Leadership and Lazy Labels

In a workshop the other day, 2130 Partners’ co-founder, Suzanne Frindt, (who is also my wife), usedthe term “Lazy Labels” to capture the instant, automatic, and unexamined statements many, if not all of us make on a fairly regular basis. These statements could also be called “knee jerk reactions.” In this highly charged season of political sound-bites, such Lazy Labels seem to be flying everywhere!  What we notice about “Lazy Labels” is that they seem to be a convenient way to suppress complex topics you don’t actually understand, don’t want to examine, or have “already made up your mind about.”  The issue with this is that their use diminishes your effectiveness as a vision-focused leader. Let me explain. Lazy Labels often have the effect of “shutting things down” like diagloue and conversations. If you stop dialogue, healthy inquiry, and curiosity-based listening with one of those quick labels/statements, you and those around you, will never learn more about each others’ knowledge, perspectives and feelings. In fact your brain has a mechanism to be sure you don’t learn anything that disagrees with your Lazy Label.  You won’t be learning anything new about the subject at all.  You will only see evidence that agrees with you. As we have written about often, we believe this is the era of collaborative leadership. We need each other’s skills, competencies, knowledge and perspective now more than ever, so shutting yourself and/or your team members down is dangerous.

Scotoma example

Lou Tice of The Pacific Institute in Seattle, WA teaches about “scotomas“ which are our blindness to data that doesn’t match our beliefs about the world.  (Scotomas are literally an area of diminished vision within the visual field, a blind spot. It comes from the Greek word skotos (to darken) and means a spot on the visual field in which vision is absent or deficient.) What we are talking about here are “mental scotomas,” meaning a figurative blind spot in a person’s psychological awareness, the person being unable to gain insight into or to understand their mental problems; lack of insight. There are many great examples of how we can’t see things right in front of us that we are not open to.  A common example is when you get a new car and then suddenly see similar models everywhere. Where were they yesterday?

I am going to suggest that the scotomas created by your Lazy Labels protect you from the discomfort or flat out fear of stepping into the unknown. After all, if you drop the Lazy Label and actually engage in a real dialogue about a subject with someoone, you may hear things that may make you uncertain, uncomfortable, or downright scared. If you open up to, and actually consider ideas, perspectives, and data that differ from your previous ideas, you will be in unknown territory.  You may even be permanently changed by the interaction.

If that happens, you might find yourself in a complex web of relationships and agreements built on who you were and how you thought before you opened up in this new dimension.  Before you even get the chance to find your new footing you will have to get to work in new conversations with many people.  You might even run into resistance, mocking or rejection.  (No one ever said leadership growth would be easy…)

Even if you believe you are more evolved than I am describing, what about the folks that work with and for you?  Are you getting a sense of how some of your great ideas for change may land with some of them at times? Do members of your team react to you with Lazy Labels?

We have posted on a number of occasions about being present, being with the unknown (courage), and making the choice to work from a shared Yonder Star, (or shared vision).  In a recent post we looked at the assertion that “anything you can’t be with owns your life.” Now we are upping that challenge.  We are asking you to look newly under your Lazy Labels when you hear them come out of your mouth and encourage those around you to do the same.

If you are willing to get serious about kicking yourself into a new learning orbit, start making lists of Lazy Labels you have for family members, people and programs at work, “the government,” community servants, religious groups, scientific data and theories, etc., etc.  Engage with and learn from people on the other side of those Lazy Labels. Be intentionally slow to understand. In this era of “faster, faster, faster’ it will be a challenge, but it will be worth it.

What If Pavlov's Dog Had a PDA?

In the 1920s Ivan Pavlov conducted a series of very famous experiments in which he taught dogs to salivate at the ringing of a bell. If PDAs had been invented, he could have taught the dog to salivate when his cell phone received a call, email or text. He might have even taught the dog to bark so he would never miss an “incoming!”

Much of what we observe in the behavior of those around us looks very similar. Despite frequent complaints about the number of emails and the expectations of immediate responses, PDAs are everywhere and constantly being checked. In our executive groups, members used to talk with each other at breaks. Now they all tend to get on their PDAs, and a good number are peeking throughout the meeting as well.  Are you a victim of your PDA? What in the world is it all about?

According to Wikipedia, “classical conditioning, (also Pavlovian or respondent conditioning, Pavlovian reinforcement), is a form of associative learning that was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov in 1927. Associative learning is the process by which an element is taught through association with a separate, pre-occurring element.”  In the case of the dog’s brain, that pre-occurring association was the smell of meat powder. What are your (probably multiple) prior associations that cause you to frantically and fanatically check your mobile device? A good friend, Brian Stuhlmuller of Distinctions, Inc., points out that most of us are unconsciously afraid that one of those emails in that unmanageable onslaught of incoming that we get every day, (and generally don’t get to all of), “is going to get us.” Failure to respond will cost us a deal, a relationship or something we highly value. It’s “the boogeyman just below the window on your iPad screen.”

I have been reflecting on myself in this regard and can see that I have unconscious concerns that someone is going to be mad at me, think I’m a flake, or perhaps even drop me from their circle. A client might have asked for something important to them and decided I’m unreliable or worse, irresponsible. I even see that there are some old beliefs in my group of associations like “in a well run office, people answer the phone in two rings or less.”

If you recognize you have your own version of Pavlov’s dog, and would like to break out of it, take bold action. For example, delete all of your inbox at midnight on New Year’s Eve and on regular dates throughout the year. If that’s too bold, go “off line” for significant parts of your day and week. Listen to your mind. Log the internal dialogue. Discover the associative learning that runs your life around email and texting. Self-observation is the key to freedom.

If you can recognize what’s driving you, you are at the Leadership Choice Point™. Perhaps it’s all fear that has you dancing to your PDA or maybe it’s just trying to manage your circumstances so you can survive another day. Is that really any different? You are either on the Red Line or the Blue Line of the diagram.  Choosing to pursue your vision/intention and your own priorities over reacting will start you up the Green Line.

Which path will have your life more productive, satisfying, and fulfilling? If you are leading a company or a team, which way will have your associates be more productive and less stressed? What are you waiting for?

The Myth of Time Management

A Google search for time management blogs produces more than 20,000,000 results. Charles Kettering’s well known phrase “a problem well stated is a problem half solved” gives us a clue as to why so many people are writing and speaking about time management and yet we see a huge percentage of our clients suffering trying to manage their time. We believe the problem neeeds to be “well stated” or reframed. The “Frindt Correlate” to Mr. Kettering’s thoughtful phrase is “a problem misnamed is a problem stuck!”

If you think about it for more than a second or two, it’s clear that you can’t manage time! Time passes tick-tock. In our normal world, (excluding quantum physics from this discussion), it does not go faster or slower and no one has more or less of it than you do. If you want to push that examination to another level, notice that it is always and only ever now. Even when you get to that concept you call the future it will still be now.

Language is the software that drives our brain’s problem-solving efforts. As a result of misnaming, the brain is working on the wrong issue and the pain continues. So how can you think about this subject in a way that produces more valuable outcomes, reduces your stress, and allows you to lead an integrated life?

First, be accurate in your thoughts and spoken words. Describe what you can actually manage. You can, for example, manage your priorities. You can manage which ones you act on and how much time you spend on them. You can manage your conversations, both the ones you have and with whom you have them.

To gain real power in the aforementioned management steps, create a vision, or what we would call a “Yonder Star” for yourself and share it with your teams – or in your family for that matter. This step will give you a sense of direction and allow you to sort out your priorities in a meaningful way. In the absence of a vision or goal, and alignment with those around you, “any road will get you there…” or, as the Zen Master said, “if we don’t change directions, we will likely end up where we are headed.”  In the case of many unexamined lives, that is mostly around in circles.

It is important to examine the associative learning you have that drives your current behavior. You may find that you will be required to have a number of difficult conversations with some of those around you to gain control of the ability to set your priorities or at least to freely choose priorities that are imposed by others. If you discover that too many of those types of priorities are driving your life and that they actually conflict with your own authentic priorities, it will be time for a career decision!

The Operating Principles that we employ in our engagements, and aspire to live by in our personal lives, will be important to keep in mind as you engage in shared priority conversations.Our book, Accelerate, was created to empower you in such pursuits, as is our e-course, and new materials that we will be launching over the next few months.

Take action, log your thoughts so you can manage your brain more productively and be at the Leadership Choice Point more frequently.  Notice how, with practice, you are spending more time on what’s important to you, feeling less stressed, have more free time, and are experiencing fulfillment.

2012 - How's It Working For You?

In mid-December we wrote one of our year end, “get ready for next year” blog posts called, “It's 2012 - Make It Happen!” Now that we are moving in to the second half of the year we are wondering - how’s that working for you?

Traditionally at the end of the year the majority of our clients and friends are working on “what’s next.”  The effort ranges from New Year’s resolutions, to budgets, to creating an entirely new vision and, (hopefully), strategy to go with it. Often somewhere in the first quarter, (if not actually in January), these “best of intentions” fall to the wayside. As the economy continues to be challenging and the levels of stress seem to be in an unprecedented range we thought now would be a good time to “look up and out” and revisit the idea of a bold vision in 2012.

Most of the time, when we talk about “bold vision” we find these efforts produce plans based on past experience, rather than launching a truly bold vision. So to clarify what we mean, we say vision has more to do with a dream for the future than what’s happened in the past.  This is a really critical point. When teams go to create a vision they really think they are working on the future, but this “predictions based on the past” almost always dominates the conversation and people aren’t even aware of it. (Next time you are in a high level strategy session or meeting about vision, see if you can detect what we are pointing to here. If you need more clarity, we talk a lot about the differences in our book, Accelerate, in the section on Leadership Choice Point.)

In the book we also emphasize that most ”leadership” activity is based on looking backwards, reviewing results to-date, and building a plan forwards from that past.  There is nothing wrong with this. As human beings our minds and memories are constructed to have a “database” that builds on past experience. If we didn’t have a “cumulative learning ability” we would be helpless. Every moment would be new. We wouldn’t be able to find home at night, wouldn’t recognize it when we got there, and strangers would occupy it if we couldn’t draw effectively from our past experience.  That’s the good news part.

The bad news part is that past-based predictions also keep us enslaved to what’s stored in our mental database, (or what we fondly call “the mental File Cabinet.”)  It keeps our attention on our limitations. For example, we know the story of a head-hunter who was working on a placement. He had spoken with a potential candidate and told him, “I can’t present you for this CEO job, for which you are an excellent candidate, because you don’t have a chemistry degree.” The last CEO of the particular company had failed. He had a chemistry degree and the Board of Directors insisted on the new candidates having one also. So it’s an interesting issue. In this example, if a chemistry degree could predict and determine success, why did the previous guy fail? Why does it make it a given that this other outstanding candidate would fail because he doesn’t have one? Somewhere in the past, this notion became a “predictor of success” and even in the face of evidence to the contrary, it’s still being pursued. (This is why we used the strong language “enslaved” in the first sentence of this paragraph.)

It gets worse when we are in this predictive state and also creating and executing on a vision. Check your own thoughts here and see how often you can be truly creative and go for something that is not a projection of the current path of your life, your resume, your finances, your job…you see where this is going.  Borrowing from the article I will cite below, we could call this “remembering the future.”

The Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition on 12-12-10 included an article, “Why The Mind Sees the Future in the Past Tense,” by Matt Ridley in which the author points out that recent neuroscience studies show the same parts of the mind hold our episodic memories and our imagined futures. Given the evidence here, it’s no wonder the “predictable” dominates our thinking.

What excited me about the article were the studies that show that, “the more unexpected something is, the more conscious we are of it.”  Your brain has to work harder when what shows up doesn’t match prediction, or expectation. What this means to me is that the most highly leveraged way to get yourself and your team in to powerful action is to start throwing new stuff in front of your collective brains. Create a BOLD vision that you can’t prove based on the past. You will be stimulated, more conscious, and therefore more present. You will be unleashing creativity instead of invoking your past experience, circumstances, knowledge, (or lack of it), and limitations.

I am not being “Pollyanna” or encouraging “woo-woo” here. Once your new bold vision, or as we call it, “Yonder Star” is created, it’s time to be responsible for the past. It’s time to get very clear about your situation – “the way that it is and the way that it isn’t.”  If you start looking from the perspective of your Yonder Star as if it is already fulfilled, your mind will start discovering what it did to get there. It will get very excited about remembering.

In his blog post, “Strategy Slam’”, a long-time colleague, Russ Phillips, recommends going to Denny’s by yourself with a pen and pad to do your creative thinking. I am much more creative in dialogue with other committed players.  Many people wait for adversity to set in, and it will, sooner or later, to force themselves and their associates to get creative…”sort of a create or die strategy.” There are lots of ways to “get yourself there.” What gets you in action for a bold inquiry?  What’s your most creative environment? What calls forth your commitment? What stops you? These may be the most powerful questions you can ask yourself as you revisit, resurrect, or invent for the first time your bold vision for 2012!

Are You In Your Comfort Zone?

The term “comfort zone” has become a popular way to describe how we are feelingabout various activities we are taking part in – “that pushed me way out of my comfort zone,” or “that was not in my comfort zone,” are pretty common phrases these days.

When we talk about our “comfort zone” what we are talking about is our personal orbit, our range of personal activities. Each of us has a daily routine, a weekly routine and perhaps even a monthly or yearly routine. Generally speaking we are creatures of habit and we develop comfort zones we like, and of course, feel comfortable in.

Often, even when we do try to venture out of it, we are quickly pulled back in to it. There is a dynamic called “homeostasis” which is critical to this. Homeostasis has both psychological and physical implications and what it’s pointing to is the fundamental and biological drive for equilibrium and stability in a system, (and yes, we are including human beings as systems). In effect, homeostasis helps create and regulate our “comfort zones.” This is a very important phenomenon to understand. It works for us in critical ways. For example, it helps keep our body temperatures stable. As we know, we all have a set-point for body temperature that is on average 98.6 degrees. The homeostasis in our bodies helps insure that when our temperature fluctuates, it comes back to this comfortable set point. The downside is that when we challenge ourselves psychologically and emotionally in various ways, there can be a “homeostatic back lash,” and a strong pull to go back to our existing comfort zone until we have solidly established a new set point.

So our comfort zone is somewhat like a thermostat. Unconsciously it has been set at a particular point and when we change it, it takes some time to “heat up or cool down” to the new set point.

An amazing example of this is the research that has been done on lottery winners. It has been found that generally, if someone was poor before winning the lottery, they will end up poor again. If they were middle class, they would ultimately end up middle class again and so on. This is a powerful example of what happens when our set points or comfort zones are radically and unexpectedly challenged and how powerful homeostasis can be.

As we discuss comfort zones, set points, etc. we want to be clear that this is not a piece about people who plod along and move slowly or people who seem risk averse. If you are a fast-paced, “go go go” type of person that is your comfort zone. What if you had to slow down, be more reflective, bring your energy “down and in” instead of being an “up and out” kind of person? What if you had to take on a meditation practice? Would you still be in your comfort zone? What if you are a thrill seeker and look for ways to “push the envelope” all the time? What would happen if you lived a more mundane existence and had to experience the ordinary? Would you still be in your comfort zone?

The thing is, if you want new outcomes, bigger results and to achieve your vision are you ready to expand your comfort zone? Are you ready to alter your personal orbit? Are you fortified and prepared for the inevitable backlash that may come from inside you, but also from those around you who may feel threatened or unnerved by change? If you are part of their system, their orbit, their comfort zone, and you change, what happens to their comfort zone? If you aren’t ready to expand your orbit, how can you expect your colleagues, team, or employees to do it?

Leadership: Are We Having Fun Yet?

In the realm of leadership the conversations are almost always quite serious. We discuss characteristics and traits like integrity and core values and mission statements for guiding teams of people. We review how leaders make mistakes, and how they fail. Process improvement, ROI, P&Ls, the list goes on. One topic that rarely comes up is “fun.” And why would it? Leadership is serious stuff right? Profits are at stake. People’s livelihoods are dependent on the successful outcomes of business plans. Fun is “frivolous” and has no place in conversations about important topics like leadership – or does it? Culturally we are a very driven society. There is a push to succeed, particularly on an individual basis. In business this often translates to company cultures of, “if you are car isn’t in the parking lot on Saturday, don’t bother coming back to work on Sunday,” which translates to 60, 80, or even 100 hour work weeks. The thing is high levels of stress are well-documented to break us down and cause serious health problems. Over-worked, exhausted people are less likely to be creative, innovative and productive and are more likely to be out sick.

So what does fun have to do with it? Quite a bit if you read, "Imagine: How Creativity Works," by Jonah Lehrer. Activities that we usually consider unproductive or wasting time often bring forth the creative breakthroughs and innovative thinking that are critical in business today. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com seems to embrace this philosophy. He is leading one of the most successful companies in America and his focus is on happiness – for his customers AND his employees. Here’s a quote that’s typical from articles about Hsieh and Zappos:

“And yet, this mild-mannered fellow leads a company that is entirely uninhibited. Interviews are held over vodka shots, bathrooms are plastered with “urine color” charts (ostensibly to ensure that employees are hydrated but also just to be weird and funny), and managers are encouraged to goof off with the people they manage….

Hsieh tries his best to keep up with the goofy, libertine culture. Every day, he blasts a steady stream of playful messages to 350,000 people on Twitter. (Before taking the stage at a conference earlier this year, he posted this missive: ”Spilled Coke on left leg of jeans, so poured some water on right leg so looks like the denim fade.”)” (quote from Inc. interview)

Hsieh’s approach to business is radical. He sits with his employees rather than in “an important office,” and he encourages their creativity and “goofy fun” daily. Of course there is more to his approach than having fun, but it is a critical piece of the formula and an element that is seriously lacking in American business these days.

Many companies have “enforced fun” like the annual company picnic, the annual Holiday Party and such. These events are often met with reactions ranging from “this is annoying, but I have to go,” to all out dread by employees and feel unnatural since they aren’t in sync with the daily culture. Employees often attend to be sure they get their “points” and to be seen as being loyal and enthusiastic, (whether they really feel it or not).

So what would happen to America and American business if we “lightened up?” What would happen to you as a leader if you allowed yourself to have fun? You may argue this wouldn’t be natural for you, but according to reports, it’s not natural for Tony Hsieh either. He is described as a fairly shy, reserved person, yet he pushes himself out of his personal comfort zone because he understands the bigger picture benefits to his company and business. In these complex and stressful times the idea of having fun seems counter-intuitive - yet given what is emerging about the conditions for creative thinking, it may be a critical leadership move to make.

What would happen if you not only allowed, but encouraged your employees to have fun? What if fun wasn’t once or twice a year “because you should,” but it was a daily part of coming to work? Might be worth experimenting with this one…

Is There A Common Language For Leadership?

Have you ever wondered whether there is any common language that exists for all humans and, if so, how knowing about that language might help you be a more effective as a leader? Well, there is and researchers have called it “deep metaphors.” In the November/December 2008 issue of Spirituality & Health magazine, Managing Editor Betsy Robinson’s article, “Our Common Language,” offers a very insightful summary of work done by Harvard Business School professor and sociologist Gerald Zaltman, Ph.D. and his team across 12,000 in-depth interviews in more than 30 countries.

Dr. Zaltman and his son, Lindsay Zaltman, have described their research in their book Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal About the Minds of Consumers. While the consequences for marketing are dramatic, today we are more interested in how a working understanding of these metaphors will assist you in your leadership, your skill at conflict resolution, and your understanding of and ability to clear upsets.

According to Robinson, these deep metaphors are unconscious, universal, basic frames or orientations we have to the world around us. In the language of the work of 2130 we’d call it “the instant, automatic, and largely unexamined context or paradigm in which you live your life.” The researchers have identified seven main lenses:

1) Balance – justice, equilibrium, interplay

2) Transformation – change in state, status, substance, circumstance

3) Journey – meeting of past, present and future

4) Container – connotes inclusion or exclusion

5) Connection – relating to oneself & others

6) Resource – source of support

7) Control – sense of mastery, vulnerability, well-being

and four subsidiary ones:

1) Movement or Motion – related to journey

2) Force – power that can compel or constrict

3) Nature – not from humans, growth and evolution

4) System – gives order

If you’d like a visual experience of these lenses, check out this video: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2exh6i6T6tg[/youtube]

Two very important dimensions of this work are the emotions and beliefs that we have connected with each of these deep metaphors and the fact that we cannot express ourselves without using the metaphors. Put simply, our conversations are full of phrases, which arise out of these metaphors, and they all have emotional baggage with them. Since we all use the same deep metaphors when relating to the same situations, it is the emotions that we have historically attached to each that yield the connecting or conflict that arises from each conversation. In our 2130 Partners’ language, this is the “stuff that fills our File Cabinets.”

Your ability to resolve conflicts, dispel upsets, and be an effective, productive leader will all be greatly enhanced by learning about and observing these deep metaphors in the situations you encounter. Robinson offers several helpful practices and exercises:

1) Make a list of the emotions and beliefs you have associated with each metaphor.

2) When you are in the middle of conflict, realize that there are deep metaphors at work and the parties have differing, perhaps extreme, emotions and beliefs associated. Find a way to appreciate the others’ basis in the conversation.

3) Find a way to sketch out a shared vision for the parties – what would life be without the conflict? In 2130 Partners we call this finding a Shared Yonder Star for the conversation and the relationship. Where will we be when it all turns out? Build a productive conversation from that commonality.

While it may seem difficult or awkward at first, viewing your encounters through the lens of deep metaphors and appreciating the generally unconscious, unexamined and often differing emotions and beliefs associated will almost certainly increase your conversational capacities and your ability to lead effectively.

Give Me Liberty!

Demand for more creative freedom, self-expression, greater distribution of power, and a strong say in how things are done, (which is being driven by younger workers in particular), are just some of the changes that are taking place in business. Although a rebalancing of the business paradigm to include new ratios of these elements is in process, the importance of liberty, freedom, and individualism are forces that have long been fundamental to our overall culture, and have been evolving in Western Europe and later in America for centuries.

St. Augustine asserted around 400 that “…we do by our free will whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us only because we will it.”  St. Thomas Aquinas confirmed that idea and declared, “A man can direct and govern his own actions…” around 1250.

Those Europeans who left home, family, familiar surroundings and all the trappings of security to come to the “New World” were clearly the most passionate among their peers about seeking freedom. Early American flags and symbols included the Gadsden Flag and the first Navy Jacket which both bore the inscription “Don’t Tread On Me” along with the image of a rattlesnake.

Clearly, a core element of what it is to be an American has been a fierce sense of independence and personal freedom.  In business a very high percentage of entrepreneurs found their companies to escape the perceived tyranny of having bosses and “confining” structures and processes.  This is where things get tricky. These same fiercely independent creative visionaries then often want to control those around them in their own organizations. Part of this is certainly to create and maintain the quality of the products and/or services they offer, and to insure the execution of their vision, but part of it is certainly to maintain their own freedom. Collaboration requires that the idea of complete autonomy by a leader be “given up.” How do leaders think they can maximize performance of a modern organization with top-down initiatives, myriads of centrally generated goals, constant demands for conformity with corporate directives and HR policies, and regular “Performance Reviews?” As we have seen one of the most foundational elements of our culture is personal freedom. The expectation that employees will give theirs up and conform is almost ludicrous when you think about it from the larger cultural push for independence and freedom. True collaboration requires that strong-minded business owners and entrepreneurs have a deep respect for others and recognize that while they have strong opinions theirs is not the only perspective nor the only way. This can be a very difficult pill to swallow. Often entrepreneurs become successful, (or at least think they do), due to their ”single-mindedness.” However, this approach is not sustainable long-term in the new business paradigm that is emerging.

We are not saying we have all the answers to what appears to us to be a major “fatal flaw” in many of the leadership/management teams’ thinking that we encounter.  Being an ostrich about such a fundamental problem with traditional corporate thinking does not, however, move us forward at anywhere near a fast enough rate to compete successfully in the modern business world. It is important that leaders recognize the powerful, cultural forces at work and that their own desire for freedom also exists in the hearts and minds of their employees and co-workers.

Obviously in the space of a blog it’s not possible to go deeply into all the issues around collaboration. We have proposed a number of ways to maximize freedom, initiative, creativity, and productivity in our book, “Accelerate: High Leverage Leadership For Today’s World” available here. We encourage vigorous inquiry and discussion and would love to hear your ideas on the subject!

Bravo For the Naysayers!

Many business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals are “visionaries” – independent minded self-starters with lots of creativity and ideas. They often have a deep belief and confidence in their own point-of-view. If you are one of these people and have been successful, these traits have served you well. The challenge is that, at some point, to increase your level of productivity and success, it will take a team around you. “My Team Are My Hands and Feet.” – Do you hire people as extensions of yourself? Meaning, you want them to just execute what you have in mind without questions - just to be an “extra pair of hands and feet.” If you have not developed the ability to clearly articulate your vision and goals in a way that is inclusive, everyone else is left wondering and waiting for you next set of instructions. This reinforces your sense of “I should just do it myself,” or, “if I could just do it myself.”

Rather than looking for more hands and feet, the real high leverage opportunity is to hire people who have their own skills, talents, and intelligence to bring to the table. Find people with approaches and styles complementary to your own. Develop your ability to explore their perspectives on what and how to do things. Be slow to understand rather than cutting them off or assuming you already know what they will say. Learn to create a shared vision or Yonder Star with them and them give them the power to execute based on their competence and understanding. If, as a leader, you can’t tolerate, let alone lead, people who think for themselves, bring added dimensions to the party, or approach things differently than you, you will drastically limit your organization’s growth and pay a lot of money for very minimal results.

“Wet Blankets and Naysayers.” – As your team grows, there will inevitably be people who ask questions, ask for clarification, ask for more information and potentially challenge ideas. Do you interpret these folks as “wet blankets,” “naysayers,” or “whiners.” Do you resent having your vision and creativity questioned? Perhaps that is not what is actually happening. Consider the following:

1. People have different styles of learning, understanding and processing information. Rather than questioning you as a person, they may well be going through their process of understanding your thinking.
2. The larger the team, the further you are as a leader from doing the actual work. During the “ideation phase” your team is likely to bring up important potential issues and consequences that are best thought through well in advance of jumping into execution. Since they are closer to the action than you, these conversations can present valuable intelligence and probably avoid serious mistakes later.
3. Some people are just excellent at identifying obstacles. Rather than brushing them off or assuming they are being “negative,” pay attention. A good “obstacle finder” is actually a great addition to the team. They can save you valuable time by helping you identify and address issues in advance.
4. Most of all, remember that what surfaces as a complaint or negativity is generally an access to what the individual is truly committed to and how they feel thwarted in that commitment. Flip the complaint over to a positive statement and you may be surprised by what you learn.

“What Are You Really Good At?” – No matter how gifted, talented, and intelligent you are, you still have a “zone of excellence,” (as author Gay Hendricks would say), and zones of competence and incompetence. Your highest and best use is your zone of excellence.

Richard Strozzi-Heckler of The Strozzi Institute talks about what he calls a “rhythm of excitement.” It is a rich topic that he reviews in his book, “The Anatomy of Change.” To paraphrase and simplify, essentially there are 4 stages where people feel energized or “excited.” The stages are Awakening, Increasing, Containment, and Completion. People tend to be energized largely in one of these stages. “Awakeners” are “idea people.” “Increasers” are people that tend to grab on to ideas and make them even bigger. They fill the ideas out. “Containers” take ideas and say, “let’s move on it.” “Completers” implement and get things done. There are very important skills and strengths in each area. Awakeners and Increasers tend to be entrepreneurs and business owners. This is their “zone of excellence.” It’s important to know where you are energized, know what you are good at, and then fill out your teams with the other stages. Find people you respect and trust who have the skills you are lacking, listen to them, and organize in such a way that each team member is in position to contribute their highest and best.

Are You A Self-Referencing Leader?

In the process of growing up and becoming a successful leader, you most likely put together a set of well-developed values, beliefs, experiences, and capacities. You have probably done well at suppressing your emotions and demonstrating your rational thinking. Being successful means your mix has served you well; you have been rewarded, “bonused,” and encouraged along the way. You have probably learned to rely on the way you interact, solve problems, and produce results to the point where the basis of your thinking, (your “paradigm”), is now instant, automatic, and unexamined. To paraphrase the Peter Principle, you can expect to be promoted to your level of incompetence, (if you haven’t been already).  This means that at some point,”the success train” of your career is coming to a halt. If you happen to own your own business, and are already at the top, it is likely to happen in the form of business expansion. In other words, your business will expand to your level of incompetence.

How does this happen?  Our belief is that as your work requires broader and broader reach and impact, the very traits and skills that got you rewarded and promoted to your next level of accountability, (or allowed you to create a successful business), can be what defeats you. You will be working with many more people who differ in their perspectives, learning styles, ways of processing information, and ways of interacting with others the bigger your career or business gets. In order to make the leap past the Peter Principle, you will have to expand your own skills and capacities.

Einstein’s oft-quoted statement “problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them” applies here. If you continue to rely solely on your own thinking and way of operating, (and why shouldn’t you since, after all, you are successful and you got here, didn’t you?), then you are in a place of “self-referencing leadership,” and that means the Peter Principle is “in effect.”  To continue to lead successfully, you will be required to think in new ways and benefit from the thoughts and perspectives of others. In other words, cherished self-reliance becomes obsolete. Collaboration, inclusion, openness, the ability to continue learning, respect of others’ skills, expecting others to contribute - these are the traits that are critical to develop.

To collaborate successfully will require opening up to creativity, inspiration, and empowering others. Doing this will require developing the added dimensions of intuition, (gut feel), and heart-centered knowledge to your already highly developed intellect. (See last week’s blog post on using all of your intelligence if this is a new concept.)

So bottomline, when success is at hand, and all the skills you currently possess have gotten you there, it’s time to push yourself to expand. You must increase your capacities to collaborate with others and your “capacities of intelligence” if you are going to overcome the Peter Principle and continue to be a successful, and not merely self-referencing, leader.

Do You Use All of Your Intelligence?

This may seem like a funny question, but do you know the answer? Are you using all of your intelligence? We don’t mean “business intelligence” in the sense of consumer data, research and business results. We are talking about your own personal intelligence. You probably believe you “give it your all” and use all of your capacities and capabilities – but are you sure?

The fact is, there are three ways that we as human beings detect, receive and process information. There are three centers of intelligence – the head, the heart and the gut.

Our culture primarily values the head or intellect. Ever since the time of the philosopher, mathematician and physicist, Rene DesCartes, (“I think therefore I am”), the intellect has been prized as the center of our understanding, intelligence and knowledge.

However, at some level, we all know this belief is not quite accurate. For example, we know the heart provides us with key information. We have all heard the phrase, “I followed my heart,” and we all immediately understand what that means. Think about that phrase for a moment. If the heart didn’t provide us with information, how could we follow it? And if the information wasn’t powerful, why would we follow it? It turns out that scientific studies about the power of the heart show there is an extaordinary amount of energy and information coming from and through the heart. In fact, there is now evidence that a type of neural tissue is present in the heart which indicates the heart and mind work together to process information. The Institute of HeartMath has been studying the power of the heart for years and we recommend looking into their work to find out more.

When it comes to the idea of the heart as a center of intelligence, there is some cultural ambivalence. On the one hand, we are suspicious. Isn’t the heart “emotional?” Emotions ”shouldn’t be followed.” They are “irrational” and that’s not a good thing. Right? However, at the same time that we have this cultural concern, there has been alot of work done in the realm of emotional intelligence and its importance. Some have even stated that being “emotionally intelligent” is more important than having a high IQ. So although in some ways we are suspect of the heart’s information, we also seem to understand its value.

How would you rate your EQ or emotional intelligence? Are you able to tune in to your emotions and what they might be telling you? Are you able to recognize what your heart has to say?

The third center of intelligence is our gut. We have all heard the phrase, “I had a gut instinct.” Similar to the phrase about the heart, we all know what “having a gut instinct is” and what it means when someone says that phrase, whether we personally tune in to our gut or not. The gut actually has an extraordinary amount of neurological tissue and activity in it. So much so, that physicians regularly refer to our gut as having a “second brain.”

We can all think of examples of stories where people followed a gut instinct and it was either critical to their survival, or it changed their life, or drove them to make an important business decision. When people are tuned in to that gut information, and they are asked how they knew something or why they did what they did, the response they give is, “I just knew,” and we can tell by the emphasis that the knowing came from a deep and solid place. Being able to tap into our deep-seated inner knowing is something fundamentally human that our culture does not overtly value highly.

How familiar are you with your gut instincts? Can you think of times it has served you well? Are you able to tune in and hear what your gut is telling you?

People have varying degrees of connection to their three centers of intelligence. Some rely almost exclusively on one center. Some may even use two or all three, but much of this reliance can be unconscious. Processing information and decision-making is often very automatic and unexamined.

We suggest you do a little experiment and self-reflection. Watch your decision-making processes this week and see which center(s) you use. If you find you are not using all three, then the fact is, you are denying yourself valuable information. The world has become so complex and difficult to navigate, we all need all the help we can get. Your body gives you three different ways to receive and process information and these centers of intelligence may even have different perspectives on the same issue. Taking time to tune in and listen to yourself is a skill we can all develop. It is likely that if you are disconnected from a center of intelligence it will be your heart or your gut. You can actually build this connection and it’s not terribly hard, it just takes practice. If you want to find out what your heart has to say, sit quietly, put your hand on your heart and ask the question you need answered. This may seem incredibly simple, but it has the effect of dropping our attention and helping us connect. The same will work with the gut.

As leaders, we can’t afford to dismiss or ignore key information. And frankly, who would deny themselves the opportunity to “become more intelligent?”

Does Your Organization Have a Cultural Strategy?

(This post is an edited version of an article by Suzanne Mayo Frindt. To get the complete text click here.)  Excellent companies have Financial Strategies, Operational Strategies, Marketing and Sales Strategies, and commensurate Resource Allocation Strategies (including People, Time, Money, Equipment/Assets, etc.) How many companies actually have a Cultural Strategy? Yet all companies have a culture, implicitly if not explicitly developed on a historical basis. A company culture can be defined as “a cognitive framework consisting of attitudes, values, behavioral norms, and expectations’’ (Greenberg and Baron, 1997), “the collective thoughts, habits, attitudes, feelings, and patterns of behavior’’ (Clemente and Greenspan, 1999), and “the pattern of arrangement, material or behavior which has been adopted by a society (corporation, group, or team) as the accepted way of solving problems’’ (Ahmed et al., 1999).^[1]

A company’s culture dramatically impacts the success or failure of all other strategies, and yet little if any attention is consciously placed on the care and feeding of a productive, learning culture. It is the invisible glue that binds together ever more diverse workforces including people from many cultures and generations. Most executives are not conscious of culture or of the implications of their decisions on the development of or degradation of culture. Without a culture strategy, where are they aiming anyway?

All development and training is built on the platform of culture. It is the ‘context’ that determines whether the financial, operational or marketing strategies succeed or fail. A human resource focus on recruiting, retention and succession planning by definition focuses on the experience and skill building of individuals and often misses the broader perspective of the cultural influence and implications. And whose job is it to develop a conscious strategy for culture? Whose job is it to continually feed and nurture a productive culture? We would say it lands squarely with Leadership!

What is a Learning Culture and How Does it Get Developed? A Learning Culture is one where the individuals and teams consciously invest in growing and developing themselves. In a Learning Culture executives are purposeful about the impact of decisions and strategies on the fabric of cultural development. There is a focus on reducing friction and waste in communications and developing productive working relationships. People know there is an expectation for growing and learning. Hiring decisions are made with an interest in an individual’s ability to learn, adapt, grow and shift. An atmosphere of curiosity, forward thinking and ‘how can we learn from this’ thinking permeates. It becomes the foundation or platform on which everything else is built.

What Are The Payoffs of a Learning Culture? For an organization, this type of culture provides much more innovation, creativity, agility, and expedited problem solving capabilities.

For individuals, it provides opportunities for learning and growth. It also provides forums to be challenged, to add value, and to contribute at a high level.

How Can We Develop a Learning Culture? There are many books and articles about learning organizations including work by Senge^[2] and Argyris^[3] that explain in depth about the what and how of learning organizations. Our 2130 methodology, (and terminology adaptation in some instances), ties to the 5 aspects of a learning organization that are generally accepted by leadership ‘gurus’ as follows:

1. Systems Thinking: Understanding how things influence each other as a whole. Our view is that executives and organizational leadership are accountable to the entire organization and all stakeholders for this larger view, including strategy development, planning, implementation, review and adjustment. In addition to a responsibility for systems thinking on an individual executive basis it is also critical that the entire executive team itself operate as a productive, learning system.
2. Shared Vision/Values: “A vehicle for building shared meaning” from Peter Senge’s “Fifth Discipline.” Unfortunately, this often looks more like the version from Dilbert “A long meaningless statement that proves management’s inability to focus.” Over the last 20+ years we have worked with organizations to develop Vision, Mission and Values in our methodology ‘Vision-Focused Leadership’. Absent a shared vision, individual agendas rule the day and gaining personal power becomes a major executive focus.
3. Productive Mental Framework: We talk about busting mental barriers, increasing mental agility and increasing capacities to deal with the unrelenting pace of change and increased complexity of issues facing leadership today. It is critical to become aware of our blind spots and biases to be able to think clearly in the present to make the best decisions in a complex business environment.
4. Personal Mastery: This is the commitment of every person in the organization to improve, develop and challenge themselves to be more than they are today. Individuals who insist on status quo and structural barriers to communication usually self-select out of a Learning Culture.
5. Team Mastery: Organizations must realize that groups of people, (of any size of 2 or more), create yet another ‘entity’ with its own dynamics and productivity levels. There are group skills and developmental opportunities that build on, yet are distinct from individual capacities. When groups develop these capacities we call that increasing their collaborative capital.

So What Will You Do Now? Take stock of your culture. What are the stories being told about your organization by employees, clients and vendors? What stories would you like to be told? Where are the gaps? Are you willing to commit to your role in your organization’s culture?

---

^[1] From  “Developing a Corporate Culture as a Competitive Advantage”;  Golnaz Sadri and Brian Lees

^[2] Peter Michael Senge is an American scientist and director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is known as author of the book The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization from 1990 (new edition 2006). (Courtesy wikipedia.com)

^[3] Chris Argyris is an American business theorist, Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School, and a Thought Leader at Monitor Group.[1] He is commonly known for seminal work in the area of “Learning Organizations”. (Courtesy wikipedia.com)

Leadership Language: From Delusional to Powerful

In our current blog post for Vistage International's Executive Street, we look at the word and concept of "try" and its lack of power.

However, there are even more statements and phrases common in business today that are unproductive and prevent forward momentum. Many of the conversations that pass for "normal" are filled with words and phrases that have no power and fill the conversational space with the false implication of action. This type of communication seems to keep the speaker from being present to his or her own experience and commitment, (or, more likely, lack thereof).

Let’s start with the word “like.” Admittedly this overused word is mostly in the younger set. It seems to be a substitute for being articulate enough to share one’s own experience accurately and authentically.  As an example, the phrase “it’s like I’m cold,” – does that mean you are? You aren’t? Why not just state “I am cold?”  Including “like” seems to allow a lot of talk without much real connection to personal experience. The words speak to an experience that is similar or “like,” rather than a statement that owns one’s physical state in that moment.

Another set of words and phrases we hear quite regularly are: “try,” “need to,’” “want to,” “should,” “ought to,” and “would be nice if…” Our view is that these, and many more phrases like them, occur constantly in every day management conversations and are worse than meaningless. In fact, it could be said that in these types of conversations both the speaker and the listener are “deluded.” They are deluded because there is an implication of action where there will most certainly be none. We call these words and phrases the “said” portion of a statement. Underneath the “said” is that which is “unsaid.” We find the ”unsaid” is usually some version of, “but I can’t.”  For example, the “said might be” – “we should put a budget together on that.” The “unsaid” might be, “but we don’t have time.” Another example of the “said” might be –  “I’d love to go with you guys.” The “unsaid” might be, “but my wife would never stand for it.”

The third, even subtler phrasing we hear is some version of “my opinion would be…” or “my idea would be…” Said in this way, the speaker never seems to be questioned and yet, what does he or she mean?  “”My idea would be…” but, it turns out what they’re saying isn’t really their idea? Or is it? Another example is “my opinion would be…” So does that mean it’s that person’s opinion unless it meets with criticism in which case they’ll change it? As listeners we really don’t know where the speaker stands. It’s easy to wonder if the speaker knows their own point-of-view or whether they are just testing the waters to see what is acceptable, popular, or meets with approval from the top of the hierarchy in the conversation.

It seems the culture of many organizations today encourages this type of “soft pedal” speak. It leaves people latitude to shift to what is acceptable and to recover more easily if they “step in it.” The issue is that people aren’t encouraged to have a real point-of-view, nor are they encouraged to articulate it if they genuinely have one. From a leadership standpoint, we don’t believe this builds leadership skills, confidence or a healthy cultural paradigm in which team members can bring all that they are and have to the table.

The antidote to all of this unreal or deluded conversation is taking the risk to say directly and succinctly what you are really experiencing/feeling, what your truth is, what you are committed to, what you promise, and what you can be counted on to do. If you are a leader and you begin to communicate in this way, those around you will recognize the authenticity of it. You will likely build more trust within your team. Particularly if you encourage them to also take on this style of communication. An important key is that it will only succeed if people see that they will not be punished, criticized, embarrassed or shamed for doing it. A strong leader builds a safe container for those around them to bring their best thinking knowing they can articulate it and it will be received with respect even when others disagree.

If you take this on and find yourself uncomfortable, make note of what your mind is saying is going to happen to you or how your internal dialogue is criticizing you.  Use your self-awareness skills and you will likely find what’s stopping you is a limiting belief.  Once identified, you can go to work on letting go of it.  Check out Kimberley Heart  or Morty and Shelly Lefkoe  if you need help working through your limiting beliefs.

To become a clear, powerful, and intentional leader, listen to your statements over the next few days and make a record of all the times you say things from one or more of the above groupings.  You probably have your own favorite versions of each!  If you are having trouble self-observing, keep going for it and also start recording what you hear others saying.  What is the “unsaid” in each conversation? Are you willing to restate your comments with real self-awareness, authenticity, and commitment?

This is an opportunity to multiply your and your team’s productivity and effectiveness!

Is It The End of Management?

In a Wall Street Journal article, “The End of Management,” Alan Murray makes a compelling argument that "modern management is nearing its existential moment.”  He focuses on the last 100 years or so when large organizations developed to organize people and allocate resources for tasks that seemingly could be done much more effectively than individuals contracting with each other. Graduate business school programs have evolved, largely to educate large numbers of people to fulfill the needs of these organizations to deliver on that promise. One of the responsibilities of many, if not most, of the people in these organizations is to increase certainty or predictability with the intention of increasing quality and on time, on budget, performance.  An unintended consequence of those efforts is to make the organizations resistant to change and seemingly even resistant to the dynamics of the market itself.

As the rate of change and market disruption accelerates to the pace we see today with the advent of things like social networking and smart phones, this sets up “a destructive clash between whirlwind change and corporate inertia.“ Murray argues that some of the classic failures of once market-leading companies has not been a result of “’bad management," but because they follow the dictates of ‘good’ management. They listened closely to their customers. They studied market trends. They allocated capital to the innovations that promised the largest returns. And in the process they missed the disruptive innovations…

Murray traces the development of managed corporations back to a 1937 book citing the importance of lowering transaction costs.  We’d like to step even further back for a moment to the very origins of capitalism and organized business. Rodney Stark in his book “The Victory of Reason” provides a very detailed history of the evolution of business, as we know it.  Activity started shifting from barter to cash in the 9^th century and great monastic estates began hiring labor forces to perform complex, well-organized activities.  By the 13^th century, religious and societal issues around profits, property rights, credit, and vending had been resolved. Italian city-states began expanding trade into Europe and the rest of the Mediterranean.

Banks and management evolved to address the issues first of facilitating transactions over these greater distances and then lowering their cost.  By the 14^th century Italian schools were organized to teach required administration and management skills.  Accounting, compound interest, double entry bookkeeping, and insurance were invented, all to facilitate transactions. As trade expanded to England, a nation of shopkeepers and manufacturing entrepreneurs sprang up and, as they say, “the rest is history."

Fast forward back to today with this historical perspective and we can see that everything we take for granted as we do business today was originally invented by someone to facilitate trade, which in turn was driven by thousands of entrepreneurs in all regions where they were allowed to operate and were not taxed out of existence. Modern management is just a relatively late development to solve the “recent” problems of large operations scattered over great geographic areas and allow them to continue to facilitate trade and lower its cost. Much of the value of that management has been in gathering, organizing, and dispensing information needed by large numbers of people in far-flung operations to get their work done and make the transactions happen.

Now, with the advent of instant worldwide communication, essentially free information, and the ability of large numbers of people to organize and collaborate without hierarchy, creativity and innovation can move far more rapidly than it can through a traditional organization. Individual entrepreneurs are again empowered, as they were in the middle ages, by these “new fangled inventions,” to start and build businesses. To survive and continue to add value to society, existing firms will be called upon to facilitate their employees ability to think and act like entrepreneurs and to find ways to make their collaborative efforts more valuable than “free” individuals can create through open source collaboration.

Bottomline: The game is on! Is your company addressing this enormous historical shift that rivals that which happened in the 9^th to 13^th centuries? Are you recognizing this new game? Are you “all in”?

So You Think It's Time For a Change?

Most of the time when consultants, coaches or other “outside interventions” are tapped by leaders of organizations it’s because there is some type of crisis or turning point. Usually “the pain” has become high and the solutions to the issues just aren’t apparent to leadership. There are various causes of business pain, but the one we are going to focus on today is a common one. It is some variation of “go fix my people.” There is often a perception issues are being caused by an individual, several individuals, a department or team.

Underneath it all, particularly within owner-entrepreneur types of environments, there is a very particular bottom line and let’s cut right to it. Owner/entrepreneurs work the way they work because they like it. It’s working for them. What “the pain” is almost always about is that the way they are working, is not creating the results they want and they don’t like it. However, the request is “go fix the other people!” Ultimately, so the owner/entrepreneur can continue with their patterns and approach without having to shift themselves. Sometimes, depending on how urgent the “pain” is, leaders will shift, but inevitably, the minute there is enough breathing room, they snap back to their previous ways. Just as inevitably, the patterns that don’t work for the business, (but work on a personal level for the leader), are back, and soon enough, the “pain” is back.

The most important challenge for leaders when there is business “pain” is to look in the mirror and ask tough questions. Sure, there may be some work that needs to be done with other people, or teams, but leaders set the mood, tone and culture to an enormous extent. So if you are a leader experiencing “business pain,” start with yourself and some fundamental questions:

• Who am I BEING as a leader? Meaning, what are my attitudes, beliefs and patterns of reaction? Am I willing to dig deep and understand my role in what is happening?
• Am I willing to change?
• Am I willing to create a vision for myself about the type of leader I am committed to being and am I willing to create a set of practices to support the fulfillment of that vision?
• Am I willing to find the support I need to make shifts?

Change is possible and change takes work.Whether a leader changes or not, energy is being expended. It takes energy to keep patterns in place when they aren’t working and there is a state of resistance. We call that ‘friction and waste,’ a subject we address in our blog posts on Lean Thinking. It takes energy to make changes. There is a cost either way. The question is – where does a leader “pay up?”

If any of this sounds familiar, consider taking yourself on, not just your teams, processes or organizational structure.

We have a proprietary approach and method we offer for this, and there are many others out there as well. The key is to find the one that resonates for you and get to it!

Suzanne Appeared On "Rewiring Your Brain"

Suzanne recently appeared on the internet radio show, "Rewiring Your Brain," with Dr. Rose. To listen to the show click here

Leadership and Spiritual Health

The last two weeks we have been delving into various aspects of health and their relationship to leadership. This week we are looking at “spiritual health.” Normally, we don’t hear the terms “spiritual” and “health” together and we certainly don’t hear them alongside “leadership.” But going back to what we have been saying the last two weeks –the healthier you are, the better your performance. Leaders need to be at their best, (and to reconfirm, when we say “leaders” we don’t mean those with big titles, we mean those who practice the positive qualities of leadership in their lives regardless of their role). The idea of “spiritual health” or being spiritually healthy is not about whether you have a religion or not. It’s about whether you have a sense of being connected to something greater than yourself.  How you define and express that connection is highly personal. You may feel connected to God, Divine Spirit, a greater consciousness or the greater good of the planet and its inhabitants. You may express it through religious affiliation, philosophical affiliation, meditation, yoga or another personal practice.

The question is, “how healthy are you in this arena right now?” How you would know is – do you actually feel connected to something larger than yourself? If you happen to be an atheist or agnostic it is still a valid question – do you feel a connection to the planet we live on and its inhabitants beyond just your personal existence?

What are your practices around this connection? If you find the connection is strongest through religious affiliation, have you been able to attend your church/synagogue/mosque lately? If it comes through philosophical contemplation have you read anything new and stimulating recently? If it comes through meditation and/or yoga are you making time for those practices? Do you spend time with like-minded people? Do you discuss your thoughts, questions, concerns and beliefs?

If you lead an organization of some type, have you considered the spiritual health of the organization? In the June 2008 issue of Ode Magazine, the cover story The Gospel According to Adam Smith was about “spiritual capitalism” http://bit.ly/Pdsv  The article reviews some top organizations implementing spiritual values and the positive results that occurred. One of the people profiled was Art DeLorenzo who had been a Group Vice President at Ameriprise Financial. Here is an abbreviated excerpt from the article, “In 2000 after the dot-com stock market crash his team was dealing with especially heavy negativity. DeLorenzo contacted Rick Aberman, a developmental psychologist and founding partner of Lennick Aberman Group…and put him in touch with Fred Luskin, a psychologist who cofounded the Stanford University Forgiveness Project. …The trio developed a program based on Luskin’s “forgiveness” training. Why forgiveness? ‘Interpersonal kindness and goodwill that is almost unlimited…that is the spiritual basis of life’ said Luskin, who says we develop it by practicing what he calls ‘the three tenets’ of compassion, forgiveness and gratitude. “

The article continues, “The results of this training were encouraging. Participants showed an average 18 percent increase in commissions on sales compared to 11 percent for those who did not complete the training. In a sales environment, generating 7 percent more revenue than your colleagues is huge…Since this initial training each year participants have outstripped the average productivity of their peers. In 2008, Ameriprise decided to roll the program out to their Mid-Atlantic Market Group of 1,100 salespeople.”

By learning basic “spiritual health” tools in this program the sales people clearly displayed productivity increases in the workplace, and the company benefited from the spiritual health of its people.

This is just an example of why we are suggesting you evaluate the state of your spiritual health, and that if you are a business owner or organizational leader, you might want to consider the spiritual health of the group. Spiritual health creates a “win-win” for you, the team and the customers.

Leadership and Health - How Are You Doing?

Previously, we raised the idea that health is actually part of the larger conversation about leadership. If you aren’t at an optimum level of health you aren’t performing your best.  We also raised the idea that there are multiple dimensions of health – mental, emotional, spiritual and of course, physical, (and there are even more). We wrote about the physical dimension and this week we want to go into the mental/emotional realm. These two are often collapsed together and there is no doubt they are inextricably linked. The term “mental health” often refers to our ability to handle our reactions to the circumstances and challenges that come up in our lives. In fact, the dictionary defines it as “psychological well-being and satisfactory adjustment to society and to the ordinary demands of life.” For the purposes of this post we are going to separate the two terms and define them a bit differently. When we talk about “mental health,” what we are pointing to is “intellectual health” – meaning how healthy and fresh are your thought processes? When was the last time you challenged yourself to learn something new? How much are you reading? (And not reports and emails! Reading fiction for fun, or non-fiction topics that interest you?) Do you do puzzles – crossword or otherwise  - to stimulate your cognitive abilities? We often repeat the same thought patterns and think about the same subjects day in and day out. Learning something new helps keep your brain healthy and your perspective fresh. For more information on how to keep your brain and thinking healthy visit www.drweil.com and search the database. When we talk about emotional health we are talking about how you are feeling about your life and the people and activities in it. Are you experiencing joy and satisfaction? Are you having fun? Do you relax? These days most of the people we speak with say “no.” Very few people seem to feel they have time for fun or relaxation. The thing is, if you don’t give yourself a chance to relax and unwind the constant stress is very hard on your body. There is lots of research about the effects of continuous stress on our systems. It’s important to have fun – for your health. If time keeps slipping by, try scheduling it in regularly as a mandatory on your calendar.  Make sure you are actually “cutting loose” – play a musical instrument, practice martial arts, go horseback riding – something that truly turns off your typical daily thought patterns and redirects your attention to something that is refreshing.

Take some time to reflect and evaluate how well you are handling your current levels of stress. If you find that you aren’t as resilient as you would like to be and if stress and circumstances are bringing you down, get support! If you find there are painful incidents in your past that have a tight grip consider seeking some type of counseling. If you are most comfortable with a faith-based approach speak to your minister, spiritual director or trusted spiritual advisor. You may also find a certified psychological professional is best.

If you find you are having trouble finding your passion, designing a future you are excited about or reaching particular goals and dreams then hire a coach. Ask around and find someone who has an approach you are excited about pursuing. Partner with your coach so that you have the support you need to get where you want to go.

The healthier you are physically, the better you will feel mentally/emotionally and vice versa. It’s all interconnected so do yourself, your organization, your family and friends a favor and take action to insure your health is optimized!

Dwight Appeared on Unopened Gifts Radio Show

On January 19th, Dwight appeared on the Real Coaching Radio Network Show, "Unopened Gifts," hosted by Jim McPartland. This show was internet TV/radio. To watch and listen to the show you can watch below or click here

Video chat by Stickam.com

Leadership and Your Health

“People spend more time planning their VACATIONS each year than they spend on planning for their care and well-being the other 51 WEEKS.” –Thomas Leonard

There are many dimensions of health including: mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, environmental and more. It’s pretty self-evident that the healthier you are, the better you can perform. Performance is foundational to leadership yet health is rarely part of the leadership conversation. If anything, as researcher Brene Brown says, being run down from exhaustion has become a "status symbol." Although people may admire your tenacity and commitment, being exhausted is not a healthy state and it's unlikely you are performing optimally.

As Thomas Leonard points out above, very little time is spent by most of us on our own care and well-being. Since it's January and many of us are thinking about improvements and changes we want to make in our lives. Why not consider how improving your health can improve your leadership?

This week we want to focus on physical health. If your physical health isn’t optimized, your performance isn’t either and your ability to lead is limited by the energy being siphoned to health issues.

So how do you take care of your physical health? What do you do for yourself? What are your practices? Most people think about this and focus on diet and exercise – often beating themselves up for all the things they are still “doing wrong” or “not doing,” or they believe they don’t have time, etc.  The thing is, there are incremental steps you can take to start improving your physical health without taking on a big program. Here are some easy steps you can make today:

1. Get informed. There is a lot of misinformation and confusion out there about what really is healthy. We recommend two solid resources, Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Mehmet Oz. Both of these doctors are highly educated and make clear information widely available. Dr. Weil has a great web site with a searchable database for health issues www.drweil.com He also has two fundamental books that can help you – 8 Weeks to Optimum Health and Eating for Optimum Health. Dr. Oz has a TV show that you can Tivo or DVR if you don’t feel like reading. If you do want to read, he and his partner Dr. Michael Roizen also wrote, “You: The Owner’s Manual” which has lots of great information.
2. Do the basics. An example of “the basics” is that we have all heard you need to drink 6-8 glasses of water per day, (8 ounce glasses that is). Yet how many of us do it? If you can just do this piece, your health will be improved simply because you will be hydrated. Don’t like plain water? Squeeze half a lemon or lime in it. Still not good? A splash of cranberry or pomegranate juice has health benefits and helps with the taste, (provided you are doing just a splash and you are doing real juice, not the high sugar filled kind.) The basics are covered in the works of Dr. Weil and Dr. Oz we mentioned above and being hydrated is one example of improving your health without feeling like you are taking hours out of your day for a huge program.
3. See your doctor. A lot of us skip exams and annual tests we should be doing. Whether it’s a mammogram or a colonoscopy many people are not doing their “regular maintenance.” So if you haven’t seen your doctor or you have been skipping tests, get them done. If you don’t like your current doctor, ask around. Check with a friend or colleague whose health you admire and get a new physician to work with.

Obviously we are not physicians and this blog is not intended to dispense medical advice. We are simply suggesting that health is actually part of the leadership conversation and the healthier you are the better you can lead. So do yourself a favor and care for your health and well-being all 52 weeks of the year!