Arceil on Leadership

Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)

by Thomas J. Lee

Sad though it was, the news of Neil Armstrong's death on Saturday recalled a time when Americans were cohesive and enthusiastic about something—a time when we were proud of a historic, heroic achievement and appreciative of the leadership that had made it possible.

It brought us all back to the incredible day in 1969 when, thanks to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the impossible became reality. Only two generations before, scarcely anyone had thought it was even remotely possible for people to fly, let alone travel through space. But here, in my grandmother's lifetime, we had progressed from a pair of brothers at Kitty Hawk to a pair of astronauts on the surface of the moon.

We could see it for ourselves: Two human beings were walking, or bounding, on the dust of another heavenly body. We could see them with our own eyes and hear them with our own ears. It was one of those few moments—and one of even fewer good moments—that everyone alive would remember as long as they were alive. No one could possibly forget it.

As it happens, only a few days before Mr. Armstrong died, I was thinking about him and his legacy, as I finished reading Cronkite, Douglas Brinkley's splendid new biography of Walter Cronkite, which talks at length about the space program and the lunar landings. I found myself wondering why the first man on the moon had chosen such a quiet life for himself in the decades that followed.

As you may know, Armstrong lived out his life on a farm outside Cincinnati and in the classrooms of the estimable University of Cincinnati. He was a picture of grace, dignity, and humility. He gave occasional talks on technology and space, and only last year testified before Congress on the decline of NASA, but for the most part this humble, unassuming gentleman spurned the mantle of large leadership that could have been his, and its legacy ours.

In contrast, his fellow Ohio astronaut, John Glenn, became a highly regarded U.S. senator and, at one point, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Glenn's public persona cast a long shadow over Armstrong. Glenn aspired to large public leadership, whereas Armstrong did not.

Let us be careful with our words here, as my intent is not to disparage Armstrong's life and accomplishments. To the contrary, I wish to honor them, to recognize them, and also to put them into a meaningful context, from which we can draw lessons for our own lives.

Leadership takes many forms. There are visionary leaders, moral leaders, custodial leaders, tyrannical leaders, and more. The only thing they have in common is the allegiance of people who choose to follow their lead. To have that allegiance, they do the work of leadership, which is to build the engagement of people around a concern and a cause.

One need not be famous to do this. Millions of parents, coaches, and teachers do it all the time, with little or no recognition. Indeed, I have no reason to believe that Armstrong wasn't doing this very thing with students in his classes on a smaller scale.

But he could have done it on a large scale. He could have led the charge toward American technological superiority in a way that few others could dream of. He could have given speech after speech, written book after book, created a foundation or an institute, all to marshal support for space exploration and technology. He could have provided the face and the voice that the cause of STEM education—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—so sorely needs.

That he chose not to do so is no reflection on him or his character, and I certainly do not wish to impugn either. It is, however, an object lesson in the nature and challenge of leadership.

Leadership is neither a title nor a trait, nor in the case of someone like Armstrong is it a trophy. It is, rather, work; and it is hard work at that. One need not choose to undertake this work, and that is fine. But one cannot leave a legacy of big change without it, either.

Neil Armstrong was a hero, a hero's hero. They don't get much bigger than taking mankind's first steps on the moon. I applaud him and his courage, along with the extraordinary technological prowess of his fellow astronauts and their thousands of colleagues back on Earth. But a part of me wishes that Armstrong had also risen to the challenge of leading a new generation of exploration and discovery through technology. A part of me wishes that Armstrong had been not just a hero but also a leader.

 
 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Two Leadership Lessons from "Invictus"

by Thomas J. Lee
 
There's a marvelous scene in Invictus, the Oscar-nominated 2009 movie chronicling the remarkable come-from-nowhere victory of the South African Springboks in the World Cup of rugby in 1995. It's a true story, and all the more riveting for the light it sheds on leadership.
 
The Springboks of 1995 were a mediocre team, as always. In fact, the only reason that South Africa was competing in the World Cup is that it was hosting the tournament; the host team always gets a free pass. Everyone expected the Springboks to bow out early.
 
Alas, because the team symbolized the country's white minority, the millions of recently liberated black South Africans didn't care about the outcome of the tournament. That is, with one exception: South African President Nelson Mandela. To him, the Springboks were a potential tool for cultural reunification.
 
If you have never seen Invictus, pick a night soon to stay home and stream it. It is a moving film. Even if you have seen it, you may want to watch it again for the powerful message on leadership it offers.
 
At one point in the movie, Mandela (portrayed magnificently by Morgan Freeman) invites the white Springboks captain François Pienaar (Matt Damon) to his office for tea. Mandela asks Pienaar a provocative question: What is his philosophy of leadership? Pienaar replies that he likes to lead by example. Mandela agrees, but he pushes for more. He wants to know how Pienaar inspires people to overcome long odds, to accomplish the seemingly impossible.
 
I won't spoil it for you; suffice to say that the answer to Mandela's question forms the crux of the whole movie. Exactly how do leaders inspire people? What role does a leader's example play? How far can you take it? How does power affect it? How can a leader go beyond the immediacy of example, to reach for the stars? What repercussions can all this have on ordinary people?
 
In business, largely because of traditional tools of management, and also because of asymmetric power structures, there's a tendency to rely heavily on the legal authority of position. Your boss tells you to do something and you do it.
 
But no one feels inspired or led in such a situation. Motivated by the threat of a kick in the pants, yes. Motivated by an ennobling, inspiring vision of the future and the opportunity to help make it happen, no. Not at all. Not close.
 
Managers in business typically shy away from the emotion inherent in inspirational leadership. It's one thing to see passion in the depiction of products in advertising, quite another to see it in the demeanor of a company's management.
 
Moreover, power and example are often at odds in leadership. There is a tension between them. Managers face a basic choice: Do you lead by the example of power, or do you lead by the power of your example? Can you do both?
 
Leaders are often in a situation where they must exercise power. What they rarely appreciate is the fact that the very exercise of power can reinforce their impact as a leader, or it can do just the opposite: it can compromise it, even undermine it. Which it does depends on context, intent, and clear, compelling, credible communication.
 
Everywhere and always, people will resent and reject the wanton example of power when exercised for selfish or reckless or ignoble ends. But everywhere and always they will notice, heed, and remember the deliberate power of a beneficent, purposeful, honorable example.

 

 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Imagine If Everyone Were As Focused as This Young Man

by Thomas J. Lee

My old next-door neighbor was a wide receiver in the National Football League. One evening, while we were both grilling out, he and I got to talking about football. He began describing for me what it was like to play professional football before thousands and thousands of people. Then he said something I will never forget.

Carl had so honed his craft, so thoroughly ingrained it, that when I asked how it feels to catch a pass in a game, he had to take himself physically through the motions to be able to respond. It was comical in a way.

At one point, standing on the patio, he had his arms outstretched, as if he were catching a pass over his left shoulder. He remarked that, as he is running to reach the pass, he cannot hear the stadium crowd.

That just stunned me.

I found that incredible. Think about it: Fifty thousand, sixty thousand, maybe seventy thousand fans in the stadium, most of them screaming their throats dry, and he cannot hear them.

Carl went on. He said he can hear his own footsteps, and he can hear his own breathing. But he cannot hear the crowd. As the ball falls gracefully into his arms, almost in slow-motion, his only focus is on wrapping his fingers around it, pulling it in and keeping it close, and then reaching the goal line with it. Those are the only things that matter. Everything else, including the crowd, ceases to exist. It just isn't there.

Now that's focus.

Imagine, just imagine, if the dozens or the hundreds or the thousands of people in your organization all had such extraordinary intensity of focus around your business goals and strategy. Most certainly they, and you, would be performing at a level you have only dreamed about.

There are tools and techniques to build that kind of focus. But the master key that unlocks it is your own focus. For you cannot ask of others what you have not demanded of yourself. If you yourself, as a leader, are not truly focused on strategic imperatives, no one else will be.

Begin with this simple question, and answer with a bucket of ice-cold honesty: What is it that you are most concerned about? Let's agree to net out the personal stuff: your kids, house repairs, aging parents, weekend plans. As you come to work each morning, what is it about the business that is most on your mind?

If you're like many managers, and probably most, execution of the business plan isn't front and center. Nor is realizing a long-term vision. Living out the company's values isn't close. While your monthly nut and year-end bonus are probably right up there, chances are your day-to-day focus any given morning is on a personnel issue, or a conference call at 9, or a dysfunctional staff department, or a draft marketing plan, or an OSHA inspection, or performance reviews, or squeezing another 1 percent from next year's budget, or any of a thousand other things that compete for your time and attention. That's the reality of life in management.

Because your focus is on these front burners, it is only natural to put truly strategic issues on the back burner. We quietly tell ourselves it is only for a day, only for the week. We'll get to the important stuff next week, next month.

Meanwhile, anyone and everyone with whom we come into contact immediately senses our real priorities, our real focus. We cannot hide. Every question we ask, every comment we make, betrays our real interest, our real concern. Because our real priorities and real focus are something other than the organization's strategic vision and long-term goals, the vision and the goals slip to second place, and then to third, and then off the grid altogether.

We all know that the hardest person to manage, and the hardest person to lead, is one and the same. You say hello every morning in the mirror. Only you can change that person's priorities, and therefore it is you who must.

Tomorrow morning, and for just one day at a time, shift your focus. Throw a spotlight on the strategic. Let the little things fall into place on their own. They will, after all.

For just one day, focus on the truly important things. Govern your questions and comments so that most of what you say, all day, creates energy around your strategic imperatives. Don't neglect or even diminish the lubricants of human relationships, of course. But let any substantive remark about the business revolve around the organization's vision and strategic intent.

Imagine you are Carl, running out and in. Reach out your arms. Look for the ball. Run to it. Listen to your own footsteps, your own breathing. Let the ball fall into your arms, as if no one is watching. It's just you, the ball, and the goal line.

Chances are the game will change.

 

  © Copyright 2004-2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Servant Leadership: The Secret Sauce of Extraordinary Cultures

 

By Thomas J. Lee

The concept of servant leadership has been around for more than a generation now, but too few businesspeople understand and embrace it. That's a shame.

I like to think of servant leadership as the secret sauce that accounts for the towering differences between shopping at Macy's and shopping at Nordstrom, between flying on United and flying on Southwest, between having lunch at McDonald's and having lunch at Chick-fil-A.

Nordstrom, Southwest, and Chick-fil-A have all publicly declared servant leadership as a pillar of their cultures. They have woven it into their leadership fabric. So have SAS, Wegmans, AFLAC, Zappos.com, Marriott, the Container Store, REI Outfitters, U.S. Cellular, Yum Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, A&W), Herman Miller, Kaiser Permanente, Darden Restaurants, and the U.S. armed forces, among others.

In a nutshell, servant leadership turns the tables on the relationship between leaders and the led. It moves from command to collaboration, from control to stewardship, from narrow accountability to broad opportunity. It lights a fire not underneath people but inside them.

Perhaps the best way to approach servant leadership for the first time is to recall President John F. Kennedy's famous words in his 1961 inauguration address: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

Now tweak those words just a little. Substitute your people or your employees for your country: "Ask not what your people can do for you. Ask what you can do for your people."

Servant leadership will admittedly rub old-school, 20th century managers the wrong way. They will bristle at the thought of it. They will regard it as an abnegation of their rights and duties as managers.

In fact just the opposite is true. I have had the pleasure of working for a couple of genuine servant leaders over the course of my career, and I can attest to its power. Because they were serving me, I was able to accomplish things that otherwise would have remained beyond my grasp. The companies grew and prospered as a result, while our competitors were stagnating.

The 21st century is not the 20th century. Times have changed. People are different. They want different things. Companies that don't realize this core truth, and respond to it, will continue to have difficulty finding the right people and attracting them to their organization.

Our new Master Class features a robust introduction and overview of servant leadership in business. Scroll down three posts (or just click on Master Classes above) for more information, and then join us on June 26 for a special one-day seminar.

 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Three Common Myths of Leadership

 

By Thomas J. Lee

In one way or another, I've been working in the vineyards of leadership for most of my career. I have interviewed senators and presidents. I have worked with CEOs of big companies. More recently, I have taught thousands of managers how to lead people.

Through all these experiences, the subject of leadership keeps getting more and more fascinating. The more you dig into it, the more golden nuggets of truth you find—and the more fool's gold of misunderstanding you find, as well.

Today I'd like to address some of the common misunderstandings around leadership. They are so pervasive that they color everyone's grasp of the subject. You can call them myths. Let's briefly explore just three of these myths.

Myth Number 1: Leadership is a position on the org chart. This belief is so entrenched that The Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Business Review both commonly use the word "leadership" as a synonym for "senior management." Rarely does either publication use "leadership" to describe the hard work that goes into taking people along on a journey of change.

Leading and managing are actually both hard work, but they are fundamentally different kinds of work. Moreover, in both substance and style, different kinds of communication drive the two things. Finally, and this is key, the work of leadership must extend far into the ranks of any company that wants to grow and prosper.

Think of managing as the hard work of ensuring compliance with predetermined expectations: deadlines, budgets, standards, laws, quotas. In contrast, think of leading as the hard work of imagining, describing, and bringing about a new and better tomorrow, often in periods of uncertainty and risk.

Those new and better tomorrows are vital. They mean the world. Companies that don't embrace the challenge of change, that don't continually reinvent themselves, gradually disappear. Look at TWA, Maytag, Gillette, Schwinn, McDonnell Douglas, Oldsmobile, Wyeth, Ameritech, Amoco, and many more. Some of their brand names survive in the marketplace, but all these companies have disappeared in the last fifteen years. Just disappeared!

Few managers regard themselves as collateral leaders of the enterprise, and few executives provide for the professional development of managers into leaders. And because so many successful managers were schooled as managers, hired as managers, promoted as managers, and rewarded as managers, they are trapped in a default state of only managing things.

They even invoke the phrase "change management" to describe what should be the work of leadership. They can do better.

Myth Number 2: Communication for leadership is rudimentary, easy, and simple, and it need not be a strategic concern. After all, senior managers assume, they have been talking ever since they were toddlers, and they have been making presentations since they were management trainees. What could be simpler?

The reality is that clear, credible, compelling communication for leadership in business doesn't come naturally and intuitively to most managers. It involves all kinds of implicit, non-spoken messages that you send by means of decisions, habits, standards, assumptions, attitudes, schedules, and so much more, as well as explicit statements and questions that may inadvertently convey messages you don't intend.

Indeed, your unintentional communication can easily overwhelm your deliberate, intended messages. When you think of communication as only the stuff of PowerPoint presentations or email messages, you miss the impact of most of your communication. That's self-defeating.

Good communication for leadership requires a great deal of time, effort, and skill. Most of all, it requires sensitivity to people. But the investment is worth all the work. It pays huge dividends.

Myth Number 3: The mark of successful leadership is full alignment. Again, not true. The mark of successful leadership is full engagement. Alignment and engagement are not the same thing. In fact, they are almost opposites.

You can think of alignment as the work product, or deliverable, of good managing. You meet the pre-determined expectations that I mentioned a moment ago by aligning people and other resources with results.

Engagement is completely different from alignment. Think of engagement as the work product, or the deliverable, of good leading. It is all about people who are focusing on the right things, who are constantly searching for solutions, who are excited and enthusiastic, and who have the backbone to change themselves and to insist that others change as well.

Thus it is true that the mark of successful managing is alignment, but as we have already seen, the work of managing and the work of leading are two different things.

Companies need both good management and good leadership, and it follows that they also need both alignment and engagement. They need alignment to meet the challenges of today. They need engagement to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

 

Unfortunately, companies often get low marks for engagement on employee attitude surveys, but the companies don't understand engagement well enough to know what to do. So they keep on focusing on managing the company. Next year, they survey employees again, and they get similar scores. Surprise, surprise.

We discuss all this, and much more, in our celebrated Master Class workshops. We have an inaugural, one-day, open enrollment Master Class scheduled for June 26. Call us (at 847-247-2241) today to register.

 
 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Eight Archetypes of Dysfunctional Listening

 

By Thomas J. Lee

Here's an important question: Does anyone really listen to what you say?

Here's another, even more important question: Do you really listen to what other people say? Really, really listen?

Be honest with yourself. For objectivity, ask a colleague, a partner, a spouse. Believe what they say.

None of us wants to admit it, but few of us listens as well as we should. For many readers of MindingGaps, a big part of the problem is your intelligence. When it comes to listening, you can be too smart for your own good. We dealt with the problem of intelligence in an earlier post, which you can read here.

We have identified eight types of dysfunctional listeners. We describe them more fully in our Master Class workshops. Here's a sneak peek:

The Brick Wall. This dysfunctional listener (also known as the "Teenager") is often impassive and shows little eye contact. You really don't know whether he is listening at all. Because he is so detached, he rarely connects with other people, and so he feels isolated and removed. Talking to him is like talking to a proverbial brick wall.

The Donald Trump. The brash, outspoken real-estate mogul is an ideal archtype for another kind of dysfunctional listener. He is a screamer's screamer, constantly peppering people with loud, aggressive questions and never waiting for a thoughtful response. Like his persona on television's "The Apprentice," he is more interested in belittling people than in learning anything.

The Bobblehead. These dysfunctional listeners are eager to convey their interest by nodding their head and interjecting verbal tics ("Hmmm" and "Yes, I see") at the appropriate moment. But ask them what was said or how they feel about it, and they'll find a creative way to have the statement repeated for their benefit. (Note: In the Bobblehead's defense, he is often in conversation with the Auctioneer, described below.)

The Stephen Colbert. Like the comedian's television persona, a Stephen Colbert listener manipulates the words that other people speak to his own needs and expectations. He is quick to interrupt and quick to misinterpret, so that whatever other people say will serve only his own interests. Alas, other people don't have an opportunity to clarify their message. He doesn't have time to really listen.

The Auctioneer. The Auctioneer is really a non-listener because she is talking all the time. She doesn't pause long enough to hear anything that anyone says, except perhaps a single word of confirmation. When she takes a breather, and others are getting a word in edgewise, she may abruptly speak up with a new topic, apparently without realizing that she is changing the subject. That's possible only because she wasn't listening to the conversation before she spoke up.

The Sgt. Joe Friday. Most of our readers are too young to remember Sgt. Friday from television's "Dragnet" series, but even they will recognize his legendary refrain: "Just the facts, ma'am." As dysfunctional listeners, the Sgt. Fridays of our world believe that they know what information they want, and they only want factual data that fits their framework. Thus they don't hear anything unexpected, and they don't hear any expressions of emotion.

The Search Engine. The Search Engine is the person who is a little (or a lot) remote from a conversation until she hears mention of her own name or responsibility. Then she is all ears. Like a Google algorithm, she is programmed to notice only those things that matter to her. That's usually herself or her job.

The Multitasker. This dysfunctional listener deserves its own essay, because it is perhaps the biggest listening problem in business. People are so busy they believe they must do more than one thing at a time to get everything done. When it comes to listening, that is a fool's paradise, because it creates more, and more serious, problems than it solves. Smart executives have stopped trying to multitask in conversation.

There you have it, eight types of dysfunctional listener.

Do you see yourself in any of them?

If so, you now have some idea of how to change.

If not, you certainly aren't alone. In fact, that's the real problem for so many of us.

 

Next: Three Myths of Leadership

 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

A Simple Process for Better Listening

 

by Thomas J. Lee

A week or so ago we explained why smart people have more difficulty listening.
In a nutshell, it is because you process information rapidly, you are usually thinking critically, you render judgments frequently, and you are often juggling multiple demands on your time.

It all adds up to what I call a conspiracy of cacophony. There's so much stuff rattling around your head, and it is making so much noise as it rattles, you cannot hear anything else.

Here's the good news. You can discipline yourself to become a deeper, better listener; and you should. People will appreciate it. It's actually a straightforward process. To get started, recognize the four levels of good listening.

The most basic level is simply alert listening. This is just being seriously ready and willing to listen. (Some of my coffee klatch friends will tell you I am often not even at alert listening, but that's before 480 milligrams of caffeine have begun coursing through my body.) If you cannot take time for a conversation when someone approaches you, say so, and agree on a time when you can.

The next level is attentive listening. Here you are in the conversation, and you are deliberately seeking and absorbing information. It requires an investment of determination and sincerity. You cannot fake it, and multitasking is toxic to it. Clear your mind and expect to grow.

Beyond that is active listening, a rigorous process for ensuring that two parties to a conversation fully and accurately understand each other. It was introduced in 1955 by Carl Rogers and Richard Farson, and it is still standard operating procedure in many organizations. Though a little on the laborious side, active listening is an especially good tool for taking the heat out of negotiations, disputes, and other tense relationships.

Finally we arrive at affirmative listening, where you are demonstrating your real commitment to a full, candid, guileless exchange of information, insight, and intuition that honors and affirms everyone. Here you are determined to make that happen, and you are doing so with a nobility and innocence of purpose.

At the risk of appearing "graceless and manipulative," as Richard Farson later put it (in Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership), by "analyzing those special moments when we are enriched and exhilarated by someone's listening to us," I offer this eight-step path to affirmative listening:

1. Have a predisposition toward learning and acting on what you learn. Your default state is probably speaking and controlling, so you must change your default state. First, recognize that you can learn something of value from almost anyone you meet. Expect the best idea this year to come from someone you least expect, and look for it in the next five minutes. Next, convince yourself that you will probably have to act on the information you're about to learn, so you'd better get it right. Finally, tell yourself you have less than half the information you need to make a prudent decision, and the other half is in the mind of the person right in front of you. She may be reluctant to share it with you, so you have to tease it out.
2. Turn away from distractions. Be fully engaged in this conversation. I know: You're busy. We all are. No one will blame you for wanting to do as much as you can in the time you have. But that doesn't mean you can, and it sure doesn't mean you should, be thinking or doing anything else while carrying on a substantive conversation with someone. You must concentrate on the conversation. Research has shown that subsequent ability to recall data depends heavily on how attentive a person is during the conversation. So focus, focus, focus.
3. Suspend evaluation and premature judgment. Sincerely grant good faith. Evaluation and premature judgment are the twin bogeymen of poor listening. You may be smart, but you cannot listen openly to what someone is saying while you are also evaluating and judging it. You will have plenty of time for that later. For now, just listen with an open mind, and concentrate. It's one thing to have an open door, quite another to have open ears, an open mind, and open arms to embrace an idea you didn't come up with. Don't bother with the devil's advocate. Instead, be an angel's advocate.
4. Calmly probe for detail, and seek real-world examples. Before you reach for conclusions, take the intermediate step of listening for details and examples. Ask for stories or anecdotes that convey a linear progression of events you can see in your mind's eye. The colorful detail and stories are relatively easy to remember, and together they bring life to the matter at hand.
5. Absorb and synthesize the information. Square it, if you can, with other information, with your intuition, and with other insight you have already developed along the way. Here is where your inductive reasoning comes into play. A moment earlier you were deliberately not listening at a conceptual level; you were listening for memorable detail. Now you must broaden things by looking for the governing idea, the principle, the thesis. (Note: It's fine to compare what you are hearing with your own experience. However, for now you should be reluctant to interject your own experience, as that can divert the conversation away from the other person's concern and leave the impression that "it's all about you.")
6. Ask relevant, open questions. Then stop talking. Let silence do the heavy lifting of a conversation. If you are always rushing in to fill the uncomfortable silence, others will never have the opportunity to speak their piece. Be sensitive to the asymmetry of power in any organization; if you're the boss, the people on your team may feel intimidated or anxious in your presence, so don't be the first to speak (unless, of course, it's an emergency and people need to act fast). Generally favor open questions over closed except when you're in the muck of details. Closed questions (often beginning with do/does, is/are, who, when, where, and how much or how many) elicit only specific, discrete bits of information: a yes or a no, today's date, an age, your hometown, whether it's raining or not. Open questions (typically beginning with what, how, and why or why not) elicit richer descriptions, preferences, reasoning, explanations, questions, ideas, observations, insights and the like. For a great example of the latter, just watch a real pro like Oprah Winfrey or Charlie Rose interview someone. You won't hear many closed questions.
7. Clarify meaning, and translate implications. This is the labor of active listening. You clarify meaning by repeating what another person has said to that person's satisfaction before you get to reply substantively. Then you reason through the implications in dialogue and collaboration with the other person. Use words like we and let's. Make sure the two of you (or three, or however many) are in agreement as to what comes next.
8. Promise and deliver a response by a certain date. Any salesperson worth her commission will tell you she never departs a prospect's office until she has a date and time to talk next. The same goes for any substantive conversation. Don't just leave people dangling in mid-air. After you do leave, make sure you follow through on time. If you cannot, get back to the person to update him on your progress and your new expected time line.

Just get into the habit of using these eight steps, and people will notice. They may even decide that you do care, after all.

 

Next: Eight Archetypes of Poor Listeners

 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Are You Smart? Then You Are Probably Also a Poor Listener!

 by Thomas J. Lee

Are you fairly bright?

I figured so. After all, you're reading this!

Seriously, our mailing list consists largely of successful managers. So there's a real reason for me to believe that, yes, you are indeed intelligent.

Unfortunately, that means you have a problem, and it is a problem you probably haven't really appreciated and understood.

It is just this: You are a poor listener. Generally speaking, the brighter that people are, the poorer listeners they are.

It stands to reason. By definition, intelligent people absorb information fast. Researchers have found that intelligent people think at the rate of 500 to 700 words per minute. Even fast talkers speak at only 175 to 200 words per minute. That's a lot of time—more than 36 of every 60 seconds—for you to be mentally doing other things while people leisurely finish their own sentences.

What are you doing all that time? Lots of things. Remembering what to get at the grocery store. Reminding yourself to see a new movie this weekend. Figuring out why this person is taking forever to make a simple point. Most of all, you're deciding what to say in response.

Bright people also tend to make judgments—lots of them, in rapid fire. So as another person is talking, you are making judgments about her intelligence, her knowledge, her diction, and maybe a few other things we won't go into here.

Finally, smart people are typically busy people. You probably have a lot of issues and decisions you need to address. It is tempting to think through these things whenever you have a few seconds. Given the ubiquity of smart phones, you may also be itching to send someone a text message or to scroll through your email. You may even think you can multitask successfully. Hey, we're all a little delusional.

The big problem with all this is that people do notice it. At this very moment some of them are silently complaining to themselves that you don't listen. They may even be complaining aloud to one another. From that, they easily conclude that you don't care about their ideas.

Next: A Simple Process for Better Listening

 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Ozzie Guillen's Foul Ball on Fidel Castro

by Thomas J. Lee

Every business manager, government official, and aspiring entrepreneur should sit up and pay rapt attention to the ordeal that Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillén is going through this week—and then remember to choose her words very, very carefully.

A native of Venezuela, where he still has a home, Guillén has enjoyed a long and successful career as a baseball player and manager. He managed the Chicago White Sox to a World Series championship. After leaving the White Sox last autumn, he signed with the Miami Marlins, who have just built a shiny new stadium in the Little Havana section of Miami. The city's million-strong community of Cuban Americans is the heart of the Marlins' fan base.

After only five days as Marlins manager, Guillén is interrupting a road trip to fly back to Miami and apologize after telling Time magazine of his admiration for Cuba strongman Fidel Castro. Guillén had gone so far as to say he loved and respected Castro for remaining in power so very long. No mention of machine guns, firing squads, 30-year prison terms, or anything of the sort.

You can read all about it for yourself in these dispatches from the Miami Herald, Bloomberg, and the Associated Press.

Regular readers of the Minding Gaps blog know that I generally advise leaders in business, government, and any other sphere to "say what you think, and think what you say."

However, there are five important boundaries on that advice. I call them the 5Rs. You should speak only when your thoughts are "5R Ready."

So before you say what you think, make sure it is:

• real, which is to say based on observable facts and familiar experience;
• relevant to the challenge at hand;
• respectful of people and their feelings;
• relationally constructive, not destructive; and
• reasonable and rational, by which we mean both within the bounds of reason and logically derived by reasoning.

If it isn't, you should be asking yourself some tough-love questions as to why you're even thinking such things. They're toxic to you and everyone else. Before you speak, get your head together.

Ozzie Guillén's remarks to Time magazine met none of these five tests. They didn't come close.

If I were advising Guillén, I would suggest not going before a bank of microphones. Rather, he should be sitting down with Miami's ex-pat community and just listening to its voices. Then, after coming to a better understanding of Castro, he should apologize without using the words "if I have."

Maybe, just maybe, he can survive. No bets though.

 

© Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Golf and Other Bad Metaphors for Business

Regular readers with a good memory have requested that we rerun this essay on The Masters, golf, and other bad metaphors for business. We are only too happy to oblige.

TJL                

 

by Thomas J. Lee

This week the best golfers in the world converge on Augusta, Georgia, to compete in The Masters. It is a special event in sports. You need not be a golfer—I myself haven't swung a driver in 23 years—indeed, you need not even enjoy sports to find special beauty in the magnolias, dogwoods, and azaleas of the Augusta National Golf Course and in the glorious traditions of The Masters.

There's just one problem with major golf tournaments and with golf in general. They give license to so many executives to use this wonderful game as a metaphor, absurd though it is, for business performance.

Sooner or later almost every manager will find himself in a town-hall meeting or a skip-level luncheon or an after-dinner speech when a senior executive—his own boss, perhaps—begins to wax eloquent on golf as the perfect comparison for business. Maybe the speaker will even step away from the lectern and pretend to size up that 20-foot putt for a birdie on the 18th hole, and then go on to expound on the parallels between golf and business. That's what we mean by using golf as a metaphor for business.

By metaphor we are not referring to clichés, which are another problem altogether. A cliché is just an overused and typically tin-sounding word or phrase that has lost whatever zest it once had. Business is full of clichés, too: walking the talk, win-win solution, thinking outside the box, synergy, paradigm shift, pushing the envelope, today's highly competitive marketplace, proactive, a perfect storm, leverage—and we're just getting started. There are hundreds of them, Lord help us all.

In contrast, metaphors can be good or bad. A metaphor (and its like-as cousin, the simile) is a comparison for the sake of shedding light on something. A well-chosen metaphor can be terrific for a speech or presentation. Executives who use golf as a metaphor for business success are trying to be creative, and that is fine. We like creativity.

Some common metaphors in business work well. Low-hanging fruit refers to easy, early solutions. A well-oiled machine suggests an operation running smoothly. Tip of the iceberg conjures up a superficial observation. These metaphors lack something in freshness and creativity, but they make up for it in clarity and color.

Golf, however, is a perfectly awful metaphor in business. It is awful because there are no real parallels between performance in business and performance in golf. What matters in business has nothing to do with what matters in golf. Looking for parallels between business and golf is like looking for similarities between mollusks and molecules. 

I do realize that millions of people enjoy golf, and that is certainly their privilege. They may think of it as a social sport because they golf in twosomes and foursomes, and afterward they enjoy lunch or drinks and dinner. Moreover, many parents (including my own) have taken delight in teaching their children to golf, and it becomes a wonderful family activity. All good.

But the sport of golf is a solitary enterprise. It requires intense concentration, hushed silence, and perfect form, and it is so very leisurely. It isn't noisy or messy, and it certainly isn't fast. It does not require collaboration or innovation or engagement or teamwork or agility or communication of any sort—all of which are essential components of business success. Conducting an orchestra comes closer to running a business than golf ever can. For that matter, a Saturday night jazz quartet is more like a business than a Saturday morning foursome is.

Another bad metaphor is "human capital." Companies commonly refer to the people who work for them as human capital. Please.

I understand the different kinds of capital: economic, physical, intellectual, social. But something repugnant, thoroughly repugnant, happens when we juxtapose the words "human" and "capital."

Substitute the word "chattel" for the word "capital" and you begin to see it. Then take another small step to "indentured servitude" and—well, you can see where I am going with this. As every youngster in the United States learns in school, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment were supposed to put an end to thinking of people as capital. It's about time business caught up.

Similarly, many companies think they are saying something good and decent and noble when they tout employees as "our most important asset."

I am all in favor of declaring that people are important, but they are not and never can be an asset. An asset is something you own and control. No business owns its people, and when a company thinks it can control people, it is in for a rude surprise.

The fact is that any employee can quit and go to work for the competition any day of the week. A machine or a forklift or a trademark cannot do that. They are assets. People are people. People have legs and pride and souls, and they can walk across the street to take a job with your competitor. Sometimes they do, too.

One other metaphor, so innocent and even noble in its intent, is actually problematic as well. It is likening the people of a business to a family. "We're just like a family around here," too many CEOs are in the habit of saying.

This metaphor has the same issue as golf has: It just isn't true. An office or a factory may feel like a family because you spend so much time with the same people, and perhaps everyone even has everyone else's back. That is fine as far as it goes, but sooner or later the similarities end.

Here's the bucket of ice water: Families are forever. Companies are not. Families thrive on love and devotion. Companies thrive on revenue and income.

It is true that divorce can ruin a family just as bankruptcy can ruin a business. But companies must make tough but honorable decisions that can have devastating repercussions for some employees. Families make tough but honorable decisions so they can stay together, laugh together, love together. The two are not and cannot be the same.

I probably sound like a curmudgeon today, and that is not my intent. I applaud anyone who struggles with articulating a vision or values or the essence of a workplace. It isn't easy, I know.

But all four of these metaphors are bad because they are emphatically untrue or because they inadvertently undermine the dignity of people or because they promise something they cannot always deliver. With just a little more thought, you can do better.

So enjoy The Masters this week. Enjoy as much golf as you can this summer. Just don't think of this wonderful sport as a metaphor for anything in business, especially performance and success. And the next time someone uses one of those other metaphors, give him a link to this blog.

 

© Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

The Constant Peril of Slipping Backward

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Even for the best companies, it is always easy to slip back into mediocrity. They just stop embracing change. Soon they are no longer ahead of their peers. They're only keeping pace, if that.

It is always much more difficult to continue moving forward into the unknown. That requires real leadership—and not just at the top of the organization but up, down, and across it.

Leadership is essential because its work product, its deliverable, is the full engagement of people throughout the organization. Getting that engagement, keeping it, and building it requires a deliberate focus of its own. That deliberate focus is the stuff of leadership.

© Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

University of Illinois President's Stormy Tenure Is A Sad Case Study

by Thomas J. Lee

Michael Hogan's stormy tenure as president of the University of Illinois, and his resignation yesterday after only twenty months on the job, offers yet another case study on the importance of humble, servant leadership and on the critical role of respectful, mutual communication as its energy and light.

Here are a few articles for background: the Chicago Tribune's account of the resignation, the Chronicle of Higher Education's report, and the Chronicle's earlier piece (from March 8) on Hogan's communication problem with faculty at the University's flagship Urbana-Champaign campus. It is a sad case study indeed.

My main question is intended to spark more intellectual curiosity than anxiety, but I cannot help expressing it with a tone of frustration: Just when will leaders learn?

If anyone should have had some sensitivity to the challenge of real leadership, you'd think it would be a historian of diplomacy like Hogan. But no, even he committed some of the most egregious blunders we have seen in quite some time. Read the three articles to see for yourself.

Last month the University's faculty protested. More than a hundred of its senior professors, the big names the University of Illinois cannot afford to lose, called for his ouster. Their complaints were classic: micromanaging, arrogance, bullying, insularity, and more. Above all, the complaints zeroed in on a profound lack of respect and empathy for the people Hogan sought to lead. Like too many leaders, he seemed to think it was all about him.

The situation boiled over this week. Hogan said he had had enough, and he decided to quit.

I fear that many putative leaders in business are in similar situations, but in their case, people don't speak out for fear of retribution in an uncertain economy. (The senior professors who called for Hogan's resignation are protected by academic tenure.) 

Hogan, and leaders everywhere, would do well to heed the words of Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th century British leader: "I must follow my people," Disraeli said. "Am I not their leader?"

 

© Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

More Employers Ask Job Applicants for Facebook Passwords

by Thomas J. Lee

I am not the least surprised, but I certainly am flabbergasted, that more employers are asking job applicants for Facebook passwords.

It isn't surprising, because many companies have long misunderstood the concept of trust in the workplace. They have assumed that employees should just naturally trust them, without themselves first earning the trust of employees or first investing the same kind of trust in employees.

Life just doesn't work that way. Trust is and always has been a two-way street. It must be earned, and it must be shown. He who doesn't trust is only rarely and briefly accorded any trust. That is as true in our professional lives as in our personal lives.

Trust is far too precious and far too tender to be treated as if it can be presumed or commanded.

If not surprising, these policies are nonetheless flabbergasting. They set the tone for brazen disregard for employee dignity. What company would want employees who are so deferential, so servile, as to tolerate that? 

If I were in charge of the hiring at these companies, I might actually ask for a Facebook password just to see which job applicants would refuse to provide it despite expecting that it would cost them the job. Those are the applicants I would be inclined to hire. In the long run, they will stand up for integrity and for their own dignity. How refreshing.

Give me an employee who knows right from wrong, smart from stupid, trust from mistrust, decent from indecent. I can build a fine company with people like that.

 

 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Goldman Sachs Replies to Mr. Smith

 

Here is a response from Goldman Sachs to the essay by Greg Smith published in this morning's editions of The New York Times and referenced in my own blog post (just scroll down).

Backlash Against Goldman Sachs Op-Ed Writer Begins in Earnest - Business - The Atlantic Wire.

In the interest of fairness, I recommend reading it as well as Mr. Smith's essay.

TJL

Greg Smith's Very Public Resignation

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Until today, Greg Smith was executive director and head of the U.S. equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Goldman Sachs.

He resigned out of disgust—that isn't too strong a word, as you will see—with Goldman's culture of putting profits before customers. Moreover, he submitted his letter of resignation to The New York Times, which obliged him by printing it today. Online and in print, it's fair to say that millions of people will ultimately read it.

You can read it for yourself here: Greg Smith resigns from Goldman Sachs. Don't miss it.

Reasonable people can debate whether Mr. Smith should have gone public with his thoughts. The fact is he did. It's done, and his thoughts are out there.

In his shoes I wouldn't have done the same thing, but if it compels Goldman and other large investment banks to rethink and change their culture, then it may be worth it.

Here are some questions for any business leader to think about:

• Do you think Goldman's senior management has viewed its culture the same way Mr. Smith describes it?
• Do you think Goldman's executive team regards the firm's culture as "the secret sauce" of its success, to use Mr. Smith's phrasing?
• How important is your own firm's culture? How would you describe it, and how do you think others in the company describe it? How do customers describe what they see of it?
• Does your organization truly put the customer before the profit? In what ways do you see this as the reality?
• How should you change the culture of your organization? How can you?

 

 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

A Case Study in Poor Executive Communication

Here is an unfortunate but instructive case study on executive leadership that underestimates and undervalues the challenge of communication as the energy of leadership.

It involves the troubled president of the University of Illinois, and it appeared in the Chicago Tribune today.

U. of I. president says he did poor job of connecting with faculty.

 

The Three Essential Components of Any Leader's Credibility

by Thomas J. Lee

Back in the 1980s a onetime IBM salesman and singing cowboy by the name of Robert Fulghum wrote a little book that became a worldwide sensation. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten stayed atop the best-seller lists for two solid years. It was translated into 27 languages and sold in more than 100 countries.

As the title suggests, this marvelous book asserted that the really important verities of life we learn as young children. Perhaps nowhere is that more true than in communication, especially for the sake of leadership.

Consider what we learned about communication as youngsters on the playground:

• Thou shalt not lie.
• Practice what you preach.
• Actions speak louder than words.
• Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
• Seeing is believing.

In other words, we learn early on that credibility is the currency of communication. We learn that we cannot get away with just saying whatever we want, when we really don’t mean it. Other people resent and dislike that, and they will resent and dislike us.

As we grow into adults, we come to appreciate the significance of this. We realize that all the fast and fulsome talk in the world cannot buy the allegiance and dedication of people: our kids or our employees or our constituents. Only our credibility as leaders can do that. Without credibility, our communication is like counterfeit money.

Moreover, we realize that the measuring rod of credibility does not belong to us as leaders. It rather belongs to the people we seek to lead. They and they alone measure our credibility. If they find it in our leadership, we and they can go anywhere. If they don’t, we and they can go nowhere.

Those of us who think a little longer about the challenge of credibility also realize that, when we begin to assert ourselves as leaders, credibility becomes more elusive and difficult. It begins with simple trust, for sure, but it also seems to demand more than trust alone. It also requires respect and affinity with people.

By trust, we have in mind a high regard for the veracity of one's word. People who trust someone believe the person is telling the truth. The truth that he tells may be a factual depiction of reality. Or it may be a sincere statement of intent, or a frank and honest description of his opinion, values, or perspective. Whatever path it takes, it must square with reality.

By respect, we're referring to a high regard for the leader's command, control, and competence: his ability, energy, initiative, resources, and perseverance—in short, his authority. In the colloquial, this quality is often referred to as "street cred." People must recognize and respect a leader's capacity for situational authority in order to believe he is capable of accomplishing that which he is setting out to accomplish.

By affinity, we mean a high regard for a common bond of interests, needs, and concerns. Apart from someone under the hypnotic spell of a cult, no one willingly follows a leader whose purpose runs counter to their own well-being. Rather, people look for nobility of intent: an honorable purpose that aligns with their own well-being. What is important and valuable to the leader must be, or must become, important and valuable to the people she would lead, and vice versa.

One or even two of these three cornerstones is not enough. Respect and affinity in the absence of trust leaves a residue of doubt. Affinity and trust in the absence of respect leaves a residue of skepticism. Trust and respect in the absence of affinity leaves a residue of opposition. Leaders need all three: trust, respect, and affinity with people.

Now most of us didn’t actually learn this part in kindergarten. Those who never learn it at all will never capture the hearts and minds of people. They will never lead.

 

 © Copyright 2012   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Engagement and Alignment Are Two Different Things

 

By Thomas J. Lee

There's a lot of confusion, even among senior executives and their advisers who should know better, around engagement and alignment in the workplace.

Everyone speaks approvingly of both engagement and alignment, of course. But many executives and consultants use the terms interchangeably—though in fact they are very different—and don't see the particular nature of their own work as producing one but not the other.

So let's carve out their distinguishing features. To understand these two terms, you need to begin with basic distinctions between leadership and management.

It is only when we unpack leadership and management from each other that we can see the unique challenges, tools, and rewards of each. It's also only when we unpack leadership and management that we begin to understand engagement and alignment as two different, but complementary, things.

For starters, companies make a big mistake when they use the words leadership and management to refer to positions or levels in a hierarchy. We would gain a lot of clarity if we instead understood leadership and management as work—not as persons in a pecking order but as responsibilities, tasks, and especially communication. They do different things, though they certainly leverage each other.

Up, down, and across an organization, anyone in authority must do both. Front-line supervisors must bear some responsibility for collateral leadership, and even the CEO has some basic managerial tasks.

The work of management is all about ensuring steady, reliable, consistent performance. A manager who is managing well is ensuring the performance of a team to certain predetermined expectations.

If the expectation involves spending money, we call it coming in under budget. If it involves completing a project by a specific date, we call it meeting a deadline. If it involves doing something or producing something within acceptable parameters, we call it complying with a standard—quality, perhaps, or safety. When it involves making or selling or issuing enough of something, we call it clearing a quota. There are many other kinds of similar challenges around production processes, contractual obligations, legal procedures and requirements, ethics standards, cultural imperatives, and much more.

When successful, management creates alignment. Alignment is the deliverable or work product of good management. It is the equivalence of expectation and performance. Alignment is a good thing; misalignment is bad. But remember: Alignment is not the product of leadership. It is the product of management.

The work of leadership is altogether different from the work of management. Leadership is all about change. A leader who is leading well is successfully bringing about a particular, big change, either culturally or operationally.

Leadership entails envisioning, articulating, inspiring, and supporting change—attitudinal or behavioral—or a breakthrough performance of some sort, typically requiring the discretionary and self-sacrificing efforts of people, and often in an environment of uncertainty and risk to oneself.

The change or breakthrough may involve launching a new product, or expanding geographically, or merging cultures after an acquisition, or fending off a unionization vote, or adopting a new technology, or meeting the changing needs of customers. There are many kinds of such challenges.

When successful, leadership creates engagement. Engagement is the deliverable or work product of good leadership. It is the predicate of change. Engagement is a good thing; disengagement is bad. But engagement is not the product of good management. It is the product of good leadership throughout the organization.

Alignment is critical to meeting the needs of the present. Companies and other organizations—associations, governments, universities, charities, teams—make commitments they must fulfill. Alignment is necessary to fulfilling those commitments.

Engagement is critical to meeting the needs of the future. Companies and other organizations must always adapt to changing circumstances, environments, and opportunities, lest they wither and die as so many erstwhile giants that failed to adapt have withered and died before them. Without engagement, organizations cannot survive long into the future.

It is another big mistake to use the tools of one to accomplish the goals of the other. Companies often try that, and they routinely fail, whenever they launch a “change management” initiative while overlooking the need to lead change, which is something entirely different. Similarly, an energetic and charismatic leader without an eye for detail can lose sight of the basics.

Management and leadership differ most dramatically in the substance, style, and tone of the communication that supports each of them. Communication for the sake of managing is authoritative, directive, and influencing. It carries an implicit "stick" of accountability. Communication for the sake of leading is visionary, collaborative, energizing, and inspiring. It carries an implicit "carrot" of opportunity.

I like to draw two concentric circles to illustrate. I label the inner circle management and the outer circle leadership, to convey the point that good management is at the core of good leadership. That is because good managers must lead themselves, and paradoxically they do so by managing themselves. Good leaders are their own first followers. They lead the way so that others can follow.

Many companies and other organizations are well-managed. They meet the needs of the present just fine. But they are not necessarily well-led. Thus they are duly anxious about the future. They are anxious not because they are unable to predict the future—everyone is unable to predict it—but because they are not ready for whatever it may bring. They are not ready because they know so little about change, about engagement, and ultimately about leadership.

Two different things they are, managing and leading; and two different things they are, alignment and engagement. In both cases, both are important. Both are necessary. They’re just different. Quite dramatically different, at that.

 

(c) Copyright 2012     Arceil Leadership Ltd.     All rights reserved.

Kudos for Walter Isaacson's Biography of Steve Jobs

by Thomas J. Lee

For the last four or five days I have been immersed in Walter Isaacson's fabulous new biography of the late Steve Jobs, which was published only last Monday. It is a terrific read, and I can recommend it enthusiastically to anyone with even a passing interest in business, leadership, or technology—or even, I am tempted to add, narcissistic personality disorders.

There's no question that Jobs changed the world far more in the last fifteen or twenty years than all but a handful of people do in their entire lifetimes. Along with the creative geniuses he assembled at Apple and Pixar, he pretty much invented or reinvented whole industries, from computers to animated movies to telephones to retailing to music and more. The company he founded in his mom and dad's Silicon Valley garage grew up to be the most valuable corporation in the world, surpassing the likes of Sony and IBM and Exxon.

As I write, I myself am listening to the purity of a Chris Botti trumpet solo ("When I Fall in Love") on iTunes, which arguably saved the music industry from itself. Santa knows how much I want an iPad under the tree this year. When this old ThinkPad dies, and it will, my next computer will most likely be a Mac, too.

Isaacson duly credits the Apple founder with a long list of triumphs, but his biography of Jobs is anything but servile or sycophantic. Rather it is bracingly candid, finely balanced, richly insightful, and powerfully revealing. Isaacson, who has also written acclaimed biographies of Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, and Benjamin Franklin, personally interviewed Jobs more than forty times, and he talked to anyone else who knew Jobs well, from Joan Baez to Yo-Yo Ma, from Larry Ellison to George Lucas, from Steve Wozniak to Bill Gates, and many more. Just weeks before Jobs died, Isaacson sat on a bed with Jobs, who lacked the energy even to get up, and sorted through old family photographs.

But as insistently iconoclastic and innovative as Jobs was, he was also a temperamental tyrant, whose frequent tirades reduced colleagues and competitors alike to self-doubt, paralysis, and years or even decades of hostility that didn't have to be. In reading Steve Jobs, you just want to grab the man by his black Issey Miyake turtleneck and shake some empathy into him.

Here are a few of my margin notes:

• A billionaire several times over, Jobs could have lived an insular life like his friend Larry Ellison but chose not to. Though large and comfortable, his residence in a Palo Alto neighborhood was completely unprotected. No guards, no gate. Thousands of people knew exactly where he lived. Anyone could ring his doorbell. When Bill Gates came to say good-bye a few months ago, he parked in the driveway and knocked on the back screen door, and Jobs's daughter, who was doing homework at the kitchen table, just nodded and pointed to the living room where her dad was sitting.
• Jobs cried often. For most men, including me, crying does not come as naturally as perhaps it should. It came easily to Jobs. Sometimes it was out of appreciation, as for purity or truth or beauty; other times it was out of anger or jealousy. Occasionally he used it just to get his way.
• Apple colleagues coined the phrase "reality distortion field" to describe their boss's frequent and longlasting delusions. Jobs never let cold facts get in his way. If he wanted to believe something else, he did. He would also convince others of his world view.
• Far from decisive, Jobs would take forever to make simple decisions that take other people hours or even minutes. He never got around to furnishing, even minimally, a 17-room mansion he owned in ritzy Woodside, California (except when he lent it to the Clintons on visits to their daughter at nearby Stanford, and then he would rent furniture for it). After proposing to his girfriend, he didn't buy a diamond ring or even mention marriage again; nine months later, she bolted. Only then did he get serious. When he and his new wife bought their Palo Alto home, he took weeks to decide what brand of washer and dryer to buy.  
• Humility was for other people. He was all about arrogance and intimidation. He refused to put license plates on his car, and he routinely parked in stalls reserved for handicapped people—sometimes even stradding the painted line to take up two stalls. He also had a reputation for body odor. For years he insisted that his strict vegan diet made attention to personal hygien unnecessary. Everyone else disagreed, to no avail.
• He was profane, and he was binary. Everything was either this or that, with no possibility for shades of gray. Designs for new products were always "shit" until their final, slight modification. Then they were perfect.
• The fact you cannot replace the battery on your iPod, or watch a Flash video on your iPhone, or create something on an iPad, is a reflection of Jobs's personality. He insisted on total control and abject simplicity, often at the expense of the convenience and utility of Apple products. He even initially fought the user-created proliferation of apps, which now make the iPhone and iPad so wonderful.

Steve Jobs is jam-packed with insights on Steve Jobs. I can't wait for the inevitable movie, and you shouldn't. My binary advice: Buy the book now, and read it now.

 

A personal note from the blogger: I appreciate your continuing interest in Minding Gaps and your patience while I have been away. My desire for a respite from the blog was deeper than anticipated, and then the press of business prolonged my absence. I am back now, on a less-imposing schedule. You'll find new posts here once a week (or more often if and when I have something topical to contribute). Remember, you can search for subjects in the box at the upper right.

—TJL                     

 

Next Week

What People Fear, and What They Need from a Leader

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Our New Twitter Address: @LeadAloud

 

Would you take a moment and change your Twitter address for us to @LeadAloud? Or begin following us at that address if you aren't already? We're consolidating several Twitter addresses to just one.

Also, if the spirit moves you, kindly pass along @LeadAloud to any of your friends and colleagues who have an interest in leadership, communication, change, and workplace engagement.

And in the meantime, remember to check back here (at www.MindingGaps.com) for more short essays. We have nearly 500 original essays on various aspects of leadership, communication, change, and workplace engagement just fingertips away.

We're taking a respite for reflection, restoration, and hopefully a little renassance. We'll be back in a month or two on a regular basis.

—TJL                     

 

The Work Product of Leadership Is Engagement

by Thomas J. Lee

You can easily tell the difference between a manager and a leader in business.

Managers are striving for alignment. They are concerned first and foremost with consistency. They want to make sure that the people on their team or throughout their organization are getting things done to such-and-such a standard, on time and within budget, and by various other constraints such as process controls, laws, safety precautions, quality parameters, and so forth.

Moreover, because managers naturally want to avoid or prevent any shortcomings, they are on the lookout for negative deviations from the norm. They want to spot problems early, so they can intervene and correct them before they explode. It follows that managers are just a little on the pessimistic side, ever watchful for anything that may signal an issue.

Now every business worth its name needs good, solid managers. Businesses make commitments to stakeholders such as customers, investors, employees, and suppliers, and to third parties such as regulatory agencies, communities, and so forth. They must honor those commitments. The better the managers they have, the more commitments they will keep, and the fewer disappointments they will experience.

But any business that wants to grow and prosper in the future cannot settle for good managers. It also needs leaders—and not just in the corner office or the C-suite but completely up, down, and across the organization.

Leaders are different from managers. Leaders strive not for alignment but for engagement. They are concerned first and foremost not with consistency but with change and commitment. They want to make sure that the people on their team are bringing everything they can muster to the challenge at hand, which is typically so big that it demands significant risk and perhaps even sacrifice amid great uncertainty.

Common scenarios for this kind of commitment may involve merging two companies, spinning off part of one company as a stand-alone enterprise, restructuring an organization in such a way that its teams and reporting relationships change, introducing new products to the marketplace, adopting a process modification, expanding or consolidating or restructuring territory, facing down a new competitor or product, integrating a new technology, and any number of others. Just look at companies such as Ford, Kodak, IBM, Virgin, and many others. You will quickly see the degree of change they have undergone and continue to undergo.

Now because leaders are focusing not on consistency but on change, they're looking to their people for full involvement—physically, intellectually, emotionally, viscerally. They're on the lookout for positive deviations from the norm: ideas, suggestions, thought-provoking questions. The leaders themselves see their role as supporting, not controlling, the people who may or may not rise to the challenge. Thus the disposition of leaders is just a little optimistic, in the belief that people can contribute more with the right kind of support.

Companies need managers to meet the demands of the present. They need good leaders to meet the opportunities of the future. Anyone in any position of authority should view himself and herself as both manager and leader, and every company should equip its managers with the skills and tools to lead as well as manage.

 

Next

The Paradox of Respect

 

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Publisher's Note

 

Beginning this week, new essays in Minding Gaps will appear just once each week while we focus on writing a book. Also, for the time being, our twice-monthly feature Numbers will appear irregularly and infrequently.

Keep in mind that nearly 500 original essays on various aspects of leadership, communication, change, and workplace engagement continue to be available on this site. Just scroll down or, for a particular topic, enter a term (a relevant word or phrase) in the search box at the right.

At some point in the future, we will return to our regular publishing schedule. We appreciate your forbearance until then.

—TJL                 

 

{Side Roads} Climbing Mount Rainier in the Middle of Night

 

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

We post these diversionary Side Roads columns only on occasion and only on weekends. The rest of the time, we stick to the mission of this blog, as explained on the Our Philosophy page.

Our previous Side Roads columns introduced you to my heretofore secret recipe for pesto; recounted my climb to the summit of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park; took you along on an African safari; shared the story and a few pictures of a visit to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa; looked at the 90-year rivalry between two National Football League teams, the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears; and described a classic Midwestern snowstorm.

Today we recall my ascent of Mount Rainier, a 14,411-foot volcano in the Cascade Range just south of Seattle, in the middle of night ten years ago this summer. (For the record, I am no longer climbing mountains.) Mount Rainier is the fifth-highest mountain and the single most-strenuous climb in the lower 48 states. Though stopping a little short of the summit, I still regard the climb as successful for lots of good reasons. Here’s the whole story.

Mount Rainier      

by Thomas J. Lee

The first goal of any mountain climber is just to come back alive. That is especially true for tenderfoots like me on a heavily glaciated peak like Mount Rainier. So anyone who returns from climbing Rainier has already achieved his primary goal. If that’s a little simplistic, it’s also as real as a heartbeat; some climbers don't make it back.

There are two kinds of amateur mountain climbers. I call them the “reachers” and the “searchers.” For some climbers, reaching the peak is everything. The destination is all that counts, and they are determined to get there. For others, the journey matters more; the adventure and thrill are paramount. I was always proud to be a searcher.

All along, summiting this 14,411-foot volcano was secondary to the experience and to the knowledge and insight I was searching for. I took away profound lessons for my life, a grasp of nature's incredible power and beauty, terrific memories to last forever, and lots of deep, soulful satisfaction.

True, it all came at a cost: nasty scratches and hockey-puck bruises, feet full of blisters, a high-altitude sunburn, grime that wouldn’t wash away, legs that couldn't climb stairs, and a body that ached so completely and so severely that I constantly had a jar of Advil within reach. Worse yet, I was registered to run the Chicago Marathon a couple of months later, and running was out of the question for a couple of weeks.

I actually made it farther up the mountain than I had hoped, and I am convinced that we would have made it all the way if we had departed high base camp according to our plan, preferably by 1 a.m. and certainly by 1:30 a.m. at the very latest. Instead, my team finally embarked at 2:45 a.m., which was much too late (thanks to our guide, who chose this occasion for some extra winks).

The beauty we saw was phenomenal. Even from the elevation I reached, we were looking down at Little Tahoma (the state’s third-highest peak, visible to the far left in the photograph above), Mount Adams (the second), the ash-gray and hollowed Mount St. Helens, Mount Baker (the fourth) and, in Oregon, Mount Hood and the Three Sisters. The mountain snow was glaringly white but the glaciers were pockmarked with granular pumice. The air was thin, and the sunlight was almost painfully brilliant. We wore SPF30 sunblock on any exposed flesh and even inside our nostrils. People without sunglasses have actually burned their retinas.

After a day of training, we had set out in the morning and reached high base camp, at 10,100 feet, by 5 p.m. It was already a grueling climb with 35-pound packs on our back. Camp Muir turned out to be nothing more elaborate than a tarpaper shack with sheets of plywood on which we could stretch out our sleeping bags. But by the time we got there, it looked like an antebellum mansion. We enjoyed a marvelous one-course dinner consisting of all the hot water you could want.

Each climber carried his own pre-packaged heat-and-eat food like oatmeal and soup, along with plenty of Gatorade and candy bars. Stretching out on the hard plywood felt wonderful after climbing all day.

Our party consisted of 24 climbers and six professional guides, a couple of whom had done Everest. It was a group of overachievers. Among the climbers were four physicians, an attorney and his two grown kids, several executives, a Harvard grad student from Israel, an accountant, a magazine publisher, a couple of college students, a high-tech entrepreneur, a small businessman, a Microsoft programmer from India, a honeymooning couple, a manager, and I. There were 19 men and five women. From the main base (5,400 feet) to high base camp we hiked all together, through montane meadows and up rocky bluffs and finally onto year-round snowfields (different from glaciers inasmuch as snowfields don’t move).

After reaching Camp Muir, we had time for dinner and then bunked down for some ersatz sleep with blindfolds and earplugs. By 7:15 p.m., it was quiet. Everyone was tired. We dozed lightly until being awakened at 1 a.m.

That seems early but it was really too late, and we didn’t set out for a final attempt on the summit until much later. It's a strenuous, 11- or 12-hour hike just from Camp Muir to the summit and back. Thus, setting out at 2:45 a.m. means that you don’t return to high base camp until mid-afternoon, after the sun has had six or seven hours to bake the front of glaciers. That creates a serious hazard of avalanche, especially in late summer.

Just three days earlier a huge wall of ice (probably the size of an eight-story building) had come crashing down over the main trail across the Cowlitz Glacier, one of 26 glaciers that so gloriously drape Mount Rainier's summit. We would normally have followed that very trail. Because of the debris, we detoured around it; and from a high precipice we could survey the truck-size blocks of ice now littering the trail. Anyone in the way would surely have been killed by these colossal snowballs.

The night sky was bright with a million stars when we embarked from high base camp. We were roped together with carabiners in teams of four, each team three or four minutes apart and headed by a professional guide, as we traversed glaciers and climbed through ridges of rocks and
scree in the darkness. We all wore crampons and helmets with headlamps. Within each team we were usually about 10-12 feet apart from one another, but in especially dangerous spots we were “short roped” to about three or four feet. That way, if one of us fell, he would have no momentum to carry down the others.

To compensate for the late start from Camp Muir, my guide wanted to hike double-time up the mountain. I could do that for a few hours, but at my age and at such a high altitude, I just couldn't keep it up even with all my physical training. (On registering for the climb, everyone is advised to be in the best shape of their life and to train rigorously for months beforehand. I was and I did, but hey, there’s only so much a guy can do.) I also determined that, at least for someone like me, to continue on would be to court more danger than I wished. In that situation, a single misstep could be fatal. Better to be humbled and alive than to be proud and dead, I figured. Finally, after climbing steep inclines for four or five hours through the nighttime cold and a face-scraping wind, I had to confront my own limits.

We were atop a steep, rocky ridge known appropriately as Disappointment Cleaver when a couple of us (the Microsoft guy and I) chose to hunker down and watch the sun rise slowly on the mountain's eastern flank. Though the summertime temperature was 20 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind was gusting to 40-45 mph, it was phenomenally pretty, unlike any other dawn I have ever seen: first a scarlet eyelash, then a brilliant splash of magenta across the horizon for more than an hour.

Later a few more climbers came down the slope in retreat. We roped ourselves together, found our sunglasses and goggles, and began the slow trudge back down to high base camp in the light of day. Only then did we realize how close—just three or four feet, really—we had hiked in the darkness past glacial crevasses so deep we couldn't see their bottom even in daylight. The glaciers that we had crossed were massive (several miles in length and 300-500 feet thick) and repeatedly fractured with crevasses, some of the cracks just inches across but others wide enough to swallow a city block of houses. It was incredible.

Back at Camp Muir, we met up with others who had retreated earlier. All of us waited for the return of those who had soldiered on. After regrouping, it took several more hours of steep, knee-buckling descent (in double-time again!) to get back down to the main base camp.

By then, we could scarcely stand and couldn't walk another step. Our feet were covered with blisters. Our shoulders felt like stone. We were all in serious pain. But we were thrilled that we had tried, and we knew that we were forever changed by the experience. We were also profoundly grateful; two other climbers died in high-altitude falls nearby the previous week, so our own blessings were real indeed.

What did I learn from it? Well, things little and big.

At the very least I learned how to use an ice axe to stop sliding for miles down and off a mountain, whether on my face or on my back, and whether feet first or head first. I learned how to walk in crampons across a glacier and up a wall of ice or fragile, old igneous rock. I learned that volcanoes are covered with pumice that stings your face in the wind. I learned how to breathe at high altitude (frequently and fully expel the carbon dioxide from your lungs). I learned the importance of carrying as light a load as possible up a mountain; every pound, every ounce, counts for far more. I learned just how big a volcano can be and just how deep a crevasse can rive its glaciers. I learned the joy of eating cold pizza for breakfast and consuming a dozen candy bars a day while still losing five or 10 pounds. I learned that I really don't enjoy wearing a beard, and so it's gone already after only a couple of weeks.

I also learned some things that other people learn earlier in life. I learned to be much more careful than I have been, for each step I take through life may be my last, figuratively and literally. I learned that a timely start spares haste. I learned to cherish the moment, to see more in life than I have seen in the past. I learned that things around us may be vastly greater than we, but that we are no small creatures either. I learned that respecting both the fragility and the power of nature is a real and a vital paradox. I learned that reliance on oneself and on one's team is the same thing, for all of us must do both; we must respect both the individual and the team. I learned to go slow, one little step after another, ever upward. I learned to see compelling beauty in self-fulfillment and in the satisfaction of a challenge well met. I learned that we have more courage and strength in our being than we know but, for me anyway, it will be found only for the searching, never for the wishing.

The following quotation, attributed to the legendary Swiss mountaineer Edward Whymper in 1871, was posted inside the door of that tarpaper shack at Camp Muir: "Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are naught without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste, look well to each step, and from the beginning think what may be the end."

Indeed. Indeed.

 

Coming Next Week

The Work Product of Leadership

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Leaders Must Know and Respect Internal Gatekeepers

by Thomas J. Lee

It's natural, perhaps even inevitable, for managers and leaders to assume that they hold the authority in an organization. After all, even a junior manager commonly has the power to hire and fire, and senior management can merge, sell, or even shutter a company. That is real authority.

Alas, it is only one kind of authority: the legal authority to run the company. There are other kinds of authority, distributed throughout the organization, that also bear heavily on whether, when, and how anything gets done and on whether, when, and how anything really changes.

Managers who neglect these informal centers of authority often delude themselves into thinking that their mission or strategy is fully deployed, that people up, down, and across the company are acting in accordance with the strategic direction. The managers are surprised when the results don't bear out the promise of their strategy, and they wonder why things apparently just hit a wall.

Savvy, successful leaders approach things differently. They look for these gates of leverage and then recruit the gatekeepers to support the strategy. They realize that each gatekeeper can determine whether a strategy slows, stops, or proceeds through the gate. The more gatekeepers a leader has in the fold, the more likely the strategy will move through these gateways.

Here are four kinds of authority—each its own strategic gatekeeper, if you will—well beyond the legal authority that managers already have:

Economic authority is the power of the purse. Externally, economic authority rests with customers who decide whether to buy the product of a change. Two legenday case studies in business school are the decisions by Ford Motor Co. to introduce the Edsel in 1958—it would last only three years—and by Coca-Cola Co. to change the recipe of Coke in 1985. In both instances, customers rejected the new products. Internally, it is whoever exercises practical control over spending, which typically depends on the size of an organization, its controls, and its authorization levels. It can reside with the receptionist who holds the key to the petty cash drawer, or it can be the auditors who wave a flag on p-card abuses. 

Technical authority resides with holders of any unique competency that a strategy or change requires. It can range from engineering (the design of packaging or manufacturing equipment, say) to supply chain to legal counsel, and more. Any of these gatekeepers can open or close their gate. When it closes, so do the prospects for a strategy or change initiative.

Functional authority belongs to anyone who is in an informal position to close a gate and thereby stymie a change. Some years ago I stopped at a high-tech store—one of a nationwide chain—only to discover a complete absence of sales personnel on duty. Customers were just milling about. The sales team was upstairs in the store manager's office loudly protesting a new compensation system. All afternoon, customers came and went without buying anything, as there was no salesperson to make a sale. The sales personnel were exercising their functional authority. It's little wonder the company declared bankruptcy shortly afterward.

Social authority is informal influence among others that rests on personality, social order, and networks. Some people have outsize influence over the thinking of their peers. When it comes to a business strategy or change initiative, they can put the brakes on without the leader's knowledge. Generally speaking, it isn't the office cynic who has the most influence, as many employees just discount that person's constant quibbling. Nor is it the office cheerleader, whose enthusiasm grates on nerves. Rather it is the sober, thoughtful person in the middle whose voice others seek out and respect. 

There are other kinds of authority, as well: moral authority, political authority, and strategic authority, just to name a few. The wise manager is alert to all of them.

The need to recruit these critical gatekeepers comes back to the crucial differences between managing and leading. Managers have official command of their team as a matter of the organization's hierarchy; people are assigned to a team and to a manager. Leaders must earn their influence, because the people they would lead have a choice as to whom they will follow. To lead successfully, leaders must enroll as many supporters as they possibly can.

 

Coming on Friday

Climbing Ice-Covered Mount Rainier

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

{Numbers} New Managers Get Little or No Training in Leadership

 

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 and in management, 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

American companies have not consistently been rising to the challenge of cultivating the next generation of leadership, it appears.

According to a nationwide survey sponsored by CareerBuilder, promotions to management usually come with little or no formal training, and many managers continue to flounder in their new roles.

Some 26 percent of managers said they were not prepared to take on their new challenges, and 58 percent said they received no training at all to meet the responsibilities of leadership.

Managers identified their biggest challenges as resolving issues between co-workers on their team, motivating team members, and reviewing employee performance.

Primary concerns that employees have about their manager are playing favorites (23 percent), not delivering on promises and not listening to concerns (both 21 percent), not providing feedback (20 percent), not motivating (17 percent), and providing only negative feedback (14 percent).

 

Coming on Wednesday

Leaders Must Know and Respect

Other Kinds of Authority

©  Copyright 2011    Thomas J. Lee    All rights reserved.

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.

 
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[email protected]

 

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.

The Eight Habits of Highly Effective Listeners

 

We have been on our annual study and renewal period throughout June. During this time we have reprised some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. Now that we're turning the calendar to a new month, we'll return with all-new essays beginning on Friday.

 —TJL                         

 

by Thomas J. Lee

For most managers, listening to people is a significant challenge.

Part of the problem is you are just so busy. You have so much on your plate, and you have so many accountabilities, that you often just want the information you need—"the data that matta"—right here and right now. Any further explanation feels burdensome. A long, rambling conversation is like a Sunday stroll in the park when the temperature is 105 F. and dark thunderheads are gathering on the horizon. You just want people to get to the point and, frankly, to get out of your way so that you can get some real work done.

But that's only part of it. Another big part of the problem is your own intelligence. That is true, and I am not being patronizing. By and large, managers are bright people. But here's the rub: Smart people are worse listeners, not better listeners, than most people are.

That is because smart people process information faster than other people do. Smart people think approximately three times faster than most people talk. You take in more information, you churn it faster, and you come to more conclusions. Then you look for more information to churn, and the process continues.

Now you may think that someone who absorbs information so fast and so well would be a terrific listener. But smart people are constantly evaluating and judging others. You yourself do so much evaluating and judging, and you do it so routinely and so instinctively, you don't even notice. You have already been doing it about me and about this very essay less than 250 words into it. (You're thinking: Gotcha! It's "fewer than 250 words into it!")

Listening is something I myself struggle with. My friends will tell you that I often drift into what they call a zone. To become a better listener, I am using an eight-point checklist to remind myself of some basic requirements of deep listening.   

Here's the eight-point checklist I have been using. Maybe it will help you, too:

1. In any conversation of any sort, have a predisposition to learn something of importance and consequence. Avoid thinking of conversations as random, purposeless activities that just clutter your day. Rather, look at everyone as a potential teacher, and regard yourself as an eager student. The fact is that everyone does have something worthwhile to teach you.
2. Turn away from all distractions. (This is a particular challenge for me personally, as my friends will tell you.) Thrust yourself into the conversation with the entirety of your body, mind, heart, and soul. Be fully engaged. By body, I mean making full (but not scary or intimidating) eye contact, and having a pleasant disposition of your physical bearing. Do not multitask here. By mind, I mean being intellectually curious. By heart, I mean acknowledging the decency of the other person. And by soul, I mean having a constructive, affirming purpose for the community of persons in the conversation.
3. Suspend evaluation, and grant good faith to everyone involved in the conversation. Be on their side, and let them be on yours. Assume they have entered into the conversation not for their own advantage but for the sake of creating value for everyone. For the next few minutes, everyone is an angel, and everyone's purpose in angelic. That includes you: Do not play the devil's advocate, even for a moment. Instead, be the angel's advocate.
4. Probe for detail, and seek real-world examples. It is one thing to discuss a situation at a theoretical level, quite another to notice how it plays out in real life. Here is where the data that you usually seek takes on situational context and greater import. Notice what has actually happened, how people have reacted or coped, what the antecedents or causes were, what the effects and consequences were, and so forth. Don't overlook what hasn't happened that you might surmise would happen in such circumstances.
5. Absorb and synthesize information, intuition, and insight. Notice the presence or absence of connections to important concepts and doctrines (such as your company's values and mission or purpose). Remember the examples as illustrative of the larger ideas. Use them as grist in the future. Remember, data will always tell a story. You just need to be open enough and alert enough to read the narrative before your very eyes, as it is, which may or may not be as you want it to be.
6. Ask relevant, open, and constructive questions—and then stop talking. For the uninitiated, a closed question seeks a specific fact: a date or an age or a name, whether the flight is on time, when the meeting begins, who your brother is marrying. In contrast, an open question doesn't preclude the range of responses. It often begins with how, what, or why. Craft your questions in such a way as to build more potential intellectual capital. Then, after asking each relevant and open question, be quiet. Enjoy the stillness of the moment. Let your silence lift the conversation to a higher plane. Then think about what has been said. Record any important observations or reflections in a journal you carry with you for that purpose (and keep its content clear of day-to-day minutia like telephone numbers, reminders, and so forth). 
7. Clarify the meaning of it all, and translate the implications. Figure out where the conversation has taken you. What have you learned? What didn't you learn that you might have? What additional information do you need, and where might you get it? Does the situation require action? If so, immediately or at some point further in the future? Are there issues of personal safety and security here? Is there a question of ethics? Of business strategy? Are the data coherent and cohesive? What matters and what doesn't?
8. Promise and deliver a response by a certain date. Do not, do not, do not offer a substantive reply of which you are not certain. Do, do, do take the time you need to get whatever additional information or authority you need to respond with credibility and clarity. Resist the temptation to go to closure unless it is something you definitely want; unnecessary closure can be a roadblock to continuing exploration and even greater understanding. Give the other individuals a sense as to when you will get back to them, and be sure to follow up.

That's my list. Surely you can improve on it. Send your additions and refinements to [email protected] or telephone me at +1-847-247-2241. I enjoy hearing from Minding Gaps readers.

 

Coming on Friday

Ron Tidwell on Primitive Communication

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Intelligent People Have a Problem

 

We are on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we are reprising some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays beginning Friday.

 —TJL                         

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Most of our regular readers are successful business managers, and they, which is to say you—you regular reader, you—are smarter than the average dormouse. If you aren't necessarily a card-carrying member of Mensa, you certainly aren't a member of Densa, either.

What you probably don't realize is that your above-average intelligence—the sheer power of cognitive discernment that helped get you this far—is a problem for you. Yes, a problem.

That's because your intelligence interferes with your listening. It is quite a paradox, but it is true. Intelligent people have greater difficulty, not less difficulty, in listening to other people.

Why is that? By definition, intelligent people are quick to absorb and process information. The brighter you are, the more you tend to think analytically and evaluatively.

Strictly as a quantitative measure, you can listen intelligently at the rate of 400 to 500 words per minute, perhaps even more, all while analyzing the message you are hearing and evaluating the speaker.

Meanwhile, the speaker is in the slow lane. He is probably speaking at 125 to 150 words a minute, or 175 to 200 words a minute if he is talking fast. The bottom line: Listeners are always faster than speakers, and smart listeners are especially fast.

That isn't good. It means you are probably missing some or perhaps even much of the robust information, the subtlety, the emotion, and the crosscurrents of what is being said. You're reading the headlines and maybe the first couple of paragraphs, and then you're psychologically turning to the comics page.

In coaching leaders, I nudge them toward what I call intellectual patience. Be slow to understand, I counsel. Be very, very slow. You will find yourself more reflective, more appreciative, and more nuanced, and therefore wiser than you otherwise would be.

Intellectual patience is just a predisposition of cautious, deliberate exploration and discovery. Imagine yourself walking in the dark, as if you have awakened in the middle of the night and are stumbling to the kitchen for a glass of water. Without a night light, you need to walk slowly, lest you trip over a child's toy on the staircase (as I once did, seriously). 

That is how you should listen. Be quiet. Pay rapt attention. Do not preoccupy yourself with judgments about the speaker or with your own list of things-to-do. Don't interrupt. Don't think of what you are going to say next. Just listen.

Listen patiently, and let the speaker finish, even if you are busy. Enjoy the balm of silence on your psyche. Reflect before asking a good, thoughtful question, and then let silence work like yeast. Finally, given a choice between interpreting a message harshly or generously, let yourself be big.

Maybe, just maybe, your intelligence will get out of your way, and you will actually hear what the other person is trying to tell you. You may even understand and accept it.

 

Coming on Monday

Eight Habits of Highly Effective Listeners

 

(c) Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

A Great Tool for Collateral Leaders: Microvision Statements

 

We are on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we are reprising some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Many of us regard vision statements as the province of the CEO and the board of directors. That's only natural, as vision statements set forth an ideal future state for their entire enterprise. 

But collateral leaders throughout the organization can use microvision statements to advance their own leadership, too. By microvision statement, we just mean a vision statement with a tight field of view. It paints a vivid picture of an ideal future for only a part of an organization.

Any leader at any level of any organization can use a microvision statement to describe an ideal future state for a subset of the enterprise, be it a division, a department, a team, even an individual—perhaps for the leader himself or herself.

Don't confuse microvision with micromanagement. Microvision is useful and conducive to leadership, and the best people on your team will generally appreciate the effort. Micromanagement—a manager's overbearing and distrustful meddling in the day-to-day work of individuals—is destructive and corrosive to leadership. The best people on your team will resent it.

Micro or macro, a good vision can be worth gold. While the worst vision statements are riddled with clichés and rhetorical flatulence, the best are noble, inspiring, even glorious. They are very, very powerful, too.

For one thing, a well-crafted vision statement brings everyone together on the same page, and it gives everyone a mental image of success. That imagery enables people to order their work around a crystal-clear picture that energizes and directs them. It's like having a compass, a battery pack, and a talking map all in one.

A good vision does more than that though. It gives you a means of testing your stated values against a picture of the future. Does your vision rest on the bedrock of your values as applied in the real world? It should. If it doesn't, then it's just counterfeit currency.

Moreover, a good vision lets you deduce the appropriate strategies and tactics that can make the vision a reality, and it inspires you and your colleagues to go to extraordinary lengths on its behalf. Finally, it serves as a useful landscape for milestones that help you measure and assess your progress.

To do and be all that, a vision must be specific to its business and social context. It must get beyond the boilerplate that so many organizations settle for. It must reach for the stars, but more than that, point to the North Star as a beacon. That is true for macrovision and microvision statements alike. 

Microvision statements need not be florid or evocative, and they most certainly should not be replete with clichés, as many of their bigger siblings are. Indeed, these small-bore vision statements may not be narratives at all. They may come closer to a matrix, a little spreadsheet, or even a Gantt chart than to a descriptive narrative.

To begin thinking about a microvision for just a piece of the enterprise, take the bigger enterprise vision statement (the macrovision) and extract its essence. List its key phrases and translate them to real day-to-day work. Look for parallels here to the work you and your team do or can be doing. Then imagine, or envision, what the result of that work would be. Describe it in detail. Now give some thought to exactly how you and your team make it real. In other words, what does the enterprise vision become in your hands?

See? It's easier than you thought.

Before you go too far, make sure you understand the difference between a vision, a goal, and an objective. To borrow a metaphor from sports, the vision is tantamount to the visual image of players hoisting a trophy and parading down Main Street after winning the championship. In contrast, a goal is winning more games than the other team. The objective is winning today's game or even just scoring a point.

Now some of you may prefer a structure to the traditional narrative of a vision statement. That, too, is fine. Here's a structure you can use for a microvision.

On a single sheet of paper, draw a 3x3 matrix with each of the nine cells large enough for 25 to 35 words. Across the top, label the three columns with years. Choose the years that make sense for you and your team. Young people and mature organizations (trust me, that isn't the paradox it may appear to be) will want long-range years—say five, ten, and twenty years out. Older people and startups or turnaround companies will want short-range years—perhaps one, two, and three years out.

Down the left side, label the three rows Have, Do, and Be. Thus the top row captures what you or your team want to have (that you do not already have) by each of the years you listed. The middle row describes what you want to do or be doing (again, that you have not already done) by each year. The bottom row identifies who you want to be (that you are not yet) by each year.

Invest a lot of thought in this. Let it evolve. Give yourself permission to change it over time. As it does change, however, be sure to think critically about why you are changing it. Is it because you are growing? Because you have shrunk from your challenges? Because your interests have changed? Because other people have come into your personal life or joined your team at work? Because new opportunities have opened up?

One final point. Allow your vision, even a microvision, to be large. Let it be big. Let it be grand. That is what a vision should be and must be so that it can inspire. Small things are just small, but something big must be reckoned with. It demands to be.

Just be sure to do the work that follows, the work of bringing your vision down to earth. Give it legs. Then get on with the work of making it real. 

 

Coming on Monday

The Special Problem That Intelligent People Have

 

Coming on Wednesday

The Eight Habits of Highly Effective Listeners

 

© Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Emotion Is Central to Leadership and Thus to Change

 

We are on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we are reprising some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Have you ever noticed the difference in tone between a company's marketing communication and its leadership communication on business strategy? Especially in the consumer-products sector, but elsewhere to an extent, it can be dramatic.

Advertising is often unabashedly emotional. TV commercials for new cars, for example, commonly appeal to the pride of ownership and, at the holidays, even the joy of giving. They play down or ignore things like horsepower or trade-in value. Advertising for life insurance tugs at the heartstrings of family, and 30-second spots for beer invoke friendship and fun.

In contrast, a company's employee communication on business strategy is typically straightforward, sober, and matter-of-fact. There is little emotion. Yes, you see sporadic articles and photographs in newsletters on dedicated employees or extraordinary service. But the fundamental purpose of business is often reduced to quarterly goals, and the bulk of information is on new procedures and controls.

Canadian neurologist Donald B. Calne observes: "Reasoning leads to conclusions. Emotion leads to action."

Conclusions are important. Facts and logic have an important role. But action is essential. If emotion brings us to the brink of action, then it is an essential component of employee communication. We neglect it to our peril.

Always be mindful of the fact that people find a great deal of motivation in positive, affirmative appeals of emotion. Employees need straight information, of course. But they also need to hear the emotional cause for working hard, doing the right thing, persevering through adversity, scratching the creative itch, and taking risks. They need to hear of pride, service, loyalty, and so much more. Anyone who has ever succeeded at anything knows the importance and the truth of this.

 

Coming on Friday

Microvision Statements for Collateral Leaders

 

(c) 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd.  All rights reserved. 

The Business Case for Communication on Change

 

We are on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we will reprise some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Over the last few days I have been involved in two discussions—one as an observer in an online forum, the other as a participant in an exchange of emails—regarding the necessity for communication in support of leadership and change.

It appears some people out there are not yet convinced that communication matters.

Frankly, I find that astonishing. The factual basis is so solid, and the logic is so compelling, that I cannot understand why any serious business executive has any doubt. The evidence is both quantitative and qualitative, and it is conclusive.

Surely we can stipulate that the world is always changing. Technology changes. Economies grow and shrink. Older people retire, and younger people with new ideas come along. The market for goods and services changes as consumers and businesses decide they want and need different things. Companies merge and spin off. Trade barriers come down. Management fads come and go. Innovation creates new competition. Companies form and enter the marketplace. Always, things are changing.

Now, follow along with me. Wouldn't you agree that:

• Companies cannot control the changes around them, but they can control (a) whether and how they initiate change and (b) whether and how they respond to external change. Both the direction and the pace of their own change are variable, and both are controllable.
• Organizations that fail to change will invariably become irrelevant. Then they will whither and die. From the British Empire to the Pickett Slide Rule Company and AOL, history is filled with the bones of giants that failed to adapt.
• If what made you good is alone enough to make you great, you would already be greater than you are. In fact you will always need new ideas, new competencies, and new practices to grow and meet the demands of the future. That's life, and life is change.
• The work of leadership is largely the work of envisioning, articulating, and supporting change, commonly requiring discretionary effort and even self-sacrifice by many people, often in a state of uncertainty and risk. That fairly describes the business world of the 21st century, doesn't it?
• Communication is the energy of leadership and thus of change. You know this to be true because all of history's great leaders, those individuals who have brought about the greatest change in the most trying of circumstances, have consistently been articulate and inspiring communicators. Think of Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela. The reason this is true is equally obvious: People cannot act in concert with a leadership vision and agenda unless they have the big ideas, the information, and the incentive to do so, and they get all that through communication.
• Every organization is always communicating with itself—thinking out loud, as it were. People talk. Rumors spread. Leaks occur. The communication may be managed well or poorly or not at all. It may be clear, credible, compelling, constructive, collaborative, continuous, civil, and concise, or it may not be. The degree to which it is managed well and purposefully is the degree to which the organization can change in accord with the leadership vision and agenda and thereby determine its own destiny. 

Now forgive a little hubris, but executives who choose to deny these propositions are denying some very obvious truths, perhaps because it is comfortable for them to remain in denial. After all, it is easier to deny the need for communication than to assume responsibility for communicating and perhaps even to confront some long-festering professional competency gaps.

Executives who acknowledge these facts, and we hope this includes you and your colleagues, will properly ask what they should do first. I would suggest they consider the possibility that a systematic process of integrated strategic communication just may be the missing piece of the puzzle. At the very least, they should get moving on a needs assessment to better understand their situation and the opportunities it presents. Remember, every problem in life is an opportunity.

Call us. The number is +1-847-247-2241. We can help if you call, but not if you don't.

 

Coming on Wednesday

The Role of Emotion in Leadership

 Coming on Friday

A Great Tool for Collateral Leaders

(c) Copyright 2011 Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

My Dad, a Humble Profile in Leadership

 

We are on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we will reprise some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

A year ago this weekend, the Chicago Tribune published my Father's Day tribute to my late dad. We reprise it today.

 —TJL                         

by Thomas J. Lee

A fellow blogger posed an interesting question online, in anticipation of Father's Day. He asked: What kind of leader was your father?

I had to think a moment. My dad, who passed away in 2007 at the age of 93, was a wonderful man. But probably most people did not regard him as a leader. He wasn't an elected official. Nor was he a high-powered executive. Nor was he active in politics or community affairs.

Yet leadership is not only for the powerful and the prominent. Millions of people offer profoundly inspirational leadership in their everyday lives. So it was with my father. He lived a life of humility, decency, authenticity, and commitment.

Naturally outgoing and happy, he exercised quiet self-control even in the face of considerable adversity. He didn't lose his temper. He didn't curse or cheat or lie. He didn't gamble or drink to excess. He hated war, but he went, and his unit liberated Dachau. In 75 years of driving a car he never had an accident, not even a fender bender. He never even got a traffic ticket. In short, he was a rock, always there when it counted.

Most important, he knew how to love, and he did. The late Ann Landers, who could tell us a thing or two about families, often wrote that the greatest gift a father can give to his children is to love their mother completely, deeply, and unconditionally.

My four brothers and I were the beneficiaries of just such a gift. For more than six decades, probably from the moment he first noticed her at another soldier's wedding in Chicago, my dad loved my mom, and he let it show. He loved her completely. He loved her deeply, and he loved her unconditionally.

I have a particularly warm memory, framed like an old faded photograph in my mind's eye. When I was 10 or 12, I would wander into the kitchen before dinner, only to find my dad and my mom in a bear hug of an embrace while potatoes simmered on the stove.

Such a warm sense of security washed over me. Some of my friends had parents who yelled at each other. Others had parents who brooded in silence. Not I. Not my brothers. We had a security blanket up over our shoulders and snug under our chins. We had the luxury of never, ever worrying.

My dad always loved my mom, and my mom always loved my dad, and that's the way it was. It was just that simple and it was just that wonderful and it was always just that way.

Only a few weeks before my mother died in 2004, I visited the two of them in their apartment in Florida. What I witnessed on that visit was like a scene out of an old black-and-white movie starring Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson or Donna Reed.

My mother sat at the kitchen table, her days so very numbered, and yet with a smile of calm, divine peace across her face, as my dad, a gifted tenor who had once aspired to the operatic stage, sang love song after love song to her. He must have sung for an hour, maybe two, and he sang from his heart. He sang: "Everybody loves my baby, but my baby don't love nobody but me." My mother died a happy woman, for she was loved.

Most of all, I remember Dad as a man who worked hard, who made the most of what he had, who lived his life with passion for his art as well as for his wife, who humbled himself and honored others, who recognized duty, and who devoted himself to the things that matter, which is to say, to the people around him.

Will you abide one last anecdote? It is from the day I learned to swim. I tell it because it says so much about the man my father was.

There was to be a kind of commencement exercise at the old YMCA pool in my hometown. All the kids would swim the length of the pool, and then, one by one, we were to be called up by name and given a certificate.

Now it's odd what we remember from our childhood. Of that day, I remember a feeling of anxiety, knowing that my mother was home with my little brothers, and my dad was at work.

Back then, Dad always had to work on Saturday mornings. So the other kids would have families in the gallery cheering them on. But not I. I was on my own. That would be okay. I could handle it. I would be fine. I would just buck it up.

So one by one, in alphabetical order, the instructor called the names of all the swimmers. I remember hearing the instructor call out Ade, and Bobby, and Mike, and Steve. And one by one, each of them walked over to get his certificate as the gallery erupted in cheers.

The closer the instructor got to my name, the more alone I felt. I braced myself for a little polite applause from the other parents. The instructor called my name. I got up, walked over, and reached out for my certificate.

Sure enough, the applause was polite. But just then a voice rang out from the gallery, loud and clear and echoing around the pool: "Way to go, Tommy!"

I looked up. It was my dad. Somehow, he had got off work, and he had made it over to the YMCA to watch me get that certificate.

Ever since, whenever I have needed some encouragement, I have harked back to those few words, and I have picked up the pace and tried a little harder. My dad's voice is never far away. He is my cheerleader, even now, after he is gone.

By my measure, this is certainly the stuff of leadership. My dad was an ordinary, everyday hero. His achievement in life wasn't winning an election or getting a big promotion or living in a fancy house. Rather, it was leading a fine, long life and filling it with honor and love.

And so now, for another Father's Day without him, it's my turn, and I just hope he can hear me: "Way to go, Dad! Way to go!

 

Coming on Monday

 The Business Case for Communication on Change

 

 © Copyright 2011   Thomas J. Lee   All rights reserved.

What Are They Saying About You?

 

We will be on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we will reprise some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Every workplace is a conversation. The nature of the conversation—its content, its tone, its energy—reflects the degree of engagement or disengagement of the employees.

The conversation is about the organization, its purpose, and its leadership. To the extent the conversation understands and appreciates the nobility of the organization and of its leadership, the employees will be inclined to follow the lead of leaders.

If and when the conversation cannot find the nobility, or if and when the conversation determines that the supposed nobility is a lie, the employees will be disinclined to follow the lead.

It’s pretty much that simple.

 

Coming on Friday

A Humble Profile in Authentic Leadership

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Finding Strength in Uncertainty, Because of Uncertainty

 

We are on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we are reprising some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

by Thomas J. Lee

Are you often sure of yourself?

Are you often certain you are right?

I confess that I am. I dislike that about myself.

Not that I announce it loudly, or at least I don't think that I do. But I feel it. Often it is stirring in me as other people are talking. I quickly find myself concluding—prematurely, on little evidence—that I know more and have thought more about the subject at hand. Rarely is that true. I just think it.

It is an omniscient self-certainty, and, even when it is talking quietly to me, it is obnoxious. It is arrogant. It is corrosive to thoughtful, reflective leadership.

You see it in politics all the time. Tune in either of the two more dogmatic cable networks here in the States (that's Fox News for the right, MS-NBC for the left), and you cannot go an hour without coming across it. All the pundits and politicians are absolutely, positively convinced of their own point of view.

I fear their arrogance is contagious. More and more, people are just so certain of their own viewpoint—so certain that they have no time for anyone else’s.

Justice Learned Hand once wrote: “The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.” That is just so profoundly true.

Many years ago, when I wrote a weekly newspaper column, I confessed to my own doubts about the Vietnam War. In one column, I told of a high-school class reunion that I had recently attended. Before dinner, we had memorialized a classmate who died in Vietnam. His parents were there with us. His mother told us that she was always so patriotic, but that she still couldn’t quite understand exactly what her son died for. Neither could I.

After the column appeared, I received a thoughtful, gentle letter from a conservative reader. He wrote to comfort me. He said: “I wish I were as certain about anything as some people are about everything.”

Indeed. Indeed.

 

Coming on Wednesday

What Are They Saying About You?

 © Copyright 2011   Arceil Leadership Ltd.   All rights reserved.

Suddenly, a Great Need for Immediate Change

 

We will be on our annual study and renewal period through June 30. During this time we will reprise some of our favorite posts of the preceding twelve months. We'll return with all-new essays on Friday, July 1.

 —TJL                         

 

by Thomas J. Lee

One balmy evening after dusk I was relaxing on the patio with my legs outstretched. Crickets had begun to sing, and Venus was slipping toward the western horizon. I had enjoyed another productive day. Everything was perfect. I wanted nothing to change.

Just then I noticed a small animal of some sort off to the right. It was already dark, so I couldn't quite make out what it was. Slowly approaching me, the furry thing waddled right up to my shoes and stopped.

You can imagine my horror when I realized the animal wasn't a neighbor's kitten, and it wasn't a squirrel. Nor was it a raccoon or an opossum. It was a skunk, a polecat. I kid you not. For minutes 

 

that seemed like hours, it sat on its haunches just inches from my feet. I was never so perfectly still in my entire life. I didn't breathe. I didn't swallow. I didn't blink.

In an instant I went from wanting nothing to change to wanting everything to change, immediately and radically. Yet I could do nothing. If I had so much as burped, this little beast would have fouled the entire neighborhood. Everything within a quarter mile would have stunk for days. I could only wait it out, in perfect stillness and utter silence.

Eventually the skunk moved on, and I could exhale and blink again. Five minutes later I felt a sneeze coming on, and I prayerfully thanked the heavenly stars that I had not sneezed while my uninvited guest was sniffing at my feet.

This incident occurred two or three autumns ago. I recalled it this week when the subject of change came to mind. I've noticed that, for some people and some companies, the thought of change can bring about such anxiety they react with terror and paralysis.

That isn't a problem in the presence of a skunk, figuratively or literally; the paralysis suits you just fine. But if the challenge you are facing requires that you change for the sake of innovation, or personal growth, or subject-matter mastery, or credibility, or a behavioral correction, or relational empathy, or anything else of importance or value, it most certainly is problematic. Your paralysis is part of the problem.

Regular readers will recall that a couple of my recent posts (here and here) focused on helping people to identify the need for change and to muster the will to change. Indeed, change is a continuing theme of the MindingGaps blog, for change is the currency of leadership.

In my own experience, most companies do want to change either their culture, or their operations, or their performance. Yet few actually change as much or as fast as they wish.

It is true that some recognize no need to change, so they never even set out to change. Others say they want to change when they actually do not. Many others genuinely want to change but do not know how. And many, many others seek to control and constrain their path of change, rather than create a culture of self-energizing and self-sustaining change that can redefine their marketplace. Over-engineering change can have the effect of stifling it altogether.

In any case, companies that are most in need of change but refuse to do anything about it are those that most risk being forgotten or marginalized in the years ahead. Anyone my side of 40 can name brands or products that are scarcely known to young people today—CompuServe, the Sony Walkman, Oldsmobile, Pan-Am, Schlitz, the DC-10, Zenith, Gourmet, camera film and slide projectors, DEC computers—and dozens of companies that are now subsidiaries or mere historical footnotes: Maytag, Gillette, TWA, Amoco, McDonnell Douglas, NCR, Ameritech, Warner-Lambert, A.G. Edwards, and so many more.

Even among extant companies, the tales of coulda-woulda-shoulda read like ghosts from a Dickens novel. I think of Xerox, whose share of the copier market plummeted from 90 percent in the 1970s to just 20 percent in the 1980s after Japanese manufacturers began selling better machines at lower prices. I think of IBM, which was so busy selling Selectric typewriters that it took a pass on the operating system and applications for personal computers, and instead let a couple of college dropouts start a cute little company they called Microsoft. I think of Blockbuster and Sears and Border's, whose stores today are almost empty.

On the other hand, there is Apple, which has changed radically, and there is Google, whose culture is all about innovation, and there is Ford Motor Co., which is leading a resurgence of American auto manufacturing, and there is Amazon, which is becoming an online main street. American Express and Wells Fargo both got their start running stage coaches across the West, and today they are vibrant and dynamic. Even IBM has learned from its mistakes and reinvented itself.

The CEO of a Fortune 25 company put it well in an inspiring 1993 speech to his senior leadership team: "We need to embrace change—not for its own sake but for our sake. We must understand that the world isn't standing still and that we can't stand still either. People and organizations that delude themselves into thinking they do not need to change are on a course of self-absorption and self-destruction. From the British Empire to the Pickett Slide Rule Company, history is full of giants that failed to adapt."

The choice we face isn't merely between changing and not changing. The choice is between changing and dying. Indeed, in these times of rampant mergers and acquisitions, the choice is as much between changing and being eaten alive for breakfast by a competitor.

It's just that sometimes, the mere thought of change is so intimidating, it is paralyzing. I know. I have been there.

 

Coming on Monday

Finding Strength in Uncertainty

 

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