Are You Driven by Goals at the Expense of Compassion?

Posted on by Will Marre

Increasingly I find it easy to swing on an emotional pendulum from ‘angry-frustration’ to ‘inspiring-hope’ and back again. Something I get angry about are the corporate working conditions that inflame our stress and dampen our performance are much worse now than they were when I started my work 30 years ago (1984).

I am angry that most leaders lead from fear rather than vision.

I am angry the sum total of all the bad things powerful people have decreed on the masses…slavery-genocide-war-exploitation…are as prevalent today as they were at the dawn of history. I am angry because Hard Power leaders have made all the rules that matter since we became conscious. And hard power, which is the institutionalization of self-interest, will never lead a better future. You may be surprised at this, but even my deeper look into Buddhism makes me mad because it takes for granted that men are more advanced souls than women…otherwise they say…why would women be so powerless? Grrrr.

Hard power “logic” is always self-serving and always asserted with arrogant and endless confidence. But it’s ultimately self-destructive. There will never be a war to end all wars unless it’s a war to end all human life. You see, hard power thinking is like a dog chasing its tail. Training the dog to run faster and feeding it better food doesn’t accomplish anything except a more frustrated dog. And yet Soft Power, the power rooted in empathy and compassion is no match for hard power.

Leaders of companies and nations have experimented with it but ultimately it devolves into a hippy commune and collapses in exhaustion…whimpering for consensus while realty overwhelms good intentions.

The new answer is the old answer. It’s the only answer.

It’s the wisdom of balance. Yin and Yang. The harmony of empathy and discipline. Freedom and responsibility. Empowerment and accountability. Innovation and execution. Vision and the bottom line…Your head is in the clouds and your feet on the ground…that’s Smart Power. I know, it’s obvious. Yet it is rarely practiced. We need to change that.

It all starts with our inner voice.

The one that is telling us what our higher goals should be. And the one that makes up excuses to justify abandoning them when we are tested by disappointment. It’s that inner voice. Yesterday we had lunch with a Smart Power 30-year-old Tibetan women. She was married to a selfish, unfaithful, violent man. She demanded a divorce, which is very unusual in her culture.  She learned English so she could become an effective importer wholesaler. Then she asked her parents to select a new husband since she had not used the correct criteria for her first choice. When a marriage partner she approved of was found she informed him he would stay home and raise the children while she built her business.

She said men cannot work outside the home and remain faithful. She said “There are too many desperate women who wish to steal husbands so he must stay home where temptations are minimal.” Our new friend is a tiny, sweet compassionate woman who loves her family. Her work isn’t driven by her personal ego but from a vision for her family’s best future. I am not suggesting all women should work and keep their over-sexed husbands locked up. Rather I am admiring the strength of a Smart Power woman who cares enough about her future to take charge of it. So how about you?

Are you driven by goals at the expense of compassion?

Or are you driven by peace-making while your dreams melt away. What’s the Smart Power balance you need right now? If our seemingly powerless Tibetan friend can re- invent her life, so can you.

Women – How to Increase Your Leadership Power

Posted on by Will Marre

Right now I’m working with a remarkable woman leader. She is the head of Human Resources of North America for a major global company. To sum it up, she is smart, fearless and savvy. But it’s not just what she is but what she does that makes her powerful. If I were to identify the single leadership problem that is an epidemic today it is confusion. People don’t perform well when they’re confused and most employees in most organizations are very confused. It’s not surprising.

We live in a time of great complexity. Competition is ferocious. Companies used to have competitive advantages that would last years. Now that’s been reduced to months. External factors in the economy, technology and social trends all work to create employee whiplash caused by constant changes and escalating demands.

I’m not exaggerating this problem of confusion. Recently, Franklin-Covey published some research that asked employees to rank their leaders against 77 management behaviors. Although people ranked “being a hard worker” the number one trait of their boss, the worst traits were ones that are at the root of basic leadership. They said their bosses were lousy even terrible at:

  • Prioritizing work so that time is spent on what’s most important
  • Setting up your expectations when assigning tasks
  • Planning ahead to reduce working in a crisis mode
  • Providing timely feedback on performance

These behaviors were the lowest scored. They were dead last among managers of some of the world’s most prominent enterprises. This is a big problem. Lousy leadership creates lousy performance which fills organizations with dysfunctional anxieties. When people are worried and confused they hunker down into all the toxic forms of self-protection which makes working in large organizations seem like you are trapped in a Dilbert cartoon. Whenever I’m able to work with exceptional leaders it’s like breathing pure oxygen.

I really hunker down and take notes on their behavior. I try to be a leadership anthropologist watching for what causes success in challenging cultures. At the core of leadership is the wise development and use of power. By power I mean the leadership ability to focus peoples’ attention, motivate their abilities, and prioritize their work to achieve meaningful goals. In many ways leadership is very simple. People want to succeed and leaders who make success easy are given a lot of power. As I have written before most male leaders rely on hard power strategies to push people to get things done.

But when people are confused pushing people to work harder always makes things worse. Product failures, angry customers, plunging sales and passive aggressive cultures are all signs of employee confusion. Many female leaders mistakenly try to balance the shortcomings of hard power by over-relying on the tools of soft power such as empathy and collaboration. But getting people together to try to figure out what their boss really means only leads to more confusion.

It also weakens the power of women who may be misusing their emotional intelligence when it’s their practical intelligence that will make a difference. That’s exactly what my client does that is so refreshing… and so powerful. She wields SMART Power like a samurai, cutting through confusion by constantly simplifying complexity. She is able to articulate the big picture and the vital business priorities using an array of simple declarative sentences.

She always ties her HR agenda to the urgent needs of the business. She can articulate the strategic imperatives of the enterprise as clearly as the CEO. Then she states what must be done immediately and has a question such as, “Does it make sense to you that we replace our annual performance reviews with short, biweekly feedback sessions since people need a constant flow of coaching to stay focused on emerging priorities?”

This technique of making recommendations in the form of a question consistently raises her power wattage. Her questions frame the discussion and contain compelling ‘if-then’ logic. It also helps her not fall into the trap of either whining about or insisting on a change she wants to make. This technique is not trivial. There is plenty of research that confirms when women try to exert power using the same techniques as hard power males they actually reduce their power and influence and become labeled as “overly aggressive, or worse…”

To sum it up, if you want to increase your SMART power then simplify confusion, clarify priorities, and lead people to follow you by asking them smart questions. Above all have a leadership agenda. Don’t wait for orders and don’t spend your life trying to achieve other people’s goals. Your goals are probably smarter!

The Six Practices That Drive Bold Moves

Posted on by Will Marre

The term “bold moves” has become synonymous with radical strategic surgery to create new ways of making money, new innovative products, attracting masses of new customers, and boosting brand energy.  Bold moves are exciting and seemingly risky.  When they work, we deeply admire them.  Zappos’ crazy commitment to delivering happiness was a bold move.  So is TOMS Shoes commitment to giving away as many shoes as they sell. When Steve Jobs ran the show virtually every product Apple invented were all redefining bold moves.

 

A few months ago I started working with a technology client whose women leaders asked me to research the factors that drive successful bold moves, so together with our Apple to Zappos’ research team I studied and interviewed leaders who are brilliantly successful at creating organizations who consistently create game-changing value. 

 

You won’t be surprised that what these leaders do to invent and implement bold moves focus on a common set of principles based on Smart Power. (Download a PDF of The Smart Power Process) What caught my attention was not just what they did but also that they had one big intangible quality in common.  It’s simply this.  Each of them was up to something more than just making money. Smart Power focuses on creating value based on the business model – Good, Grow, Gain. 

Of course pursuing Good first creates a lot of Gain, and all of them have produced stunning financial growth and profits, but that was the result of a goal far deeper than financial returns.  They each had a vision of doing something that had never been done before to create bold new value for people and often society.  From Nike’s commitment to use sports to train a new generation of self-confident girls in poor nations to Tesla’s overarching focus on harnessing technology for sustainability, all these leaders were burning with values-drenched vision.

 

There are six other practices I found that drive successful bold moves when they are fueled by Smart Power. And the bold moves not only work for businesses but also for individuals. Here they are:

  1. Cut in order to grow.  Not all revenue is good revenue.  Creating new value requires unreasonable investments of talent and money.  That comes from refocusing the organization on the few new things that matter.  Steve Jobs cut Apple’s 40 “me too” products down to four original ones and reduced $7 billion in revenue to $5.7.  Starbucks closed 600 stores.  Ford killed 40 car models.  Aggressive pruning makes for healthy growth.  (So what do you have too much of in your life?  The easy answers might be too much debt, too much bad food, too many non-supportive friends, too much stress… and what about too many distractions… too many activities don’t add value to your life. What could you prune right now that would create space to invest in time and energy to grow?)
  2. Assault the status quo.  Being bold means standing at the intersection of unsolvable problems and customer desires.  This requires not settling for the old ways of doing things. Throw away benchmarks.  Breakthroughs come from reframing old ways and sticking your thumb in the eye of convention.  You have to be willing to stand on the edge of your industry and become the new authority. (Social comparison, which is your inner-voice comparing the material abundance of your life with others who have more, is a major cause of unhappiness. If you’re looking for personal benchmarks focus on the people you admire for their love and contribution to a better future. That will not depress you. It just might inspire you.)
  3. Be today’s best version of yourself.  Great brands keep growing.  They rewrite their stories by standing on the shoulders of their heritage.  Old brand promises have to be re-imagined to stay relevant to drive new allegiance with new customers. (I believe the purpose of life is simple…do your best to become your best. If you can imagine being a better person then that ideal is a gift to you.)
  4. Do what others are afraid to do.  Great leaders are willing to create overwhelming focus and frightening force to obliterate competitors.  Apple invested $193 million in advertising their iPod in the first 12 months of release.  Their closest competitor invested $10 million.  Having the courage to redefine a category, create enthusiastic customers, and generate benchmark-busting margins is essential for a bold move to have impact. Are you willing to invest in yourself and your personal future? (What might happen if you over-invest in learning what you need to learn, and doing what you need to do so that you stand out in a world that is pushing you to fit in?)
  5. Make a difference that benefits humanity. With today’s consumer if you are not up to something bigger than making money you are up to no good.  Now every consumer is an activist.  They demonstrate their values with their wallets.  86% of consumers say business has a direct responsibility to solve social problems and heal the environment.  This is today’s centerpiece value that drives innovation, attracts talent, engages employees, and impresses customers. (We will never feel fulfilled if our work is not aligned with our values. I believe that you can make your difference every day. If that’s your intention, you will see the opportunities clearly.)
  6. Change fast.  Bold moves are nearly always revolutionary.  It requires simultaneous realignment of strategy, talent, brand, and the internal systems to support the change.  Fast change is more successful than slow change because it creates focused energy.  It also produces results that sustain the change. No change is perfect.  In fact it’s messy. The real world demands we constantly adapt.  Successful leaders will always seek new products, new channels, and new customers.  It’s a growth mindset. (How much better would your life be if you became great at changing when old habits and old thinking no longer worked?  Change as soon as you need to…this is the key to resilience… the single most important ability for successful life.)

As you can see these six drivers of successful bold moves are pretty scary—definitely not business as usual or even life a little better.  Bold leadership requires so much courage that it’s not surprising that the commitment to change must come directly from your deepest values. Genuine bold moves come from inner convictions deep in the bones of courageous leaders who are willing to make their difference.

 

Do you have a vision you hold so strongly you’re unwilling to accept defeat? Nothing less will do.

Give Your Family the Gift of Your Failures

Posted on by Will Marre

Believe in yourself! Believe in your ability to overcome failure, defeat challenges, and stamp out the urge to give up. According to child psychology research from Emory University, the greatest single gift you can offer a child or teenager is the belief that they can overcome life’s inevitable body slams and rise again. It’s called resilience. I call it transformational tenacity. Adults who possess this optimistic resilience report being happy much more of the time than people who consider themselves either “realistic” or cautious (pessimistic). None of that is particularly surprising, but this finding might be.

It turns out most children form a self-view or identity that includes an inner story that rules their response to setback and failure. So if your story about yourself is that you can find a way to be happy and successful no matter what is happening now—you will. If your self-story is that “people like me are just unlucky or undeserving” you will likely make choices that leave you both unhappy and less successful. The research isolated the importance of developing a resilient identity has accounted for differences in income and education and most other factors that also impact happiness and success.

The findings are clear that while it’s true many factors impact our positive well-being, the strongest is our identity or self-story. Now here is something very interesting. The researchers found the best way to develop a resilient identity is to read stories or see movies of people who you identify with who have overcome setback and failures. What really caught my attention was that the strongest influential stories are those that come from your own family. Yes, if you have ancestors who lost everything and crossed the ocean or walked the plains to establish a better life, that’s a story worth repeating.

I’m lucky my family history is rich with stories of resilience. My great-grandfather was forced to leave Italy at the age of 15. He left in the early 1850s to escape Napoleon III’s mad plan to force young boys into a new army to reconquer his uncle’s lost empire. Luigi, my grandfather, arrived in California with nothing. He became an apprentice to a butcher. He later lost his savings seeking gold and lost his money a second time as a merchant.

He was eventually successful at raising cattle and ranching. I grew up on his ranch, which was sadly lost despite my father’s tireless vigilance in a tragic legal battle involving powerful corporations and corruption. And yet here I am with nine grandchildren and my own adventures of failure and success in every area of my life. My first business was an overnight success immediately followed by financial catastrophe. I’ve lost all my assets twice.

It took me three marriages to discover how to be a wise husband. I know the crush of failure. I understand the feeling despair so deeply I would have welcomed a massive wipeout drowning me. I know the sinkhole of persistent loneliness, and I also know that if I don’t give up the sun will shine, love will bloom, and prosperity can return. That story, the story of my life, my father, and great-grand father’s life, I’ve been sharing with my grandchildren this past week.

My hope is that you’ll tell your story to those whom you love. Our story is our gift. Our life’s work is to never give-up so that we can make the difference we are designed to make with the people we are blessed to touch. Our job is to live so that our stories inspire. This is what I believe. It’s not over. It’s never over. Not ever.

Your Moment of Truth – Why Do You Run?

Posted on by Will Marre

I’m racing against the speeding train of the future. I am trying to get to the track-switch before the speeding train of humanity arrives at the switch point. It’s vital. If the train doesn’t switch direction the track it’s on will take it right off a cliff.

 

Fortunately I am not running alone. Millions of us are running to various switch-points where we will collectively raise our arms on the giant levers and pull with all our might to push the rails in a new direction that will take humanity to a future of sustainable abundance.

 

I am one of the older runners. In fact some people wonder why I’m still running at all. At times, the lure of retirement is seductive. My major interests require health and vitality yet today I get eye injections to fight creeping cloudiness. Last year I spent months with heart specialists who were worried that my heart might just switch off.  That seems much less likely now. Yet I find that no matter how much good food I eat and bad food I avoid and how many days I walk 3 miles and sneak in an hour-long surf the warranty on my body parts is coming to an end. I feel a lot like an old car that requires constant tune-ups, frequent oil changes and a new set of tires.

 

But if that’s what it takes, that’s what I will do because I am still running. You see I have unfinished business. I was thrilled this year with the 25th anniversary of the publication of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. With 25 million copies sold it is one of the most read business books in the world. I believe it’s truly a great book. One that is practical as well as inspiring. One that almost never got written. I remember vividly the day that Stephen Covey (above) walked into my office so exhausted from his repeated teaching of the Seven Habits workshop that he wanted to move on to something else. “Something in leadership” he said.

I tried to commiserate with him while I told him that he would never produce anything as relevant and life-changing to more people than the Seven Habits. He looked at me with very tired eyes and said “I hope that isn’t so.” He had a right to be exhausted. His speaking was the financial engine of the company and we were investing heavily in the future. Brad Anderson and I had recently finished a successful tour of our most supportive clients raising money to develop the Seven Habits video-based training course so that certified trainers could teach. We were young and stoked because this would be the tool that would let us reach millions worldwide… if we could just ignite widespread demand.

 

That seems quite unlikely to almost everybody at the time, especially Stephen. 

It’s true, we had gold-plated clients like Disney and Procter& Gamble but every client was a hard-fought win. Sales cycles were 12 to 18 months. We were doing the business version of trench warfare. What we needed was a book. A big bestseller. But Stephen was too busy to write something he was proud of. We had tried many editors and ghostwriters but none of them could capture Stephens’ voice, so on that day Stephen wanted to give up on the idea of a book.

 

When he left my office I felt twin motives of compassion for his discouragement and a passion to solve the problem. In that instant I turned to the bookshelf behind a  and gazed at a  thick transcript of eight hours of recorded video training of Stephen delivering the Seven Habits in front of a live audience. This was destined to be the core of our new training program. But as I looked at that transcript what I saw was every core principle and every great story expressed in perfect cadence in Stephen’s own voice.

 

Within an hour I had taken the section known as the Emotional Bank Account and given it to Roger Merrill to work on with his wife Rebecca over the weekend to see if they can transform the recorded word into the written word. By Monday they had. And it was perfect. Within a few days we sent that section to Stephen’s literary agent and within a month we had a real book deal with Simon & Schuster. I soon found out that writing a good book is not the same as selling it.

A year after publication the publisher announced that they were going to end the hardback edition and issue it in paperback. We had sold 300,000 copies.  The publisher was pleased but I was devastated. We needed to sell millions of books to create sustained demand for our training. Even 300,000 books had done little to generate organic interest in our training. It was time to make a decision.

 

I have found every success story has a moment of truth where you either go all in or shrink. 

I talk about this cautiously because we only tend to hear the stories of mind-boggling success. Yet there are many more stories of risking it all and losing all. That’s what makes going all in so hard. By this time we had a nice slow-growing training business. We were then faced with investing in a risky national speaking tour. The plan, developed by Greg Link, a wild man marketer, was to rent 3,000 seat symphony halls in 17 major U.S. cities to enable Stephen to do three-hour mass workshops.

Greg was a great believer in critical mass by getting lots of people to experience the same message at the same time. He wanted to engage entire business communities of cities to create a chorus of buzz. He beat back more reasonable people inside our company who were willing to support venues for 300 people but thought selling 3,000 tickets at a time was impossible. But Greg would have none of it.

 

The task and expense of direct mail and outbound call center to sell tickets was huge. Ultimately Greg and I convinced Stephen to give the green light while risking the company’s future and his own financial well-being on this audacious plan.

 

Fortunately it worked.

 

Some of the events made money, some lost money.  But midway through the tour our phones started ringing. Companies were calling us to bring the training to them as fast as we could. The new paperback version was flying of the shelf and we never looked back. Even today, 25 years laterThe Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is frequently a top 10 business bestseller.

 

The reason we fought so hard for so long and spit in the eye of risk is that we really believed in what we were doing. The consequences of failure were tiny compared to the consequences of success. We were also very lucky.

 

But I personally still have some unfinished business. 

We launched the Seven Habitstraining in major corporations in the 1980s. It was an audacious message to bring to business at a time when Milton Friedman’s ridiculous contention that ‘corporations only responsibility was to make money’ was gaining massive traction.  Our training had leaders writing personal mission statements, striving for life balance, negotiating win-win solutions, collaborating respectfully and espousing the balance between seeking golden eggs and taking care of the goose. We did this at the same time the movie Wall Street eloquently portrayed our emerging economic system that legalized greed.

 

During the last three decades there has been a war going on for the souls of leaders. 

It’s the same war I entered into at the beginning of my career. In some ways it’s sad that a book like The Seven Habits which is rooted in the universal morality of the Golden Rule and calls people to aspire to express their highest selves would be so popular at the same time our economic system has become so corrupting.  We are at a point of major system failure. Our finance-based economic system rewards and gives power to people with pathological self-interest. For our children to inherit a world we want them to live in this must change.

 

There are small and mighty forces that are focused on positively changing the way we all think about the purpose of work, our economy, business and society.  The opposing force of the powerful status quo is well financed and very noisy. They are both powerful and stupid. They justify what is unjustifiable. Yes, we can defeat them.

 

I honestly believe that SMART-Power thinking and leadership practice combined with the essence of conscious capitalism and new structures like B-corporations can become the business norm as a new generation of leaders and more women ascend into leadership.

 

My job is to equip them with tools that will enable them to lead, innovate and out-compete business as usual.

 

This can’t be done with soft ideas of asking people to behave better. This can only be done by resolving the paradox of hard and soft leadership, science and spirit, discipline and love, action and reflection. This is the core of wisdom.

 

It is time for aggressive wisdom.

 

So the reason I still run alongside humanities’ train is that not only do I want people be more personally effective… I want a future that creates more effective institutions so that our best ideas, our most inspiring hopes, and our moral imaginations can prevail.

 

And one thing I notice that makes me smile is that today there’re a lot more people running with me.

Be the Smartest Voice in the Room: Ask These Two Questions

Posted on by Will Marre

I have been doing a lot of training of men and women leaders on the science of using the strength of both genders to create new solutions to nasty business problems.

 

I use something I call Trans-Logical Thinking. It requires a ruthless determination to transcend the low-level trade-offs of hard logic. Hard logic is either/or thinking, and it’s simplistic. Overly simplistic. It comes from a black or white mindset. It assumes there is one right answer to every problem. It assumes that virtually every outcome is the result of one principle cause. It is overly moralistic urging gets you to brand your opinion as good and different opinions as bad.

 

Hard logic is the main thinking tool of hard power. The aggressive drive to control, to dominate and be right are prime motives of hard power. You see it everywhere. You see it in Executives’ meetings. You see it in politics.  

The irony of hard power logic is that it is weak. 



SMART logic is simply a much more powerful way to think. 

It relies on a broad spectrum of thinking tools that combine the strengths of intuition, practical thinking and analysis. Leaders who use SMART logic are comfortable with complexity. They recognize that virtually every difficult problem has multiple causes and that any action is likely to cause unintended consequences.

 

SMART logic begins with the recognition that we swim in paradox. 

You can love your children and be incredibly frustrated with them at the same time. You can love your job and hate what you have to do today at work. That’s just the nature of reality and the reality of nature. Light is both a wave and a particle.

 

The most successful leaders, the ones we really admire, come up with unexpected solutions by resolving paradox.  Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz turned coffee into a luxury. He made every drink customizable and combined it with fast service. He chooses to give part-time employees health insurance and pay for their college education. None of those ideas make sense to a hard logic thinker.  If he were pitching Starbucks to venture capitalists today they would laugh.

 

Steve Jobs made technology beautiful and easy to use when everybody else didn’t believe that an average person would ever want or use a computer. That’s why computers were ugly and complicated.

 

Walt Disney created a magic kingdom from carnival rides usually found in dusty county fairs. It didn’t make any sense that he would be so successful. His bankers abandoned him. It defied hard logic.

 

We admire Starbucks’, Apple’s and Disney’s unique solutions because they’re unexpected.  

These are leadership acts of creative courage. 



But what I observe is that in spite of its weakness, most leaders have embraced hard logic… the logic of either/or. They say “We can either make money or pay our front-line people well… but we can’t do both.”  (These leaders persistently ignore the examples of Costco, In-N-Out Burger and Zappos who pay well above their lagging competitors. Why? Because hard logic makes you dumb!)

 

Too often I find that when hard power leaders express an interest in elevating women into leadership they complain that it’s difficult to find a woman who “thinks like a man.” They also express doubts that women will give their work their exclusive attention. Yes, they frequently have a long list of reasons why women are unable to perform like men do.  

They seem unable to consider that the value of women in leadership is that they don’t think or work like men. 

It seems contrary to their hard logic that since most leaders are men they think they need to find women who act like men in order to make them leaders. That’s just plain stupid.

 

Let me make this real. 

I recently completed the leadership transformation project for Cricket Communications, the fifth largest wireless carrier in the U.S. As a no- contract carrier their primary customers were people in the lower-half of household income.  As they were looking for more customers many of the leaders who spent time on the front lines of the retail store network had the idea they could be successful by going down market. That’s right, go after poorer people. 

There was initial opposition. After all poor people make bad customers, right?  It’s pretty obvious… poor people don’t have money to spend on fancy phones or cell service. That’s simply logical.  It’s a perfect example of hard logic. And it was dead wrong.

 

It was wrong because there’s more to the story.  In the 1930s Congress passed a law giving subsidies to people receiving public assistance to help them get phone service. This idea was justified because of the overwhelming evidence that telephone communication increases people’s economic opportunities and upward mobility.

The law is still in effect and offers qualified low-income individuals $10 a month off their phone bill. The problem is there’s a lot of paperwork involved and qualifications vary from state to state. No other cell company was willing to invest the time, people and money to sort this complexity out and use Information Technology to make it efficient. The reason was simple, “Poor people make bad customers.”

 

The question that I coach people with creative courage to ask is… “What if the opposite was also true?” or “Under what conditions would the opposite be true?” 

For Cricket Communications it turned out that customers that received a subsidized discount were a lot more loyal and consistent than customers who didn’t. Once Cricket invested in making the whole sign-up process efficient and easy it became their fastest growing and most profitable business segment. The creative courage to take this risk came from spirited discussions of men and women leaders who were willing to suspend their simplistic prejudices and unravel the knots of opportunity.

 

The key to open the door to SMART logic is how you frame questions.

As soon as you ask the question “Under what conditions would the opposite be true?” you open brave peoples’ minds to see hidden opportunities were no one else has the guts to look.

 

For SMART logic to really create value leadership teams need diversity of thought, diversity of personality and diversity of experience.  They also need unity. Great leadership teams are united by the idea that the purpose of business is to create value.  Real value. Nontrivial value. Value that makes the quality of life of other human beings better.

 

What the world needs now are people who do not accept hard logic. We need people with creative courage and the emotional intelligence to persuade, influence and if necessary, hypnotize their opposers.

 

This is a requirement of great leadership. Stand up and lead from where you are. 

You can do that by asking courageous questions that open minds to SMART logic.

10 Actions For Business Success and Happiness

Posted on by Will Marre

A few years ago I wrote a book titled Save the World and Still be Home for Dinner. The title came from a running conversation I was having with a woman executive client who was trying to start a new purpose-driven business while she raised her two young daughters, helped her aging mother and stayed engaged as a loving wife. When I asked her what she really wanted she responded, “I just want to save the world and still be home for dinner.”

I don’t think anyone has defined a well-lived life better than that statement. Yet turning that aspiration into reality is a constant challenge. Today more than ever. Many times I am asked to summarize the practical principles that makes her request achievable. Here is a menu of 10 actions you can take that capture what my happiest and most successful clients do. If you want more from your life than you’re currently getting choose 1 or 2 of the items that would make the most difference and commit to do them for 21 days. If they produce the change you are seeking you will have a new positive habit. Then reload. Try another new habit and then another. The cumulative impact is transformational.

1. Decide to stand for something.

Make a promise to yourself to make your difference…a commitment to live your life in a meaningful, fulfilling way. This will change your priorities, what you’re willing to say “yes” to…and what you must say “no” to. I call this your personal promise. Write it down, take a picture of it and make it your home screen on your cell phone. When you pick up your phone and the screen lights up look at what you’ve written and ask yourself “Am I making my difference right now?”

2. Change your theory of life.

Many of the most challenging things that will ever happen to you are beyond your control. (Death, divorce, sickness, job loss, bankruptcy, caring for loved ones…) It is difficult to be happy if your expectations are that your life should be full of endless days of sunny weather. For most of us life is frequently stormy. A major part of life’s purpose is to learn to be resilient, resourceful, agile, and be able to transcend the drive for pleasure with the quest for meaning. I have found that life is not easy for anyone. It isn’t meant to be. We live to become stronger, better and to help others along their path. Align your expectations with reality and master the art of resilience.

3. Don’t allow the powerful, greedy, and stupid people who make our society and our world worse than it should be, to ruin your peace of mind.

Resist expending your energy on blame and focus on leading your own life. Be an activist by stopping the fight against bad ideas and invest all your energy in good ones.

4. ‘Saving the World’ does not mean you have to hold an important job at a nonprofit.

Saving the world does not have to be starting a new socially conscious business. For most of us it is the genius of turning our values in value for other that is seen in the way you do your work, love your loved ones and inconvenience yourself every day to make your difference. Never forget, sometimes the best way to change the world is to change a diaper.

5. Be proud of your employer.

Is your company valued and respected? Are its values aligned with yours?  Are you encouraged to grow and express your authentic, best self? Are you paid and treated respectfully?  Refuse to be exploited. Invest your time and effort in working for a great enterprise. Lists like ‘A Great Place to Work’ and websites like Glass Door offer unprecedented information about the quality of potential employers. Don’t work for jerks… it will make you feel small. Honor yourself by working for a great organization. Or start one!

6. Create a life-list of activities you most enjoy.

To make this list, pay attention to your true feelings. What activities consistently light up your passion and ignite your energy from the inside out? Write these activities down. Post them on your bathroom mirror. And take time to do them weekly. Hike, paint, bike, garden, play a musical instrument, do yoga… do something that fires-up your joy at least three times per week. Make it possible by making it easy to do. Just 20 minutes a day of doing something you love is a daily vacation.

7. Use creativity to solve your problems.

Don’t be an either/or thinker.  Ask yourself “how” instead of “if.”  Somebody with far bigger problems and fewer resources have solved the problem you’re facing. You can too.

8. Be intensely present with people.

Listen without an inner agenda…without formulating what you’re going to say next. Don’t allow your mind to wander. Quit pretending to listen while you’re having a second conversation in your mind or saying “uh huh” while you’re texting someone else. Keep bringing your total concentration back to the conversation in front of you. Do this with everyone…your family, friends, coworkers, cabdrivers and cashiers…just watch what happens to your own happiness.

9. Get off the Grid for three hours a day.

Be radical about this. No smartphones, computers, TV, or news. Think, reflect, journal, study, talk, walk, eat, help, love with no distractions. Fully engage yourself in the interests of the person you love the most. Take back your inner life and invest in your love life.

10. Eat wisely, exercise daily, sleep peacefully and spend wisely.

In order to save the world and still be home for dinner, what you value should be reflected in your day-to-day choices. So value your personal vitality and your health.  As far as wealth, you will feel rich if you buy a few high-quality things that you will continue to relish long after you purchase them. For everything else, make do with what you have or buy the cheapest acceptable option. The temporary pleasure of buying something you cannot afford will never exceed the stress of financial bondage.

So travel light because you will have many more opportunities to do what you really want to do and live the life you will find most deeply satisfying…that’s the greatest wealth of all. These are 10 big life changers. As I said, it’s better to choose one or two of these actions and do them with your full energy…otherwise they won’t have much impact. The great thing about positive behavior change is that it’s infectious. One good thing, we do a second thing and a third.

Also, sometimes changing 5% of your life will change the way you feel about the other 95%.

Life is a long journey on a path covered with thorns and broken glass.  These actions are like grippy-soled hiking boots.  Slip them on and keep climbing.

My Path to Profound Confidence

Posted on by Will Marre

Last week I wrote about the importance of confidence as a high-octane fuel for leadership. In fact, it’s a make or break attribute if you’re interested in becoming a senior leader of any organization. That fact is it’s also a problem. There are people who are so confident they are made leaders of powerful organizations or have loud public microphones that influence millions that are simply bad for the world. You can be devilishly immoral or colossally incompetent and still be hypnotically confident.

That brings trouble to us all. Many confident acting people are primarily driven by fear or by having something to prove.  When these are your ghostly drives it’s like living in a haunted house. Scary stuff happens. People whose confidence is driven by these low motives often seem insistent, arrogant and relentless. It’s important to recognize that large organizations are most often toxic to people’s positive well-being because these abrasive behaviors are very often rewarded, especially if they’re covered by a spray tan of charm and a bleached smile.

Today I’m going to present something far more important than practical confidence. 

That’s because practical confidence is only a behavioral skill. But due to my long life and an ample share of crushing life tests I have learned there is a confidence far more valuable than a confident personality. If you discover it, it will make you immune to the harmful effects of fear driven bosses. It is also the most powerful psychological vaccine in the universe. I call it your Invisible Light. It’s not primarily a quality of your personality. Rather it’s a quality of your core being. It only becomes visible when you realize you have nothing to prove. It comes in the flash of clarity that the point of life is not what you achieve but the quality of person you become.

Simply put… you uncover your invisible light when you move from self-awareness to soul-awareness.

I realize the word ‘soul’ raises red flags in some of you. But please relax your inner voice of skepticism and just listen for a bit. I’m going to tell you a very personal story about coming to soul awareness. It’s not a story about religion. Rather it’s a story of my experience with reality…but transcendent reality. And it’s the root of profound confidence.

It’s a story that begins with my lost decade.

It began on May 30th 1990 as I was sitting in a chair in my parents’ bedroom watching my father die. I was very close to my father my entire life. He was a John Wayne figure. A cattle rancher with a college degree…maybe the smartest man who has ever fixed watering troughs.  He was passionate, loving and fearless. When I was 13 I actually saw him talk an angry, desperate man out of trying to kill him by offering him a job. I thought a lot about his example as I sat in vigil. In the instance my Dad past I felt his essence, his spirit, his soul leave the room. I didn’t imagine this. I experienced it. It was only the beginning.

The next nine years were brutal.

Everything that was important to me was stomped on.  My wife of 20 years announced that she didn’t love me but rather had fallen in love with a young business partner. I was betrayed by a lifelong friend in a new business venture. The list goes on. I will simply summarize by saying everything that was important to me and nearly every belief I valued was shattered.  For nine years I was virtually alone and continuously struggled like a drowning man desperate for air. It was in this state of prolonged misery that I came across a book written in 1934 titled “The Secret Path” by Paul Brunton. In it he captures the essence of thousands of years of seeking the ultimate truth. He gets at the root of our invisible light by eliminating all the things that we are NOT.

First, we are not who we ‘think’ we are.

It’s true…all of us have a self-concept… the story about ourselves that we tell ourselves.  This is the monologue of our inner voice that tells us how smart we are, how good-looking we are, what we ought to believe, what we ought to do, what we deserve, what excuses we can justify…and on and on. It is a full-blown novel. But it isn’t who we really are. It’s just our story.  I know this because when my story got shredded I was still breathing…but just barely. I had spent my life saying my prayers and eating my Wheaties…doing what I should whether I liked it or not. I expected life to be just and fair. I thought the universe worked like an honest bank. If I just kept investing by being responsible and trying to be good, nothing really bad would happen to me. That was the story I kept telling myself.

But that story was dead wrong. Brunton is brilliant at teaching you how to write a new story.

He uses a simple meditation that enables you to clearly understand that you are not your achievements, your appearance, your memories, your job, your opinions, your reputation, your stuff, your behavior, your IQ, your tribes, your tastes, your interests or anything else that is not your essential identity. In today’s world this is a radical idea.

Psychologists tell us that we are all ‘socially constructed.’  They maintain that our identity is formed by whom we identify with or disassociate from. They laugh at the idea that we have an individual essence. They insist that all we are is the story we have created about ourselves. Some brain scientists also maintain that our separate consciousness is an illusion. They claim our identity is simply an imaginary construction of our brain chemistry. But is it? That is after all the big question.

It you take away all experiences, achievements, and everything else that seems to make us individuals what’s left?

Soul awareness. Soul awareness is neither a logical assertion nor an emotional belief. It is a profound and direct experience of being. It is knowing beyond reason. It is sometimes called super–rational knowledge. It’s knowledge that arises from our whole being, not just from the limited tools of logic or just the hot blood of emotion.

How do you get to super-rational knowledge?

Simply turn off the noise of your busy mind and listen for something deeper. If you say “I am not my achievements, who am I?” Just listen.  If you say “If I am not my body, who am I?” Just listen. That’s what I did. I did it for months. If you quiet your mind and learn to pay inner attention you can have a super-rational experience of truth beyond doubt. Soul evident truths. You see your invisible light. You discover that the existence of your inner being needs no external proof. Without a doubt you exist. It is nothing less than your transcendent identity…what most people call your soul. As Einstein discovered, matter can be converted to pure energy and energy into matter. You can experience your eternal energy. Your indestructible essence. In the quiet of sustained silence it is simply there.

Knowing this makes you free.

Toward the end of my decade of dark nights I went up to the mountains. I was alone in a cabin and as the sun was setting I decided to spend a little quiet time and think about my father. I laid down on the floor, closed my eyes and tried to imagine how it might feel to have him loving me right then and there father to son. I felt empty, exhausted and hurting. Then my mind shifted. I envisioned him holding me as a tiny child and I could feel his sure, unrestrained love. Then something changed. My imagination receded and I began to sense his actual presence. It seemed like a physical presence, not just in my mind but right there in the room. He seemed to be hovering above me, mirroring my reclined position.

His presence was unmistakable, just like when he walked into a room when I was growing up. He had the same powerful energy he’d always had. I had not felt anything like that since his passing. I didn’t know that I could. My mind was empty of thoughts but flooded with love. Then he spoke to me. Not out loud, but in his voice, with his thoughts. He simply and powerfully affirmed that there was nothing wrong with me.  And there was nothing wrong with what I wanted for my life. He simply said, “Be who you are and do what you came for.” I realize that that sounds corny, like something you might hear on Oprah. If I were making this up I would try to be more clever.

But I’m not making this up. It wasn’t so much his words as his undeniable presence that he used as a spiritual blowtorch to evaporate my self-pity and doubt. Above all it made me feel that I was ‘enough.’ A few other things happened in the remaining moments of that experience but the last thing he said was “this is real.” To be as descriptive as I can be it wasn’t so much that he said it as he ‘intended’ it.

That night my suffering ended.

The challenges didn’t, but the way I took on those challenges completely changed. I had received a gift of profound confidence.

The bottom line for me is simply this…  There is more to life than what we see.

What most people think is important isn’t at least not in the way they think it is. So for me the point of life is to become the best person I choose to be. As far as the world goes, I have nothing to prove…nobody else’s expectations to meet. I know that my experience is not unique. Tens of thousands, maybe even millions of us have had super-rational experiences confirming that there is more to life than life. We have every reason to be profoundly confident.

Top 10 Tips for Building Your Confidence

Posted on by Will Marre

Confidence is the engine of success. The advantages of confidence are eye-popping. Social research confirms that your personal confidence is a more accurate predictor of your success then competence.

The reason is simple. Confident people learn what they need to learn and do what they need to do to overcome failures and setbacks that are inevitable along any journey of human achievement. Confidence is a hot topic these days. One reason is that there is strong evidence there is a confidence gap between men and women. And that gap is holding women back from getting their fair share of opportunities for rapid advancement and senior leadership. But a lack of confidence is not just a woman thing.

So many times when I’m in a senior leadership meeting and a director or VP walks in to present a new opportunity or solve a big problem their confidence becomes a topic of discussion after they leave. In business speak ‘executive presence’ is the tag given to how confident a young leader appears. 

HR research reveals that a lack of executive presence is a promotion killer. 

And I have personally witnessed many good ideas not seriously considered because the presenter seemed a bit timid, insecure or unsure. Confidence not only powers success, it’s also emotionally magnetic. Studies show that confident people are listened to more carefully, inspire loyalty and are more widely admired. Yep… confidence matters.

Let’s Build Your Confidence…

The good news is that confidence can be developed. It can be instilled as an authentic foundation of your personality if you’re willing to change your inner story and outer behavior.
 
There are two core dimensions of confidence that must be harnessed to get the advantage of its full power. 
 
One dimension is Practical Confidence the second is Profound Confidence. Today I am going to show you a roadmap on how to increase your practical confidence. Next week I’ll do the same for profound confidence. So here we go… To avoid any confusion, let me call out the enormous difference between fake confidence and real confidence. Fake confidence is your belief that you can manipulate opinion and successfully blame others when you fail. It’s nothing more than bluster. 
 
Only delusional people can continue to fail, insist they are right and everyone else is wrong and remain confident. 
 
We all know lots of delusional people. We have elected many to public office, we have all had delusional bosses, and nearly all of us have delusional relatives. So let me be clear…bluster is not confidence, it’s psychosis.
 
Real confidence is your belief in your ability to succeed no matter what.
 
Genuine confidence drives you to continuous action. This drive for ‘action learning’ is practical confidence. It’s practical because it produces results, which triggers learning and improvement. When others sense you will learn what you need to learn and do what you need to do to succeed they experience your confidence.
 
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What Really Matters…

In my experience of coaching people to have stronger executive presence by deepening their belief in their ability to succeed, there is one essential that matters.You have to have an authentic agenda.  You must have a practical goal that you care enough about that burns off the fog of fear. And when I say something you care about…
 
I mean something that really inspires you. 
 
It has to be so personally motivating that you are able to psychologically toughen yourself to withstand criticism, blow off judgments and transcend discouragement.
 
Knowing what you want is the foundation of confidence. Spending your life achieving other people’s goals will keep you weak.
 
Your authentic agenda is a source of grit…which is your unbreakable will to learn and persist through the successive ups and downs experienced on any journey to a worthwhile outcome. No one succeeds without failing first. It’s good to remember that confidence is situational. There are some areas of your life where you are extremely confident. Many people are confident in their driving. From what I can tell, overconfident. But it didn’t start out that way.
 
Nearly 80% of young drivers have accidents within 24 months of getting a drivers license. Most young drivers are tense, distracted and are quick to panic under unexpected challenges. Confidence grows with time and consistency. In spite of accidents new drivers continue to drive…learning to get better. What enables millions of people to gain the confidence to drive in spite of the fact that it’s quite dangerous (there are about 200,000 traffic accidents a year in the U.S.) is that young drivers are very motivated to get the benefits of personal mobility.  
 
So they overcome their fears and dismiss evidence that they’re lousy drivers to eventually become competent. And that brings up an interesting point. Your authentic agenda…your goal that inspires you…doesn’t have to be world changing. I see plenty of leaders who have an agenda to increase sales, improve production, or bring a new innovation to market. Most often these are not world changing goals. Selling more jeans, speeding up software development or negotiating a vendor contract will not change the future of humankind. Nevertheless, a leaders’ confidence in the pursuit of these goals will often make the difference between ultimate success and failure.

Here’s the Key…

The key of course is to stay focused on the goal rather than yourself. The killer of confidence is self-doubt and self-consciousness. When I was learning to speak in public I had a very difficult time. I wanted to be great but I sucked. I would scan the audience for support, looking for a smiling face or nodding head. If I didn’t see any visible signs of affirmation my inner voice would begin to attack my confidence.“They don’t understand what you’re talking about; they are not buying what you’re saying; they’re bored; they don’t think your funny; they can’t wait for you to finish.” Now as soon as I allow that voice to infect my confidence I start to physically sweat.
 
Then all of my inner energy dissipates and I spiral downward into a human slug… which confirms all my inner fears. All this happens because my goal is wrong. Instead of having a practical goal of teaching an audience something valuable my goal shifts to being popular or admired. As soon as that happens my power evaporates. The best advice Stephen Covey ever gave me about public speaking was to “seek to bless not to impress.” That changed everything for me. And gave me confidence to stay with my teaching message with sincerity and conviction even if people are messing around on their iPhones. If I stay with my agenda, my confidence stays strong and peoples’ attention returns.
 
Now let me give some tools that will magnify your confidence.
 
Critical thinking. If you were going to be effective against people with bluster who insist on making unfounded criticisms you need to strengthen your critical thinking skills.  When someone is forcefully making a point that is just plain wrong you can take the breath away from that blowhard by pointing out the logical fallacy he or she is relying on. Here are three common ones.
  1. Confirmation Bias. This happens when somebody only presents evidence that confirms their bias. This is very common. It’s what got us into the war in Iraq.  Recently released records show that Dick Cheney insisted the CIA only provide evidence that supported the existence of WMDs.  Analysts who tried to present contrary evidence were reassigned. This doesn’t just happen in politics. Nearly all leaders fall prey to the temptation that reality conforms to their theories. If you find yourself needing to go against thinking-as-usual to achieve your goal it really helps to point out how considering your data and evidence requires an open mind, free of confirmation bias.
  2. Attribution Error. It’s all too human to look for a single cause to any affect. A common attribution error is that employees are primarily motivated by money and the positive or negative judgment of their boss. It turns out human motivation is extremely complicated.  Low paid people doing repetitive work are often motivated to produce more by money. Highly paid experts are much more motivated intrinsically to solve interesting and worthwhile problems for their own sake. The point is, most things in life have multiple causes. Pointing this fact out in the pursuit of your goal will often neutralize dismissive critics.
  3. Unexamined Assumptions. This is the mother of logical fallacies. Unexamined assumptions are often promoted in time-worn bromides. For instance, in an age of unexpected disruptive competition, ‘going back to the basics’ is a path to oblivion. Just ask a publisher in the newspaper industry. If you want to see the ocean about examined assumptions we swim in just ask yourself, “What would have to be true for______________( fill-in the blank) to be true?” What you will find is that most people are making decisions based on unexamined assumptions.
A lot of illogical people act confident and try to assert their power by forcing their decisions and viewpoint on you.  Don’t let them. Point out the fallacy in their logic. Don’t let them off the hook for sloppy thinking. Again, be committed to your authentic, practical goal. Exercise grit. Don’t give up or give in.

Tips for Building Your Confidence…

I’ll conclude with a list of the top 10 tips that can strengthen your confidence. These are not a substitute for having an agenda but they are psychological protein that can help strengthen your resolve:
  1. Ask others what they most admire about you. Those are your strengths. Rely on them in hard moments…nurture them.
  2. Increase your energy by getting eight hours of sleep, moving throughout the day, and eating a healthy diet.
  3. Dress and groom yourself in a way that reflects your self-respect.
  4. Create a place at home that’s a refuge from stress. Go there daily, read, reflect and write in ways that feed your soul. This is the way you take control of your inner voice.
  5. Engage in vigorous exercise. Strengthen your body…it will strengthen your confidence.
  6. Focus daily on what you want for your career and your life. Act on opportunities that advance your self-agenda.  Progress builds confidence.
  7. Deepen your friendships with people who genuinely love you and encourage you. Avoid critics and cynics and all mean people.
  8. Empathize but don’t apologize for problems you did not cause. If you’re constantly saying your sorry people will think their problems are your fault.
  9. Strive to be an expert. Be curious. Constantly learn. Share what you are learning. Assert your point of view. Be tolerant of conflict. Shake off mistakes. Be excited about who you are and what you can do.
  10. Don’t apologize for your goals for the life you want… ever!

To summarize the scientific formula for building confidence is: Have goals you are willing to stick to.

Stand up for your point of view with evidence and logic and confront those who oppose you by naming their logical fallacies. (If that doesn’t get you anywhere find a new place to work. Working with fools is foolish.) Develop your confidence muscles by exercising the top 10 tips. Now that I’ve talked to you about practical confidence you’re ready to go a little deeper… profound confidence. That’s the confidence you can gain that no tragedy, loss or disappointment can take away. I will explain it next week. In the meantime, remember…

Everyone has a difference to make and what you do matters.

 

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Why it’s Hard to Not Act Like an Idiot

Posted on by Will Marre

Nearly every company I do consulting for these days have something in common… and it’s not good. It’s called Project Failure. Virtually everywhere I go important strategic projects are failing to be delivered on budget or on time. This is not a trivial problem. Failing to achieve vital goals puts companies’ at risk and demoralizes employees.

Whenever organizations suffer chronic failure it brings up questions.

Are the right people in charge? Are the people in charge listening to the right people? Maybe not. That’s because research from Zenger Folkman confirms that people who are most likely to understand the time, money and resources necessary to accomplishing goals are usually not the people in charge. In fact they’re most often members of a group whose voices go unheard… women managers. You heard me. We live in a complex world. Most of the important things that happen to us are beyond our control. Yet, our brains are wired to make things seem simple and in our control. This helps us keep our worries in embers rather than inflame our brains with the bonfire of uncertainty.

One thing psychological research is clear on is that human beings hate uncertainty. 

We hate it so much that the most common stupid thinking trick we play on ourselves is called confirmation bias. This means that we pay attention to and even seek out any evidence that confirms our current prejudices. Then we create mental models of cause and effect which deceives us into believing we know more than we do. Leaders who have a Hard Power mindset are the most susceptible to self-deception… or what I call acting like idiots. Here is why.

The Hard Power mindset focuses on control.

This makes a dictator model of leadership seem logical and attractive. This creates high decision-making efficiency and accountability. Hard Power political leaders can quickly become ruthless. People who don’t execute their wishes get executed. Today we see lots of politicians using Hard Power messages to stir people up. You know… when anything is happening that we don’t like, bomb the hell out of someone.

Many people find this is an attractive idea. It’s simple and we like simplicity. Hard Power language confirms a make-believe world where we can force people to do what we want them to do. That of course is the thinking of idiots. Unfortunately it’s not that different in business. Uncertainty is viewed as a weakness. Goals must be set. Big, hairy, audacious goals are especially favored because on the off chance they are achieved the leader is celebrated as a hero. My experience with Hard Power is leaders who are constantly setting “stretch” goals and driving their teams to “up their game” is that they mistakenly attribute success to all-out, relentless effort. This feeds into their confirmation bias.

It makes leadership seem very simple. Set goals, get in people’s faces, intimidate people through rewards and punishment and keep track of today’s score. Whatever… that’s not leadership. That’s dictatorship.

So let’s get to real leadership.

Leadership that accomplishes worthwhile goals. Goals that make the quality of human life better. My experience is that wise leadership sets meaningful goals based on a realistic use of the time, resources and talent needed to achieve those goals. Necessary time, resources and talent are chronically underestimated by Hard Power, goal-mad leaders. Here are some dos and don’ts for Hard Power leaders (who are usually men) and Soft Power leaders (who are often women).  These are the rules for people who are serious about success and are committed to the idea that better things happen when men and women leaders work together.

For men (or Hard Power women): Do:

Do what you mother taught you about being polite.  When you’re setting goals ask the women on your team (or women who are one or two levels deeper) what it would take for the organization to execute and successfully achieve your goals. Always remember, their brains are designed to think more holistically. They’re much more likely to see un-intended consequences, and the full scope of effort needed to be successful.  So…ask…listen…acknowledge. That’s it.  Ask for specific input. Listen with both ears. Then acknowledge the content of the message that is presented and ask more questions. That behavior creates engagement. Often what is said may seem like a wet blanket. Reframe the message.

Your bias for action may blind you to the risks and difficulties that stand in your way.

This is foolish. Before you start on any long car trip you need to have a full tank of gas and a clear understanding of the distance your car can go before you need another fill-up. Doesn’t matter how fast you drive if you run out of gas before you reach your destination.

Don’t:

Don’t dismiss the wisdom of women’s assessments of what it will take to succeed because your mental model of women is that they are overly cautious, “fraidy-cats.” When we were teenagers most of our mothers were telling us to slow down while our fathers may have been winking.  Our mothers were right…wearing seat belts and driving the speed limit is always a better choice if living a long life is a goal.

For women leaders (or Soft Power males): Do:

Do master the behavior of positive pro-activity. This is accomplished by framing you’re prudent wisdom in the context of the strategic objectives of the enterprise. Powerfully communicate your commitment to achieving relevant, strategic goals. Never use the phrase “yes…but…” Rather, restate the importance of a goal and your commitment to achieve it by considering all the critical details including the unstated and often unmeasurable roadblocks. These are the inconvenient truths that linear brains ignore. Most importantly, suggest solutions and progressive steps that should be taken to ensure success. Assert yourself calmly and drive for progress.

Don’t:

Don’t engage in hand-wringing, complaining or passive aggressive blaming. Don’t nag others about your concerns. All those behaviors play into female stereotypes that reduce your influence and confirm the prejudices of linear thinking Hard Power idiots. Let me be clear.  I have coached many male, Hard Power leaders who are exceptionally effective. The reason is they don’t act like idiots. They recognize their blind spots and biases and surround themselves with a diversity of strong leaders who are unafraid to express their opinions.

There is only one way to foster the candid expression of different viewpoints…it is to listen with an open mind. This is how great leaders vaccinate themselves from thinking viruses caused by a desire to succeed without understanding the sustained investments in time, processes, resources and talent necessary to do amazing things. To be vivid, most of the time leaders go to war or terrorists blow themselves up it is because of the blood-lust to impose their will. Their emotional vision of defeating their enemies leads them to ignore the risks of oversimplifying complexity.

I often think of the example of William Wallace, the hero of Braveheart. He made a great speech and then led his raw army into a gruesome slaughter. I am sure if he’d consulted the wives and mothers of his untrained warriors they would’ve proposed a long-term strategy designed to minimize casualties and maximize results. I just want to point out that women’s brains are wired for complexity. It is this wiring that makes Soft Power very powerful.

Wise leaders build executive teams that integrate Hard and Soft Power to help large groups of people, from corporations to nations, achieve sustained greatness.

Wisdom is very rare. Our world needs lots more of it… be wise.