Archive for January, 2010
Three Mantras to Keep Your Ego in Check January 29 2010
Leaders have to walk a fine line. On the one hand, it’s important to leverage the footprint of the role that you’re in. As I said in a webinar on leading at the next level for Government Executive magazine yesterday, there are certain things that only you can do given the leadership role that you’re in. That brings us to “on the other hand.” On the other hand, as you leverage that leadership footprint, it’s really important to remember that much of your capacity to get things done flows from the role and not because you’re God’s gift to leadership.
This lesson was powerfully brought home to me about 10 years ago when I announced I was leaving my corporate vice president’s job in a month to start my coaching business. I was amazed at how quickly my calendar went from being jammed to being able to drive a truck through the white space. Same thing with my e-mail inbox and my voice mail. Empty and empty. Once people knew I was leaving, they moved on to life after Scott.
I read a funny story that illustrates the same dynamic in Al Kamen’s In the Loop column in the Washington Post this morning. As a follow up to the State of the Union address this week, Kamen was writing about the tradition of one cabinet member leaving Washington to ensure continuity of government in case disaster strikes during the speech. He shared this story about former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman who was the designated out of towner during the 1997 State of the Union:
For the 1997 speech, then-Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman headed up to New York for dinner with his daughter in Manhattan. He flew on a small Air Force jet with a security detail, the "suitcase," and a doctor, he recalled Thursday. He was taken in a small motorcade to his daughter's apartment building.The detail stayed downstairs while Glickman watched the speech. As soon as it was over, they called up and told him, "The mission is terminated." They took off and left Glickman and his daughter, unable to hail a cab, to walk 12 blocks to dinner in the pouring rain. "Ah, the fleeting limits of power," he observed.
Great story, huh? Leaders need to protect themselves and the people they lead by keeping their egos in check. Sometimes, like I did or Dan Glickman did, you’ll get a cosmic reminder to do so. A lot of the time you won’t. So, as a public service to leaders walking that fine line between leveraging the footprint of their role and not letting their ego run away with them, I offer three mantras to regularly repeat to oneself:
- It’s not about me, it’s about the role. It’s not about me, it’s about the role.
- The fun stuff that comes with my job doesn’t belong to me. The fun stuff that comes with my job doesn’t belong to me.
- This, too, shall pass. This, too, shall pass.
For best effect, spend at least five minutes a day with your eyes closed repeating one of the mantras over and over again to yourself. It’s probably best that you do this in private. People get nervous when they see leaders talking to themselves.
What mantras do you use to keep yourself grounded?
Truman Thursdays – Commanding Officer Joe Clarkson on Leadership January 28 2010
As promised, over the next several Thursdays I’ll be sharing interviews with some of the commissioned and enlisted personnel I met on my recent trip to the aircraft carrier, USS Harry S Truman. The basic question I asked everyone was, “What are you looking for in a leader?” First up with his answer to that question is the commanding officer of the Truman, Captain Joe Clarkson. If you’re looking for insights into how the top leader of a complex operation approaches his job, listen to what Captain Clarkson has to say.
(By the way, the plane launching from the deck in the opening segment is an E-2 Hawkeye.)
Three Reasons You Should Fire the Prima Donna January 27 2010
Over my ten years as an executive coach, I’ve come across situations where one of my clients feels like they’re between a rock and a hard place because they have someone on their team who produces great results but alienates everyone around them. You know the type. It’s what we’ve come to call the prima donna. According to Wikipedia, the term comes from the world of Italian opera where the prima donna is the “first lady” – usually the leading soprano in the company with a reputation for arrogance, ego and irritability that makes them a real pain to deal with. These days the term has become gender neutral. Males can be prima donnas too. (American Idol’s Simon Cowell is the first male example that comes to mind.)
The prima donna dilemma has been on my radar screen a few times in the last year. These situations usually have some common characteristics. The prima donna is talented in his domain and selectively builds relationships with a few key people who can help him accomplish what he’s trying to do. Meanwhile, he treats his teammates poorly and, as he puts more and more points on the board, starts making demands of the boss that have the whiff of extortion. You probably have seen how this plays out. “If I don’t get the promotion, the raise, the big account, the glamorous assignment or whatever, I’ll take my services elsewhere and you’ll be left high and dry.” He’ll usually make this move a few weeks or days before a critical meeting with a customer or in the midst of an important project where he’s a player. Every time he gets what he wants it becomes fuel for a cycle of escalating demands down the road.
So, if you’re a leader with a prima donna on your team who keeps playing this game, what do you do? It’s simple. Bite the bullet and fire them. Here are three reasons why you should:
Video Book Club: The Power of Full Engagement January 26 2010
Do you find yourself running faster and faster to keep up with all of your commitments? If you do, you’re not alone. As I’ve noted here before, the lowest rated item among the hundreds of leaders that have received feedback through our Next Level 360 degree survey is “Paces himself/herself by building in regular breaks from work.” We live and work in time-challenged times.
If any of that connects with you, then you’ll want to take a look at The Power of Full Engagement
For now, here’s a bit on The Power of Full Engagement
What I Learned on an Aircraft Carrier January 25 2010
Last October, I had the opportunity to speak on leadership to newly promoted admirals and senior executives of the US Navy in their annual symposium. That led to an invitation to join a group of civilians to visit the aircraft carrier, USS Harry S Truman, on a training cruise off the coast of North Carolina last week. As you can see from the photo to the left, I made the trip. (That’s your faithful correspondent, front row, fifth from the left.)
I’m not going to lie to you. I was pretty excited to go on the trip since we’d be making an arrested landing on arrival (in a C-2 Greyhound transport plane) and leaving the ship a day later via a catapult assisted launch. As much as I love Disneyworld, they’ve got a ways to go before they come up with a ride that’s as exciting as going from 150 knots to 0 in three seconds on landing or from 0 to 150 when you take off. It was a very cool experience, but I have to say was not even close to being the best part of the trip. The best part was the opportunity to see several thousand men and women of an average age of 24 working together to do amazing things on a round the clock basis. Over the years, I’ve watched hours and hours of film on the Navy and thought I had some appreciation for what they do. Last week I learned that there is no substitute for seeing it in real life.
I shot about three hours of video on the Truman and have a lot of great interviews from the sailors about what they look for in a leader that I’ll share with you on Thursdays over the next several weeks. In the meantime, I’ve put together this 3:00 minute highlight video to give you a taste of life on the ship.
Also, I wanted to share some of the big leadership lessons I learned while aboard the Truman.
What You Can Learn About Negotiating From Conan O’Brien January 22 2010
As I’m writing this a few days before publication, by the time you read this Conan O’Brien will have probably left The Tonight Show on NBC with a hefty severance package in the neighborhood of $30 million. (See this article from the Financial Times for details.) I’d leave for that amount and I’m guessing you would too. While it’s unlikely that any of us are going to have the opportunity to negotiate for such a lovely parting gift, there is a lot you can learn from how Conan handled his exit.
As I said in my video book club post on Bargaining for Advantage, life is essentially a series of one negotiation after another. Some are high stakes, some are low but anytime you’re trying to reach an agreement with a co-worker, your boss, your spouse or your kids, you’re negotiating. (Why do I hear the voice of William Shatner in my head right now?) In setting up the deal he’s getting from NBC, Conan demonstrated three basic approaches that all negotiators should keep in mind:
Know your strategy: Are you most concerned with getting a particular result, maintaining a relationship or somewhere between the two? Your answer will determine your strategy. Depending on where you are in the process, your strategy can shift. For years, Conan was concerned with maintaining his relationship with NBC so he could eventually get his dream job of Tonight Show host. In those years, he had a strategy of accommodating NBC’s desires so he could be positioned to win the grand prize. When NBC wanted him to move the start time of his show to 12:05 am to accommodate the return of Jay Leno to the 11:35 slot, he’d had enough. At that point, he quit caring about his relationship with NBC and shifted to a competitive strategy to get the result of the biggest possible severance (and plenty of publicity to set him up for his next job).
Create leverage: Once he switched to a competitive strategy, O’Brien created a lot of leverage over NBC by releasing a public statement outlining why he would not move the Show to 12:05 am and making a lot of jokes at the expense of network execs. He moved to seize the high ground and create a groundswell of public support. Fueled by social media, NBC was quickly behind the eight ball with a lot of fans who were angry at the way Conan was being treated. The leverage O’Brien created compelled NBC to make a lucrative deal to make the whole problem go away.
Know your BATNA: BATNA stands for best alternative to a negotiated agreement. In other words, you need to know your walk away point and what you want to walk away. O’Brien’s BATNA point was a shift out of the 11:35 pm slot. Since he was clear on that with himself, he knew when it was time to change his strategy and create the leverage.
What else do leaders need to keep in mind when they’re negotiating? If you’ve been paying attention to the Conan/Jay drama, what’s your take on how they’ve handled their negotiations? Any lessons to be learned that apply to those of us who don’t have TV shows?
How Coakley and Brown Pulled Defeat from the Jaws of Victory and Vice Versa: What Leaders Can Learn January 20 2010
One of the most fun aspects of my work as an executive coach is the opportunity to work in a lot of different organizations. I enjoy observing what’s different and similar in the various cultures. One thing that’s more or less the same everywhere is that most people profess a distaste for “politics.” The only problem with that is that there is always politics and if you’re going to make a difference, you have to successfully deal with it. When you get down to it, politics is about influencing people to do something. If you’re a leader, you’re doing that every day, all day long.
Another thing I like is elections. One of the reasons I like elections is that on a given day the outcome of all the politics becomes crystal clear. Someone wins and someone loses. There’s usually a lot more ambiguity in organizational politics.
So, this week in Massachusetts, we had a crystal clear political outcome when Republican state senator Scott Brown roared out of nowhere to beat the Democrat state attorney general Martha Coakley to win the US Senate seat that had been held for 46 years by the late Ted Kennedy. Just a month ago, Coakley was the overwhelming favorite to win the race. In the last ten days, Brown closed the gap and ended up 
with a decisive win of 52% to 47% of the votes.
Brown influenced more people to vote for him than Coakley did for her. How did he pull victory from the jaws of defeat? How did she do the opposite? What can leaders who need to influence people day in and day out learn from these two? Here are three lessons from each:
Video Book Club: Bargaining for Advantage January 19 2010
Whether you realize it or not, your average day is full of one negotiation after another. It could be at work, with a customer or supplier, at a community organization meeting or at the family dinner table. If you’re engaged in a conversation where you and another person are trying to come to a joint decision, you’re involved in a negotiation. So, since you’re in negotiations all day long it’s a good idea to build your skill set in that domain.
Fortunately, there’s a really good book called Bargaining for Advantage
Six Qualities That Made Martin Luther King, Jr. a Great Speaker January 18 2010
Several years ago I was given the gift of the recordings of the sermons and speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. The sermon set is called “A Knock at Midnight,” and the speeches set is titled “A Call to Conscience.” There are companion books of the same title for each set. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I listened to every sermon and speech in the recordings. I learned a lot about King from that experience and came to some conclusions about what made him an effective speaker.
As we take today to recognize King’s life and its impact on the world, I thought I’d share six qualities in his speaking that I think all leaders should emulate. If you’re pressed for time as you read this, you can skip ahead to the list. If you have eleven minutes more, watch the You Tube clip of King’s “I Have a Dream Speech”. Most of the six qualities that I identified in listening to his recordings are illustrated in that speech.
Here’s a quick synopsis of some of the qualities that King had as a speaker along with some questions to get you thinking about your own opportunities to be a more effective communicator.
Make a Difference This Year. Right Now. January 15 2010
The tragedy in Haiti is a leadership moment for all of us to step up and do what we can do to help. I was talking with my college junior son on the phone last night and he said he wanted to go to Haiti to help. I know how he feels. I imagine most of us do. When you see or hear the reports of the deep suffering of as many as 3 million human beings, the natural response is to help.
As we’ve seen on television, the immediate challenge is for the professionals who are on the ground in Haiti to get into Port au Prince and set up the infrastructure and processes needed to provide rescue services, medical care, public health, food, water, shelter, security and more. It’s an overwhelming situation with acute needs now that will evolve into a long term recovery process. It will take money and that’s where we can all help and lead.
For the past several years, my company has done something just after the new year to acknowledge and thank the clients and colleagues we work with. Last year, we made a donation in their honor to the micro lending organization, Kiva, and I was planning on doing that again this year. Kiva is a great organization making a big difference around the world and they deserve our support and involvement. However, the needs of Haiti are so great that this year our donation is going to Doctors Without Borders for their relief work in the country.
If you haven’t already, I encourage you to make a donation to one of the reputable organizations working to help the Haitians and to ask your colleagues, friends, family and clients to do the same. There are about 5,000 readers a week of this blog and you can do the math to see what a difference thousands of $10 or $100 or more donations would make. It could be $50,000, $500,000 or more in relief funds.You can make a difference. Here are some options for you to consider:
Make a $10 donation to the American Red Cross’ Haiti relief efforts by texting the word, Haiti, to 90999. Your donation will be billed to your cell phone. It’s quick and easy.
Make a larger Haiti relief donation to the Red Cross at this address or to Doctors Without Borders at this address.
Or, for a list of links to other organizations providing relief to Haiti, go to www.helphaiti.msnbc.com.
Thanks for your leadership throughout the year and in this time of great need when your leadership and generosity can make such a difference.
Scott Eblin is an executive coach, speaker and author of 
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