Speed-read, as is often best with business books. Some good ideas, much of it common sense.
Notes:
p. 14: Truly human leadership protects an organizatioSpeed-read, as is often best with business books. Some good ideas, much of it common sense.
Notes:
p. 14: Truly human leadership protects an organization from the internal rivalries that can shatter a culture. When we have to protect ourselves from each other, the whole organization suffers. But when trust and cooperation thrive internally, we pull together and the organization grows stronger as a result.
When the people have to manage dangers from inside the organization, the organization itself becomes less able to face the dangers from outside.
Truly human leadership protects an organization from the internal rivalries that can shatter a culture. When we have to protect ourselves from each other, the whole organization suffers. But when trust and cooperation thrive internally, we pull together and the organization grows stronger as a result.
The systems inside us that protect us from danger and encourage us to repeat behavior in our our best interest respond to the environments in which we live and work. If we sense danger our defenses go up. If we feel safe among our own people, in our own tribes or organizations, we relax and are more open to trust and cooperation.
A close study of high-performing organizations, the ones in which the people feel safe when they come to work, reveals something astounding. Their cultures have an eerie resemblance to the conditions under which the human animal was designed to operate. Operating in a hostile, competitive world in which each group was in pursuit of finite resources, the systems that helped us survive and thrive as a species also work to help organizations achieve the same. There are no fancy management theories and it is not about hiring dream teams. I tis just a matter of biology and anthropology. If certain conditions are met and the people inside an organization feel safe among each other, they will work together to achieve things none of htem could ever have achieved alone. The result is that their organizaitons towers over their competitors.
p. 22: Intimidation, humiliation, isolation, feeling dumb, feeling useless and rejection are all stresses we try to avoid inside the organization. But the denager inside is controllable and it should be the goal of leadership to set a culture free of danger to each other. And the way to do that is by giving people a sense of belonging. By offering them a strong culture based on a clear set of human values and believes. By giving them the power to make decisions. By offering trust and empathy. By creating a Circle of Safety.
By creating a Circle of Safety around the people in the organization, leadership reduces the threats people feel inside the group, which frees them up to focus more time and energy to protect the organization from the constant dangers outside and seize the big opportuntiies. Without a Circle of Safety, people are forced to spend too much time and energy protecting themselves from each other.
pp. 98-100 � milgram experiment � AG’s recommendations; obedience; easier to hurt people if disconnected from them (community; danny)
The second is the agentic state theory, wherein, per Milgram, "the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view themselves as the instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, and they therefore no longer see themselves as responsible for their actions.
pp. 131-132: When we assess how we “feel� about our jobs, we are very often responding to the environments in which we work. It is not just about the work we are doing, per se. And when a culture changes from a place where people love to work into a place where they go to work simply to take something for themselves, the finger gets pointed at the people who run the company. People will respond to the environment in which they operate. It is the leaders who decide what kind of environment they want to build. Will they build an inner circle around those closest to them or will they extend the Circle of Safety to the outer edges of the organization?
p. 136: Inside a Circle of Safety, when people trust and share their successes and failures, what they know and what they don’t know, the result is innovation. It’s just natural.
p. 140: The problem is not how a company conducts its business per se. The problem lies with the quality of relationships within the organization � starting with the leader.
“Power…gradually shuts the tyrant off from the world.� And, as we already know, when distance is created, abstraction settles in and soon after that comes the paranoia. The tyrant sees the world against them, which only compels them to shut out even more people. They set up more and more rigid controls around their inner circle. And as their isolation increases, the organization suffers.
Absent any care from above, those inside the org are less likely to cooperate. Instead, competing against each other becomes the best way to advance. And when that happens, the success individuals in the group may enjoy will not be met with congratulations from others, but with jealously.
p. 143: “what happens when the leader is wrong in a top-down culture? Everyone goes off a cliff. Have to learn to trust bottom-ranked crew more than trust yourself as a leader
p. 144: Give authority to those closest to the information.
p. 147: The more energy is transferred from the top of the org to those who are actually doing the job, those who know more about what’s going on on a daily basis, the more powerful the org and the more powerful the leader.
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