Jul

30

All Leadership Is Local

Filed Under All Posts | 6 Comments

Friends,

I was asked to speak at the kickoff for the Detroit Free Press Flagstar Marathon.  I was stunned by the number but especially the longevity of the volunteers.  The Marathon is celebrating its 30th anniversary this fall, and many volunteers at the event had been working for 15, 20, even all 29 years.  Such longstanding commitment only happens with good leadership.  To sustain such commitment, leadership must ensure that the event is well organized.  Leadership must generate a sense of achievement and growth –the Detroit Marathon has been the country’s fastest-growing marathon for the past five years.  And there must be a strong spirit of camaraderie – a spirit that was palpable at the kickoff.  The room had the distinct feel of a family reunion.

Pat Ball, the executive director, is the kind of humble leader who would say that her event is good and growing precisely because of those volunteers.  That is literally true; Pat manages the event with a paid staff of two.  Two people – for an event that ranges across 26 miles, twice crosses an international border, features numerous bands, coordinates multiple charitable partners, entertains elite runners from around the world, fields a medical team, runs a website, and then hosts well over 15,000 runners. Volunteers pull it off, but you don’t recruit, engage, and retain and deploy that army, without incredible leadership “from the top.”

Tip O’Neill was fond of saying “all politics is local.”  Pat Ball typifies the fact that “all leadership is local.”  Here’s one way.  Before the kickoff event, I looked at the agenda, and went “oh no, this is going to last forever.”  As the keynote speaker I figured people would be exhausted by the time it was my turn. Sure enough Pat went through multiple categories of people who needed thanks: new corporate sponsors, old corporate sponsors, big sponsors, small sponsors, runners, former directors, one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, and about different 20 categories of volunteers.  Many she invited to say a few words.  Others she had special gifts for.  Clearly each was special to her.  The thought occurred to my been-to-too-many-events-mind: Do we have to applaud for each specific individual she names?  But, as I looked around, people seemed totally engaged.  No one was leaving.  And it seemed that nearly everyone was enjoying the tremendous attention that Pat paid to so many of these individuals, as she told stories or made a point of thanking them for very specific contributions they had made.

Just about any other leader I know would at some point have uttered those famous words of efficiency:  “ladies and gentlemen, please hold your applause until I finish reading all of the names.” But not Pat.  Each person had their moment.  It was then it occurred to me: no wonder it feels like a family reunion here.  No wonder these people come back year after year after year.  No wonder this marathon is the fastest growing marathon in the country.  Who wouldn’t want to work for Pat Ball?  As I suspect Pat or her volunteers would correct me, they don’t work “for” Pat Ball, but “with” Pat Ball.  She portrays the two characteristics that Jim Collins in Good to Great says belong to the Level Five leader:  “quiet humility” and “fierce resolve.”

It’s a great joy to watch a fine leader in action with her team.  I hope the example I have offered this morning helps you to

Lead with your best self,

Dan

Jul

23

Coach Blanco- Lead Where You Are?

Filed Under All Posts | 13 Comments

Friends, 

When I became a first spouse, I would never have imagined that I would meet a peer like this.  But I sure am glad I did.  It’s been cool meeting a first dude, first guy, and a former first hunk.  But my vote for first gentleman of the decade goes to the first coach, Raymond Blanco of Louisiana.  I think it’s fair to say that after his wife Governor Kathleen Blanco leaves office at the end of this year, all of his fellow spouses will remember him with the deepest fondness. 

I’d guess Coach is in his early 70s, a burly guy, with a hearty laugh (often aimed at his “friends” in Texas).  Coach shoots straight and pulls no punches.  A football coach turned college dean of students, it’s easy to imagine him chewing out a player or hugging a big lineman or yelling exuberantly after a big win.  He’s the kind of guy whose players and advisees come back sometimes after decades to thank him for directing them onto a life path.  He and Kathleen raised six children, she served two terms as lieutenant governor, and you would think those two things would prepare them for just about any leadership roles.  

But what could prepare you for Hurricane Katrina?  Oh, I know, a million Monday morning quarterbacks told Louisiana and the world a thousand things the Blancos – as well as the Bush’s, the Nagins, the FEMAs, the Army Corp of Engineers, the Congress, etc. – could have and should have done, before, during, and after the storm hit.  But face it: can you imagine having the scope of responsibility that the Governor of Louisiana had in late August of 2005?  Can you imagine absorbing the heartache and the rage and the fear, while attacking thousands upon thousands of problems – systemic, structural, critical, architectural, financial, political?  And can you imagine being a husband of 43 years, and watch your wife assailed by just about everybody for just about everything – even while she is pouring every ounce of her heart and mind and body into making life work again?  Perhaps, sometimes endurance itself is heroic leadership.  I admire Coach’s persistence and love.  

I was blown away to hear the sincerity of his wife as she shared her parting words with her fellow governors.  Because I have heard and read countless accounts of how terrible the devastation was and is, I was so impressed to hear the way she talked about Louisiana’s amazing opportunity to create greatness out of the devastation!  After all she and Louisiana have been through, I found her faith uplifting. 

Well, the Blancos represent the wildly extreme example of the reality that we must all lead where we are.  In the vast majority of cases, whether we are parents or teachers, pastors or politicians, we cannot pick and certainly cannot control the environments in which we lead.  We will often be judged as though we do control all of the variables.  As my friends at Quicken Loans advise, you’ve got to “ignore the noise” – even the noise of your own blame and self-doubt.  Lead where you are.  Control what you can. There is heroism in faith and persistence, in love and in hope.  You can’t control the context but you can 

Lead with your best self,   

Dan     

 

  

Jul

16

Sometimes You Win When You Lose

Filed Under All Posts | 27 Comments

Friends,

Todays story reflects my hard-won victory over . . . well, over me. It was grueling — like a 5-set tennis match. And, like a lot of my wins in the world of self-management and other-leadership, I’ll forget how I pulled out a win, why such a win is worth the effort, and how to do it again. I hope replaying it will contribute to my, and perhaps your, future wins.

I was enmeshed in a confrontation with one of my kids. We stood in the side drive quite literally face to face, for about an hour. The long and short of it was that I felt frustrated by what I felt was a pattern of reclusive and sometimes chilly behaviors. The discussion went through distinct phases. Stage one: issues raised, defenses raised, volumes raised, defenses on both sides raised even further. Stage two: harder listening – in both senses: first, hard to exercise the discipline to totally get what each other are saying. I find it takes enormous concentration to fight my urge to interrupt and argue, and to instead simply understand her point of view. Then it’s hard to let reality be something other than what I see it as, but instead to see how we truly experience different realities. After much external struggle and then even more internal struggle, I finally heard her fundamental questions: Why is it that I have to meet your needs? Why do we have to communicate in the times and manner that work best for you? And why can’t you accept that we’re different and let me be in my own way, even if it sometimes looks reclusive?*

That led to stage three: an odd moment of radical choice. I could almost hear the inner voices asking what my choice would be:  ”How important is it to you to’win’ this argument? Does ‘winning’ really make sense in this context? Is it really surrender, are you conceding the game?” So, what would I do? Would I continue to insist on the primacy of my view of reality? Or would I let that go, and allow that she and I had vastly different experiences of reality. Would I focus on doing my work of gaining and operating from a full understanding of her reality, or would I keep pushing her to understand and live inside my view? I chose to explicitly acknowledge the legitimacy of her reality and her way of being. I am pretty sure she heard my request in turn for her to be sensitive to how her way impacts those around her, including me. But it’s her choice and not my insistence that stands to generate movement.

Is there broad leadership relevance to this story? I think so. I suspect that a manager-employee relationship in most traditional workplace cultures mimics this relationship of a parent vis-a-vis a nearly-mature older teenager. Oh, the tension and conflict may be masked at work, but the resistance to accepting the singular importance of the manager’s worldview is often working beneath that surface. So the manager has a choice: keep expecting and assuming the other must accept the primacy of the manager’s view of reality and chosen style of working together (and see deviations as insubordination, rebelliousness, ignorance, etc) , or do the hard work of understanding the other’s legitimate views, style and needs.

I look forward to reading responses to this post to find out whether you find it as hard as I do to close your mouth, open your ears and mind, and

Lead with your best self,

Dan

*I am not saying that I relinquished all parental standards in our talk. It would take many more paragraphs to reconcile and distinguish my legitimate authority and responsibility for standards with my commitment to meet my daughter as a fundamental equal.

** There was a glitch in last week’s link to the book Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments by Kent Keith. Sorry for any confusion. You can find Kent’s book here.


Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments

By: Kent M. Keith

Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments: Finding Personal Meaning in a Crazy World
buy now

Jul

9

People are People, Lead Anyway

Filed Under All Posts, Reading for Leading, frontpage | 4 Comments

Friends,

It is not as though I believe that bad things don’t happen to good people. They do. Indeed, as Kent Keith writes in the last of his 10 “Paradoxical Commandments:” “Give the world the best you have and you will get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.” But I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself.

Kent Keith was an unusual student at Harvard in the 1960s. He was a moderate – calling for change but within “the system!” He was also wise beyond his years, publishing and distributing 30,000 copies of a pamphlet about the aforementioned Paradoxical Commandments. The essence of his message was that the world is not especially kind to those who lead, but that leading is the way to create a life of meaning and purpose. To heck with what the others say! Lead anyway!

Well, fast-forward three decades. At his monthly Rotary club meeting, 50-something Kent bows his head to hear a poem attributed to Mother Teresa. His fellow Rotarian reads . . . you guessed it, Kent’s own Paradoxical Commandments. Kent tells the disbelieving fellow that he wrote those lines, asks where the gentleman found the quote, and heads to the library to find it in a book about Mother Teresa. Although a few times before in the preceding 35 years these commandments had found their way back to him, he was utterly blown away at the notion that his words had been placed on the wall of an orphanage by Mother Teresa, in India, a world away. He took it as a clear sign that he should re-publish his work. There are other unusual twists to this story; for example, someone else was about to publish the Commandments, not knowing that someone had written and copyrighted them 30 years ago. One might have imagined an 11th commandment: “If you write, others will steal your best ideas. Write anyway.” Kent did publish his book, a simple and wonderful read called “Anyway: the Paradoxical Commandments: Finding Personal Meaning in a Crazy World”. His stories offer a context that could support anyone from a recent high school graduate to a sixty year old middle manager.

Kent was recently named the new CEO of the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership in Indianapolis. If you are familiar with Greenleaf — the man or the Institute named for him — you know that Kent Keith’s spirit of “leading anyway” fits perfectly. The Keith-Greenleaf focus is on doing good work, leading so that those around you grow in wisdom , trusting this will yield good results. Those results may not appear right away. It may take 30 some years before the world is ready for your work. And even still you may never see it, never know just how it mattered. But as Kent Keith would say, do it anyway. The good has a way of living in spite of us. So, though no one may appreciate it today,

Lead with your best self, anyway!

Dan


Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments 

By: Kent M. Keith

Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments: Finding Personal Meaning in a Crazy World

buy now

Jul

2

Two Words — Public Service

Filed Under All Posts | 13 Comments

Friends,

My wife and governor who sometimes does a late night edit of my column may not like this RFL, but here goes anyway . . .

In this column I have frequently written about some of the wonderful corporations that serve their clients and provide outstanding workplaces for their employees. But in this 4th of July week when we celebrate that we are a government of, for, and by the people — I feel it’s overdue that I say a word about public service and public servants.

So often we, as citizens, forget the real meaning of both parts of the name “public servant.” The public part is worth celebrating. In government we serve everyone. Where a corporation has the luxury to be focusing in on their particular shareholders and on their specific customers, the government serves all. It can’t say, “I don’t want to build roads for them, or there.” “That client is a jerk; I’m done working with him.” “I want to find a different niche.” “I’m only going to serve customers who can pay x, y, or z.” No. Government is universal, so everyone has an equal right to public goods, time, and attention. This means that public servants deal with folks that many would rather ignore. Public servants work with prisoners and their families; obnoxious campers; with foster care children and abusive parents; with unreasonable parents and apathetic parents; with drunk drivers and with people who, for their own private gain, pollute the environment, rip off consumers, endanger workers, or cheat on their taxes. I am thankful there are people who will serve all the public.

The vast majority of public employees I have encountered see themselves as “servants.” Many serve people every day whom David and Isaiah and Jesus and Mohammed said we were sent here to serve. Many feel it’s an honor to serve. When our State was facing a huge budget deficit, public servants gave sizable concessions to help balance the state’s budget. I suspect that in the next round of contract negotiations they will contribute again. And I resent the aggressiveness of those who so quickly seek a pound of flesh from these public servants, when we so seldom acknowledge them, thank them, and celebrate them for the service they do on our behalf. They make our cities, states and our nation good; they give credibility to our laws and life to our constitution.

At the risk of seeming self-serving, I also think we ought to credit our elected leaders from time to time. I am amazed at the sacrifices of school board members, city council people, legislators, mayors and judges. Sure they have egos. Who doesn’t? But the vast majority are primarily motivated to serve – taking on tough problems and tough citizens and doing the best they can. I will keep celebrating the best corporations and their impressive leaders. But how about a little perspective? In a 2006 study of the top 350 corporations, the compensation of CEOs was 411 times the amount of the average worker. I’m proud that my wife has from her first year in office given back 5% of her salary, but with or without that giveback, the multiple of her salary to the average worker – as with all public servants I am aware of — is at the most four or five, not four or five-hundred.”

Our government is as good as the people we elect. Last week two really talented people told me that they used to think about a career in politics, but not any more. They wondered why anyone would put up with the crap (their technical word) that people in public service take. The answer is that it’s a fantastic calling to commit to the public – all of the public – and to attempt as best they can to serve, and to

Lead with their best self,

Dan

P.S. I wrote last week about Parker Palmer’s idea of the broken-open heart, and I gave a link to the book in which it was contained. Bless Parker for sending me the following note: “You may want to let your newsletter readers know that there are cheaper ways to get my essay on “The Politics of the Brokenhearted” than buying the book, “Deepening the American Dream.” E.g., go to http://www.commonweal.org/new-school/audio_archives.html and scroll down to my interview, where you can download a pdf file of the piece.”

  • Subscribe and Follow

    EL Radio via podcast
    RfL via RSS
    All posts via RSS
    Dan on Twitter
    Dan on Facebook

  • Recent Posts



  • Product Specials

    Everyday Leadership: Getting Results in Business, Politics, and Life (7 Disc Audio CD)
    Everyday Leadership: Getting Results in Business, Politics, and Life (7 Disc Audio CD)

    Everyday Leadership offers strategies to improve leadership skills, achieve results, and gain greater satisfaction in these hectic times. It speaks to the everyday leader, whether that person is a principal, pastor, parent, or CEO.


    $34.99
    $24.99

  • Shopping Cart

  • Archives

Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes