Event: SCHUITEMA ON LEADERSHIP – The Care & Growth Model
Venue: Etisalat Academy
Date: 17th April 2008

Event Description

Leadership by Intent-Transforming Conflict into Synergy

Conventional wisdom in management has been that if you single-mindedly focus on the results to be achieved, everything else falls into line and the organization becomes healthy and productive. Nothing can be farther from the truth in real life. More often than not, this approach of using results as the main yardstick of success creates problems in productivity, low morale and employee turnover. A bigger issue is that this approach leads to a flawed, one-dimensional view about the role of the manager and this in turn serves to perpetuate the problem.

People don’t go the extra mile for organizations; people go the extra mile for people, the ones who lead them effectively. Effective leadership requires a transformation in mindset and behavior, from just professional competence to personal effectiveness and excellence.

The Care and Growth™ Model intuitively and logically demonstrates that excellence at any level, may it be individual, group, organization, even nations and in any domain, be it commercial, non commercial, government etc, can be accounted on the basis of a single criterion called INTENT i.e. the intent to make a contribution unconditionally. It shows that the issues of personal excellence and team/organization excellence are same issues and cannot be dealt with separately.

Any group is successful based on the degree to which its members are unconditional in pursuit of the group’s objectives. This essentially requires each member to willingly suspend his self interest for the objectives of the group, only then you have a team. On the other hand, if everyone is pursuing self aggrandizement you have no team, it is a herd of cats, no matter how skilled they are individually.

If the benevolent intent of the group is not worthy of this suspension of self interest then it cannot seek to mobilize unconditional behavior. People will only suspend their self interest and go an extra mile for some noble purpose that is bigger than their self interest.

The sad reality is that the current understanding of organizational excellence seems to be focused on everything but the intent of its people. As a result it is probably one of the key factors behind the disablement of teams and in turn organizations.

Program Outline:

Establishing Criteria for Organizational Success

• Conditions under which a group produces surplus/profit
• Intent of the group – Taking vs Giving
• Implications of Intent

Establishing Criteria for Effective Leadership

• The person I would work for willingly
• The core leadership themes
• What do we mean by Intent of a Leader?

Organizational Implications of Care & Growth Model

• Inversion of Means and Ends
• The coaching metaphor
• Product of leadership

Cultivating “Giving” in Organizations

• Empowerment Paradigm: Means, Ability & Accountability
• The Hard and the Soft Mistake.

Establishing Benevolent Intent of an Enterprise

• Why do businesses exist?
• Creating benevolent intent of an enterprise
• Linking benevolent intent of enterprise to benevolent intent of tasks

Linking Organizational Excellence to Personal Excellence

• Personal Implications for the Leader
• The Three Attentions

Leadership by Intent

• INTENT the core link between Personal Excellence, Organizational Excellence and Team Excellence.
• Transforming conflict into synergy