Grow and lead for all of us

Integrity

Episode 49: Ed Schein On Humble Consulting [The Amiel Show]

Episode 49: Ed Schein On Humble Consulting [The Amiel Show]

by ·

How do you help employees become more engaged? How do you retain your best people? How, on any organizational challenge, do you provide real help faster?

Ed Schein answers this question in his brand new book, Humble Consulting.

Ed Schein

One thing you don’t do, he says, is conduct six-month assessments of an organization’s problems or culture. That takes too long. Instead, have a real conversation with the person you’re trying to help. Don’t just give them what they ask for. Find out what really matters to them. Sometimes it’s simpler than you think.

And Ed Schein has a pretty cool resume. An Emeritus Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, he invented the notion of organizational culture. Yeah, that was him! He also was the first person to describe what process consultation looks like. That was him, too!

So if you work in and around organizations, you’ve been influenced by his work–whether you know it or not.

To understand what he means by “humble consulting” and how it can add value to your work, listen in to this week’s episode.

It was an honor to talk with Dr. Schein. I hope you enjoy it!

Listen to the Podcast

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Highlights

  • 6:30 Why do we need humble consulting?
  • 12:00 In a professional relationship, the client often mistrusts you initially
  • 15:00 Evolution from process consultation to humble consulting
  • 21:00 The most extraordinary gift a consultant could be given
  • 27:00 Trying to fix an unruly group at Digital Equipment Corporation
  • 33:00 Staying overnight with the Ciba-Geigy CEO and his family
  • 41:30 Are you a track team or a soccer team?
  • 46:00 A company dies but its culture survives–is that success?
  • 50:00 Ed is described as a “terrible failure” for overpersonalizing a committee
  • 54:30 Ed’s new partnership with his son

Tweet a Quote

Doing an organizational diagnosis & making recommendations is much too slow

–Ed Schein  Tweet this quote

Explore Additional Resources

New to Podcasts?

Get started here

Subscribe to the Show on iTunes (It’s Easy!)

  1. Sign into iTunes using your ID and password
  2. Search the iTunes store for “Amiel Show”
  3. Click on the Subscribe button. It’s in the upper left corner of the screen.

Give Me a Rating or Review on iTunes (It’s Also Easy!)

  1. Sign into iTunes using your ID and password
  2. Search the iTunes store for “Amiel Show”
  3. Click on “Ratings and Reviews”
  4. Give it a rating. Bonus for a review
Episode 24: Amy Jen Su On Owning The Room [The Amiel Show]

Episode 24: Amy Jen Su On Owning The Room [The Amiel Show]

by ·

Leadership presence. In some organizations, you hear the phrase all the time. Sounds impressive, but does anyone know what it actually means?

Do you?

Now, you’re a smart person, so let’s assume you have a definition ready at hand. Leadership presence is about how other people perceive you. And power.

Through this lens, the greater your presence, the more powerfully you show up in others’ assessments. Most of us want to be perceived as powerful. So leadership presence is a good thing, right?

Amy-Jen-Su

Yes, but only if it means showing up powerfully as ourselves. Not imitating someone else, but expressing the highest and most authentic version of who we are.

When you do this, you’re not renting someone else’s space or personality.

You own the room.
[Read more…] about Episode 24: Amy Jen Su On Owning The Room [The Amiel Show]

Episode 9: Tim Fort On Leadership And Integrity [The Amiel Show]

Episode 9: Tim Fort On Leadership And Integrity [The Amiel Show]

by ·

The most I laughed in graduate school was in a class on Business Ethics.

Does that surprise you?

It sure blew my mind. After all, ethics has a reputation for being part tranquilizer, part antagonist. If it doesn’t put you to sleep with simple axioms, it rankles you through coerced thinking.

Right?

Not in our classroom that term at the University of Michigan. It was more like that famous shot of adrenaline to the heart in Pulp Fiction? Every hour we spent together was filled with rancorous debate, frank stories, and unexpected laughter. This wasn’t just because we had a great teacher and a bunch of characters in the room. What made our conversations so engrossing–and fun–is that we had a safe space to rigorously and respectfully air our differences–not only with each other, but within ourselves. To challenge each other’s assumptions, bring undiscussable topics into the light of day, and wrestle with the complexity that underlies every single business situation–if you know where to look.

Two decades later, I invited the teacher of that class, Tim Fort, now at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, to join me for a conversation.

Tim Fort cropped

In Episode 9 of The Amiel Show, Tim Fort and I discuss:

  • Why it’s important and difficult to know which virtue to use in which situation
  • What we can learn about trust and business ethics from Star Wars and football marching bands
  • How integrity is neither simple nor idealistic but a practical confrontation with a complex world
  • How organizations can make it easier for people to speak candidly about difficult issues
  • What leaders can do to deliberately practice high integrity behavior on the job
  • What Tim is personally practicing to develop as a human being

Listen to the Podcast

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

[Read more…] about Episode 9: Tim Fort On Leadership And Integrity [The Amiel Show]