Listen as Janet Britcher of Transformation Management discusses her book; Zoom Leadership: Change Your Focus, Change Your Insights; with Kevin Short of the Think Outrageous radio show, including Janet’s four lenses and their relation to Myers-Briggs personality types.
Kevin Short: This is Kevin Short. Welcome to the Think Outrageous Radio Show. We’re fortunate today to have as our guest, Janet Britcher. Janet has written a book, Zoom Leadership: Change Your Focus, Change Your Insights. Janet, thank you for being here. Tell us something about yourself. What motivated you to write this book?
Janet Britcher: Thank you Kevin. I’m delighted to talk about what motivated me because I have a real sense of mission about leaders being great at their job and that too often, when they’re promoted, they don’t get the kind of support that they need in order to be excellent. Nobody really wakes up in the morning and says, “Let me be a bad manager.” That’s not effective. What motivated me was, I’ve spent about 20 years in Human Resources.
When I left 15 years ago to start my own business, Transformation Management, I felt, “What have I learned? What kind of complaints come in to my office?” In the morning, a manager would come in angry, pretty much annoyed that an employee had not done what they wanted, and in that afternoon, an employee would be irate or hurt that the manager wasn’t effective or wasn’t fair. That’s what really motivated me to develop my leadership coaching business.
Kevin: Makes sense. Talk about who you’ve talked to, what you’ve learned as you wrote, and studied them, and researched the book. What things did you learn?
Janet: What I found was that, usually I’m working with client leaders who’ve been promoted to that next level. Reasonably enough, leaders are grappling with decisions that they need to make, whether to hire or fire, whether to work on that project or prioritize another one. Like all of us, they can get stuck in their own loop or their own thinking. I developed an approach that opened up possibilities.
That approach, we’re all familiar nowadays with that idea of zooming in and zooming out, whether you think of that as a map, or video camera, that whole idea of getting closer to an idea or a dilemma, or further away. Using each of four lenses, I found, would help my clients open up to their own good ideas and their own expertise. It was a way, in a sense, to be able to search inside their own mind. The four lenses are think, act, feel, and witness, and then combining that with the idea of getting closer in or further out.
Kevin: Do you find many people that can use the four lenses every day?
Janet: Well, it’s hard to say, but in the moment of feeling stuck about a decision, sometimes it only takes shifting one lens. You might be very logical and thinking, “Why won’t this budge, why won’t this move?”, but shift to the act lens that you just do one more thing, you just pick up the phone or call someone or research something. Sometimes it doesn’t take using all four; it can take, maybe, just shifting this one, or the other one.
Kevin: You’re saying people, you think, go back and forth, which sounds right. I would guess, I’m a big fan of Myers-Briggs. It seems like people shift as they go through their day, as they learn, as they mature. Their strengths they may have had when they’re 25 may be very different at 40. I would guess that would be true with your four lenses also.
Janet: That’s right.
Kevin: That makes sense?
Janet: Yes. I’m a big fan of Myers-Briggs as well because it gets us to think about decision-making mode in that think lens or in that feel lens. As you say, we can all use all of them, but I do think we tend to have a strength, and we tend to rely on that strength. Whenever we over-rely on one particular strength, there’s bound to be a context or situation for which that’s not the best fit. If we’re full on logical and thinking and analytical, there’s going to be some situation where you need a little more of that feeling lens. Similarly, if you live in that being nice, and being empathic and talking about feelings, there’s bound to be a context in which that’s not exactly the right fit.
Kevin: Right. Bringing all this forward for what you’ve learned from the book, how do we apply this to everyday life? I’m assuming that’s what you do in your firm, Transformation Management. Help me understand how this works. Well, maybe explain what Transformation Management does. What are you trying to accomplish there and how do these four lenses make that happen?
Janet: What I’m trying to accomplish is helping leaders be effective, and because they often get promoted without good backing or mentoring, they might have a very supportive boss who still may not be a great mentor. Learning to look for resources outside of that particular manager, it might be helpful taking a class, taking a workshop. In my experience leaders all have a job besides leading, they have to be good at their functional area, let’s say marketing or engineering. They may not have had the opportunity to develop as big skills or deep roots in the leadership piece.
In that moment when they’re faced with a dilemma or an angry client or a work overflow or their own leader unhappy with them, in that moment of stress and tension is when our minds constrict. Any tool that helps you get unstuck from being frozen or limited in your perspective is going to help. Zooming in, let’s say that your leader is annoyed that some performance metric was not met, zooming into the logic of that helps identify the details of why that didn’t occur, then zooming out in the think or logic lens helps understand how the strategy may be in jeopardy, why your leader may be apprehensive or unhappy because you didn’t accomplish this particular project means that a broader picture, a zoomed out lens strategy may be impacted, or in jeopardy.
Looking at those from close up and the far-out can help you relate to that leader, then moving, let’s say into the feel lens might help you understand how you feel being criticized; that helps right there. Focus in on feelings, how your leader might feel, then zooming out, being able to detach a little helps you connect to the overall goal and the overall feeling of the brand, or the culture that you’re trying to create.
Kevin: Makes sense. The average person who reads your book or is a client of yours, do you think they understand their profile indicators that you and I were thinking of as Myers-Briggs. It seems like that would help them understand these four lenses a lot more if they understood who they are, and where they struggle. I’m an INTP and I’m off the charts on each one of my indicators, so there’s no ambiguity which, once I understood that, was very educational, and helped me understand why I struggle with these emotional people that are all over the world.
Janet: It probably helped you adapt or compensate, from the “N” you know that your strength is synthesizing and seeing the big picture, but you probably have strategies to compensate for that and develop your detail or your sensory, or else work with and partner with people who brought that, right?
Kevin: Yes, that’s why I surround myself with people who like detail today. That’s how I’m successful, but I did not know that; I was going down a different path. I grew up in a corporate home. I thought I should be a corporate executive. Well, that’s not what I should be, it took me a while to learn that. I find most people are not aware of their emotional structure, their strengths and weaknesses, in the end, this really helps them get there.
Janet: Yes, actually, I really appreciate the question because it helps me bring the answer in a different way, that is in Myers-Briggs, for example, learning your own profile preferences is very powerful because then you can know where your default is as a style, and you could either develop its opposite, or surround yourself with people with the opposite. I think some of the client leaders that I deal with haven’t had the opportunity to develop a depth of knowledge in things like Myers-Briggs.
In a situation, in a moment they can understand am I being emotional? Or am I taking an action? Or am I being logical? Or am I stepping back and reflecting through the witness lens? What I wanted was a model that they could grab in the moment of being stuck, without needing a lot of steps. If they have that step, then it makes that even richer, but even if they don’t have knowledge of, let’s say a personality profile indicator in that moment, they might realize, “I’m being overly logical and this person I’m dealing with is being emotional.” Then let’s seek and find a common language, or common lens. It opens that possibility either switching lenses in that moment without them feeling like, “I have to change my personality.” Or even shifting the range of focus: in close, or out far. Either one of those would kind of unlock stuck-ness.
Kevin: Yes. It makes perfect sense. As a high “I”, I married into a high “E” family. I thought I’d left this universe and gone to another one. It was very frustrating for me because I grew up in a home where every word you said you owned it. You don’t get do overs. I’m married into a family who rarely think about any word they say. [laughs] So you have to challenge them three or four levels deep before you find out how they really feel about it. Myers-Briggs saved it.
Janet: Yes and in that example, there’s a big risk of passing judgement like, “They’re not being trustworthy”, or “They don’t mean what they say”, or “I can’t rely on them.” It happens with use of lenses that you can fall right into being judgmental without just accepting, “Wait a minute, all we’re doing is translating.” It’s like from English to Spanish or translating what your intention was, what your outcome is, what your need is, what your priority is. We’re translating from one language to another without a judgement because if you impose the judgement layer then you get all bugged down.
Kevin: Right. It’s easy to fall into the trap to just value your position, but it’s not healthy. I agree. I also find that while helpful to me, as far as what my strengths and weaknesses are and maybe why there’s a disconnect in a conversation. It also can be — I have found it an effective tool to explain why I’m struggling with what somebody is telling me. I’m a big picture person, you’re at two inches off the ground. I’m not following you and I’m being overwhelmed by your level of detail. In explaining the same, I’m trying here, but I don’t speak to that language, is there any way that we can do it a little bit different way or maybe you could understand my position? It is helpful not only to explain yourself, but help the other person to understand what your limitations are.
Janet: That’s right. It sounds like you do it in a way that’s an invitation – you’re inviting them. These details are important to you and, “Can you tell me the impact?” or “Can you tell me the meaning?” or “Can you tell me the importance?” because they probably know it as soon as you ask. Until you ask they’re living in the details, but that’s great that you can invite them in to what you need.
Kevin: Some days, some day is just right. It is very healthy for me because I have learned that if you and I are discussing something and I’m trying to influence your decision and you’re not coming to my side of the table, then I have not explain it right. I have not understood your position and that’s a lot healthier than me getting frustrated that you don’t agree with me and just — I haven’t figure out right away to explain it and that helps a lot. What else have you learned about people as you’ve written this book? Now you’re out doing a road show in marketing the book, what are you learning about people as they talk about the subject?
Janet: I am learning that over time because of the research that backs it up that emotional intelligence is getting more credibility and more visibility. That it’s nice to think in corporate that all decisions are logical, but all we have to do is look at the stock market to remember that even finance isn’t logical. Finance and money and numbers are emotional. Helping people get more fluent in the language of what their reaction is, what I find is if you can name it, you can name your frustration or your anger, or the source of it, then it doesn’t drive your bus.
It’s when you think you can ignore it, then it begins to override your behavior in what you’re doing, but actually it reduces your intense feelings when you realize what’s going on. I’m not talking of venting, people sometimes mistake venting for being in touch with their feelings, but in my experience, venting doesn’t really vent the pressure, it actually fans the flame.
Kevin: Absolutely. We all say things, I know I’m guilty of this, when I’m venting, it seems it give me license to just have a steady stream of consciousness. That really makes no sense, I just feel good saying it. Then I need to back track and we apologize and interact. I agree venting might make you feel better momentarily, but it creates a lot of challenges.
Janet: That’s right. That brings me to the fourth lens, the fourth is witness. Now, this really is not a corporate phrase, but I’m very fond of it. Witness is that idea that someone might come in and vent at you and you let them. You don’t solve it, you don’t move in with your advice, you don’t do anything except receive them and note it. Witness can also be sometimes be you’re in a meeting and you get all rolled into the drama of the meeting, and other times, you’re watching as if from a balcony. Witness is that capacity to watch your group or watch your meeting as if from a balcony.
Zoomed out, witness includes being a socially responsible company or caring about the planet and profits, or caring about people and profits or partnering with the local schools where their curriculum will better prepare your new hires. The witness lens can zoom in and zoom out as well.
Kevin: Makes perfect sense. Our guest today has written a book called Zoom Leadership: Change Your Focus, Change Your Insights. Janet Britcher was nice enough to be here with us. Janet, thank you very much for being here. I’d like to thank our listeners for listening today on Thinking Outrageously on a Daily Basis by listening to the Think Outrageous Radio Show. Thank you Janet.
Janet: Thank you Kevin. Thank you very much.