Elaine discusses the challenges faced by women in leadership positions…

1. Unconscious Bias: Stereotypes and subconscious attitudes toward the capabilities of women
2. Inadequate Support: Lack of sponsorship and mentorship on leadership development opportunities for women
3. Home-Work Dichotomy: The fact remains that women are the major caregiver of children and the elderly

…and provides strategies on overcoming challenges faced by women leaders:

1. Continue to advocate for and promote gender equality by hosting workshops and dialogues to uncover unconscious bias, as well as create platforms for women’s voices to be heard within organisations
2. Provide equal access for female for resources, mentorship, and leadership development among women
3. Tap on government support packages for women development, while including men in the process of affirming that household responsibilities are equally the domain of men and women as both are equal in worth and value

Gender equality in the workplace has long been acknowledged as integral to the success of any organisation. Time and time again, research and results show that companies and businesses perform better when they have more women in the workforce, as Elaine shares. Arguably, women are by nature caring and empathetic — traits that are critical in building relationships with both internal and external stakeholders in any organisation.

Genetic predispositions aside, however, the perspective of women leaders are crucial if a company hopes to make well-balanced and informed business decisions for their employees, consumers, and clients. Nonetheless, there are critical leadership qualities that women need to cultivate in order to fully claim their entitlement to empowerment:

1. Continuous Self-growth: To lead well, a leader must grow and learn ceaselessly
2. Compassion: A leader might not understand everyone and everything, but they should be willing to meet people where they are and put themselves in other people’s shoes
3. Courage: A leader must be able to make difficult decisions and move forward amid uncertainty and the unknown

About the Trainer

Elaine Zhou was born in China and came to live in Singapore when she was 19 years old. She started her career with a corporate job as an HR assistant, and worked her way up to management level, in charge of the Asia-Pacific region workforce.

Years later, Elaine quit her corporate job to embark on an entrepreneurship journey. She started two businesses on her own, which had to be closed down. Amid the failures, Elaine found her true calling in leadership development, “which I truly believe was the start of my personal transformation.”

For the past 11 years, Ms Zhou has been running her own business, and successfully at that. She has been providing leadership development training and support for corporate leaders, directors and entrepreneurs, as well as women empowerment training and invaluable knowledge and tools that equip female working professionals and female entrepreneurs thrive and get ahead in their careers.

Through the years Leaine has found her voice and rightful place in the sun — conducting workshops, facilitating roundtable discussions, and speaking at conferences both locally and internationally on topics close to her heart, including leadership development, women empowerment, and entrepreneurship.

Six years ago, Elaine founded Global Youth Leadership Program, a non-profit social impact project with the mission of training young leaders, 16 to 35 years old, so that they too may find and embrace their true calling.

If “Vulnerability-based” trust is absent in a team, then their chances of reaching a high level of performance are significantly reduced. But, if a team can create this kind of atmosphere and culture, then they will have overcome the first of the 5 Dysfunctions — and the key to achieving this is courage. To encourage this behaviour in others, it first has to be exhibited by the leader.

Dysfunction # 2: The fear of conflict

“Contrary to popular wisdom and behaviour, conflict is not a bad thing for a team.  In fact, the fear of conflict is almost always a sign of problems.”

 – Patrick Lencioni

So, which problem is Lencioni referring to?

“Contrary to popular wisdom and behaviour, conflict is not a bad thing for a team. In fact, the fear of conflict is almost always a sign of problems,” according to Lencioni.

The key problem is fairly straightforward. Unless there is some “conflict” or at least disagreement within a team, it’s unlikely that they are able to engage in the unfiltered and passionate debate that is necessary for all ideas and suggestions to be thoroughly reviewed and ensure that they add value to the business. Instead, teams resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments resulting in less than optimum decisions being made.

Conflict within teams often becomes destructive and personal, but the type of conflict the 5 Dysfunctions model advocates is both productive and ideological. Such conflict is impossible unless the team is comfortable with the concept of vulnerability-based trust (referred to in Dysfunction #1).

Even in the best teams, this type of conflict will sometimes be comfortable, but the fear of occasional personal conflict should not deter the team from regular, productive debate.

Dysfunction # 3: Lack of Commitment

 “In the context of a team, commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in…. Even from those who voted against the decision.” 

– Patrick Lencioni

Previously, we proposed that if team members do not have the willingness to deal with the conflict that may arise from passionate debate, then they are unlikely to be making optimal decisions. 

There is also a very important knock-on effect, wherein it becomes all too easy for team members to fail to commit to team decisions on the basis that their views were never given due consideration or perhaps even heard. 

This results in “corridor conversations,” which make it clear that the team concerned is not cohesive. Obviously, this has negative connotations in itself. 

But what is often overlooked is that this kind of split is frequently all too apparent to those reporting to the team and so has a damaging impact throughout the organisation. So true buy-in can only be achieved if team members feel that their opinions have been heard and understood.

One of the other key elements Lencioni considers necessary for commitment is clarity. 

I expect we have all had the experience of happily concluding a meeting thinking that everyone had agreed to a particular action only to find afterwards that there were numerous interpretations of the same agreement! 

To combat this issue, Lencioni proposes a simple tool to ensure that if there are any misunderstandings or differing interpretations, then they should be dealt with before the meeting closes. Yes, the meeting may last a little longer, but this far outweighs the time saved in avoiding future disagreements.

Great teams operate on the basis that everyone in the team has a responsibility to express their true opinions irrespective of how unpopular they may be or who they are disagreeing with. 

But they also have the equal responsibility to commit to the group decision even when it goes against their own view. This approach is enshrined in one of Amazon’s well-known leadership principles: “Disagree and Commit.”

Dysfunction # 4: Avoidance of Accountability

“To hold someone accountable is to care about them enough to risk having them blame you for pointing out their deficiencies.”

– Patrick Lencioni

Very few people would argue with the concept of holding people accountable for their actions and behaviour. However, Lencioni stresses two important elements that are vital to doing this effectively:

1. It’s impossible to hold people accountable if they haven’t given prior and public commitment to the actions they are supposed to take. Hence, this dysfunction is directly linked to the previous one — Lack of Commitment.

2. Perhaps more unusually, Lencioni contends that the most effective form of accountability is peer accountability — where peers take it as their responsibility to “call each other out” if they notice colleagues who are not living up to their commitments. More often it is left to the leader of the team to do this, but peer accountability leads to a stronger team, even if there are some uncomfortable moments to be navigated along the way.

Dysfunction # 5: Inattention to Results

“A functional team must make the collective results of the group more important to each individual than individual members’ goals.”

– Patrick Lencioni

Ultimately, the overall purpose of overcoming the previous four (4) dysfunctions — building greater trust, engaging in healthy conflict, obtaining clear commitment and holding each other accountable is for one reason only — is the achievement of results.

But here, Lencioni again makes a key point: the results everyone should be concerned with are the team’s overall results, NOT each team member’s individual results. This is a common problem in large organisations with reward structures based on individual departmental objectives.

To foster the right environment to achieve this focus on overall results, individual team members must recognize and act in a way that — however loyal they are to the team they serve. Their overriding loyalty is always to the team to which they are a member.

In summary, the journey through the 5 Dysfunctions of A Team can at times be challenging. But the overall, long-term improvement in true teamwork and ultimately, better results far outweigh the temporary discomfort.

About The Blog Author

Paul Stuart
Senior Director Client Solutions, Kaleidoskope Pte Ltd

As a consultant operating in four main roles — trainer, facilitator, executive coach and organisational development consultant — Paul has facilitated a wide range of interventions and has trained more than 40 different nationalities in 20 countries.  

He has a special interest in the areas of Project Management and Leadership, Influencing skills and Communication. He is known for delivering programmes that are engaging, practical and fun; with a strong emphasis on “learning by doing” so that the skills and techniques “stick.”

Today, Follett is known as one of the great thinkers and management experts of classical management theory. Moreover, Mary was thinking ahead of her time, having formulated principles regarded as the gold standard to this day. She is regarded as the “Mother of Modern Management“. She believed that management was the “art of getting things done through people.”

She anticipated collaborative practice, self-managed teams, adaptive leadership, and agile work. Furthermore, Follett saw organisations as a network of relationships that would amplify the creation of value across the organisation if fully empowered and activated. Instead of doing work according to the strict orders of a manager, Follett advocated for conducting work according to the situational context.

“We should all stand on Follett’s shoulders in order to see further into the possibilities for organisational perfectibility.” 
– Rosabeth Moss Kanter

“Every one of the features of the new organisation that we (and so many others) were so giddy proclaiming as cutting edge and revolutionary had been anticipated by Follett” 
– Nitin Nohria

“The prophet of management. Management and society should welcome her return.” 
– Peter Drucker

In 1933, the year Follett died, a Jewish German named Kurt Lewin emigrated from Germany to the US, anticipating the dark days that followed. While regarded as a brilliant thinker and teacher, his Jewish heritage prevented him from getting senior academic roles until near the end of his life.
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Surrounded by students and thinkers of all genders and cultural heritages, Lewin’s collaborative methodologies, influenced by quantum physics and unsurpassed to this day, resulted in the foundational development of more behavioural concepts than perhaps any group in history.

Organisational: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), sensitivity training, diversity training, leadership styles, step-based change, organisational climate (a precursor to organisational culture), team dynamics.

Societal: social psychology, action research, group dynamics, plus significant contributions to developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, and the theory of cognitive dissonance.

Despite their foundational brilliance, Follett and Lewin’s non-mainstream gender and cultural heritage hindered them throughout their lives and haunted them even after death.

Their visionary genius is absent from the vast majority of OD, DEI, and leadership programs that their thinking should underpin. Instead, a narrowly elite subset of North American white males continues to dominate. It results in biased interpretations, partial knowledge, an impoverished learning experience, and solutions that cannot deliver the desired outcomes.

Follett’s and Lewin’s thinking underpin contemporary collaborative and collective organisational practices such as DEI, psychological safety, agile teamwork, adaptive leadership, leadership styles, and the ecosystemic mindset. However, they cannot be adequately understood or implemented without the historical context.

Likewise, any attempt to create value in today’s complex interdependent organisational systems is diminished and undermined by a lack of awareness of these foundational ideas.

Follett and Lewin’s lives, thoughts and ideas provide much-needed context to contemporary organisational concepts and practices. Moreover, they allow people to see that today’s ideas are not novel and unproven.

The debate continues as to which is the best way to create value: inclusive collective sensemaking or exclusive individual authoritarianism. Rather than ignore the profound and foundational research on DEI, organisational networks, and collaborative sensemaking, we employ it to add depth, colour, and narratives to recent thinking, ensuring our workshops are complete, rigorous, entertaining, and memorable.

Likewise, it must be noted that for an organisation to thrive in today’s business environment, it must first accept the obsolescence of measuring success solely by financial gains. In this age of rapid transformation and disruption, a trifecta of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles is key. Collectively, the ESG Principles is the foundation upon which a strong and sustainable workplace is built.

Adopting ESG principles is tantamount to future-proofing your organisation as it facilitates top-line growth in the long term, attracts talent, reduces costs, and forges a sense of trust amongst consumers.

As such, the question begs to be asked: What are the critical leadership competencies, meaningful insights or perspectives that leaders today need to create diverse, equitable, and inclusionary value in organisations?

• Psychological Safety: how collective intelligence creates organisational value, and how
• to create environments that enable it.
• Adaptive Leadership: what leadership styles fit what organisational situations, and how to adapt between them.
• The Agile Mindset: how to improve collective sensemaking and collaborative decision-making in agile work.

Tracing the future of ESG leadership back to the origins of DEI could very well be the key to building an organisation’s social stability — now a major determinant of a company’s public image or the growth potential of a business.

At Kaleidoskope, we help you forge the right leaders to support your organisation’s ESG efforts in line with DEI principles. We are here to support your efforts in shaping the narrative towards an inclusive, sustainable, and socially just future and provide you with the tools to embark on this learning journey.

Want to know more? Reply to this email or give us a call at +65 9100 5995.

These are disruptive times we’re living in. The world is only just beginning to learn to live with the scars of the pandemic, and yet another threat looms. This time, it’s the threat of war, posed by an autocrat over a sovereign state, in utter disregard of international laws.

These days it feels like the waves of change are rolling in fast and fierce, crashing hard, and rippling endlessly over every aspect of our life. But the human spirit is tenacious. And so, for most of us, life goes on, it’s back to work—as we continue adapting to the circumstances and evolving with the changing environment.

Within this context emerged the concept of hybrid working. In today’s new normal, “the workplace” doesn’t just mean a physical office in a fixed location. Hybrid teams work onsite or virtually at home or in the office, or in any such combinations that would allow them to perform their duties.

For the managers in your organisations, work has gotten more complex and challenging. Now they would also be accountable for coordinating teams dispersed across various locations, working in different circumstances and environments.

In this article we will discuss:

How to Manage & Engage your Hybrid Teams Effectively

Are the managers and team leaders in your organisation ready for the challenges of running hybrid teams? We prepared something to help you! Click download to access the brochure.

These are disruptive times we’re living in. The world is only just beginning to learn to live with the scars of the pandemic, and yet another threat looms. This time, it’s the threat of war, posed by an autocrat over a sovereign state, in utter disregard of international laws.

These days it feels like the waves of change are rolling in fast and fierce, crashing hard, and rippling endlessly over every aspect of our life. But the human spirit is tenacious. And so, for most of us, life goes on, it’s back to work—as we continue adapting to the circumstances and evolving with the changing environment.

Within this context emerged the concept of hybrid working. In today’s new normal, “the workplace” doesn’t just mean a physical office in a fixed location. Hybrid teams work onsite or virtually at home or in the office, or in any such combinations that would allow them to perform their duties.

For the managers in your organisations, work has gotten more complex and challenging. Now they would also be accountable for coordinating teams dispersed across various locations, working in different circumstances and environments.

In this article we will discuss:

• practical ways, tips, and actions that will help your managers lead and support their hybrid teams better
• critical questions that the leaders in your organisation must be ready to face and answer, in the context of hybrid working
• the most effective ways for a leader or manager to create a successful hybrid workplace
• recommended “strategy shifts” or suggestions on reframing our perspective on workplace challenges in today’s new normal

Are the managers and team leaders in your organisation ready for the challenges of running hybrid teams? We prepared something to help you! Click download to access the brochure.