The Reason I Haven’t Posted in a Week

One week ago today, I was lying flat on my back looking at the low-hanging ceiling of a life-flight helicopter.  My right leg was cocked at an unusual and uncomfortable angle, painfully yelling for attention.  At the same time, a highly trained medical professional relieved the deadly pressure around my collapsed lung.  His skill is the reason I’m alive today and writing this post.

When my wife arrived at the scene of the accident, she was informed by the police that I had been involved in a serious car accident resulting in numerous head injuries, several broken bones and a right hip that was severely broken.  She was told I had been life- flighted to Geisinger Medical Center.

She called our three children – one who lives here in Williamsport PA, one who lives in Fort Collins CO, and one who is married to a pastor and lives in Lancaster PA.  They all immediately stopped what they were doing.  Even the pastor stopped his sermon.  They all rushed to be with their mom and to stand at my side.

A Leadership application: performance requires preparation.

You cannot know the exact situation that will emerge in your context – but you can put policies and procedures in place that enable people to make decisions.  Don’t solve every contingency.

A framework:

• Create a framework rich in values and loaded with mission.
• Crisis provides new opportunities for existing and emerging leaders to perform.
• A framework provides an opportunity for organizational and leadership development.

If you can be tough on values and vision – crystal clear – you enable and enhance performance during times of crisis.

Thank you for your concern.  I won’t be online much.  I’m hopeful for a full recovery in six months.

How to Make Risk Taking Less Risky

I woke up this morning to a few email questions from individuals seeking my perspective, advice, or suggestions. I usually answer questions with questions and when applicable reflect back what I see. Giving advice falls third on my response to email inquires.

One questioner explained their aversion to risk along with a lack luster performance in group meetings. They clam up.

Interestingly, they added a preference for one-on-ones.

They rightly see risk aversion as a road block to achieving big dreams.

My response:

Thanks for dropping a note. I love the self-awareness you possess. I think it enables you to see your best strengths and use them to pursue your best opportunities.

The first things that come to mind are questions about lowering what’s at stake?

1. Is it possible to lower what’s at stake to the point where you can take small steps toward your big objective?
2. Is it possible to avoid an all or nothing situation?
3. Can you identify risk points where failure isn’t final? In other words, are there areas where recovery is easier?
4. Can you make contingency plans if your preferred approach doesn’t work? Jim Collins on “if then” contingencies.

Regarding group meetings:

You might use your one-on-one skill to prepare individuals for meetings you lead. Basically, have a series of short one-on-one meetings with the same agenda you have for the group meeting. Schedule the group meeting after working through issues and building buy-in using one-on-ones. Leverage your strength.

Note: this post is based on, but does not completely reflect the email exchange that prompted it.

What insights or suggestions do you have for dealing with risk aversion?

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Jack Welch Led Gossip Sessions

With typical candor and color, Jack Welch said, “We always had one hell-of-ah gossip session after every meeting.” (ELP, 2011, NYC)

At least two things happened at meetings Jack Welch attended. First, the agenda happened. Second, and more importantly, an H.R. meeting happened during and after.

During meetings Jack and his team looked through the conversation and paid attention to the people in the room.

After meetings, they sat around “gossiping” about the participants of the previous meeting – the meeting after the meeting.

I’ve heard of the meeting before the meeting to organize and plan outcomes. But I’d never heard of the meeting after the meeting; at least not like the one Jack described.

Gossip sessions questions:

1. Did this one blow smoke?
2. Did that one exceed expectations?
3. Who are the consistent performers
4. Who are the excuse makers?
5. Who spoke with candor and acted with courage?
6. Who offered creative ideas?
7. Who contributed most?
8. Which ones led and which ones followed?

Two Central Concerns:

1. Are the right people doing the right job? Think Jim Collins’ bus illustration. Get the wrong people off the bus and get the right people on the bus.
2. How are you supporting the people who drive performance?

Welch’s Number 1 Rule of Leadership:

“Rule 1. Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter (meetings) as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.” Jack Welch

Meetings provide opportunities to evaluate your team – to see through the agenda and focus on the people.

Successful leaders make second things first:

First, create a compelling picture of the future; that’s vision. Second, focus less on where you are going (vision) and more on the people who take you there; that’s performance.

What distracts leaders from focusing on the people?

What do leaders who are focused on people do?

The One and Only Reason to Help

Competent people are insulted when you try to help them do their job. They think, “You don’t trust me.”

Managers must know when to step in or stay out. Help too quickly and you’re a smothering meddler; delay too long and you don’t care.

When it comes to helping others, their confidence levels matter. Overconfident people crash and burn before accepting help. Under-confident people stall unless they receive help.

Be prepared to help when:

1. New threats arise.
2. Employees feel isolated or out of the loop.
3. Staff feels confused. Your greatest asset is creating clarity. Clarity enables action. Tip toeing through confusion blocks performance.
4. People feel under-appreciated. Employees pour themselves out for organizational objectives. Organizations refill employees with compensation, recognition, appreciation, and opportunity.

A key to when:

Frustration tells you when to step in or stay out.

Some are frustrated when you help. Let them struggle. However, don’t leave them hanging. Tell them you are available if they need something and then step away.

Some are frustrated when you don’t help. Explain your reasons for not helping. Give them clarity, permission, resources, training, and timelines to move forward and then step away. You can’t constantly help.

Appropriate levels of frustration enhance performance. Too much frustration stalls performance.

The one reason:

The goal of helping is enabling. Real help takes people to the place where they don’t need help. Any other reason is a dead end.

1. Doing things “for” someone doesn’t help.
2. Doing things “with” someone helps as long as they grow.
3. Letting them struggle helps as long as they are making adequate progress.

Organizational objectives:

Timelines and deliverables may prevent you from taking the time to help. In this case reassign or compensate with added resources or people.

How do you determine when it’s time to help?

Do you tend to help too much or too little?

Five Techniques That Make You Matter Most

The need to tell others you’re important suggests you don’t feel important.

Insecure leaders build, protect, and validate themselves. They spend their days like male peacocks fluffing their tail feathers. “Look at me, I’m beautify; I’m important.”

Fluffing activities suggest people don’t believe they matter.

You must believe you matter:

“Everything you will ever do as a leader is based on one audacious assumption. It’s the assumption that you matter.” Kouzes & Posner.

How to matter most:

You matter most when you make others feel they matter.

Secure leaders courageously build others; they fluff the feathers of others rather than their own.

Confident leaders know that people who feel they matter, will. People who feel they don’t matter, won’t.

5 Ways to matter most by making others matter:

1. Develop their skills. Competence means I matter.
2. Give them authority to make choices. Warren Buffet said, “Delegate almost to the point of abdication.” He owns over 80 businesses. The third richest man in the world (Forbes 2011) tells the CEO’s of his businesses that he doesn’t expect to hear from them more than once a year. He says the business is yours; you run it.
3. Explain their impact. Create goals, milestones, and deliverables that highlight the results of their efforts, positive or negative.
4. Tie daily behaviors to purpose. Tell them what their behaviors mean in practical terms. One nonprofit that worked with single moms brought single moms into the office. Seeing the people they served gave purpose to daily activities.
5. Build their security by acting consistently. Secure people dare to courageously act. Secure people trust that you won’t harm them. Insecure people constantly walk on thin ice.

Has someone made you feel that you matter? What did they do?

How can you make others feel they matter?

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Find this post useful? Check out: “Four Ways to Create Unflinching Boldness.” Don’t press timid people to be bold – Give them hope and they will be bold.

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How to Avoid Irrelevance, Guaranteed!

“Customers are the boss.” A.G. Lafley.

Customers determine what you must do well. You may be the world’s best pickle packer. But, if the world doesn’t value perfectly packed pickles, you are tragically irrelevant.

Unexpected:

I love coming across an unexpected idea. The first core strength of Procter & Gamble – A deep understanding of the customer – shouldn’t have surprised me but it did. (Core strengths are listed in Game-Changer by Lafley and Charan)

Wisdom is beautifully simple. It only took a moment for the genius of P&G’s top core strength to make sense.

Purpose and value:

Drucker said, “The purpose of a business is to create a customer.” It doesn’t take a genius to understand the value of understanding customers.

P&G got it right because the only way to deliver valuable-value is to deeply understand customers. You must understand their aspirations, needs, wants, and desires. Understanding them is the only way you can deliver meaningful solutions, services, and products.

Good but off target:

You might think your core strength is innovation, efficiency, communication, leadership development, or organization. All of these are important, even necessary, but not first.

On target:

The center of your business, leadership, or management is your customer. Without a customer you’re irrelevant. The only way to create, serve, and retain customers is to deeply understand them. P&G nailed it.

The customer-centric leader:

1. Listen to and learn about your followers (customers).
2. Speak to their aspirations not yours.
3. Bring valuable-value to them.
4. Broaden your influence by meeting universal needs and aspirations.
5. Serve others successfully and they’ll follow you.
6. Leaders follow their followers.

Choose your core competency carefully. Every list of core strengths must begin with, “Deep understanding of the customer.” What do you think?

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The Question A.G.Lafley Didn’t Answer

Unspoken words say more than spoken.

I asked A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Procter and Gamble, a question he only partially answered. He began with “if” statements but never finished. Here’s how it went down.

“I’m interested in how leading changed you and what you did to navigate those changes.”

A.G. pushed his fingers up under his chin and paused a good while. “If you know yourself … and if you are comfortable being yourself … if you have passion for what you do and know how you add value …”

A.G. didn’t complete the thought.

Finally he added, “The jobs I had were my chance to practice.”

What A.G. Lafley didn’t say:

A.G. didn’t say leading changed him. Actually, he implied it hadn’t.

I’m sure A.G. learned many things about leading. You can’t lead a multinational, fortune 500 organization and not be a learner.

However, the implication I took from A.G’s. answer was that leading hadn’t changed him as a person.

Warren Bennis sheds light:

This morning I reached for my copy of Bennis’ seminal work, “On Becoming a Leader.” Bennis says, “… people begin to lead that moment when they decide for themselves how to be.”

He goes on, “… [separate] who you are and who you want to be from what the world thinks you are and wants you to be.”

Why leading didn’t change A.G. Lafley:

I don’t think leading changed A.G. Lafley because he had decided “how to be” before he assumed his leadership role.

A choice:

Leaders spend too much time searching for the next management strategy or leadership technique. The “leadership flavor of the day” dominates them.

Choose “how to be” before seeking strategies and adopting methods.

What are the pros and cons of viewing leadership as a way of being before it is a way of doing?

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My exchange with A.G Lafley happened at HSM’s Elite Leadership Program I attended in New York City. It’s was an intimate setting with Jim Collins, A.G. Lafley, Calvin Klein, and Jack Welch.

Defending New Ideas Without being Defensive

All leaders explore, introduce, and defend new ideas. Defending an idea often creates adversarial conversations. You offer points that support your idea and others evaluate, adopt or reject.

You’ve surrendered your power from the beginning.

There’s value in the traditional process but there’s a better way.

Defend less explore more:

1. Explore how new ideas compare and contrast to established ideas.
2. Explore the potential results of new ideas compared and contrasted to the results of old ideas.
3. Define the dangers of clinging to established ideas and the danger of adopting the new.
4. Examine established ideas in light of the new.
5. Acknowledge built in bias for the tried and true and skepticism toward the new.

Our bias toward staying the same is normal and often helpful. Clinging to the known is a platform for making sense of innovative ideas.

Benefits:

Adopting innovative ideas makes sense if they more fully align with reality than established ideas.

Additionally, the benefits of adopting an innovative idea must surpass the benefits of staying the same. Change for the sake of change isn’t worth the effort.

Exploring new ideas must include the questions, “What are the benefits of staying the same?” “What are the benefits of adopting a new idea?” “Does this new idea better align with reality?”

Champion:

Most importantly, someone must tenaciously and gently champion innovation during the exploration. This sounds like defending but it isn’t if you use the questions above.

Values:

The decision to adopt an innovative idea or to remain the same often boils down to values. Colliding values create tension around adopting or rejecting innovations. Wise leaders listen for values. It’s easier to explore, reject, or adopt innovations when groups share values.

When values collide, exploration ends and conversations move from pros and cons to who’s right and who’s wrong.

How do you introduce new ideas in your organization?

What strategies work well for exploring innovative concepts?

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8 Ways to Overcome Fear and Find Courage

Gutless leaders aren’t leaders. Separated from courage the other components of leadership like decision making, problem solving, and vision casting are meaningless drivel.

Cowardly Leaders:

1. Close their ears to criticism.
2. Attack critics.
3. Use anger to fuel action.
4. Make excuses.
5. Refuse to change their minds.
6. Change their mind too quickly.
7. Defend poor choices.
8. Play office politics.
9. Pass the buck.
10. Lie.
11. Don’t trust others.
12. Undermine the success of others.
13. Talk too much so others can’t talk.
14. Correct more than complement.

Courageous leaders:

Courageous leaders speak the brutal facts with kindness. Frequently, anger or fear gives fearful leaders the “courage” to speak the brutal facts. On the down side, anger and fear make them seem belligerent and unapproachable.

Courageous leaders lift others; fearful leaders put others down. One reason leaders withhold honor is they fear high performers. They fear being overshadowed.

Courageous leaders dare to surround themselves with highly talented people. Fearful leaders are more confident around incompetence.

8 Ways to find your courage:

1. Share your fears with trusted friends. Secretly harboring fear gives power to fear.
2. Give yourself to a noble purpose or challenging vision.
3. Find a boss who stands behind you.
4. Make a wise decision that makes someone unhappy and see if the world comes to an end.
5. Think of what you can do. Stop whining about what you can’t do.
6. Take small steps forward rather than giant leaps.
7. Focus on your strengths more than your weaknesses.
8. Know and accept yourself. It’s incredibly easy to define ourselves by the work we do. That creates fear. Take a deep breath and get in touch with your own values and passions and then pursue them.

What turns leaders into cowards?

How can leaders develop courage?

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Don’t miss a single issue of Leadership Freak, subscribe today. It’s free.  It’s private.  It’s always practical and brief.

Go to the main page of Leadership Freak by clicking the banner at the top of this page, look in the right-hand navigation bar, enter your email and click subscribe.  Your email address is always kept private.  Note:  if it doesn’t arrive, check your spam filter for a confirmation email.

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Other posts on courage:

Finding Your Courage

Ten Steps Gutsy Leaders Take

How to Bring Caution and Courage Together

One Useful Strategy for Becoming More Useful

Peter Drucker encouraged leaders to ask, “How do we make ourselves useful?”

Daniel Pink’s research indicates three drives motivate us.

1. Autonomy: the desire to be self-directed.
2. Mastery: the urge to get better at stuff.
3. Purpose: making a contribution.

Combining Drucker and Pink:

Leaders are useful when they honor the contribution of others.

Honoring contributions:

1. Explain the positive impact others make.
2. Highlight the positive qualities others have.

Explaining positive impact is good. But, highlighting the positive qualities that got the job done is exponentially better. For example …

Saying, “I’m impressed with your creativity when you solved our production problem.” is better than, “Thanks for helping us meet our production targets.”

People focus:

People get lost behind production pressures; we make them cogs in the machine. Overcome “cog mentality” by refocusing on people.

Refocus on people by honoring them more than production.

Leaders who say, “It’s all about the people.” and honor production over people are inconsistent hypocrites. I’m not suggestion you stop honoring production. But if it’s all about the people, then focus on the people.

If you honor them, they will produce.

Added bonus:

When you honor the talents and skills of others, they will honor your wisdom with loyalty.

Too much:

It’s impossible to honor positive qualities too much as long as you always connect honor with current, specific examples of performance. Always include performance. Excluding performance lowers honor to a compliment. Compliments are good, but honor is better.

You get what you honor.

What are some useful ways to honor people?

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