Minding Gaps

Quote / Unquote: Ralph Waldo Emerson on Hypocrisy

 

Recently we resumed publishing a feature we call Quote / Unquote, which offers a simple, noteworthy quotation on some aspect of leadership, communication, change, or engagement in business. In most cases we also provide context, comment, or questions to stir discussion. Occasionally, however, the quotation stands alone.

Previous posts in this category have included, among others, Peter Drucker on regarding employees as volunteers, Charles Osgood on responsibility, Margaret Mead on teams, Jim Nordstrom on employee engagement, Andre Agassi on decisions, Carl Jung on accountability, Albert Einstein on curiosity, Bejamin Disraeli on the great paradox of leadership, Charles Dickens on electronic communication, and Eric Hoffer on change. For any of those posts, or for any of the other 400 essays in our archives, just enter a keyword in the search box to the right.

Our quotation today comes from the leading voice of American Transcendentalism in the 19th century. The wisdom of this quotation is as valid and as relevant today as ever.

by Thomas J. Lee

Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, laid the cornerstones of Transcendentalist thought in the United States. A reaction to both stolid religious doctrine and objective intellectualism that found no room for intuitive faith, Transcendentalism offered a path for spirituality that resided in the individual's heart and mind. It required no confirmation from either ecclesiastical or academic authority.

A prolific essayist and frequent lecturer, Emerson had a silver tongue for aphorisms, many of which have survived more than a century since his death in 1882. You may recall one from ever-present dorm posters in college: "Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail." You can easily find many others in a quick online search.

One of my favorite Emerson quotations speaks to every business manager and, for that matter, any leader in any walk of life:

 

What you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say.

 

We have often used this venue to explain that words count, for they set expectations, but that decisions and behavior count even more as communication, for they either validate or invalidate the words.

Moreover, we have asserted that nonverbal communication is far more than it is conventionally thought of: body language, facial expression, and vocal intonation. It is actually the totality of what you think and do. 

To our thinking, many companies (and even more so, politicians) are preoccupied with what they say—to employees, to customers, to shareowners, and to regulators—at the expense of what they intend and do to bring meaning and import to their words. All too often they devote more time to crafting just the right words than to committing themselves to following through.

Take a few moments to reflect on Emerson's quotation, and then consider the following questions:

• Why is it so common to say one thing and do another?
• What are some inherent difficulties in seeking to speak with authority and influence?
• Why can it it be especially problematic to say the "right thing"?
• How often do you fail to live up to your own words? Who is usually the first to notice it? Do you sometimes not notice it at all?
• What built-in constraints can you identify to talking? (You may wish to refer back to our essay of May 20 on ten talk traps.)
• When you think of nonverbal communication, do you think mainly of body language? Facial expression? Vocal intonation? Or something bigger?
• What other kinds of nonverbal communication communicate far more?
• What does your own nonverbal communication say about you? In what ways?
• How are you working to lead with more integrity?

Coming on Monday

Data on Leadership Training

Coming on Wednesday

Types of Authority

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

How to Manage Yourself (Part 4 of 4)

  

(Fourth of Four Parts)

by Thomas J. Lee

We come to the end of the our series of essays on how leaders should manage themselves.

Regular readers of Minding Gaps are familiar with our basic distinction between managing and leading, and with our argument that good managing is at the core of good leadership.

We define both managing and leading as a function not of position but of work. For both, their nature derives from their purpose. But that is where the similarity ends.

You can think of managing as the hard work of ensuring performance to the expectations of stakeholders. Typically it involves meeting deadlines, coming in under budget, complying with standards or procedures or requirements, or producing or selling a sufficient number and quality of something.

Leading is quite different. You can think of it as the hard work of bringing about big change or a breakthrough performance—first recognizing and identifying the need for it, then envisioning it, then championing it, then supporting it, and then driving it.

Now to lead successfully, you must first be able to manage, and no one is more important to manage than yourself. That's right: you.

Only by managing yourself can you lead others. That's because only those leaders who embody the change they advocate will be taken seriously by the people they wish to lead. Wannabe leaders who cannot or simply do not embody the change will be unable to lead. Their would-be leadership will be lifeless.

In this four-part series, which we began on July 11, we have broken down the day-to-day implications of managing yourself. The first installment was on managing your words: what you say, how and where and when you say it, and what you choose not to say. The second installment was on managing your thoughts. The third installment was on managing your attitude and energy. For the final piece, we turn to managing your own behaviors.

 

*     *     *

Last week we asked you to imagine a big circle in the sky with three equidistant points at 2 o'clock, 6 o'clock, and 10 o'clock. You were to label the 2 o'clock point Attitude, the 6 o'clock point Behavior, and the 10 o'clock point Consequences. Along the rim of the circle, we asked you to draw curving arrows between the points clockwise, such that Attitude points to Behavior and so forth.

We initially used this model to highlight the importance of attitudes. Today we will use it to throw a spotlight on your own behavior. Everything you do sends a message of one sort or another to other people.

Here's an example from one company, certainly not atypical. Senior executives have gone hoarse talking about the importance of safety. They are genuinely concerned about the physical well-being of employees. But they have also maintained aggressive financial and operational targets. That sets up an inevitable conflict.

One senior manager told me how it plays out. Mid-level managers, knowing they will be held to account for their performance, tend to cut corners to save money and speed production. Those corners can impinge on safety. A common scenario in such circumstances is directing a worker to use broken equipment, perhaps having been set aside and waiting to be repaired, "just this once" in order to complete something on time and under budget. Workers have a right to refuse such assignments and to blow the whistle on the manager, but in practice few do so. They don't want a reputation for whining.

Similar conflicts can arise over all kinds of cultural and operational vectors: product quality, customer service, process improvements, innovation, design, and so much more.

Here are some strategies to use in managing your own behaviors on the job:

• Translate your business strategy to actionable behaviors that apply to everyone, and to behaviors that also apply only to managers, and to behaviors that also apply only to executives. Make certain you are visibly and consistently demonstrating those behaviors, especially when you are in a hurry and tempted to neglect them "just this once."
• Scrutinize your day-to-day behaviors for the implicit messages they send, especially messages that run counter to formal and verbal strategic messages that establish direction, norms, and priorities. Neglecting to do examine your routine behaviors is all but inviting to be perceived as a hypocrite, though that's the last thing you want to be or to think of yourself as.
• Pay particular attention to patterns of incidental behaviors, such as showing up late for meetings, frequently going to lunch with the same colleagues, rolling through stop signs, and so much more. These things can be grist for griping by the people on your team. Violating rules is never permissible simply because someone of high rank is doing the violating. Think goose and gander. 
• Adopt a new rule for yourself: no multitasking when it involves anyone else's time, voice, or dignity. That means not checking your email in anyone else's presence, and it means not searching for anything online while someone else is speaking. You must be careful about even taking notes on a computer, as it will appear to others as though you aren't paying attention.
• Consider challenging cultural conventions in your organization to send an implicit message that you appreciate doing things differently. For example, if you are a relatively senior manager, and subordinate managers always go to a senior manager's office for meetings, switch it around. Better yet, commit to spending most of your day out and about rather than closeted in your office.
• Make strategic communication a routine, day-to-day priority rather than a weekly, monthly, or quarterly event. After all, if the people throughout your team or operation don't know what you're thinking, how can you possibly expect them to act on it?
• Control your temper. Yes, work is stressful, but that is never an excuse to lose it. If you have frequent difficulty with this, get some help. If you don't, it can derail your career or worse. In the 21st century, even the frequent use of profanity is out of place.
• Be sure you are present and accessible physically (that's the easy part), intellectually (that's more difficult), socially (that make require a personality transplant for some of you), and emotionally (that's especially difficult for many of us). You must show up for work as a complete person, simply because it is easier for other people to relate to a whole person than to an empty suit.
• Remember that the single most powerful means of communication you have is the decision. Which decision, you ask? That one. And that one, and that one, too. Every decision you make defines your character in the eyes of other people.

Gandhi's essential message for posterity was: You must be the change you seek in the world. Any leader who wants to leave a legacy of change must take the first steps. That means managing himself.

 

Coming on Friday

Ralph Waldo Emerson on Hypocrisy

 

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

If Open and Honest Communication Is a Problem

  

(To read all our posts on leadership, communication,

change, and engagement of employees, just scroll down.)

 

 

You may work in a high-performance organization. Perhaps your company is already on a list of best places to work, either locally or nationally. Perhaps your employee survey scores are above the norm. Perhaps you are an employer of choice.

Or you may work in a challenging environment. Perhaps you have a rumor mill that moves at warp speed. Perhaps you have front-line supervisors who are openly cynical. Perhaps your employee surveys come back with low marks for "open and honest communication."

Or—and more likely—you may work at an organization, large or small, that is good but could be a whole lot better.

Wherever you are on this continuum, you and your managers can benefit hugely from our Boot Camp in Strategic Leadership Communication. High-performance companies can move to the next level. Struggling organizations can begin to get their act together. Middle-of-the-road companies can identify their next opportunities for improvement.

A great deal is at stake. Because the competition is always changing, no organization can remain where it is. Always, you are either improving or worsening relative to competitors. Product quality, personnel costs, employee engagement, and ultimately customer satisfaction and your profitability are on the line. At the very least, as our economy recovers, every company must worry about retaining the loyalty of its talent.

We have a solution: our Boot Camp in Strategic Leadership Communication, an intense, sophisticated, on-site workshop that changes the way managers and supervisors communicate business strategy and information, manage their own priorities, and build affirming relationships of mutual dignity and respect.

Here are just some of the benefits of Boot Camp:

Bottom Line Value. Research shows that between 2.1 and 2.5 percent of an organization’s revenue is lost to the active disengagement of people. That’s as much as $2.5 million for every $100 million of revenue, and it is just for the active disengagement. (Passive engagement adds still more to the cost.) Recover it, and it goes straight to the bottom line.

Big Impact. Leadership and management are two different things. So are engagement and alignment. (Remember this: “Assign to align. On page to engage.”) The communication that drives each is different, too. Use the wrong one, and you get the wrong result. We bring clarity and explanation to these important distinctions. Executives will understand the importance of distributive leadership—after all, no one can be everywhere—and managers will understand why they must stand up as collateral leaders of the enterprise.

Practical Examples. We have scoured top-tier companies for best practices, and we bring them to you. Your managers will see practical examples from companies like Harley-Davidson, Levi Strauss, Nordstrom, Starbucks, Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, and many others. Your people will remember the vivid stories for years to come.

Quantitative Data. We present hard, factual, quantitative data to support our argument on the power and value of communication around business strategy. You and your managers will get facts and figures on change, trust, engagement and disengagement, perceptions of managers by employees, ROI, message clutter, employee frustrations, rumors, and so much more.

Simple, Powerful Models. Our flagship models, the Rainbow and the GearBox, have been used by such iconic companies as Pfizer, Anheuser-Busch, Harley-Davidson, Royal Dutch Shell, FMC, John Deere, Northwestern Mutual, and the legendary Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. The Rainbow Model identifies unintended, and previously unnoticed, credibility gaps: mixed messages, muddled messages, mute messages. Another model, the GearBox, serves as both a structure and a self-assessment tool at the intersection of strategy and employee engagement. We guarantee you will find them enlightening.

Robust Credibility. Any leader is communicating constantly, often (and most especially) when he is least aware of it. We hammer home the point that communication is anything—verbal or nonverbal, explicit or implicit—that either conveys information or creates meaning. That forces managers to rethink their routine, their habits, and their own unnoticed behavioral ticks, for those nasty, inadvertent messages they didn’t intend to send—but did, more than once.

Talk Traps. The work of leading people isn’t easy. If it were, anyone could do it well. But we have been around long enough to know the landscape of difficulties—and talk traps are a big one. Inexperienced or unskilled leaders often run into the classic talk traps: small talk, sunny talk, scare talk, sweet talk, smart talk, simple talk, song and dance talk, slick talk, snarky talk, or self talk. What they should rely on is straight talk. But even that isn’t easy. We’ll take your team through the challenge of straight talk, so that they can do it right.

Healthy Culture. Good communication of business information in a company is more than a process. It is a culture. In a healthy culture, communication is clear, credible, compelling, constructive, continuous, collaborative, civil, and concise. For each, we have powerful diagnostic questions that will open eyes, minds, and hearts to change.

Practical, Proven Strategies. We have distilled our teaching down to neat lists of strategies and tactics. They all make abundant good sense, but many of them never occurred to managers beforehand. 

 

Boot Camp is available in a one-day or two-day format. It can be customized to your industry, your strategy, and your legacy. Leading companies in manufacturing, technology, finance, retail, and service industries have made it a staple of their professional development.

Evaluations of our workshops are consistently high. After sitting in a windowless room for a day or two, more than 95 percent of participants recommend the experience for their peers and superiors. Here’s what past participants have said:

 

“This was a top-notch program directly geared [to] the success of managers. It was a continuing education program among peers.”

—a senior manager of a Fortune 100 consumer-products company

“I have worked for this agency for 25 years, and I have never had a day of in-service training as valuable as today’s.”

—scientist, agency of the U.S. government

“Excellent presenter, measured pauses, superb, enthusiastic, thought-provoking, excellent material, first-rate, will definitely recommend.”

—a guest participant

“I have gone through a lot of leadership training. This is one of the two best. The other was at Carnegie Mellon, and this workshop is more applicable to my day-to-day work.”

—senior engineer, aerospace company

“Tom is terrific! Original, enthusiastic, motivating . . . the lessons are applicable, useful, and real.”

—senior manager for an international food and beverage company

 

Call or write now for best availability.

 
+1-847-247-2241
info@arceil.com

 

How to Manage Yourself (Part 3 of 4)

 

(Third of Four Parts)

by Thomas J. Lee

Minding Gaps is midway through a series of essays on how leaders should manage themselves.

In order to lead successfully, you must first be able to manage, and no one is more important to manage than yourself. Only by managing yourself can you lead others. Pretenders who cannot or do not manage themselves will be discounted and discredited by the people they seek to lead. As potential leaders, they will be lifeless.

In this four-part series, which we began last week, we are breaking down the day-to-day implications of managing yourself. The first installment was on managing your words: what you say, how and where and when you say it, and what you choose not to say. The second installment was on managing your thoughts. Now we turn to managing your own morale: your attitudes toward yourself and others.

 

*     *     *

Imagine a big circle in the sky with three equidistant points: one at 2 o'clock, another at 6 o'clock, and the third at 10 o'clock. Label the 2 o'clock point Attitude, the 6 o'clock point Behavior, and the 10 o'clock point Consequences. Along the rim of the circle, draw curving arrows between the points clockwise, such that Attitude points to Behavior and so forth.

The clockwise direction is important. It makes plain that attitudes do have consequences. It also establishes that behaviors are a critical link between our attitudes and the consequences we experience, and it acknowledges the force of consequences on our attitudes.

We use this simple A-B-C construct as a template for identifying the drivers of performance, both in terms of building people engagement in a team or enterprise and in terms of managing one's own performance. We'll use it today in the latter sense, as we analyze the role of managing your attitude. So we will home in on that 2 o'clock point on the circle.

To get started, think first of the broad categories of attitudes you can have in the workplace. Probably the most obvious category is attitudes toward your own boss. Another obvious category is attitudes toward your peers. Still another obvious one is attitudes toward the people on your team.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Here are some others, a little less obvious: your atttitudes toward your work, toward travel and relocation for your job, toward work-life balance, toward customers, toward competitors, toward your accomplishments, toward the missed opportunities of your career to date (don't kid yourself, we all have them), toward personal and professional growth, and toward the future.

Perhaps the least apparent of all attitudes is your attitude toward yourself. Are you ashamed of yourself? Proud of yourself? Is your attitude toward yourself closer to recrimination or forgiveness? Closer to applause or humility?

Together, all these attitudes can define us through the day-to-day behaviors that they naturally bring about. An attitude of gratitude leads us to say thanks. An attitude of greed leads us to demand more.

Attitudes even have an effect on our health. An attitude of patience lowers our stress and hence our blood pressure, while an attitude of impatience increases both.

One of the critical fulcrums of attitude is empathy: the degree to which we understand and appreciate the perspective and point of view of other people unlike ourselves. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? Are they inclined to trust or distrust us? To be patient or impatient with us? To believe or disbelieve us? To give us the benefit of the doubt, or insist on zero-tolerance accountability? Then we can ask the same questions of ourselves toward them, and we can apply the Golden Rule or ignore it. Big differences in all these.

As you reflect on attitudes, you may wish to wrestle with these questions:

• Just what are your most common attitudes in the workplace toward your boss, your colleagues, and the people on your team?
• Is your atttitude toward your work one of pride or disappointment? Toward its requirements and impositions one of burden or opportunity?
• Do you view your career to date mainly with pride or regret?
• How do you regard your customers? Do you see their requests as interruptions of your work or as the purpose of your work? Are your customers more often irritating or satisfying?
• What about competitors? If you could, would you want to drive them out of business?
• Do you regard your company's professional-development requirements as a burden or an opportunity? Do you think of the future as basically exciting and potentially glorious, or as basically depressing and potentially disastrous?

 

Coming on Wednesday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

 (Fourth of Four Parts)

Publisher's Note:

We'll be off Friday and Monday for a family wedding.

We will return on Wednesday the 28th.

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

{Numbers} Workers Trust Managers More Than Executives

 

Numbers, a twice-monthly feature, regularly presents business data that is noteworthy, puzzling, alarming, widely misunderstood or misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. It appears on the first and third Monday of each month.

Since its inception two years ago, Numbers has presented data on a wide variety of issues: employee engagement, organizational culture, trust in business, information overload, strategic communication, CEO compensation, layoffs, job satisfaction, Internet usage, nonverbal communication, fear in the workplace, and many other variables.

You can read any or all of those posts (and hundreds of other short essays, as well) whenever you wish, just by scrolling through the archives. For a particular subject, use the search button atop the right column.

by Thomas J. Lee

Corporate employees trust their own managers more than they trust their company's senior executives, according to a survey of more than 7,000 employees at all levels of American companies.

Only 20 percent of people strongly trust the top management of their organization. Some 36 percent moderately trust their top management, while the remaining 44 percent range from not trusting to strongly distrusting their top management.

The same study, conducted by Leadership IQ, found that people were more trusting of their direct boss than top management.

It concluded that 34 percent of people strongly trust their direct boss, 35 percent moderately trust their direct boss, while the remaining 31 percent range from not trusting to strongly distrusting their direct boss.

As you reflect on these numbers, ask yourself:

• What do you think can account for the difference?
• In your company, is the CEO's communication too polished, too artificial?
• Does your company promise more than it delivers to employees?
• Have company policies trampled over high-minded corporate values?
• What can companies do to restore trust? 

 

Coming on Wednesday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(Third of Four Parts)

 

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

Of Champions and Leaders

Two years ago in this space we waxed eloquent on the amazing final holes of the British Open. Any weekend duffer who has ever pretended to hear the roar of the gallery while approaching the 18th green will recall the thrill that ageless Tom Watson, then 59 years old, gave us that July weekend in 2009. Here is what we wrote:

by Thomas J. Lee

If love like youth is wasted on the young, as Sammy Cahn wrote, so perhaps is sport. Yes, everyone savors the thrill of victory. Yes, everyone feels the sting of defeat. But only the properly aged among us can bask in the warmth of an ever-flickering candle of one more time, just one more time.

For anyone of a certain age or better, watching 59-year-old Tom Watson on the final holes and then in the playoff of the British Open at Turnberry, Scotland, today was to indulge in a little reverie.

Watson had earned his first Open championship in 1975, years before some of the other professional golfers of today were born. But here he was again, where he wasn’t supposed to be. Hadn’t he graduated to the senior tour a decade ago?

In the end, Watson squandered a one-stroke lead on the 72nd hole to end the four rounds in a two-way tie. Then, in a four-hole playoff, he drove into the rough and finally lost to Stewart Cink.

The victor is a relatively unheralded American, but he is no youngster himself. Winning his first major championship today at the age of 36, Cink is already three years older than Watson was when he won the last of his eight majors, 26 years ago.

Nevertheless, the story of the day belonged to Watson, still in the hunt after all these years.

“It would have been a helluva story,” Watson said afterward. “It would have been a helluva story, but it wasn’t to be.”

The spectacle took me back to a triathlon in St. Petersburg, Florida, several years ago. I was competing in the 40-something age group. Having swum a mile in Tampa Bay and ridden the 25-mile bike course through the streets of old St. Pete, I was running strong only a couple of miles from the finish line.

My legs still felt fine, and I was thoroughly enjoying the experience when a pretty young woman, probably half my age, pulled up alongside me. For a few minutes, our banter made me feel as if I were in my 20s again.

Then she casually remarked, “You know, when my dad gets to be your age, I sure hope he is in your shape.”

Her well-intended words were like a brick wall in my path. Could I actually be older than her dad?

Nah. You don't think, do you? Suddenly I felt like walking, or crawling.

My legs slowed. I felt weak. Keeping the same pace we’d both been running a few seconds earlier, she sprinted ahead.

Age, it now seems to me, is permission to reflect and appreciate in ways we couldn’t, or just didn’t, when we were rushing headlong into life. Tom Watson seems to know that intuitively.

Reflecting aloud today in the clubhouse after the last hole, he asked himself what impressions or insights he would take away from the week’s experience. He thought a moment and answered: “A lot of warmth, a lot of spirituality.” It was scarcely the answer of a brash young man.

The ageless golfer is a gentleman who knows what it means to be a gentleman. He has always let his integrity do the heavy lifting of inspiration.

No one should forget his courageous decision in 1990 to resign from a Kansas City country club after it refused membership to a Jewish couple. He explained his reasoning only privately, but when the club reversed its policy, he rejoined immediately and publicly. There was no loud grandstanding, and yet there was no mistaking the message.

Stewart Cink won the British Open today, and my hat is off to him. He deserves to be congratulated. But in my book Tom Watson is the real champion. Thank you, Mr. Watson, for a marvelous weekend of golf, and thank you for the splendid example you continue to give to us all.

 

*     *     *

Two years later, Tom Watson, now 61, is competing in the British Open again this weekend, and as of today he is only nine strokes off the lead at Royal St. George in Kent, England. [He would finish the tournament eleven strokes off. The winner was 42-year-old Darren Clarke of Northern Ireland.]

Of equal note, Watson was coincidentally paired with his namesake, Tom Lewis, a 20-year-old amateur whose parents so loved golf and so respected Watson they named their newborn son after the golfing legend. Imagine the thrill it must be for the youngster to be sharing the fairways with him.

Some things get better with age, and Mr. Watson is one of them. 

 

Coming on Monday

{Numbers} Trust in Management

 

Coming on Wednesday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(Third of Four Parts)

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Holy Kaw! Minding Gaps Is Now On Alltop.com!

 

I am thrilled to announce that Guy "Holy Kaw!" Kawasaki—best-selling author, Apple's original evangelist, and co-founder of the Alltop aggregator—has just added Minding Gaps to the Alltop blogroll.

Alltop readers can now access this blog under the Leadership tab or by searching for Minding Gaps from the Alltop home page.

Holy Kaw is right!

—TJL                       

 

Coming on Monday

{Numbers} Trust in Management

 

Coming on Wednesday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(Third of Four Parts)

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

How to Manage Yourself (Part 2 of 4)

 

(Second of Four Parts)

by Thomas J. Lee

As regular readers know, Minding Gaps defines managing and leading in terms of the work they involve, not in terms of positions on an organization chart. Anyone with responsibility for the work of the other people wears the hats of both manager and leader. That's especially true in an organization that recognizes the need for and embarks on a course of change, growth, or improvement.

As we explained a couple of days ago, the two roles are different but closely related. Managing is the hard work of ensuring performance to the expectations of stakeholders. Leading is the hard work of bringing about big change or a breakthrough performance—first recognizing and identifying the need for it, then envisioning it, then championing it, then supporting it, and then driving it.

In order to lead successfully, you must first be able to manage, and no one is more important to manage than yourself. Only by managing yourself can you lead others. Pretenders who cannot or do not manage themselves will be discounted and discredited by the people they seek to lead. As potential leaders, they will be lifeless.

In this four-part series, which began Monday, we are breaking down the day-to-day implications of this concept. The first installment was on managing your words: what you say, how and where and when you say it, and what you choose not to say. Now we turn our attention to managing your thoughts.

 

*     *     *

 

As we explained Monday, the first thing you must manage is your mouth: your words. The second thing you must manage is your mind and the access to it. What you think has a powerful bearing on what you say and do. People who pollute their minds with cynicism, falehood, scorn, and prejudice invariably emerge as pitiful. No one admires them, and few follow them of their own accord.

My late grandmother had a pillow with this aphorism in needlepoint:

Mind your thoughts, they are the words you say;

Mind those words, they are your deeds from day to day;

Mind those deeds, they are your habits, hard to break;

Mind those habits, they are the soul you ‘lone make.

There's truth as well as rhyme in this verse.

Here are some specific suggestions for managing your mind:

• Cultivate intellectual curiosity. Just as Albert Einstein valued imagination over knowledge, so we should value curiosity over insight. It is more important and of more value to ask good questions than it is to know and remember things, simply because imagination and curiosity are critical to the knowledge and insight of tomorrow. (If you're still not convinced, ask yourself whether you would rather own shares in a company that makes slide rules or a company that makes tablet computers.) Encourage your colleagues and staff to probe deeper and to challenge one another, including yourself.
• Set a good example; question your own assumptions constantly and relentlessly. Assume that you have less information than you need to come to the conclusion you are already at. Ask yourself what additional information you should have and where you can find it. Also, think rigorously about your reasoning process. You can find plenty of online resources that will teach you about errors in logic and reasoning.
• Challenge yourself to think at a higher plane. Sports and hobbies are good and even important parts of your life, but find time also for serious reflection and conversation. I favor journaling. You'll rarely find me without my leather-bound journal within reach. I reserve it for serious observations, thoughts, excerpts and quotes, ideas, and questions to which I want to give more thought. I also keep a date-ordered Word file that functions as a chronicle of my business life. 
• Give yourself regular intellectual nourishment. Read books, serious books—biography, literature, essays, history—as well as magazines like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Vanity Fair. Make a point of reading the editorial and op-ed pages of at least one well-regarded and internationally recognized daily newspaper.
• Especially if, like me, your Myers-Briggs score tilts the N side of the iNtutive/Sensory scale, be skeptical of the ideology you bring to any issue. Question your beliefs and the framework of assumptions and expectations you have. Search for data that either supports or undermines them. All of us weave a narrative about people, institutions, and issues. If yours is bereft of objective, provable facts to support it, then it's probably a product of your presumption—or perhaps of someone else's agenda.
• When you feel yourself rushing toward a conclusion, stop and ask yourself (a) what you know for sure about the situation, (b) what you think you know but aren't quite certain, (c) what you have been told but have no independent reason to believe, and (d) what you don't know at all. By thinking a little about those four questions, you'll slow yourself down and refrain from jumping to conclusions.
• Take pride in having not just an open door but an open mind. Make it easy for anyone at any level of the organization to approach you with information or a perspective that challenges your thinking. When someone does approach you, pause to admire her courage, and be predisposed to accepting and believing the information or point of view, if only for the time it takes to investigate.
• Finally, exercise regularly, eat right, and drink moderately. The healthier your body, the healthier your mind.

Just as Grandma Lee's needlepoint suggested, our thoughts are powerful precursors to our words, and our words largely determine our actions and the actions of others within our sphere of influence. Bring a high standard to your thoughts, and the rest of your job suddenly becomes much, much easier.

 

Coming Next Monday

{Numbers} Trust in Management

 

Coming Next Wednesday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(Third of Four Parts)

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

What Really Matters

 

This is too good not to share with you. I am borrowing it from the Character Counts program, which has been embraced by many schools.

                     —TJL                       

 

 

What Really Matters

by Michael Josephson

 

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.

There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.

All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.

It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.

Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.

So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire.

The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.

It won’t matter where you came from or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end.

It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.

Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

 

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

 

What will matter is not what you bought but what you built,

not what you got but what you gave.

What will matter is not your success but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught.

What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched,

empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

 

What will matter is not your competence but your character.

What will matter is not how many people you knew,

but how many will feel a lasting loss when you’re gone.

What will matter is not your memories but the memories of those who loved you.

What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

 

Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident.

It’s not a matter of circumstance but of choice.

Choose to live a life that matters.

 

How to Manage Yourself (Part 1 of 4)

(First of Four Parts)

by Thomas J. Lee

Regular readers of the Minding Gaps blog are familiar with our basic distinction between managing and leading, and with our argument that good managing is at the core of good leadership.

We define both managing and leading as a function not of position but of work. But that is where the similarity ends.

Managing is the hard work of ensuring performance to the expectations of stakeholders. It usually involves meeting deadlines, coming in under budget, complying with standards or requirements, or producing or selling enough of something.

Leading is the hard work of bringing about big change or a breakthrough performance—first recognizing and identifying the need for it, then envisioning it, then championing it, then supporting it, and then driving it.

Now here's the crux: In order to lead successfully, you must first be able to manage, and no one is more important to manage than yourself. That's right: you.

Only by managing yourself can you lead others. That's because only those who manage themselves effectively will be taken seriously as leaders. Those who cannot or do not manage themselves will be discounted and discredited by the people they seek to lead. As potential leaders, they will be lifeless.

But what does managing yourself mean in practical, day-to-day terms? What exactly are we saying when we are urging you to manage yourself?

In today's post and three more than follow this week and next, we'll break it down for you.

 

*     *     *

 

The first thing you must manage is your own mouth. It is not true, and never has been true, that you should feel free to say anything that occurs to you. Nor is it true that your role as a manager anoints you as an expert in all things, that your opinion should trump everyone else's.

Sometimes, and probably rather often, you, like anyone else, are wrong. Keep that in mind before you offer your opinion as if you enjoyed the divine right of kings and anyone who would dare disagree is a knave or a jester.

It then follows that you should:

• Develop a judicious sense as to what requires your voice. Speak up on the important things, both strategic and personal, especially when remaining silent would implicitly convey a false or a counter-strategic message. On strategic matters, it's especially important to speak up often on the fundamentals: the organization's core purpose, strategic intent, values, vision, and operating priorities. On personal matters, it's especially important to acknowledge (sometimes privately, sometimes publicly) life-changing events such as a surgery, a graduation, and the like.
• By the same token, recognize the value of stifling thyself. You don't have to be the first to speak and the last to speak. You don't have to talk louder than others. You certainly shouldn't interrupt. Get in the habit of letting others enjoy the spotlight. 
• On the other hand, do use casual conversation as a social lubricant that can break down barriers and bring people together. The weather, vacations, sports, movies, hobbies, and recipes all reach across the hierarchy. Never pass anyone in the hallway without greeting, unless you're passing them constantly and it would be awkward to greet them repeatedly. 
• Apart from an appropriate level of casual conversation, minimize diversionary topics that compete for strategic focus. Most workplace communication should involve work processes, product quality, customer expectations, improvement suggestions, scheduling changes, and so forth. Use this formula: 5/95, or 5 percent of conversation for non-business matters, 95 percent for business-related topics.
• Especially if you live or work in a small or midsize community, remember that you are constantly on display. If you are curt with or dismissive of someone in a service capacity—a waitress or grocery clerk, for example—you can expect to be noticed by someone you don't recognize but who knows who you are.
• Refrain from uttering anything of a cynical nature, regardless of the target. When someone else waxes cynical, call them on it. Here's what I say: "If you have evidence of wrongdoing, by all means offer it up. Let's see it and examine it." (If it's evidence of criminal wrongdoing, it should be presented to the authorities.) "Otherwise let's grant people the benefit of the doubt. Isn't that the Golden Rule at work?"
• Stop rumors in their track. Don't pass them along. Let people learn over time that they can expect to hear reliable, strategic information from you first.
• Avoid subjects that demean people or that polarize them for no reason. Don't bring up politics, religion, or any hint of sexuality or sexual orientation. Don't even think personally or professionally disparaging thoughts, in either content or tone. It goes without saying that adolescent behavior, such as off-color humor or mimicry of ethnic accents or disabilities, is absolutely verboten.
• As a general rule, offer praise in public (unless something about the environment tells you otherwise) but criticism only in private. Even then, seek out details and attenuating circumstances before criticizing, and keep your criticism brief and tightly focused.
• Learn to rely more on questions than commands, but make certain your expectations are clear and agreed upon. Favor open questions—typically how, what, and why—over closed questions. Avoid short-circuiting discussions by offering your own opinion too early.

Not infrequently, the comment that most damages your reputation is a loose, thoughtless, impulsive remark that reveals the character at the core of your being. I'm not asking you to pretend to be someone else. I am asking you constantly to be the best of the person you are. Bring the best you to the party.

Coming on Wednesday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(Second of Four Parts)

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Six Months Ago It Wasn't So Hot Outdoors

As much of the United States broils under the mid-summer sun, we thought we would bring you a refreshing break.

Here is a link to our observations of six months ago, when it wasn't so warm outdoors. The occasion was one of the Midwest's worst blizzards ever.

Stay cool, and enjoy.

Be Your Own First Follower

by Thomas J. Lee

On any given day, the people you seek to lead may or may not hear, understand, believe, remember, or appreciate what you have to say. Nevertheless, you must say what you believe, and you must say it often.

On any given day, the people you seek to lead will always notice, observe and remember what you do and how you do it. Never forget that people are constantly comparing what you do and what you neglect or decline to do with what you say and what you said. That's accountability, and you like accountability.

Finally, on any given day, the people you seek to lead are determining for themselves whether to follow your lead. The decision is theirs alone. It is not yours. It will rest largely on whether they regard you as a person of noble purpose and integrity, and as a person of principle, intellect, competence, standards, and wisdom.

So speak up, and speak up often, about what matters most, and then be your own first follower. To show the way, you must first go the way, for leading is all about following first.

Coming on Monday

How Leaders Must Manage Themselves

(First of Four Parts)

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Presidents and Social Media

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Twitter is fine for its original purpose—updating friends on an ETA or changing plans at the last minute—but its 140 characters are scarcely enough for the nuances and complexity of serious discourse.

Until someone invents a robust social-media bullhorn, presidents (and anyone else with a big message) should stay off it.

Just one man's opinion, worth what you're paying for it.

 

Coming on Friday

Be Your Own First Follower

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

The Irony of Seeing and Believing

 

by Thomas J. Lee

On any given issue, people may or may not hear what their leaders say. But they will always see what the leaders do, and seeing is believing.

Does that strike you as true? It certainly does me.

And yet there's a problem with such a facile analysis: The opposite is also true.

Believing is seeing, too. That's right. Just as seeing is believing, so is believing seeing.

Think about that. We're not just playing with words here. It's an important if complicating point for leaders and for anyone who counsels leaders on communication.

Not only do people believe what they see with their own eyes (that's the seeing-is-believing part), but they tend to see mainly that which they already believe (the believing-is-seeing part).

Their eyesight—yours and mine, too—is naturally selective. We see things first, notice things most, and remember things longest that conform to our own perspective and that confirm our own judgment.

It's certainly no secret that two intelligent, reasonable persons can experience the same event—a concert, a movie, or a dinner in a restaurant, say—and come away with sharply divergent impressions.

How often have you and a friend read the same book and disagreed on it? Listened to the same political debate and disagreed on the candidates? 

The fact is that each individual processes new data through his own lens of preconceived expectations, needs, experiences, opinions, and concerns. This frame of reference changes slowly, if at all.

That basic dynamic holds as well for news and announcements about the workplace. What people already know and believe bears heavily on their reaction to additional information and messages.

Does that make leadership communication in the workplace pointless? Not really, no. It does make it more difficult though.

As a practical matter, it underlines the need to educate employees constantly on the company's strategic reality. The more that people know, the more likely their beliefs will reflect the company's real-world environment.

Moreover, it reminds us that, as the best comedians and orators have long understood, we are always speaking to an audience of one. Never to a crowd, but always to each individual person in the crowd.

The distinction is critical. Ever notice how a riveting speaker works a room? She fixes her eyes on one person at a time. Afterward, almost to a person, people say: "I felt as if she was talking just to me." That's what we mean.

What are the implications of all this for business leadership? Even in the largest organizations, any leader must keep uppermost in mind who it is that he is hoping to lead, and must address their issues as they see them.

He should ask: How much do people already know about the situation, the direction for the future, the organization's progress? What do they think of it? What is their emotional state? Exactly what are they worrying about, fearful of, concerned about, hopeful for?

That—even more than the nuts and bolts of the message—is the most important consideration in leadership communication. In it lies the secret of great communication. Speak to the human heart and what lies inside, and you cannot go wrong.

So just remember this: It is always, always the who before the what. Never the other way around.

 

Coming on Friday

Be Your Own First Follower

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

A Vision of Parades and Fireworks

 

After the thirteen colonies declared independence from the British crown 235 years ago, the American patriot John Adams wrote to his beloved Abigail back in Massachusetts:

“I am apt to believe [the anniversary of the declaration] will be celebrated by succeeding generations . . . with pomp and parade; with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations; from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forever more.”

Now that, we can all agree, was an extraordinary leadership vision.

 

 

Today is the Fourth of July, the official anniversary of the declaration and the quintessential American holiday. Lo these many years later, we continue to celebrate our independence with parades, flags, cookouts, and of course fireworks.

Lest you ever wonder whether a vividly articulated vision is worth the effort, look skyward after dusk tonight, and see for yourself.

Celebrate exuberantly but safely today, and enjoy a glorious Fourth of July.

 

Coming on Wednesday

The Irony of Seeing and Believing

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Quote / Unquote: Rod Tidwell on Primitive Communication

 

It has been a while since we published a feature we call Quote / Unquote, which offers a simple, noteworthy quotation on some aspect of leadership, communication, change, or engagement in business. In most cases we also provide context, comment, or questions to stir discussion. Occasionally, however, the quotation stands alone.

Previous posts in this category have included, among others, Peter Drucker on regarding employees as volunteers, Charles Osgood on responsibility, Margaret Mead on teams, Jim Nordstrom on employee engagement, Andre Agassi on decisions, Carl Jung on accountability, Albert Einstein on curiosity, Bejamin Disraeli on the great paradox of leadership, Charles Dickens on electronic communication, and Eric Hoffer on change. For any of those posts, or for any of the other 400 essays in our archives, just enter a keyword in the search box to the right.

Today we turn to Rod Tidwell, the fictional National Football League wide receiver in the 1996 Cameron Crowe movie "Jerry Maguire," which starred Tom Cruise in the title role, along with Cuba Gooding Jr. as Tidwell and Renée Zellweger as Dorothy Boyd. To my thinking, "Jerry Maguire" should have won the Oscar for best picture that "The English Patient" did win.

by Thomas J. Lee

In "Jerry Maguire," the 1996 movie that Cameron Crowe both wrote and directed, Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Rod Tidwell, a self-centered professional football player, to Tom Cruise's Jerry Maguire, his agent.

Crowe gave Tidwell several powerful lines, one of which is among the most memorable in the history of movie making, for it was Tidwell who said: "Show me the money!"

But another of Tidwell's line's in the same movie is even more relevant to the subject of this blog and to your work as a manager and a leader: 

 

Talking is just a primitive form of communication.

 

One of the fundamental points we have made repeatedly in Minding Gaps over the years is that your words count, but your intent, behavior, and decisions count as much or more. They are your identity, your character. They are you.

Moreover, nonverbal communication is far more than it is conventionally thought of. It is the totality of what you think, say, and do.

To our thinking, many companies (and even more so, politicians) are preoccupied with what they say at the expense of what they intend and do to bring meaning and import to their words. 

Reflect on Tidwell's line about primitive communication, and then consider the following questions:

• Why does he call talking "primitive communication"?
• What are the limitations of talking in business? (You may wish to refer back to our essay of May 20 on ten talk traps.)
• When you think of nonverbal communication, do you think mainly of body language? Facial expression?
• What other kinds of nonverbal communication communicate far more than body language or facial expression?
• What does your own nonverbal communication say about you? In what ways?
• Is it deliberate or accidental?
• How specifically are you working to improve your nonverbal messages?

Coming on Monday

The Vision of a Celebration

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.