Archive for February, 2011
How To Keep Them Talking About You February 4 2011 3 responses
My oldest son, Andy, is a senior at James Madison University. A couple of weeks ago, he told me a story about Ron Carrier who was president of JMU from 1971 to 1998. In other words, Carrier retired as president of JMU nine years before Andy arrived as a freshman. More than a decade after he retired, JMU students are still telling Ron Carrier stories.
There’s a leadership lesson in there.
Andy told me that a few times a year Carrier would walk up to a student on campus and ask them about their GPA. If it was solid, Carrier would tell the student to take the next day off from their classes. Carrier would attend their classes for them with the promise of taking excellent notes that he would pass on to them.
How brilliant was that? In one gesture, Carrier made a student happy, created an opportunity to personally check on the quality of JMU instruction, meet a bunch of students when he attended the classes and generate a lot of positive word of mouth buzz throughout the campus. Buzz that was so strong that students like Andy are still talking about President Carrier thirteen years later.
Simple yet elegant. What are the easy to do, likely to be remembered things that you could do as a leader to learn more about your organization and build connections at the same time? (Here’s a hint – anyone seen an episode of Undercover Boss lately?)
Denial, It’s Not Just a River in Egypt February 2 2011 2 responses
It looks like the end game for Hosni Mubarak may be nigh. At the end of the day when a million countrymen flooded the streets of Cairo to call for his immediate resignation, the Egyptian president went on television to say he intended to stay on the job for eight more months to ensure an orderly transition. As I write this, that transition includes riots in the streets between the masses demanding Mubarak’s resignation and what looks like a few thousand people who support him. The country’s army is doing its best to allow freedom of expression while maintaining order in a non-violent way. The police, thought to be loyal to Mubarak, look poised to step in.
It’s a mess that stems from a leader who could not see or accept that the dynamic had suddenly turned dramatically against him. After 30 years as the ruler of Egypt, Mubarak apparently couldn’t believe that the situation was beyond his control. His long held story about himself seems to be so strong that he’s in denial about his changing fortunes.
He’s not the first leader to be in denial and he won’t be the last. The history of government and business is littered with the stories of leaders who denied or could not see the world around them was rapidly changing. They often held on too long and things ended badly for their organizations and their people.
Of course, there are a lot of stories of leaders in denial that we never hear about it because they play out on smaller stages. You have probably witnessed some. You might have been involved in some. Maybe you see it going on in your organization right now. While I hope it’s not the case, you might even be the leader in denial.
In the interest of providing a reality check, here are five signs that you or a leader you know might be in denial:
Scott Eblin is an executive coach, speaker and author of 
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