Negotiators, even professional ones, make surprisingly many wrong decisions that doom negotiations that should have succeeded. Many of these mistakes relate to overestimating how well they can read the feelings and thoughts of other parties in the negotiation, as well as the extent to which the other party can read their feelings and thoughts.
For instance, research shows that negotiators who sought to conceal their desires did a better job than they thought they did. In turn, those who tried to convey information to those they negotiated with about their preferences overestimated their abilities to communicate such knowledge. Other scholarship shows that negotiators with less power are more prone to such mistakes than those with more power.
Scholars call this erroneous mental pattern the illusion of transparency, referring to us overestimating the extent to which others understand us and how well we grasp others. This mental blindspot is one of many dangerous judgment errors – what scholars in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics call cognitive biases – that we make due to how our brains are wired. We make these mistakes not only in work but also in other life areas, for example, in our shopping choices, as revealed by a series of studies done by a shopping comparison website.
Fortunately, recent research in these fields shows how you can use pragmatic strategies to address these dangerous judgment errors effectively.
I observed a clear instance of an illusion of transparency when an electric company brought me in as a consultant to mediate in failing contract negotiations between the management and the union. Both sides believed the other party to be unwilling to negotiate in good faith, asking too much and giving too little. The union demanded substantial wage hikes, strong job protections, and better retirement benefits, and management pushed back firmly on each request.
Quickly, I noticed that the illusion of transparency gravely inhibited progress. My private conversations with representatives from both sides showed that all felt they communicated their positions effectively, both the areas where they wanted to stand firm and where they felt willing to compromise. Yet these same conversations showed many areas of agreement and flexibility that neither side recognized.
Why didn’t both sides explicitly outline their positions thoroughly and clearly, so that the other side understood precisely where they stood? Because they were afraid that the other party would take advantage of them if they explicitly stated their actual positions, including the minimum they’d be willing to accept.
So both sides tried to convey what was most important to them by arguing more strongly for specific points and less strongly for others. They believed that the other side would “get the hint.” Unfortunately, neither side “got the hint” of the real priorities of the other side.
What I asked each side to do was use the decision-making strategy of weighing their priorities. After deploying this strategy, the union negotiators assigned priority to increased job protection, second to better retirement benefits, and third to a substantial wage increase. The management negotiators used the same strategy and attributed priority to no wage increase, second to decreased retirement benefits, and last to weaker job protection.
By clarifying these priorities, the parties were able to find room for negotiation. The final contract included much-strengthened job protection, a moderate boost to retirement, and a small wage hike at just below inflation.
The management appreciated the outcome since it didn’t have to spend as much money on labor; the union membership liked the peace of mind that came with job protection, even if they didn’t get the wage hike they would have wanted.
The key takeaway is that in any negotiation situation, you’re very likely to be overestimating the extent to which you explained your position to the other party. You’re also probably too confident about how well you understand the other party’s perspective. The other party is most likely making the same mistakes regarding you.
An easy way to address these problems is to use the decision-making strategy of weighing your priorities and having the other party do the same. Then, trade off your lowest preferences against their highest ones and vice versa. You can come to a win-win agreement where both parties realized the most significant gains and experience the least losses. Such strategic approaches to addressing cognitive biases will help you in all areas of your professional life.
“Disruptive leaders like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have transformed companies, industries and entire societies while generating incredible wealth for themselves, their investors, their employees, as well as millions of other people,” says business disruption author John Furth.
Furth takes the lessons these and other great disruptors have learned and turns them into practical exercises, tools and techniques to help senior executives develop their own disruptive skill sets in his book, “Owning Tomorrow: The Unstoppable Force of Disruptive Leadership”
For over 25 years, John Furth worked with CEOs and their C-suite executives at some of the largest corporations of the world such as Sony, Deutsche Bank, Pfizer and Discovery Communications, helping them develop and implement disruptive and innovative businesses, leadership teams and organizations.
He has found that most successful disruptive business leaders have eight basic traits in common:
1. They are “brainiacs.” While some well-known business disruptors never finished college, many received PhDs from the highest-ranked universities in the world. But they all have the same commitment to lifelong learning.
2. They often push accepted behavioral, cultural, legal, and ethical boundaries to the limit. Unfortunately, if some of their more extreme tendencies aren’t reined in properly, they can quickly destroy everything they and their team worked hard to build.
3. They’ve learned how to disrupt their own frames of reference and unproductive mindsets. This helps them increase their focus, ability to innovate, and to stay one step ahead of would-be competitors. Disruptive leaders expect and often demand their teams to think and act in the same way.
4. They look for information, insights, and inspiration in unexpected places. They recognize that the usual or “traditional” sources of data are by nature backward-looking and hence of limited value in a world that is being re-created. Great disruptors ask excellent questions and listen carefully to the answers because they never know when someone else might have an insight that could be useful to them and the business.
5. Their businesses – regardless of whether they are B2C or B2B – deliver on at least one of three fundamental value propositions:
Provide goods, services and experiences that were previously only available to the most privileged members of society to a much larger percentage of the population more easily and affordably.
Give customers what they want, when they want it and how they want it.
Eliminate or reduce the things in people’s everyday lives they don’t want, from everyday annoyances like wasted time, boredom, complexity or unhappiness as well as life-threatening situations like poverty and disease.
6. They understand that disrupting an existing eco-system or process on a regional or even global scale can cause significant short-term negative consequences. Entrenched and inflexible companies are driven out of business, and many individual careers are adversely affected. However, the value created for billions of people far outweighs such negative incidents.
7. At some point they learn the ultimate paradox of disruption: “more stays the same than changes.” Like all successful companies, disruptive enterprises have to have the funding necessary to execute their plans, the right people doing the right jobs and the wherewithal and commitment to push through many breakdowns and hurdles.
8. They generate unimaginable wealth for themselves, their investors, their employees, and others connected to their companies.
Let’s say you’re interviewing a new applicant for a job, and you feel something is off. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you’re a bit uncomfortable with this person. She says all the right things, her resume is great, she’d be a perfect hire for this job — except your gut tells you otherwise. Should you go with your gut?
In such situations, your default reaction should be to be suspicious of your gut. Research shows that job candidate interviews are poor indicators of future job performance.
Unfortunately, most leaders tend to trust their gut over their head and give jobs to people they like and perceive as part of their in-group, rather than merely the most qualified applicant.
The reactions of our gut are rooted in the more primitive, emotional, and intuitive parts of our brains that ensured survival in our ancestral environment. Tribal loyalty and immediate recognition of friends or foes were especially useful for thriving in that environment.
In modern society, however, our survival is much less at risk. Our gut is more likely to compel us to focus on the wrong information to make decisions in the workplace and otherareas.
For example, is the job candidate mentioned above similar to you in race, gender, socioeconomic background? Even seemingly minor things like clothing choices, speaking style, and gesturing can make a big difference in determining how you evaluate another person.
Our brains tend to fall for the dangerous judgment error known as the “halo effect,” which causes some characteristics we like and identify with to cast a positive “halo” on the rest of the person. It’s opposite to the “horns effect,” in which one or two negative traits change how we view the whole. The halo effect and horns effect are two of many dangerous judgment errors, which are mental blind spots resulting from how our brain is wired that scholars in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics call cognitive biases. We make these mistakes not only in work but also in other life areas, for example, in our shopping choices, as revealed by a series of studies done by a shopping comparison website.
For example, you need to remember that just because a person is similar to you does not mean she will be the best employee. The research is clear that our intuitions often don’t serve us well in making the best hiring decisions. Such reliance on intuition is especially harmful to workplace diversity and paves the path to bias in hiring, including in terms of race, disability, gender, and sex.
Despite the numerous studies showing that structured interventions are needed to overcome bias in hiring, unfortunately, business leaders and HR personnel tend to over-rely on unstructured interviews and other intuitive decision-making practices. Due to our overconfidence bias, a tendency to evaluate our decision-making abilities as better than they are, leaders often go with their guts on hires and other business decisions rather than use analytical decision-making tools that have demonstrably better outcomes.
A proper fix is to note how the applicant is different from you, and give them “positive points” for it. Alternatively, create structured interviews with a set of standardized questions asked in the same order to every applicant.
Let’s take a different situation. Say you’ve known a business colleague for many years, collaborated with her on a wide variety of projects and have an established relationship.
Imagine yourself having a conversation with her about a potential collaboration. For some reason, you feel less comfortable than usual. Most likely, your intuitions are picking up subtle cues about something being off.
Maybe it’s nothing. Perhaps that person is having a bad day or didn’t get enough sleep the night before.
However, that person may also be trying to pull the wool over your eyes. When people lie, they behave in ways that are similar to other indicators of discomfort, anxiety, and rejection, and it’s tough to tell what’s causing these signals.
Overall, this is an excellent time to take your gut reaction into account and be more suspicious than usual.
The gut is vital in our decision-making to help us notice when something might be amiss in well-established relationships. Yet, in most situations, when we face significant decisions about workplace relationships, we need to trust our heads more than our gut to make the best decisions.
As we head toward the middle of the 21st century, I write this letter to shed some light on some blind spots within your company, that may ultimately prevent a successful transition towards a brighter future. While the foundation of your company may appear in safe standing, the reality is that you could be slow dancing in a burning room with your employees and the wider community severely affected. This letter is intended to inform, and hopefully disrupt, the status quo of your organization with a few key points:
1. The Tone You Set is the Culture You Create
Warren Buffett said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” Keep an eye on your culture and yourvalues. Not the company’s values — yours. Not because you own the company (you might), but because the moment you signed on as the captain of that ship, you become responsible for the tone and culture.
Be careful with your people. If your culture is chaotic, the trickle-down effect to those under you can be harsh, and you will become stuck with their attitudes. If this elicits from you an attitude of: “If they’re not happy, then there’s the door” then I’d suggest reframing the situation. The key lesson in Remember the Titans was “Attitude reflects leadership, captain.” Consider a more empathetic approach, because it’s highly likely that employees never signed up to be first responders.
The World Economic Forum published an article by Dr. Travis Bradberry, president of TalentSmart and coauthor of Emotional Intelligence 2.0. In this July 2019 article, he states, “For the titles of director and above, scores descend faster than a snowboarder on a black diamond. CEOs, on average, have the lowest EQ scores in the workplace.”
I would imagine it is both isolating and discouraging to learn this, even for the most comfortable and closed-off CEO. However, you are far from alone.
After some self-examination, though, realizing that your approval rating is in direct correlation with your emotional intelligence score might create pause for strategic reconsideration. Frederic Laloux of Thinkers50 said, “When organizations are built not on implicit mechanisms of fear but on structures and practices that breed trust and responsibility, extraordinary and unexpected things start to happen.”
2. Communication is a Heads-up Profession (and Practice)
While technology and automation are undeniably the future, it’s also about human connection. If the culture and values mentioned above, caused this slow dancing, burning room scenario to appear, then adopting technology and automation to mask the fact, will not achieve much. Introducing a healthy level of automation and technology into your company while still keeping face-to-face interactions with employees is vital for your organizational structure.
Avoid a self-devised “escape route” when communicating with employees, and you’ll be amazed at how much respect you get — when your communication shifts from disengagement to engagement. Bottom line: Engage using technology and automation with your external audiences (customers), and use some personal engagement when necessary. Engage in face-to-face interactions with your internal audiences (employees) and use technology and automation when appropriate.
3. Change the Mental Health Narrative
Stop criminalizing mental health days (currently masked as “personal” days). The average citizen, through to the president of a country, sometimes needs a personal day. It shouldn’t require being doubled over with influenza to ask for one. Engaged employees are happy employees and vice versa. Healthy workplaces and communities start with the right work/life balance. Even yoga in the workplace has become a trend. Still, it cannot refuel the mind and body the same way that hiring another person can — to help balance your mounting workload.
As the CEO, you play a pivotal role in demonstrating how mental health is perceived within your company, and ensuring that adequate support exists. Lastly, remember the power of storytelling; your transformation can create far-reaching impact. Iron sharpens iron, and nothing beats mentorship. Whether mentoring a fellow CEO or someone directly under you, pass along your sage advice. Remember that you are not alone.
When you hear the word leadership, what comes to mind? Most people associate leadership with being the best of the best, demonstrating high ideals, and living and acting with integrity. But as long as there have been leaders in the world, there have been leaders who have blatantly compromised their principles.
In fact, one of the earliest known literary writings, The Epic of Gilgamesh, centers on immoral leadership. In it, Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, introduces the idea of the “lord’s right,” in which leaders get to exercise jus primae noctis, the right of a lord to deflower local virgins on their wedding nights. Why? Because they can, that’s why.
It’s this because-I-can attitude, this type of behavioral latitude, that warrants joining morality to leadership. Just because you can do things non-leaders can’t doesn’t mean you should. But a leader’s freedom to “call the shots” is the very thing that causes some to lead in compromised and self-serving ways.
The Leader-Follower Dynamic That Spells Trouble
Leaders and followers share an unwritten understanding: when you’re the one who sets the rules, grades performance, signs paychecks and doles out rewards, you have more power and freedom than those who don’t get to do these things. Others serve at your pleasure and are accountable to you, not the other way around. In time, this can be massively seductive.
Leaders are always being told how special they are. Think, for example, of the numerous privileges leaders are afforded: they get fatter salaries, larger offices, more agenda airtime, better perks, and more deference.
They also get less flak when they interrupt people, show up late for meetings, or skirt around the processes and policies everyone else has to follow. Even the simple fact that there are far fewer leaders in the world than followers exemplifies a leader’s specialness. The fact that not everyone gets to be a leader suggests that they are a cut above the rest of us mere mortals.
Followers, too, often enable, contribute to, and embellish the specialness of leadership. Followers build the lofty pedestals their leaders adorn. Every time followers say “yes” when thinking “no,” bite their tongues, mimic a leader’s style, or capitulate to unethical directives, the specialness of leadership is reinforced.
A Leader’s Ego Keeps It Going
The more praise and deference followers bestow upon a leader, the more the leader believes in his or her own specialness. It feels good to have your ego stroked by eager-to-please followers, and, before long, some leaders will start to surround themselves with sycophants and suck-ups — just to keep the pampering going.
Given this, is it really surprising that some would be seduced into thinking they are “better” than everyone else, that they deserve more of the spoils, or that they should be free to act with impunity?
Should it really catch our attention that some leaders are more concerned with the privileges attached to their position, instead of being grateful for the privilege of making a positive and lasting impact on people’s lives?
Is it at all shocking that some leaders would succumb to thinking that they’re the focal point, instead of the people they’re charged with leading? There really isn’t anything surprising or shocking about it. Hubris is what you get when a leader becomes spoiled.
The Costs of Hubris
While all the real-world costs of hubris are high, perhaps none is as costly as the sheer loss of potential for the good a leader could have accomplished — and all the lives the leader could have positively impacted — had he or she not become so enamored with power.
Hubris, as a “leadership killer,” also damages a leader’s potential legacy.
Above all, leadership is a tradition that’s carried out and passed on from generation to generation. A leader’s legacy is built by developing and nurturing the skills and talents of the people who are doing work on a leader’s behalf.
A leader’s most important job isn’t to acquire more power; it’s to empower others so that they, too, become future leaders. But these new leaders will never get there—or be inspired to try—because hubris snuffs them out.
Now ask yourself: Does any of this strike a chord? Do you find yourself drawn to leadership’s dark side? How will your actions today define your legacy tomorrow? What will the people you’ve led in the past say about you long after you are gone?
By Bill Treasurer and Captain John “Coach” Havlik.
Havlik is a U.S. Navy SEAL (Retired), who led special operations teams around the world during his 31-year naval career, including the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the SEAL’s most elite operational unit. Captain Havlik was a nationally ranked swimmer and is a member of the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame and Mountaineer Legends Society.
Dana Cavalea is the former director of strength & conditioning and performance for the New York Yankees. Here, he shares 15 lessons about what it takes to become a champion from stories and insights he has gleaned from some of the world’s top performers in sports, life, and business.
01. You’ve Got to Hate Losing More Than You Love Winning
Research has shown that most people that make it have had to overcome some levels of hardship. This causes them to have a must-win attitude rather than a would-like-to-win attitude. Those who hate to lose play for much more than a trophy, but they approach all that they do with an attitude of fighting for survival. They are often intrinsically motivated at their core and rely very little on external motivation and validation. Whenever a team is being built, if you want to go places, find the person that hates to lose and put them at the top of the leadership hierarchy.
02. Never Get Too High And Never Get Too Low
When big moments hit, do those moments force your heart rate to accelerate, hands to sweat, and your muscles to clench? If it does, you are like most. But, the top performers in the world don’t see the magnitude of these moments. Often referred to as having ice in their veins, the top performers realize something straightforward: What they focus on becomes more significant. So, if you treat every moment as the same, you are always playing from a mental state of even-keeled. Keep your moments in check, and as a result, you will find you have a lot more energy available to you. Getting high and getting low is exhausting, and it forces you to live moment to moment — having your outcomes determine your happiness —which is a dangerous scenario for any visionary, high performer.
03. Consistency Over Time Yields Results
Can you do something every single day? The same routine. The same schedule. The same meal plan. This is what the best of the best can do. They spend the early parts of their careers, finding what works, then they immediately build a routine that incorporates those things. Then, they execute on those habits daily. Some of the world’s top performers are very simple (vanilla) and often boring people. Why? They know that results are the result of a consistent routine done daily. With consistent, daily routine, results happen. They are not chasing gold rainbows, but instead focusing on the process that will lead them to the pot of gold, one coin at a time.
04. If They Don’t Respect Your Time, They Don’t Respect You
This was a lesson taught by Derek Jeter, former professional baseball player of the New York Yankees. One day, before his workout, he asked why I was at the gym so early. I told him I was waiting for a player that never showed. That’s when he told me how he views time. If somebody doesn’t respect your time, they don’t respect you. If you are late, call. If you can’t make it, call. If you blow off a meeting without calling or texting, realize you just committed the ultimate professional foul; you told somebody with your actions that you don’t respect them. Show up. Be on time. Be a person of your word.
05. Off Days Are Off Days
When was the last time you took a day off? No laptop, no phone, no thoughts about work? If you are like most, it’s been a while. Because of this, you may be facing burnout, exhaustion, or a lack of creative ideas. Also, when the body and mind are tired, productivity suffers. So, if you’re not getting things done like you used to, it may be time to take a trip. The mind needs to unplug just like an electronic device that’s been switched on for years. The end result is burnt out electronics. We don’t want the same thing to happen to you! The best of the best know they need to renew their mind and body. They take guilt-free, scheduled days and weeks off. So should you.
06. Three Things
Quiet the noise. Slow everything down. One pitch at a time. These are words of wisdom from the great Mariano Rivera when discussing how he gets things done in the big moments. While others are focused on everything going on around them, The Sandman takes a deep dive inside himself. He controls the only things he can control: his mindset and his cut fastball. The rest, he says, is going to happen regardless. So, if he commands what he can control, his chances for consistent performances and success go way up. That mindset also provides a level of focus, intensity, and most importantly, the conviction that no self-help book or course can ever give you.
07. Fit to Win
Business and leadership is very competitive and taxing on the mind and body. What are you doing to prime yourself to play every day? Daily workouts, daily walks, hot baths, steam room sessions, and sequenced breathing patterns are just some of the things pro athletes and reformed executives do to compete at the highest levels. This is done to give you the competitive advantage that having more energy delivers. Training both your psychology and physiology are essential if you want to compete with consistency and for the duration. Take a look around your workplace or even a local airport. What do you see? Often, you’ll find tired executives that have reached their physical breaking point as a result of their constant pushing. Bring yourself to your highest levels of health, and you’ll see significant spikes in your business results.
08. Find the Bully And Knock Him Out
That bully is fear. You gotta face it. You will be afraid to make calls, open emails, or have difficult conversations with yourself and others. But you have to do it. You must have the courage to face the bully head-on and let him/her know that you are not going to take their crap anymore. The doubt, the fear, the insecurity— you can overcome it all by acknowledging that it’s real, but doesn’t have power. Once you tie your emotions to those feelings, then it gains power. When you vacate your emotions, you create freedom, and only thought remains. A thought without emotion is just a thought. When you face adversity, realize you have the power to overcome anything in your way by raising your energy, awareness, and placing focus on what you are building, not what’s holding you back.
09. You’re Never Overdressed in a Suit
People judge. How you look, how you act — it all matters. As a member of the New York Yankees, every player had to wear a suit when we traveled. Why? As the Yankees general manager, Brian Cashman says, “Perception is reality.” It’s so true. When you show up in a suit or even slightly dressed up for the occasion, it shows you mean business, but, most importantly, that you’re a professional. In a time where business casual is the norm, taking your fashion game to the next level may be the reason why your entire game elevates.
10. Failing to Plan Equals Planning to Fail
Plans work. But, you need to give them time to work. You must also give them your full attention and believe they will work. At times, you must dump your plan or tweak it. One thing is for sure though, if you are an aimless wanderer, you will go someplace, it just may not be where you want to go. Forget the long-term business plan. Create a daily, weekly, and monthly strategy. Pick a goal for the quarter and go after it.
Do that for each quarter, and when you look back over a year, you’ll find yourself having accomplished things in line with your plan and short-term vision. That’s success. That’s being focused on what’s in front of you while keeping your mind, heart, and future open for what comes next: the magic of circumstance and putting yourself in a position to succeed.
11. You Gotta Have Moxie
Life is tough. Business is tough. You could easily get knocked around, and you will. That’s why you have to have guts. You have to have a can-do spirit that can get you through the waves of adversity that will try to shipwreck you. Take time each day to ground yourself with serious thought and even some laughter. With this clarity, you will gain conviction, and from that conviction, you will gain confidence. That’s what it takes to win in life — confidence. When you combine that confidence with a clear direction and a plan, you are in the best possible position to win. Confidence is in the heart of every champion. And, it’s built over time.
12. Torre Rules: People First
When you lead people, realize you are leading people and not cattle. Joe Torre, the great major league baseball manager, was a master at this. He made every interaction personal, rarely talking about the game, but always talking about you, the person. By realizing that people make up your team at a deeper level, you’ll be able to lead them in a way very few do — from a position of care, authenticity, and love. When you focus on the people first, the outcomes take care of themselves because you now have a relationship and a team culture that is based on openness and honesty.
13. Pace Yourself. If You Are Going to Eat, You Must Digest
Hustle. Get after it 100 percent. These are the sayings of today as it relates to how you should go after success and live your life. But, realize this: At times, we are not ready for the success we want. We are not ready for the promotion, the corner office, the leadership responsibilities. In time we will be. But, there is a chance that we are falsely evaluating ourselves and our abilities. We may have more work to do on ourselves first. Don’t be in a rush. The true leader is one who trusts their pace without letting the external pressures speed them up. One step at a time. One day at a time. Over time, if you hit enough singles, runs begin to score. Build your dream over a lifetime, rather than working to do it all within a quarter.
14. Don’t Tell Me, Show Me
There is a lot of talk today on social media. Are you talking, or are you doing? Action always wins. Talk is easy, work is hard. The everyday, monotonous execution of work is what separates the doers from the talkers. Can you show up and work with passion when the assignment may not be that exciting? Can you take that trip across the country to make that sale even if you don’t want to take the flight or the contract is not that big? Can you show up because it’s what’s needed, despite not being glamorous? Top performers always show up. They may not feel that great every day, but they still show up. They take the actions needed to get them closer to their goals. They sacrifice to be a great team player. They show up even when there’s no easy alternative. Pound the pavement. Let others do the talking for you.
15. Sometimes You Have to go Back to go Forward
As with anything in life, you will have setbacks. Setbacks are set-ups for your next significant move. Embrace them, don’t run from them. Don’t retreat into a dark hole. Realize that sometimes being pulled back is like archery. You get pulled back slowly, only to be accelerated forward speeds never before experienced. A setback could be what’s needed to gain knowledge, experience, confidence, and the tools you need to end up where you’re meant to be. Embrace it. Faith up. Fear down. There’s a plan at work. Trust the circumstances of your life.
The tone from the top matters, and the beginning of a New Year presents an excellent opportunity for CEOs to reexamine how they’ll lead going forward. With 2020 now a reality, chief executives can choose to usher in more of the same, or they can use the changing calendar to reimagine, reinvent, and reshape their culture. I’ve always believed the most valuable gift a CEO can give their team is the ability to make a meaningful impact on culture. The following are five things any chief executive can and should do for their team in 2020.
1. Focus on Leadership Ubiquity
Leadership that isn’t transferable, repeatable, scalable, and sustainable isn’t leadership at all. Not everyone can be the CEO, but everyone can lead. Remember this: If you tell people loud enough or often enough that they’re not a leader, don’t be surprised when they begin to agree with you.
When in doubt, think ubiquity, not scarcity. Leadership isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, a scarce commodity. Far too many companies wrongly treat leadership as an esoteric role reserved for a privileged few. However, healthy organizations realize leadership must be a ubiquitous quality that permeates every aspect of day-to-day operations. They understand every person must lead; even if people are only responsible for leading themselves, they must lead.
2. Make a Co-investment
I’ve always said, “Leaders who complain about a lack of resources simply aren’t very resourceful.” Most CEOs have fallen into the bad habit of asking people to do more with less. While this makes for a nice soundbite, it’s not nearly as productive as showing your team how to unlock more cash. Instead of just asking people to make cuts in their operating budget, tell them they can reinvest 50 percent of what they cut into new projects of their choosing. You’ll still produce a reduction in spending, but you’ll also fuel a jumpstart in R&D and innovation with money that was already in the budget. Most importantly, you’re demonstrating that you trust your team with a discretionary spend. Investments made closest to the challenge/opportunity are likely to produce the most significant impact.
3. White Space
Have you noticed how some leaders are frenzied, stressed, and always playing from behind, while others are eerily clammed and always appear to be a few steps ahead? It’s been my experience that leaders who fall into the latter category make great use of their thought life, while those in the former group seem to forgo their alone time in lieu of being busy. Savvy leaders crave white space, whereas unseasoned leaders feel uncomfortable with open time.
Most organizations I’ve observed have a nasty habit of sequestering their best leaders in virtually endless amounts of mind-numbing meetings. They run their talent from one meeting to another all day long and call it being productive — I call it lunacy.
CEOs who want to unleash an entirely new level of productivity should institute a No Meeting Monday policy. Question: When was the last time you had an entire day of the workweek dedicated to thinking and planning? Answer: Probably not recently, if ever. Give back the first day of the week to your team and watch something amazing happen. Firstly, the sense of dread many feel on Sundays will evaporate, allowing team members to show up on Mondays recharged and ready to go. Secondly, by having control over their Mondays, they will generate substantially more productivity during the remaining four days of the week. I have watched this produce remarkable gains in both qualitative and quantitative outcomes.
4.The Gift of Great Talent
While I generally don’t believe in absolutes, the exception might be when it comes to the advantage created by talent. CEOs either create a talent advantage or they operate at a talent deficit. I’ve always believed that leaders deserve the teams they build, and I’ve yet to be convinced otherwise.
I can think of no better example of talent impact than by examining how companies approach digital transformation. Many leaders have fallen into the trap of believing digital transformation is like playing a game of technology catch-up — that if they can harness a bit of digital exhaust and turn big data into smart data, somehow their business will transform itself. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the billions of dollars spent chasing digital shadows won’t change a thing.
Stop putting the focus on technology and put it where it belongs: on talent and relationships. Real digital transformation occurs when business models and methods are reimagined by courageous leaders willing to manage opportunity more than risk, focus on next practices more than best practices, and who are committed to beating their competition to the future by attracting better, smarter talent.
5. Read, Read, and Read
CEOs cannot scale their business if they cannot scale their leadership, and one of the fastest ways to scale your leadership is to turn your team into a voracious group of readers. One of the best gifts chief executives can give to their team is a freshly updated, standard reading list. While there are many books I could recommend, my favorite choice to jumpstart your reading in the New Year is Principles, by Ray Dalio.
Firespring is Nebraska’s first certified B-Corporation, and helps organizations identify their purpose and bring it to life. Their media company offers a range of services, from creative and print production to marketing campaigns, and culture alignment solutions. The company was recently ranked #87 on the 2020 Real Leaders Impact Awards, but there was a time when they almost failed.
During Firespring’s infancy, a catastrophic financial event occurred. Board members asked founder and CEO Jay Wilkinson to lay off 80 percent of their employees. “I refused to do it,” says Wilkinson. “I dug in my heels and wouldn’t do it.” After this firm stance of defiance, and in an unusual turn of events, his board fired him as the CEO of his own company.
Wilkinson, a serial entrepreneur of more than 20 companies, explains that he was left disheartened by the board’s decision. What could he possibly tell the people of his company, that he considered his greatest assets? Little did he know what he was about to say to them would transform the company forever.
“That’s when I first learned the power of just throwing it out there, let’s be real here, let’s call crap, crap.”
He gathered all the staff into a room and explained precisely what was going on. To his surprise, the staff members understood the circumstances and remained determined to keep the company going, even offering to take a cut in pay to keep everyone together. Wilkinson recalls: “That’s when I first learned the power of just throwing things out there. I thought, ‘let’s be real here, let’s call crap, crap.”’ After this surprising intervention, the staff of Firespring rallied together to become financially solvent again. “It was really due to everything being put openly on the table,” he continues. “Everyone knew exactly where we stood.”
Listen to Episode 55 of the Real Leaders Podcast to learn how they overcame failure with vulnerability:
Listen on Spotify
“There’s no human who doesn’t want to be a part of something. And that’s what good leaders like to create.”
During their darkest hour, it was transparency, vulnerability, and inclusivity that the staff of Firespring leaned on. Asked about the merits of this style of leadership, Wilkinson ponders for a while, and then says one word:“Inclusive.”
“The word inclusive may be the word best suited to a particular style of leadership that’s not about leaders and followers,” he says. “This entails introducing a vision into a situation and letting the staff fill that vision — collectively. Everybody wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves, it’s a natural human desire, and that’s what good leaders want to create.”
Now, more than 20 years later, Firespring has over 180 employees and 3 offices — Lincoln & Omaha, NE and Council Bluffs, IA.
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So much has changed since I first began teaching about leadership. Once upon a time, leadership wasn’t the buzzword it is today. In fact, when I first started teaching about leadership, everyone else was talking about management.
Management was all about titles, stability, and positional authority. Leadership is different — it’s about influence, adaptability, and moral authority. Managers are given responsibility; leaders earn respect. I want to talk to you today about how leaders earn that respect.
I want to talk about developing moral authority as a leader.
You see, moral authority is a weightiness, a sense of wisdom and experience that encourages other people to put their trust in you. A leader with moral authority is someone who has turned time into an ally — over time, a leader with moral authority has proven to be consistently competent, have consistent character, and shown consistent courage.
There’s a common theme in that sentence — consistency.
I talk a lot about consistency because it’s been the key to my leadership success. In fact, it’s one of the things that surprises me most about leadership. If you do the right things the right way for the right reasons when you’re young, it often goes unnoticed by the world at large.
But do that over decades? You’ll get more credit than you think you deserve.
I’ve been consistent in my personal growth, my teaching, my character, my thinking, my writing — and because of that, I’ve been able to stay in the game for over 40 years. I call it layered living. The benefits and gains from year to year work together to produce a life of leadership that others want to learn from.
That’s the funny thing about the leadershift to moral authority — in a fast-forward world, where we face daily change and disruption, our people are looking for a leader who can provide stability. It is the task of the leader to be flexible enough to change while being trustworthy enough to provide hope. Flexibility and trust are achieved through consistency.
To go back to my earlier point, there are three areas where leaders must become consistent if they wish to earn moral authority:
Competence. This is the ability to lead well. Making smart decisions, knowing your people, understanding your field, and committing to personal growth are all examples of competence. Leaders who demonstrate that they know what they’re doing — and that they learn from their mistakes — establish themselves as a leader worth following.
Courage. This is moving forward in the face of fear. A well-known adage states that courage is not the absence of fear, but the presence of mind to act when afraid. Every leader needs courage to make hard decisions, needed changes, and cast vision.
Character. This is being bigger on the inside than the outside. Leaders of character know that who they are is more than what they achieve. Character is a commitment to continual growth in the areas of integrity, authenticity, humility, and love.
When I was in my early 30s, I decided to do five things to make myself a better leader: always put people first; live to make a difference, not to make money; be myself, but be my best self possible; express gratitude — reject entitlement; and be willing to be misunderstood and lonely for the right reasons.
I made the commitment to live out those five things, not because I saw them as means to an end, but because I felt they were simply the right things to do. I’ve worked hard to follow those guidelines for the last 40 years, and I’ve been blessed to see a great return on that decision.
In the end, you don’t get to grant yourself moral authority. Only others can do that. But you can strive for it — and you should. In a shifting world, leaders with moral authority become a foundation for others to build upon.
As you begin planning for 2020 and the decade ahead, here are some inspirations to help lay the mental foundations for success. After analyzing some of the high achievers of our time — Jeff Bezos, Ray Dalio, Admiral William McRaven and more — and interviewing top experts in persuasion, rationality, and cognitive psychology, Al Pittampalli discovered habits that have accelerated their paths to success. These practices of persuadable leaders, as he calls them, can do the same for you.
In an uncertain world, successful leaders are moving toward a more adaptive way of thinking: persuadability. Persuadability is the genuine willingness and ability to change your mind in the face of new evidence. Being persuadable requires rejecting absolute certainty, treating your beliefs as temporary, and acknowledging the possibility that — no matter how confident you are about any particular option — you could be wrong.
Yet, even those who are convinced of the benefits of being persuadable may hesitate to change their minds. Deep down, we associate changing our minds with weakness of character. For evidence, look no further than the language of successful leadership. Strong leaders “stay the course.” They “defy the critics.” They “prove them wrong.” These phrases resonate with us because we’ve been led to believe that conviction is the heart of integrity. To change your mind is to “flip-flop”; to doubt your own beliefs is to “lack a core.” All too often, leaders who are persuaded by others are labeled “pushovers” or are accused of “caving in.” With these falsehoods in the way, it’s difficult for leaders to revise their strategies. Here are several ways to prepare yourself to receive new ideas.
» Consider the Opposite
If being persuadable means changing our minds in the face of evidence, the first thing we have to be able to do is to spot evidence when it crosses our desk. Noticing evidence that supports our current beliefs is easy, but when it comes to counter-evidence — information that cuts against our current hypothesis, theory, or opinion — it can be devilishly difficult.
» Update Your Beliefs Incrementally
It’s not easy to think in shades of gray all the time. Occasionally when I explain this method to people, they’re horrified by the idea. It seems exhausting, they say. Others think that by constantly shifting your beliefs, you could never be sure about anything, thus making you a slave to uncertainty. But thinking in shades of gray, although awkward at first, is the opposite of slavery. It’s complete freedom — the freedom to follow the evidence wherever it may lead.
» Kill Your Darlings
What are favored beliefs? Put simply, they’re ideas about the world that we want to be true. For this reason, when faced with threatening information about our favored beliefs, remaining open-minded is a challenge. The advice, embraced time and time again by great writers for decades, has been: Kill your darlings. Crass perhaps, but for good reason: It underscores the idea that discarding a favored belief is supposed to feel painful, twisted, even unholy. There is a point to the loss; it’s in service to a greater purpose, improving the totality of the work. The gain outweighs the loss.
» Take the Perspectives of Others
To lead effectively, we need to be understood. But to be understood, we need first to understand. People are complex creatures, and we can’t communicate with and influence them effectively if we don’t know their interests and positions. Often, the way we think they see the world isn’t the way they see the world — we need to take that person’s perspective.
» Avoid Being too Persuadable
Always maintain at least a token willingness to change our minds. Steve Jobs understood this concept intimately. Yes, he was legendarily relentless in his focus. Jobs once boasted about the number of products Apple had (at the time less than 30) compared to the size of the company ($30 billion), explaining, “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”
» Convert Early
As a leader, if you want to change the world, the quickest and most powerful way is often not to persuade others — it’s to be persuaded yourself. Often, for an idea to cross the chasm, a few brave men and women must be persuaded to convert early on without many (or even any) references in their peer group. These individuals take a huge risk because they are defying the social norms of their group. But by doing so, they serve as key references for other early majority members, increasing the likelihood that others will adopt the idea, and thus helping the innovation cross the chasm. Every social movement needs insiders in skeptical precincts to act as champions. Become one of those champions. Remember that the quickest path to changing the world is often changing your own mind. The group that you have the most power to influence is your own tribe. And with great power comes great responsibility.
