What Your People Are All About

Friends,

As I have done for the last eight years, I again have the extraordinary privilege of participating as a leadership consultant in the Leadership Detroit program. The program brings together just over 60 people who are leading in their organizations in the private, not-for-profit, and governmental sectors. They will meet for a day or two in each of the next nine months. Their orientation retreat was held this past week.

The retreat started with coffee and the usual ritual of hand-shakings, name-tag readings, connection-makings, and the ubiquitous line, “So, what do you do?” Then in the first formal exercise, each person was asked to share a “defining moment” from his or her life. The brief snippets ran the gamut of experiences from the loss of parents or siblings to the birth of children, from moments that were humbling to tragic to jubilant.

When the group was asked after the defining moments were shared, “What stood out about this experience?” the first response was (as it is almost every year): “I was struck by how none of the stories had to do with business successes, promotions, titles, or achievements. They were so personal.” People — the same kind we work with, for, and against every day — shed the uniforms of their cell phone companies, auto suppliers, utilities, mental health providers, etc., and met each other as people. It was moving, humbling, and unifying.

The stories almost always point in two directions that we, as people who hope to lead others, should continually appreciate. One is to family. If we want to support our people and get the best out of them, we should never forget what they generally think is best about them: their family, their people. The Fortune “100 Best Companies to Work For” all seem to get this, developing formal and informal practices that support people as family people. Second, the defining moment stories point to meaning, often because people have been awakened by deaths or near brushes with death. People seek purpose, meaning, work and relationships that matter and leave a mark. So, point to the meaning in work and beyond.

Apropos of this effort — as I write this on Sunday night — my nine-year old son Jack has read this draft and proposes this ending to RFL: “Tell them that you have to end because you have to sing and put your son to bed.” Wise man. As he grows, he’ll surely do what you endeavor to do .

Lead with your best self,

Dan

Monday Morning Focus

Friends,

How do you focus on a Monday morning? Last week I wrote about how important it is to keep a vision in front of you and those you lead — especially in times of press and pressure. Today just a few words on the importance of attentiveness to others — something that can get lost when stress is high and multi-tasking beckons. Leadership necessarily means getting things done with and through others. So it’s vital to stay with them.

My friend Cathy Raines used to print up one of those old fashioned rubber stamps every year. She’d pick a slogan for fun, for focus, or for both, and then she’d put that stamp on letters, envelopes, notes to people, or paper that she’d keep in front of herself. My favorite of those stamps was when she turned the raffle ticket line into a reminder about leadership practice and her own state of mind; her stamp read: “You must be present to win.”

Being present has become more difficult. The computer and the Blackberry (or “crackberry,” as I’ve heard them called) take us from the place where we are literally physically present — a staff meeting, a drop-in by a staff member, or the road we’re sharing with other vehicles hurtling along at 75 mph — to other places that beckon like the Sirens called to Odysseus. Someone on my team stands in my doorway for a needed check-in and I distractedly alternate between the computer screen and their presence in my doorway. Not always, but often this inattention leads both to sloppy work and drains energy from others who are looking to me for feedback, insight or support.

An RFL reader responded candidly to last week’s column with a powerful story about his re-learning the importance of being present to win:
I was, as often happened, paying only partial attention when my older daughter, then a ten year old, was trying to tell me something important to her, but not particularly interesting to me. She noticed that I was busy reading the newspaper and not focused on her comments. She asked me to listen to her.

I said, “I’m listening, honey, you just go ahead and tell me.”

She reached up and grabbed my face, turning my head to look directly in her eyes. “No,” she said, “I mean full-face listen!”

So, I offer these two simple reminders: “You must be present to win,” and “No, I mean full-face listen!” as great reminders of how to focus and to…

Lead with your best self,

Dan

A question in a time of press and pressure

Friends,

Jennifer and the kids and I were on a long drive in the car last week. Talk turned to how hectic and pressured the next two months were going to be. I said “I have a question for each of us: What activity or attitude or behavior do you think you could have that would most contribute to the peace and happiness of the team, of the family during this tough time?” They are used to odd questions from me, and as I expected they asked me to go first. I said “Two things: more patience, and an assumption on my part that we can make your requests or suggestions work, instead of my natural tendency of assuming it can’t work and that I’ll have to resist it. I want to try to think win-win more often.” I was gratified when they each offered what they could do. (One passed during the ride but shared her thoughts later.)

I learned a long time ago — but unfortunately continually forget — that when it comes to working with groups one good question is worth a hundred pronouncements. And so this question generated some ideas, perhaps commitments (although I didn’t insist on it), and a palpable sense of energy and unity of purpose. If you look at that question I asked, it has two pieces. Although it may not appear this way, it is first of all a statement of vision. I was not trying to be visionary nor poetic nor inspiring. They would have laughed me out of the car if I had tried. But I was implicitly laying out a picture of success that we could all buy, namely, a family of peace and happiness.

Later in the week I was reading the page proofs of my book Everyday Leadership, that will be published in February. I was struck by a section where I ask the question: Can you afford to talk about vision when you’re in the midst of incredibly challenging realities? You won’t be surprised by my answer: You need to talk about vision especially at times when reality is challenging. The press and pressure of the work doesn’t go away when you talk the vision. But it does cause people to remember where they’re going, what the big game is. And when we focus on vision, we get ourselves back on the same team, rather than defining ourselves in opposition to each other. We are Granholm Mulherns, not adults vs the kids, or the boy vs the girls, or oldest vs middle child. We are Ford, not legal vs financial, labor vs management, plant vs corporate, design vs finance, etc. We are educators, not parents vs teachers, teachers vs administrators, businesspeople vs the educational system. So that now in the press and pressure, cooperation, respect, and energy all rise — drawn forth by a shared vision of success.

The second thing my question aimed at was helping our kids and us find our own individual place in alignment with the vision. People want to contribute, to feel they can make a difference, but they need to be reminded that they can do so, and invited to give it their best. It helps when you go first with an offer to give your best, and thus,

Lead with your best self,

Dan

The omnipresence of ego

Friends,

Never underestimate the sneaky power of the human ego. But neither doubt the ability of people to suddenly put the “me” aside and do something great for “us.”

When I was younger, I had supposed that people got over ego. I figured at some point in their careers, at some level in their corporate ascent, at some juncture in their political rise, they would gain a level of self assurance that put them above it. Ego would be in check, not in control.

By “ego” I mean a certain drive for credibility, recognition, credit. I mean the character that almost never speaks out loud but can scream within each of us: “Hey, look at me. I did it. I’m here. I mean something. I matter. I achieve. I rock. I rule. I drive a Lexus. Don’t mess with me.”

And even more than that, I mean by ego the little character that roars within: “He doesn’t even see me. She thinks she’s better than me. They’re trying to squeeze me out. Nothing I say matters to him. She listens to everyone but me. He did that just to irritate me. If I don’t do it then it won’t get done right. I know I’m right, but nobody will listen.”

This omnipresent ego when it’s really excited can be petty, vengeful, and vicious. It can also — sometimes at the same time — be self-lacerating. And let’s give ego the tons of credit it truly craves and truly deserves: Ego can push us to incredible accomplishment, as we attempt to satisfy its craving to BE SOMEBODY.

If you have a team, ego is the hidden partner within each player at the table. I found ego at every senior executive manager level where I coached or consulted. And in the cutthroat, merging, acquiring, reorganizing, and downsizing world we’re in, I found lots of deeply bruised egos. I find ego my constant companion these days when I wonder: “How do I prove myself worthy with Jennifer’s team? How do I contribute and demonstrate that I am valuable?”

Here are the lessons I extract: First, I need to keep acknowledging my own ego, and decide at any moment whether it is helping or getting in the way. For instance I might ask: Is ego causing me in this situation to be overly controlling or unnecessarily competitive? Ego has a way of regularly inflating my importance in a situation. Second, I have to recognize that everyone around me needs appropriate recognition and encouragement, and their egos, just like my own, makes them human not evil. Finally, whether it is me or those I work with, the fact that ego is omnipresent says to me that I better similarly make purpose, vision, goals — the stuff of us — just as omnipresent as the “me” of ego.

You need to use, yet rise above ego, if you are to truly,

Lead with your best self,

Dan