Archive for September, 2008

The Huffington Post ran a recent article on this topic. It was serious, but generated all kinds of interesting comments (some are very funny). Take a look, have some fun, and think about what questions have changed or could change your life?

Enjoy.

I spend time “behind closed doors” with leaders, listening to things that they wouldn’t necessarily tell anyone else. Sometimes, I am able to hear things that others may not hear.

One of the things I hear when I listen well is the courage it takes to be a leader. We often don’t stop to notice the seemingly small, everyday actions our leaders take because their behavor is clouded by the folklore of leadership. We expect them to part the waters and make the impossible happen, when realistically, many are showing courage in small but significant ways all of the time.

As an executive coach, I have a view of leadership courage that rarely has to do with making water part. I am often struck by how difficult it is to do the every day stuff that makes a leader, a leader.

Some examples of courageous acts that never cease to astound me include:

• Standing up for an employee when nobody else will;
• To delicately “coach” the boss;
• To alter one’s own behavior in ways that can be uncomfortable but is for the “greater good” of the organization;
• To give credit for success away to others.

Even now, when the photos of dejected Lehman employees carrying their boxes out of their offices is fresh in our minds, it is wise to remember that there are lots of good leaders out there. When boss-bashing seems to be the norm (and in many cases, it is deserved), it becomes important for us to recognize that there are good people trying to lead their organizations and communities in the best ways they know how under very difficult circumstances. And because the stuff of everyday leadership seems insignificant, these leaders do what they do without notice, much less thanks or praise.

Being a leader, by its very title, can be a lonely job. It sometimes pays well, but not always. It can be gratifying, but more often, it is just plain hard work. It requires taking risks that can transcend an individual and put him or her in personal peril.

Maybe I’m stepping out on a limb here. But I when I listen from behind closed doors, I hear just how hard it is to do the job of “leadership”, let alone do it well. Lets spend some time looking for what our leaders are doing right and celebrating their courage.

At a time when more attention is paid to sports figures who are in trouble, we are reminded of some of the good guys, who exemplify the best in sportsmanship and leadership. Derek Jeter is such a person.

A home-town hero. I admit that Mr. Jeter was raised in the neighborhood of my adopted community of Kalamazoo Michigan. So I may be a little biased. The stories about him and his family (I worked with his mother and had occasional contact with her in a past corporate-life world) have always been surrounded in home-town values and the importance of close ties.

A positive role model. Beyond the status of hero in Kalamazoo, we benefit from his generosity and modelling “giving back”. His Turn 2 foundation supports our local youth with a program called Jeter’s Leaders, a youth leadership and social change program. Mr. Jeter occasionally visits Kalamazoo, making sure to spend some time with the children in the program and to visit students at his high school alma mater, Kalamazoo Central High School.

An example of humility. On Tuesday Derek Jeter broke Lou Gehrig’s record for hits at Yankee stadium. An Associated Press report of the record he broke indicated that the sellout crowd of 52,558 applauded him when he landed on first base, and kept on applauding. After about a minute, Mr. Jeter took off his helmet and waved it, and later said “I’m always a little uncomfortable in those situations.”

Manager Joe Girardi said that Jeter embodies what people want to see in a player: a guy who goes about his business, staying out of the headlines, does a lot of great things, is important to the community, and gives back all the time. Here’s to more sports icons who exemplify leadership at its best!

In ancient Greece, a “Symposium” was a meeting for convivial and intellectual conversation.

After a year of planning with a great team, I have just returned from Chicago where the International Association of Coaching in Organizations (ICCO) held a 2.5 day symposium on “Executive Coaching for Sustainable Leadership”. As is ICCO’s norm, this event included all stakeholders who are interested in furthering the study, learning, processes, and professionalism of executive coaching in organizations. It was truly an international event, with attendees from Europe and India.

Kept small, so as to retain some semblance of intimacy and confidentiality, thirdy six of us proceeded with case studies presented by individuals in business organizations. We then broke into smaller groups, with some of the participants coaching and others consulting with the presenters in a confidential, safe atmosphere.

One of the ICCO board members, Bill Berquist, said that he figures each presenter actually gets about $10,000-$15,000 of coaching and consulting services in the process. We heard from each of them following the process and learned that all took home new ideas, some more profound than others, and some with concrete, actionable items.

Sustainable Leadership is a big topic – and the planning team was quite intentional about choosing such an amorphous title. It allowed for a lot of space and creativity. We spent a half day on “animateur” questions around the topic, and came to no specific conclusions, but it seemed all involved walked away with new thinking and ideas. This was okay, since the entire symposium was about the conversation, and opening our minds to new thought.

Saturday’s “rump session” (because it came at the end – the “rump” – of the symposium) deepened the conversations through facilitated conversation which allowed us to co-create the questions and subsequent dialog. Since this was linked to what we experienced and discussed the first two days, it was a marvelous way to cap off the symposium by provoking additional ideas.

The individuals attending from business organizations indicated that it was a chance for them to step out of their daily routine, take a breath, have some deep discussions about what mattered to them on the topics and to take away some new ideas to help them move forward in their organizations. I do believe that everyone walked away renewed.

Since I was on the planning team, I may be a bit biased. But I walked away grateful for the time in dialog with people who also care about sustaining leadership and the impact that coaching can make to that.

From the September 2008 Aspire Newsletter:

I have great respect for leaders who are willing to own up and step forward to resolving situations that everyone else is complaining about. It takes great courage to admit “I have a role to play in this situation” and to step into the leadership spotlight to make changes for the greater good.

However, sometimes a leader can get stuck in the blame game; whining and criticizing others for not changing a bad situation. Criticism and judgment about a team that isn’t functioning well, an employee who is underperforming, or a boss who is problematic can be cathartic, but whining doesn’t fix anything. Generally, I find that leaders are anxious to take action to do their part in resolving the situation but get stuck on defining their role and the action to be taken.

One of the things that good coaches can do is to help a leader who is stuck in blame, criticism or whining get clear about their responsibility in frustrating situations. With this issue, I’m giving you a tool to coach yourself when you are stuck.

I’m usually not much on gimmicks, but I have been known to use three simple questions that a leader can remember to ask themselves to get started on accepting responsibility and taking action. These questions can also be used by the leader when coaching others who may be playing the “blame game” to help them understand their responsibility in a situation. I hope this month’s “Dear Leader” letter will help you and your team when you are stuck in the blame game.

A Letter to Leaders: Three Questions to Stop the Blame Game

Dear Leader,

I’ve heard you complain about situations that you are not happy about. You blame your team, your manager, or your organization for a bad situation. All of your negative criticism isn’t changing anything.

Although you know that you cannot actually change others, you can change how you view and react to the situation. This may be just the catalyst needed to turn things around. You already care enough about what is happening to be critical about it. The next step is to begin to become unstuck by deciding what you want to do about it.

There are three important questions you can ask yourself to start the process of change:

1. What is my role in this situation? Sometmes, a leader needs to own up to the fact that they’ve had some part in the circumstances that they are unhappy about. This isn’t about assigning personal responsibility when it doesn’t exist (it may not). Rather, it’s about seeing clearly that the individual, team or organization may have created the situation with some help from you. Even non-action or silence on your part could have allowed uncomfortable circumstances to get to where they are now.

2. Do I have a responsibility in resolving this situation? You may believe that you have no responsibility in resolving the situation at all. This is perfectly ok. You can choose to excuse yourself from it. In which case, the honorable thing to do would be to stop complaining about it. However, if you decide that you have some responsibility to take action, continue on to question number three.

3. What is the first step I can take? Often, one small step is all that is needed. This first step may point the way to further action or it may be enough in and of itself to put the situation to rest. Just do it!

Answering the three simple questions and taking some action, (including choosing not to take any action) may be all it takes to resolve the situation or change your mind set about it. Either way, you’ve made a choice, and you can now move out of the blame game.

Warm Regards, Mary Jo

Remember your mother counting to ten before she handed out punishment when you were being naughty? “I’m going to count to ten, young lady, and by the time I finish counting, you should have all of your toys put away”. Seems there is some rationale for this – both for the child to complete the task, but also for mom to pause and calm down a bit to reassess her reaction. (Leaders everywhere can thank their mothers for being a great role model for hitting the pause button).

The data on pausing our emotional response and thinking it through rationally cancels out the impression that we have no control over our reactions. Mom was right. Leading scientists believe that we have more control than we thought.

New technologies that are imaging the brain in “real time” are shedding light on the importance of pausing to consider an emotional reaction. These studies are allowing neuroscientists to chart areas of the brain in ways that may show us how to deal with our emotions in a more productive way in the workplace.

And, since a leader can set the emotional tone of the workplace, the implications of all of this research could be astonishing for leadership.

Studies suggest that the more aware we are of our moods and emotions, the more active our prefrontal lobe becomes. This is the part of the brain that is responsible for rational thinking. Pausing to allow a potentially out of control reaction to reach the preforontal lobe in the brain may permit a leader to express more reasoned response.

This means that by being aware and intentional of our moods and emotions, rather than allowing knee-jerk reactions, a leader can be more thoughtful and consider how to respond in a way that serves him and others in his organization best.

So hit the pause button in order to be intentional about a situation that may cause you to react irrationally. How? Some suggestions as follows.

Consider the last time your emotions got away from you and you reacted in a way that didn’t serve you or your organization best:

• What was the trigger that set you off?
• What was the emotion that was expressed? What was the emotional trigger behind the emotion? (hint: the trigger may not be the same as the emotion was expressed. Fear may be expressed as anger)?
• Where did you feel that emotion (may be anywhere in the body. There is a reason we use the term “gut reaction” for example)?
• How did you really want to react to the situation?

Following this post-mortem, you can start asking these questions in real time as you feel your emotions getting the better of you, before you react. With practice and a few deep breaths, you may be able to hit the pause button and become more intentional about your reactions.

Dan McCarthy, of Great Leadership blogging fame (one of my favorite blogs on leadership) has named his picks for the 3rd edition of the Leadership Development Carnival. Intentional Leadership gained a mention with our post entitled “Increasing Your Social IQ”.

Thanks Dan, and congrats to all of the submissions. Check it out. Lots of great stuff here.

You may be working too hard. Not in the way you think – I’m ruling out physical labor and long hours, although the latter may be related to the topic of this post.

So many leaders are micromanaging, and telling their employees WHAT to do and HOW to do it, that they work themselves into high stress and long hours that is needless. When a leader learns to use coaching skills to help employees figure out how to get the work done on their own, and when a leader learns to let go and trust that employees will get the work done well…….sometimes magic happens.

You are then able to focus on the big things – the vision, communication, setting the tone for the organization. The fun stuff.

How to change your thinking and actions to making your employees accountable? Some first thoughts and steps:

• Figure out the roots your aversion to allowing employees to do what needs to be done. Often this is a control issue – a bit of narcisism, perhaps, that you are the only one who can do it right. Is this true?
• Do you have the right people in the seats to get the work done? If not, some “reorganization” or training may be in order.
• Assuming your organization is in a spot to begin to trust and empower your employees, start by communicating the “WHAT” that needs to be done. Listen to what the employees have to say about that. Allow them to ask questions about the WHAT.
• Let go of the how. You may need to coach employees with some well thought-out questions that will assist them in figuring out the “how”. Some examples:

What is the first step you can take?

What will be your biggest challenge here?

What will empower you to fulfill your commitment?

What barriers are in your way to completing this?

• Let go of the need to be involved in the HOW. Be clear in communicating how you want to be informed of progress, and hold the employees accountable to delivery as agreed.
• When the HOW is complete, reassess your aversion to empowering employees. What would you do differently? Are you able to begin coaching them to come up with the “WHAT”?

From my August 28 column in West Michigan Business Review:

Sometimes inspiration about leadership comes from unlikely places. You may discover valuable lessons in life and leadership if you are open to the surprises the world offers you every day.
Last week I was walking through an airport with time to spare. In the middle of a concourse a pianist caught my attention. He proved to be a leader in his own way ?€“ a unique individual, yet very similar to leaders everywhere.

Before I saw Stephen Marq playing (www.stephenmarq.com), I was surprised by a beautiful Steinway Grand piano and the lovely, poignant music pouring from it. Approaching the piano bench, I saw Mr. Marq putting his entire soul into the music. It was a moving and engaging experience.

As I got closer, I could see that he was completely focused and absorbed in creating a powerful mood in the midst of a very busy airport. People were streaming by in the usual fashion, in a hurry to get to their flights, not noticing. However, some had stopped to crowd around the piano, obviously captivated by the music. Several children were fascinated with the open piano top, watching the strings move as Mr. Marq played. They were swaying, talking, laughing and moving in, wanting to be close to him; a few were right at his elbow. Others were trying to reach into the instrument to touch the strings. A few adults had money out, waiting to purchase CDs.

The pianist took no notice of the chaotic airport scene or of the children or adults nearby. He was completely absorbed in his music. After observing for awhile, I moved on to my gate. But I felt compelled to return to ask this man some questions ?€“ to deepen my understanding about what I`d observed. What made it possible for him to stay so focused in the midst of chaos? How was he able to project so much emotional energy that the mood of his music was reflected by those who listened?

Our dialog provided some insight to my observations of that scene: a musician at a beautiful grand piano undeterred by powerful distractions. What lessons can a leader learn from this?

?· Focus: Focus is important to engaging others. A leader must have the intention and discipline of focus to “play the music” that will compel others to follow in the midst overwhelming distractions.

?· Dedication: There is no doubt that this pianist was dedicated to his craft. The complexity of the music he played required years of study, reflection and practice. Great leaders devote this same effort to learning their craft.

?· Mood: Mr. Marq sets the mood for those who listen to his music, and that mood is contagious. His music engages and captivates. A leader can also set a mood that will engage and captivate followers.

Pause for a moment in your rush through today`s work. What surprising lessons are waiting for you?

copyright 2008 by Business Review