A Leader For All Time

Posted on by Grant Schreiber

Nelson Mandela has died at age 95. While many still debate his political standpoints, one thing is clear: he was a moral compass for more than just South Africa, his compassion for people reached around the world and influenced statesmen and ordinary people alike. His tenacity and strong will are legendary, part of what has seen him live through unbelievable hardships and challenges, yet stay resolved in his will to see his dream become a reality.

Mandela is a shining example of what a long-term view can achieve, sticking steadfastly to his principles and repeating simple, insightful  phrases along the way until everyone finally gets it. A view that is now so widely accepted among South African’s and many others around the world, that to consider that he spent 27 years in jail for daring to think that diverse cultures might live together peacefully, sounds ludicrous today.

In the 1980’s wearing a T-shirt with Mandela’s image got you five years in jail under South African law. Today his image is everywhere, with hundreds of thousands of T-shirts worn in honour of his legacy and in respect for this remarkable man. It’s a stark reminder of the twists of history and how yesterdays “terrorist’s” can become tomorrow’s respected leaders.

As hard as it might be to believe, President George W Bush only signed a bill removing Nelson Mandela from the terror watch list in 2008, at age 90. Mandela emerged from 27 years of incarceration without an agenda of revenge or remorse. Instead he started rebuilding his dream of reconciliation among South Africa’s racially divided population. His first words were to affirm that all South African’s, whether black or white, were equal citizens and needed to work together to create a “Rainbow Nation.” Along with FW de Klerk, the serving president at the time, he began a negotiated political settlement that focussed on a sustainable future for the entire population.

He was clear that one bad mistake (apartheid) was not to be replaced with another equally extreme system of social engineering. Twenty-seven years of solitude, many of those in a cell on Robben Island measuring only 8-by-8-foot had amplified for him the effect of words and actions when chosen carefully. He has taught us that your background doesn’t have to define you and that change and disruption is a necessary tactic in life, even though most of us would prefer to choose a more comfortable, seemingly certain future.

Although known more for his political views, Mandela can teach business leaders valuable lessons too. A real leader is one whose words and actions are not confined to a sector of society, or even a time of history, but rather ring true and offer value for all time. It’s about finding shared values to cherish, respecting and acknowledging the beliefs of others that are different from yours and ultimately never giving up on an ideal you know has real value for humanity. Below are some of Nelson Mandela’s quotes on a variety of issues.

On speaking Long speeches, the shaking of fists, the banging of tables and strongly worded resolutions out of touch with the objective conditions do not bring about mass action and can do a great deal of harm to the organisation and the struggle we serve.

On the future Many people in this country have paid the price before me and many will pay the price after me.

On challenges Difficulties break some men but make others. No axe is sharp enough to cut the soul of a sinner who keeps on trying, one armed with the hope that he will rise even in the end.

On friendship I like friends who have independent minds because they tend to make you see problems from all angles.

On equality I have never regarded any man as my superior, either in my life outside or inside prison.

On time I never think of the time I have lost. I just carry out a programme because it’s there. It’s mapped out for me.

On death Death is something inevitable. When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, he can rest in peace. I believe I have made that effort and that is, therefore, why I will sleep for the eternity.

On ideology I had no specific belief except that our cause was just, was very strong and it was winning more and more support.

On freedom of expression A critical, independent and investigative press is the lifeblood of any democracy. The press must be free from state interference. It must have the economic strength to stand up to the blandishments of government officials. It must have sufficient independence from vested interests to be bold and inquiring without fear or favour. It must enjoy the protection of the constitution, so that it can protect our rights as citizens.

On character It is in the character of growth that we should learn from both pleasant and unpleasant experiences.

On leadership Real leaders must be ready to sacrifice all for the freedom of their people.

On words It is never my custom to use words lightly. If twenty-seven years in prison have done anything to us, it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die.

On life What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.

On Integrity Those who conduct themselves with morality, integrity and consistency need not fear the forces of inhumanity and cruelty.

On AIDS When the history of our times is written, will we be remembered as the generation that turned our backs in a moment of global crisis or will it be recorded that we did the right thing?

On humour You sharpen your ideas by reducing yourself to the level of the people you are with and a sense of humour and a complete relaxation, even when you’re discussing serious things, does help to mobilise friends around you. And I love that.

On selflessness A fundamental concern for others in our individual and community lives would go a long way in making the world the better place we so passionately dreamt of.

On determination Everyone can rise above their circumstances and achieve success if they are dedicated to and passionate about what they do.

Quotes copyright © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation

 

The Art of Addiction

Posted on by Real Leaders

Whether you like it or not, you’re affected by addiction. Do you have more than four employees, four friends or four family members? If so, the odds are that you’ll encounter this problem sometime in your life. Statistics show that one in four families are touched by addiction, meaning that most of us will need to face ongoing challenges with this growing epidemic.

A unique drug rehabilitation center in Italy is giving the world hope by showing spectacular results, by transforming lives through creating amazing art and businesses that fund much of their overhead. Drug addiction can be a lonely and desperate place for a young  person, caught in a spiral of self-loathing and rejection by society. Many degenerate into crime, either from a need to financially fuel their habit, or because bad company and drugs always seem to find each other.

This drug rehabilitation center in the Rimini province of Northern Italy is showing that traditional ideas around the treatment of addiction no longer needs to be about deprivation or punishment. San Pantrignano runs its free rehabilitation program like a business, and the human dividends are showing.

The organization welcomes young men and women with serious problems linked to drug addiction, completely free of charge. They do this without requesting any kind of contribution from their families and without any state funding.  The organization also practices no ideological or social discrimination when admitting residents, who come from around the world. Letizia Moratti, former mayor of Milan, and an Ambassador and President of San Patrignano, is extremely proud of a recent achievement: presenting their impressive statistics to the World Bank.

The figure that raised eyebrows was the 72 percent success rate of people who had fully recovered after completing the rehabilitation program. She is working on raising awareness for their work, at the world’s largest drug rehabilitation center in the world. The current success rate in the U.S. is around 30 percent, where rehabilitation is typically short and expensive.

Moratti is keen for other countries to adopt their winning formula.  “Since our inception, 25,000 people have been successfully treated,” says Moratti. “We also make a concerted effort to help our residents acquire a professional certificate or diploma, that can be used to help rebuild their lives.”

It must be working, as 96 percent have found full-time employment upon leaving San Patrignano.

Calling the residents “guests” and  teaching them commercial skills within disciplines such as food, wine, home design, publishing and event management, might also be a reason why the waiting list to join has grown. Residents arrive with a bleak future and leave with skills that make then employable. Two other branches of the project have since been established in Novafeltria and Trento, enabling more young people to be accepted.

The value of their work has culminated in the community being recognized and accredited by the United Nations with the status of “Special Advisor to the Economic and Social Council of the UN.” They also received a visit from UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon,and were honored to address the General Assembly of the UN in June, to mark the worldwide day against drugs. Empathy and compassion have existed around San Pantrignano from the start. In 1985 the owner of the property, Vincenzo Muccioli, renounced his ownership of the 300 hectares of land and donated it to the San Pantrignano Foundation, in which he himself had played a part in establishing.

Muccioli’s family had a history of caring for the sick and offering alternative medicine to people as part of a cooperative they’d set up on the property in 1978. Moratti’s family joined him in 1979 and they’ve grown the organization into a social enterprise that currently houses 1,300 young men and women.

Residents at San Patrignano learn how to produce goods that are sold around the world. A collaboration, earlier this year, with leading architects and designers, such as Daniel Libeskind, Chiara Ferragamo and Arnaldo Pomodoro, has culminated in an exhibition of high-end furniture and décor that made its way from New York Design Week to cities across America. Other lines of goods produced by residents of San Patrignano are impressive as well.  They’ve produced 500,000 bottles of wine and attracted Japan as a major client, currently contracted to export  100,000 bottles a year to that country.

They produce cheeses, meat, ham and salami and run two restaurants, one of which is a Pizzeria, one of the most successful Pizzeria in Italy, and currently showing good profits. A textiles division produces scarves, bed linen and leather objects such as bags and belts. To add to the diversity, they also breed dogs and care for lost and abandoned animals. Not content to just keep residents busy, Moratti continually reminds them of their overriding goal: quality. “This is how we give our residents pride and dignity – quality is essential.

We give them the best teachers and training to produce the best quality,” she says. The community generates Eur15 million of revenue per year, but productivity remains low, due to young people wanting to leave the organization to practice their skills in the real world. This fact does not bother Moratti much. “We run a non-stop training process, that’s why productivity is not high.

We teach people to reach their potential and the work they do here is a tool to help them regain self-esteem, responsibility and dignity,” she says. “This is not something we can put a price to.”

While San Patrignano far exceeds most rehabilitation centers, with its innovative revenue generation by residents, it’s the human capital that excites Moratti the most.

“Two hundred of our residents are currently spending time with us as an alternative to jail time,” says Moratti.

“They are offered a home, healthcare, legal assistance, and the opportunity to study, learn a job, change their lives and regain their status as full members of society.” A policy decision they have taken is not to accept money from residents, their families or the state. It even extends to former residents who have left and want to donate. “We believe in this strongly,” says Moratti. “All the boys and girls find themselves equal and don’t feel different from each another.

The rich and poor, the ones who can pay and those who can’t, are all treated equally. As a result, when they have a crisis or face difficulties they are more willing to listen and trust in the process.” The fact that San Pantrignano is free, is very important for the success of the community, yet the staff turnover rate is high, probably due to the fact that the model they’ve adopted is a long-term recovery program, and can take it’s toll on the 109 volunteer staff.

Moratti values the donors and partnerships they have in place, yet also works hard at alternative fundraising ideas. The beginning of November saw six former drug addicts representing San Patrignano in the New York Marathon. Besides the runners pursuing their dream, it was also an opportunity to create visibility for their cause and make their small village in Italy known to people in need around the world.

“We have more than 100 boys and girls that have come from more than 30 countries,” says Moratti.

“From the U.S., Canada, Russia, Brazil, Columbia and  Eastern Europe, so we are truly an international facility for anyone in need.” The rest of the world is coming to this Italian coastal town for another reason too, Moratti regularly hosts government representatives from other countries seeking to replicate the San Patrignano success at home.

An agreement with Qatar to train volunteers at their facility is underway and discussions with Indonesia have begun. To attract interest, Moratti also hosts a yearly delegation of NGO’s from around the world to receive training, which might even teach us something from their perspective. “We don’t believe we’re the only answer, we love to share our  experiences with others,” says Moratti. In addition to the commercial projects at San Patrignano, there’s also a huge hidden saving that is directly linked to keeping residents off the payroll of the state.

“Over the last 25 years we’ve prevented our residents spending a total of 4,000 years in prison. This equates to a saving of Euro 300 million, or Eur16 million per year,” says Moratti.

Last year San Patrignano saved the state Eur32 million. This makes San Patrignano a likely candidate for the new social impact bond concept. Goldman Sachs in New York recently floated a $9.6 million bond for the Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience program, a new curriculum that seeks to bring down the number of youth offenders going back to prison.

In 2012 the New York City Department of Corrections created a sensation by asking for private, corporate investors. In a new way of thinking about financing social goods, private capital is used to finance a government-sponsored program. Based on the success of the service, the government pays a dividend based on the level of impact achieved.

“This is a new frontier in financing, because it will help the state to pay for success,” says Moratti.

A few pilot projects in Italy have seen the percentage of repeat offences committed by incarcerated youths drop from 98 percent to 19 percent. The basic principles on which San Pantrignano is founded are respect for life, oneself, others and the environment, are universally recognized by various religious faiths around the world.

Moratti believes that this universal approach, combined with strong leadership, is where many organizations and companies should be heading. “Motivation, passion and an ability to convey to others what you believe are signs of a good leader.

I don’t believe in stand-alone leaders, only collaboration,” says Moratti.

The Solution to Leadership Failure

Posted on by Will Marre

An earlier post produced a huge and thoughtful response from many senior leaders around the world. Responses confirm that leaders are having a difficult time getting the right things done on a timely basis in this time of ferocious competition. Several responses also brought up new challenges that I will deal with in future blogs. One of the biggest questions arose from my assertion that attempts to train business leaders are failing. After all, it’s a pretty big statement given the thousands of business schools that are trying to teach business leaders around the globe. The problem is business schools and companies are still training business leaders to succeed in hierarchies.

Organizations where things get done through chains of command. These are organizations where critical knowledge is often centralized. Resources are hoarded and defended. Annual planning cycles lock people into priorities that quickly become irrelevant in the face of new competitive threats.

The complexity of these large cumbersome organizations create bureaucracies that makes simple tasks and changes virtually impossible.

For instance more and more new clients are asking if I take credit cards. They want to know because the procurement processes are so broken that it takes weeks or months to contract with new suppliers. This locks them into into old suppliers with old ideas and tired solutions. And change that takes weeks or months is a timeline left over from the industrial age. That’s a leadership problem. Oh and one more thing…

most employees don’t want to work for their employers.

We know that because 80% of people who currently have jobs are actively looking for a new job on the Internet. And Gallop just finished its worldwide engagement survey and once again found that over 70% of workers are not committed to their organization’s goals.

The primary reason for that is that goals employees feel ineffective in their work. It’s too difficult to succeed when people’s goals are constantly shifting. Employees feel exhausted from relentless stress caused from having highly demanding jobs with low control and autonomy. Again, it’s just too hard to get things done. And the majority of employees find their work intrinsically meaningless… yet work is way too demanding for it to be purposeless.

Those are leadership problems. They are big, sweaty, stinky problems. These are not problems that can be overcome by getting 20% better at one leadership competency or targeting high potential leaders to go through a year-long program.

We simply don’t have time to develop the new leadership competencies needed one leader at a time.

So this is what I did. Five years ago, at the onset of the great recession I started a research project with students from the University of California San Diego and Clemson University School of Business. We named it Apple to Zappos. We set out to discover what leaders of persistently successful organizations were doing differently than everyone else.

I interviewed top executives of the best performing companies ranging from Apple to IBM to Nike to Zappos. We looked at seven criteria – growth, profitability, innovation, employee engagement social responsibility, sustainability, and brand power. We also examined best leader practices research from Teresa Amabile who is the Director of Research at Harvard Business School. I spent a year working closely with Joe Folkman of Zenger-Folkman doing a deep dive on their Extraordinary Leader research. We analyzed global research studies from Towers-Watson, McKinsey and Company and several others. This was my conclusion.

Success creates successful behaviors. Leaders perform badly when they are failing. Employees perform poorly when they are consistently unable to achieve goals.

Put simply, leadership success, employee success and business success are united in a continuous virtuous cycle. Once that cycle turns downward… leaders get worse pushing the business down faster and faster while pushing their employees to continuous failure.

It is the primary job of business leaders to make it easy for their employees to succeed… that’s what creates business success.

I know, it’s simple. Yet few leaders get this and even fewer know how to do it. So as I work in the war zone of 21st century, helping companies who are fighting to stay relevant, profitable and growing I had to come up with something that was simply different than traditional leadership development. The result is something I simply call 5-STAR.

It’s based on the finding that winning behavior in extraordinary organizations comes down to five things. Leaders and their teams must be…

  1. Focused
  2. Creative
  3. Collaborative
  4. Fast acting
  5. Constantly improving

Simple but not easy. This is not easy because people tend to be either both focused and fast acting or creative and collaborative. It’s yin and yang. This creates natural tension. For instance in most organizations senior leaders are goal-focused and action- driven. Their implicit belief is that value is created by fast and flawless execution.

But that’s only partly true. If you get really fast at doing things customers don’t value you simply accelerate failure.

There is another large group in most organizations that are purpose-driven innovators. They are motivated to create new value. Value that really matters to people. They like to create and collaborate. They always have questions and their questions slow things down. This drives the focused-doers crazy. The reality is, for an organization to work, you need both yin and yang. But you won’t drive business teamwork by going to a tepee and sweating together.

Our research of persistently great companies shows they create teamwork by winning together. As I thought about the challenge of coming up with fast ways to transform leadership and culture I began to experiment with training teams in a leadership process that didn’t demand individual change.

My premise is if you just follow the process you will start to win. Every team member will get engaged… and that will fuel a winning balance of focus and creativity and collaboration and action that drives continuous improvement… value, growth and profits.

 

The Instant Leadership Process – What’s Really Holding You Back

Posted on by Real Leaders Inc.

In a previous post, I wrote that there is little to no evidence that our attempts at leadership development over the last 50 years have resulted in better leadership. That’s right, although there has been literally thousands of books written on great leadership, armies of leadership consultants, and millions of dollars spent on leadership development, we don’t seem to have a critical mass of great leaders.

Looking at employee surveys from the 1960s to the present, there’s no data to support that employees today have any better opinion about their leaders’ abilities than employees did 50 years ago.

I’m not suggesting we give up on training and developing leaders, but what I am suggesting is that we get ‘real’ about its effectiveness. 

And the problem that we have today is that the demands of leadership have radically changed in the last 10 years. Leading a company with a hierarchical structure is vastly different than leading an organization which gets work done though networks. In fact, it’s much harder to lead a network of people with varying skills and abilities to achieve goals than it is to cascade your leadership influence through a chair of command.

What’s needed is a radical new approach that gets work done by having people follow a leadership process.

I believe this is far more realistic and effective than depending on developing individual leaders to be great. I do because I’ve had direct experience with it, working in some outrageously competitive business situations and highly resistant cultures.

This is how simple it is.

When a leader of a team or an organization is trying to accomplish anything, this process must be followed.

WHAT: A leader must create focus by clearly articulating the goal.

WHY: People become creative and innovative and understand the purpose behind the goal. A motivating goal will have two dimensions – a human purpose and a business purpose. If your only purpose is to make money or win market share your people will quickly become exhausted and disengaged.

This step is essential with today’s workforce… it’s usually skipped by most leaders.

HOW: Everyone must collaborate getting to the best ‘HOW.’ This demands new disciplined processes that create universal engagement that breaks down silos and creates a continuous strategic-tactical conversation. When this doesn’t occur the law of unintended consequences destroys execution.

DO: Leaders must drive goal-focused action constantly. Team members should always be looking for the next smart thing to do and initiate.

REVIEW: Leaders and teams must swim in a stream of feedback. You cannot wait for formal after-action-reviews to make important changes. Action reviews informally take place in three-minute hallway conversations and constant communication. (Formal after-action-reviews are also vital when critical milestones are either met or missed.)

The power of this process is that everybody can already do these things.

They just need to get into a habit of doing it. It needs to become embedded in the leadership culture. Of course individual skill makes any of these five steps better. So no-one is off the hook for individual leadership development.

However, in my experience without a common leadership process organizations are simply held back by the lack of skills of their poorest leaders rather than by the abilities of their best ones.

The biggest challenge to implement the systematic leadership process is that bad leaders say, “I already do this.” When they do, I say, “oh yeah?” Then I simply go one or two levels down and ask, “What are your most important goals and why are they the most important?” I continue, “Do these goals and the purpose behind them inspire you or discourage you?” Most often the answers I get reveal that people feel confused, pessimistic or cynical about success.

That’s why they’re on the lookout for another job. That’s why they are disengaged. That’s why it’s so damn difficult to get much done.

See for yourself. Use 5-STAR and ask your teammates or your leader or your employees if they are clearly focused on your most important business goal. Ask if they know why it’s important… both the business purpose and the human purpose. Then ask if everybody has been involved with the execution process so that glitches are minimized and important changes are made on a timely basis. Then ask…

“Are we getting better at executing our most important priorities or are we repeating the same mistakes we usually make?” So go ahead, give it a rip… and tell me what you find. The bottom line is that we are no longer playing football where coaches call in the play from the sidelines.

Business has become basketball. Everyone plays offense. Everyone plays defense. Action is a continuous flow where players are always trying to make it easy for each other to succeed so the team can win. Is that how your enterprise runs?

 

The Instant Leadership Process – What’s Really Holding You Back

Posted on by Will Marre

In a previous post, I wrote that there is little to no evidence that our attempts at leadership development over the last 50 years have resulted in better leadership. That’s right, although there has been literally thousands of books written on great leadership, armies of leadership consultants, and millions of dollars spent on leadership development, we don’t seem to have a critical mass of great leaders.

Looking at employee surveys from the 1960s to the present, there’s no data to support that employees today have any better opinion about their leaders’ abilities than employees did 50 years ago.

I’m not suggesting we give up on training and developing leaders, but what I am suggesting is that we get ‘real’ about its effectiveness. 

And the problem that we have today is that the demands of leadership have radically changed in the last 10 years. Leading a company with a hierarchical structure is vastly different than leading an organization which gets work done though networks. In fact, it’s much harder to lead a network of people with varying skills and abilities to achieve goals than it is to cascade your leadership influence through a chair of command.

What’s needed is a radical new approach that gets work done by having people follow a leadership process.

I believe this is far more realistic and effective than depending on developing individual leaders to be great. I do because I’ve had direct experience with it, working in some outrageously competitive business situations and highly resistant cultures.

This is how simple it is.

When a leader of a team or an organization is trying to accomplish anything, this process must be followed.

WHAT: A leader must create focus by clearly articulating the goal.

WHY: People become creative and innovative and understand the purpose behind the goal. A motivating goal will have two dimensions – a human purpose and a business purpose. If your only purpose is to make money or win market share your people will quickly become exhausted and disengaged.

This step is essential with today’s workforce… it’s usually skipped by most leaders.

HOW: Everyone must collaborate getting to the best ‘HOW.’ This demands new disciplined processes that create universal engagement that breaks down silos and creates a continuous strategic-tactical conversation. When this doesn’t occur the law of unintended consequences destroys execution.

DO: Leaders must drive goal-focused action constantly. Team members should always be looking for the next smart thing to do and initiate.

REVIEW: Leaders and teams must swim in a stream of feedback. You cannot wait for formal after-action-reviews to make important changes. Action reviews informally take place in three-minute hallway conversations and constant communication. (Formal after-action-reviews are also vital when critical milestones are either met or missed.)

The power of this process is that everybody can already do these things.

They just need to get into a habit of doing it. It needs to become embedded in the leadership culture. Of course individual skill makes any of these five steps better. So no-one is off the hook for individual leadership development.

However, in my experience without a common leadership process organizations are simply held back by the lack of skills of their poorest leaders rather than by the abilities of their best ones.

The biggest challenge to implement the systematic leadership process is that bad leaders say, “I already do this.” When they do, I say, “oh yeah?” Then I simply go one or two levels down and ask, “What are your most important goals and why are they the most important?” I continue, “Do these goals and the purpose behind them inspire you or discourage you?” Most often the answers I get reveal that people feel confused, pessimistic or cynical about success.

That’s why they’re on the lookout for another job. That’s why they are disengaged. That’s why it’s so damn difficult to get much done.

See for yourself. Use 5-STAR and ask your teammates or your leader or your employees if they are clearly focused on your most important business goal. Ask if they know why it’s important… both the business purpose and the human purpose. Then ask if everybody has been involved with the execution process so that glitches are minimized and important changes are made on a timely basis. Then ask…

“Are we getting better at executing our most important priorities or are we repeating the same mistakes we usually make?” So go ahead, give it a rip… and tell me what you find. The bottom line is that we are no longer playing football where coaches call in the play from the sidelines.

Business has become basketball. Everyone plays offense. Everyone plays defense. Action is a continuous flow where players are always trying to make it easy for each other to succeed so the team can win. Is that how your enterprise runs?

 

Adapt or Fail – Why 70% of Your Team Isn’t Committed to Your Success

Posted on by Real Leaders

Whenever you work really, really hard and fail, it is because you’re missing something. Usually it’s reality. It is tempting to deny that anything has changed. Or that you need to know something that you don’t. Or that others aren’t inspired by the same things you are. Or that you’re going to have to take responsibility for things you don’t want to. The list goes on. There are countless reasons to deny the real reasons we are failing. So we wait.

We wait for things to get back to normal. Well, things are not going to go back to normal because something really, really big has changed. It is a revolution of epic proportion. It is simply this.

Anyone can know anything, instantly. 

In the last five years, access to knowledge through smartphones enables almost everyone to know anything they want to know within minutes. I frequently tell my career classes that anyone can become an expert in a specific field within six months. 

Hell, you can become more knowledgeable about a certain topic than 80% of people in three weeks. All you need to do is spend 20 minutes a day with a search engine on the Internet watching videos, reading articles, or searching the research. Want to become knowledgeable about 3D printing, how to finance a business, what makes a happy marriage, how to surf, garden, play the guitar, write a book, write code, manage a project, meditate, or quantum physics? It’s all there.

And there’s more. You can connect with people who are interested in the same things you are very, very easily. I know, you’ve heard versions of these breakthroughs incessantly. This is hardly new news.

But what is new is the radical impact these things are having on businesses and organizations of all types.

And radial is not too strong a word. Consider this. The invention of the printing press in 1450 was the beginning of the end of the dark ages. Remember the dark ages were really dark. In many places, human beings took a step back in terms of their calling in life and even life expectancy. For instance, in Roman times indoor plumbing, clean water and municipal sewage systems were common.

In the dark ages, people threw their crap out the window. Only 1% of Europeans could read or write the year the printing press was inventing. 50 years later, 50% of Europeans were literate. This democratization of knowledge spurred new questions and massive curiosity. The grip of the Catholic Church on people’s thinking violently conflicted with the Protestant Reformation.

The age of world exploration was born and the Renaissance flourished. The philosophers of the Enlightenment created new models of thinking about individual rights and human potential, and led to modern democracies, explosive growth in university education and the scientific method. Okay, that was a big change. Now, imagine that kind of world shaking change happening in a very compressed timeframe. That’s what’s going on. In my work, I see it being played out every day in the area of business. It shows up in tow powerful palaces… leadership and culture.

I think we should face the fact that most of our efforts at leadership development have failed. 

Although billions have been invested over the last 50 years and tens of thousands of books written to promote better leadership, there is virtually no evidence that leaders are any better today than they were five decades ago. When I ask business audiences today how many great leaders they have enjoyed working for over their careers, the highest number I get is two. That’s exactly the same number of audiences were giving me 35 years ago when I started working with Stephen Covey. Perhaps that’s not because developing great leaders is futile, but rather because the challenges of leadership are expanding faster than our ability to help leaders improve.

And, I’m convinced the gap between what’s needed and what’s happening is getting worse. 

It is because the technology and social revolution has changed the way value is created, work gets done and they very nature of the workforce. Here are the main points.

1. Organizational hierarchies are relics of the industrial age.

They are in the way of success. They are designed to maximize the productivity of routine work and minimize risk. When General McChrystal took over the Special Forces command nearly a decade ago it took 96 hours to plan a special operation. Within two years he was able to reduce that time to 20 minutes. He did it by converting the Special Forces command from a hierarchy to a network. Leading networks is a very different skill set than leading a chain of command. And most current business leaders are very, very bad at leading networks.

2. Competence is measured by strategic velocity.

That is the speed at which strategy is decided upon and executed. Most leaders today are still relying on PowerPoints and annual planning cycles. That is leadership malpractice. Today there is a huge gulf between what must be done and what gets done.

3. To be competent, leaders must open-minded enough to constantly evolve strategy and agile enough to stay engaged in the details of execution.

This requires the expertise to create strategy that is responsive to constantly changing trends, opportunities and threats and the social intelligence to work with teams of people as a peer to execute it. (Steve Jobs was an emperor in terms of strategy. But he was a teammate in product development meetings.) In my experience most leaders don’t have a clue on how to do this.

4. The workforce is changed.

Not just millennial’s… everyone. Employees used to give their best efforts because they had the security of long-term employment. They also felt they had a stake in the organization’s long-term success. No more. Research reveals that 80% of employed people constantly search the Internet for a better job. Global surveys that determine the level of commitment employees have to their employer’s success reveal that 70% are not very committed. This is unsustainable. For a network to thrive people must be focused, creative, collaborative and absolutely committed to results. Creating that requires number 5.

5. Human purpose is not optional. Since virtually all employees feel like they are simply hired guns it is impossible to create high-performing teams without genuine shared purpose. Survival and success on their own are not shared purpose. Shared purpose is working together to improve the quality of life of customers’ in a distinct way.

This is not just corporate social responsibility. It is not simply sustainability. It must be your reason for being in business. Real value-driving-purpose has to be at the core of an organization’s money making business model. Haley Rushing of the Purpose Institute recently shared their research with me. It’s simple.

Clear purpose drives:

    • Innovation, product development, pricing, brand, culture, advertising, hiring, technology investment, market segmentation, supply chain management… everything.
    • Purpose makes hard decisions easier and faster.
    • Most important, human purpose connects people directly with their job and the enterprise. It increases commitment and reduces friction.
    • Purpose is the inspirational glue that keeps networks working at very high rates of innovation execution.

6. You have to know what the hell you doing. Leaders must have extremely high levels of business acumen and competence. Purpose is no substitute for competence. Passion alone can put you out of business faster because you mistake your good intentions for good outcomes.

That’s my brief explanation of why old models don’t work, employees are disengaged and once great enterprises will fail if they are not lead in radically new ways. The good news is there are lots of people interested in this new way of leading and working. I hope you are.

 

Are You Your Biggest Problem?

Posted on by Will Marre

I am. I am a big fat problem for myself. So are you. We all are. That’s the way life is. It’s natural to think you are normal…but you’re not and neither am I. We are all quirky as hell. Of course we have a self-protective inner story to tell us that we’re not…but we are…each of us.

Decades of psychological research confirms that our greatest weakness is a lack of self-awareness. 

If you ask five friends to describe your strengths and weaknesses and the impact you have on others those five are likely to say things that are very similar. However, if you wrote down your answers to that same question and compared it to what your five friends say about you…your answers would be the most different. We don’t see ourselves the way others see us. We tend to exaggerate our strengths and make excuses for our weaknesses. Or we make the mistake of thinking our strengths compensate for weaknesses.

Like our family and coworkers don’t care that we’re crabby and short tempered because we mean well…we are just stressed. But that’s just a story. We made it up.

We make up a lot of stories.

The brilliant research on self-awareness, Daniel Goleman, tells us that we are Olympic gold-medal winning self-excusers. We expertly blame and rationalize to shirt responsibility for our frustrations and failures to people and forces beyond our control. The universal human pattern for this is simple.

First, we deny there’s a problem. 

That’s because if there is a problem, we will have to attend to it. We will have to invest energy and do something different. We just wish problems would go away on their own. Maybe if we wish hard enough…

Second, we blame others.

This takes a lot less effort than changing out behavior of ourselves to get a new outcome. We are not very psychologically agile. It’s much easier just to keep doing what we’re doing and blaming others for what doesn’t work.

Finally, we rationalize. 

We accept the previously unacceptable. We convince ourselves it doesn’t matter after all. We even use those terrible words “it is what it is.” This pattern is very common in human relationships going bad. It happens with couples, families and friends. It’s universal because we are all low on self-awareness and high on self-protection.

We judge ourselves through our motives but others by their behavior. 

This is much more than a personal problem. It is a central problem in leadership. It’s why countries go to war, governments stop working, and corporations fail. Research confirms that low self-awareness is the most common, single leadership weakness.

The signs of low self-awareness in leaders are overconfidence, insistence  and closed-mindedness. 

These outer behaviors are most often a mask for inner self-doubt. You see self-doubt as a natural outcome if you don’t have a strong sense of your essential identity. This is the deep, genuine inner ‘you’ that would remain the same no matter if you won the lottery or were forced to live on the street. Sometime when I’m coaching a leader I ask them “who would you be if you had been born and raised by a poor family in a developing country?  Who would you be if you hadn’t gone to college? Who would you be if you were born 200 years ago? “ Yes, I know these are strange questions… they are meant to be.

What I’m trying to get people to think about is who are you at your core?

Who are you independent of your circumstances, your upbringing, your job, your car, your house, your family? Who? How do you find meaning in life? What do you most value? Do you have any commitments or beliefs that you would die for? And if you do…. are you willing to live for them? Are you willing to stand for them? Speak up for them? The best way I have learned to transcend self-doubt is to get acquainted with your authentic, inner self.

The core part of you, your essential self, has no doubts about you or inflated views of your capabilities.

Neither is it self-protective or defensive. This is not New Age woo-woo. Rather it is at the core of deep, life-satisfaction. I have deeply enjoyed working with a few well grounded CEOs. I knew they had capacity to become great leaders because they sought feedback. They had the inner strength to remain non-defensive and very curious about their impact on others. Above all they know who they were, what they stood for and how they felt about important things. They demanded a lot from themselves but were also self- compassionate when they were tired or foolish.  They didn’t pretend to be perfect or to be anybody they were not. At the same time they had no excuses for their own failures.

Confidence without arrogance is extremely powerful.

So how about you? What’s your level of self-awareness? What’s your level of non-defensive confidence? Are you curious enough? Open-minded enough? Do you know what makes your life worth loving? Aristotle said that the best life is one in which you fulfill your nature in the pursuit of a noble purpose.

Do you know what it means to “fulfill your nature?”  

If you do, turn up the volume on your efforts. If you don’t know, invest your energy in becoming self-aware… it is the only foundation that will weather the storms of life.

 

Adapt or Fail – Why 70% of Your Team Isn’t Committed to Your Success

Posted on by Grant Schreiber

Whenever you work really, really hard and fail, it is because you’re missing something. Usually it’s reality. It is tempting to deny that anything has changed. Or that you need to know something that you don’t. Or that others aren’t inspired by the same things you are. Or that you’re going to have to take responsibility for things you don’t want to. The list goes on. There are countless reasons to deny the real reasons we are failing. So we wait.

We wait for things to get back to normal. Well, things are not going to go back to normal because something really, really big has changed. It is a revolution of epic proportion. It is simply this.

Anyone can know anything, instantly. 

In the last five years, access to knowledge through smartphones enables almost everyone to know anything they want to know within minutes. I frequently tell my career classes that anyone can become an expert in a specific field within six months. 

Hell, you can become more knowledgeable about a certain topic than 80% of people in three weeks. All you need to do is spend 20 minutes a day with a search engine on the Internet watching videos, reading articles, or searching the research. Want to become knowledgeable about 3D printing, how to finance a business, what makes a happy marriage, how to surf, garden, play the guitar, write a book, write code, manage a project, meditate, or quantum physics? It’s all there.

And there’s more. You can connect with people who are interested in the same things you are very, very easily. I know, you’ve heard versions of these breakthroughs incessantly. This is hardly new news.

But what is new is the radical impact these things are having on businesses and organizations of all types.

And radial is not too strong a word. Consider this. The invention of the printing press in 1450 was the beginning of the end of the dark ages. Remember the dark ages were really dark. In many places, human beings took a step back in terms of their calling in life and even life expectancy. For instance, in Roman times indoor plumbing, clean water and municipal sewage systems were common.

In the dark ages, people threw their crap out the window. Only 1% of Europeans could read or write the year the printing press was inventing. 50 years later, 50% of Europeans were literate. This democratization of knowledge spurred new questions and massive curiosity. The grip of the Catholic Church on people’s thinking violently conflicted with the Protestant Reformation.

The age of world exploration was born and the Renaissance flourished. The philosophers of the Enlightenment created new models of thinking about individual rights and human potential, and led to modern democracies, explosive growth in university education and the scientific method. Okay, that was a big change. Now, imagine that kind of world shaking change happening in a very compressed timeframe. That’s what’s going on. In my work, I see it being played out every day in the area of business. It shows up in tow powerful palaces… leadership and culture.

I think we should face the fact that most of our efforts at leadership development have failed. 

Although billions have been invested over the last 50 years and tens of thousands of books written to promote better leadership, there is virtually no evidence that leaders are any better today than they were five decades ago. When I ask business audiences today how many great leaders they have enjoyed working for over their careers, the highest number I get is two. That’s exactly the same number of audiences were giving me 35 years ago when I started working with Stephen Covey. Perhaps that’s not because developing great leaders is futile, but rather because the challenges of leadership are expanding faster than our ability to help leaders improve.

And, I’m convinced the gap between what’s needed and what’s happening is getting worse. 

It is because the technology and social revolution has changed the way value is created, work gets done and they very nature of the workforce. Here are the main points.

1. Organizational hierarchies are relics of the industrial age.

They are in the way of success. They are designed to maximize the productivity of routine work and minimize risk. When General McChrystal took over the Special Forces command nearly a decade ago it took 96 hours to plan a special operation. Within two years he was able to reduce that time to 20 minutes. He did it by converting the Special Forces command from a hierarchy to a network. Leading networks is a very different skill set than leading a chain of command. And most current business leaders are very, very bad at leading networks.

2. Competence is measured by strategic velocity.

That is the speed at which strategy is decided upon and executed. Most leaders today are still relying on PowerPoints and annual planning cycles. That is leadership malpractice. Today there is a huge gulf between what must be done and what gets done.

3. To be competent, leaders must open-minded enough to constantly evolve strategy and agile enough to stay engaged in the details of execution.

This requires the expertise to create strategy that is responsive to constantly changing trends, opportunities and threats and the social intelligence to work with teams of people as a peer to execute it. (Steve Jobs was an emperor in terms of strategy. But he was a teammate in product development meetings.) In my experience most leaders don’t have a clue on how to do this.

4. The workforce is changed.

Not just millennial’s… everyone. Employees used to give their best efforts because they had the security of long-term employment. They also felt they had a stake in the organization’s long-term success. No more. Research reveals that 80% of employed people constantly search the Internet for a better job. Global surveys that determine the level of commitment employees have to their employer’s success reveal that 70% are not very committed. This is unsustainable. For a network to thrive people must be focused, creative, collaborative and absolutely committed to results. Creating that requires number 5.

5. Human purpose is not optional. Since virtually all employees feel like they are simply hired guns it is impossible to create high-performing teams without genuine shared purpose. Survival and success on their own are not shared purpose. Shared purpose is working together to improve the quality of life of customers’ in a distinct way.

This is not just corporate social responsibility. It is not simply sustainability. It must be your reason for being in business. Real value-driving-purpose has to be at the core of an organization’s money making business model. Haley Rushing of the Purpose Institute recently shared their research with me. It’s simple.

Clear purpose drives:

    • Innovation, product development, pricing, brand, culture, advertising, hiring, technology investment, market segmentation, supply chain management… everything.
    • Purpose makes hard decisions easier and faster.
    • Most important, human purpose connects people directly with their job and the enterprise. It increases commitment and reduces friction.
    • Purpose is the inspirational glue that keeps networks working at very high rates of innovation execution.

6. You have to know what the hell you doing. Leaders must have extremely high levels of business acumen and competence. Purpose is no substitute for competence. Passion alone can put you out of business faster because you mistake your good intentions for good outcomes.

That’s my brief explanation of why old models don’t work, employees are disengaged and once great enterprises will fail if they are not lead in radically new ways. The good news is there are lots of people interested in this new way of leading and working. I hope you are.

 

Comic-Book Heroes Help Change Image of Islam

Posted on by Real Leaders

Naif Al-Mutawa has developed a series of superheroes who’s main mission is to change perceptions and educate, while still being entertaining.

As provocative as Wonder Woman, but in an entirely different way, Batina the Hidden is a character in the hit comic book series “The 99” who is not only a Muslim girl from Yemen, but one whose outfit of choice when fighting evil is a burqa. “Most articles about Islam these days involve terrorism, so that was my challenge: How do I redefine this? The media not only reflects reality but can help change the course of reality,” said Naif Al-Mutawa, creator of “The 99,” during a speech at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity a few months ago.

“The idea was to reposition Islam not only to the West, but to Muslims themselves as well.” “The 99,” features Islam-inspired characters, based on the 99 attributes of Allah, who discover magic stones that unleash powers like superhuman strength, ability to read minds, and to teleport. And, in true super-hero style, they use these powers to fight bad guys. The comic series, which began publication in 2007 by the Teshkeel Media Group in Kuwait, is the first of its kind from the Middle East geared toward an international audience.

The characters may have Muslim names, but they represent diverse backgrounds, such as Hadya the Guide from London, a human GPS navigator, and Bari the Healer from South Africa. This year, the comic series secured distribution in its ninth language, French; a theme park has opened in Kuwait; and deals with DC Comics have been made for “The 99” to feature the likes of Superman, Batman and a fully clothed Wonder Woman.

By early next year, an animated television series based on the comic strip will be broadcast in North America, the Middle East, North Africa, parts of Europe and Asia, and eventually Australia. “When it hits TV, it will showcase one of the highest standards of animation,” Al-Mutawa, a New York-trained clinical psychologist and entrepreneur, said at the Cannes conference.

The idea of cultural crossover is one that Al-Mutawa has grown up with; as a child, his Arab Muslim conservative parents sent him to a culturally Jewish summer camp in New Hampshire by mistake in 1975. He did not realize this until later, yet continued to attend for a decade. His five boys currently spend their summers there. After earning a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Long Island University in New York and working with survivors of political torture at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, he went to business school and obtained an M.B.A. from Columbia University.

Eventually, he returned to Kuwait and flirted with a few business ventures before coming up with the idea to start a comic book with Islam-inspired superheroes. Within a few months, he raised $7 million from 54 investors in eight countries. Today, the project has secured more than $40 million in financing and is expanding into an animated series. “His concept is potentially world changing,” said Elliot Polak, founder and creator of Textappeal, a British firm that provides cross-cultural marketing and advertising expertise for global companies.

“Dr. Al-Mutawa is working on rebranding, not of a product or service, but the rebranding of Islam.” His work is turning heads. At the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington in April this year, President Barack Obama singled out Al-Mutawa during a speech promoting interfaith dialogue and cross-cultural initiatives. Still, the road to success has “not all been roses,” Al-Mutawa said at the Cannes conference.

“There have been a million setbacks.” He has had to defend his ideas against a potential ban in Saudi Arabia and a fatwa by scholars in Indonesia. Of the 50 female characters in the series, Batina the Hidden is only one of five characters who wears a head scarf. In a scene from “Wham! Bam! Islam!” by the independent filmmaker Isaac Solotaroff, whose documentary on Al-Mutawa’s triumphs and struggles over the past four years will be shown on PBS in the United States in late 2013, an Indonesian university student wearing a hijab asks why the character Soora wears an immodest tank top and leaves her hair uncovered.

“I believe the purpose of this comic is to be countercultural,” she tells Al-Mutawa. “You know this is wrong, so why do you insist on doing this?” Al-Mutawa responds by telling her about a fire in a school in Riyadh two years ago when girls came running out of a school without wearing head scarves, and the morality police sent them back to the school so the fire fighters would not see them dressed immodestly. The girls burned to death in the school.

“The question here is, is Islam measured by behavior, which anyone can fake by praying or wearing a head scarf, or is it measured by values and faith?” he asks. He then emphasizes that it is dangerous to give a small percentage of people the control to define what is and isn’t Islam. “This is what will take us to hell in a handbasket, and it’s our fault if that happens, nobody else’s,” he says to the university students in the film. In another scene, Al-Mutawa is at Sabili magazine’s offices in Indonesia. Posters that decorate the walls say “Do Not Fear Al Qaeda.” As Al-Mutawa explains how “The 99” is inspired by Islam, one of the religious scholars slaps his hand on the table and says, “You can’t rewrite Islam!” In response, Al-Mutawa explains that the same virtues in Islam are shared with other faiths and that he is not attempting to rewrite any religion.

“Dr. Al-Mutawa was in control and perfectly fluent in each of these settings,” Solotaroff said in an interview this week. “He is someone who has straddled multiple worlds his whole life, so it’s not in his DNA to choose sides and as a result.” At the Cannes conference, Al-Mutawa was careful to highlight that the comic series is not purely Islamic or didactic in nature, but rather a concept inspired by the religion. He pointed to the way that other cultures have developed secular work based on religious archetypes – even Superman and Batman use storytelling elements from the Bible, he said – and yet this has not been achieved in the Muslim world.

“Until that’s done, we won’t be able to give divergent opinions and promote discussion,” he said. “What are people going to say about the Koran – they don’t like the font? The color purple used? This is a very limited scope, and my task is to fuse divergent ideas together.” And so, he uses comic books as a medium to send positive, fresh messages to youth internationally and in the region.

Toward the end of 2010, 37 percent of the Arab population was under 14 years old, which makes for about 110 million Arab preteens, according to data provided by Dubai Media City, which houses animation workshops. Jamal Al Sharif, its managing director, said, “Animation has a bigger purpose than just entertainment. The popularity of ‘The 99’ has proven that the animation industry is poised for a new leap and paved the way for grooming fresh talent and creativity in the region.” All this wasn’t an easy idea to sell a few years ago.

The Solotaroff documentary shows scenes of how Al-Mutawa, pitching the concept to investors, strengthened his case by talking about a sticker book created by an Arab businessman showing bloody scenes of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and of suicide bombers extolling the virtues of martyrdom.

This sticker book, called an “Intifada Album,” was selling to thousands of children in the West Bank. At the end of one scene, Al-Mutawa says: “My message was very clear to investors: Muslim children need new heroes.”

 

Three Conflicts & The Only Way Not To Be Bullied

Posted on by Real Leaders Inc.

Over many years of my leadership consulting practices, I’ve had to facilitate agreements among unreasonable people. Often these battles have occurred between chest pounding executives who are frustrated or frightened. I’ve also refereed Boards of Directors of merging companies and unions and management.

On a few occasions, I’ve been ambushed by spouses of clients who want me to help repair their ragged relationship…Yep, I’ve been in some pretty wild situations. Early in my career, I taught and relied on the tools of ‘seek first to understand and then be understood’ and ‘win-win’ to forge agreement out of the ashes of conflict. What I’ve found is that these tools are excellent to solve problems, Level One problems. Those are disagreements over tactics.

These conflicts arise when people have shared values and goals, but simply want to go about things in a different way. 

For instance, if both my wife and I wanted to take a relaxing vacation and I wanted to go to the tropics and she wanted to go the mountains, we could probably find a ‘win-win’ resolution by taking the time to sincerely understand what it is about those places that give each of us a sense of relaxation. Then we might come up with a simple solution like alternating vacations between the beach and the mountains.

We’d probably feel pretty good about the solution if we both agree that relaxation was the primary goal and that we actually planned our time and activities to achieve that goal. What makes this work is our supreme value for a harmonious relationship based on respect, fairness and mutual advocacy. Now if our conflict was a little more intense such that I want a relaxing vacation and she wants an exciting one… it would take a little more creativity. What’s not obvious about resolving Level One conflicts is that to maintain goodwill you need to not cave-in.

It’s important to have a reasonable tolerance for disagreement because this will stimulate creativity.

If you value harmony so much that it’s very stressful to even have temporary disagreements you will find yourself never taking the vacation you want or launching the marketing program the way you designed it… or any other priority that you’re willing to sacrifice to avoid conflict. The will to resolve Level One conflicts at high levels of mutual satisfaction stimulate creative innovation and resilient relationships. All good stuff… yet we often find ourselves in Level Two conflicts, which are more difficult to solve.

Sometimes far more difficult. Level Two conflicts are disagreements over goals. (Remember, Level One was conflict over tactics) sometimes I call these ‘small pie conflicts.’ By small pie I mean that there is simply not enough for everyone to get what they want in the amount they want. Sure it would be great if you could increase the size of the pie in every situation but that’s just not realistic. Once I was helping several physician groups negotiate their financial relationship with a large hospital system.

There was a limited amount of money to divide and it was clear that that small pie of money would not be growing very much anytime soon. If the doctors made more, the hospitals would make less and vice versa. Soon this escalated into a bare-knuckles battle with lots of accusations and emotion. The only way I could get these agitated adversaries to calm down was to ascend the ‘mountain the values’ until we could find common ground.

What they could agree on was that the hospital system and the physicians were sincerely dedicated to providing the best patient care possible. I was also able to get them to a common reality about their mutual finances.

When goals are in conflict it is critical to agree on the facts, so Level Two conflicts are resolved when people agree on both facts and values otherwise there is no path to agreement.

Now we come to ugly Level Three conflicts. These are conflicts over values. Most often they simply cannot be resolved. One example of Level Three conflict was the Cold War. The values of dictatorial Communism versus Western democratic values had no meaningful common ground. To preserve the peace we simply zoned off the world, rattled our sabers and frightened each other into avoiding war. It appears we have a similar problem with Al Qaeda. The unquestioned values that we have for individual freedom, self-expression and personal conscience are not shared.

Both sides actually believe they have the moral high ground so conflict is inevitable.

Throw in other high ignition problems like widespread poverty, political rivalry, tribalism and oil and you have a boiling stew of conflict. Level Three conflicts are not only geopolitical. They exist in the workplace and at home.

The most common Level Three conflict arises in working with people who are pathologically self-interested… just plain selfish.

Now all of us are selfish from time to time especially when we’re scared or stressed. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about people who refuse to empathize. These are people who treat everyone as either a threat or an ally to get what they themselves want. Their main tactics are bullying and manipulating. They bully by making threats, hoarding resources, stealing ideas and blaming others when anything goes wrong. Their arms get tired from throwing people under the bus.

What’s unfortunate is that bullies can thrive in hierarchical organizations that tolerate it.

Mid-level bullies are often miss-characterized as no-nonsense managers by senior executives. So they frequently persist and even thrive. Manipulators are passive-aggressive. They also blame others, deny responsibility and play the victim. An Olympic level manipulator seems to be able to figure out how to never be wrong or responsible…it’s everyone else’s fault. Bullies and manipulators are everywhere.

Social psychologists estimate that about 35% of adults never mature beyond this level of living. Every workplace has them and so does virtually every family. So what do you do with Level Three conflicts? There is only one thing to do. Create rules and boundaries for your interactions.

As the saying goes ‘you can’t make a good deal with a bad person’… at least not for long. When you’re in conflict with others because of the fundamental disagreement over values the conflict will never end. So you need to protect yourself from selfish nut-jobs. Unless the crazy person has a life altering experience which actually changes their values a healthy trusting relationship is simply impossible.

I didn’t always believe this. For 40 years I was a magnificent idealist. But the lessons of life taught me that the lethal combination of someone who is competitive and insecure will make them bullies. My attempts to have sustained relationships were totally disruptive to my own psychological health. What I found was that bullies look for people they can intimidate, and manipulators are simply parasites looking for hosts who will cave-in to the whiny demands.

What’s going on here is Level Three conflict. These conflicts will ruin your life if you allow them to.

There is nothing you can do to repair them and it’s not your job to.

Your job is to make a difference. Your job is to be healthy, loving and to do something that matters. The next time you’re in conflict take a moment to analyze whether it’s Level One, a conflict over tactics; Level Two a conflict over goals…or a code red Level Three.

Understanding the world this way changed my life.

I hope it does the same for you. Note to women:  Most women’s brains are wired for social harmony and empathy. This makes them “soft” targets for bullies and manipulators. The most common response is to become passive aggressive, which helps you maintain power without being confrontational.

The problem is being passive aggressive makes you psychologically sick and makes you feel weak. The best strategy is calm assertiveness. Know what you want. Ask for what you want. Create what you want. I know, it’s not as easy as it sounds… yet there’s simply no other choice.