INsight/ One To One

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Manila, 28 June 2023 — How one-to-one conversations and teamwork can change the world.

Story

It happened in 1982. The first time we learned about the powerful quote by Margaret Mead, an anthropologist, was in Earth at Omega: Passage to Planetization by Donald Keys, a writer on psychosocial interfaces. Keys was the president of Planetary Citizens, which he co-founded with U Thant, a former secretary-general of the United Nations. Clearly, these two were people who sought to discover how positive changes could best be introduced at a planetary scale. 

But where do we need to start in order to drive such changes? The surprising words that Keys attributed to Mead were, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Interestingly, these words are nowhere to be found in Mead’s published work. Four years earlier, however, Mead had been honored with the Planetary Citizen of the Year Award. So perhaps they came from a personal communication between these two ambitious change makers.

Since 1982, researchers have continued to explore how large-scale changes can be influenced in a variety of ways. Among these, teams of thoughtful and committed citizens certainly play an important role. Especially when the team members display diversity in their backgrounds, thoughts, and skills. Personally, I am inspired by the work of Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, leadership researchers who collaborated at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. In their book Resonant Leadership, they show how change makers will benefit from developing resonant relationships, both in teams and one-to-one. 

Challenge

Just like in the 1980s, influencing large-scale positive changes for humankind and our planet is still a holy grail in our world today. A quest that is pursued by political leaders, academics, and advocates alike. And by leadership coaches like yours truly. Think of the imperative to make much more progress in climate mitigation and adaptation, poverty reduction, peacebuilding, water, food, and energy security, and the other challenges captured in the 17 global goals for sustainability.

Perhaps, however, your primary focus is more local, to bring positive changes to your business, organization, or community. Hopefully, then, your results could contribute to the positive changes we want to see on a larger scale in our world. In my experience, the process of becoming effective leaders who drive change requires from us that we gather the courage to work on several scales at the same time. And cultivating resonant relationships will help us accomplish that.

The choice to play a bigger game is often used as a metaphor to describe leadership itself. It calls on us to work in teams in the way that Mead and countless team leadership specialists have advocated. It prods us to find ways to influence organizations and much larger audiences of people, as Keys, U Thant, and many contemporary leaders—think of Greta Thunberg—have envisaged. Meanwhile, what Boyatzis and McKee remind us of is that developing such leadership impact requires that we become resonant leaders first, and that starts in our relationships and one-to-one conversations.

Question

There is no getting away from, or leapfrogging over, the fact that any change-making effort at scale will need to start with self-leadership and developing resonant relationships in teams. The skill of conducting transformational one-to-one conversations is a necessary part of that process, and it includes handling so-called difficult conversations.

That leads me to my question for you this week. As you ponder your big vision for a better world, what are you doing to lift the quality of your one-to-one conversations to the level of transformational leadership?

During my work with leaders to help them navigate transitions and play a bigger game in their work and life, this question keeps coming up. It becomes an integral part of what we work on in our coaching relationships. In doing so, I’m grateful for the inspiration that we can draw from Mead’s words and from Boyatzis’ and McKee’s wise counsel.

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P.S. If you join the LEADyear Challenge this week with your Collab of three enthusiastic colleagues, you get to learn and practice a special kind of one-to-one relationship in July: how to use a coaching style.