Oct

23

Should You Say “Amen”? Or “No Way Man!”?

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Friends,

I got some great Amens from last week’s RFL. You’ll remember I was writing about how followers can bring out the best in leaders by giving them an occasional Amen or a nice job. One reader put an exclamation point on it, while another raised a valid concern.

The first wrote about encouragement and said, Truly, it’s lonely at the top. When you report to someone a partner, principal, department head, CEO, coach or parent: you generally get some feedback and hopefully some praise. But you have to adjust when you become managing partner, school superintendent, CEO, or parent because now you look up the hierarchy but there’s no one there. You’ve lost the boss to encourage and often lost the peers with whom you could joke, commiserate, or get a friendly, Amen to that, brother. This person argued that managers truly need the Amens that we unthinkingly withhold from them. To reinforce the point from last week: It’s easy to forget that the manager doesn’t stop being human, and that humans never stop needing encouragement.

A second reader recoiled at the idea that leaders needed more encouragement. He suggested that a bigger problem than unappreciated leaders is unchecked leaders. And so he asked: Would someone disagreeing with a minister be shouted-down by the rest of the congregation? Would the minister even be able to hear them? Well, I can think of one solitary time in 48 years of church-going that I ever saw a preacher publicly challenged, so I suppose that answers his questions! On the other hand, many ministers I have known do receive considerable amounts of advice, feedback, pushback, blowback, etc., outside the actual service. But the more interesting point is not the church, per se, but the general problem that authority is, as this reader suggested, often not challenged, even when it needs to be. Clearly, there are times when some in authority are not hearing, not seeking to hear, and not even remotely aware of what their followers are thinking.

The reader was dead right: encouragement alone especially with toxic or despotic authorities may not improve their management.

But consider this: encouragement and specific constructive feedback are not an either/or proposition. The very same authority figures that could use some positive encouragement in some aspects of their leadership, probably also could use some honest feedback in other domains of their leadership. Take an example from child-rearing. Could you raise a child well with only positive encouragement, or only brutal honesty about how they are performing? Of course not. They and we need both. The more genuine support we receive and the more objective-constructive feedback we receive, the more we will improve as leaders.

It takes kindness and courage to offer both types of advice to your boss, and thus…

Lead with your best self,

Dan

Oct

16

Can I Get an Amen?

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Friends,

It is referred to as a call and response, and unaccustomed to it, I found it startling at first. But I have come to appreciate it deeply. In most of the churches (as well as synagogues and even a mosque or two) that I had visited in the first four decades of my life, quiet and order were the watchwords. In my Catholic tradition and in most Protestant churches where I had worshipped, the minister spoke and the people listened €“ to him if he was good, to coughs and bird songs and whispering neighbors when he wasn’t. But in the last four years I have regularly visited black churches to recruit mentors to work with children. And there I experienced the phenomenon of call and response.
Are you hearing me? a pastor might ask, and he or she would receive in return a random cascade of a preach it, all right, talk to him Jesus, oh yes, or any number of other words of encouragement and reply. He need not even ask. Words are offered up freely, especially when he begins to quicken his pace and volume. The congregational volume will regularly rise with his. The followers respond, but the followers increasingly lead, as their emotional energy lets the preacher trust in his message and know he is being heard. They would likely describe it as the holy spirit in motion, but you needn’t have religious faith to feel that a powerful dynamic is at play. Leader and led are moving each other.

Reverend Jim Wallis spoke in Lansing a couple weeks ago about his great book God’s Politics. He told the story of how nearly frozen he was when he took to the pulpit in the historic church of his hero Reverend Martin Luther King in Atlanta, until an elder(ly) man in the front corner began to call, all right now, and preach it, and a steady stream of encouraging words. Reverend Wallis said he found his groove and some eloquence and passion, and after his talk he found the man and thanked him. The fellow said something like, Oh, yes, I’ve raised up a lot of preachers in my day.

Call and response speaks to us as followers. How well we do we bring out the best in our leaders? Or do we expect them to always be strong, clear, and perfect, without any support or guidance from us? As a parent I reflect back on the 18 or so years when I was a child and so seldom told my parents or my teachers or my coaches amen, that’s right, come on with it. Followers have a lot more power than they think to use. Are you using your power to encourage?

And from your positions of authority, you might ask, Are you hearing me? a little more often. Sometimes you’ll find out as a result that they’re not! — you’re off track and so you can adjust. But often you might gain the encouraging response that drives you forward, pulling out your best, inspiring you so that you can…

Lead with your best self,

Dan

Oct

9

Leadership and Muscle Memory

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Friends,

It was deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say. We were shooting hoops in the sidedrive. My “little” girls were now — it seemed all of a sudden — blocking my shots. One said, “let’s play lightning,” a fast-moving game we used to love but hadn’t played in a year. As we walked to the free throw line, an argument nearly broke out about which two basketballs we should use. I laughed out loud and asked them, “Do you guys remember I wrote about this very situation in an RFL years ago — about arguing about which balls we would use?” They remembered. We skipped the argument and played.

But, I was so struck by the thought: How uncanny that groups repeat, over and over, their same old patterns.

Athletes talk about a thing called “muscle memory.” It applies to much more than sports. The body memorizes patterns. The tongue and lips and vocal chords learn in the early years how to move and coordinate themselves to form words like “park” (or “pock” if that mouth is trained in Boston). The muscle movements — whether for speech, writing, or a thousand other activities become unconscious. These patterns can be changed with heightened conscious effort and repetition, but without such effort we will speak, swing a golf club, open a car door, stir our coffee, or write RFL with unquestioned repetitive patterns.

My experience with my girls suggested: just as with an individual, this pair of girls is repeating a “collective muscle memory.” It makes sense that groups would have such patterns of movement. For example, with muscle memory a manager frowns to show her frustration, and then her staff person with unconscious muscle memory, triggered by challenge, immediately begins to explain why he did what he did. The two people act like one organism. The unconscious repetitive responses are necessary, because they free our conscious minds from a million decisions. But we can see the danger. Repetition. Calcification. Misunderstanding. Reacting to the present as though it’s exactly the same as the past. It almost never is.

Leaders have to question the same old same old, the muscle memory, the deja vu all over again. Cuz stuff keeps changing. Like the kids who keep developing, the students who are different than last year’s, the customer, the competition, the board, the community, the parents, the spouse. Leaders watch. Leaders choose reality and ask whether the muscle memory is still functional. Leaders keep noticing what’s different and encouraging their teams, followers, kids, colleagues to see what’s really here right now, and whether yesterday’s solutions really work.

I am planning an upcoming conference, and the staff person sent me last year’s agenda, so we could “just tweak it.” I don’t think you can just keep tweaking last year’s agenda in this fast-changing world. Not if you’re going to…

Lead with your best self,

Dan

Oct

2

“Because You Do Things So Well”

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Friends,

On Labor Day, Michigan’s mighty Mackinac Bridge – a 5 mile span that connects the state’s two peninsulas – swells with nearly 50,000 people. They cross the bridge which rises to a height of 199 feet above the water, enjoying the fellowship and one extraordinary view of the meeting point of Lakes Michigan and Huron at the “tip of the mitt.”

In 2005 the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness sponsored a run to precede the walkers, and this past year the Council came up with the idea of “Mentoring: A Running Start,” which invited 20 adult mentors to train with their youth mentees and to run the bridge on Labor Day. Marilyn Lieber, the Director of the Governor’s Council sparked it all with a great vision. She inspired generous sponsors who helped make it all happen, as they treated the mentor pairs to running shoes, colorful running warm-ups, and a weekend on Mackinac Island. Similar acts of inspiration and challenging leadership occurred, as mentors encouraged their mentees to imagine that day when they would stride across the mythic bridge. Some, like 11 year old Cynthia, who is co-mentored by my wife Jennifer and Angel Boshea, ran the entire distance and they are now hooked on fitness and running; Cynthia has run two timed races since then.

I often write about vision. Vision is powerful, and I often mean vision in the literal sense, i.e., what you see . . . you can achieve. (Hopefully your browser will let you appreciate this vision in the picture below.)

Leadership soars with vision. AND leadership works when there is real and credible action. The Mentoring run required that the Mentor Michigan team work with the Governor’s Fitness folks — different teams, missions, and people. And at the meeting to debrief the project, Amber Reiss, the Mentor Michigan coordinator said something that was simple and yet profound. She said to Marilyn, I will work on any project you ask me to work on because you do things so well. Aren’t you a hundred times more willing to follow someone when you know they execute? When you know they’ll roll up their sleeves and get it done?

In the week ahead you might pay attention to the power that comes to your teams when “you do things so well.” And you might also recognize those folks like Marilyn and her team who just flat out get it done, and in those ways,

Lead with your best self,

Dan

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