(Your) Leadership in Our Democracy

Friends,

As we begin work today, across the U.S. we are down to 99 days until the election. 36 governors will be elected. One-third of the United States Senate. All 435 members of Congress. And state legislators in many states. Here in Michigan campaign finance reports came out on Friday. The amounts being raised and spent seem almost obscene, and the totals will climb. The great majority of spending by congressional and statewide candidates will be directed at television ads — 30-second spots — designed to send a message and evoke a response, often an emotional one. A local reporter chided me in the last week for saying in one breath that I thought voters were smarter than people think, and in the next breath saying that these ads have already had a huge impact. I don’t see the contradiction. TV will influence many. Yet thoughtful discussion will move a relatively few, yet hugely important group. So much in our democracy turns on the discussions that thinking people have. I don’t mean that some people can think and others can’t. We all think. I mean that some will get engaged and actively engage others, while too many will not be touched, challenged, or engaged in the questions that will dictate who will lead them and how.

It’s up to each of us as citizens to decide whether we are ready to turn our leadership over to the victor in the battle of political spots or get ourselves informed and bring others into dialogue about where we should be heading. As you’re watching ads over the next three months, consider getting off the couch to live the democracy that we champion to the world. Enter the public dialogue, and

Lead with your best self, Dan

A story almost too powerful for words

Friends,

For nearly a month I’ve been wanting to retell this story, but it kept being too darned simple to tell. Mind you, the story is utterly fantastic — in the Disney sense of unimaginable, and in the everyday sense of wonderful! Yet, I could find no real twist, no complex-yet-simple hook to hang it on. I still don’t have that hook, so I will just tell the amazing story that you likely read about last month:

Warren Buffett announced that he is giving approximately $30 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He says that they’ll be better at giving it away than he would, and he enjoys what he’s doing more than he would enjoy creating a big foundation. This enormous gift from the second richest man to the richest man is not all that surprising if you’ve followed Buffett:

He is a fan of the estate tax, saying that dynastic giving is a form of welfare to the heirs. (His advice to the wealthy: give your children enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.)

He still lives in the modest home in Omaha that he bought for $31,500 in 1958.

He drives himself to McDonalds for cheeseburgers and drinks Cherry Cokes. He does have a plane, which he refers to as “The Indefensible.”

Buffett is an iconoclast; he just does what he thinks is right, and he’s pretty smart about doing it. He’s also quite humble about what he does. So, it’s unlikely there will be a Warren Buffett University or even a Warren Buffett Foundation! Makes you want to write a “big” anonymous check, doesn’t it?

I didn’t have a shiny hook to hang this amazing story on. What about Buffett’s philanthropic leadership strikes you? Does it illustrate ways in which you want to . . .

Lead with your best self?!

Dan

They’ll be spizzed at Ford

Friends,

Imagine you are sitting in a board or commission meeting. You know how those things are - the night before them, everyone checks their schedule and lays out their just-back-from-the-cleaners business suits, we sit around the big rectangular table, tons of paper that some of us have read, a dictating machine, the name placards out for the new members, staff outside the fishbowl, and “the chair will entertain a motion . . . ya di ya di ya.” Bang the gavel. Z-z-z-z.

So, when Janet Lawson, executive director started explaining at an official meeting of the Michigan Community Service Commission how we were going to reform the Governor’s Service Awards, and she told us all that she and her team were “really spizzed” about the new Awards program, you can imagine the looks. At first people seemed a little nervous, like maybe we didn’t know what the word “spizzed” actually meant (Be honest: Do you?). But we were seeing if others were similarly befuddled. Of course, we all looked quite serious and masked our uncertainty; this was a board meeting after all. But then slowly the subtle sideways glances turned to small and knowing smiles that worked their way around the room, as if to say, “Don’t you love this 50-ish woman talking with the unvarnished enthusiasm of a 4 year old?!!!” That’s our Janet Lawson.

For two years Janet brought something that every team loves: pure, creative, joyous ENERGY! In her two years at the helm of the Community Service Commission she brought a magic wand of energy everywhere she went:
* one-on-one meetings with new commissioners (that’s why they knew she wasn’t crazy or “immature” when she told us she was spizzed)
* new initiatives to get mentoring on the airwaves
* a Governor’s Service Awards dinner without the dinner but with Jeff Daniels and extraordinary local performers and a cheap ticket and lots of fun instead
* a fun team competition at work to get her staff healthier (measured in pounds lost and laughter expressed)

Leaders gauge energy levels, and leaders get people spizzed by the leader’s enthusiasm. Oh, it can be introverted. It can be a quiet drive. It can be modeled through long hours, intense concentration, risk taking. But there’s nothing like seeing it, feeling it, being infected by the sheer joy of it. Janet Lawson I’ll never be, but I will not forget how Janet lived the lesson: teams thrive on energy. As a result, I will bring a little bit more of energy, and I will encourage the natural actors in our company to light up our stage with their joy and flair.

Today Janet’s staff members will arrive to find personalized gifts she left each of them late Friday. Our loss at the Community Service Commission is Ford’s great gain, as Janet begins as their worldwide director of volunteerism and giving. Ford: get ready to get spizzed.

You’ve got to get spizzed yourself if you’re going to . . .

Lead with your best self,

Dan

P.S. If you want another fun example of leadership energy how about this one: Has anyone seen Detroit Tigers pitcher Nate Robertson in the late innings chewing a golf ball sized wad of gum and bringing the rest of the team to the edge of the dugout to chew, and cheer on their brothers? Brings a smile to my face every time I see it.

Leading on the front lines

Friends,

My daughter Kate announced a couple years ago that Alexander the Great was the one general that she would have wanted to fight for. “Why?” I asked. She replied, “He was the one I’ve read about who actually fought next to his soldiers and never asked them to do anything he wouldn’t. It made him a better general because he knew what he was talking about and he knew the danger his soldiers faced.”

Reading for Leading is less an attempt to teach fancy new stuff than to remind you and me of the core practices of leadership. And to recognize that often really innocent forces - within us and without - knock us off track from practicing these basics. Such forces make it hard to be Alexander-like. When you have some authority in an army, a bureaucracy, or a corporate structure, you’re pulled away from the front lines. By your own thoughts: “I’m too busy.” “My time’s too expensive to be digging, greeting customers or cleaning up after a board meeting.”

Sometimes folks at mid-levels in the organization really don’t want the brass on the front lines. Consciously or otherwise, they’d rather you not hear things directly. Or, they don’t want it to look like they haven’t planned perfectly. I imagine that’s what staff thought when Roger Penske, chair of the Superbowl XL Host Committee grabbed a shovel, to pitch in when Detroit’s Winterblast preview was treated to a blizzard the night before kickoff. It would have been easy for him to stop, with folks saying, “Here Roger, give me that shovel. You shouldn’t be doing that.” But you can bet the volunteers and hourly workers appreciated his persistent humility and attention to the task at hand.

This past Friday, Colonel Tadarial Sturdivant was feted as he retired from his post as the 15th director of the Michigan State Police. I was most taken by the speech given by Mike Moorman who represented the Troopers Association, the frontline, non-officer corps of the MSP. Trooper Moorman said that Tad Sturdivant was “a trooper’s colonel.” He went on to describe how when the MSP was dispatched to quell the disturbance in Benton Harbor in 2003, Colonel Sturdivant was on the street with the troops, not back in an office in Lansing. And when a Michigan unit was dispatched to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Colonel Sturdivant served right alongside the troopers. That, he said, is a trooper’s colonel.

If it’s been a while since you’ve hit the front lines, you might look for a chance to get back there this week. Question the thoughts and the words that keep you from getting there, a vital place to -

Lead with your best self,

Dan

Fathers Dad Leadership

Friends,

Tim Russert of Meet the Press, has followed up last year’s acclaimed tribute to his father Big Russ with a compilation of the stories that readers poured out to him in response to that first book. This one is called Wisdom of Our Fathers. Hearing Russert talk about it made me think of my own hero, Jack Mulhern (1928-1996). His two favorite words were sacrifice and love. He pronounced them with his actions even more than his tongue. The achievement he was unquestionably most proud of was that all 7 of his kids earned college degrees.

Big Russ and Dad inevitably turn my gaze to less fortunate kids, to think, “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” I have mentored two boys in the past four years. One raised by a single mom, whose love, determination, encouragement and discipline with her children inspired me. The other whom I mentioned in last week’s RFL is being raised by his grandmother, who’s valiantly trying to fill the chasm in his parentless life. 40% of American children spend part of their lives in single-parent households. Estimates are that 70% of African American boys are being raised without fathers. Many of their biological fathers were themselves raised without fathers.

From a moral standpoint, these children belong to all of us. We have the opportunity to put a finger on the scale of life that is weighted so heavily against them. I mentor because my father’s love (and some would well say, my Father’s love) was unearned. Dad put his whole self on that scale for each of us.

90% of our prison population is male. While some worry about the fairness of college admissions and the morality of affirmative action, I worry about prison admissions and the lack of affirmative action to keep children out, especially African American boys.

33% of our mentor population is male. Why not think about putting your finger on that scale of justice? Have a hand in crafting the lives of young people who through no fault of their own, are longing for a friend, who will,

Lead with their best self,

Dan

P.S. While I worry much about our boys, I readily acknowledge that critical fields remain tilted against our girls and women.

4th of July Leading and Listening

Friends,

I marvel at what our Founding Fathers wrought when they declared independence 230 years ago tomorrow. In action, democratic leadership is wild, fascinating, and full of challenge. At no time is this more true than during an election, like the one my wife faces in November. In this period, leaders in their own right seek to move Jennifer by urging her to do what they consider good. Whether they are environmentalists or fundamentalists, big city dwellers or Yoopers (our friends in the Upper Peninsula, or UP), feminists or motorcycle riders, they are trying to move her. And at the same time she is trying to move them, to motivate them to work for her overall view of a better world.

Jennifer continually lets people know that she truly wants to hear their views. She must get 50-500 opinions a day. I picture hundreds of people with Jennifer at the center and everyone trying to nudge her and the government in a different direction. As her spouse, I have 5-10 people a day telling me how our team can do things differently - whether that is governing or campaigning. They are all trying to lead. The jostling is a sign of a healthy democracy.

As leaders we have to listen. Each perspective is uniquely part of the picture. Each perspective brings new ideas and involvement in communities and involvement in democracy. So, those we are privileged to lead, must be heard. . . even though it’s sometimes hard. When the advice feels more like attacks, I sometimes want to put it bluntly, “Have you even listened to the other side?”

A leaders gut-level response to fight back is what youth coaches feel when parents assail them, what CEOs feel when the papers question them, and what managers feel when they are criticized. So, we have to remember one of the most energy dampening things leaders can do - in politics, business or life - is to stop listening. When we stop, we lose people’s motivation and their trust. Cynicism hardens and the democracy weakens. When we ask people to care about our company, congregation, or community, we must be prepared to do the hard work of listening. When we allow true candor, we will in time generate the capacity in those we lead to accept candor in return. And open, two-way communication generates both learning and trust.

Our Founding Fathers undoubtedly listened to a great variety of opinions. The freedoms our democracy produces are well worth the wild ride. Cultivate the courage and trust to listen and …

Lead with your best self,

Dan