Clear Leadership: Sustaining Real Collaboration and Partnership at Work

by Gervase R. Bushe

With new research, fresh insight, and up-to-date examples of what it takes to organize and sustain healthy relationships at work, Clear Leadership tackles the big issues head on. Building on the powerful concepts that made the first edition such a success, Gervase Bushe explains why even the most promising partnerships get derailed and what you can do about it.

Genres: Leadership, Business, Nonfiction, Psychology, Professional Development

228 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2005

Reviews

[Risto Hinno]

Not just great book but wow! Concept of interpersonal mush explains a lot of miscommunication, anxiety we have in organizations and personal life also. Very similar to Imago Relationship Therapy which I have used myself. This book shows how to share our mental maps with other (without expecting them to be totally true) and how others could share theirs. This doesn't let anxiety, gossip etc. to step in. These don't help us create better organizations and doesn't let organizational learning to happen. Must read for managers but suitable for everybody.

[Matthew RC]

There is a lot here to digest. The clearing of the interpersonal mush that the book describes most assuredly is a process worth exploring and mastering if one can screw up the courage. For my money, the meat of this book (at least in my case) is in The Curious Self and The Appreciative Self (Chapters 7-8). This really builds a huge amount on the self-awareness work that I have already completed.

[Teresa]

Very interesting and systematic way to make clear communication.

Table fo content

Introduction
Overview
Interpersonal Mush
Partnership with Others
What About Organization Theory?
The Psychology of Experience
What Is True?
The Skills of Clear Leadership
The Attribute of Self-Differentiation
The Issue of Authority
A Clear Leadership Example

Chapter 1 Where Interpersonal Mush Comes From and What It Does to Organizations
Overview
Why We Live in Interpersonal Mush
Why Is Interpersonal Mush “One of the Most Debilitating Realities of Human Association”?
The Fundamental Attribution Error
Projection
What Is the Effect of Interpersonal Mush on Organizations?
Summary

Chapter 2 Introduction to the Organizational Learning Conversation
A Learning Conversation in Action
Learning Conversations Versus Normal Conversations
The Skills of Learning Conversations
Summary

Chapter 3 Understanding the Foundations of Clear Leadership — Self-Differentiation
Overview
Fusion—Demanding That Others Manage My Anxiety
Disconnection—A Different Kind of Reactivity
Self-Differentiation—Resolving the Paradox
The Boundary Between Past and Present
Summary

Chapter 4 The Four Elements of Experience — The Experience Cube
The Basics of Experience
The Elements of Thinking and Observing
The Element of Feeling
The Element of Wanting
Summary

Chapter 5 The Aware Self — Knowing Your Experience Moment to Moment
Overview
Fill In the Cube
Use Clear Language
Talk About Right Here, Right Now
Identify Your Mental Maps
Exercises to Develop Your Aware Self
Summary

Chapter 6 The Descriptive Self—Reducing the Mush by Making Me Understandable to You
Overview
Be Transparent, Not Intimate
Make Statements Before Asking Questions
Describe the Impact Before Responding
Describe Your Experience, Not Judgments
Exercises for Developing Your Descriptive Self
Summary

Chapter 7 The Curious Self—Uncovering Other People’s Experience
Overview
Make It Appealing
Park All Reactions
Confront for Insight
Listen Through the Cube
Exercises to Develop Your Curious Self
Summary

Chapter 8 The Appreciative Self—Creating Spirals of Positive Partnership
Overview
Cultivate an Appreciative Mind-Set
Align with Their Positive Intent
Find with Tracking
Increase with Fanning
Exercises to Develop Your Appreciative Self
Summary

Chapter 9 The Learning Conversation in Depth
Learning Conversations Versus Performance Management
The Learning Conversation Process
Managing Learning Conversations
Coaching Others Through Learning Conversations
What About Those Who Won’t “Play”?
What Stops You from Starting the Conversation?
When Is the Best Time to Have a Learning Conversation?
Summary

Conclusion Learning to Sustain Collaborative Organizations
Overview
Three Kinds of Inquiry
Creating a Culture of Clarity
Life Commitments

Appendix Research on the Impact of Clear Leadership in Organizations

[Nat Baca]

For a book nominally about pushing through “mush”, there sure is a lot of mush here. A loosely cobbled-together amalgam of widely debunked Freudian psychoanalysis, irrelevant personal anecdotes, and dated cultural and professional references does not a unified theory of human interaction make. The experience cube is an interesting idea, as are the various “selves”, but there’s honestly no data here and the author’s voice gets in his own way as he rambles on about what workplaces in the 1990s must have felt like. For a better presentation of these same topics, see OASIS Conversations. Avoid the mush.

[Tim]

There is so much to unpack in this book, I was overwhelmed. But I took notes all the way through. Like all Management Change books, there is a lot in here middle management cannot enact. But understanding the problems in human psychology really helped me see that things were not my fault, that I was contributing to the mayhem and how to, at minimum, manage myself.

So it's only a 4 because you need to be the owner of the company to actually make the majority of change indicated by the authors.

[Sara Modig]

Yes, Bushe presents convincing principles for good, effective, empowering leadership of the kind I want to practice. And even if I won’t be able to develop those best practice learning conversations that are examplified in the book, just having the perspectives presented in the back of my mind will take me and my partners far.

[Lisa]

Easily the most emotionally aware business book I've read. It discuss combating shame and told to sidestep defensiveness, in the workplace! It is most useful if an entire organization goes through the training together because a learning conversation is a lot of specific steps that are valuable, but hard to teach in the moment.

[Neil]

I’ve had this book on my work desk for over a year reading it on and off. It’s provided many moments of thoughtfulness for me especially as my organization grew. The concept of interpersonal mush was newer to me and I adopted it as I sought to have more clarity on my worksite.

[Malin]

Kurslitteratur men rätt banger

[E]

Thoughtful guide to turning an office into a collaborative workplace

A chapter in Something Happened, the 1974 novel by Joseph Heller, starts: “In the office in which I work there are five people of whom I am afraid. Each of these five people is afraid of four people (excluding overlaps) for a total of 20, and each of these 20 people is afraid of six people, making a total of 120 people who are feared by at least one person…[Everyone is:] afraid of the 12 men at the top who helped found and build the company.” That’s a lot of fear. Does this environment sound familiar? Distrust, depression and anxiety are endemic in many organizations. According to professor and consultant Gervase R. Bushe, such negative emotions often result from the “interpersonal mush” that plagues offices. He details a program you can use to help eliminate the mush and create a workplace that fosters partnership and collaboration. getAbstract recommends Bushe’s intelligent, well-researched book to all executives, as well as to anyone who wants to learn how to relate to others honestly, openly and straightforwardly.

To learn more about this book, check out the following link: http://www.getabstract.com/summary/12...

[Mike Ceballos]

Desde mi personal punt de vista, este tipo de libros no se presta para una reseña literaria, sino más bien, una explicación si la metodología y el conjunto de herramientas que aquí se detallan, son de utilidad en la vida real.
Como tal, Gervase muestra un conjunto de herramientas que de manera empírica he estado aplicando, encontrándome que algunas veces me resulta y en otras ocasiones, los resultados no son los que esperaba.
El establecer un canal de comunicación claro y de aprendizaje contínuo, es una tarea difícil que puede llevarse a cabo a través de estas técnicas de Clear Leadership. Vale la pena entender los cuadros o mapas mentales del libro.

[K.G.]

Bush' book Clear Leadership is smart and addresses the issue of "interpersonal mush" between leaders and their people. His ideas are good but I wasn't sold on how you should address it. I think the exercises and the type of conversations he recommends could be clarified or simplified. Overall, the book has some good points but I think putting the recommendations into practice will be challenging.

[Peter]

Excellent! Especially like Bushe's concept of "interpersonal mush", a term he uses to describe an interaction that’s based on stories people have made up about each other but have not checked out. See more here: http://www.tangotraining.com/blog/200...