Influence & Insight | December 2021

Leadership Story | Leaders Provide Vision

Jim Collins has updated the original version of Beyond Entrepreneurship in the more recent BE 2.0, referencing prior findings from Built to Last, Good to Great, and Great by Choice. In short, Collins believed an update was in order. In the spirit of our own self-improvement and in particular, living our leadership philosophy, we may find chapters 3 and 4, Leadership Style and Vision, respectively, particularly useful.

In Chapter three, Collins simplifies his definition of leadership:

“Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done.”

That’s it. Short and sweet. He goes further - providing Seven Elements of Leadership Style:

1. Authenticity
2. Decisiveness
3. Focus
4. Personal Touch
5. Hard/Soft People Skills
6. Communication
7. Ever Forward

It’s worth taking a look at the first element, authenticity, and considering how well our actions model an example others wish to follow. Our leadership philosophy is just a set of words for anyone to hear but our actions will be noticed, whether we’re paying attention or not. Collins urges us to show our convictions by conveying a ferocious intensity about our values, beliefs and desires. Perhaps our leadership philosophy may benefit from an update as well, with a corresponding commitment to doing what we say we will do. Notice that none of the seven elements mention being the subject matter expert or project manager. My favorite Collins question from the section, reflecting on time spent at West Point is:

“What Cause Do You Serve?”

In Chapter 4, Collins diagrams the term Vision as an organization’s Core Values & Beliefs leading to Purpose and subsequently leading to Mission, in essence combining the three. When composing or updating our leadership philosophy, all three vision elements should likewise be described, perhaps starting with an inspirational or motivational description of where, why and what we as leaders are moving toward.

Leaders Provide Vision.

The Power of Full Engagement | Book Review

Several of our leadership workshops (Energize2Lead or E2L, Personal Leadership Philosophy & Setting Leadership Priorities) describe the importance of energy as our basic leadership fuel. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz tell us why via the concept of full engagement, in this lifetime work which should occupy any leader's bookshelf alongside Crucial Conversations.

New Paradigm | Full Engagement

To be fully engaged, we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest (p. 5).

The authors summarize the new energy (leadership) paradigm (p. 6):

Old Paradigm

Manage time
Avoid stress
Life is a marathon
Downtime is wasted time
Rewards fuel performance
Self-discipline rules
The power of positive thinking

New Paradigm

Manage energy
Seek stress
Life is a series of sprints
Downtime is productive time
Purpose fuels performance
Rituals rule
The power of full engagement

A good portion of the authors' research comes from working with top-performing athletes, who spend a great deal of time preparing for relatively short duration competitions. In contrast, the performance demands that most people face in their everyday work environments dwarf those of any professional athletes (p. 8). As good leaders, we should consider daily our expectations of others and the corresponding energy required for positive outcomes.

Four principles develop the engagement (pp. 9-14) model, forming the book's outline:

• Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual
• Because energy capacity diminishes both with overuse and with underuse, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal
• To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same way that elite athletes do
• Positive energy rituals -- highly specific routines for managing energy -- are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance

After developing the full engagement model (about two thirds of the book), the need for underlying purpose is explored, followed by self-examination (audit) and how to develop rituals.

Engagement Rhythm

Eugene Aserinsky and Nathan Klietman discovered that sleep occurs in smaller cycles of 90-120 minute segments (p. 31), called the "basic rest-activity cycle," or (BRAC), which also extends to our waking lives via ultradian rhythms. We should therefore consider daily cadence structuring our energy management challenge. This could be challenging, since we live in a world that celebrates work and activity, and ignores renewal and recovery (p. 37).

A Dynamics of Engagement (p. 38) diagram helps, recommending both high and low energy (red and pink, respectively) descriptions of fully engaged and fully disengaged-type conditions. Put another way, our daily patterns should toggle between the red and pink squares, while avoiding the negative (gray) quadrants. If we wish to improve, or build capacity, we must expose ourselves to more stress -- followed by adequate recovery (p. 43).

An interesting nugget backs this up: The authors noticed what the very best professional tennis players did between points - they instinctively used the time between points to maximize their recovery (p. 32).

Our Four Energy Sources | E2L

Our physical energy, the size of our energy reservoir, depends on the patterns of our breathing, the foods we eat and when we eat them, the quantity and quality of our sleep, the degree to which we get intermittent recovery during the day, and the level of our fitness (pp. 48-49). This is our foundation and it's critically important. According to the National Academy of Sciences, medical errors, many of them at least partly caused by fatigue among doctors, account for nearly 100,000 deaths a year, more than from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer and AIDS combined (p. 57).

Knowing our (and others') E2L profiles can be a great help, since emotional intelligence is simply the capacity to manage emotions skillfully in the service of high positive energy and full engagement (p. 72). How can we do this? Like Covey's important but not urgent quadrant, the authors found making enjoyable, fulfilling and affirming activities priorities (p. 76). A series of useful case studies (pp. 84-89) discuss expansion of emotional capacity, similar to Flip Flippen's concept of relational capacity. Keep in mind negative emotions (think E2L instinctive dimension) serve survival but they are very costly and energy inefficient (p. 92).

The key supportive muscles that fuel optimal mental energy include mental preparation, visualization, positive self-talk, effective time management, and creativity (p. 94). Thinking burns an enormous amount of energy. The brain represents just 2 percent of the body's weight, but requires almost 25 percent of its oxygen (p. 96)! How can we wisely use our mental energy? Reflection and journaling can help. According to Betty Edwards, the highest form of creativity depends on a rhythmic movement between engagement and disengagement, thinking and letting go, activity and rest (p. 98). Does this mean time management doesn't matter? The authors tell clients clients it is not an end in itself. Rather it serves the higher goal of effective energy management (p. 106).

Recall that declaration of our values is the cornerstone our our Personal Leadership Philosophy. The connection to a deeply held set of values and to a purpose beyond our self-interest -- is the most powerful source of our motivation (p. 110). We should periodically ask ourselves (and others) how much of our leadership energies are focused beyond ourselves. More than at any other level, spiritual energy expenditure and renewal are deeply intertwined and tend to occur simultaneously (p. 113).

Purpose | Audit | Rituals

If growth and development take place from the bottom up -- from physical to emotional to mental to spiritual -- change is powered from the top down (p. 131). Acknowledging our metaphysical side takes courage. The simple, embarrassing reality is that we [often] feel too busy to search for meaning (p. 132).

Loehr and Schwartz describe positive purpose becoming a more powerful and enduring source of energy in our lives in three ways: when its source moves from negative to positive, external to internal and self to others (p. 135). As leaders, we can ask ourselves if the daily application of our and our organization's core values satisfy all three criteria.

Pages 154-155 offer an excellent cost/benefit (audit) chart with the most common (to the authors) observed expedient behaviors along with corresponding short-term benefits and long-term consequences. For example, multitasking may feel productive yet eventually leads to shallowness of connection to others.

We may audit our energy expenditure with the following questions (p. 157):

• How do your habits of sleeping, eating and exercising affect your available energy?
• How much negative energy do you invest in defense spending -- frustration, anger, fear, resentment, envy -- as opposed to positive energy utilized in the service of growth and productivity?
• How much energy do you invest in yourself, and how much in others, and how comfortable are you with that balance?
• How much energy do you spend worrying about, feeling frustrated by and trying to influence events beyond your control?
• Finally, how wisely and productively are you investing your energy?

Positive energy rituals are powerful on three levels. They help us to insure that we effectively manage energy in the service or whatever mission we are on. They reduce the need to rely on our limited conscious will and discipline to take action. Finally, rituals are a powerful means by which to translate our values and priorities into action... (p. 166). Think of all the daily activities we don't spend energy thinking about: driving a car, walking, eating, etc. Rituals conserve energy.

There are several key elements in building effective energy-management rituals but none so important as specificity of timing and the precision of behavior during the thirty-to sixty-day acquisition period (p. 173).

Conclusion | Leadership

It's all about personal energy alignment.

Coaching Story | Why Be a Leader?

A common theme, or struggle, in recent coaching sessions, has been the realization, sometimes surprisingly so, that leadership is not easy and often elusive. Organizations assign different terms such as manager, supervisor, director and others, but the point is the same - a newly promoted leader whose responsibility is team performance which relies on the activities of others.

Consider a typical professional educational timeline: K-12 schooling - 13 years. Undergraduate college - 4 years. Master’s degree - maybe two more years. Many of us are 25-30 years old entering a profession where our primary emphasis and reward structures have been based on individual achievement and educational attainment. Aggravating this focus on self are common organizational structures indicating:

• The best in the organization compete for promotions
• The higher positions in the organization are manager/leader roles
• One must achieve these positions to earn more money

It’s as though promotion to a supervisory or leader role requires one to abandon much of what we’re been trained to believe and have been rewarded for up until that point. If one feels jolted or shocked in the new leader role, it’s understandable and quite normal. When Jim Collins visited West Point years ago, he was surprised at how much young cadets responded to an ethic or spirit of service, especially since there was nearly no financial compensation offered the cadets.

Pick up a newspaper today, and notice the difficulty organizations are having trying to get employees to return after working from home:

WSJ Article

It appears the legacy organizational structures and reward mechanisms are not so persuasive anymore, brought to light via the Covid environment.

Here’s a couple ways to embrace a broader, leadership perspective not focused on self which may help. First, adopt an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity or comparative mindset. Collins’ leadership style and elements are helpful here along with his broad vision definition.

We may go further, exploring the nature of human engagement, which relies on all four of our sources of energy, richly describe in The Power of Full Engagement.

The sooner we adopt a more holistic, and more human definition of leadership, the richer the rewards are when in pursuit of something greater than ourselves. Or, as Susan Packard, co-founder of HGTV realized:

“The big aha moment was realizing it was no longer about racking up my own personal wins.”

That’s a great answer to the question Why Be a Leader?

Influence & Insight | November 2021

Leadership Story | Leaders Collaborate

Silo Breakers. Compassionate Foodies. Collaborative Leaders. These are three self-described Team Names from leadership groups from the past month. Such names, and the thoughts leading to them provide further proof that Zoom Breakout rooms can be a terrific environment for deep sharing. This is also the typical time of year when organizations launch the often overestimated Strategic Plan for the upcoming year. Take a look at this Harvard Business Review (HBR) Article and five common strategic planning myths:

Myth 1 Execution Equals Alignment
Myth 2 Execution Means Sticking to the Plan
Myth 3 Communication Equals Understanding
Myth 4 A Performance Culture Drives Execution
Myth 5 Execution Should Be Driven From the Top

Whether in a virtual breakout room, or during an in-person sharing session, multiple teams recently identified the same issues as HBR authors Donald Sull, Rebecca Homkes and Charles Sull — that people in other units are not much more reliable than external partners are. It’s the same thing that was discussed over and over with all three groups. How can we think about this?

First, when we align our internal goals, and provide expectations through our Personal Leadership Philosophy, we’ve only completed the first phase leading to effective strategic execution. Consider individuals with dominant green and dominant blue Energize2Lead (E2L) colors, or the team dynamics profile of the most recent graduating leadership team cohort. A superficial reading of their team profile may conclude it’s a group of shy introverts. Maybe so, but this is also a group temperamentally suited for collaboration, the ideal strategy for Leveraging the Power of Conflict.

We should consider a second strategy phase consisting of sharing and aligning our goals across units, continuously sharing knowledge, and adapting to dynamic conditions such as our Covid environment. We may go even further by more widely sharing our leadership philosophy and requesting feedback, especially if our philosophy is aligned with our organization’s mission and values.

Interestingly, many of last month’s leadership course attendees didn’t really think of themselves as leaders. Maybe it was the lack of ego, or dominant red in their E2L profiles. More likely it had to do with lack of title or position. Whatever the reason, quite the contrary was on display. The HBR authors cite Larry Bossidy’s best-seller Execution, and that effective execution in large, complex organizations emerges from countless decisions and actions at all levels. Seems like it’s time to ask Larry for a copy of his book and share more of his findings.

Leaders Collaborate.

The Culture Fix | Book Review

The takeaway via Doug Heuertz, CEO of The Preferred Group:

“But what I learned… was that the more emotionally intelligent you
are, the greater results you’ll get as a leader and as a CEO.” (p. 11)

Will Scott offers a most practical “how to” guide for cultural transformation, an excellent companion to S. Chris Edmond’s the culture engine. Scott prescribes nine activities via nine chapters in nine weeks, akin to an Academy Leadership staggered Leadership Development Program (LDP). The lasting value of Scott’s book is its focus on visual communication of organizational values.

People think visually. People think in language. When words and visual elements are closely intertwined, we create something new and augment our emotional intelligence (p. xvii).

Scott’s emphasis on values reminds us of Jim Collins and likewise our Academy Leadership Core Values Alignment workshop. A recommended sequence: Define core values in a workshop, then read a story such as Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness describing how to gather internal feedback, and use Scott’s numerous examples how to visually share the values both internally and externally.

Take a look at Great Southwestern Construction’s visual focus and recognition of values. You’ll see the same visuals inside the company’s locations that you see on LinkedIn.

Do people in your organization make everyday decisions based on core values? We should. To build or rebuild your company’s culture, you must make a similar priority – you have to put culture above all else (p. xxiii). That’s the “why” of The Culture Fix – to stick up for employees so that they might love where they work and why they work (xxix).

This book review aligns Scott’s findings with development of a Personal Leadership Philosophy, a Core Values Alignment Workshop and highlights terrific ways to visually share the results.

Alignment | Personal Leadership Philosophy

In his youth Scott observed with each job that [he] held in the interim, [he] saw how a leader’s values affected his/her workforce (p. xix). He also noticed that those who risked the least survived because it was an environment that was disinterested in change and lacked any sense of teamwork or cooperation (p. xx). That may work well in a prior generation, in a static environment. Not so much today.

We should feel vulnerable when composing our leadership philosophy. If you don’t emotionally engage your team, they will have no reason to feel or act on those values (p. 3).

Consider the Global Talent Trends Survey (with almost 8,000 people surveyed) which determined 3 factors that create a successful and efficient workforce: workplace/schedule flexibility, commitment to health and well-being, and working with a purpose (p. xxiv). Are any of these factors your leadership priorities or part of your operating principles?

Scott distills the most successful leaders are the ones with the following five traits (pp. 4-7):

• They have a “culture-first” mentality
• They’re closely involved with the people operations
• They champion the CoreVals (core values) internally and externally
• They really see their employees
• They recognize their culture champions

How well do you and your staff list and align your values, into words (p. 25)?

Vision statements are powerful, especially at the beginning of our leadership philosophy. Via reflection and journaling, we can (p. 130):

• First, Look Back
• Next, Consider Where You Are Now
• Then, Look to the Future

Then put our thoughts into words and share. A good example:

By 2021, improve it! will have trained thirty-thousand people in our live improv training sessions so that they can become better versions of themselves and keep growing personally and professionally (p. 132).

To prevent regression, avoid, reduce, or purge the following non-negotiables:

• Negative employees
• Difficult conversation avoidance
• Fear of conflict
• Lack of trust
• Avoidance of accountability
• Disregard for team objectives
• Sexual harassment or other anti-social behaviors

Alignment | Core Values Alignment Workshop

To start: The word culture comes from the Latin work cultura, meaning to grow or cultivate (p. xxi). Which means simply listing values and posting them on the wall is not nearly enough. Culture is an unseen force that guides and influences key interactions between people who keep businesses and organizations running (p. ix).

Scott has a great idea: When listing candidate core values, think of the associated business stories (p. 23). First, they’ll be authentic, second, you can then think of ways to visualize the story. Scott shares a listing of SABREs four core values and definitions plus normative behavioral statements (pp. 31-33):

Empowerment: More freedom to perform tasks as workers saw fit.

Prepared and engaged: Doing the job right at the factory, test site, and warehouse gives consumers the tools they need to be prepared and engaged – to support a 360-degree awareness of their environments while increasing personal security.

On page 51, Scott shares an example Core Value of Respect from his first company, Waer Systems:

• We hold our colleagues, partners, and customers in high regard
• We are open about issues, plans, results, and problems
• We trust each other and are not shy of conflict-for-good

Alignment & Rollout | Design | Visualize

Scott offers wonderful visual examples – clever pictures – in addition to simply words describing core values on pages 45-48. Terrific idea. He goes much further leading to a visual Core Workflow diagram illustrating business processes and their relationship to core values (see pp. 116 – 121).

A couple other nuggets:

On page 79 is a circular core values diagram that looks a bit like Academy Leadership’s challenge coin. It’s a great challenge coin template.

Scott encourages incorporating values into (p. 91):

• Daily Huddles
• Weekly Team Meetings
• Weekly Management Meetings
• Townhall/All-hands Monthly Meetings (in which awards are distributed)

Award the culture champions. Like our Accountability Workshop case study “Walk the Talk” award. There’s a great example on page 8 – the Pepper Group Kick-Ass Award.

Summary

Scott offers good ways to calculate Return on Investment (p. 146):

• Goal achievement reports
• Financial reports
• Employee evaluations
• Quarterly and annual surveys
• Consultant interviews
• Spontaneous testing
• Gut checks

It’s a nice combination of quantitative and qualitative measures.

He also shares offers a Culture Index Tool (www.cultureczars.com/the-culture-fix-book) which reminds us of Edmonds’ end of chapter culture surveys.

“Culture is an unseen force that guides and influences
key interactions between people who keep businesses
and organizations running.” (p. ix)

Will Scott generously provided a copy of his book for review.

Coaching Story | Leaders Self-Evaluate

College football season is a great time of the year. A recent coaching session triggered a thought about college football players who, rather than declare early for the NFL draft, decide to complete their last year of college, completing their degree and continuing to develop as better ball players in a team environment.

Precisely the same thing happened in our coaching session:

• Team performing very well
• Catching a lot of fall out contract money
• Greatly reduced number of direct reports by developing and promoting others
• Peers are of a higher rank
• Championing internal leadership training
• Interested in a 360 review for feedback and improvement

The client is eligible for a a promotion this calendar year, and has multiple sponsors as advocates. However, during our third coaching session, the client revealed more interest in further team development and self-improvement first, maintaining work/life balance, and perhaps applying for the promotion in an upcoming 2022 cycle. How about that?

We should keep this in mind during our coaching sessions. When we ask those we are coaching for a self-evaluation, we’re more likely to receive a similar response, based on honesty, humility and self-reflection. Many times we are tempted in the coaching role to evaluate, usually based on limited and/or incorrect assumptions rather than underlying truths, which likely formed the basis for this client’s prudent decision.

Leaders Self-Evaluate.

Influence & Insight | October 2021

Leadership Story | Leaders are Active

A majority of course attendees of late have shared that either they have never attended a single leadership workshop or their organization has never sponsored such an event. As a result, the idea of viewing oneself as a leader may be new or even uncomfortable. Recent observations include:

• a fixation on having no direct reports, evident during self-evaluation questions
• drafting a leadership largely in third person
• repeatedly using the term leadership as a noun

Unintentionally we may appear passive and disconnected from our organization when exhibiting these behaviors. In Dave McKeown’s The Self-Evolved Leader, he offers a likely cause:

“We’re barely starting to move away from the old, industrial-era
way of thinking about leadership and its relentless focus on
top-down hierarchy and planning.”

It’s as though lacking a formal, authoritative, established leader title we blind ourselves — unable to notice many instances of daily leadership activities we perform and subsequently believing we actually don’t lead at all. During a recent international webinar with nearly a hundred professional managers in attendance, several attendees treated the term leader with apparent scorn, perhaps reflecting their jaundiced internal view of their organizational culture. Wow!

Let’s consider three takeaways from Academy Leadership Excellence courses as our toolkit for countering these often self-limiting, passive tendencies:

1. Challenge Coin. On the last course day, every attendee receives a challenge coin recognizing completion of a Personal Leadership Philosophy. One side of the coin is actually inscribed with “My Personal Leadership Philosophy.” as a reminder for us every day to do what we say we will do.

2. A small blue “Challenge Card” is likewise shared with all attendees. The card, inspired by Marshall Goldsmith’s book Triggers, lists five questions:

Did I do my best today to:

…live my Leadership Philosophy?
…prioritize my time and set clear goals?
…communicate effectively?
…coach my people?
…create a motivational climate?

Each of these questions intentionally triggers our minds by challenging self-improvement.

3. A Journaling Book - for capturing periodic reflections on our leader performance. Maybe the best of all habits.

How do you fall prey to passivity? What active leader improvement steps do you take?

Leaders are Active.

The Self-Evolved Leader | Book Review

“We’re barely starting to move away from the old, industrial-era
way of thinking about leadership and its relentless focus on
top-down hierarchy and planning.” (p. 2)

Dave McKeown’s most readable work counters the passive mindset many of us have, especially early in our careers, that we are not and will not become leaders – those leaders are people of unreachable and unrealistic achievement we’ll never compare to. We may think of his book as a more focused version of Marshall Goldsmith’s Triggers’ self-coaching treatise.

McKeown observes that our role models for leadership are the visionaries who completely reimagine a product, an industry, or the world (p. 5), which can easily make one feel insignificant, when in fact, there is plenty of room for leaders who are less focused on pushing the boundaries and more likely to press for evolution rather than revolution (p. 6).

Parts 2 and 3, The Key Elements of Self-Evolved Leadership and Mastering the Self-Evolved Leadership Disciplines, respectively, comprise the heart of the book. Our review highlights connections between active self-leadership techniques mentioned in McKeown’s book with several Academy Leadership workshop teachable points of view.

The Passive Landscape

In our Setting Leadership Priorities workshops, the significance of important yet not urgent activities emerge. We’ve allowed every input into our daily routine to become “urgent” and spend most of our time stuck fighting fires and lurching from crisis to crisis rather than affording ourselves the headspace to think about what’s important… (p. 20) The Covid environment has seemingly exacerbated the situation as many of us now live with additional distractions working from home. As a result, we often seek heroes, but most heroic leaders find themselves in an almost addictive feedback loop (p. 22).

Why not incremental team progress over a sustained period, akin to deliberate practice, rather than hoping and waiting? It’s more sustainable to build a foundation of great leadership that’s based on shared accountability rather than heroics (p. 6). There’s great utility in distinguishing responsibility from accountability and requiring both from everyone on our teams. The resultant cultural shift is toward each team member understanding the connectedness between each other and the specific role each plays (p. 27). Stanley McChrystal shares this discovery in Team of Teams, with subsequent breakthrough performance. We may think of empowerment as no more than the institutionalization of shared accountability and a pursuit of development in your team (p. 28).

McKeown summarizes internal characteristics of Self-Evolved Leaders (pp. 33-38):

• They push for growth
• They demonstrate vulnerability
• They practice empathy
• They feel a sense of connectedness
• They operate from the locus of their control

How many of these traits are found in your Leadership Philosophy? They [Leaders] purposefully build in time to have developmental conversations with their teams and strive to link the strengths of everyone to the appropriate roles and projects on their team (p. 41). Leaders coach.

Vision and Alignment

Creating a higher purpose for your team is fast becoming one of the key distinguishing factors for attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent and a necessity for building collective morale when you go through a turbulent day, week, or month (p. 49). There’s no better place for stating this than your leadership philosophy, and earlier in the document is better.

Recall in our Energize2Lead workshops, most of us don’t want to be told, what, when and how to do things. A compelling vision statement is less about the what or the how of what you do and will explain clearly and succinctly the why your team exists (p. 51).

Continuous alignment is much like deliberate practice. Ask your team to share it (common vision) at the start of meetings, put it in your email signature, print it out on laminate cards and stick them all over your office (p. 57).

Once we’re past telling others what and how to do things, delegation comes naturally. Anywhere that you and at least one other person is interacting, you can practice one of these disciplines:

• Take a pause
• Exist in the present
• Set context
• Be intentional
• Listen first
• Push for clarity

These are great times for sharing a common language and vocabulary around great leadership, communication, decision-making, and accountability is the catalyst that unlocks team performance (p. 9).

Leaders coach.

Moving Beyond Passive

We offer the term Tyranny of the Urgent during Setting Leadership Priorities workshops. When you’re trying to deal with a seemingly unlimited number of tugs on your attention, you’re unable to get to the headspace to think creatively (p. 105). That’s a death sentence in our competitive global economy, not to mention ineffective leadership.

If you assume the people on your team have positive intent with the desire to learn, grow, and ultimately develop, then finding ways to give them additional projects and tasks that may be at the edge of their ability can help accelerate that process (p. 120). This may be challenging when we place great value on our own Subject Matter Expertise (SME).

Consider this: When you position yourself as a leader with all the answers, you create an unspoken win/loss tally running and an inherent desire to throw up more wins than losses (p. 139). Worse, people will only tell us what we wish to hear, creating a large leadership blind spot.

Being a leader as coach provides an ideal antidote. Stop protecting people’s weaknesses. Instead treat them as if they will succeed and be there to support and guide them as needed (p. 126). Embrace a positive, abundance mindset. Pivot toward discussions of how they can use this situation to learn something new about themselves that they can work on over the long term (p. 137).

McKeown offers a valuable coaching term. A symbiotic conversation is any interaction that acknowledges the interdependence of the group and provides an opportunity for further growth among its members (p. 149). Great term and great idea. Where may these conversations lead? The main characteristic of a group with deep accountability is that there is enough trust, respect, and desire to see each other succeed that they’re able to spur one another on toward achieving their common goals (p. 164).

Sustain

Positive transformation takes time. What does it look like? Those organizations that display exemplary leadership across the board have a common set of definitions and vocabulary that means the same thing no matter what part of the organization it’s used in, yet the language remains flexible enough for individuals to still impart their own uniqueness (pp. 220-221).

McKeown includes a variety of follow up resources, useful for continued journaling, reflection, and self-evaluation. Like our Academy Leadership Action Plan:

Self-Evolved Leaders Resources

Selfevolvedleader.com/resources

Self-Paced Leadership Mastery Program

Selfevolvedleader.com/mastery

Self-Evolved Leader Public Workshops

Selfevolvedleader.com/public

Self-Evolved Team In-House Workshop

Selfevolvedleader.com/workshop

“We haven’t fully developed our thoughts on what comes
after the bureaucratic organization.” (p. 2)

Dave McKeown generously provided a copy of his book for review.

Coaching Story | Leaders are Learners

At least two current clients have shared coaching session challenges in migrating from manager, or individual contributor roles, to leader roles. Common challenges include:

• Difficulty in delegating
• Establishing leader rather than programmatic priorities
• Learning to say no
• Finding a comfortable work/life balance or equilibrium

One of the clients has the additional challenge of motherhood, and has asked if there are any available mentors within her company who may help her. Hint: Yes, and we shall find one or more.

The anxiety in these coaching sessions is obvious, and in a way, very welcoming. For a continuously evolving or improving leader, these struggles are a natural part of our growth process. Rather than thinking of the leadership role as a destination to reach, we may think of these steps as a continuous process which never ends. We can reimagine our role of leader are curious learner, rather than the know-it-all expert. Shedding that self-perception is both relieving and energizing.

Two recommended resources for this journey, often shared in coaching sessions:

Carson Tate’s Work Simply

Carson’s very well organized book pinpoints common challenges such as out-of-control email and numerous other productivity tips. You’ll find her productivity assessment correlates quite well with our Energize2Lead (E2L) profiles.

For a deeper dive into how we manage our energy, rather than our time, take a look at Tony Schwartz’s The Power of Full Engagement which will help you transition from a clock watcher to a reflective observer of your own energy levels.

Leaders are Learners

Influence & Insight | September 2021

Leadership Story | Leaders are Active

• a fixation on having no direct reports, evident during self-evaluation questions
• drafting a leadership philosophy largely in third person
• repeatedly using the term leadership as a noun

Unintentionally we may appear passive and disconnected from our organization when exhibiting these behaviors. In Dave McKeown’s The Self-Evolved Leader, he offers a likely cause:

“We’re barely starting to move away from the old, industrial-era
way of thinking about leadership and its relentless focus on
top-down hierarchy and planning.”

Let’s consider three takeaways from Academy Leadership Excellence courses as our toolkit for countering these often self-limiting, passive tendencies:

2. A small blue “Challenge Card” is likewise shared with all attendees. The card, inspired by Marshall Goldsmith’s book Triggers, lists five questions:

Did I do my best today to:

…live my Leadership Philosophy?
…prioritize my time and set clear goals?
…communicate effectively?
…coach my people?
…create a motivational climate?

Each of these questions intentionally triggers our minds by challenging self-improvement.

3. A Journaling Book - for capturing periodic reflections on our leader performance. Maybe the best of all habits.

How do you fall prey to passivity? What active leader improvement steps do you take? Leaders are Active.

The Self-Evolved Leader | Book Review

“We’re barely starting to move away from the old, industrial-era
way of thinking about leadership and its relentless focus on
top-down hierarchy and planning.” (p. 2)

The Passive Landscape

McKeown summarizes internal characteristics of Self-Evolved Leaders (pp. 33-38):

• They push for growth
• They demonstrate vulnerability
• They practice empathy
• They feel a sense of connectedness
• They operate from the locus of their control

Vision and Alignment

Once we’re past telling others what and how to do things, delegation comes naturally. Anywhere that you and at least one other person is interacting, you can practice one of these disciplines:

• Take a pause
• Exist in the present
• Set context
• Be intentional
• Listen first
• Push for clarity

These are great times for sharing a common language and vocabulary around great leadership, communication, decision-making, and accountability is the catalyst that unlocks team performance (p. 9).

Leaders coach.

Moving Beyond Passive

Sustain

McKeown includes a variety of follow up resources, useful for continued journaling, reflection, and self-evaluation. Like our Academy Leadership Action Plan:

Self-Evolved Leaders Resources
Selfevolvedleader.com/resources

Self-Paced Leadership Mastery Program
Selfevolvedleader.com/mastery

Self-Evolved Leader Public Workshops
Selfevolvedleader.com/public

Self-Evolved Team In-House Workshop
Selfevolvedleader.com/workshop

“We haven’t fully developed our thoughts on what comes
after the bureaucratic organization.” (p. 2)

Dave McKeown generously provided a copy of his book for review.

Coaching Story | Leaders are Learners

At least two current clients have shared coaching session challenges in migrating from manager, or individual contributor roles, to leader roles. Common challenges include:

• Difficulty in delegating
• Establishing leader rather than programmatic priorities
• Learning to say no
• Finding a comfortable work/life balance or equilibrium

One of the clients has the additional challenge of motherhood, and has asked if there are any available mentors within her company who may help her. Hint: Yes, and we shall find one or more.

The anxiety in these coaching sessions is obvious, and in a way, very welcoming. For a continuously evolving or improving leader, these struggles are a natural part of our growth process.

Rather than thinking of the leadership role as a destination to reach, we may think of these steps as a continuous process which never ends.

We can reimagine our role of leader are curious learner, rather than the know-it-all expert. Shedding that self-perception is both relieving and energizing.

Two recommended resources for this journey, often shared in coaching sessions:

Carson Tate’s Work Simply

Influence & Insight | August 2021

Leadership Story | Leaders Seek Feedback

A long-term client recently asked “What should I be doing next to continue growing as a leader?” Good question. She’s attended many leadership programs over the years and we share leadership stories regularly throughout the year.

At the beginning of many Academy Leadership courses, we ask audiences whether they believe, individually, that they are good communicators. Most hands quickly rise. Our self-perceptions are often illusory and self-congratulatory, and that thought came to mind thinking over my colleague’s question.

Feedback.

Most of us are a lot better are giving it than receiving it, and even when we ask for it, we may find ourselves in conflict with the very responses we asked for. So, the easy answer to the question was “How about a 360?” - a review with feedback from peers, direct reports and supervisors in addition to self-evaluation. It’s a great way for we as colleagues to avoid the hazards of confirmation bias and self-generated illusions.

Dr. Mindy Hall, like the day one focus of a Leadership Excellence Course, emphasizes self-knowledge is critical. Hall also asks how aware are we of how we are perceived.

Bullseye.

Hall shares that many of us operate out of a sense of intuition, pattern, and recognition. Often we may achieve quite a bit of success with such methods. But we can go a lot further with objective evaluation by others. Think about it, as we move higher through an organization, we should look for more and deeper feedback, although the opposite seems the norm. A favorite excuse: “Who has time for any of that,” yet perhaps fear of evaluation by others may hit closer to the mark.

For the ubiquitous Subject Matter Expert, highly rewarded for technical expertise and subsequently promoted to a supervisory role, divergent expectations between self and boss are likely. The technical expert may now be expected, probably for the first time, to support and develop others, while still believing that self-focus should continue. A 360 review and debrief would expose differing expectations, and the sooner the better.

Who gives you feedback? How frequently? And do you genuinely embrace it? Leaders Seek Feedback.

Leading with Intention | Book Review

...but those who made the decision to be more self-aware and
intentional achieved higher-level results in terms of both the
positions they've held and the impact they've had than those who
continued to operate primarily from intuition (p. 12).

Dr. Mindy Hall's tightly crafted work is a terrific companion and precursor to Crucial Conversations. Subtitled Every Moment is a Choice, Dr. Hall's work aligns well with the three days of an Academy Leadership Excellence Course (LEC): Parts I and II are similar to an LEC day one focus on self; Part III mirrors an LEC day two focus on others and in particular how to communicate and understand people; Parts IV and V correspond to an LEC day three focus on organizational excellence (accountability & coaching) and action plan follow through (p. xv).

I | Know Yourself

Dr. Hall correlates low self-evaluation scores in our Setting Leadership Priorities Workshop encountering the ubiquitous question: Who has time to think about "who they are being while they are being"? (p. 3). Her three layers of growth model (p. 5) remind us of the Knowing-Doing Gap; as both require consistency in behaviors resulting from new knowledge, and that very few translate awareness into action.

How aware are you of how you're perceived? (p. 9) Recall our LEC introductory point that 87% of leaders believe they are good communicators while only (via Tom Peters Group) 17% of corresponding subordinates agree. Decades of consulting and coaching have informed Dr. Hall nearly 80% of those [she has] worked with did not lead intentionally - they operated out of intuition, pattern, and reaction (p. 11). She retells a story of a memorable general manager: He recognized the impact of his position, actions, and words, and aligned them with purpose (p. 16), further reinforcing that many informal leaders do not realize the amount of influence they hold in their organizations (p. 19).

Eight questions on pages 28-29 are self-evaluation or accountability questions, which foster reflection and positive reactions like the active questions Marshall Goldsmith shares in Triggers. We can go even further and share these questions as part of our Personal Leadership Philosophy commitment to feedback. This level of awareness may create an energizing place like the one Dr. Hall described: "... an energy and excitement in the air. People talked about possibilities for the future. They spoke of each other with high regard. Leaders were accessible, knowledgeable, and interested (p. 34)."

Chapter 11 (pp. 39-41) directly relates to our our truth, relationship & identity triggers (see Thanks for the Feedback) and additionally mentions how we each have stories of ourselves, as we discovered in Crucial Conversations. Dr. Hall shares ten terrific questions (p. 43) allowing self-awareness; or what you are doing while you are doing it, how you are being while you are being it, and what you are thinking while you are thinking it. On page 56 she asks the fundamental question:

"How does this philosophy show up in my actions?
Is there more I can do to bring these words to life?"

II | Know Your People

Dr. Hall cites John Kotter - that communication must go beyond just informing; it must excite people by connecting to their values (p. 60). She relates a valuable 360-type coaching story: Her (the client) perception of the way she operated and the way she actually operated were not congruent (p. 64). The client was unaware until the evaluation revealed objective observations and some "tough love" feedback. Are we brave enough for this unvarnished feedback? We should be.

Where might this level of communication lead to? Dr. Hall shares an example of perhaps the ultimate crucial conversation, the story of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (p. 75) in post-apartheid South Africa. What prevents us from this level of interchange? Dr. Hall answers: Far too often when we get frustrated or bored, we opt out -- emotionally or physically -- from conversations that we deem difficult or uninteresting, particularly if there is a point of tension (p. 76). She reiterates the need for courage (p. 77):

"When you have to sense and say what is 'hanging in the air';
essentially, when you read the dynamics in a room and you must
decide whether or not to share with candor what you observe."

III | Know Your Stuff | Action Plan

On page 84, Dr. Hall discusses audience [my term] and how to test perceptions by asking questions during a meeting or simply by being hyper-attuned to the conversation. An outstanding Chapter 23, Moving Beyond Functional Expertise, corresponds well with the need for (360 review) transition from leadership competencies to leadership characteristics, reflecting that much less attention is usually given to the development of skills for organizational leadership (p. 87). Dr. Hall asks "How do you impact the culture and tone of the organization? How does the culture and tone impact you?" (p. 91). Her terrific definition of culture is also a reminder of the environmental cultivation required of an effective leader:

Culture is the social energy built over time that can move people
to act or impede them from acting. (p. 93)

Similar to the Kotter eight stage change process model, Dr. Hall uses the Peak Development CLEAR Model (see Figure 25.1 p. 94), which actively links an organization to its culture. She emphasizes the number one way culture is shaped is by what leaders model (p. 97). Like findings in our High Payoff Activities from the Setting Leadership Priorities workshop, as we grow as leaders we must focus on who [we] are being (p. 100) rather than what [we] have gotten done.

To do this, Dr. Hall introduces a useful four-dimensional developmental focus model consisting of interactive effectiveness, meeting effectiveness, strategic effectiveness, and execution effectiveness (pp. 107-108).

Summary

Like Stanley McChrystal's humble revelation Be a gardener, Dr. Hall's wisdom advises we Be a pebble in the pond (p. 119). She has realized all leadership is personal, and so is the obligation to affect others' lives (p. 115). It is a choice and a decision (p. 127) - bravo!

Additional Resources

Dr. Hall offers continued support with

The Leading with Intention Toolkit follow up tools;

Peak Development Radio - available on iTunes, and

Growing Your Organization - her periodic blog relevant to our workplace.

Note: Dr. Hall generously provided a copy of her book for review

Coaching Story | Leaders Continuously Learn

During a recent virtual three-day Leadership Excellence Course, one of the attendees shared with the on-line group she wishes to grow as a leader. Additionally, she revealed her desire to become more vocal and confident. These are open and honest expectations frequently offered by junior professionals and especially among those newly promoted to supervisory positions.

This lack of confidence seems to stem in part from our tendency to equate our leadership ability with technical competence. As a young company president years ago, it amazed me how frequently people assumed I knew many things, which I did not, simply because of my job title.

An effective counter to this tendency and to alleviate misperception is curiosity which may be put to work with a keen recommendation by Dr. Mindy Hall, author of Leading with Intention.

During our first follow-on leadership course coaching session, I suggested the “2 + 2” Rule Dr. Hall references in her book, with my client. It’s a very simple rule, that when developed into a habit, reaps multiple benefits. Before any meeting, think of two items to share and two questions to ask the audience. That’s it.

At the beginning of our second coaching session, the client was exuberant - she couldn’t wait to share the results of faithfully practicing the 2 + 2 rule. The client mentioned that in the past she would passively sit in meetings and that it was very difficult to “get the floor.” What changed? She interjected that she had a question to throw out to the group and her boss immediately noticed her increased involvement and subsequently asked her to take on more of a leader role as a result.

That’s just the beginning. Use of the rule expresses humility, curiosity and cultivates an environment of knowledge-sharing. Who wants to speak up in front of a know-it-all boss? Hint: The bosses that think they know everything, don’t. Over time this habit strengthens our brand identity as a leader, meeting and surpassing expectations of our leadership development. Can’t wait for our next coaching session.

How do you foster an environment of accountability? How do your teams continuously improve?

Leaders Continuously Learn.

Influence & Insight | July 2021

Leadership Story | Leaders Journal

Have you heard of Alex Honnold? Who’s that? How about the actor Matthew McConaughey?

Honnold is know for his successful free solo - no ropes - climb of 3,000 foot El Capitan in Yosemite, and we’ve all probably seen one or more of McConaughey’s films. What do both have in common?

They both are active journal keepers. In the Academy Award winning free solo documentary, it’s easy to miss the brief, yet significant mention of keeping a journal. Honnold not only kept a journal, complete with detailed pictures and descriptions of his climbs, his story may be one of the best contemporary examples of deliberate practice, well described in Anders Ericsson’s Peak.

McConaughey’s 36 years of journal keeping are central to his best-selling memoir Greenlights, described in an interview with Jimmy Fallon. Yes, that’s thirty-six years.

Often at the beginning of a three-day Leadership Excellence Course, an attendee will describe how they used to journal in the past, but somehow “it got away from them,” or they “became too busy.” When we have those thoughts let’s keep in mind Alex and Matthew. Another idea is to ask ourselves if we’re too busy to become better at anything. Good question. Tough question.

Leaders Journal.

The Code Breaker | Book Review

“The key to innovation is connecting a curiosity
about basic science to the practical work of
devising tools that can be applied to our lives.” (p. xix)

Perhaps unintentionally, Walter Isaacson‘s amazing story of Professor Jennifer Doudna and the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (P. 73), or CRISPR history, a landmark book on many fronts, also reveals, in the reviewer’s opinion, Doudna’s leadership philosophy. Some of the assembled quotes are not directly attributable to Doudna, yet altogether constitute her leadership approach.

A Code Breaker Leadership Philosophy

How did life begin? (p. xvii).

Curiosity is the key trait of the people who have fascinated me, from Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein to Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci (pp. 478-9). Push humanity forward? Yes, sometimes it’s the rebels who do so (p. 326). Women in science tend to be shy about promoting themselves, and that has serious costs (p. 110). The men who had sequenced DNA taught us how to read the code of life, but the more important step would be learning how to write that code (p. 41). Many creative people grew up feeling alienated from their surroundings (p. 4). Science can be very exciting, like being on the trail of a cool mystery and you’re getting a clue here and a clue there (p. 29). We do it to go after big questions and take on risks (p. 108), [especially when] we don’t know the answer we’re supposed to get (p. 33).

Never do something that a thousand other people are doing (p. 46). Ask big questions (p. 46) and lead by listening (p. xiv.). All medical advances attempt to correct something that happened “naturally.” (p. 368) Master the art of being tightly scheduled by while still finding time to connect with people emotionally (p. xiv). [Invention] is not a simple one-way linear progression. Instead it’s an interactive dance among basic scientists, practical inventors and business leaders (p. 90). Creating great products is important, but what’s even more important is creating a team that can continually make such products (p. 103).

[Let’s be] part of a scientific team where so many people with different talents have coalesced around a common goal (p. 415). I like to hire people who have their own creative ideas and want to work under my guidance and as part of my team, but not with daily direction (p. 85). [Leadership is] about teams, innovation, and how to create a work environment that stimulates creativity (p. 402). Sometimes an intellectual bond is the strongest (p. 59). Make sure other team members believe they can fit in (p. 105). Place as much emphasis on making sure someone is a good fit as assessing their research accomplishments (p. 109). Push [each other] to make things, even on a computer, rather than play with things that other people have made (p. 163).

I’m not going to work with people I can’t trust, people who stab you in the back. (p. 211). The public-private partnership that led to the availability of the polio vaccine became an inspiration (p. 248). As long as we are correcting genetic mutations by restoring the ’normal’ version of the gene – not inventing some wholly new enhancement not seen in the average human genome – we’re likely to be on the safe side (p. 370).

Summary

People who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code (p. xvii)

“Great inventions come from understanding basic science.
Nature is beautiful that way.” (p. 447)

Coaching Story | Leaders Foster Accountability

On the third day of Academy Leadership Excellence Courses, we usually launch the Accountability Workshop just before lunch. Most attendees are near the top of their game, often with multiple degrees, credentials, and 10-20 years of experience or more.

One of the more interesting discussion questions focuses on identifying signs that accountability exists within an organization and also identifying signs that accountability does not exist within an organization.

One sign, in particular, has captured the attention of many attendees this year: Repeated mistakes. How often are we addressing the same performance or technical issues, month after month, or year after year?

It’s a good question, and it’s also worth asking how this reflects on our effectiveness as a leader, whether in a formal position of authority or less formal role of influencer. For those of us who consider ourselves subject matter experts, the question may be uncomfortable.

Recall one of our roles as leaders is creating safe and open environments with aligned performance goals, in overall support of our organization. Fear of Speaking Up (FOSU) is a frequently mentioned sign that accountability does not exist. Oh, and if part of our leader self-image is that of the Uber-Subject Matter Expert, or SME, we may be unintentionally contributing to an environment of fear.

How do you foster an environment of accountability? How do your teams continuously improve?

Leaders Foster Accountability.

Influence & Insight | June 2021

Leadership Story | Leaders Continuously Learn

Perhaps inspired by Generals Dempsey and McChrystal, it’s worth reflecting on the significance of learning as a vital leadership trait. Let’s use the lens of typical three-day Academy Leadership Excellence Course workshops as our guide:

• When sharing course expectations - Nearly all attendees wish to learn something new, a new tool for the toolbox.
• Energize2Lead (E2L) - We learn how others are different, and understand the different approaches that 75% of those we work and live with use.
• Goal setting - Often a challenging realization - How well do we know the Life’s Compass Rose and the Master List of Personal Dreams and Goals of those in our charge?
• Feedback - Practice “leadership By Walking Around” - one of the best ways to learn about everyone on our team.
• Motivation - What type of environment do we create? Does Fear of Speaking Up (FOSU) exist? Is our environment safe for sharing?
• Conflict - Collaboration is our ideal strategy - consider learning as both objective and opportunity in any conflict.
• Priorities - Planning and organizing may be extended to learning, in combination with delegation. Let those who you have delegated to teach everyone what they have learned. Knowledge sharing is power.
• Accountability: How do you know if it is missing? How about repeated poor performance or repeated mistakes. Real issues likely not addressed. Would that happen in a genuine environment of knowledge-sharing?
• Coaching - Analogous to listening. When we listen we learn. The best coaches are lifelong learners.

Leaders Continuously Learn.

Radical Inclusion | Book Review

“We believe that what pulls us apart today, whether in business,
the military, or politics, is exclusion.” (p. 168)

General Martin Dempsey & Ori Brafman create a companion work which reminds us of both General Stanley McChrystal’s Team of Teams and Captain Michael Abrashoff’s It’s Your Ship. The first two parts of this book seemingly acquaint the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to our contemporary environment removed from a prior insulated military environment.

The authors share three central takeaways (p. 42):

• Not including – exerting control – comes at an economic cost, one that is increasingly difficult to bear and harder still to justify. In Teams of Teams, McChrystal realized the same ultimately concluding the role of a leader is that of a gardener.
• Bring a cause to a preexisting community. Similar to Jim Collins’ advice to select people predisposed to your organization’s values and Academy Leadership’s focus on Core Values Alignment.
• Real inclusion is about understanding the pillars of participation, personalization, and purpose. Or put another way, it’s about alignment in the pursuit of excellence. Recall, Abrashoff prudently reminded us:

“Forget diversity. Train for Unity.”

Dempsey shares an early glimpse (he seemed genuinely surprised) when he was challenged by a twenty-eight-year-old captain for a deficiency in training (p. 48) while in Afghanistan. Perhaps a safe environment for feedback was routinely suppressed simply by the presence of a flag officer.

Our review focuses primarily on Part 3, The Inclusive Leader and seven leadership (chapter) tools:

• Belonging Isn’t Optional
• Connect Effort With Meaning
• Think About What You’re Not Thinking About
• Prevent Decision Paralysis
• Collaborate At Every Level Of The Organization
• Expand The Circle
• The Leadership Instincts: Listen, Amplify, Include

Belonging Isn’t Optional

With our combined effort aligned and everyone working toward a common goal, we find a sense of control that produces a sense of order for each of us within the organization, and this trickles into our individual daily lives (p. 77). Imagine how much more effective team goal setting rather than a typical hierarchical top-down approach may be, perhaps during an Aligning and Accomplishing Goals workshop? And if we’re not inclusive? If people don’t feel like they belong to your group, department, company, or corporation, they easily can and probably will find something else to believe in and belong to (p. 81).

The authors describe successes, failures, being cared for, what right looks like, and what wrong looks like as five kinds of experiences a leader should provide (pp. 87-88). Each of these may be described in advance in our Personal Leadership Philosophy, or PLP.

Connect Effort With Meaning

Most of the responsibility is on the leader: to explain, to encourage, and to inspire (p. 90). Repeatedly, in Creating a Motivational Environment workshops, course attendees wrestle with whether or not leaders actually motivate people. Our authors appear in agreement that the environment we foster is what matters, and that ways leaders can “make it matter” include (pp. 93-94):

• Define and allow others to understand who you are
• Make each individual feel that they have the potential to be a better person
• Make sense of things for the team

As Simon Sinek reminds us, provide the Why.

Think About What You’re Not Thinking About

Humility is a terrific leader trait. Leaders can learn to imagine if they place the emphasis on “learn:” (p. 100)

• If they learn to listen and seek to know
• If they learn to be alert
• If they learn to find advisors
• If they learn to connect disparate thoughts
• If they learn to challenge assumptions
• If they learn to become comfortable with complexity

This is just what McChrystal shared when establishing an increasingly effective situational awareness headquarters. Set up an operations center manned and equipped to process and share information, establish a transportation hub to monitor and coordinate the flow of logistics, and establish a training base for the hundreds of international medical volunteers eager to assist in the crisis (p. 104). Cross The Knowing-Doing-Gap.

Prevent Decision Paralysis | PLP

Consider the following as a leadership philosophy operating principle: A bias for action is a leadership instinct based on the belief that in order to decide, you must learn, and in order to learn, you must alter the status quo (p. 108). Let’s add three excellent priorities, also useful in any PLP:

“But to do it, and to keep faith with my soldiers, I need three things. First, I need to keep the unit together. Second, I need you to give us a mission. And Third, most important, led me entrust my soldiers and their families with information (p. 115).

Especially in a dynamic environment, perfection frequently is the enemy of “good enough.” As leaders, we need to ask ourselves what we can do right now to make an impact in solving the issue, sometimes without fully comprehending where that action may lead (p. 120).

Collaborate At Every Level Of The Organization

In our Leveraging the Power of Conflict workshops, we explore how collaboration is the most effective (albeit most time-consuming) strategy. Similarly, an open and safe collaborative environment is the hallmark of a good After Action Review, yet few organizations, especially big ones, ask their junior members about opportunities the organization may be missing (p. 122).

Expand The Circle

The authors indirectly promote an abundance mindset:

Real power is measured not in degree of control, but rather in the ability to find optimum, affordable, enduring solutions to complex problems (p. 130). Remember Dempsey’s surprise at the Captain’s training improvement idea?

However, at least for now, there are more examples
of leaders succumbing to the fear of losing power
by aggressively seeking to exert greater control. (p. 134)

Lead by example and live your leadership philosophy. Leaders must understand, however, that relinquishing control works only when there is an ethos in place that supports it (p. 147).

The Leadership Instincts: Listen, Amplify, Include

We may think of the three instincts as a condensation of the prior six chapters:

• Listen to learn (p. 150). Think of how others communicate, as in our Energize2Lead workshops.
• Amplify to establish expectations (p. 150). Think of best practices and ideas and incorporate them in our leadership philosophy expectations.
• Include to empower (p. 151), then share knowledge, which in turn inspires loyalty.

Summary

Let’s treat knowledge as an active process, not a static thing. Everyone became aware, vigilant, and committed to creating a shared understanding of what was happening on the battlefield (p. 164).

“The highest such bar is being willing to set aside your individual
interests in order to advance the interests of the group.” (p. 68)

Coaching Story | Leaders Stay Objective

Assessments dominated the past month, spanning from a larger Energize2Lead (E2L) Workshop for a military support unit, to several 360 debriefs, a client request for both a cultural assessment & inclusion of After Action Review workshops in an upcoming leadership development program, and of course many virtual executive coaching sessions.

What guides a coach through any of these assessments? A keen understanding of what feedback really is. During our Academy Leadership Feedback workshops we distinguish between three types of feedback

• Appreciation
• Evaluation
• Coaching

It’s always interesting when attendees reveal that evaluation and coaching are often the same thing within their organizations. Another key takeaway from the workshop is the importance of leaders (coaches) relying on objective data and not misrepresenting our observations or interpretations as fact. This dangerously leads to labels, self-fulfilling prophecies, and prejudicial stereotypes.

Oh, and let’s keep in mind, that as “leader coaches,” during any evaluation, it’s a great time to ask how we are doing, and how may we better support those undergoing any assessment.

What assessments do you use? What does your organization use? Do you distinguish evaluation from coaching?

Leaders Stay Objective.

Influence & Insight | May 2021

Leadership Story | Leadership is About Relationships

Sometimes our human condition showcases a leadership lesson in stark terms. In January 2020, a large in-house, in-person program was facilitated in the Augusta, Georgia, area. Over a dozen of us traveled to the host site, including a group from the company’s Atlanta office. Maybe it was the small size of the room, or the dinners together every night, or a looming sense that Covid was going to be a disruptive worldwide event, but this particular group bonded tightly over our three days together, playfully naming ourselves the Southern Fried Leaders.

Two weeks ago, we lost one of our cohort, and exchanged emails of surprise, shock and sadness. Interestingly, everyone referred to our Southern Fried Leader group by name.

In Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership (Book of the Year), Kouzes and Posner stress that leadership is not a position, rather that leadership is a relationship.

Indeed it is.

After the devastating news two weeks ago, it seemed the appropriate thing to do, for now anyway, was to share our fun team slide show from over a year ago. It showcased all of us as a team, learning, sharing and having fun. This was also the last in-person in-house program with the client before the Covid pandemic restricted travel.

Let’s keep in mind our human condition, and the leader’s role in recognizing and fostering relationships. In the end, that is what matters most. Leadership is about relationships.

Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership | Book Review

“Leadership matters. It’s essential in every sector, in every
community, and in every country.” (p. xix)

Book of the year.

The most consistent, enduring, and challenging feedback offered during Academy Leadership Excellence Courses remains that of the Subject Matter Expert (SME), individual contributor, or professional without formal direct reports proclaiming leadership practices either less relevant or not applicable by definition. Thank you James Kouzes and Barry Posner for your timely antidote.

Yes, this book is for and about people who do not have titles, like supervisor, manager, executive, chief, head, director, captain, boss, and the like, or some formal authority over other people (p. xv).

It seems useful thinking about leadership as a verb, rather than a noun. The authors offer another terrific insight - underscoring the truth that leadership is a relationship (p. 5). A good way to start doing this is not thinking of ourselves. The authors close with a great list on page 173 highlighting what happens when we think as leaders, not individual contributors. It’s wonderful and worth reading before embarking on the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership (p.11):

• Model the Way
• Inspire a Shared Vision
• Challenge the Process
• Enable Others to Act
• Encourage the Heart

This review shares each of the five practices and correlates each to one or more Academy Leadership workshops and/or influential authors with similar findings.

I | Model

Often a shared Personal Leadership Philosophy, or PLP, includes an expectation such as lead by example, or defining integrity as doing the right thing even when no one is watching. Both are examples of modeling behaviors. Empathy matters. The authors share stories concluding that whatever it is, no act of kindness is unworthy and doesn’t go unrecognized (p. 24). Clarity matters. When you are clear about your personal values, you are better prepared to make choices based on principle, rather than the whims, fashions, and pressures of the moment (p. 29). Our values by themselves are not enough. Alignment matters. Discovering and affirming shared values is the foundation for building productive and genuine work relationships (p. 32). We’re credible when we put this all together.

Language matters. Most people are “prisoners” of their organizational vocabulary – try talking for a day about the people in an organization without using the words employee, managers, boss, supervisor, staff, subordinate, rank-and-file, or hierarchy (p. 41). This is terrific and a challenge worth sharing in upcoming courses. Frequently these ‘nouns’ trigger passivity and a scarcity mindset – cancer for an effective leader.

Feedback matters. The authors cite LPI (Leadership Practices Inventory) data showing that asking for feedback is one of the least frequently engaged in leader behaviors (p. 45). We need to check our egos and our fears for growth. There is simply no way to get around the fact that while you may not always like the feedback you receive, it is the only way you can really know how good you are doing and possibly learn better ways you can become even better (p. 46).

II | Inspire

Creating a Motivational Environment workshops develop the theme of environment creation rather than the conceit we may control others’ behavior. How to start?

Crossing the chasm from individual contributor to leader
requires fully embracing the need to develop the capacity
to envision the future. (p. 54)

Visionary statements in our PLP are powerful. Visions are projections of your fundamental beliefs and assumptions about human nature, technology, economics, science, politics, art, ethics, and the like (p. 56). People want to know the why behind our decisions and the direction we are going. This may be a challenge for the highly intelligent SME, repeatedly rewarded and promoted for individual effort. You have to get off automatic pilot, believing that you know everything you need to know, viewing the world through pre-established categories, and not noticing what’s going on around you (p. 60).

Remember leadership is about relationships. You have to engage the people you are involved with and work with in conversations about their lives, about their own hopes and dreams, and how they can see these realized by sharing and participating in the vision (p. 64). Many leadership course attendees feel shock when they discover during the Aligning and Accomplishing Goals workshop, they have not given much serious thought to their own personal goals and dreams, and usually no thought to those of anyone else.

III | Challenge the Process

The vast majority of organizations, institutions, and even communities and families are not typically bastions of change; often quite the contrary (p. 80). Chances are, each of us can think of several improvements, but often fear speaking up. The authors share that the reality is most challenges choose you and not the other way around (p. 83). It’s a call for initiative, often rewarded after the fact (seek forgiveness rather than permission).

Humility matters. One of the reasons that people are often afraid to ask around for advice and input from others is because they perceive that doing so means, or at least implies, that they’re incompetent or don’t know something that they should already know (p. 88). Think about professional athletes – they continuously and deliberately, practice. And they are already very, very, good.

Similar to Kotter’s Leading Change, you make something happen when you notice what isn’t working, create a possible solution for the problem, gain buy-in from constituents, and implement the desired outcome (p. 84). Knowledge matters. Researchers shadowing senior executives discovered that the most successful ones were not waiting for information to come to them. Instead they were out and about gathering knowledge (p. 87), reminiscent of Pfeffer and Sutton’s findings in The Knowing-Doing Gap.

Curiosity matters. When the after-action review is not about getting called out for making a mistake and more about getting better, defensive posture lessens and learning happens in the “other” category of experiences (p. 99). Shared knowledge builds a powerful organization

IV | Enable Others

Coaching is not a job, but a process that relies especially
on an interpersonal relationship. (p. 128)

Once genuine coaching is viewed separately from evaluation, our Coaching to Develop Leaders workshop defines Performance Coaching as an energizing, positive experience. Kouzes and Posner do the same. You show people that you trust them when you listen, provide opportunities for them to contribute freely, make choices, and be innovative (p. 109).

Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter develop active questions in Triggers. Similarly, our authors notice that [the best listeners] demonstrated that they were listening by asking questions that “promoted discovery and insight.” (p. 111) Consider pausing a bit longer before asking questions, and tie active questions to your PLP and vision.

Connections matter. The most well-connected individuals are typically those who are involved in activities outside of their immediate job function or discipline, and who avoid being too strongly typecast in one field, function, administrative body, or community (p. 117). Perhaps this mitigates the belief that we must hold on too tightly, or the traditional thinking promoting the archaic idea that power is a fixed sum, and correspondingly, if you give any of your power away to others, you will have less power and be less powerful (p. 120).

Accountability matters. Consider an accountability commitment, perhaps in your PLP, as a requirement for team eligibility. When people take personal responsibility and hold themselves accountable (by others) for their actions, their colleagues will be considerably more inclined to work with them and be more cooperative (p. 127).

IV | Heart

A companion section to Mark Crowley’s Lead From the Heart.

When we get past thinking about ourselves, we may focus on all the good around us. Leaders give heart to others by recognizing individual contributions and celebrating victories together (p. 135). Consider starting staff meetings or events with teammates recognizing each other. This practice may additionally offer insights into how best to recognize each other -- [we] can recognize them in a way that they personally value, because it’s relevant to what they care about (p. 144). One example: Not everyone wishes public recognition.

Telling stories about how people demonstrate their commitment to values is another way to show your personal involvement, and it is one of the quickest and most effective ways to communicate how people are supposed to act and make decisions (p. 156). Our Academy Leadership team has practiced this for years, and it pulls us closer together.

Lastly, don’t make the mistake of assuming that people only respond to formal or monetary rewards (p. 146). Recall Dan Pink’s findings highlighting autonomy, mastery and purpose as fundamental drivers.

Summary

In short, we’re all leaders, and the best leaders are lifelong learners.

“…those leaders who engage in learning for five or more hours per
week, compared to those who spend an hour or less per week, are
74 percent more likely to have more direction in their careers and 48
percent more likely to find purpose in their work.”
(p. 169)

Coaching Story | Be Courageous and Humble

“My first reaction to your draft Personal Leadership Philosophy was It Scared The Hell Out of Me.” That’s not an easy email to send to someone who has worked very hard to capture their leadership thoughts on paper for the first time.

Similar peer feedback was offered in breakout sessions later in our virtual Leadership Excellence Course. One of the common terms shared was “harsh.”

Several examples of courage were on display throughout our staggered, virtual course over several months. First, it takes courage to share who we are as leaders in written form, because what we initially write may not capture our thoughts and feelings accurately. Second, providing candid feedback to a new peer, while remaining professional is a balancing act, only made more difficult in a virtual format.

Finally, it takes both demonstrable courage, as well as humility to compose eight drafts (a record maybe?) of a Leadership Philosophy, driven by a desire for self improvement, and then sharing with one’s team.

In this case, humility, persistence, and courage paid off. The newly promoted supervisor shared the revised PLP with a direct report, leading to a communication and relationship-building breakthrough.

An email with revision nine would not surprise.

Leaders are courageous and humble.

Influence & Insight | April 2021

Leadership Story | Leaders Foster Accountability

Earlier this month I was invited to a weekly virtual corporate-wide company meeting stimulated by the Covid environment. Well over one hundred tied in to the meeting on the Microsoft Teams platform, utilizing overhead imagery by Google, animation recreating several key events, employee interviews as well as actual photographs of crews at their respective work sites. Even more so, it was timely, recalling events just days before.

Watching was spellbinding. The majority of the virtual session comprised two safety incidents: One which occurred at a sister electrical industry company, and the second at the host company. The format was that of an After Action Review, or AAR, and it was impressive. In our Academy Leadership Accountability Compass workshops, we pass out the correspondingly titled book which is subtitled Moving from “The Blame Game to Collaboration.”

That’s exactly what was on display: An experienced lineman retold a story, step by step, leading to a safety incident which nearly took his life, but fortunately left him only with injuries and important lessons learned for all. Perhaps the most poignant moment was an interview after hospitalization, when the lineman shared that he had let his family down as much as his co-workers and his organization. Rather than a finger-pointing exercise, it was a perfect illustration of both self responsibility and accountability to multiple groups. Real life.

The second event, the one internal to the host meeting company, revealed similar errors, fortunately without the resultant physical harm of the prior. The entire team was engaged, not just present, thoughtfully asking questions, and learning from each other. One attendee helpfully shared a reference of commonly misunderstood electrical terms as a refresher, and another noticed that the induced current in a detached structure exceeded the total amount of current used by an average household! A serious business indeed!

Without realizing it, all seven of the organization’s core values were on display during the 90-minute webinar: Safety, respect, responsiveness, creativity, integrity, initiative and teamwork. The senior company safety executive gracefully led the lessons learned portion of the review. This was followed by a statement by the company president reminding everyone in the company that they are not just the “tip of the spear,” but they are the ultimate ambassadors of the company, leaders in every right as much as anyone else. It was a perfect statement of Commander’s Intent, one of the unstated themes in The Talent War.

Leaders foster accountability.

The Talent War | Book Review

“There is no end state, no end to this war, just a steadfast
commitment to engage in the fight every day, as the
survival of your organization depends on it.” (p. xii)

Mike Sarraille & George Randle with Josh Cotton, PhD, based on extensive Special Operations training, challenge traditional notions of competency or resume-based hiring widespread in the workplace. It’s worth listening to Jim Collins’ audio about hiring based on core values alignment, as a “what to do,” while the authors offer a blueprint for “how to do it.”

The authors begin by sharing 2019 Conference Board findings: The overwhelming majority of CEOs cited the ability to attract and retain quality workers as their top concern (p. xi). Similar to Whitney Johnson’s observations in Build An A Team, one only need look at LinkedIn for a short time to notice the overwhelming focus on individual accomplishment, competency, or mastery as the primary basis for hire.

Part I of the book shares nine core selection characteristics common to special forces, along with introducing a talent mindset. Part II comprises the core of the book, offering a different strategy for hiring well worth considering.

This review correlates the authors’ nine core characteristics to Academy Leadership assessments (360 review) & workshops and recommends applying Talent War findings via one’s Personal Leadership Philosophy (PLP) and a Commander’s Intent.

A Talent Mindset

It is the individual who never gives up, who performs in high-pressure situations, and who will win when others say it’s impossible (p. 22).

When our Academy Leadership team conducts 360 assessments, we’re looking for transition from focus on leadership competencies to six leadership characteristics, or who a leader is:

• Leadership Image
• Developing a Following
• Judgement/Decision-Making
• Personal Ethics
• Coaching/Mentoring
• Building Teams

Sarraille learned the same (p. 19), initially judging like most hiring managers, and eventually understanding the Special Operations assessment and selection process destroys any previously held notions of what talent looks like (p. 21). What counts? Through the authors’ research and interviews, nine core characteristics identify an individual as having high potential (p. 23):

• Drive      the unrelenting need for achievement and constant self-improvement
• Resiliency       the ability to persevere in the face of challenge and bounce back from setbacks
• Adaptability    the ability to adjust according to the situation, learn new things, innovate, and try new methods
• Humility self-confidence in one’s ability while understanding that there’s always room for improvement and that others’ experiences and knowledge are valuable
• Integrity          an adherence to not what is legal but also what is right
• Effective Intelligence       the ability to apply one’s knowledge to real-world scenarios
• Team-ability   the ability to function as part of a team, placing the success of the whole above the needs of the self
• Curiosity          a desire to explore the unknown and question the status quo in pursuit of better, more effective solutions
• Emotional strength          a positive attitude, high empathy, and control over one’s emotions, especially in chaotic and stressful situations

It’s worth returning to Collins’ words about alignment and the use of our leadership philosophy. How many of these nine characteristics are explored during a hiring interview, and how many of these traits are addressed in the core values, operating principles and expectations sections of our PLP? Notice similarities with the prior six leadership (360) capabilities.

Imagine hiring for a position and objective that is completely new. That’s what the authors realized was happening. No one has prior Special Operations experience, so the most effective selection is based on mindset and character (p. 64).

Another distinction is continuous training. Not just for those designated having special status, but everyone. The authors believe that a talent mindset not only accounts for hiring talented people but also includes the continual development and investment in that talent through their tenure in the organization (p. 28).

Who does your hiring? Probably a staff manager unconnected to day-to-day organizational, or line work. Special Operators treat recruitment and selection strategically. When you put high-performing business leaders into HR, you can transform the department into a powerful, strategic function within the company (p. 42).

Leadership Strategy

“Hire Character. Train skill.” (p. 83)
Peter Schutz, former CEO | Porsche

A recurring theme. The authors also cite Herb Kelleher, legendary Southwest Airlines co-founder and CEO: “We draft great attitudes. If you don’t have a good attitude, we don’t want you, no matter how skilled you are. We can change skill levels through training. We can’t change attitude.” (p. 87)

It's worth revisiting hiring criteria. Do you even know what your organization’s requirements are? The authors see companies making three common mistakes when it comes to looking at experience (p. 96):

1. They require experience that doesn’t matter to job performance.
2. They require very specific experience when general experience would be just as good.
3. They prioritize industry experience over character.

“Lieutenant Colonel Brian Decker distinguishes the big difference between Special Operations and the private sector:

“The private sector abdicates their selection process to
academic institutions, to credentials and to resumes,
We look at those types of things, but we’re more concerned
about the input that goes into accomplishments.” (p. 101)

We can think of another leadership lesson from the military, in addition to the PLP -- a Commander’s Intent.

“You need to create the perception that your organization will offer
a challenge -- a chance to do the biggest, hardest, most dynamic,
fastest-changing work that will ultimately set your workers up for
success in every facet of their lives. Then you pose the question to
challenge potential talent: do you have what it takes?” (p. 160).

Many of us are familiar with Dan Pink – and his conclusion that autonomy, mastery and purpose are primary motivators once we’re paid enough to not think about our work. The authors create a useful Employee Value Proposition, or EVP, on page 167 showcasing the Venn Diagram intersection between Growth and Development Opportunities, Work Environment and Culture, Compensation and Benefits and Purpose. We can call the EVP the Why? of our enterprise.

An Academy Leadership three-day Leadership Excellence & Executive Coaching Course concludes with the Coaching to Develop Leaders workshop. Why? The authors answer the question for us. The greatest responsibility of all leaders is to be a coach and mentor and to develop the subordinate leaders below them (p. 183).

Train to Retain

Who gets non-technical training in your organization? A common attendee comment in Academy Leadership courses: “My boss needs this more than I do, but would never attend.” In Special Operations, assessment and selection is unique in that it is combined with training (p. 197). For everyone.

Feedback matters. The authors recommend identifying which new employees are performing well and which ones are not. Then return to the notes and documentation from the hiring process (p. 235). Continuous improvement.

Summary

A worthy call to action for vastly improving our hiring processes.

“When you become a leader, your impact is no longer limited to
what you can accomplish individually, every person you lead
becomes an extension of you, creating an exponential impact.”
(p. 255).

Coaching Story | We’re Leaders Even When We Don’t Think So

“But I don’t have any direct reports.”
“But I’m not a supervisor.”
“I don’t manage anyone.”

For anyone who has thought or declared this aloud, especially after a leadership workshop self-evaluation, a new book has been written - just for you, and just in the nick of time!

Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner’s new book Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership How to Make a Difference Regardless of Your Title, Role, or Authority goes beyond arguing that leadership is not a position, it shares five practices of exemplary leadership:

• Model the Way
• Inspire a Shared Vision
• Challenge the Process
• Enable Others to Act
• Encourage the Heart

Chances are, you’ve included some of these practices in your leadership philosophy, or have described something similar. Or perhaps, you’re modeling leadership traits without even thinking about it.

Here’s a challenge for all of us: When we find ourselves saying that we are not influencing or leading, how about stopping for a moment and asking ourselves:

• Is that really true?
• Am I being passive rather than active?
• What can I do differently?

There’s a pretty good chance that there’s plenty we can actually do, and a strong likelihood we’re responding to not having a title like supervisor, manager, executive, chief, head, director, captain, boss and the like.

We’re leaders even when we don’t think so.

Influence & Insight | March 2021

Leadership Story | Vulnerability Creates Safety

Sharing program expectations, what to achieve? and what to avoid? at the beginning of an in-house Leadership Development Program is a great way to take the temperature of an audience, and perhaps reveal the predominant internal organizational culture. Consider this list from a recently completed in-house program:

• No cliches
• No jargon
• Genuine feedback, listening
• Listen to learn
• Speak freely
• Caring, empathy and patience

Turns out this particular group is highly educated, technically competent and involved in providing critical first responder communications system deployment. The initial program inputs suggest desire for a less harsh, more caring, environment. Perhaps a different culture. Most of us are tired of the virtual environment, missing the opportunity for face-to-face, personal connections. Maybe this particular virtual environment, these Zoom sessions, allowed enough virtual “safety” for sharing multiple sensitive topics less likely shared in person.

It happened again during a second in-house virtual program kick-off. This group shared similar expectations, and included the goal of vulnerability. Think about that. Similar to our recent observations regarding the importance of purpose during our Covid pandemic, we’re seeking authenticity, genuine connections and the empathic, vulnerable leader certainly appears welcome.

Let’s think about culture this month. What type of environment are we contributing to? How may we improve our environment, our culture, leading to superior results?

Vulnerability creates safety.

Courageous Cultures | Book Review

“There’s a world of difference between insisting on someone’s doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it.” (Mr. Rogers p. 157)

Karin Hurt & David Dye offer a how-to guide for the emerging leader often trapped within a larger organization dominated by a prior-generation, command-and-control, management-dominated culture. It’s a great companion work to S. Chris Edmonds’ the culture engine.

The authors introduce a Cultural Oasis as the solution when wondering if it still possible to build a Courageous Culture on my team (p. 31) within unsupportive or toxic environments.

Envision this review as including: A macro-level business audit, a personal cultural (leader) audit, a description of a courageous culture and a suite of tools we may construct our team’s oasis with. It’s worth mentioning several areas where Hurt and Dye’s ideas may fit within a Personal Leadership Philosophy. Beginning with Chapter 5, the authors include First Tracks sections listing how we may put our new tools to good use.

Cultural Audit

We can all relate to unsafe meetings or a work environment where the Fear of Speaking Up (FOSU) exists (p. 5). As a countermeasure, three helpful cultural characters (pp. 5-6) are offered:

• Microinnovator The employee who consistently seeks out small but powerful ways to improve the business.
• Problem Solver The employee who cares about what’s not working and wants to make it better.
• Customer Advocate The employee who sees through your customers’ eyes and speaks up on their behalf.

It appears there is a disconnect between the C-Suite and the “front line” in many organizations. Consider this: According to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers CEO Survey, 77 percent of CEOs say they struggle to find the creativity and innovation they need (p. 11).

Yet the authors found five reasons that people don’t speak up to contribute solutions, suggest microinnovations, or advocate for customers:

1. People don’t think leadership wants their ideas.
2. No one asks.
3. They lack confidence to share
4. They lack the skills to share effectively.
5. People don’t think anything will happen, so they don’t bother.

Making things worse, many organizations tolerate behavior inconsistent with listed core values. Leaving a toxic leader in place tells your team (p. 28):

1. That you lack courage
2. That you don’t value them
3. That this kind of abuse, harassment, and bullying is o.k.

Especially since only one or two experiences with a bad manager, or bullying peer, will be enough “proof” for most people that speaking up isn’t safe (p. 42).

If your organization focuses on exit interviews or reading Glassdoor reviews, you probably missing earlier cultural warning signs. For example, from 25 to 30 percent of employees get income from short-term or freelance work each month and the number is growing (p. 11).

Takeaway: We can’t underscore the importance of alignment as a high-payoff leadership activity.

Personal Audit

The authors ask us to master our stories, reminiscent of Crucial Conversations, or put another way, asking “What Do I Really Want?” This is also an excellent reminder we should maintain a personal leadership journal. This allow us to recall the moments that made [others] think we were courageous (p 43), guiding future decision-making, increasing the chances we’ll courageously choose to live according to our values (p. 44).

Courageous Culture Snapshot

A Courageous Culture is one where (p. 3):

• Teams at every level of your business continuously ask, “How can we make this better?”
• Leaders have the courage to ask what’s not working and really listen.
• Everyone is confident to raise a hand on behalf of the customer and put purpose about politics.

This sounds like an effective After Action Review (AAR) everyday mindset. Cultures require an elegant dance between two seemingly contradictory leadership characteristics: Clarity and Curiosity (p. 51). It’s very similar to Navy SEAL Jeff Boss’ solution for Navigating Chaos. Ask yourself how much clarity your Personal Leadership Philosophy provides – where are we going? what does our future look like?

Our Toolbox

We can start by overcoming FOSU. Your team won’t be able to hear anything you say about courage and innovation without first watching what you do – very closely – to see if what you do matches up with what you’ve said (p. 68).

Have you ever watched a leader ask for feedback and then defensively justify their decisions and shoot down objections? (p. 80)

Think of Marshall Goldsmith’s Trigger-type questions. You ask in ways that draw out people’s best thinking (p. 79). These are not passive, yes or no answered questions. When you ask a courageous question, you (pp. 81-83):

• Get specific
• Be humble
• Don’t respond – yet

Take a look at the great list of courageous questions on page 83, a favorite is: What must I do better as a leader if we are to be more successful?

Then we need to follow up, or walk the talk.

If you’re inspecting without being “in the arena” or not putting yourself out there for your team or not on the front line to know what really happens, you won’t be able to celebrate true success or have the credibility to influence change. (p. 138)

Start Building

In both Creating a Motivational Environment and Leader as Coach workshops, we’re focused on the environment (think culture) we’re creating.

To build an infrastructure for courage, pay special attention to how (p. 144):

• Employees receive performance feedback (or performance coaching).
• You equip people with the skills they need to succeed.
• You choose leaders – and how you equip them.

People want to know “why?” The authors found that sixty-seven percent of our research participants said management operates according to the notion that “this is the way we’ve always done it.” (p 148)

We can bring together our diverse cultural Microinnovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates (p. 173) and use eight good coaching questions (pp. 179-181):

1. What is the goal
2. What have you tried?
3. What happened?
4. What did you learn from this?
5. What else do you need?
6. What else can you do?
7. What do you think will happen if you try option A?
8. What will you do?

Summary

How will you know when your culture is courageous?

“When you surround yourself with others who also believe that silence isn’t safe and effort is everything, you’ll soon find that you feel lonelier hiding your truth than speaking it.” (p. 192)

Karin Hurt generously provided a copy of her book for review.

Coaching Story | Leadership is an organizational activity, not a noun or group name

Have you ever felt excluded in an organization when hearing about a leadership activity, planning or strategy session, or subsequent outcome - in which your were not asked to participate, nor asked a single question about?

We’re bringing this up for two reasons: First, we’re focusing on culture this month and second, four different clients have requested expanded leadership development activities across the organization as a 2021 priority. Two of the organizations are involved in critical infrastructure construction, one is a regional Zoo, and the fourth is a top tier consulting firm.

In each of the four organizations, we’ve facilitated leadership development programs for over five years, and in one case, have trained nearly two hundred people. Why the concern now?

Perhaps having many individuals and teams working remotely has contributed to this, perhaps the Covid pandemic has revealed where organizational structure may be improved.

Another thought: Introspective organizations had the opportunity in 2020 to ask how they may improve in 2021, and after the pandemic, emerge with an improving, more aligned culture.

It’s worth keeping an eye on cultural trends this year, along with engagement and alignment.

Leadership is an organizational activity, not a noun or group name.

Influence & Insight | February 2021

Leadership Story | Leaders Continuously Seek Purpose

Two themes provoked strong reactions during our annual Academy Leadership [virtual] conference this past month. While reflecting on 2020 events, it was worth sharing that many invited webinars and talks last year centered on maintaining a sense of purpose, magnified during the Covid pandemic. My colleague Tom Deierlein requested and posted on LinkedIn an energy Venn diagram included in the presentation. The response was viral, striking the same nerve on-line as in our three days of meetings. Credit is due to Naomi Simson, who who wrote about this in her book Live What You Love, first reviewed in 2017, and who kindly shared her book when we were both invited speakers at a 2017 conference in Sydney. While preparing for a webinar last spring, I came across the story of two USAF Academy cadets who committed suicide shortly after the senior class was isolated. Thinking about how such a tragedy could happen motivated a return to Naomi’s book, the purpose Venn diagram, and led to revisiting what the nature of connecting with others, or networking, is actually about. It’s worth sharing Naomi’s book review again to start 2021.

What has 2020 taught us as leaders? Ask yourself. There are great lessons for all of us.

Leaders continuously seek purpose.

Live What You Love | Book Review

"Living a purposeful life is about energy. And there's nowhere
better to start than your physical well-being." (p. 350)

Naomi Simson's personal journey & well-referenced book models passion-based or next-generation leadership. Her story offers sharp contrast with a typical, low-energy lifestyle and informs how we may discover what we want to do most leading to a more fulfilling life. This review ties Simson's 4 P's (Passion, Persistence, Positivity and Purpose) to a recommended leadership path.

Passion

Identifying personal dreams and goals (both our own and others) is a central part of the Leadership Excellence Course Goal Setting workshop. Simson tells us it might take some exploration to discover (p. 8) our inner spirit. If we're overbooked, or repeatedly chasing shiny things, this won't happen. Simson realized when everything was urgent (pp. 9-10), nothing is important and she missed connecting with her children as a result. Ouch.

We know what it looks like, afterward, when someone has aligned purpose with joy. Simson asks why are entrepreneurs so revered. It's not magic, and it's not just risk taking, it's about becoming real:

"If you're not being real, you're not going to attract the kinds of
people around you who will support your passion." (p. 34).

One of the key ways to build an organization Simson cites is identifying shared values (p. 35), similar to our focus in Core Values Alignment workshops. This approach allowed her to target five ways (p. 63) to well-being (from the New Economics Foundation):

1. Connect to the people around you -- be present.
2. Be active -- go for a walk, play a game.
3. Take notice -- be curious about what goes on around you.
4. Keep learning -- try something new.
5. Give -- do something nice for a friend or a stranger.

Simson points out Raj Sisodia, who advises "Make people your primary purpose" (p. 88), leading to happier employees, who are (via Shawn Achor, The Happiness Advantage):

• 31 per cent more productive.
• 40 per cent more likely to receive a promotion.
• less absent, with 23 per cent fewer fatigue symptoms.
• up to ten per cent more engaged at work.
• able to sell more -- happy sales people produce 37 per cent greater sales.

Simson hints at her own Personal Leadership Philosophy by asking "Do you know what you stand for? (p. 109). When we do articulate that, it allows for a consistency between both the team and the leaders, in turn, creating trust for the brand (p. 111).

Persistence

"Resilience and persistence are the game changers.
They give you the strength to live a powerful life instead of playing
small and being plagued by insecurities" (p. 145).

Over time, those we coach and develop will tell others more about us than any other factor. Simson agrees: Being a leader is not about yourself or your profile -- it's about the legacy that you create (p. 135). She wasn't (me neither) always like this (p. 122): "I had always been pushy -- often at the expense of not knowing the impact it was having on the people around."

Guess what? When we are focused on helping others grow, we'll likewise want to improve ourselves. Like Anders Ericsson's definition of deliberate practice, Simson describes Luciano Pavarotti's approach (p. 175) to singing: "I concentrated on doing better than I had the day before and stopped worrying."

Most of us have hang ups we must overcome before living this way. Simson lists Five Famous Fears (p. 178):

• Humiliation
• Separation
• Poverty
• Unknown
• Missing out

Both the entrepreneur and leader feel these insecurities, but move ahead anyway. Or as Simson mentions, whatever you practice is what you become good at (p. 186).

Positivity

Simson courageously admits her prior self-centered focus (p. 203): "In my earlier years as a business leader what I lacked was the ability to include others." Now she looks to Jeff Haden's list of what makes a great boss (p. 207):

1. They believe in the unbelievable
2. They see opportunity in instability and uncertainty
3. They wear their emotions on their sleeves
4. They protect others from the bus
5. They've been there, done that ... and still do that
6. They lead by permission, not authority
7. They embrace a larger purpose
8. They take real, not fake risks

At its core, Simson finds that leadership is about positivity, authenticity and connection (p. 232). What kind of environment do we create when leading this way? Let's look at ten traits positive people have in common (pp. 254-257):

• They feel great
• They live longer
• They are healthier
• They keep going
• They are in relationships
• They have deeper conversations
• They look for good
• They spread positivity
• They are productive
• They are lucky

Compare a work (and life) environment with these attributes vs. the typical disengaged organization. This is the result when we align work with passion.

Purpose

Simson references Oprah Winfrey, perhaps channeling Maslow (p. 298): "The key to realising a dream is to focus not on success but on significance." The following Venn diagram shows the intersection we should seek:

As with Simson, it may take some time to intersect all four areas. But when we do:

"Living your purpose will mean you experience life at a whole new level. You will thrive, flourish or excel. Your context will change and so will your view of the world." (p. 297)

Keep in mind, it is never the business which creates the purpose (p. 313). In her book (p. 330) The Gifts of Imperfection, Dr. Brené Brown describes belonging as, 'the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us.' First, establish the purpose; Second, start the business; and third (p. 331): "It is important to hire people who are aligned with the company's purpose."

Summary

Simson's journey to leadership started with a sense of purpose (p. 364). So can yours. She invites us to contact her via her blog naomisimson.com.

Note: Naomi Simson generously provided a copy of her book for review.

Coaching Story | Leaders Master Energy

Our second theme is energy. A recent, challenging coaching session started with shared client frustrations, described with phrases such as “Never going to happen” and “Nothing that I can do.” After a few minutes of this, it seemed appropriate to ask whether or not the coaching session was a waste of time. Sometimes we’re not aware of our negative energy.

Once again my thoughts turned to Naomi Simson, since she fundamentally believes that a purposeful life at the core is about energy. Interestingly, this topic also surfaced during our annual meeting. Diane Wilhelm introduced another way of thinking about energy: Anabolic and catabolic energy.

Like Diane, we can think of energy from a coach’s perspective. We can think of catabolic energy as draining, contracting and resisting energy (from cat = down, against). Likewise, we may think of anabolic energy as constructive, expanding and fueling (ana = building, upward).

From Breaking Down Energy: What You Need to Know as a Coach, Leader, Educator (or Human Being!)

Another source that comes to mind is Tony Schwartz & Jim Loehr’s The Power of Full Engagement, a rather deep dive into our multiple sources of energy. The authors reveal that we may audit our energy expenditure with the following questions:

Schwartz and Loehr further share that our positive energy rituals are powerful on three levels. They help us to insure that we effectively manage energy in the service or whatever mission we are on. They reduce the need to rely on our limited conscious will and discipline to take action. Finally, rituals are a powerful means by which to translate our values and priorities into action. Think of all the daily activities we don't spend energy thinking about: driving a car, walking, eating, etc. Rituals conserve energy.

We can tie all of these observations to our Personal Leadership Philosophy, our personal energy Venn diagram, and ultimately to our purpose.

Leaders master energy.

Influence & Insight | January 2021

Leadership Story | Leaders Embrace Failure

It’s refreshing when a leadership course attendee recognizes mistakes as learning experiences in their Personal Leadership Philosophy. Memories of the Air Force Officer Evaluation Report (OER) process suggest that one had to be superhuman: with perfect evaluation scores, a General Officer endorsement, and superlative performance descriptions altogether broadcasting one never made a single error and further hinting that perhaps no risks were taken either.

The recent report of SpaceX's Starship SN8 prototype test launch naturally caught my eye, especially since the craft exploded upon landing

Reporter Mike Wall noted: The 165-foot-tall (50 meters) SN8 appeared to notch all of these big milestones, except for the final one: The vehicle hit its landing mark but came in too fast, exploding in a dramatic fireball 6 minutes and 42 seconds after liftoff.

How did SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk respond? Elation.

SN8's rapid unplanned disassembly did nothing to dampen the spirits of SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, who was thrilled by the results of today's flight.

"Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed! Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!"

Musk tweeted this evening.

"Mars, here we come!" he added in another tweet.

Imagine the motivational environment this type of support creates. What does your leadership philosophy support and what actions do you take in support of your teams?

Leaders Embrace Failure

Lead Care Win | Book Review

“Your number one and irrefutable goal is to focus your leadership on
the development and sustainability of relationships.” (p. 2)

Read the Coda starting on page 181 first. You’ll understand Dan Pontefract better as well as the “why” behind his refreshing work. He reminds us that people matter most. Each of us possesses a backstory, but we also have various issues we are dealing with at any given moment… (p. 183).

Leadership Excellence Course attendees often include phrases corresponding to Dan Pontefract’s lesson, or chapter titles:

• Be Relatable
• Play for Meaning
• Stay Present
• Remain Curious
• Embrace Change
• Dare to Share
• Command Clarity
• Commit to Balance
• Champion Others

when composing a Personal Leadership Philosophy (PLP). This review showcases one peril, one takeaway and one story from each chapter lesson – hopefully inspiring our own stories, and refinements to our PLP.

Be Relatable

You operate with two personalities: one for work and one for outside of work (p. 9). Aircrews asking for doctors aboard during medical emergencies don’t care if a physician is on the clock or not. Same with leaders. Empathize with others. Use your head, heart and hands to better appreciate peers and team members (p. 21). Pontefract offers three types of empathy (pp. 12 – 13): cognitive, emotional and sympathetic. Consider sympathetic empathy as this requires action building on the other two forms.

Play for Meaning

You come to work for the money, not the meaning (p. 29). Chances are, if we’re doing this, we’re also chasing other’s definitions of success and accomplishment, driven by a scarcity mindset. Reflect on and decide your short-term and long-term working life achievements. Capture the behavioral changes needed to accomplish each of them (p. 39). Keeping a leadership journal is an underrated activity, probably because we falsely attach importance to merely being busy. Pontefract asks “Whom Am I Serving?” (p. 31). Years ago a dear friend lamented his poor decision to leave his wife. My advice to him was to do just this, discover who he was serving.

Stay Present

You believe that things are just happening so fast these days, there’s just no time to plan. There is only one work ethic, and that is being “on” all the time (p. 51). Pontefract keenly notices senior leaders have a tendency to look for “efficiencies” first rather than behavior improvements (p. 48). We’ve all heard “do more with less” before. Consider energy management instead, which captures both behaviors and priorities. Analyze your calendar and determine where you can block off time to dedicate to undisturbed, focused work. Be consistent (p. 61).

Remain Curious

You learn only as much as you need in order to do your job. You’re not interested in learning much else (p. 75). It’s genuinely creepy meeting someone who doesn’t read. Pontefract has challenged his thinking and knowledge level in many ways, leading to a lifelong learning approach (pp. 65-66). That is an example of an abundance mindset taking advantage of the limitless knowledge surrounding us all.

Embrace Change

You believe you do not have the time to embrace change because you are too busy doing your “real job.” (p. 95) This brings to mind several “Networking and Leadership” webinars this year. Pontefract has reached a similar conclusion. It has developed an army of colleagues and contacts I can call on at a moment’s notice for assistance. My network has become my net worth… (p. 93). Stay positive, open, flexible and patient when change inexorably arrives at your doorstep (p. 103). Pithy words during a pandemic.

Dare to Share

My favorite chapter lesson. You hoard information, especially new information because that’s how you think you can get ahead (p. 113). This was the prevailing mindset/culture years ago in the military/government environment encapsulated by the term Need To Know. Pontefract reminds us: Whether there are individual, team or departmental biases, they can become a massive problem in our efforts to share information, data and knowledge with others (p. 110). Does your work environment encourage sharing? Are your meetings safe places to do this? Offer up your experience to colleagues in the organization. Be a mentor, or at least someone who shares their knowledge (p. 119).

Command Clarity

You believe your future success depends on demonstrating how busy you are today (p. 130). Notice a pattern here? The bane of the professionally busy. In Navy SEAL Jeff Boss’ Navigating Chaos, he finds that sharing knowledge is the real source of power. It’s not about us. Block out time in your calendar to become more strategic with your thinking and to make better decisions. Reinforce how time is linked to the stable mental mood that nurtures clarity (p. 137).

Commit to Balance

If people want coaching, you think they should join a sport or get a gym membership (p. 147). A favorite leadership course expectation is replacing prior definitions of coaching (typically both evaluative and negative) with a positive, energizing performance coaching approach. Pontefract calls out Microsoft, prior to Nadella and Hogan as not a coaching organization, nor did it listen to or generally recognize its people (p. 142). Create the conditions where you will commit to balance. In doing so, you will diversify, include, flex, recognize, coach and trek (p. 159).

Champion Others

You have to be a different person at work, more thick-skinned. Comes with the territory of being a leader and getting people to follow orders (p. 170). A companion to the relatable lesson before, consider how authentic we are (not) when describing or modeling two personalities to different audiences. Sounds exhausting. Pontefract calls out The Case for Humble Expectations: CEO Humility and Market Performance (Oleg Petrenko), demonstrating greater shareholder returns. Hold the door: no matter your age or tenure, it’s your duty to care and help others (p. 179).

Summary

Dan Pontefract reflects on Seneca’s essays on tranquility:

“Believing in yourself and trusting you are on the right path,
and not being in doubt by following the myriad footpaths
of those wandering in every direction.” (p. 122)

A timeless reflection during our chaotic times.

Dan Pontefract generously provided a copy of his book for review.

Coaching Story | 2020 - A Year of Gratitude

In our Academy Leadership Coaching to Develop People workshops, we share that one of the characteristics of an effective coach is continuous learning. It is worth spending a few moments thanking this audience for unprecedented learning opportunities this past year.

As early as February, a partner client agreed we should attempt a three-day Virtual Leadership Excellence Course. Rather than ask whether or not this could be accomplished, we focused on learning new platforms (WebEx, Zoom, etc.), fixed the program dates and eventually launched a successful program in late April. Interestingly, since we were all disrupted by the Covid pandemic, our common challenges led to increased sharing.

The deep need for human connection, and genuine work/life balance quickly surfaced as an enduring issue regardless of leadership program, coaching session, or worldwide webinar audience. Prudence suggested reaching out to colleagues across the globe, leading to webinars based out of Texas, Germany, Dubai, Sydney and Aukland. My hope is to maintain and grow these new affinities in 2021 and beyond.

As a way of saying thank you and strengthening client/coach relationships, I reached out to several authors requesting signed copies of their books to offer clients who bravely launched virtual leadership experiences. Many thanks to General Stan McChrystal, Susan Packard and Mark Crowley for the boxes of your personally signed books. We’ve been mailing them all year and will continue the practice.

As we enter 2021, please continue reaching out and sharing your leadership stories, in particular how you have applied your leadership toolbox to a challenging environment. Also, please let me know how to improve, support you and your organization, and what we may try together in the future.

Thanks to you, 2020 - A Year of Gratitude - was a breakthrough year for learning.