The interview can be found at PR Junction and downloaded there or off iTunes.  If you want to learn more about Anders’ work, you can visit his website.  And for those interested, you might also check out the PR Junction website.

Enjoy! 

First, I asked participants to write their summary thoughts.  My hope was that by asking people to work individually rather than in a small breakout group would yield more specific insights (rather than motherhood statements). 

Second, I explicitly asked people to not give generic statements such as “we need to listen to our employees.” 

Third, I asked participants to think along three lines: A) what topics are on your mind as a result of discussing this case?  Topics that seem provocative or important to you now? B) What aspects of this case were most instructive to you?  Is there a specific idea or lesson you can take back and use at the office on Monday? C) Has the case raised a specific question in your mind?  You may not have the answer now, but you would like to have more information in hopes of finding an answer?

Initially, I think this was a step forward.  I am still not entirely satisfied with the outcome, but at least I did not get so many motherhood statements.  And when participants did tend to gravitate toward the general, I immediately asked follow-up questions which encouraged them to drill down and identify the critical point.

For example, when a participant said that “employees must first decide they want to change before anything can happen or be developed” I immediately followed-up with the question, “so then, what are you saying is the very center–the core or the heart–of someone’s resistance to change?  Can you define the epicenter?”  With about 2 minutes of discussion, they did arrive at an answer.

So, I am making progress but I am still not entirely satisfied I have found the best questions to help learners identify importan learning points from a discussion.

Do you have any suggestions?

So what question(s) did I ask that evoked mother statements as a response?  I asked a question that I bet we have all asked at one time or another–what lessons can you take away from today and apply when you get back to the office?  Though well intentioned, I am tonight thinking this is a pretty poor question.  From extremely bright people, this questions evoked responses like “Leaders must walk the talk,” “Leaders must communicate effectively,” and “Leaders must think about the people they are leading.” All true, but extremely general and not at all personalized.  I was not hearing what lessons from today were important to each person and her/his specific job.  Generic statements only.

The problem, I think, lies in the question.  A motherhood question invites people to respond with motherhood statements.  Afterwards, the HR colleague in the room suggested that maybe people could identify lessons by asking them, “after today, what about leadership would you like to: do more of, do less of, not change, and change substantially?“  Not a bad suggestion.  Certainly this question could be modified many ways.

Another idea I had was to ask participants to identify a lesson from today that is personally important to them.  Then, follow up by asking them to relate this to a specific past experience (when they could have applied this knowledge), a present challenge they are currently facing, or a future challenge they are certain is headed their way.  They would need to recount the story, briefly, and connect the lesson explicitly. 

I am also playing with the idea that whatever I ask, perhaps I should give them a printed form for capturing lessons and distribute this form at the start of the session.  This would potentially frame the day and indicate from the outset that they must find something meaningful and make connections before the day’s end.

The one thing I am certain of is that I will not begin the debrief at a small group level.  I want people to reflect and write individually.  Perhaps then they can discuss as a small group after writing individually, but the personal lessons I believe must come first.

I will be giving this much more thought.  But, one thing is certain–I won’t be inviting anymore motherhood statements at the end of my sessions.

The idea is that we will begin by discussing current books which are important to the business community.  Thus, in terms of breadth we will not discuss solely the discipline of leadership.  We will discuss both the traditional category we label leadership as well as leading thoughts across the business functions.  This broad approach to discussing leadership within the context of marketing, corporate communication, law, organizational behavior, and of course traditional leadership will allow us to discuss many timely and important topics.

But since leadership matters, we will dive deep and discuss what these ideas mean for people who want to exercise leadership within their office, organization, or industry.   

From time-to-time we hope to bring in guest executives to comment.  We will also try to invite the authors to share a few words. At the end of the day, we hope to add something that listeners find useful, that members of SMU and other academic communities find thoughtful, and that everyone enjoys listening to once a month.

We hope to have the first episode on-line in early October.  Stay tuned!

What really caught my eye was Sam’s “overriding” interest in trust.  Above all other issues, globalization has raised the importance of trust.  He asked us how we can ensure trust amongst all stakeholders when business uses increasingly distributed models?

 To illustrate, Sam discussed the international corporation (operates out of the home country and sells goods internationally), the multinational model (many company locations overseas and all of which are miniature versions of the home HQ), and the globally integrated enterprise (all functions and services are distributed around the world, integrated fully via technology, and the company literally becomes a global enterprise). 

So how do you build and maintain trust in a globally integrated enterprise?  Sam’s answer was to “lower the center of gravity.”  Decision making needs to be pushed downward and you need to attract and develop the right people who can make these decisions within the context of a lowered center of gravity.  But people are people…and they will make mistakes or do something they shouldn’t.  The company’s leadership will remain responsible for these missteps and it is a fundamental duty of leadership to address these issues proactively and wisely. 

This is all very general and the talk was short (no more than 25 minutes).  But the ideas are interesting and I am sure we are able to tease out some useful material.  For me, I cannot help but make connections back to Edelman’s Trust Barometer.  Sam say’s trust is of “overriding” importance, and Edelman tells us that businesses generally receives little trust around the world (but more than media and government, generally).

It sounds to me like trust–on many levels–is in fact an overriding issue of corporate leadership.