Minding Gaps

What Do You Have in Common with Riccardo Muti?

Riccardo Muti, the newly designated music director of the acclaimed Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was drawing one analogy in an interview yesterday morning, and it was a good one. I would like to borrow his analogy and apply it differently, to make a parallel point.

 

In an interview published in the Chicago Tribune, the Italian maestro was addressing a cultural barrier between much of working-class Chicago and the city’s symphony, which has garnered praise and honors around the globe. Then he observed that a symphony must function as a model of civic cooperation.

“Each section of the orchestra plays a different and independent part,” said Muti, referring to the strings and the horns and so forth. “But they put their parts together without killing what their colleagues are doing, so as to achieve a finished performance. They perform together to reach a superior goal—a unity of sound and expression—through cooperation.” He said this broad cooperation was instructive for any community and indeed any society.

A business of any appreciable size has a similar challenge. For sake of example, let’s think of a manufacturer, though the analogy would be equally valid for a service provider or a retail store or a distributor—any organization with divisions and departments. In our example, the sales department, the manufacturing division, and the accounting office are like the strings and the horns of an orchestra. They must work together for everyone’s benefit. If instead they choose to elevate their own interest over the whole organization’s interest, they will wind up with noise, not music. Their “audience”—the customer, after all—will not be happy.

Unfortunately for the business, each division and department does not have its own musical score, its own formal part of the composition to play, note for note. In this respect, the business enterprise is perhaps more like a jazz combo, performing from a theme but with individual instruments playing harmonic riffs of their own, all within the overall framework of the piece. Still, the analogy holds.

Muti’s comment reminded me of a remark that his predecessor, Daniel Barenboim, once made in an interview with Chicago’s classical music radio station, WFMT. Barenboim observed that, as a conductor, it was essential for him to step back and let each performer contribute to the best of her ability. If he ignored that vital principle, if he instead played with a heavy baton that controlled and stifled the individual musicians, the orchestra's music would be heard as oppressed and lifeless.

In both cases, we have tensions that, if managed well, ultimately work to the advantage of the whole, and ultimately to the benefit of the customer. And in both cases, the role of the leader is more to coalesce than to control, more to draw forth than to draw tight, more to inspire than to influence. 

 

In Praise of Mentoring

I haven’t been a full-time student in twenty years, and my daughter, now in law school, has long since ceased to ask her old man's advice on anything academic. Nevertheless, each autumn I look forward to the start of the school year, for a special reason: It’s mentoring time again.

For more than a decade now, I have been mentoring public-policy graduate students at The University of Chicago, where I earned my own master’s degree. I have found mentoring to be as satisfying and rewarding for me as it is intended to be for the student.

For any of you who are not presently involved in a formal mentoring program, I have two words of free advice: Get involved. Mentoring is a powerful opportunity to cultivate another generation of leaders. It is also a wonderful way to give back to the greater community, even if it's just within your company.

If your business already has a mentoring program for younger staff but you’re not involved in it, see if you can become involved. If it doesn’t have a program, take the initiative of establishing one, or at least get the conversation going in that direction. If you are a mentor but you haven’t been putting your heart into it, pause to reflect on the opportunity you are missing.

Alternatively, seek out a college or university that may have a need for someone like you, or find an organization for youth in your community that needs adult role models.

Each year, I am assigned a University of Chicago graduate student who has requested a mentor. We meet several times during the school year for lunch or coffee, and we exchange emails and take time for telephone conversations whenever the need arises.

Our conversations cover the landscape. Sometimes I find myself offering advice on job interviewing and résumés. Because of my own professional expertise, I have worked on a student's skills in expository writing and public speaking. Other times I have just listened as a student vents about a professor whose grading curve is harsh. Still other times I have pushed a student to think more creatively and broadly about his or her future or values or commitment. The students assigned to me are typically new to Chicago, so I have even offered advice on how to enjoy the city on weekends.

The university’s roster of mentors consists of established leaders in metropolitan Chicago. Some are corporate executives. Others are elected or appointed officials of government. Still others are entrepreneurs, or attorneys, or physicians, or administrators of non-profit associations. They all have jam-packed schedules, but they all make time for these high-potential young people.

Just last week, we gathered for our annual mentoring reception and dinner, and I met the young woman with whom I will work this year. Like all the students who have been assigned to me over the years, she is bright, reflective, and articulate. I look forward to working with her.

I have found mentoring to be a constant wellspring of insight and ideas. It keeps me young and continuously invigorated. You will benefit, too. Do give it a try, if not in your place of business then in the greater community. Someone out there needs you, and you have more to offer than you realize now.

Managing and Leading with Intentionality, or Not

I happen to belong to a men’s group that meets for dinner every few weeks and discusses—well, life. We try to take things deep. Apart from a little chit-chat at the beginning, we avoid talking about sports, investments, business, the weather, women, vacations, music, food, wine, books, politics, movies, religion, cars, or hobbies. You may ask what else there is. Actually, lots.

We take turns setting the agenda. For our next meeting, it’s my turn. The theme for this meeting will be intentionality and purpose. I sent out the agenda couple of days ago. We will apply a series of questions to the course of our lives, past and future, in the hope of gaining insight to our own intentionality.

It occurs to me that the same—or similar, anyway—questions can shed light on the degree to which we manage and lead our teams and organizations with intentionality and purpose.

To begin thinking about it, grapple with these questions:

• What significant elements in the course of your organization now appear, with 20/20 hindsight in your rear-view mirror, to have occurred unintentionally—without much or careful forethought and deliberate planning, but rather as one thing “sort of” leading to another?

• What were the surprising benefits of this meandering path?

• Conversely, what price did you pay?

• What disconnects do you observe in retrospect between your values, pholosophy, or vision and a largely unintentional path, if that is what you have taken?

• What events and developments in the course of your business now appear as the product of deliberate planning?

• To what extent has a more deliberate course, if that is what you have taken, truly affirmed your value structure, your philosophy, or your vision?

• If your course has been more deliberately planned—call it “buttoned down”—what surprising costs did you pay from following a straight and narrow path? What were the benefits? Were they the conventional benefits you expected?

• What was a hybrid, and of which was it more?

• How and how not are the two paths mutually exclusive?

• In what ways are you now managing and leading with greater deliberate intentionality? Or with greater agility, so as to exploit unforeseen opportunities? If there is a change, why?

• On balance, do you wish for more intentionality and purpose? Or more serendipity and unanticipated opportunity?

Side Roads: Hiking to the Summit of Half Dome in Yosemite Park

 

Life shouldn’t be all work and no play. So a couple of months ago we began publishing Side Roads, an irregular, infrequent feature here at the Minding Gaps blog. It will recognize and celebrate passions, milestones, excursions, pleasures, relationships—everything that we ultimately work for. It’s all about life’s joys, both little and large.

We’ll post these diversionary Side Roads columns only on occasion and only on weekends. The rest of the time, we’ll stick to the mission of this column, as summarized in the masthead above and explained more fully in the Welcome! and Our Philosophy posts.

In our inaugural Side Roads column on August 15, I shared my recipe for pesto. If you haven’t yet tried it, be sure to do so soon, before fresh basil becomes difficult to find for the winter.

Today, in the second installment of Side Roads, we will revisit one of the most phenomenal days of my life—the day I climbed Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. If you have ever climbed it, you know just how exhilarating a hike can be.

 

 

That’s me. In the navy blue shirt, waving to you. From the top of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. It was ten years ago today. Look closely, and you will notice the orange date in the lower right corner.

The view from the summit of Half Dome is spectacular, as you can see for yourself. That little bluff a couple of miles behind my arm is the legendary El Capitan—its own face so very intimidating.

From where I am sitting to the valley floor below is just about one mile, straight up and down. Starting from the valley floor, I climbed Half Dome in a single day, and I took the long way. My route was closer to twenty miles, plus the vertical mile on the ascent and the vertical mile on the descent.

It was pitch dark when I started around six o’clock in the morning, and it was pitch dark when I finished around eight in the evening. (The trail itself is only about eight miles horizontal and one mile vertical, each way. But without an overnight camping permit you cannot park close to the trailhead, and if you are embarking before dawn there are no shuttles to the trailhead. So you walk.)

By comparison, running the Chicago Marathon was easy and brief. I was in pretty good shape for this climb, and yet it was so debilitating that I couldn’t walk for three days afterward. I could scarcely stand. Even sleeping was painful, even with prescription-strength doses of ibuprofen.

Because I was hiking in the autumn, when the waterfalls are comparative trickles, I was able to climb right alongside the Vernal and Nevada falls. In springtime, thunderous cataracts prevent anything of the sort. It was straight up, rock upon rock, each a foot-high step. When I got to the top of each waterfall, I expected to see the bald head of Half Dome ahead of me. But the trail kept going and going.

At times, I thought I was lost. It was nearly noon before the rocky promontory showed itself, and I still had two more hours to the top. The last mile of the climb (from where I am in this picture) is extremely strenuous. Multiple switchbacks lead upward to the shoulder. There you discover a pair of iron cables draping down the final 150 meters of bare granite at a slope of maybe 40 to 55 degrees. To reach the summit, you pull yourself up hand-over-hand, and you hold on tightly. If you let go, you die.

When I finally stepped onto the peak, I had an odd feeling of disappointment that the climbing had ended. The journey was so exhilarating; now I would just turn around? Then I looked out across the valley. Oh. My. Gosh. Under a pure, cerulean sky, I could see probably fifty or sixty miles. A mile below, Yosemite Valley looked like a child's playset. Maybe, I thought, this is how we appear to God.

I noticed a little cairn of rocks in the middle of the summit. Each climber could contribute a stone or a rock to it as the only evidence of his presence. I placed mine alongside the others. In parks, as you know, you leave nothing behind but your footprints, and you take nothing out but your pictures.

Naturally I took quite a few pictures. Though climbing alone that day, I traded cameras with other climbers so that we all had photographic proof of our success. For the picture of me on the summit, I ventured daringly close to the sheer cliff. I felt eerily invulnerable. Below, I could see nothing smaller than a shed.

Though the hike would take fourteen hours, I could remain on the summit for only thirty minutes at midday. The descent would be long and grueling. Fortunately, the most frightening moments were the initial return down the granite slope to the shoulder. It took more upper body strength to go down the cables than up, and it was scarier—owing to the fact I was looking at where my body would land if I fell. 

The sun set an hour or so before I got all the way down to the valley floor. Fortunately, I had brought a halogen flashlight. The last few miles were excruciatingly painful. My quads and hamstrings were piercing with pain. Neither leg wanted to move. I needed both, and I forced myself to keep walking.

Only after my descent did I learn that an early explorer of the High Sierra had once confidently predicted that no one would ever reach the summit of Half Dome. The bald head of steep granite was just too forbidding. Eventually someone did summit, of course. Today, hundreds of climbers reach the peak every year.

A few weeks after this adventure, I was flying back to San Francisco, and the pilot took us right over Yosemite. By then it had already snowed. But I could clearly make out Half Dome and the Vernal and Nevada falls. The memory of agony and of ecstacy they had given me that day in October brought a satisfying smile.

What a day it was. What a day.

Quote / Unquote: Benjamin Disraeli on the Paradox of Leadership

 

Last week we introduced another new feature, which will appear irregularly but frequently. To be known as Quote/Unquote, it will offer a simple, noteworthy quotation on some aspect of leadership, communication, or business. In most cases we will also provide context, comment, or questions to stir discussion. Occasionally, however, the quotation will stand alone.

Our inaugural feature quoted the British novelist Charles Dickens, who presciently imagined some of the difficulties with email—140 years ago. (Scroll down to the September 11 post.) Today we quote another Brit from the same era, Benjamin Disraeli, who was both an author and a Conservative Party political leader. Not incidentally, he was also a wit; scores of his incisive quotations have survived the decades and are as relevant today as they were in the 19th century.

Benjamin Disraeli was twice the prime minister of England during the reign of Queen Victoria. An intimate friend of the monarch, and the only person of Jewish heritage ever to serve as prime minister, Disraeli intuitively knew that compelling leadership is a kind of spiritual transaction between the leader and the led. Moreover, he understood and appreciated a paradox of leadership: that leaders must follow, and followers must lead.

In one of his most famous remarks, Disraeli said:

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

 

Take a moment to think about that. Now, ask yourself these questions:

• What exactly do you think Disraeli is driving at?

• Is he suggesting that leaders should abdicate the responsibility of leading?

• Is he calling for anarchy or a kind of mob rule?

• What relevance, if any, does Disraeli's remark have for leadership in business generally? For leadership at your level (enterprise, division, department, team) more particularly?

• Should leaders be more humble than prideful? Why or why not?

• Why should, if at all, leaders follow the people they are nominally leading?

• Doesn’t that undermine the leader's role?

• In a modern organization—a large business enterprise, or one of its divisions, or one of its operating teams—what would this look like and sound like?

• What would be its practical impact?

Quote / Unquote: Charles Dickens on Face-to-Face Communication

 

Today we introduce another feature of the Minding Gaps blog. It will appear frequently but irregularly. To be known as Quote/Unquote, the feature will offer a simple, noteworthy quotation on some aspect of leadership, communication, or business. In some cases we will also provide context, comment, or questions to stir discussion; in other instances, the quotation will stand alone. We begin with a prescient quotation from a famous 19th century British author.

Charles Dickens, perhaps best known for his Victorian novels A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and A Christmas Carol, must have been thinking of only the telegraph when he remarked:

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone

who with his soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

Dickens, who died in 1870, could have known only of the theoretical basis for the telephone, which wouldn’t be developed and patented until 1876. The generations of technology since—from the telephone to tubes and transistors to teletype to television to Telex to texting to Twitter (honest, the alliteration wasn't intentional)—have brought us ever greater speed and access to information, while steadily reducing the intimacy and touch between and among us, and perhaps raising shields behind which we cower and quiver, as Dickens seems to have been predicting.

What would Dickens think of today's communication? We pass more data back and forth, to be sure, but whether we understand one another even an iota more is questionable. Today, many of us take peculiar pride in cramming indecipherable and impromptu abbreviations into 140 characters and quickly pressing SEND, often disseminating the shorthand to people we have never met and never will meet.

Let’s ponder:

• Was Dickens exaggerating the social or psychic cost of electronic communication?

• Do you think he was just a Luddite at heart?

• What have we lost through technology? What role does email play in that?

• Is the rush to social media (such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogging) problematic for you?

• Beyond speed and access, what have we gained through technology?

• What is Dickens implying by references to “soul” and “brave and true”?

• Are we less soulful, brave, and true than our parents and grandparents? If so, what exactly is the nature and cost of that? 

• How do we best cope with the implications of all this on human understanding and social cohesion?

Stop the Web 2.0, I Want to Get Off

Not really. But sometimes, I’m telling you.

For the uninitiated, Web 2.0 refers to the second generation of the Internet, a two-way street. It is what the Internet is today.

Initially, in the 1990s, the Web was a waterfall or a cataract of information, all of it cascading downward. It was static, an online catalogue and newspaper and encyclopedia: interactive only insofar as you might use it to make purchases or reservations in a secure transaction or to search for data that could help you make better decisions. In retrospect, we now refer to that as Web 1.0.

Beginning five or six years ago, the Web evolved into a riverway or a canal, with barge traffic flowing in both directions. More to the point, it became dynamic, a community and a conversation: not merely transactional but broadly participative and transformative. Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and Wikipedia, not to mention this very blog, embody the virtual public square of the Internet today. This new generation of technology is known as Web 2.0.

Now in virtually every respect, I find Web 2.0 exhilarating and energizing. It is a big part of my life, as it is of yours, for sure. Much of our work life plays out on Web 2.0.

But in one prominent respect, I find Web 2.0 most unfortunate, even at times repugnant. I speak of the comments section that often follows an essay or video or other feature posted to an Internet site, often a newspaper or a political site. Some of these comments are so revolting, so vile, so profane, that decent people can only shudder. I myself want nothing to do with them. I want to turn off the comments sections permanently.

Take a look at this fascinating series of iconic photographs, and then, if you stomach it, read the exchange of comments that follows. In particular, look at comments numbered 4, 16, 30, 53, 54. Mind you, this is relatively tame stuff. It is easy to find sites where the comments are far more vitriolic and scornful. But this is sufficient to illustrate the point I am making.

I’d like to see an option at the end of any site with comments that allows the reader or viewer to choose whether to see any comments at all. Nine times out of ten, I would choose not to.

I’d also like to see a requirement for real names to be entered with any comment, and a strict prohibition on verbal abuse and profanity. Yes, I know the argument that the Federalist Papers were anonymous, and I am not a fan of political correctness in the least.

It’s just that we’re living in an era when transparency, authenticity, and civility need to be restored to public discourse. As the comments on so many sites indicate, we’re not there yet. We’re not close to it, and we seem to be moving in the wrong direction.

Side Roads: An Occasional Diversion

Life shouldn’t be all work and no play. So we’re beginning an irregular, occasional feature here at the Minding Gaps blog to be known as Side Roads. It will recognize and celebrate passions, milestones, excursions, pleasures, relationships—everything that we ultimately work for. Think of it as a photo album of life’s joys, little and large.

We’ll post these diversionary Side Roads columns only occasionally and only on weekends. The rest of the time, we’ll stick to the mission of this column, as summarized in the masthead above and explained more fully in the Welcome! post and the Our Philosophy post, both of which you can usually find among the first dozen or so posts.

For our inaugural Side Roads column, we’ll begin with a recipe—yes, a recipe.

 

I happen to enjoy cooking, and my favorite dish is a summertime joy: fresh, aromatic pesto. I cannot stop eating it. To my thinking, it’s better than chocolate.

The main ingredient in pesto is, of course, basil. Thanks to hydroponic growers, you can now buy fresh basil year round at the green grocer, and it is much less expensive than it used to be. That enables you to prepare pesto year round, which is a very good thing.

Still, I prefer to make pesto with only the freshest of basil. I don’t have an herb garden any more, so I typically obtain basil as gifts from generous friends or in bulk purchase from summertime farmers markets here in suburban Chicago. Either way, it is just hours from the garden.

Last weekend, after purchasing quite a bit of basil at an outdoor market, I made the emulsion described below and then froze it. Now I can thaw it and use it gradually for several weeks.

Almost any pesto is delicious. Some few are excellent. One or two are extraordinary. Mine? I personally think it is phenomenal. But you be the judge. If you disagree—well, that's silly. You won't.

Now I am happy to share it with you. Please, please; there's no need to nominate me for a Nobel Prize. Just don’t say I never give you anything.

To begin, have these ingredients at hand:

• 1 big bag (one pound) freshly harvested basil
• 2 cups virgin imported olive oil
• 1 stick unsalted, unsweetened butter, softened
• 4 teaspoons Kosher salt
• 8 tablespoons fresh pignolia nuts (pine nuts)
• 12 cloves peeled and crushed fresh garlic (or more, I won’t complain)
• 2 cups freshly grated, imported Romano pecorino cheese
• 8 tablespoons freshly grated, imported parmesan cheese

Now proceed as follows:

• Rinse the basil.
• Strip the basil leaves from their stems, and discard the stems.
• Combine the basil with the olive oil, pine nuts, garlic, and salt in a food processor (in several batches, and in equal proportion to the amount of basil you can fit).
• Mix by pulse for 30-45 seconds. That's enough to chop the basil and pignolia nuts finely and blend everything nicely. Do not blend excessively. You should have a textured emulsion. Combine the batches and gently stir. 

You can freeze the emulsion, as I did last weekend. It will also keep several weeks in the refrigerator. I cover it with a thin layer of olive oil to prevent oxidation.

When you are ready to finish it, proceed as follows:

• Fold the pecorino and the parmesan gently into the basil emulsion. Stir.
• Introduce the softened butter to the mix. Blend gently.
• Add a tablespoon or two of hot water to melt the ingredients together.
• Blend gently but completely. 

Serve over freshly made, al dente linguini or fettuccini.

That’s it, folks. Let me know how it tastes.

Have a great weekend, and see you Monday.

Remember: Monday will be the second installment of our new regular feature on data. We'll start each week with a statistic that is noteworthy, alarming, misinterpreted, or otherwise deserving of explanation, comment, or clarification. We’ll accompany it with thought-provoking questions or commentary for reflection and discussion. Monday, we will present the data on nonverbal communication that so many otherwise intelligent people believe is true—but isn’t.

How to Be a Mensch of a Leader

I found pearls of insight in this interview with Bruna Martinuzzi, a Canadian consultant and expert in emotional intelligence. Her thinking on these issues is consistent with my own.

Ms. Martinuzzi is the author of The Leader as a Mensch: Become the Kind of Person Others Want to Follow. In this interview, conducted by Guy Kawasaki, she explains how to be a mensch in business.

 

Question: What qualities define a mensch?

Answer: A mensch is an individual who is decent and honorable in all of his undertakings—he or she is the same person privately and publicly. This is a person of high integrity, someone that you would feel totally comfortable doing business with. A mensch’s word is as good as his signature. One of the hallmarks of a mensch is empathy and compassion, a genuine caring for his fellow man. A mensch will always look for an opportunity to do good in life, to be of help to the community. When you are in the presence of a mensch, you feel good about you—you sense a total absence of artifice, you know that you are in the presence of a genuine human being, one who will not deceive you, undermine you or try to diminish you in any way.

Question: Are mensches born or made?

Answer: Some individuals have a natural capacity for being a mensch. They learned this at their mother’s knee—they cannot be anything else because the seed for menschhood was planted and nurtured early on in life. They may be catapulted into menschhood by some significant life experiences like experiencing a loss, surviving an illness, going through a betrayal by a business partner—all events that become a healthy trauma, that awaken one to the need to be a better human being, to function on a higher evolutionary plane. Still for others becoming a mensch evolves from a motivation to be a good leader, to do well while doing good. All of us have in us the capacity to act as mensches—it’s a part of being human. We just need to raise our awareness of how we show up in our dealings with others and ask ourselves, "Am I proud of who I am or who I have become as a person? Do I strive to do the right thing?" Self-awareness precedes self-management.

Question: What is the acid test to separate the true mensches from the smooth pretenders?

Answer: There are two things at play here. The first is: Consistency. While some people can succeed at counterfeiting who they are for some of the time, if you spend enough time with them, you start to see some cracks in the veneer. You get a glimpse of the person behind the mask. It is very difficult to go through life, in all circumstances, trying to keep the mask in place. It will slip at some point. The other thought that comes to mind is that, deep down, most of us have a well-developed gut feel that sends signals to us that not everything we see is at it seems. But many choose to ignore the whispers for a variety of reasons. As Goethe put it: “We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.” It may not be convenient or in our self-interest to believe otherwise, and, therefore, we ignore the small integrity slips, the little things we see that tell us all is not right with that person.

Question: Who are some examples of mensches in business?

Answer: There are many. One, for example, was mentioned last month, by President Obama at his Address to the Joint Session of Congress. He spoke about Leonard Abess, a bank president in Florida who took his $60 million cash out bonus, and distributed it to all 399 people who worked for his bank, and not only that, he tracked down another 72 who used to work for him. When he was asked why he did it, he said: “I knew some of these people since I was seven years old. I didn’t feel right getting the money myself.”

Another example is Ted Forstsmann, CEO of IMG and the senior founding partner of Forstmann Little & Co, a leveraged buyout firm. Forstsmann co-founded The Children’s Scholarship Fund, the U.S.’s largest charity devoted to helping parents send their children to the schools of their choice. He continues to do work to improve the lives of children both here and abroad. Peter Peterson is another one. He is senior Chairman of the Blackstone Group, an alternative asset management and financial services company. Peterson gave $1 billion to his new foundation, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, to help solve some of the U.S.’s biggest economic problems.

But it doesn’t just have to be about giving money: Christoper Avery, an international lawyer, founded Business & Human Rights Centre to track the positive and negative impact of over 4,000 companies worldwide. Chris Harrop, a marketing director for Marshalls, a UK stone company. He devoted his time for energetic campaigning to reduce child labor in the quarrying of Indian sandstone. Daphne E. Jones, Vice President, Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, Johnson & Johnson, is committed to helping women succeed and works to increase the number of women who work in science and technology. Linda Hunt, the Chief Administrative Officer at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix is a strong advocate for diversity, and the elimination of racism and discrimination. She has devoted herself to a hospital where she has an opportunity to also serve the poor and underserved in a part of the city with an ethnically diverse population. And, of course, we all know about Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Their mantra is: "Don’t be evil," which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. As Page put it: “So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.” A wonderful thing, indeed, if every businessperson approached their work with this mind-set.

Question: Many business people are very successful and rich and the antithesis of mensches, so why should we aspire to be mensches?

Answer: First, let’s define what the antithesis of a mensch is. This would be someone who lacks empathy, compassion and integrity—an individual who is self-serving, focused only on his own needs to succeed and acquire wealth. One would argue that those who accomplish their goals despite this way of doing business, might find success, but not significance. I love Peter Drucker’s exhortation to make your life your end-game, to ask yourself frequently: “What do you want to be remembered for?” Significance is making a positive difference in the world. Success without significance is hollow. Rabbi Hillel’s beautiful words say it best: “…if I am only for myself, then what am I?”

Question: In tough times like these, is menschhood possible in businesses?

Answer: It’s not only possible, it is essential. People are increasingly more anxious about job security and the effect that the slumping economy will have on them. It’s much easier to run a business or lead teams when the economy is thriving but it is in these tough times that business people have a golden opportunity to rise above the din of the crowd as a true mensch and show leadership and ask themselves: “How can I make a difference?”

Question: Can a young person, say under forty, be a mensch or does it only come with age?

Answer: Absolutely, anyone at any age can be a mensch—even a child can be taught to grow up as a mensch. And if you are a young entrepreneur for whom this concept has not been foremost on your mind, you can start right now. Develop a framework of principles and strong values that can help steer you in your daily choices and the decisions you make, a moral compass to guide you in your efforts to be a good human being, to use your many gifts to give something back to society.

Question: Suppose that a person wants to become a mensch, what are the steps to take?

Answer: Here are eleven quick tips:

1.   Consistently act with honesty. Watch the small integrity slips.

2.   When someone has wronged you, continue to treat them with civility.

3.   Are you in the habit of making hasty promises that you know, from experience, you are unable to keep? Think back on what promises you made, to whom, and see if you can fulfill some of these.

4.   Help someone who can be of absolutely no use to you.

5.   The next time something goes wrong on a project, suspend blame and ask: “What can we learn?”

6.   Hire people who are as smart or smarter than you are—whose talents surpass you—and give them opportunities for growth. Not only is it the smart thing to do but it is also a sign of high personal humility.

7.   Improve the way you communicate with people: don’t interrupt people; don’t dismiss their concerns offhand; don’t rush to give advice; don’t change the subject. Allow people their moment.

8.   Resolve to do no harm in anything you undertake. If you are certain that you don’t have the competence to take on something that is offered, consider that you might be doing harm to someone by accepting it anyway.

9.   Become aware of your stance at business meetings. Are you known as the devil’s advocate—the one who is quick to shoot down others’ ideas? Jumping in too quickly to negate an idea can derail the creative process for others. Often, valuable ideas are the result of the initial “crazy” thought.

10. Resolve to become a philanthropist of know-how. What knowledge, expertise or best practices can you share with colleagues, customers and other stakeholders as a way to enrich them?

11. At the end of each day, when you clear your desk before you head home, take a few minutes to mentally go over your day. Think about significant conversations you had, meetings you attended, emails you sent, and other actions you undertook. Are you proud? Could you have done better? Getting into this habit of introspection will pay dividends in the long run.

Question: Would a mensch ever refer to himself or herself as being a mensch?

Answer: A mensch doesn’t normally refer to himself or herself as being a mensch. Generally, it is others who notice that quality about a person and might be inclined to say: “You are a mensch” or “That was a mensch thing to do.” in which case, this is humbly acknowledged. For example, last year, I was reading a tribute to Sam Sane, a distinguished businessman in Australia, celebrating his 90th birthday, during which he was referred to by those assembled as being a mensch to which he replied: “I’ve always believed I was born on this earth to be a mensch. And I’ve tried to be one.”

So the $64,000 question for all of us is, “What do you want to be remembered for?”

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Bruna Martinuzzi is a certified leadership, emotional intelligence and presentation-skills facilitator and consultant. Her articles have appeared in The Leader’s Edge, Human Resources Management, The H.R. Reporter, H.R. Online, The Personnel Journal and Business Ethics Magazine. Ms. Martinuzzi's web site is here. This interview initially appeared on the web site of American Express Open.

 

Everything You Know About Nonverbal Communication Is Wrong

Everything you know about nonverbal communication is wrong.

How can I be so sure? Simple.

Most people know only one thing about nonverbal communication. They “know” that only 7 percent of meaning comes from words, while 55 percent of meaning comes from body language and posture, and the remaining 38 percent of meaning comes from tone of voice.

That is bunk.

For clarity, let me repeat: That is bunk.

Those numbers were indeed the product of legitimate academic research, but they don’t mean what everyone believes they mean. Their application is very, very narrow. Even then, the nonverbal component is subject to manipulation just as words are.

Please take just just a few minutes to watch this YouTube video, produced by Martin Shovel of Creativityworks in the UK. In addition to demolishing the myth of nonverbal communication, he demonstrates the unique power of creative animation.

Here it is:

Let me know what you think

In the future, I will have more to say about the kind of nonverbal communication that really does matter.

"You Are What You Think About"

Earl Nightingale died twenty years ago, and yet the wisdom of his message is as relevant and timely today as ever.

Nightingale created the art of motivational speaking and, in the golden years of radio, brought it to the masses. His commentary was broadcast regularly on WGN Radio, Chicago, whose signal was (and is) strong enough to reach two-thirds of the nation. Millions of people read his books, listened to his broadcasts, and took his advice.

Here is an excerpt from perhaps his most famous talk. Set aside eleven minutes and view it in its entirety. Then devote some more time to thinking rigorously about its message, and apply it to yourself. I am doing just that for myself.

Why Is Life Like This?

Ever since the spring thaw in the Upper Midwest, when the nearby park began calling my name for leisurely 3-mile jogs or brisk 5-mile walks, I have been searching for the black fanny pack that holds a water bottle and my cellular phone.

I searched this house from top to bottom, from north to south, from east to west, from inside out--all to no avail. It was nowhere. All told, I must have devoted five or six hours to this hapless endeavor. Probably more than that. It became an obsession, and a futile obsession at that.

I searched through all my closets. I searched in all my luggage, all my backpacks, all the nooks and crannies of this place. I looked through all the boxes that hold stuff I should have thrown out years ago. I even looked in the refrigerator.

Zip. Zilch. Nada.

I was fanny packless. There was no fanny pack to be found. No where. No how. No why.

I could only assume that I tossed it out last summer or fall. Maybe it got moldy in all the rain last year. Or maybe I left it somewhere. Although I didn't remember doing either of those things, there was no other explanation. Whatever. I would just have to buy a new one.

Today, some errands brought me past the local Sports Authority store. So I stopped in and examined the array of fanny packs, and I settled on a snazzy number that set me back $20.32. Before leaving the store, I used the sales clerk's scissors to remove all the tags and plastic marketing straps. One less thing to do at home.

Now, finally, I could once again go for a run or a walk without having to carry a water bottle and telephone in my hand.

I came directly home. I pressed the button on the garage opener. The door opened up. I pulled into the garage.

You guessed it. There, on the handlebars of an old triathlon bike, lay not one but two fanny packs.