Archive for August, 2010
Three Warning Signs That You’re Setting Yourself Up For A Leadership FAIL August 30 2010 one response
There’s a long-standing piece of advice to leaders that goes like this. They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
I’m thinking about that this morning having read an article in the Washington Post over the weekend about polling that shows DC mayor Adrian Fenty’s previously overwhelming lead in his reelection campaign has flipped to a 17 point deficit. Post reporter Mike DeBonis breaks down the numbers and offers an excellent analysis of how things have deteriorated for Fenty. He offers several reasons why Fenty is on the ropes. When I read through the list, I saw three reasons that should serve as reality checks for leaders in any arena.
The common denominator question for leaders is do you, through your words and actions, show that you care about the people you’re leading? Here are the warning signs of an impending leadership fail that DeBonis identified in his article:
Three Tips for Beating the Jitters August 26 2010 2 responses
It doesn’t matter how far you go as a leader, you’ll occasionally face situations that make you nervous. The reasons for the jitters can vary. It might be the first time you’ve led the senior staff meeting; it could be your first congressional hearing; it could be a crucial conversation with a key customer. No matter what the situation, you need to show up at your best with your confidence dialed in at just the right spot.
How do you get yourself there? How do you pick up the confidence that you need to perform and let go of doubt about how you’ll show up?
I spent yesterday morning talking with about a hundred newly promoted leaders in their organization and this was a hot topic during the general session and during the breaks.
Based on a combination of what I shared with and heard from the leaders about what works for them, here are three tips for beating the jitters when the stakes are high:
A British Friend’s Take on BP August 24 2010 2 responses
By the end of the day last Friday, I was ready to spend the rest of the afternoon talking with friends. One of them was my buddy Steve Bowling. Steve’s a coach and former HR exec based in New Jersey. He’s also a Brit who has lived in the States for the past ten years or so. Great guy and a lot of fun to hang out with and talk to.
We hadn’t talked since around May. After we caught up, I asked for his take on three topics – the World Cup (good tournament, but still smarting over England’s performance), David Cameron as PM of Great Britain (waiting to see how the cuts in social services will go down with the public) and his thoughts on how badly former BP CEO Tony Hayward had damaged the British brand.
Steve (who has given his blessing for me to recap our conversation) piqued my interest when he began by saying, “Well, here’s a somewhat cynical view. I think BP has handled the situation rather well if you look at the long term.” I was a bit taken aback by Steve’s response because, like the author of a recent New York Times piece on how not to handle crisis communications, I was among the many people who thought BP’s response and, particularly Tony Hayward’s, to the spill in the Gulf was abysmal. (One of the wonderful things about writing a blog is your opinions are part of the permanent record. You can read one of my earlier takes on BP here.)
Here’s how Steve sees it.
Are They Stepping on Your Toes? Grow Bigger Feet. August 20 2010 no responses
One of the common things that keeps managers from becoming leaders is spending too much time and attention protecting their turf. Over time, their attention gets really internally focused on protecting and keeping order in their own little world. If you’ve seen the Lord of the Rings movies, it’s a little like Gollum maniacally coveting the ring while murmuring, “My precious, my precious.” When managers are in that mode, they become blind to the bigger opportunities around them. Seizing those bigger opportunities is one of the differences between being a leader with management skills and just managing.
A lot of my coaching engagements with high potential leaders focus on that distinction. The client has made their reputation by managing something really, really well. The leadership opportunity comes when the range of expectations facing them becomes so broad that the only way they can succeed is by letting go of some of that turf they’ve been so carefully protecting. When they make that shift, good things usually happen. They have more bandwidth to see what’s going on around them and identify opportunities to contribute and lead on a wider range of issues. At the same time, the people who felt constrained or frustrated by the turf protection approach become more productive because they have more freedom to think and decide on the best courses of action.
The positive aspects of this kind of shift were summed up well by the colleague of a client I worked with a few years ago. As I was conducting the closing round of feedback, this person told me that he used to be in regular conflict with my client about stepping on each other’s toes. That changed, he said, when my client started focusing on contributing on broader issues in the organization and grew more influential and respected as a result. The upshot, his colleague told me, was that “his feet have gotten so big he doesn’t feel me stepping on his toes anymore.”
What’s your experience? Are most managers more concerned with their toes getting stepped on or growing bigger feet? What’s your best advice for managers who want to increase the positive impact of their leadership footprint?
How to Perform When the Room Doesn’t Work August 18 2010 5 responses
Not to get all prophetic or Inception on you, but today’s post is inspired by a dream I had last night. (Don’t worry, it’s nothing really weird or creepy.) So, I’m downtown somewhere and Kiss is supposed to be doing a concert (yes, I was a big fan in junior high). Turns out, though, that they’re playing in a department store window and the audience is out on the sidewalk watching through the glass. And it’s not the whole band, it’s just Gene Simmons singing a couple of songs by himself and his makeup doesn’t even look right. The crowd booed him off the stage (or out of the window) after two songs.
I have no idea why I had that dream (all of you Jungian analysts out there, I’d love to hear your theories). When I woke up, though, it reminded me of the many times when I’ve been booked as a speaker or presenter and shown up at the venue to find a room set up that was not at all optimal. The situation has never been as bad as me being on one side of the window with the audience on the other (if you don’t include video conferences that is), but I have had some set-ups that have been close to that bad.
If you’ve spent very much time at all as a leader or presenter, you know how important the sense of connection between the speaker and the audience is to the success of the event. These days, audiences want to be engaged and interact with each other, the content and the speaker. The way the room is set up makes a big difference. My favorite is a nice, big space with round tables with the audience members sitting around the halves of the table facing the front of the room. I’ll have a nice size table up front for the projector, my notes and a bottle of water and a clip-on microphone that enables me to wander the room.
Unfortunately, I rarely get everything I’d like in a room set up and you probably won’t either when you present. So what do you do to keep the connection going when the room doesn’t help? Here are five ideas that have worked for me over the years that I hope will work for you:
Leadership and the Ground Zero Mosque August 16 2010 7 responses
It looks like an emerging campaign issue this Fall will be President Obama’s position on building a mosque close to Ground Zero. At a Ramadan dinner at the White House last week, Obama said that Muslims have the right to build a worship and community center in lower Manhattan near the site of the World Trade Center attacks. While he made the distinction the next day between the right to build and the wisdom of building on that site, here is the main point that Obama made at the dinner:
“As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the founders must endure.”
Obama’s remarks echoed those of New York mayor Michael Bloomberg at a public event following a city board’s approval of building the center. Speaking of the first responders on 9/11, Bloomberg said:
“In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ ‘What beliefs do you hold?’… We do not honor their lives by denying the very Constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights — and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.”
At the risk of igniting a debate among readers on the efficacy of building the Islamic center a few blocks from Ground Zero, I would argue that both Obama and Bloomberg have shown principled leadership on the issue. For a full discussion of the historical grounding of their positions, I encourage you to read this column by Simon Schama in the Financial Times and this one by former George W. Bush speechwriter, Michael Gerson in the Washington Post.
For now, I would suggest that there are at least three behaviors that Obama and Bloomberg have both demonstrated that would well serve leaders who are navigating their way through a controversy and trying to decide what to do:
Leadership Lessons Podcast: Do More Great Work August 13 2010 one response
After a bit of a hiatus, the Leadership Lessons Podcast series returns this week with my interview with author and 2006 Canadian coach of the year, Michael Bungay Stanier. Michael is the author of the bestseller, Do More Great Work
In our interview, Michael shares his insights on:
- The difference between bad, good and great work
- Why you shouldn’t want to spend 100% of your time on great work.
- How to find and act on your definition of great work.
Michael’s a great coach and a terrific story teller. It’s a 20 minute conversation that I think you’ll enjoy. Listen in via the MP3 link below.
What a Week for Departures: HP’s Hurd, Jet Blue’s Slater and “Jenny” the Office Worker August 11 2010 3 responses
The past five days or so have been chock a block full of spectacular high-profile flameouts from jobs. A multi-million dollar CEO was forced to resign; a flight attendant chose not to wait for the jetway to depart and an office worker named “Jenny” shared her white board based resignation letter with millions when it went viral online.
As I’m prone to do, I’ve been looking for some leadership lessons in these stories and with the help of an advance copy of the new book, Good Boss, Bad Boss
But first, a recap.
Driving School for Leaders August 9 2010 2 responses
This past Sunday afternoon, I took my teenage son out for a driving lesson. Brad is the second driver my wife and I have trained after teaching his older brother a few years ago. Like most things in life, it gets a little easier with practice At least I wasn’t tensing up and freaking out as much Probably has something to do with my reflex response being four years older.
Anyway, Brad and I were practicing in the empty parking lots of a large government office center It’s a great place for driver training because the lots are connected by marked two lane roads with stop signs at intersections. We worked on hand position on the steering wheel, keeping the car smoothly within the lane, making good stops and stuff like that. Like a lot of new drivers, Brad is learning that you usually don’t have to make big moves on the steering wheel to get the car to go where you want it to go or to keep it where you want it to be.
As I was driving us home from the government center, I asked Brad to pay attention to where my hands were on the wheel as I banked through turns. I’m a big proponent of the 10 and 2 school of steering wheel management – meaning that your left hand should generally be at the 10 o’ clock position on the wheel and your right hand should be at 2 o’ clock. As we were driving, I started talking out loud about what I was doing to keep the car in the lane as the road curved. I told Brad that I realized that I was pulling the wheel with the hand that was in the direction I wanted the car to go rather than pushing the wheel in that direction with the opposite hand. That opposite hand was just along for the ride, so to speak.
OK, by now you’re saying, “Nice story about a dad and his son but what does this have to do with leadership?” Good question. Here’s the connection.
Take Your Foot Off the Gas in August August 4 2010 4 responses
The current issue of Fortune magazine offers a cautionary tale in its cover story. It’s about a former IBM senior executive named Robert Moffat whose long and successful career with the company ended when he was arrested by the FBI for conspiracy related to insider trading. The arrest was a complete surprise to Moffat and everyone who knew him. He had been a straight arrow, give everything to Big Blue kind of person since joining the company in 1978. He operated at the highest levels of IBM and was considered a candidate to be the next CEO. How he ended up being arrested is a long story that is detailed in the Fortune article, but suffice it to say he let his guard down in sharing information he shouldn’t have shared with people in relationships that he shouldn’t have been in.
The key idea for me is that he let his guard down. Moffat sounds like a lot of leaders I’ve known. Super dedicated, smart, hard working, leave it all on the field. That’s all good until it’s not. What doesn’t get factored in often enough is the need to take your foot off the gas every so often to create time to reflect on what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, why you’re doing it, what else is important, etc. The last line of the Fortune article on Moffat is pretty telling:
“When his son asked him whether all the long hours at IBM had been worth it, Moffat couldn’t answer.”
So, what do you do to avoid a conversation like that? Fortunately, August is a great month to create a little space for yourself to ask those “foot off the gas” questions. Even if you’ve already taken vacation this summer, it’s likely that a lot of your colleagues are away this month. The pace usually slows down a little bit. Take advantage of it to grab some down time for yourself here and there. Go for a run. Go for a drive. Read a book that’s not about work. Go to the park and watch the people go by. Do some things this month that are going to allow you the space to recharge.
Let’s get real. For most of us, the new year starts in September, not January. If you have school age kids, you know how much the pace picks up at home after Labor Day. If you’re a leader in just about any organization, you’re going to be up to your neck in year-end initiatives between September and December. The Fall and early Winter are always run flat out periods. Take some time in August for yourself. You’ll be glad you did.
Scott Eblin is an executive coach, speaker and author of 
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