Archive for October, 2010
Viva Chile: Leadership and the Rescue of the Miners October 14 2010 no responses
When I was a kid, my mom let me stay home from school the day that the astronauts of Apollo 13 came back to Earth after their spacecraft suffered an explosion on the way to the moon. Like millions of others around the world, we anxiously watched the TV waiting to see if the capsule would survive the reentry through the atmosphere. I remember I cried when the camera caught the first glimpse of the chutes on the command module opening and the crew members made radio contact with mission control as they floated down to the ocean recovery zone.
Watching live coverage of the rescue of the Chilean mine workers over the past two days stirred those memories from long ago. It was inspiring to look at the faces of the rescue team members as they embraced one of their comrades before he stepped into the rescue capsule to be lowered into the mine. And then 20 or 30 minutes later, the cameras underground captured him stepping out of the capsule and into the embraces and handshakes of the miners below. As they saw the scene on the Jumbotron, the crowd gathered above at Camp Hope broke into song and cheers of Chi! Chi! Chi! Le! Le! Le! About the only thing that gets any better than that was seeing the miners emerge on the surface over the next 24 hours with amazing health and vigor to greet their loved ones, their rescuers and Chile’s president.
Last month, I wrote a post on What We Can Learn About Leadership from the Chilean Miners. The complete success of the rescue effort bears out how important it was for the miners to lead themselves and each other to survive so well underground for 70 days. Much like the astronauts of Apollo 13, they showed grace and calm under pressure, maintained their discipline, drew on their training and supported each other to get through a crisis. And, as was the case with the astronauts, the miners could not have made it safely home without the efforts, talents and leadership of thousands of others. There are leadership lessons to learn from the rescuers as well. Here are some of the ones I’m taking away:
Video Book Club: The Leadership Pipeline October 12 2010 no responses
In this week’s installment of the Video Book Club, I’m sharing what I like about The Leadership Pipeline
In the video review, I walk through the simple yet resonant model of career path transitions that the authors Charan, Drotter and Noel outline in the book. Ten years later, the model holds up as a very practical and applicable road map and diagnostic for developing leaders.
Five Tips for Leaders Who Are Betwixt and Between October 11 2010 2 responses
Every so often, one of my clients will get a promotion to a job where the expectations are so different that it’s not clear to them how they fit in anymore. It’s usually a case where they’re moving from a pretty hands-on, directive leadership role and into a role in which they’re coordinating the work of a number of other leaders. This kind of shift can happen a number of times over a career. As the authors of The Leadership Pipeline
If you’re a leader going through this kind of change, it can feel like you’re betwixt and between. It seems like the people both above and below you are making most of the day to day calls so how do you add value?
As I discuss in The Next Level
What is it, given the role that I’m in and the unique resources and opportunities that come with it, that only I can do?
Every leader needs to come up with their own answer to that question. That said, there are some tips that apply in most of these betwixt and between situations. Here are five of them:
Courage and Diving Board Moments October 8 2010 2 responses
One day last week, I took the rest of the afternoon off and drove into the District of Columbia to see the exhibition of Norman Rockwell paintings on loan to the Smithsonian American Art Museum from the collections of filmmakers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Like a lot of Americans over 40, I have a soft spot in my heart for Rockwell’s paintings. For me, it’s probably because of my personal and family history with the Boy Scouts and the hours I spent as a kid looking at reproductions of Rockwell’s heroic paintings of Scouts. To see a few of those originals up close was a special treat.
The exhibit is called Telling Stories because it highlights what Spielberg and Lucas recognize as Rockwell’s genius for sharing a story in a single frame. There are 57 paintings on display that span the length of the artist’s long career. (For an informative and thoughtful review of the show, read Deborah Solomon’s in the New York Times.) If you find yourself in DC between now and January 2, 2011 when the show closes, it’s worth a few hours of your time to go.
Along with the opportunity to see the mastery of Rockwell’s technique (I was really struck by how much more powerful the paintings are in person than in print.), one of the highlights for me was a short video interview with Spielberg and Lucas in which they talked about their appreciation for Rockwell, why they collect his work and the personal meaning that different paintings have for them. The story that stuck with me the most was the one Spielberg told about Boy on a High Dive which usually hangs in his office but is the last painting you see in this exhibition.
From the standpoint of leading others and leading myself, I really connected with what Spielberg had to say about why the painting of the boy crouched down and peering over the end of the 20 ft. high dive speaks to him (hat tip to Steve Duin of The Oregonian for sharing with his readers the essence of what Spielberg said in the video):
"We're all on diving boards, hundreds of times during our lives," he explains. "Taking the plunge or pulling back from the abyss … is something that we must face. For me, that painting represents every motion picture just before I commit to directing it — just that one moment, before I say, 'Yes, I'm going to direct that movie.'"
When it came to "Schlinder's List," Spielberg adds, he clung to the diving board for 11 years before taking the plunge. "That painting spoke to me the second I saw it."
When was the last time you peered over the edge of the high dive? What are your memorable high dive moments? What have you learned about yourself and about leadership from those times? What’s given you the courage to take the next step?
How to Lead Like a Pig October 6 2010 no responses
If you’ve been looking for a great case study of how quickly leadership can change the culture of an organization, look no further than David Carr’s front page piece in today’s New York Times. In it, he describes how real estate investor Sam Zell and his minions destroyed the culture of the Chicago Tribune and other great newspapers in its holding company. To say that these people led like pigs is to do a disservice to pigs.
After he used the Trib’s own retirement plan as leverage to buy the company, Zell brought in as CEO a former morning zoo style radio shock jock named Randy Michaels. It wasn’t long after Michaels arrival that he was impressing his co-workers by offering $100 to a waitress at the nearby InterContinental Hotel to expose herself. In a truly innovative move, the new management team rewrote the employee handbook giving the green light to profanity and dirty jokes “because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process. This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.”
So, with the new handbook in place, it wasn’t long before Michaels and another senior exec were heard on an open balcony loudly rating the hotness of various female employees. Company sponsored poker smokers, illicit liaisons and other forms of loose, fun, nonlinear behavior ensued. With the newspaper industry being what it is, the employees of the Trib had some choices to make. They could leave and hope to find another job in their profession, they could stay and grit it out or they could stay and try to improve their career prospects by joining in on the Animal House leadership style. Different people chose different options. The Tribune Company was bankrupt a year after Zell bought it and, almost two years later, the case is still in bankruptcy court.
A coaching friend of mine likes to say that presence begets presence. The presence of the leader influences the presence of those being led. This dynamic can play out for good or for bad. The example from the Trib is extreme in that it’s rare for management to codify bad behavior as official company policy. Still, it’s really easy for leaders with titles to underestimate the impact of their leadership footprint. In my book, The Next Level
What Presenters Need to Learn from Luke Skywalker and Yoda October 5 2010 no responses
This week’s installment of the Video Book Club features a new favorite of mine, Resonate
Her book, Resonate, explains her philosophy of presentations and reveals, step by step, how she puts them together. In this video clip, I go into a few of the details that shares in Resonate including her belief that presenters need to view the audience as the hero, let’s say Luke Skywalker, and themselves as the mentor, Yoda for instance.
Intrigued? Watch the video. Make a lot of presentations? Buy the book. You won’t be sorry.
The Joy of Facts October 4 2010 3 responses
George F. Will ran a nice column over the weekend that highlighted some of the gems from a collection of writings by the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. My favorite Moynihan quote is my favorite because it so aptly describes the root cause of the failure of leadership that so much of the American public is concerned about today. “Everyone, Moynihan said, is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”
When I think about what concerns me the most about the direction we’re headed in, I think it comes down to the realization that facts don’t seem to matter much anymore.
Scott Eblin is an executive coach, speaker and author of 
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