By Arthur F. Carmazzi

Leadership Development and Intensification of a Leader’s Insight – the First Step of Organizational Change and Corporate Re-Culturing:

It is absolutely imperative that the leaders of an organization understand the psychology of themselves and their people, for these are the tools that will facilitate greater success.

It is more difficult to acknowledge mistakes for a leader who has been more successful. When the standard strategies that have won a leader his success don’t work, becoming defensive is not difficult, and the ability to act objectively is shut down when they need it the most. It is here that an intensive insight is imperative insight into their own actions and insight as to why others act and react the way they do. In this part, Leadership Development takes on a new perspective… Please watch the video first:

The function begins with the leaders nurturing a complete knowledge of why communication might collapse, why people develop beliefs about the company and how it affects them, and how ones own beliefs influence others and the overall culture. They arm themselves with the weapons to navigate through the quiet and agitation of human emotions, emotions that determine culture, productivity and dedication.

Human beings are emotional creatures! This is a fact. Our brain feels 30,000 times faster than it acts, and it acts 30,000 times faster than it thinks. We are supposed to react in certain ways depending on our surroundings, our past experiences and the associations attached to them, and our developed expectations. The things we pursue are often not the things we basically want, it is what we associate to the things we go after that really make the difference. The process that originates our beliefs, emotions and motivations is as follows:

There are three ways for the brain to process information, Visual (thinks in pictures), Auditory (thinks in sounds and words), and Kinesthetic (thinks in feelings and sensations). While we have all three, we are usually dominated by one that guides our external and internal communication. This communication is then filtered based on formerly developed associations that have created defenses against potential adversity. These now filter what we don’t want to accept or deal with such as the idea of failure.

Everything that does get through is evaluated against our expectations and values. For example, a high expectation can result in a situation to be less motivating if that expectation is not accomplished, on the other hand, the same situation can be very motivating with a lower expectation. Or we may have a value that smoking is a disgusting habit and our expectation of those who smoke would follow that image.

Once our expectations and values are established for that situation, we then compare it to our learned associations, the links to circumstances and behaviors that we have determined will either give us joy or give us grief. Example: if we have talked to the boss on two or three separate occasions and every time we have gotten scolded, we might associate talking to the boss is equal to getting scolded and therefore equals grief. While it may not be a permanent condition, our associations have made it permanent in our mind, how many of us have thought, “they’ll never listen” about another person they work with, and yet is it really “never”?

After all this, our brain arrives at a feeling or emotion about the event. This is the ultimate determining factor for our motivation, and the actions we take. As these emotions reoccur consistently, they become anchored to similar circumstances and create patterns that we interpret as beliefs.

In an organizational culture change program, the specific set of patterns or beliefs can create a Self-fulfilling prophecy within the organization. For example: once a person believes that the boss is “unfair”, even though the boss tries to be fair, a person’s sub consciousness will initiate actions and statements that will influence the boss to act in the way that the person anticipates, in this case – unfairly.

Moreover, it is useful to know the three basic categories of how people gain fulfillment in their perception of the world around them. The classifications are as follows:

Relaters are people oriented individuals whose basic gratification is being appreciated by their peers, they obtain this by being accommodating to those around them, and often by having the latest stuff, for guys it might be gadgets, and for ladies it might be fashion, if its new and improved and makes you a hit with your friends, the relater will want it.

Factorers are data oriented people whose basic gratification is interacting with data or objects; they achieve this by researching and information gathering, they will never buy state of the art, only things that have been proven and tested. They believe data reinforced systems over people or ideas.

Here, I would like to “plug” the Colored Brain Psychometric tools you can get for free on the web, this will define how people communicate and give greater insights for understanding others in leading change and managing subordinates

The Concepters are idea-oriented individuals and get their gratification from interacting with themselves. They try to obtain this through trying to maintain control without getting involved. Their ideal life is to come up with ideas and get other people to implement them. They want to “do their own thing” and will buy whatever will help them attain this. They are also great bargainers and are prone to buying things that are good deals but regardless of necessity.

The final step is in the retrieval of Feedback through a facilitator who will strengthen the issues of the management, the subordinates and the leader and interpret them into segments and psychological foundations that can be dealt with individually.

Once the leader becomes conscious of his group psychology and the reasons that create unwanted responses, he/she must delve into his/her own mind and thought processes, so as to understand how these affect the organization and the type of culture that it has created. This is only how the changing procedure can commence.

In the following article we will have details on Re-Identification for Leadership Development – the second step of Corporate Re-Culturing.

Continued in Part III.

 By

Arthur F. Carmazzi, Founder of the Directive Communication  Organizational Development Methodology and Ranked as one of the Global Top 10 most influential Leadership Gurus by Gurus International. Arthur specializes in psychological approaches to leadership and corporate culture transformation. He is a renowned International Speaker and bestselling author of “The 6 Dimensions of Top Achievers”, “Identity Intelligence” and “Lessons from the Monkey King”, “The Psychology of Selecting the RIGHT Employee“, and “The Colored Brain Communication Field Manual“.

More from Arthur can be found at: www.directivecommunication.com and  www.carmazzi.net