Cultural Brilliance: The DNA of Organizational Excellence
With Host Claudette Rowley – Transformation Talk Radio – Every 2nd & 4th Friday 10 AM (PT)/1 PM (ET)
With Special Guest Janet Britcher – author of “Zoom Leadership: Change Your Focus, Change Your Insights”
I had the pleasure of interviewing Janet Britcher on my show Cultural Brilliance Radio. Janet Britcher is the author of Zoom Leadership: Change Your Focus, Change Your Insights. Janet is a Certified Executive Coach with extensive experience coaching leaders, as well as group coaching for new and middle managers. She also offers leadership and management workshops, and board retreat and management team retreat facilitation. Janet’s approach is to build on existing strengths to help leaders enhance their agility, accountability, authenticity. That in turn invites employees to be more engaged, collaborative and productive, transforming business results.
Below is an article written by the Conscious Business Radio team about the show.
Cultural Brilliance helps you experience groundbreaking ways to transform your company’s culture. Host Claudette Rowley invites some of the foremost experts on organizational culture to help understand how to make a brilliant culture the rule rather than the exception.
Claudette had the opportunity to speak with Janet Britcher, author of Zoom Leadership: Change Your Focus, Change Your Insights. Janet’s book is designed to help leaders shift from a fixed to a creative perspective on solving complex problems. Using a practical, yet innovative approach, Janet’s book is a must for leaders who want to make quick, yet thorough, decisions in today’s turbulent times. As a Certified Executive Coach, Janet holds an MBA with a concentration in Organization Development from Boston College, and many additional certifications in psychology and leadership. Janet brings over 20 years of corporate leadership roles in Management, Human Resources and Organization Development to her coaching work. Her HR and management background provides a solid foundation from which to coach clients as they deepen effective leadership skills.
Today’s discussion starts with Janet’s inspiration for her book, as well as a breakdown of the term zoom leadership and its business application. Janet explains that during her experience working with leaders, she discovered many did not have a lot of training, and were seeking approaches that were fairly straight forward and easy to remember. In describing “zoom leadership”, Janet says it is the ability to change perspectives by looking through four different lenses. By changing perspectives, it’s easier for leaders to make quick, yet important decisions.
The first lens that is usually used in business is “think”. People looking through the “think” lens are logical, analytical and they tend to prefer that one lens. However, when you think about getting closer or further from a decision, it can change your perspective. The second one is “act”, which is very common with leaders – the idea of taking action, moving forward. “Feel” is the lens that focuses on emotional intelligence; Research shows that decisions are made emotionally. The last lens Janet introduces is the ‘witness’’ lens. This lens includes what people often refer to as mindfulness, or it can be what people call a bystander or observer. This lens is important in situations where people should be mindful of themselves and their reactions. It also helps when interacting with people that just need to be heard. Being able to reflect what you heard back to them can be extremely helpful and keep them grounded in their own feelings or in their own options, next steps, actions, etc. It can help them get clear on what they’re articulating.
Janet also talks about techniques to reduce stress. As she says, when people under stress, they don’t have access to all of their good ideas and the innovation that’s available. In addition to breathing or meditating, using the four lens methodology can certainly help. And over time, they will become a little more automatic in situations. She goes on to say that the best way to think about it – is to take a moment, realize the outcome of most decisions isn’t urgent. Give yourself permission to take time, to make a good decision. Whether it is journaling, sending yourself an email, anything you can do to pause even briefly will increase and enhance your ability to access your brain more effectively.
Finally, Janet reminds us that we’re all proficient in think, feel, act and witness. These are skills and abilities we all have, and it’s just a question of remembering to use them methodically when you’re stumped or unsure. As we all know about zooming closer and further as we use that on maps and camera lenses, so we’re all proficient with getting closer and further from issues. The key is to remember that this is just a metaphor for the ability to methodically consider options.
To listen to the full show, click here
For more information on Janet Britcher and her book “Zoom Leadership: Change Your Focus, Change Your Insights”, go to www.transformationmanagement.com
Click here for Claudette Rowley’s website, Cultural Brilliance
(Archived episodes available at www.culturalbrilliance.com and www.transformationtalkradio.com)
