To innovate, leaders need 'purposeful play'

At ConantLeadership, we're committed to lifelong learning and continuous improvement. In service to your leadership growth, each month we curate this digest of timely resources from around the web to:

Share actionable advice from top leadership luminaries
Celebrate a range of viewpoints (inclusion is not an endorsement)
Contextualize workplace trends through a leadership lens
Illuminate cultural recalibrations in the world of work
Support your personal development in life, leadership, & beyond

Why Leaders Need 'Purposeful Play'

Today's organizations are in a perpetual race to innovate. As new technology like GenAI transforms the business landscape, nobody wants to be left behind amidst the turmoil of digital disruption. In this MIT Sloan Management Review piece, business professor Scott D. Anthony says that the key to managing disruption is in what he calls "purposeful play." He notes that effective innovation requires the freedom from pressures and constraints that only play can provide: "In good old-fashioned play, the goal isn’t to win or lose. It isn’t to achieve against an objective standard. It’s to have fun. To experiment with different approaches. To see what feels good and what doesn’t. And in so doing, to learn and begin to build new capabilities that help turn disruption from a threat into an opportunity." Anthony says it's crucial to understand the differences between "performing, practicing, and playing," all of which are important and have their respective roles in fostering growth.

When performing: "You’re trying to achieve excellence against a given standard. Your goal is to do as well as you possibly can." There may be a judge or boss assessing you.

When practicing: "You’re trying to consciously improve your skills so that you can deliver against a given standard in the future." You may have a coach or mentor giving you feedback.

When playing: While "there might be someone who creates the context or sets the parameters for play," there's "no judge or coach," and the goal "is simply to play." Play should be fun and should create "space for low-risk experimentation, capability development, and innovation. It can be awkward and uncomfortable, but that’s when we learn the most."

Anthony adds that "many executives, sadly, are out of practice with playing at work," but should consider pursuing purposeful play because it "leads to learning," and "makes you hungry to learn more." Get the full story here.

**For more on this, explore the "Have Fun" chapter in our book The Blueprint (pages 299-306) where we provide practical tips for creating a jubilant environment for performance, practice, and play.

Trust Yourself First

"Before anyone else can trust you, you have to trust yourself," writes Deborah Grayson Riegel in this Psychology Today piece on developing and assessing self-trust. While Riegel's advice is tailored towards sales professionals, her insights hold resonance for leaders too as they are tasked with influencing other people: "Being able to extend trust externally and internally is important for everyone," and selling "a product or service—or even an idea" requires creating "a climate of trust with prospects and clients." She points to four key areas of trust to help define and assess self-trust.

1. Sincerity: "Is the assessment that you are honest, that you say what you mean and mean what you say; you can be believed and taken seriously," and "it means that your actions will be aligned with your words."

2. Reliability: "Is the assessment that you meet the commitments you make, and that you keep your promises."

3. Competence: "Is the assessment that you have the ability to do what you are doing or propose to do."

4. Care: "Is the assessment that when you make decisions and take action," you have either your own or the other relevant party's "needs, values, and interests in mind."

Ge the full story, including several self-assessment questions for each key area, here.

**For more on this, explore our library of resources specifically created to help leaders inspire, grow, and extend trust.

The Wisdom of 'Imperfectionism'

"Too much of life is wasted trying to build and control the 'right' circumstance for making a change," yet "acting on what matters in this finite life is better started today, imperfectly, than on any someday," writes Oliver Burkeman in this excerpt from his new book, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts. Burkeman explains: "My book outlines a philosophy I call imperfectionism, which takes as a given that there will always be too much to do, that you will never feel completely 'ready,'" and "once you accept that, you're free to act" right now, not in some mythical future where conditions are ideal. To practice imperfectionism, he shares five key insights.

1. You're never going to get on top of everything. "You're never going to sort your life out—and this is fantastic news," because learning to be discerning means you are free to "pour your finite time, attention, and energy into a handful of things that truly count."

2. Everything is a matter of trade-offs. Often, "we don't get around to what we care about most" because "we tell ourselves there are things we have to do instead." But whenever you make a "choice with your time, there'll always be an upside and a price to pay," and you need only decide which is more important to you—the cost or the benefit.

3. Finish things. "The basic trick is to break" large projects "down into much smaller, completable intermediate outcomes, or deliverables, and then finish those," which confers a "fantastic surge of motivation and energy," which can be reinvested into finishing other projects too.

4. Look for the life task. "It's incredibly useful, especially if you're feeling stuck or directionless, not to ask what it is that you want from life but what life is asking from you." And, "the answer that arises will very probably be something difficult," but doable "with the resources and talents at your disposal . . . there will always be a path forward."

5. You have to start from sanity. You can't wait for tomorrow to start cultivating the things you want now. "Starting from sanity means deciding how you want to be in your life and, at least in some small way, showing up in that fashion here and now."

Get the full story here.

**For more on this, explore our 6-step Blueprint process for lifting your leadership to new heights, which holds "Forget Perfection" as its central rallying cry and advocates an incremental, small-steps approach to reaching your goals.

Manage Your 'Micro-Interactions'

"Leadership is founded upon relationships," writes executive coach Sarah Langslow in this Chief Executive piece about "getting things done by inspiring people to want to do them." Langslow says leaders need to build connections because they cannot rely on the authority of their position alone as a motivating factor: "The most effective leaders make things happen through influence, through the way they communicate with their team." She says that relationships, and influence, are created through "hundreds and thousands of interactions and shared moments over time," and often those moments are brief and unplanned, or what she calls "micro-interactions." It would be easy to dismiss these fleeting interactions as inconsequential but Langslow says they "matter far more than we realize," and impact "the success and efficacy of our relationships in subtle yet profound ways." The first step to managing micro-interactions with more intention is understanding them: "Micro-interactions are what we say—and don’t say. They are how we say things: the phrasing, tone, timing and energy. . . .They are the questions we ask and how we ask them. They are the smiles, frowns, blank looks, flashes of irritation that pass across our faces. They are our habits and behaviors." Taken as a whole, how leaders show up in these small moments projects "a continuous message to the world about who we are," so it's crucial to bring more intention to each interaction. Get the full story here.

**For more on managing 'micro-interactions,' explore the 2011 NYT bestseller TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments, co-authored by ConantLeadership Founder, Doug Conant, and his colleague Mette Norgaard

Skills for Connecting in Polarizing Times

As an impending presidential election dominates the news cycle in the USA, many Americans are hungering for more amity in their communities and workplaces. In this piece on the "Campaign for Connection Challenge," Juliana Tafur and Criss Cuervo report that "three out of four Americans see political hostility and divisiveness as a serious problem and want to live in a less polarized country." The authors share seven skills for navigating division, "which research suggests can help foster understanding, ease stress, and create a stronger sense of connection with your loved ones and community." Each of these tips can help leaders and employees navigate workplace conflicts as well.

1. See the person, not the label. "When we learn personal details about others—beyond their political labels—we view them with more warmth."
2. Expand your views and circles. "Science suggests that forming friendships with people who don’t look or think like you is good for your health."
3. Find shared identities. "We can better connect with people who don’t share our political views if we focus on other important identities that we have in common—for example, as Americans committed to democracy, freedom, community, and belonging."
4. Practice perspective taking. "When you find it difficult to relate to someone’s viewpoint, try asking yourself, 'What experiences might have shaped their views?'”
5. Listen with compassion. "Science tells us that if we want other people to understand us, we should start by listening more closely to them."
6. Try self-distancing. "When conversations get heated, we can get so caught up in our thoughts and emotions that we can’t engage constructively. Self-distancing encourages you to view yourself from an outsider’s perspective and think about yourself in the third person."
7. Identify common goals. "Focusing on common goals can shift our perceptions of each other from adversaries to collaborators."

Get the full story, and sign up for the "Campaign for Connection Challenge," here.

Yes, Culture Is Key to Performance

ConantLeadership Founder, Doug Conant, is known for a famous quote that is regularly shared across social media: "To win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace." The quote's message, that a thriving workplace culture is the prerequisite for high performance, has been reiterated by experts and research studies countless times over the past two decades, yet there are always some executives who still need convincing. In Roula Amire's Great Place to Work coverage of research showing "the undeniable connection between positive workplace culture and improved productivity, retention, innovation, agility, well-being, and customer service," she seeks to persuade the holdouts in a language they might understand: Data. Recent research continues to show that the best performing companies worldwide also have the best company cultures across five key metrics. (While the research in this piece focuses on European companies, the insights are widely applicable anywhere in the world.)

1. Great workplaces are more productive.

2. Retention levels and company referrals are higher at great workplaces.

3. Great workplaces have higher innovation and agility levels.

4. Great workplaces are psychologically and emotionally healthier with higher levels of work-life balance.

5. Customer service is better in great workplaces with high-trust cultures.

Dig into the data, and get the full story here (and then forward this link to the skeptical leaders in your life).

**For more on culture, read our coverage of why two top CEOs say optimism and courage are key to shaping the future.

Driving Meaning Is Your #1 Job

In this charter interview with Joel Podolny, who is co-founder and CEO of Honor Education, as well as the former head of Yale's business school and founding dean of Apple University, Podolny shares his top three traits of "modern leadership" which are most essential for success in today's workplaces.

1. Drive Meaning. The "number one" trait for modern leaders is "the ability to really drive meaning in the organization." Keep in mind that "people spend the vast majority of their days devoted to work and if they can’t find meaning in work, that’s a pretty big gap in terms of the amount of energy and activity," so the ability to "infuse meaning, to connect the work that people do to the vision of the organization, and to interact with people in a way that affirms their importance," is essential.

2. Know Your Stuff. "Having a clear expertise as the anchor for one's leadership, as opposed to being a general manager," is crucial in environments "facing considerable change," because you "need a level of intuition" around the pressing problems facing the business, "which can only come from really being grounded in one's expertise and the work that is being done."

3. Be Curious. "It is absolutely critical in a turbulent and changing world," to have "deep curiosity," especially "when things happen that are unexpected." Podolny warns that humans are "hardwired to dismiss" anomalous "events, experiences, data that are inconsistent with what our priors have been," but successful leaders develop "the ability to meet the unexpected with curiosity," which allows them to innovate.

Get the full story here.

**For more on the essential traits of modern leadership, explore our coverage of the power of 'centeredness' in unlocking your limitless leadership potential.

Managers Are Getting Engaged Again

"U.S. employees’ attachment to their company culture has been essentially flat for years," however research covered in this Gallup piece by Heather Barrett and Kate Den Houter shows "one particularly important group of workers appears to be reconnecting with their company culture—managers." Barrett and Den Houter say this uptick in manager engagement is heartening because managers are "the translators of culture to their team and interpret how corporate values ought to express themselves in daily work and decision-making." The more connected managers are to a company's cultural values, the more they can ensure that "the culture is clear, consistent, communicated, and authentically lived by leadership." To build on this, leaders should ask themselves:

Can I define our culture?
Do I speak consistently about it?
Do I role model it?
Do I live up to it?

When managers have and express clarity around culture, they are better equipped to weave the organization's values "into communications, meetings, developmental conversations, and recognition." Get the full story here.

**For more on this, read our leadership resource on how to create a culture of accountability.

Limited Series—EQ Answers to AI Questions

In this limited series, ConantLeadership Founder & CEO, Doug Conant, provides thoughtful, human answers to pressing leadership questions that are generated with the help of AI.

The third and latest question in the series is: "How can you promote self-reflection and growth in your team?" Read Doug's EQ answer in the newest edition here.

Then explore the second edition to get Doug's battle-tested advice for driving change in a complex world.

And finally read the first edition to find actionable tips for making people feel valued in the digital age.