Jan

29

The quiet POWER of example!

Filed Under All Posts | 7 Comments

Friends,

In our busiest week of mentor recruitment I got inspired by the power of example.

Grandma Wallace” is a foster grandparent at Red Arrow School in Hartford, near Kalamazoo, Michigan.  She spends five hours, four days a week with the kindergarteners in Mrs Foster’s class.  She gets a little stipend from the Office on Aging; it amounts to about $2 per hour.  And for that money, Grandma Wallace doesn’t just stretch, befriend, and support the 25 kids.  She also uplifts the teacher, administrators and staff with her effort.  I could only smile at her vitality and generosity.

The next day I met Kate Zajac who mentors through the Center for Independent Living in Ann Arbor.  She was recognized as a “super-mentor” by the Washtenaw Mentoring Collaborative.  Her Cerebral Palsy is not cause for self pity but is a source of knowledge and strength she lends to others.  She mentors a girl who suffers too from CP, but who also has learning disabilities and recently went blind.  Katie made my point better than I could; she said, “We, the mentors, can talk with young people with disabilities about self-advocacy, but it is by demonstrating it that we make the greatest impact on their lives.”  And she does demonstrate it.  I offered to bring Katie’s super-mentor certificate down to her seat, but she deliberately and proudly worked her walker up and down the metal ramp.  Lesson learned.  Thank you, Katie.

Tad Wysor started mentoring his little guy, but the boy ran into troubles and was placed in a juvenile support camp 100 miles away.  Oh well.  No, not oh well.  Tad decided he’s just going to drive once a month to the camp to see this fellow, even as Tad adds that he is still not sure the boy yet sees him as a friend.  And when the boy’s mother expressed her frustration at not being able to see her son, Tad drove her the 100 miles, then arranged to get her out there once a month, too.  It’s through the quiet power of example that Tad’s effort made my challenges as a mentor suddenly feel amazingly insignificant.

The same night I was in Macomb County for their mentoring celebration.  I was struck by Brittany.  She’s been mentoring one girl for 3 years and about a year and a half ago picked up a second mentee.  I wondered how many of the other mentors assembled that night felt the same way I did, as I shook her hand and said, “You rock!”  What a wonderful example.

Leaders talk.  And when leaders act things change.  When leaders roll up their sleeves, put their shoulders to the wheel, answer the phones, pick up the trash, put in the hours, and sweat, people take notice.  What do your people see with you?  Do you set the pace?  Do you roll your walker up the tough ramp and back down even though somebody’s happy to bring your certificate to you?  It’s by actions that you

Lead with your best self.

Dan

Jan

22

Thank your mentor and then . . .

Filed Under All Posts | 14 Comments

Friends,

I always hope that “Reading for Leading” stimulates your thinking so that you bring a little different focus or quality to the tasks ahead in the week of leadership that’s dawning for you. This week I invite you to actually add a whole new task to your “to do” list, and I promise you’ll appreciate it. New Task: Thank your mentor!

Thursday the 25th is national “thank your mentor day.” The first task might be to identify a key mentor, a person who guided you in some special way to become the person and leader you are. It might be a teacher, coach, first boss, or just a wise and caring person who took you under their wing.

I think of my dad, Jack Mulhern. Dad respected everyone. His most frequently used word was “love,” often accompanied by its antonym “selfish.” I remember the fondness he had when we’d pull out his shoe box of army pictures, and he would point to and name poor and uneducated soldiers he served with in Korea, the farmers’ sons, and the Korean boys he befriended. Every single one was deserving of respect and kindness. I thank him for his clear lessons, boiling it all down to love. Since he’s passed I’ll call mom and share these thankful thoughts with her.

May I also invite you to consider formally becoming a mentor? Can you imagine being a boy or girl and not having a role model at all – no person who has special care for you, who is helping you find your way? All three of the boys I have formally mentored just did not have any man who consistently cared for them in their lives. In Michigan only one of every three mentors is a man. There are 4,000 kids on waiting lists, hoping to be matched; most are boys. As you thank a mentor, please consider being one. Across the country you can call 1-800-VOLUNTEER. In Michigan you can do that or go to www.mentormichigan.org

Mentoring offers an extraordinary opportunity to give back and to. . .

Lead with your best self,

Dan

P.S. There have been some GREAT comments on my RFL blogsite, which you can click above. I was a little surprised not to see many comments after last week’s column on Dr. King day. Hope you’ll consider commenting on that one or on today’s column on mentoring!

Jan

15

Dr. King on Leading With Your Best Self

Filed Under All Posts | 5 Comments

Friends,

Today is Dr. Martin Luther King Day in the United States.  We could move in fifty directions to explore the leadership ground that Dr. King laid out for us, but I want to explore one part of that territory.  I always finish this e-column with the line “Lead with your best self.”  That line is supremely King-ian.  For Dr. King was all about the determination to lead with your best self. 

We know Martin Luther King as one who acted — love seeking justice.  He was a pillar of courage, clearly knowing that his actions of civil but strategic defiance put his life in danger.  With his life and his words he continues to speak to us, especially in our times, where being born black in America generally means being born less healthy, less safe, less supported by community resources, and more likely to be suspect in way too many ways.  Conscience still calls us to work so every child has a shot at the promise of opportunity in America.

Dr. King spoke of racism.  And he was bold, too, when it came to the war in Vietnam, speaking out, even when many in the movement wanted him to not get entangled.  But he felt the moral force within, and he let it lead him.  His words pierce right to our tentative hearts:  “Men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in times of war.  Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world.”*  Are we listening in the place of courage — beneath “the apathy of conformist thought” – in our conscience and to our own hearts?   Wow, what a challenge.

Dr. King spoke so eloquently about what I call “everyday leadership.”  So, let me close with his wonderful words:

“If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.’ If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

“Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.
If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail.
If you can’t be a sun, be a star.
For it isn’t by size that you win or fail.
Be the best of whatever you are.”**

On this day of Dr. King, find your conscience and

Lead with your best self,

Dan

* “Beyond Vietnam,” a speech delivered at Riverside Church, April 4, 1967.

** From Estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  From a speech he delivered six months before he was assassinated, to a group of students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967.

Jan

8

Inauguration to Eulogy to . . . You

Filed Under All Posts | 12 Comments

Friends,

Last week I invited you to write your inaugural address. I had been inspired by my wife’s energetic delivery of her forward-looking message on New Year’s Day. Right before Jennifer’s speech I had spent a lovely half hour chatting with Dr. Rachel Keith, who retired two years ago – at 80 years old – from her practice of internal medicine. I was awed to hear her stories of her pioneering days as a black female physician, fighting the bias that sought to block her from medical school, from residencies, and from establishing a practice. I couldn’t help but think of how insidious racism, sexism, and ageism are; that one could draw a lot of conclusions from the appearance of a 4-foot-11 inch, 82 year old, African American woman. And one would be absolutely wrong, completely missing the individual and the heroine within.

I was shocked and saddened when Jennifer called me three days later to say that Dr. Keith had died suddenly. We were already in the midst of the activities surrounding President Ford’s funeral. We were drawn into the reminiscences about “Michigan’s President,” who had navigated the country through a very stormy passage. And I had just come from the funeral of Wally Piper, an Iowa basketball coaching hall of famer, who in his late 70s had poured his heart into coaching his granddaughters and their friends (including our Cece) in basketball. Sometimes – especially around the Christmas holidays – it seems like the deaths come in bunches. This trio – doctor, President and coach — all remembered with extreme devotion by those who knew them, were of a special generation.

I couldn’t help but see the similarities in the accounts of these three heroes, who played to very different audiences. Strength was one similarity. Each of them was not afraid, at critical points, to be extremely unpopular. They stood against prevailing views when an important value was at stake. I would describe the other similarity as goodness towards others, or as plain human decency. Where our business, politics, and even our sports have become dog-eat-dog, cut-throat, ego-driven and often just crass and crude, these three lives speak of a gentler time. They were all fighters for their beliefs, but as was often said of President Ford in the past week, they didn’t turn their adversaries into enemies. They valued things that we don’t talk about a lot any more: courtesy, deference, respect.

We experience “the times” we are in. And often verbally condemn them. But we also make the times we are in by our own behaviors. The funerals of our personal, communal, and national heroes, and especially those from that era of “the greatest generation,” remind us of what we will lose if we don’t actively work to replant those values in our world. So I invite you to renew your strength of character – to stand for a principle no matter how unpopular – and your commitment to basic human decency. As we recall at these funerals, these are truly the abiding hallmarks of those who

Lead with their best self,

Dan

Jan

2

YOUR Inaugural Address

Filed Under All Posts | 13 Comments

Dear Friends,

My wife delivered her Inaugural address yesterday, as she began her second and final term as Governor of the State of Michigan. It made me think that every leader ought to write an inaugural speech, and better yet deliver one.

Jennifer had a great line in her speech: “You know the Michigan that is. Believe in the Michigan that will be.” What a great template for each of us who is inaugurating a new year! So, I’d say to you: you know “your team that is,” or you know “your family that is,” or you know “the organization you are in,” or even: “you know the self you are.” So then, I’d ask, “What’s the team, family, organization or self that you believe should and can come to be?”

Here’s an outline for the inaugural address I would share with all the people that I lead, with whom I lead, and who lead me. Here’s what I believe:

• I live in a world where my teenagers depend on (and simultaneously push against) their parents. I believe in a world where my children freely choose the lives they want to lead, the decisions that will get them there, the things and people they will say no to, and those they will eagerly embrace.

• I live in a world where so many “staff people” do their jobs, keeping the wheels greased and the air in the tires. I believe in a world where everyone leads and designs and creates, each caring for the whole as much as the owner or boss or director does; believing in their right to care for it all, and trying all the time to increase the goodness and energy of the shop or the neighborhood, the church or the school or the business where they work.

• I live in a world where managers at times act out of fear and spend a lot of time keeping people in the lines, in the boxes, in their places, but I really believe in a world where managers share information, grow their teams, enlarge people’s territories, laugh at themselves, set goals that move people outside the box and work like crazy to help their people hit those goals.

• I live in a world where I still carry around resentments, regrets, fears and anxieties. I believe in a world where I can let go of that past guck and instead be in the moment and bring my best efforts to see what’s there, to love what’s there, and to contribute as best I can.

• I live in a family (both the one of my parents, and the one my wife and I started) where I and others gravitate to an attitude of seeing the others as having something we want (things, affection, attention, support, etc.). I believe in a world of family where we each look primarily to give to each other and thus create a surplus, an abundance of good from which we share.

• I live in a state that divides by race and class, by union and management, by left and right, by one creed from another, but I believe in a Michigan where we see that we have greater commonalities than differences, that we have a richness of perspectives that can be a blessing more than a curse, and that now is the time for us to come together to work to create opportunity for all of our citizens.

There’s a lot of work to leading. But it starts with a picture of where you’re heading. What would your inaugural address be about? As you set your goals for 2 double-oh-seven, where are you leading those you care about? What’s the world that you believe in?

You’ve got to see it to lead with your best self!

Dan

Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes