Janet Britcher was interviewed on Cultural Brilliance Radio with Claudette Rowley, about her book, Zoom Leadership: Change Your Focus, Change Your Insights. This is part 1, in which Janet talks about the need for flexible focus, and introduces us to four “lenses”.
Claudette Rowley: I’m really, really excited today to have our guest Janet Britcher with us. We’re going to be talking about Janet’s new book, Zoom Leadership: Change Your Focus, Change Your Insights and I love Janet’s book, so I’m so excited we get to have this conversation today, so that all of you listening can benefit as well. Welcome Janet.
Janet Britcher: Thank you, Claudette. I’m so pleased to be here.
Claudette: Yes. I’m so glad you’re here. As I was reading, flipping through your book and reading it over and reading the introduction, I just got more and more excited to have this conversation with you. What I’d love to start by asking you, what really inspired you to write this book at this particular point in time?
Janet: Well, what inspired me to write it now is that I found over time helping leaders that I had an approach that was fairly straightforward and easy to remember. In my field, it’s fun to get involved with complex models and theories, and I love that, but my clients are leaders that have a job to do all day long and they need something simple. My experience before I started my business 15 years ago in human resources was that leaders don’t get much training. They need help, they deserve help. Nobody wakes up to decide to be a bad boss one day, but they don’t get the training that they need.
Claudette: Yes, absolutely. It’s so true. No one decides to wake up to be a bad boss. Sometimes when I’m doing different kinds of facilitation, I’ll imagine your employees are coming in and maybe not doing the job that you’d hope that they were doing, didn’t wake up to your point and say, “You know what, today I’m just not going to perform.” It’s not happening. No, people actually want to do a good job.
Janet: They do. Imagine if we didn’t make nurses get training, or even plumbers, or baristas or all that, we give them all training. It’s so often that leaders get promoted because they were good at their last job and that’s an issue that I really want to help resolve.
Claudette: Yes, it’s so important. Just so we all– People listening in can understand what we’re talking about. When you say zoom leadership, what do you mean?
Janet: I mean the ability to change each of four lenses. The book presents four lenses. The first one that’s usually used in business is think. People are logical, they’re analytical, they’re scientific, or engineering and they look through that one lens. But if you think about getting closer or further from a decision, then it changes your perspective. The book is really about how to change your perspective in a way that can help you with decisions.
Let’s say you’re interviewing, zooming in would be considering a certain candidate, Paul Smith let’s say, zooming in to the analytics, of what am I looking for, or what are the qualifications, but zooming out through that thinking lens might be more about, “How many people do I need? What’s the outcome I’m looking for? What’s the result that I’d like to have?” and “What’s the hierarchy of values or competencies that I’m looking for.” That’s the zoom in and out through the first of four lenses.
Claudette: Yes. That’s so important, isn’t it? To move just beyond the analysis of facts, right?
Janet: That’s right. I’m a big fan of changing perspectives. Too often we get stuck in a default, like if I’m really analytical, I’m really detail-oriented, that’s the lens I usually use. That may be great for 50 or 70 or even 90% of the circumstances, but then you’ll find something where that’s not the one that’s going to work best and that’s what I’m offering here.
Claudette: One of the other ones you mentioned, act, is another common lens?
Janet: That’s right. That’s the second most common because leaders– I’m using leaders in a very broad sense. I think anyone who’s ever been in a line that sees a process is not going well and has a better idea on some level is a leader. In my opinion, you don’t need to carry the leader title, but that idea of taking action, moving forward, that’s the second most common one that leaders use. They hire or they say no to a recommendation or they spend money, they take an action. Again, getting closer to that, it might be deciding, let’s say pricing or zooming out from an action might be deciding market share, that whole idea of getting closer or further along that lens.
Claudette: Yes. One of the things that strikes me as well is how much information is missed when we don’t– You talk about in your book that one of our scarcest resources is attention span, right?
Janet: Yes.
Claudette: I loved this. The need to quickly reframe, right? Can you tell us more about that skill, especially reframing in this? If we reframe, what’s available?
Janet: What I think is available is a range of options, the ability to more systematically get out of the pattern of thinking and look at some other options through a lens that might not be the most common one for you. It brings a range of options, but the problem it really solves is that sometimes you’re stumped because you have no idea how to solve something and sometimes you’re overwhelmed, you have too many ideas. The idea of looking through each of the four lenses and zooming in and out is that you can innovate, you can bring new ideas to yourself and you can also narrow.
It’s a way I like you to think of it as searching in your own brain. If we had a Google for our own brain–
Claudette: [laughs]
Janet: What might that reveal?
Claudette: [laughs]
Janet: There’s lots of expertise, and insights, and knowledge, and education, but they’re not always available in the moment you’re stressed.
Claudette: It’s so true, this is what the stress does to the brain in all the neuroscience we know exist. One thing that struck me, what you just said is we might have too many ideas, we might not have enough ideas because we’re stressed and overwhelmed and that sometimes in order for an organization to innovate, we know new ideas are needed, but you’re getting down to this sounds like the individual. How does the individual person start to access new ideas so that they can join the group and innovate?
Janet: That’s right. I’d start first with the individual. But certainly a group, or a team, or a leadership team can use that same approach.
Claudette: Yes. It just seems so applicable. It’s so applicable to so many different situations.
Janet: Yes. That’s what I like about it, it’s adaptable, that you can blend it with other things you know about, other things you’re good at, you’re not limited to using only this model. That’s one of the things. I think of it like a folk song, a folk song starts out, but then somebody adds another verse, or if somebody adds a different rhythm, makes it compose to reggae and that’s–
Claudette: [laughs]
Janet: The idea I have with it is I want people to adapt it and include, and incorporate, and blend it with what else they know and are good at.
Claudette: Definitely. After we take our first break, we’re going to be going into each one of these lenses more deeply with some examples and really have a chance to look at them, but I’m curious to me, feel and witness are two of the other lenses?
Janet: Yes.
Claudette: I know they’re less common, but what have you seen with those two lenses? What’s your take on them?
Janet: Well, the way I introduced the feel lens is that 20 years ago let’s say, emotions at work didn’t get a lot of respect. But starting, in my mind, starting with the publication of Emotional Intelligence, it was a way to not only justify and defend, and present the value of emotions and feelings at work, but to make it very layman friendly. It was using scientific research but it presented in a very readable format. This idea of emotional intelligence and empathy, people now realize it’s hugely important to decision making and decisions are not made logically. If you do the research, decisions are really made emotionally.
Claudette: Yes. They absolutely are. I have actually a really interesting story, you may be familiar with it. I’d love to share it when we come back from our break. You’re listening to Cultural Brilliance: The DNA of Organizational Excellence. I’m Claudette Rowley, if you’re just joining us. We’re going to take a quick break and stay tuned and when we come back, we were going to continue to talk about this really interesting idea of what happens to our perceptions in decisions when we look through different lenses.
Link to parts 2,3 & 4
A Tool for Leadership Decisions; Applying the Model to a Client (Cultural Brilliance Radio – Part 3)
The Feel and Witness Lens of the Zoom Leadership Coaching Model (Cultural Brilliance Radio – Part 4)