ZOOM LEADERSHIP

What Is Zoom Leadership?

Zoom Leadership can be a simple, yet powerful approach for leaders when implemented properly. I define it in the following manner:

Zoom Leadership is a streamlined approach to exploring and altering perspective to create insightful options when faced with seemingly intractable problems.

Over the years I have come across many instances of business professionals who struggled a great deal with their dilemmas. One such individual, Rachel, found herself constantly under siege. She had been with the company nine years, a lot longer than many of her counterparts. As a result, she had vast knowledge about the company, its history, and processes. She felt strong devotion and loyalty to the company, as well as a strong sense of teamwork, and ended up taking on tasks that were significantly outside the scope of her role in order to assist people in other departments. Often she worked at the office late into the evening.

Rachel objected to how others in her organization tended to have an individual focus, unaware of the impact of their words. Coworkers would sometimes be careless about how they represented the company in client meetings. Some blatantly criticized the company to a client. Others apologized for a delay in responsiveness when the client was actually at fault.

That wasn’t all. Rachel was frustrated that people from other departments repeatedly asked her for the same information. Rachel felt that the supervisors and managers of their respective departments should serve as more responsible resources for their team members.

On the one hand, Rachel felt she had a big picture perspective: She was at looking at the interests of the company as a whole. She was invested in its long-term success—professionally and personally. She wanted to be helpful, so she kept adding more to her already filled plate.

On the other hand, she felt her company’s implementation team had a responsibility to offer better training, improve access to knowledge, establish quality control measures, improve their processes, and create and analyze metrics (such as weekly reporting) that would reveal issues before they were stumbled upon.

Rachel had already “zoomed out” to Thinking about the big picture. She had also simultaneously “zoomed in” to notice errors in details. However, the Action she had “zoomed in” on involved her taking on too much work. Her reluctance to push back on her workload was due to Feelings of commitment and responsibility to the company and the clients. Eventually, I envisioned Rachel heading towards burnout.

I was well aware of the company’s growth plans and thought that Rachel’s heroic measures were never going to be enough. I posed the following question to her: “What do you think would happen if you were to focus all of your thoughts and energy on sustainability and scalability?” She carefully considered that reframe. Suddenly, her perspective “zoomed out.” She realized that taking on workload and problems from her colleagues was only enabling what she perceived as their laziness. Contrary to her intentions, her rescue efforts were holding them back from learning opportunities. Once she drew this conclusion, she felt liberated about saying “No” to people when they were looking for her fix their problems for them or take up their slack. She resolved to try this new approach, although moving out of her habitual helpfulness would be challenging. She could see the payoff for the company. Zooming out to place sustainability and scalability in her field of vision enabled her to Think and Feel differently, which meant she could Act differently.

Zoom In and Zoom Out

My experience from over twenty years of executive and organizational coaching has shown me that changing one’s perspective is the single most important strategy leaders can use—not only when confronting a seemingly insurmountable challenge, but also when creating a vision and leading the team on a daily basis.

My work is informed by diverse study of human behavior and psychology, the exciting, emerging fields of neurology and leadership, and the kinesthetic somatic (body) awareness and leadership. Zoom Leadership integrates my understanding and appreciation of businesses and how they accomplish the following:

• Organize departments and workflow
• Distribute authority
• Accomplish goals
• Create culture
• Develop staff
• Engage ideas

In the chapters that follow I offer an approach that simplifies and accelerates leadership impact when running meetings, planning, strategizing, managing, and delegating. My intent is that you will discover fresh perspectives, incorporate new behaviors, and develop increased self-confidence.

Attention—Where Is Your Focus?

Before our current digital era, access to knowledge and information was a scarce resource and a key to power and impact. Centuries ago, books were only available in private collections. Education was private—for the elite and wealthy—and restricted by class and gender. Today, however, we are in a wonderful age of information. We have far more information than we can handle, with access to all of it right at our fingertips. We can pursue whatever topics or facts prompt our curiosity any time of day, as long as we have power cords, outlets (or chargers), and Internet access.

Our scarce resource is attention span and being able to stay focused and get things done without the distraction of so much accessible data. A critical aspect of being a great leader is being able to devote enough attention to a problem in order to solve it or create something new.

In order to reclaim your attention—which you may not even realize has dissipated—you must learn how to quickly reframe: to look at a familiar situation from a fresh, more empowering and effective point of view. Reframing leads to several positive outcomes:

• Improved relationship skills—working well with diverse people
• Greater self-awareness—noticing reactions at the intellectual, emotional, and physical levels
• Deeper understanding of values—knowing the foundation that provides confidence and clarity
• Clearer life purpose—awareness of the daily contributions and lasting legacy that motivate oneself and others

With regard to the final point above, leaders who are aligned with their values and life purpose have more energy, vitality, results, and impact. Although the focus of my coaching is leadership, clients frequently tell me that the new perspectives they gained from this approach have benefited them in other areas of their lives:

• Peace of mind about nagging problems
• Work/life balance
• Family dynamics
• Community activities, such as volunteering

Keeping It Straightforward

Although an appreciation for complexity can provide insight, my preference is to offer tools and techniques that distill complexity into simple, easy terms. When I work with clients I feel a responsibility not to speak in jargon; I offer them ordinary, succinct words and experiences that open their worlds—so they may open themselves to their own vast possibilities. While I love complex theories and concepts of human behavior, psychology, and emotion, I also recognize that we live in a world where learning happens in ordinary, messy, everyday interactions. These interactions can be glossed over or explored and expanded, depending on our habits of mind.

By encouraging leaders to “move in and out” to view their perceptions of reality, Zoom Leadership provides an immediate visceral experience, an altering of the status quo. It can be illuminating or disturbing as our sense of the world as we know it becomes reordered. It provides quick access to options, yet it also can be profound in terms of gained insights. Most of us habitually use the zoom feature on a cellphone camera or video camera to alter the size and scope of the subject. Online maps and apps also allow us to quickly change the size and scope of the area. Leaders I’ve worked with have found zooming to be a comfortable, yet provocative metaphor to consider new options.

Leaders are best served when they can remain grounded in their current knowledge of how things get done while at the same time altering their perspectives. After all, as a leader you know your world better than anyone else does; I would never tell a client how to conduct his or her business. My goal is to maintain and improve upon what works by helping you see things differently and more clearly.

How This Book Is Organized

Chapter One outlines the Zoom Leadership model and provides brief examples.

Chapters Two through Five apply the Zoom Leadership model through each of the four lenses of human experience:

• Think: This is the most common lens in business: problem solving, analysis, strategy, planning, and reasoning. It is often the most comfortable lens for leaders to discuss and focus on.
• Act: This is the next most common lens, because businesses must take Action in order to create products or provide services for their clients. Businesses are a hive of activities, and many leaders spend their time in this mode. This is the lens through which experimentation and productivity occur.
• Feel: This lens has received increasing respect over the last decade or so. Greater emphasis has been placed on the long-term relationship value of empathy and emotional intelligence. This direction has been bolstered by brain scans revealing what happens during decision-making. (Hint: It’s not the logical part of the brain that is activated.)
• Witness: This last lens is a word we don’t hear a lot in business, and therefore I’m going to advocate for it. Witness is a form of mindfulness and reflection. It’s a way of being truly present and conveying this to others.

Chapter Six applies zooming to movies. Movies are one way of storytelling: of listening for the essence of the human condition. In this case, the human condition of noticing how perspective is used, and how, when it changes, it changes reactions and experiences.

Write-ups from these examples apply the Zoom Leadership model, as a way to deepen understanding of the approach. Movie producers never knew what a rich experience they would offer us for this technique!

Chapter Seven provides an opportunity to practice the Zoom Leadership approach.

Now that you know a little about me and have a basic understanding about what I mean by Zoom Leadership, we can start to review the approach in detail in Chapter One.