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Back at NSA, virtually, this month to teach Conflict Resolution again. Excited to work with these distinguished executives, via WashU at Brookings, for a second time this year! Grateful to Olin Business School and The Brookings Institution for this continued opportunity.

Leaders need strength to be successful. While this obvious truth is widely recognized, opinions differ on what constitutes “strength.” In the eyes of many, strength means standing firm, winning your position, exuding confidence, and minimizing vulnerability. At PMC, our clients are often surprised to hear that we see vulnerability as a key source of leadership strength. Which is stronger, a leader who advocates a position and stands firm until others bend? Or a leader who advocates a position while remaining open to different views, even inviting challenge from others? Leaders who take the path of openness will naturally feel vulnerable. Paradoxically, this vulnerability is not a sign of weakness, but rather a clear indication of leadership strength.

PMC is proud to contribute to executive education at Olin Business School at Washington University. In addition to teaching in custom programs offered by Olin to single organizations, Paul Paese also teaches open enrollment seminars that executives from any organization can take. This year Paul is co-teaching a new program, Disrupted Workplace and Change Agility, with Rik Nemanick of Nemanick Leadership Consulting. This seminar will be held virtually this month, and is spread out over four 3-hour sessions. The two main objectives of the course are: (a) how to ready yourself and your team members for disruption, and (b) how to deploy that readiness when disruption inevitably occurs. A major theme is that we’ve entered an era where workplace disruption is more or less the status quo and, to succeed in this new reality, leaders and teams need to sharpen their communication and collaboration skills. For a description of the open enrollment sessions offered at Olin this year, see the program finder.

Candor in the workplace, even “extreme” or “radical” candor, has become a hot topic in recent years. And for good reason. The creativity, buy-in, and efficiencies possible through candid conversation are remarkable and well-documented. There’s no question that candid dialogue, when seen as the norm and practiced routinely, is a key source of competitive advantage — companies like Netflix and Bridgewater Associates are good illustrations. Yet practicing candor company-wide is not nearly as easy as popular writings imply, especially if a company’s existing culture is less than candid. At the top of the recommended reading list for candor-challenged workplaces is The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson. Published in 2018, this landmark book addresses the often subtle yet widespread effects of fear in the workplace, and how fear impedes candor and creativity. The basic argument is that, for a culture of candor to take hold and endure over time, an organization must first propagate psychological safety throughout its ranks. We couldn’t agree more. This book is strongly recommended for leaders at all levels.

Ever since the “Agile Manifesto” for software development was published about 20 years ago, Agile teams have been growing exponentially in number. At the risk of oversimplifying, Agile is an iterative approach to software development in which developers work collaboratively in small teams and deliver measurable work products in short time frames; in so doing, Agile teams are able to adapt and respond quickly to always-evolving client needs. Documented successes naturally led to the spread of Agile principles from IT to other organizational divisions. Recently, however, an article in Forbes declared “The End of Agile,” due to its scope of application having far outgrown the contexts for which Agile methodology is well-suited. But not so fast! As argued powerfully by veteran software developers Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick in their recent book, Agile Conversations, most failures of Agile are traceable not to the methodology itself, but rather to the inability and/or unwillingness of its participants to regularly engage in the challenging conversations necessitated by the Agile framework. At PMC, we’re not at all surprised by this conclusion. As our teacher Chris Argyris pointed out decades ago, promising workplace initiatives will continue to turn into “passing management fads” as long as people avoid the hard conversations that will help them truly learn from each other. For more on the why and how of difficult conversations in Agile teams, we highly recommend Squirrel and Fredrick’s excellent book.

Earlier this month, the National Security Agency retained WashU at Brookings to provide instruction on conflict resolution to executives at NSA. WashU at Brookings brings together two premier institutions to deliver on Robert S. Brookings’ desire to “teach the art of handling problems rather than simply impart accumulated knowledge” to those in and engaged with government. The goal of this partnership is to support the men and women who serve our country with cutting-edge leadership courses, either at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, onsite at the requesting agency, or virtually. The instructor retained for this purpose was again Paul Paese, of PMC. Paul taught “Strategies for Conflict Resolution”, a two-day course that was converted from in-person to virtual delivery with agencies like NSA specifically in mind. Paul’s work with the distinguished executives at NSA continues to be an honor and a joy.