Mom on her 80th birthday

I returned Sunday from the Oregon coast (which by the way struck me as though it was a marvelous cousin to the lands of the Lake Michigan dunes). I was on a retreat with 11 other men looking to renew “meaning in the middle of life.” Ann Ladd and Tim Barraud* who facilitated the session invited us to pair up and ask another guy, “What deeply touches you that makes you love this human life?” The structure of the exercise was to have the other answer the question with something, e.g., listening to the Beatles, a sunset, a child, a spouse, etc., at which point the listener (and scribe) would say “thanks,” and then repeat the question. The speaker would give another thing that deeply touched them.  And the process was repeated over and over. I believe we each had 10 minutes to reveal to ourselves and other what deeply touched us.

The exercises that had preceded that one had opened us to personal hopes and aspirations, as well as to some of our well-kept fears and unaccepted losses. I suppose it was surfacing, facing and easing of some of my fears that gave me a more right-brain perspective on some of what “touches me and makes me love this human life.” Early on my list, I told my partner: “My mom.” I enumerated aspects. Perhaps you too would have noted your mom’s remarkable steadfastness?  Maybe if you’re of my generation you would note mom’s growing fragility, which is part of what intensified my deep love for her and for life.  I was surprised to hear myself speak a candid sense, that her mortality made her that much more precious to me. 

I saw this exercise and so much of what we did on the retreat as powerful, right-brain leadership.   They led us – in my words, but in a different way — to our personal VISION and of the deep VALUES that motivate and direct us. It also unleashed deep gratitude, a powerful life and leadership force.

I was not able to get home to Detroit, but I know some ways everyday leadership works.  So, I called my mom and asked if I could share an exercise from my retreat. I began to ask her that question over and over: “What deeply touches you that makes you love this human life?” And her list got longer and longer: her kids love for her, art, music, her garden, Spring, novels, her kids caring for each other, her ability walk in a safe neighborhood.  I asked her how she felt about the list, and she said that though she’s a person who regularly gives God thanks, the exercise made her appreciate more deeply how good her life was.  I felt great and told her how awesome I thought she was that she was so full of rich life.  And the fact was, if I had upped her energy or motivation, She had really inspired me. As James MacGregor Burns famously wrote back in 1978: “transforming leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with each other in such a way that leader and follower raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality.”

Maybe you’ll try Linda and Tim’s exercise with your mom (or spouse or kids or staff).  And I invite you to see how leading through the heart is what really moves us all to higher levels of life, love and leadership!

Leading with your best self,

Dan

*

Sometimes I wonder:  Have I gotten too soft, when so many of my Reading for Leading blogs are about relationship?  But then I figure:  how else can you lead or be led, except in relationship?  And this past week offered three ripe examples, one from hoops, and two in the semester’s end.

I was in the car and heard an interview with Doc Rivers, the raspy-throated coach of the Boston Celtics.  The Celts got knocked out by the Knicks.  A reporter asked Rivers what he and his 37-year old 7-foot star Kevin Garnett had said to each other on the court at the end.  Rivers said, “I told him I loved him.”  And he said that Garnett asked him, “You gonna be alright?”  Rivers seemed dumbfounded that his player — who perhaps had reached the end of an amazing career — was worrying about him!  You could tell he was deeply moved as he talked about how amazing KG was.

So, I pulled over and tapped out an email to Andre.  He’s about the same age as Garnett and a senior in my leadership class at the business school at Berkeley.  Andre emails me about once a week and stops by office hours ever few weeks.  He tells me some idea or other that he loves. Some concept that he’s practicing at his full-time job, or putting to work as he looks to his future.  A couple weeks ago he “warned” me in an email that he’d be high-fiving or chest-bumping me every time he saw me.  It was how, he said, he needed to express his appreciation.  I wonder if Doc Rivers felt about KG, the way I felt about Andre — that I taught better every single class because of his presence.  He led me!  Led me out of my head.  Led me from my heart. Expected my best.  Told me what difference I was making. In other words, he did just about everything I was  supposed to be doing for him.  And maybe most of all, he humbled me.  I felt honored to teach him.  We all lead better when we’re touching that true vein of humility that runs near our hearts.

“A” led me, too.  Her picture belongs beside the definition of iconoclast.  She overthrows tradition.  In my course, where I urge them to see that because I am the authority does not make me “the” leader (indeed that there is no “the” leader), “A” was more than happy to take me at my word. She pushed back any time she felt the urge.  She took nothing on faith.  Two weeks ago someone asked me whether their final project had to be solo, or whether they could perhaps do it with a partner. “A” just blurted out, “Of course you can do it with someone else,” then looked at me, as if she could hear her parents saying, “A! Show some respect.”  I said, “go on A.  Explain.”  She did: “This is a class about leadership, so it’s all about working with others and bringing out their best, so of course you can work with someone else” she said as well or better than I might have.

Going out the door at the end of the last class, “A” apologized if she had ever offended me.  I’m not saying I never felt a little nervous that someone (well under half my age) would so readily seize the power I was offering to share.  I definitely felt some deep impulse of fear that I might lose control if all these students followed her lead and decided they wanted to lead.  But I told her the truth, when I said I LOVED her interventions and the way she modeled inquiry, intellectual responsibility and a desire to improve what we were doing.  As with Andre’s encouragement, A’s challenges brought out my best.

Who can lead you — and whom can you lead — from “the bottom” up?  I have a ways to go to be the teacher I want to be, but I’m utterly convinced that any greatness I can muster will be multiplied by students — so-called followers — both affirming me and challenging me to do better.

It takes others leading for us to

Lead with our best,

Dan

What if you screwed up a lot? Made judgment calls that didn’t work.  Relied confidently on past experience only to find out that there were different variables at play this time.  What if your people messed up a lot, like missed their goal 70% of the time?

So, consider this: last year only 23 of 144 players* in Major League Baseball got hits in more than 30% of their  at bats.  And the most successful wasn’t much better – just under 34% of the time he got a hit.  Can you imagine, “stepping up to the plate” — as we say in our life-and-business-jargon — and failing 70% of the time?

In a marvelous documentary called “Inning by Inning” that’s showing on ESPN, Augie Garrido, the winningest coach in NCAA baseball history says,

“Baseball screws everybody! It takes no sides, it’s a game of failure.”

In his book Life is Yours to Win, he writes:

“As a game of failure, baseball is a fickle mistress.  I tell our players that . . . often.  Yet, it’s true; someone fails on every play. Sometimes several people fail.  The pitcher fails to get a strike. The batter swings and misses.  The base runner is thrown out.  The fielder makes an error.  The coach gives the wrong sign. . . [Ellipses in original]  It sometimes pains me to admit that my favorite sport is so cruel.”

Garrido is a coach and as you can see, a philosopher.  The big lessons don’t escape him when he talks about baseball to his Division 1 college athletes, for only 1% of them he says,will be able to support themselves playing baseball.  He says failure is a teacher.  You learn to win by losing.

And his specific instruction to his players seems so worth sharing:

“If you let the negative things overwhelm you and overpower you, you will be f****** miserable. That’s all there is to it. If … [a failure] bothers you for awhile, if you got to think it through, nothing wrong with that. You got to work some things out in your own head, nothing wrong with that. But when you show up tomorrow it’s a new day and you need to see the opportunity.”

How much better we would be, if we could practice the discipline these players must develop to let it go, not fear failure, but step into the batters box, again and again.

If you’re like me, you’re still holding on to some failures.  Some big.  Others quite trivial.  What if you let a couple go this week.  Practice letting them go.  Even if you only succeed 30% of the time in that task, you be better at

Leading with your best self,

Dan

Note:  Garrido is no saint. Remarkably, he allowed the cameras tremendous access to him.  One of his tirades is easily found on the internet; often without the context which makes sense of it. But after dropping about 20 F-bombs on his players, seemingly spent from his tirade, he slows for a second and says, “I have totally failed you guys.” He begins again lashing out (not at particular players or plays but at “our failure” to play the way we can), and before he walks out, he says, “I’m sorry.  I apologize. I have totally let you down.”  It’s a remarkably live and raw example of a person who is driven to succeed, feels the total anguish of disappointment, appears to project that anger (and he would say fear — that he’s not that great a coach) onto his players, but in the end owns it.  You could write a psychology book for leaders on this one scene.  Here it is, not to be listened to with children or at work or for those offended by vulgar language:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is6xa3UlTYs

* For baseball aficionados: The overall number is low, because it’s only those who had enough at bats to qualify for the batting title. And of course some people got on with walks and errors. So the failure rate is admittedly a little bit high.

On Wednesday, I had one of the most fun times I have ever had presenting to a group. Nate Butki invited me to speak on a panel in L.A. at the Great Places to Work Conference. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re the brains (and the heart) behind Fortune magazine’s January issue which features the “100 Best Companies to Work For.”  GPTW developed the criteria and the research behind the awards, and they also consult to organizations that want to create a “best company to work for” culture.  Nate asked me to talk about “societal trends” affecting work.

I decided to make two points:  first, that authority is less and less trusted; second, that everything in our world is just more fluid, fast, connected.  (That’s for instance how Sergei, Larry and Mark became billionaires at 25.)  As a 55-year old I can see these changes.  But I especially see them through the actions and the eyes of my college students. They learn fast, experiment, go from one thing to the next. Yes, they whined when Facebook changed its timeline (I’m still not too sure what a timeline is), but for the most part, they just go with it.

When the conference said I could bring a student, and I had a great one, a Berkeley junior named Hannah Jones, I decided:  If I want people to see fluidity and how the authority figure is so much less important, well, I’d show them! Correction:  We would show them.  Hannah began as a disembodied voice thrown from outside the room, her lavaliere mic allowing her to correct points I was making — as if Google fact-checking me.  She later came into the back of the room and continued to share how my analysis wasn’t going far enough.  For instance, when I talked about how huge cultural events like Watergate and the Vietnam War eroded our confidence in authority, she answered with a litany:  911, Enron, Gulf Oil Spill, Iraq War, the housing crash and The Great Recession, campus police violence during Occupy, and even the crash of their hero Lance Armstrong.  She asked: if you’d been through this would YOU trust authorities?

I didn’t mention that Hannah also put the whole presentation together on an online platform called Prezi that I had never used and which blew people away. In the end, she took the podium and finished the presentation for me.  Although I had obviously orchestrated her presence, she wrote her material, and she taught me.  Perhaps the biggest takeaway for me was when she said, “our generation is full of distractions, positive or otherwise,” and so she said: if you don’t engage us, we will find better ways to use our time. It may have sounded threatening, but she was just telling the truth. They’re not waiting.

I wasn’t surprised when two women came up to say how much they liked our presentation (but mostly to say they knew my brother Jim). . . while fifteen others lined up to engage Hannah.  She taught me one big lesson:  If I really want to empower people, I’ve got to keep pushing the envelope, giving them a chance, letting them strut their stuff.  These guys have a lot to teach us as we

Lead with our best self,

Dan

There will be no “Reading for Leading” from me today. I encourage you, however, to hit the Comments button below should you wish to share any succinct thoughts you have that might help other readers to . . .

Lead with your best self!

Dan

Think about a time when change was foisted upon you. How did you feel, and how did you find yourself reacting to the one who brought the change? Got it in your head? I asked my students last week to share in one-on-one conversations their answers to those questions. Then I asked them — what I’d invite you to give 30 seconds thought to: Talk about a time when you were pushing someone(s) else to change; what did that feel like? What did you encounter in response from the other(s).

I asked them next in groups of 5-7 to come up with the 2 commonalities from answering these questions in one-on-one exchanges. I took notes as they called out the commonalities they came up with. Here are my notes:

I completely and totally expected that they would talk about RESISTANCE, nevertheless I was still blown away by the extent and universality of their responses.  I announced professorially:  ”Forget reading all the great books about ‘leading change.’  You have all produced the essentials in these lists.”  There are three inescapable conclusions. For the first I simply quote my friends Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner:

1.  ”Not one person [of the thousands they studied] claimed to have achieved a personal best by keeping things the same.  All leaders,” they continue, “challenge the process.”*  Leading involves bringing others to change! Kouzes and Posner study “personal best,” stories, and I guarantee in leadership failures, change and resistance-to-rebellion are almost always the lion’s share of the story of disappointment.  And as my students made so patently clear:

2. Challenge and change generate resistance, much of which is directed at the messenger. So:

3. Know it and prepare for it! As you lead change, what do you pay attention to?  Given that confusion, anxiety and resistance are inevitable, what works for — to get the work done and to keep you sane and safe in the process?

Love your thoughts, and I’ll share a few of my own next week!

Lead with your best,

Dan

* Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, The Leadership Challenge,  4th ed., 2003, p. 18.

Have you been watching the new Pope? Like all great leaders — would that be YOU??? — he demonstrates a powerful sense of symbols to  model a way for others.  His actions remind me of the line attributed to the awesome spiritual leader, Mahatma Gandhi, “be the change you hope to see in the world.”*

The pope has so far turned away from the gold cross to an iron cross, rejected a platform which raised him above the other cardinals, turned down the papal apartment for a humbler bishop’s apartment, rejected the covered pope mobile for an open vehicle; and celebrated Holy Thursday services not at the grand Basilica at St John’s Lateran at the Vatican but in a chapel in a youth detention facility, where he washed the feat of detainees, including women – a major break from tradition. He is the first to take the name of Francis (of Assisi), who was not a cardinal, not a bishop, not even a priest; and who was legendary for his outreach to the poor.

When he DOES these things, it multiplies the power of what he TELLS others to consider.  Here is an excerpt from a powerful account of his first Holy Thursday Chrism Mass, to which he addresses the priests of the Church:

Priests, he said, need to go the “outskirts” where there is “suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight, and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters.” He added that God is not encountered “in soul-searching or constant introspection.”

“This is precisely the reason for the dissatisfaction of some, who end up sad — sad priests — in some sense becoming collectors of antiques or novelties, instead of being shepherds living with “the smell of the sheep”,” the Pope explained. “This I ask you: be shepherds, with the “odor of the sheep”, make it real, as shepherds among your flock, fishers of men.”**

If you’re a champion of change, or if you passionately believe that there is a powerful “way” to work, live and lead, then I ask you:

How might you EMBODY your way?  How might people look at you — as many of us, some of us prone to skepticism look at this new pope — and say, “Wow. She or he has a viewpoint, a way, and they are really WALKING the walk; they’re not afraid to put it out there, to break with tradition, or with social expectations!”  Can they see it in: the way you dress, where you hold your meetings, where you spend your time, how often you get out of the office, take risks, apologize; give away your time, your trust, your skills, your knowledge, your attention?   What do your kids see?  Your staff?  Your boss?  Your aging parents?  The lady at the checkout counter?

Pope Francis is hearkening back to St. Francis and to Jesus, in focusing on those excluded.  He’s causing me to ask myself:  Where am I spending my time and energy?  Do I have the “smell of the sheep” about me or am I too safe, too comfortable, too caught up in my little world?

How might you model the way and thus:

Lead with your best self!

Dan

* It turns out there is a super-lively discussion of whether Gandhi ever said this precise line; there is no clear documentation of him saying or writing this.  However, he LIVED it and said things that were quite close (although more wordy and philosophical).  If you’re curious follow this link: http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/a-gandhi-quote.

** Edward Pentin, “Pope Urges Priests to be Like Shepherds ‘Who Smell Like Their Sheep,’” Newsmax, March 28, 2013, accessed on March 31, 2013 at: http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/pope-francis-chrism-mass/2013/03/28/id/496806.

A wonderful recent college grad was seeking advice … about how to give advice.  Her organization is one that’s trying to do the right thing by giving the front line (where she is) lots of feedback AND asking for lots of feedback from them to their managers.  This can be very challenging, because though the system is set up for feedback, not every manager is. “Why?” she wondered out loud to me,”does this guy not seem to ‘get’ anything I’m saying?”  She asked me how I thought she could give feedback that got through.

Almost everywhere I have ever worked or consulted, the front lines did not feel like the line “above” them truly listened to feedback — even when they claimed they wanted it. How is this possible? And what do you do about it. Two things.

First, it’s that old walk-in-the-moccasins thing. Kids complain about parents, parents complain about teachers, teachers about administration…and everybody complains about congress! But try serving in these jobs and you quickly find out that they are bombarded by many perspectives and competing voices; as an Israeli once said to me on the streets of Jerusalem, “Two Jews, three opinions.” That’s the truth about all of us; to a boss or a coach, one person wants order, while another demands flexibility, and you change the context and those same people will flip sides. I am not saying, “whatever a boss, teacher or congresswoman does is right.”  I’m saying that if you want to be effective with them, you first have to TRY to understand the variety of forces that tend to impinge upon them.

The second thing to do is act like YOU are “the” leader in the situation.  That’s hard! You don’t have the title, the pay, the sticks, carrots, reputation, perhaps the age or experience. So,what do you have?  The capacity to do what leaders do:  encourage the other — in this case the boss; describe why something is in their best interest (in leadership-speak we call this “sharing a vision” of success); ask how you can support them, share tools and knowledge you have.  Of course, these actions have to be filtered into an appropriate context.  Thus, for example, I don’t walk up to the Dean of the Law School and pretend he should listen to me as though I’m the Chancellor of Berkeley to whom he reports. But I do for example encourage him. I listen for how I can help. I talk about “my issues” in the context of the values that I know he cherishes for his institution. I share knowledge from my unique vantage point that might be useful.  I try to “walk” the talk of the institution.  And I do my best to open myself completely to his feedback and input; so that I grow, but also to model the way of listening eagerly to feedback, which is what I hope he and others to whom I report will reciprocate.

So, on the one hand (or since I’m talking about the proverbial moccasins, on the one foot): Respect the position, the title, the suit of authority and the pressures that your manager  must feel.  And then do your best to offer everything you can to help the person in the suit to thrive.

I hope this might help as you:

Lead with your best self!

Dan

Today’s column is really NOT about hoops (much as I love the game).

It’s about how brackets are both really cool — for reasons I do not understand — and can be kind of useful.  So, just for kicks I have created my own tournament bracket for your and my use.  In each branch of the bracket, I have put two words in a head-to-head competition. You choose the winner.  But instead of college basketball teams, I have put personal VALUES on my bracket.  For example, in “game 1″ in the South Regional, I ask you to choose which value is more important to you — Creativity or Dependability.  The winner of that “game” will go up against the winner of the square-off between Grit and Kindness.  And, for another example, in “game 4″ in the Midwest Regional, it’s Wealth against Steadfastness. Which do you prefer?

I thought it would be a fun way to sort out your personal values and boil  down to your top 4,  or if you want, you can “eliminate” all the way down to your number 1 value. We know that to lead well it is of vital importance that we know what we stand for, and what values we want to hold up to and for those with whom we work and live.

So you can either copy/print the image or heck make up your own.  Whaddya think?  What’s gonna make your Final Four? What really matters to you, as you

Lead with your best self?

Dan

When I woke him up for the second time on Sunday morning, my beloved son had that 15 year old’s look of anxious dread, and he breathed the heavy sigh to confirm it. I stole my own deep breath and sat on the side of his bed.  So many leadership discussions are duets, as much as dialogues. You meet your boss, your spouse, your co-worker with words, but with music, too. And so, as if with the gentlest stringed instrument, I asked him “What’s up?” and he sighed — as much as he said — “Just anxious.” Hallelulah’s for self-awareness! How great when someone can label what’s going on. I probed, still softly, “anything in particular?” Another sigh and he offered, “Too much homework. Not enough time.”

Fresh from re-reading Eckhardt Tolle, I invited him to see if he could hear that voice of dread, but not identify with it. “See if you can hear the anxiety, but don’t get on the side of it, arguing against yourself. See if you can just hear it, but not have to get carried away by it.” I told him how Tolle talks about “putting a little space” in there between your thoughts and your response to them. I told him I was feeling the same pressure about a big lecture I’m giving on Thursday. Time and again, I worry about these things (I was singing his song now, but with a little different sound, a little twist, a high harmony).  I told him that I still worry, and then I pull it off — not perfectly, but well.  Just as he pulls off his homework every Sunday.  He nodded….as if he were now a different person.

Reflecting later, I was reminded of an interview where Livingston Taylor talks about his brother James’ under-appreciated guitar-playing. Livingston, a professor at Berklee School of Music, talked about how James creates rhythm, working the pauses and rests as much as the notes themselves. That in turn reminded me of how my friend John Burkhardt teared up as he played Handel’s Messiah for me, and said, “listen, listen for the pause” — the pause before the great Amen. He seemed transported by that space.

The pause.

A space between the thought –    or the sigh, the gasp –             and           the “I am.”

I think “I can’t.”  I think “This is the time it’s all going to fall apart.”  And

I put space in.

I realize, “I think this.” Or, “I feel this.” But “I AM NOT this.”

Just enough space.

I asked Jack, “Does it help you to think of putting some space in there?” And he said, “Yes.”  And added as he swiveled his feet to the floor, “And it always feels better to be doing something instead of just thinking about it.”  Pause.

Amen.

Put some space somewhere today, as you

Lead with your best self!

Dan