Friends,

I told my students in the very first week of January:  ”I am not THE leader in here.  Anyone and everyone can lead. This is, a class about leadership, so lead.” In my crazy view, life itself should be that class where we strive to get everyone – to lead – to invite, inspire, encourage, and enable others to do the things that only they can do.*

So I begin with a question:  Do you explicitly tell your students, staff, children, congregants who “report” to you that you want them to lead?  It’s darned hard, because most have been profoundly socialized to think:  ”that’s your job.”

I also told my law students:  This is a laboratory to observe how leadership and authority work; so experiment and observe! They observed and most experienced genuine confusion when I didn’t clarify everything perfectly as their teachers have done for most of their 17-20 years in school. Like prisoners who stay in their cell even when the door has been opened, they ventured out slowly.  But like fish thrown back from the boat, most looked stunned for a time, but then found their natural strength. By the end last week, I was thrilled at the output: students reviewing each other’s papers, online posts with awesome links to YouTube and leadership articles, and even a class-wide charitable giving project. Think of what  a waste of resources it would have been – given my class with young lawyers from Australia, Turkey, Japan, Greece, Mexico, Germany, Denmark, and Georgia — if had played the Shell Answer Man, the Oracle, the Font of wisdom.  Can you imagine the richness when we talked about the intersection between the market and governments, given this array of international experience!   None of us wanted the class to end – me least of all, as follower every bit as much as leader.

Then there was Anna from Australia.  From ten minutes into that first class in January, she leaped out of the confining role of follower-student. She volunteered to do the lecture on leadership and the free market. She changed the course of classroom conversations as though she were the teacher. She unabashedly queried the class, “Why are the online forums such a flop?” and then she convinced me to alter the grade/reward system in order to heighten the participation and quality of those online discussions. Other students built an accountability system and discussions skyrocketed. Why was she so motivated, so comfortable throwing away “the” leader and instead leading?

This to me is THE most important leadership question:  How do we unleash the Anna in all of our followers?  They need not show up as BIG, bold a–kicking leadership like Anna did.  (Indeed, I may write about Jackie next week whose leadership was so quiet, some might think it wasn’t leadership at all.)  Here are some of my thoughts – to prime your thoughts, actions and comments — on how it happens:

1. You acknowledge the heck out of each individual for their “small” wins.
2. You publicly celebrate their initiative and leader-like accomplishments.
3. You constantly – until you’re sick of it – invite and expect people to reach beyond!
4. You help people set goals that push them to reach beyond.
5. In every way you can you let them know it’s safe to try and to fall short.
6. You believe they can lead and continually build your faith in them.
7. You continually create and point out opportunities for them to lead.

What do you think is most important?  I invite you to think about someone on your team, in your family, or in your classroom who’s snug in the great vast and passive middle of the bell curve.  How might you nudge them to risk 

Leading with their best self?!

Dan

* Paraphrasing Ronald Heifetz of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

The comments were awesome last week about my u-turn and how I replayed the comments of the angry driver.  I learned a lot, especially about forgiveness. Thanks!

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have great collaborators just drop into my working life. Have you?  These folks are like a tomato plant that just keeps sprouting green bulbs that turn red and juicy long into the fall.  Or, they’re like a late season acquisition (does anybody remember the year the Tigers picked up Doyle Alexander?) who brings youthful desire, but also calm, professionalism, and wisdom.  With RFL today I hold up the example of one such amazing co-worker. Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Negin honored me by auditing my Fall course at the Haas School of Business and then my Spring course at Boalt School of Law. Jon’s example inspires two thoughts.

First, in our youth-obsessed culture we routinely overlook and discount experience.  In schools, governments and businesses I have worked, I’ve seen the corrosive disdain people feel toward some “elders” and watched work relationships further collapse in a downward cycle, spurred by the hurt and cynicism of those “elders.   A good HR person might have done so magic, but typically it’s a bean counter who comes along to find an exit chute for the 55-year old who’s well up the salary ladder, yet even by his or her own estimation is not being used to create great value.  In the right shop, though; with the right boss; with well-defined goals; with respect as the driving force; and with candor and collaboration; such people can contribute greatly.  I know it well, having watched my dad in a big corporate bureaucracy.  Lousy managers helped give him an ulcer, while a great manager during his fourth decade with the company gave him a second life, where he happily produced his best work. It was like that boss picked him up off waivers.  And the company delighted in their find.

Colonel Negin is younger than my dad was (is actually younger than I), but had similarly vast experience as my dad – running ROTC, leading men in Desert Storm, teaching at West Point. I hit the jack pot when he signed up for my courses.  Although he received no academic credit, he still did every assignment; when a 10-15 page paper was due, he submitted a remarkable 17-pager.  With such behavior, he “modeled the way” and generated great credibility.   And Jon taught me something very important about leadership that I want to share.

Jon is developing an idea he calls Leadership A.R.T. – Appropriate Response Theory.  His core idea is that leadership is not one size fits all, but instead requires very different approaches at different times.  In particular, there are times – especially in his line of work – that require him to assert old fashioned top-down control. But during more routine times, Jon’s focus with his men and women is to build their skills, confidence, judgment and collaboration. So he consciously pulls back. And one of Jon’s key points is powerful:  the better you do the “routine” work of empowering others, the less frequent you’ll reach crisis and require urgent top-down intervention.

To come full circle: We can do a lot better job of avoiding the crises of payrolls that are top-heavy with weak-producing “elders,” if we do the leadership work of engaging them, challenging, inspiring and supporting them. Jon is a very special leader.  And I was crazy-thrilled to teach him a little and learn from him a lot.  But I posit that there are great people in our organizations who routinely languish, because WE don’t figure out how to engage them best. I encourage you to pick somebody up on waivers and help them in the late years of their career to truly

Lead with their best self,

Dan

P.S. For those of you interested in issues of women in leadership, and of religion (especially the Roman Catholic brand), and of the problem with old-fashioned paternalistic leadership….you might enjoy the column I wrote in the Huffington Post on Friday, called “Nun-Sensical Male Leadership.”

Friends,

I have one story I’ll frame with three questions.  If you feel like it, comment on them when you’re finished reading.

1.   How important for everyday leadership at home and work is the phenomenon I will discuss?

2.   What’s your experience been?

3.   Do you think the issue is mostly just an introvert issue?  How would those of you who prefer extraversion experience a daily incident like this.

Here’s the story.  On Saturday, Kate and I picked up Cece who was attending her roommates’ graduation at the Big House at UM.  Cars were backed up for about a half mile and I was attempting to cut across three lanes to make a u-turn. Just as I was seeing my way clear, a man two cars back rolled down his window and screamed at me, “Hey a–hole, you can’t do that.”  I casually waved and flashed him a peace sign as two cars graciously let me through and on my way.

“What a jerk,” one of my daughters said.  My amygdala – the ancient brain stem, where the fight-flight  survival instincts lie  - must have been firing, because my mind was spinning like a jet ski.  One thought right after the next:  ”I shouldn’t have done that.”  ”Man that guy was a jerk?” “Why don’t I just let this go?”  ”What was his problem?”  ”What’s with people?”  ”I guess I showed him with that peace sign.”  ”Quit gloating that was totally passive-aggressive!” Usually this chorus would have just stayed in my head.  But I said to my 22 and 21-year old daughters:  ”I hate it that an incident like that keeps replaying in my head.  I guess it’s some ancient male ego thing.”  They eagerly chimed in that they experience the same thing – their minds playing and replaying confrontations as if to resolve them – but without resolution.

Here’s what I think about my first question above:  Negativity is a major downer and a serious leadership concern!  When the brain is awash in fight or flight cortisol, it’s hard to get anything done.  This has implications for negative bosses (see the conversation about Steve Jobs a few weeks ago; how long do you think people replayed getting chewed out by him?!!).  It also has implications for the cultures that bosses allow to exist.  Even worse, negative outbursts are the dirty secrets of so many of our homes.  I know that I have said things to my kids that I wished I could take back, and that I suspect they have replayed hundreds of times.  I also suspect that very often – probably in the case of the guy who swore at me – the target of our anger is probably not the person or event that caused our frustration in the first place.  And that just confuses people who wonder: “Was what I did that bad?  Am I that bad?”  Such unclarity is the enemy of good management.

Question 2: What’s your experience been?  I’m curious how many others carry around attacks, insults, sleights, etc.  I’m curious too if you’ve found productive ways to release or otherwise defang the attacks and subdue the replays.

Here’s the third angle about which I have a hypothesis and seek your thoughts.   I’m reading Susan Cain’s fascinating book, whose title makes her point Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking.  Cain suggests that many introverts are from birth what Harvard child psychologist Jerome Kagan calls “high reactives.”  These folks whose high sensitivity is often detectable by four months old, tend to retreat from the threats and noise of external stimuli and into their thoughts and feelings.  So, my question is:  Do those of you who prefer introversion repeatedly replay incidents of confrontation and conflict?  And what about those of you prefer extraversion?  Do you relate to my story, or do you find it fairly easy to release and not second- and third-guess such incidents?

Hope we can all share some learning in order to:

Lead with our best selves!

Dan

Friends,

This week I am launching a new vehicle that will support and extend Reading for Leading.  It’s a video blog or v-log I will be publishing on a periodic basis at the site of my friend, MariaShriver.  These v-logs will alternate between topics — from  leading at the kitchen table to leading in the work space.  Maria and I sat down in her office in L.A. to explore this new collaboration and talked about why we’re passionate and what we’re excited about when it comes to leadership.

Maria drew out what I consider to be the core issues of leadership, and also asked me about the challenge for women and leadership.  You can see that video below.   It’s about four minutes long.

“I began talking about ‘architects of change’ when I was First Lady of California.  I define an architect of change as someone who sees a problem and doesn’t wait for someone else to come along with the solution.  That can be at home; you can be an architect of change by changing the topic of conversation at the dinner table or by instituting a new one… by being the best caretaker for a parent who’s ailing. You can be an architect of change by raising kids that are well balanced, are happy, and that are aware of the world around them.  You can be an architect of change by running for office, [or] by changing the school lunch menu…”

That’s of course what I call “everyday leadership!”  It’s the belief that authority/position is not the same thing as leadership.  Leadership is instead a  decision, a choice, a standpoint you will take.  It’s not a once-for-all-time.  It’s a practice I can choose every Monday morning, or any other time I want to be meaningful and make a difference.  Maria continued talking about architects of change:

“There is an architect of change in each and every  person…

“[They] Really believe that their lives are their message.”

I love that phrase, “your life is your message.”  Each of us matters.  Or, as Gandhi has been paraphrased, when he connected global issues to our own individual ability to change, “be the change you hope to see in the world.”*

Change the world as you

Lead with your best self!

Dan

* It’s a good lesson that the viral net can spread half-truths as fast and wide as the truth.  According to the Gandhi Serve Foundation, there is no record that the great Indian leader ever spoke this, arguably his most famous “quote.”  For those who are interested this is what I found:

About 5 years ago I saw this “quote” on Arun Gandhi’s website, prominently placed, for the first time. As I hadn’t come across this quote before I refered to some authentic quote compilations of Gandhi as well as the CWMG but in vain. When I asked Arun about it (by email) his then Office Assistant Betty Jennings replied on 15 April 2004:

“The quote you are seeking is paraphrased from a longer paragraph. We have never been able to find that wording, although we use it also, in M.K.Gandhi’s works of 98 VOLs. This is the paragraph and the source:

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.

VOL 13, Ch 153, General Knowledge About Health; Page 241, Printed in the Indian Opinion on 9/8/1913 From The Collected Works of M.K.Gandhi; published by The Publications Division, New Delhi, India.”

From the GandhiServeFoundation accessed by DGM on 4/22/12 at http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/a-gandhi-quote