Jim Collins wrote a wonderful article about including with our To Do List a Stop Doing List. The Stop Doing List may in fact be the more important of the two. The To Do List is a powerful force in shaping our accomplishments, but Jim’s article inspired me to reflect that the list is just as powerful in limiting our accomplishments. When we set outcomes in advance, we are ruled by expectation and we rule out possibility.

As leaders and teachers, we are usually expected Read More →

It’s Personal

Has anyone ever said to you, at work, “Don’t take it personally. It’s just business. It’s just work, there’s nothing personal about it.”

Maybe someone says, “It’s a tough year, and I know it’s hard, but we’re going to have to cut your departmental budget. But don’t take it personally.” Or they say, “I really appreciate the work you’ve been doing on this project, it’s great work. But things have changed and we’re going to have to pull the plug on it. But it’s not personal.”

We hear this all the time. But the peole who say these things just don’t get it. The only way that I can not take my work personally is if I turn myself into a cog in someone’s machine. Machine parts don’t take things personally. I don’t think I’ve ever heard my car mechanic say, “Your carburetor hasn’t been performing at it’s best recently. I think you’ve been undermining its confidence.” Read More →

The bad leader is hated and feared,
The good leader is loved and praised,
The great leader, when their work is done,
The people say, “We did this ourselves.” (Lao Tzu)

Of the leaders and teachers I have met, the most effective have the attitude that their job is to create the conditions that allow others to grow and prosper. Then their organizations, and their society, can grow and prosper with them.

Jack Welch said something similar, as probably many others have. Whoever deserves the credit, it’s a favourite definition of mine because it captures the notion that leadership is a generosity practice, and it’s best offered indirectly, by creating favourable conditions.

The idea that we lead people is a great source of difficulty in high places. If instead we are able to influence circumstances so that people have what they need to proceed well on their own, then our accomplishment becomes leader-proof and self-sustaining. We can’t stand over a plant and say, “Grow!” We place it in the right soil, temperature, water and sunlight, and the plant does its own growing.

We usually accept that teaching others can be a generous thing to do. Being willing to learn from others can also be generous, and a powerful way to engage the best in them.

What do your team or your colleagues know that you don’t? Have you made an effort to find out? Are you helping to create a culture of curiosity and mutual support in which people expect to learn from each other up and across the organizational chart as well as down?

If you’re leading a team, it may feel a bit unsettling to encourage people who report to you to show that they know more than you do, but of course they do. We’re not omniscient. An excellent way to bring out the best in people is to ask them to teach or explain something, even in small ways through the day. Then make the effort to actually learn it and make use of it.

The point is not to make conversation or single out people with little “relationship” tricks. The point is to train yourself in the habit of learning from your team. It helps to ask about things you have some natural interest in, but you can also find ways of being genuinely interested in what each person can offer. You might be surprised at what you can learn, and from whom. Everyone has something to teach, though it may be submerged. You can create conditions for them to discover it and offer it. That’s what makes learning a leadership practice of generosity.

There’s a lot of talk these days about “learning organizations.” What that really means is organizations with a culture of curiosity and mutual support where everyone practices learning from each other in little ways every day. Then when the “organization” needs to learn, the people in it are already good at it, and know how to engage the full spectrum of their abilities, together.

Here are a couple of ideas. What works for you?

Curiosity practice – If you’re not naturally inclined to seek out what you can learn from your team and your colleagues, you can start with safe territory. For instance, if your child is doing a history project, ask people when they’re settling down to a meeting whether anyone knows about that historical period. Ask them a question your child is addressing, and let everyone hear the answer. Share the answer with your child, and report back what they say. Or if you’ve heard that one of your team members speaks another language, ask them to teach you some phrases. Actually learn the phrases, accept coaching on pronunciation, and play with those phrases when you see that person again. The possibilities for learning are many. You can be as creative as you like.

It matters less what you learn, and more that you are open to learning from everyone.

Putting-to-use practice – The more immediately practical kind of learning is the kind that directly benefits the team’s efforts. Do you have lunch and learn sessions where people can present or report to their colleagues on relevant topics in which they have particular expertise? If you do, set the example of asking questions, being careful not to sound as if you’re testing them. Is there something in the tactical plan you’re not clear on? Who can explain it? Let them explain it to you when others can hear too. In any situation, try to notice opportunities for people to show what they know in a useful way, and then help their teaching to emerge.

We can all use any allies we can get, right?. Work is challenging, and having to do everything alone, feeling that we have to make it all happen, this is exhausting. How can we find more allies to support our goals at work?

One way is to broaden our idea of what can be an ally. Not who, but what. With some thoughtful attention, we can make use of the situation around us as an ally to accomplish our goals for us.

For example, if we need to confront a difficult situation with people, we want everyone to come to the meeting with an open, flexible state of mind. The meeting room itself can be our ally in this.

Here’s how it works. If we walk into a room full of little gilt chairs with white cloth covers tied over their backs, or into a room with leather swivel chairs around a gleaming table, or into a room of stacking plastic chairs, we feel different in each room as soon as we walk in. The chairs alone have the ability to influence our state of mind. When we want to influence people’s state of mind, we can create conditions in the environment that can accomplish this goal for us. We miss an opportunity if we ignore the chairs.

Here’s a famous story.

Nelson Mandela needed to make peace with General Viljoen, an Afrikaner who led the militant white resistance to change in South Africa. After some work through intermediaries, the general was willing to meet and talk. He expected this meeting to be with himself and his allies on one side of a conference table, Mandela and his allies on the other, with a lot of intense disagreement and animosity, possibly leading to some concessions on one side or another.

Instead, Mandela invited the general to his own house. They sat near each other in comfortable chairs in Mandela’s living room, and Mandela himself served the general tea. Their human allies, who would in fact have been antagonists, waited in another room. By the end of the meeting the general had agreed to stop fighting.

Of course it wasn’t just the living room chairs. Nelson Mandela had an extraordinarily powerful personality and great skill with people. But he was also known for his skill at gathering all the allies he could. The conference table would have been a further antagonist in the conversation, another barrier between them to be overcome. The comfy chairs, where the two men could sit together, were a disarming pacifier that allowed the general to feel, in his whole being, the sensation of peace, even before any negotiation began.

Of course, the most disarming and pacifying room in the world would not have worked if the general had walked in and said, “I’m not meeting here. I’m not one of your neighbors over for an afternoon chat.” Mandela knew whom he was dealing with. He knew that protecting family and home life were the main concerns of both whites and blacks, and he used this to advantage by meeting in his own home, where the chairs could be his allies.

Who are you dealing with? Is your board room your ally in your encounter with them, or does the gleaming table become another barrier between you? What kind of chairs will be your allies in helping everyone adopt an open, flexible attitude? What kind of room? If you think you don’t have time to go down the street to hold the meeting at the local pub, how much time will the pub save you by changing everyone’s state of mind for you?

We have more allies than we think, if we take time to consider what, not just who, they are.

May 2015 be a year of health, openness and flexibility for us all.

__________________________________________________

Would you please help me for a short, one click moment?

For 2015 I’m refining the basic marketing language for what I do. Please tell me if the descriptions below make you want to say, “I need that. Tell me more.” Your intuition about this question will be a really big help to me in seeing how to grow my business.

Just click the number of your choice below. (If you want to choose more than one, just come back to this email after the first.)

Choice 1 – “I work with leaders to achieve two essential goals: Better performance and deeper commitment for your people, and greater mastery of your own personal practice of leadership.”

Choice 2 – “I help executives and influencers change people’s attitude, because attitude changes everything.”

Choice 3 – “I help leaders lead their people, and themselves, to bring their personal best to work.”

Choice 4 – None of the above really make we want to say, “Tell me more.”

Good morning everyone!

The child is born, the candles are lit, the days grow longer again. The celebrations are soon over, and it’s time to enjoy ourselves.

At sea, the sun rises from the edge of the world and the ship’s crew rises with it. We scrub the decks and polish the brass before breakfast. When the ship is clean and shiny, she becomes a worthy mirror for the new day, a mirror that reflects back to us the best we each have to offer.

In the city, my cooking pot is clean and bright, and my oatmeal bowl is patterned in blue. There is a chip in the rim, which fits my thumb nicely, and brings a moment of sharpness and attention when I touch it.

In  the dojo, the Aikido master Wendy Palmer works with her Japanese teacher to bring the fullness of herself to her training. Her teacher cries out to her, “I want to see your NOBLE. I want to see your AWESOME. I want to see your SHINY.”

Our noble awesome shiny is with us always, of course. But when it’s hard to find, the world can be our mirror. Polishing our brass, cleaning our pot, touching the sharpness of real things, whatever we do to make the world bright and vivid makes life mirror-like. The mirror commands us, and the command is, “See this noble awesome shiny. Enjoy yourself. Enjoy yourSELF.”

When this command is hard to give, the mirror-like world can give it for us.

I wish you all a new year full of your most noble awesome shiny.

What does it take for your business to be a great place to work?  Many business leaders have figured this out, each in their own way. And it’s exactly the each-in-their-own-way part that is the key to leading an award-winning workplace.

There’s no formula for being a great place to work, no 5 Easy Steps. There are however two principles we see reflected in businesses that boast low turnover, few sick days, high internal promotion, few grievances and high individual initiative; all good measures of a workplace’s health.

The first principle is, work is personal. We often say, “Don’t take it personally, it’s just business,” but really we want people to take their work personally, to feel that their work is worth their personal best. Getting people to bring their personal best to work is the holy grail of leadership. If we want to lead people to bring their personal best to work, we have to get personal.

Some leaders are more naturally personable than others, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Personality is not a business strategy. Getting personal means treating employees as individual persons, each in their own way. How can you support each person, individually, to get their work done in a way that makes them feel willing, and able, to do their personal best?

The second principle is the answer to this last question. It has three parts:

Knowing the difference is the hard part, but it’s what distinguishes great leadership and creates great workplaces. How do you know the difference?

The first step is simply acknowledging that the surest way to miss what’s needed and give what’s not needed is thinking, “I know what people need, and it’s my job to give it to them. That’s what’s expected of a leader.” You may pride yourself as a business leader on having the savvy to know what to do and the hutzpah to get it done, but at this point those are habits of mind that may not serve you well. What people need from a leader is not all the right answers, which no one has anyway, but the right questions, asked at the right time of the right people.

When it comes to supporting your people’s personal best, you need a culture of not-knowing, a culture of curiosity.

This culture of not-knowing calls for habits of mind that are curious, accommodating and non-judgmental. It’s about ongoing personal conversations. “What would help you thrive at work? What do you need more of, what do you need less of?” It will be different for each person.

You can make it your daily personal practice to ask questions like this; as an expected part of meetings, just passing someone in the hall, or wherever you can. You can probe the answers, to help the person clarify what they’re really asking for and to be sure you understand. If the request isn’t something you can immediately meet, you can ask, “What part of that would be easiest for us to start with?” Or if the request seems extreme, you don’t have to cut it off with, “Well, let’s be realistic.” You can continue the conversation, including other people too. “How can we do that?” You can be transparent about what you see as the obstacles. People may have a creative answer that surprises you. The culture of curiosity and mutual support these questions create allows you to distribute resources (time, talent, money, materials, supervision, support, collaboration, goodwill) in the most efficient and personally satisfying way possible.

Many organizations are too big or spread out for you to have these conversations with everyone. That’s no problem, because these conversations can happen up, down and across the organization, between everyone. A place where everyone is committed to finding out and trying to provide what their fellow employees need in order to thrive at work, is a great place to work.

To lead any kind of cultural shift, it’s your habits of mind that are the first obstacles. In sports, “the mind is the athlete,” and it’s the same in business. To help you and your executive team shift your habits of mind it can be helpful to work with an organizational coach, who can ask you the right questions at the right time, and be an accountability partner. But simply starting to ask your people what they need can in itself challenge your thinking habits. You can practice stepping past any habitual limiting reactions you have to these conversations, and let your people be your teachers. Leaders who learn from their people are one thing everyone needs.

First published in Progress Magazine

Here’s a simple practice for shifting your attitude, on the spot, whenever you need to.

If you’re feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or even just a bit preoccupied and distracted, pay attention to how you walk. If you’re walking down the hall, or along the street, or through the parking garage, slow down. You will lose a few seconds getting to your destination, maybe even a minute. So what? Walk at a moderate pace, relax your shoulders, look up. Let your breathing fall in rhythm with your pace. It’s not Monty Python’s Ministry of Funny Walks. It’s simply enjoying the movement of your limbs, and your movement through space.