3 Ways to Communicate Better

Posted on by Debra Carpenter

The world today is a very different place than it was 20 years ago. Technology has made an abundance of information, voices, and services available to us at any time we choose to seek it out.

In fact, many of us use technology in such a way that we do not have to seek information as much as just let it come to us – in our news feeds, our inboxes, our ears and minds.

For an entrepreneur, listening earnestly and communicating clearly and effectively among all the static can be a real challenge. Several studies have looked at the ways entrepreneurs’ communication skills – or lack thereof – correlate with their success and the quality of their leadership.

What they’ve found is no surprise: The most successful entrepreneurs are expert communicators who heavily invest in social capital. But in an interesting twist, research has found that these communication skills don’t have to be inherent to be effective. They can be learned.

Based on research figures, we spend 75% of our time actively communicating – speaking and listening – compared to the 25% of time we spend passively communicating through writing and reading. Both active and passive communication methods are important for entrepreneurs to master because they hang in careful balance. What we write may affect what we say; what we read may affect how we listen.

What if you’re an entrepreneur who isn’t inherently skilled in communication? How can you improve your skills and methods to give yourself the best chance for success? I searched for effective solutions and found three ways to make yourself a better communicator.

1. Educate yourself

The best way to begin communicating better is by educating yourself. Let go of your existing ideas about communication and start from the beginning. Learn about your own preferred communication styles and the ways those methods might clash or mesh well with others’.

You don’t have to enroll in a course or go to a seminar to learn about effective communication strategies that will benefit you professionally. Google searches will return an abundance of information, so sift through and take notes as you go. Begin paying more attention to the way you communicate with others and study their reactions. Focus on listening actively rather than simply hearing what another has to say.

2. Enlist help

The internet is full of programs and webinars that promise to make you a master communicator. But I haven’t seen anything quite like Crystal, the Nashville-based tech startup that uses complex algorithms and public online information to determine the communication preferences of any person with a LinkedIn profile, down to whether or not you should use an emoji when you email them.

Crystal’s email extension makes it possible to write emails in a way that is proven to appeal to the receiver, based on the information they’ve posted or made available online. For example, Crystal knows that the client I’m working with tends to write in short, to-the-point sentences and prefers to avoid ‘small talk.’ Crystal can then suggest relevant changes while I draft an email to this client (“Consider removing the friendly but unnecessary phrase ‘How’s it going?’ from your email”).

Crystal has attracted a lot of attention so far, and is already used by employees at Hubspot, Google, Accenture, and Thomson-Reuters. In any case, it certainly takes some of the guesswork out of professional communication.

3. Begin studying mindfulness

The study of mindfulness and meditation is a process that helps people learn to be more present and acknowledge circumstances, feelings and emotions without feeling powerless to them or identified by them.

Communicating mindlessly can take several forms, including responding too quickly with anger, making assumptions, and identifying ourselves and others by the emotions experienced. These tactics can unintentionally steer an entrepreneur away from success.

By being mindful in communication, we can ensure that we don’t do ourselves or our colleagues a disservice by communicating mindlessly. Entrepreneurs can benefit from studying mindfulness in a variety of ways, including:

  • Tapping into creativity
  • Gaining clarity and insight
  • Responding appropriately to stress
  • Quelling insecurities
  • Inspiring innovation
  • Encouraging self-care

Entrepreneurs have the best chance of reaching success when they can clearly and efficiently communicate their company’s goals, vision, and mission to stakeholders. Improving interpersonal communication skills will have far-reaching benefits in an entrepreneur’s professional and personal life as well. The methods listed above can help you begin to communicate more effectively. Which will you try first?

Note: This post was originally published on Startup Grind.

 

Don’t Work For A Jerk

Posted on by Will Marre

Work should be a source of joy.

Okay, if that’s too strong, it should at least be a source of well-being. Gallup’s research confirms that work is the second most important factor in promoting our life satisfaction. (The first is the quality of our relationships.) We spend half our waking hours working. It is a source of personal identity, growth, and self-efficacy. That’s all great when our work is good. But when our work is not good, it’s our single greatest source of stress. And new research is confirming what we all know.

If our work is stressful, it’s mostly because our boss is bad. 

Here’s why: Business organizations are designed as power hierarchies. This is because the military is run as a power hierarchy, and modern organizations come from the military gene pool. The family tree of business also runs back to royalty, warlords, and a host of archaic organization models. They people at the top of hierarchies hold life-and-death power (or hire-or-fire power) over everyone. They are also expected to be smarter, better informed, and more capable than their employees. Of course, sometimes they are. Often they are not.

But it’s not competency alone that determines whether a leader creates a great place to work. More often, it is his or her personality, values and worldview. 

The emerging research on leaders of large, modern enterprises is that they tend to be more narcissistic and less empathetic than average. I know, this is not surprising. But let’s take a closer look. Narcissists:

  • Tend to act confident, be well-groomed, self-promoting, and extroverted. They make eye contact, offer inflated compliments, and have high energy.
  • Need and may demand the spotlight, recognition, and admiration.
  • Are self-serving, self-focused, and insistent.
  • Constantly search for better deals, better people, better jobs, better spouses.

And their grand ability is to leverage their influence to dominate a social group. That’s why leadership positions in business, politics, and the media appear to be loaded with narcissists. What’s dangerous about this is that the most dominant traits of a narcissist is fake empathy. That is when a person pretends to care about the sufferings and sacrifices of others, but really doesn’t.

It’s what enables business executives to permanently lay off hardworking, creative successful employees to temporarily raise profits. It is what enables leaders to sell and promote bad food and harmful products, or brazenly pollute and poison the environment. Researches have now administered thousands of personality assessments, and found that people with low empathy scores tend to become lawyers, economists, and investment bankers. (I know, I know, no surprise.) So what’s this got to do with our work? Everything.

IBM published research a couple of years ago revealing the person most employees least enjoy spending time with is their boss. They found that our stress hormone levels skyrocket when we talk to our bosses, due to the massive economic and social power bosses have. If that power is wielded by a narcissist or a low-empathy leader, it’s frankly very scary. The cure is simple. Not easy, but simple. And it has two elements.

First, become great at something.

That way, you have a career instead of a job. We all earn money by creating value. Value in a business is primarily created by saving money or making money. Be clear on what you’re great at and get better. Become an expert in a field you’re passionate about. You do this by reading, going to conferences, writing speaking, doing. Do something for at least 30 minutes each day to learn something new in your field of choice. Give yourself three years to get in the top 25% of your field. In five years, you’ll be in the top 10%. Life is short. Be great at your work so you will always be in demand.

Second, don’t work for a jerk.

Remember, business is a magnet for slick narcissists. So if you are going to work for someone rather than yourself, you must target great companies that push self-promoters away. You will discover these humane places to work through networking, reading local lists of good companies, and asking around.

Sometimes transitions take time. Don’t fret about it. Just don’t settle for being stressed, scared, and exploited. I recently finished teaching a career class to about 60 adults at the University of California at San Diego. What was reinforced to me is that we all have gifts to give. We all have a difference we can make. And if you want to, you can put yourself in the right place at the right place with the right people to work the way you are uniquely designed to.

Never give up your dream. 

Never.

Why ‘WHY’ Is So Critical for Performance and Innovation

Posted on by Will Marre

The second principle of 5-Star Leadership is answering the question, “Why?” Remember the first principle is setting a clear direction by answering the question “What?” What am I trying to accomplish… what’s the goal here? Most seasoned leaders have no problem telling people what to do. They are goal-setting machine guns.

However setting goals without establishing a good reason for the goals…without dealing with the ‘purpose’ question never really engages followers.

Sure they may act busy. But activity is not the same as performance and when leaders sense that their goals may not be achieved they tend to escalate pressure or even issue threats. Clueless leaders do this because creating stress in employees temporarily ignites their energy. But negative stress has only a short-term effect on people’s energy. If it continues, people begin to protect themselves usually by blaming others and checking out.

This poisons a working culture and creates a toxic cycle of failure.

These are common situations I come into when leaders reach out to me to help them with their organizations’ performance. Their usual complaint is there needs to be higher accountability. Yet crying for accountability is always a sign of leadership failure.  If people are unmotivated to take responsibility there is no amount of external accountability that will change performance.

I’ve never seen accountability systems that accomplished anything other than lower performance.

Unfortunately, these kinds of employee management systems are everywhere.

Decades of psychological research confirm that personal performance rises when people are inspired.

Yet years of global leadership surveys reveal that the rarest quality of a leader is the ability to inspire followers. That’s a shame. You see people become self-accountable when they are inspired. People go the extra mile when their motivated.

People create, innovate and find better, faster, cheaper ways when your mission becomes their mission.

The flame of purpose can only be ignited by answering the question …‘Why?’

What is so important about what we’re doing? What difference will it make?

Those are simple enough questions. Yet I cannot believe the dumb answers most leaders give. Usually leaders announced to their followers that they must succeed in order for the company to be profitable, or to grow, or to survive. While these reasons maybe accurate, research is clear they are not inspiring. Brain research is clear that people are motivated by emotions not logic or facts. Even more important people’s creative centers are activated by their values.

That’s pretty important since creativity is necessary to innovate new products, connect with customers or revolutionize new business models.

On the other hand, logic and fear at best temporarily motivates people to do more of what they’re already doing… so good luck with that. I’m not sure why the vast majority of leaders continue to act so stupidly. It should not be news to anyone that humans are purpose-seeking beings. Or that inspired people work harder and create more new, cool, life enriching things.

Only a fool would treat humans as carbon-based robots. Perhaps the root cause is that so many people go to business primarily to make money. That’s just ridiculous. It’s like saying the primary reason for living is to eat. Sure, without food we die but if we live to eat, over-eating will eventually kill us. Even the world’s most uninspiring famous leader, Jack Welch, finally agreed that:

“on the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.”

This is from a guy who pioneered firing people while businesses were profitable just so we could make the share price would go up. I appreciate the deathbed repentance but holding yourself up as an iconic leader only to later reject the core of your value system is more than a little sad. Human beings have spent thousands and thousands of years trying to create a way of life so that every day was not simply a grind to survive.

The Industrial Revolution gave us a huge boost in productivity so that we could create surplus. This surplus gives us an opportunity to improve the quality of our lives not just the quantity we consume. The Industrial Revolution was a means to higher opportunity but we haven’t seized it. Instead we are acting like idiots at a cheap buffet.

Is building an economy on never-ending mass consumption really the best idea we can come up with? Really?

Does your business depend on people buying things they really don’t need or especially value that are produced just as well by many competitors? That’s another way of describing business strategies that focus on market share rather than growth. The primary reason employees are not self-motivated is not because they’re lazy. It’s because their work is not purposeful. Of course for short periods of time simply accomplishing ambitious goals can motivate high achievers.

Goal achievement is a brain narcotic for people who define themselves through accomplishments.

But in reflective moments even people who define themselves as goal-seeking missiles have to ask… “Why?” Most businesses today are simply playing a game of trivial pursuit. When a talented leader like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos invests time and money into figuring out how to get packages to people using flying drones I just shake my head. What difference does that really make? For the last 10 years Microsoft has to represent the biggest waste of employee intelligence in recent history. What difference are they making? Would anybody care if they went bankrupt? Just look around you. The same thing could be said of 90% of business enterprises in existence today.

As far as producing unique value that really improves the quality of human life in most cases we’d be better off without them. They are just consuming resources and wasting human energy. I’ll let me be clear, I am not a moralistic snob.

I just believe the proper use of capitalism is to create new and innovative ways to actually improve the quality of our lives now in the future.

Of course you have to be profitable because profit creates investment surplus and investment is needed to research and develop new and cooler ways to progress. I think most people would agree that the world is better off because of companies like Disney and Nike and the old Apple.

Yes, these companies are not perfect but at least they’re up to more than simply making money. At least their employees feel like they are a part of making people happier or more informed or more able.

What people want from their leaders are goals that really matter.

This takes more than an MBA. It takes moral imagination, grit and discipline. In my recent study of geniuses Thomas Edison stands out. He held over 1,000 patents. He invented the modern research and development lab. He pushed his people to their limits. Edison established whole new industries because he was able to commercialize the use of electric lights, power utilities, and sound recording in motion pictures.

His inventions were critical to mass communication. And they changed the lives of virtually every human being after he was finished. The days of great breakthroughs are not behind us. Today a hard-headed leader like Elon Musk is so serious about alternative energy and sustainability that he created the Tesla car company to accelerate automotive technology to create systemic change.

Yes, Google is a scary company because they are a vacuum cleaner of all of our online lives. But at least they’re using their wealth to pursue interesting big problems like driver-less cars or doubling the average life span.

My point is that you don’t have to become Mother Teresa to run a meaningful enterprise.

You just have to be committed to solving problems that matter. Give us something to wake up in the morning for. C’mon, why are there intelligent people spending their time dreaming up Dorito tacos? Is this really the best we can do? Great leaders have meaningful answers to the “Why” question.  We need more great leaders.

 

How to Compassionately Deal with Poor Performance

Posted on by Matt Tenney

Does being a compassionate, servant leader mean that we should keep team members who are not performing well? Using the approach below, we can often help an underperforming team member to improve and grow. And, when necessary we can use the approach to compassionately let someone go without having to fire them.

Addressing Poor Performance

I’ve certainly failed with this balance at both ends of the spectrum. I’ve been too quick to let someone go. And, as I’ve grown more compassionate over the years, I’ve not addressed an issue that really needed to be addressed because I didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. But being compassionate doesn’t mean that we don’t address issues that need to be addressed, like consistently poor performance. Sometimes the most compassionate thing we can do, which would be in the best service of all the stakeholders, is to let someone go. Are we really serving someone if we allow them to consistently do mediocre work? Or, are we actually hurting their long-term chances for success?

The Four Pieces of Paper

I learned the approach below from my friend and mentor, John Spence. He calls the approach The Four Pieces of Paper. Although variations of it can be used with any team member who is underperforming, the approach is very powerful when thoughts come to mind of letting someone go. When having a conversation with a team member who has been underperforming, we can frame the discussion by saying something like, “I expect really great things from you. Recently, I don’t think what you’ve been doing is up to your standards. What’s going on?”

Then we can let the team member know that we’d like them to have the greatest chance for success for years to come. Not encouraging them to reach their full potential is doing them a disservice. Then we allow them to create a solution, which they will write on four pieces of paper. The team member writes:

  1. What will they achieve in a given period that they feel adequately makes up for the previous poor performance
  2. What do they need from us, as their leader, to make that happen
  3. What the reward should be, within reason, if they hit the mark
  4. What the consequence should be if they fail

Using this approach, you might find that a team member you thought would have to fire suddenly turns around simply because you showed them you care about them. You’ll also find that if they don’t hit the mark, you won’t have to fire them. They’ll have written, “I should leave,” on the fourth piece of paper because they’ll see that they picked the goal and were given all the support they needed to accomplish it.

If they still don’t hit the mark, they’ll almost always see that they are simply not in the right place and voluntarily move on. As a compassionate, servant leader, we could then help the team member find a position within our organization, or even outside of it, where she or he could thrive. How could you apply this approach to your organization? Please share your comments below.

 

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 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.

 

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.

 

Becoming Great is Simple, Just Not Easy

Posted on by Will Marre

(Note to readers: the response to my recent blog, Three Reasons Why We Need Women Leaders Now has been nothing less than astonishing. What’s clear to me is that there is a deep thirst for practical leadership advice for women who want to excel as leaders, as well as a business need to elevate more women to senior leadership positions. So, I’ve decided to add a special note to women leaders whenever my blog deals with a subject that has a unique application for women. This blog does. The note is at the end.)

Good to Great, that leadership book with the red dust jacket, sits on the shelf of virtually every leader I’ve ever coached. The reason is simple, it’s a great book. For instance the hedgehog principle in which author Jim Collins (above) encourages people and companies to focus on things they do well that they are passionate about and can make money on is wisdom in its profound form.

Yet there is one big idea in the book that has caused lots of confusion.

It’s called Level Five Leadership. Collins tells us that the most successful leaders lead with paradoxical combination of iron-willed commitment and personal humility. What’s confusing about this is that many of the leaders we most admire don’t seem to have much humility. Nobody would accuse Steve Jobs or Winston Churchill of being humble yet both are widely admired as truly great, world changing leaders. And the list of not very humble leaders seems endless. Amazon hotshot Jeff Bezos and look-at-me Richard Branson are just two more that come to mind. So what’s up?

Did Collins simply get it wrong?

Well maybe not… In my 35 years of coaching leaders, some great and some not so great, I come to appreciate what Collins was getting at. I think we can all see that an unwavering commitment to build a special organization is essential to truly great leadership.

The nature of people working together generates chaos driven by the three-ring circus of human weaknesses.

Rampant nuttiness ranging from jealousy and revenge to arrogance and intimidation constantly tear at the fabric of any organization. Leaders who understand the value of a unified, agile team of people working to fulfill an inspiring vision need to expend oceans of energy to drown the demons of social chaos. That takes infinite commitment. I think that is easy to understand… but humility? What about humility? What I’ve come to understand about leadership humility is that it is not the ‘Aw shucks I’m nobody special’ kind.

Rather, it’s the humility of being keenly aware of the limits of your own knowledge and the fallibility of your own judgment.

It is open-mindedness. Of course nearly everyone claims to be open-minded. Who walks around beating their chest about their prejudices and unwillingness to entertain any newfangled ideas or different points of view? Yet those are the most common human behaviors of all. And unless we really work at it our inner voice is saying “I know I’m right, we disagree, therefore you must be wrong.”  Yes, we may act as if were open to new ideas and different points of view but our brains are wired for certainty not open-mindedness.

Much of the time our ‘humility’ is just an act. 

That’s why so many people are attracted to start up enterprises. Entrepreneurs frequently walk a tight rope were one false step can plunge the company into a crash dive. In those circumstances successful leaders are hungry learners. The best of them are passionately open-minded and constantly seeking the next best step necessary to create momentum and sustainable success.

And it turns out the most common characteristic of failed entrepreneurs is stubbornness… which is persistence without creativity.

Close minded passion is a kind of narcissistic poison. So, it appears Collins was dead right. Great leaders are both driven and humble; committed and open-minded. Rare qualities indeed. So how about you?

As the chief entrepreneur of your own career, are you at level five?

Do you have strongly held opinions about your career or your work that lead you to only look for evidence that confirms what you already believe? It is possible to reinvent your future. New research reveals that 93% of successful startups fundamentally change their business strategy in order to succeed. In other words the first business plan didn’t work.  It’s no shame if you’re stuck.  Just don’t spin your wheels. If things are not turning out the way you expected…stop doing what you’re doing.

Spend 30 minutes every morning for the next week reflecting on your deepest desires.

Ask “what’s something new that I could do that might get me on track…” that’s open-mindedness.  And if you are moving in the right direction, ask yourself “what can I do to accelerate progress?” Do that.

Note to women leaders:

I find that women are often a little too open minded in the workplace. It’s common for women to have a hard time saying “no” when other people want to mess with your agenda. You may have been so busy helping others achieve their goals that you become a bit timid in recruiting others to help you achieve yours.

So exercise your strong commitment muscles necessary for level five leadership. Don’t apologize for your vision, your goals and the fury of your commitment.

 

What’s Your Promise?

Posted on by Will Marre

When I was in eight grade, I read 25 biographies of great leaders. They ranged from Alexander the Great to Benjamin Franklin. One thing I noticed even at that age is that they all had one thing in common. They accomplished something significant, in some cases, world changing, because they had the will to do it.

The other surprising truth was that they almost all operated on vision, rather than a specific plan. What this means is that they all seemed to have an inspiring idea of what they wanted to accomplish, but developed their strategies by paying close attention to developing circumstances as they happened.

As I got older and began to work with business leaders, I was disappointed to discover that few of them had a big inspiring idea… at least not one that emerged from their soul. In fact, most of them have been controlled by their boards or financial analysts whose expectations are almost solely focused on growth and profits rather than creating value. This reduces most leaders into managers struggling to compete in a “me too” world.

What I’ve come to believe is that if you really want to do something significant you have to stand for something, believe in something, be driven by something that is bigger than just making money or even success as others define it. 

Over time, I’ve come to describe this drive as your “promise.” Your promise is bigger than a vision. It is a specific commitment to make a difference… a difference that drives you. It turns out that to be driven by a personal promise is not impractical or foolish. In fact, virtually all business leaders who we truly admire are up to something bigger than simply making money.

They are driven to create unique value… value that matters to human beings. This is true regardless of whether these leaders are creating robust and elegant computers or inventing new life-changing devices or inventing micro finance to help lift the desperately poor to self-sufficiency. What these few business leaders have in common is that they understand that business is a powerful vehicle for both self-expression and moral ambition.

The other distinctive quality of these leaders is that they oppose conventional thinking. They ignore benchmarks. They over-invest in a few things that really matter and strip away everything that doesn’t. They rarely pay attention to the stock price of their company and often tell investors who may not like what they’re doing to invest elsewhere. I find these leaders to be frequently envied but rarely copied. Perhaps the reason for this is that you can’t copy someone else’s promise. It doesn’t work that way.

Leaders who have a promise to keep always face moments of truth when their bankers, investors and boards question them. During these moments of siege leaders will fold if they don’t display the confidence that only comes from an intrinsic commitment to an ideal that is bigger than themselves. They would simply remain dreamers – people with bright imaginations but low resolve. One thing I’ve learned from leaders driven by an inner promise is that they’re more effective, more successful and more inspiring then ordinary leaders. It’s not because they’re smarter, but because they are relentless in finding solutions to the problems that stand in their way.

After coaching leaders for over 30 years, I’m convinced that the source of our promise comes from the deepest intrinsic part of our essential being. Discovering our promise takes more than self-awareness. It requires soul-awareness. So how about you?

If you could change anything and it would work… what would it be? There are six great needs in the world today; six great causes that are at the core of vital human need. These are:

1. Ending ignorance through education

2. Ending poverty though self-sufficiency

3. Conquering disease and improving total health

4. Ending violence and creating peace

5. Ending oppression and promoting human rights

6. Preserving our natural environment and creating sustainable abundance

Do any of these causes inspire you? I’m not suggesting you start a nonprofit. It seems we have enough of those. What I am asking is how might you, with your talent, skills and experience, turn your career or your business into a means of creating value that addresses the real needs of our time? In helping many leaders find their promise let me assure you – this does not require taking a vow of poverty only a vow of purpose.

So…

If you could state your promise… the “give” that you could give to the world, what would it be?

 

Where You Place the ‘a’ Matters: Are You “Just a Leader” or a “Just Leader”?

Posted on by Deb Mills-Scofield

It’s just a trivial part of speech, just a the letter ‘a,’ no big deal. But it is! How often do we combine the words justice and leadership, especially in the for-profit sector? Obviously it’s a big deal in social enterprises; they focus on ‘social justice.’ But justice has a huge impact on any organization’s ethos and culture. Justice comes from the old French justitia meaning righteousness and equality as well as the Latin justus meaning upright. So how can we apply this virtue in a practical, applicable way as leaders? There are three ways I can think of, and I bet if you try, you can think of more.

I’ll address two: Fair versus Equal  and I versus You. The third, Triple Bottom Line/Corporate Social Responsibility, is better known and discussed, so we’ll leave that for later.

Fair versus Equal. Many of us have been through end of the year or are preparing for mid-year performance management. This is usually not a fun time to be a leader – not all the news is good, requiring honest, forthright discussion that rarely happen. For many of our people, it’s all about that raise or bonus, not ways to grow professionally. That’s why many companies treat their people equally – it’s easier!

We don’t need those hard, open, straightforward discussions about real performance and contribution. We just pay everyone at this level and move on. It’s more objective and clear – just like everyone getting a medal for showing up. Being a leader requires taking the right road, not the easy road. Treating our people fairly requires judgement, subjectivity, and clear communication of expectations and goals on an ongoing basis since the world around us changes all the time.

When we treat our people equally but not fairly, we tell people it’s okay to underperform and under contribute undermining the morale of our dedicated and passionate people and are then surprised when we get mediocre output and outcomes. What if we modify the culture to recognize people fairly, based on their work, effort, passion and results – as individuals and teams? We will be surprised to see the positive difference it will make.

I versus You. The current economic crisis may have exacerbated an extant corporate behavior, climbing the corporate lader and competing for promotions. But what have we really accomplished? We may have the wonderful corner office, but at whose expense and with what impact on results? I often as my corporate colleagues if focusing on ‘I,’ on themselves, has really gotten them the career satisfaction they sought.

As leaders, we need to help our people focus on the ‘You’ – the customer, the recipient of our services and products and you the employee. If we honestly ask ourselves who matters more, ‘I,’ ourselves, our ‘You’ our customer and people, what is our answer? A true leader is a servant who leads. So, is the business about our needs or the needs of ‘others?’

As we really focused on delighting our customers (to quote my friend Steve Denning), which means we will delight our people because they are working on meaningful, purposeful solutions to real needs (outcomes) that result revenues and profits (outputs) that can be reinvested in the delighting our customers?

Or, are we doing this for the next perk, the accolades from our peers, the prestige from our postion? I’m not suggesting total altruism (though that’s not a bad idea!), but I am suggesting we ponder why we’re leading and whom we’re leading – is it about ‘I’ or about ‘You?’ Can we really lead if it’s about us? Would we want to be led by someone who was all about himself? Does our leadership truly reflect our why and who? if someone asked one of our people who mattered to us, ‘I’ or ‘You,’ what would they answer?

Ask yourself two questions: do you treat people equally or fairly (or both) and does your leadership, hence your culture, value ‘You’ over ‘I?’ Just asking!

This post originally appeared on SmartBlog on Leadership, on SmartBrief. Deb’s other posts can be found on her website.