2002 - Conscious Business

Leadership

Fred Kofman

Summary

Take unconditional responsibility and see yourself as a player.
Integrity is essential and what’s beyond success.
Stay open, and avoid to stake your self-esteem on being right.
Manage difficult conversations respectfully and constructively.
Create a culture of impeccability by demanding accountability and praising contributions.
Master your emotion.
Recognize and avoid unconscious attitudes, interactions, reactions.
Created an environment that team emphatically answered “yes” when asked the following questions:
12 transformations along the path to conscious business:

Take unconditional responsibility and see yourself as a player.

The player is in the game and can affect the result.
The victim is out of the game, can only suffer the consequences of others’ actions, and pays attention only to those factors they cannot influence.

Integrity is essential and what’s beyond success.

Success is in the future and is the outcome of a process that takes time and depends on factors beyond our control. In contrast, integrity is immediate and unconditional and is the alignment between your behavior and your values. When it comes to integrity, we can always be players.
Enact the universal virtues of wisdom, courage, low, justice, temperance, and transcendence and seek success beyond success.

You can’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins.

Stay open, and avoid to stake your self-esteem on being right.

Assume that your rationality is limited, other perspectives are complementary, and errors are learning opportunities.
Define goals and strategies consensually, win with others, share their views, listen to others’ opinions, maximize internal commitment through free and informed choices, and accept feelings as valid.

Manage difficult conversations respectfully and constructively.

Create a respectful context for the conversation - mutual respect and trust.
Assume the best intentions and explore the other person’s perspective - deep listening.
Express your views and feelings - provide facts and own your opinion.
Brainstorm creative ways to satisfy both of your needs.
Recommend actions, ensure comprehension, accept challenges, and find shared solutions.
Implement/leverage an agreed-upon decision-making process when unable to reach shared solutions (e.g., the RAPID framework).

Create a culture of impeccability by demanding accountability and praising contributions.

Transform a broken commitment into a positive, productive opportunity through a productive complaint: verify the previous commitment and failure, evaluate the damage, express the complaint, request reparations, negotiate a recommitment, and learn and prepare for the future.
Encourage excellence through appreciation, and give powerful praise that is public, direct, concrete, and respectful.

Master your emotion.

Reflect on your inner states and make them an object of your awareness.
Accept the involuntary feelings without judgment.
Regulate your impulses, have control of your emotion, and express consciously.
Analyze your thoughts and find the root stories of the emotion.
Articulate the story behind the emotion.
Example - “I feel A when B because I think C. Does this make sense to you? What I’d like is D, so I want to ask you E. Is that acceptable to you?”

Recognize and avoid unconscious attitudes, interactions, reactions.

Focus on ego gratification without concern for the well-being of others.
Only a valid perspective is the one you hold, and anybody who sees things differently is mistaken.
Withhold relevant information to get what you want.
Attempt to prove your worth by beating up your opponent.
Carelessly collaborate, make promises without a serious commitment to honor them.
Explosion and repression.

Created an environment that team emphatically answered “yes” when asked the following questions:

Do I know what is expected of me at work?
Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my job well?
At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
This last week, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
Are my coworkers committed to doing quality work?
Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
Do my opinions seem to count at work?
Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

12 transformations along the path to conscious business:

Responsibility From blaming to owning: stop acting like a mere victim of circumstances out of your control and take charge of your life.
Wisdom From winning to meaning: stop pursuing only competitive goals and realize that happiness comes from pursuing a noble purpose through ethical means.
Humility From knowing to learning: stop trying to prove that you’re always right and open up to new possibilities.
Compassion From judging to understanding: stop seeing people through your mental filters and put yourself in their shoes.
Courage From avoiding to confronting: stop suppressing uncomfortable information and face reality.
Honesty From pleasing to truth-telling: stop altering your story to be liked by others and start telling the truth to be liked by yourself.
Respect From controlling to considering: stop telling people what to do and take into account what they want to do.
Creativity From taking to trading: stop negotiating win-lose and look for ways in which everybody can be better off through an exchange.
Integrity From defaulting to delivering: stop defrauding your creditors and honor your promises unconditionally.
Discipline From indulging to investing: stop seeking immediate gratification and postpone pleasure for the sake of happiness.
Commitment From complying to committing: stop obeying as if you had no choice and choose to do what you do entirely.
Vision From bossing to leading: stop managing people through external rewards and punishments and inspire them with a dignifying purpose.