Inspired Teams

Malcolm Colman-Shearer’s needs weren’t being met in his banking IT job in New Zealand, so he left to find an environment that was more socially oriented where relationships were important.  Jumping from the safety and confinement of that corporate ship, he’s now leading the life of an entrepreneur. He’s a member of Enspiral, a worldwide collective of individuals who not only believe in, but practice, a new way of organizing; and is the founder of Optimi, where he really follows his meaning and purpose by assisting clients in optimizing their workflow.

I respect his transparency and insights about the ups of downs of his journey with decentralized organizations.  I love his optimism about how our current network experiments are raising consciousness about new ways to organize that will evolve to further empower people.

Malcolm contrasts traditional environments vs collective networks using a rainforest vs corn field analogy. After we recorded this episode, I was in the Peruvian Amazon and had daily walks through its rainforest, observing its many micro-ecosystems. Malcolm’s analogy of an organizational network having the growth and death cycles of a rainforest resonates with me even more now that I’ve experienced the magic of the Peruvian rainforest.

About Malcolm Colman-Shearer

Ella Morgulis practices empathy and patience as a life coach and practitioner of “PQ - Positive Intelligence and Mental Fitness.”

She recounts her path from her early childhood in Odesa Ukraine, followed by her moves to Russia and Moldova, and the religious, cultural and educational “bumps in the road” she navigated along the way. She emigrated to San Francisco with her young daughter in the mid 1990’s to escape the bleak economy of that region.

Ella’s perspective:  there are many ways to consciously increase the positivity in our lives, empathy and patience enables a deeper connection with others, and asking for help from mentors gives us acceleration.

The 70’s pop hit Walk a mile in my shoes by Joe South never rang truer.

About Ella Morgulis

John Thompson of The PCO Group returns with his passion for unleashing intrinsic motivation, which has a critical role in the human state, and therefore plays out into a team and more broadly into an organization.

When tapping into intrinsic motivation, there is “no difference between being a leader and being human” since every human has leadership within them. This principle is the foundation of John’s proposal of breaking apart the 3 roles of a traditional manager - subject matter expert, developing humans, and team organization.

We cover designing for intrinsic motivation by splitting the manager (boss) role into three roles, how being bossless creates opportunities not threats, and having facilitators show up as bosses disappear.

About John Thompson

The past two years have raised awareness of our need for simplicity and community – to simply share and have a conversation with like-minded people and to feel helped and supported.  This is true across all aspects of our lives and it is especially true now as we experience work life, family and home life, and societal life in new ways.

Where can we find and build this type of community and the promises that it holds?

In the last episode, we talked about the journey of human development through coaching with John Thompson on “Redefine the role of MGR with the PCO Group.“

I really wanted to further explore peer coaching, and so I invited coach Sonja Robinson to join me. Sonja partners with John Thompson in the PCO Group.

Sonja and I talk about the mechanics of a peer group and the role of a trained coach or facilitator.

How the learnings from the wisdom of the crowd can be quite quick to learn and through this process, how one can change their attitudes which leads to new behaviors. She shares the impact that this process has had on the people in her peer coaching circles.

About GUEST

There is a lot of discussion about increasing social and emotional intelligence, showing up with more wholeness as Frederic Laloux popularizes, vulnerability and taking off your armor as Brene Brown encourages. This is just to mention a few.

But how do we put this into practice, esspecitally at work, where the title pyramid hierarchy  - visibly and invisibly - often gets in the way?

John Thompson founded The PCO Group to address this very issue. PCO – people centric organizations.

His unique approach to fostering human development - the combination of emotional social and leadership intelligence -  goes arm in arm with restructuring the role of “manager” in an organization. John proposes transferring some of the “manager” roles to other colleagues (such as the organizational’ and governance roles) and to embedded coaches who facilitate and ultimately unlock the intrinsic motivation that lies within all of us.

He talks about facilitated roles vs power roles, putting trust in the process, continuous practice (learning in the moment and applying immediately what you’ve just learned),  how a facilitated team naturally addresses inclusion, and C-suite leaders being very uncomfortable high in the Swiss Alps.

Ultimately he invites managers to let go of their traditional manager roles and colleagues to pick up some of those roles - and why this is good for everyone.

This is one of two episodes. There is a companion Episode  7 with Sonja Robinson where we talk about peer coaching.

About GUEST

John Thompson

How can you create engaged teams with autonomy in a top down workplace? Can middle managers make a difference? Yes! Wade Okinaka and Elise Lacher share the self management and human centered practices that they bring into traditional hierarchical workplaces while hitting the metrics.

This chat with my SemcoStyle friends continues with more hiring and on-boarding practices, such as rotating new colleagues through all the roles of the team, and experiments that become part of the culture.

Don’t forget to listen to Part 1 of this conversation!

ABOUT WADE OKINAKA AND ELISE LACHER

Wade Okinaka

How can you create engaged teams with autonomy in a top down workplace? Can middle managers make a difference? Yes! Wade Okinaka and Elise Lacher share the self management and human centered practices that they bring into traditional hierarchical workplaces while hitting the metrics.

Wade’s “How can I help you?” style translates into loyal teams. He skillfully navigates between top metric-driven management and his hourly waged ops team with a soulful and resilient approach. Elise infuses her accounting acumen with a stop ‘parenting children at work’ approach.

This chat with my SemcoStyle friends includes why these practices are just as good for managers as they are for those reporting to them, hiring practices ,and how to Wade handles people who aren’t staying accountable.

ABOUT WADE OKINAKA AND ELISE LACHER

Wade Okinaka

Brian Haney has maintained his fascination with the sea throughout his professional life.

He partnered with entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and change agents for over 10 years during dot com boom as an independent IT consultant. He then spent 14 years at Google to assist various teams with their creativity and innovation including his attempt to incorporate Holacracy practices into the teams’ culture and why it wasn’t successful. 

Brian is taking his experience and expertise into the seascape as The Pirate Coach, assisting individuals and teams to be more effective and innovative through team self management.

Brian shares his deep knowledge of the history of pirates during the Golden Age of Pirates and how they manifested their vision of the world they wanted to live in.  We also discuss the pirates in our current time.