February 25, 2008
Friends,
Ginger Beebe of Arkansas said what I think most of us were thinking: “it is incredibly inspiring to hear each of you speak.” We were at the National Governors Association annual meeting and first spouses had each taken a few minutes to describe their current initiatives. The breadth, imagination and enthusiasm were amazing to me. Jenny Sanford of South Carolina crafted an online video contest through which students have made films about healthy lifestyles — films relevant to them. Silda Wall Spitzer has launched a program to “green the mansion” in New York. Jessica Doyle in Wisconsin has launched book clubs for children all across the state. And Andrea Conte in Tennessee hosts a reception in the capitol for the families of victims of homicide. I could go on and on and on.
I was reminded of that great Sesame Street song, “Which One of These Things Is Not like the Other,” when I heard our main speaker who followed the spouses mini-presentations, and then when I read yet another article about the amazing Google. I was struck by the great dissimilarity between hearing from 30 or so spouses, and then hearing from the “expert” speaker. What was striking was the variety, originality, and passion of the spouses’ ideas. Patsy Riley of Alabama humbly described herself as previously “just a mom” (who happened to serve 28 straight years as president of her children’s PTA’s), yet she has launched a program to ensure that every foster child in Alabama receives a gift on their birthday. I could only think: Isn’t leadership so much more powerful when everyone grabs a share, when everyone digs down to find what they really care about and do their darndest to make a difference? Isn’t there so much more learning and inspiration in that, than in listening to “the boss,” or “the expert?” Yes, our expert speaker had worked in two White Houses and had stories to tell about First Ladies, but I found so much more value in hearing these experiments in invention and change.
You’re wondering, I hope, and what about Google? Well, one of the famous principles at play at Google is that the Googler, as the employees call themselves, have 20% of their time to work on things that are technically outside their job area but about which they are fascinated. Likewise one of the wonderful things about being a first spouse is that you can make the job fit you. And in both cases, where people are invited to follow their passion, their curiosity, and their ideals, extraordinary things happen. This month’s issue of the very cool magazine Fast Company has lots of Google examples if you want to read some.
The spouses and the Googlers make me wonder: How can I help the people on my teams to pursue their greatest passions, which relate to in some way to our core mission and values? Let them go! Free them! Encourage them! You might think about that with your folks, and while you’re at it, ask yourself what would happen if you found 20% of your time to pursue the ideas or projects or passions that most get your engine running.
You’ve got to unlock your deepest interests if you want to
Lead with your best self!
Dan
If you like Reading for Leading, sign up for the Reading for Leading newsletter, and tune in to The Winners Circle with Dan Mulhern every Saturday morning at 7am.
February 18, 2008
Friends,
A customer service note: I strongly encourage you to add me to your safe sender’s list. I talk to people almost daily who say, “how come I’m not getting RFL any more?” I can only guess they have fallen victim to aggressive spam filters. I’d love to keep sending you RFL and reading your views on my blogs, so mark me as “safe.”
We had a great call to my radio show, “The Winner’s Circle” on Saturday (follow the link at www.danmulhern.com to listen to the show live on Saturdays from 7-9 am). The caller said that he works at a tool and die shop that is in the process of being sold by the long time owners. Uncertainty is everywhere. Will there be layoffs, paycuts, new strategies? Is it even possible the company might close? The gentleman said that with anxiety up and rumors rampant, hardly any work was getting done. He told us that he was an upper level manager but even he didn’t know what was going on and therefore what to tell his team. He wondered if we had any advice. (I’ll share the advice I offered him in next week’s column.)
My guest, Katherine Crowley co-author of Working With You Is Killing Me, warmly empathized with this gentleman. She said she could understand how totally challenging and scary this situation could be for him and those he led. I could hear the relief in his voice, when he said, “yes it is.” Gosh, that step seems so simple: recognize out loud and with compassion how difficult something is. Now, Katherine is a trained psychologist, so she knows the importance of connecting with people’s hearts. But shouldn’t we all know this? To merger & acquisition folks, a job is a calculable ratio of cost to benefit. To an employee a job is food, a home (can you say foreclosure?), predictability, purpose, an identity, shall I go on? It makes human sense and business sense to empathize with people, even if, especially if, hard cuts may come.
Katherine’s co-author Kathi Elster also weighed in and she too nailed it. She told him that he should meet with his people as often as daily, and tell them what he knows. It may not be much, as information is being guarded closely. But information will always fill a vacuum. If top management isn’t talking someone will be, and they may be spreading false information, rumors, and even wild speculation. Kathi told our caller that he could allay some of the anxiety and the unproductive water cooler time by telling people what he knows, even if he just says about a rumor: “I have not heard that to be the case. I can’t say it’s not. But I have not heard it.”
If you’re in a place where there’s a whole lot of speculation and uncertainty, you’d do well to follow the advice of Kathi and Katherine: empathize with your people and communicate frequently and as honestly as you can. Be pro-active and pro-people, to
Lead with your best self!
Dan
* Jeanie Daniel Duck, “Managing Change: the art of balancing,” in Harvard Business Review on Change, 1998, p. 61 (orignally published HBR, Nov-Dec 1993)
February 11, 2008
Friends,
Ever find yourself getting “hooked?” I’m not talking hockey. And I’m not talking the oldest profession on earth. I’m talking about when someone has a way of sending your blood pressure through the roof, and of “making you” do things you don’t want to do, say things you don’t want to say, and feel things you don’t want to feel. They may snag you because they are confrontive or sarcastic, power-grabbing or passive aggressive, but they hook you! And then you may argue, lash out, or perhaps just seethe. I know this well, especially from a daughter who was born to litigate, and when she contests something miniscule or of great magnitude, when she dangles the hook . . . I bite. But sometimes it happens at work too. Someone’s overreaching, aggressive, or inappropriate behavior hooks you.
I’ve been reading a fun and useful book all about getting hooked, and more importantly, getting unhooked. Kathi Elster and Katherine Crowley offer a simple but effective four-step method to deal with being hooked, in their book Working With You Is Killing Me: Freeing Your Self from Emotional Traps at Work. The first step is to free yourself physically; they suggest the simplest method is to do some deep breathing when you know somebody has really got you hooked. A few quick breaths and you think more clearly. Next, they recommend that you free yourself mentally by identifying what it is the other person has done, but also and importantly, what it is in your thinking that has you so upset.
The third and fourth steps are action steps. In the third, you find language to halt the attack; for instance, if someone publicly takes credit for others’ work, you might say, “Tom has helped, but it’s been a fantastic team effort.” And lastly, they suggest that you use “business tools” to manage the other’s crazy-making behavior. Team meetings, memos, personnel reviews are all examples of tools you might employ.
One thing I like about Kathi and Katherine’s work is the inside-out quality of it. They take seriously the internal mental work, yet they offer usable tools for grappling with the genuinely bad behavior we sometimes face. If you find yourself getting “hooked,” you might want to pick up their book. And if you’re in my listening area — our radio stations are listed below — you can hear her Kathi and Katherine this Saturday morning from 7 to 9 a.m., on my new show, “The Winner’s Circle.”
Getting unhooked is a really smart thing to do if you want to
Lead with your best self.
Dan
The Winner’s Circle with Dan Mulhern on the Michigan Talk Network.
Greenville 1380 AM WSCG
Hastings 1220 AM WBCH
Lansing 1240 AM WJIM
Mount Pleasant 830 AM WMMI
Muskegon 1490 AM WODJ
Petoskey 1110 AM WJML
St Joseph-Benton Harbor 1400 AM WSJM
Traverse City 1210 AM WJNL
If you like Reading for Leading, sign up for the Reading for Leading newsletter, and tune in to The Winners Circle with Dan Mulhern every Saturday morning at 7am.
February 4, 2008
Friends,
A quick announcement: If you’ve been a listener of the Dan Mulhern Show on the Michigan Talk Network, see the news flash below today’s RFL
A universal value for leaders in our times should be this: continuously work to generate independent thinking among those you lead. Kids. Staff. Parishioners, Students. Bosses. You name ‘em. For humans are social beings, and we are so heavily and continuously influenced by perceptions and by the crowd that we need someone to vigilantly remind us to check the data and use our own best judgments.
Let one example suffice. Beginning about Tuesday the modern day village drummers – the TV and radio news – began to tell us across Michigan that a major blizzard was on its way; “details at 11,” “traffic and weather on the 8’s.” We tuned in. The drumbeat continued to grow louder – 8-12 inches, 12-15 inches – predicted the Thursday morning reporters. Kids were getting excited, as Friday appeared sure to be a glorious snow day. They were texting and high-fiving, thrilled to hear the snow was going to begin Thursday at and continue all night and most of the morning. Hold the phone. Just a reality check here. At midnight in Lansing it still hadn’t begun to snow. And this is Michigan after all, which means two things: first, we are decidedly not North Carolina or one of those places where a half-inch of snow leads to mass panic. We drive in the snow all the time. And second, we are like North Carolina, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Florida and about every other state I’ve visited or lived in this respect: the weather changes all the time. Meteorologists (what do they study meteors?) - are wrong by degrees, at least, all the time.
Well darn it all, they weren’t completely wrong. It did snow. About 4 or 5 inches, I’d say. We can drive in 5 inches in our sleep. But nearly every school system in central and lower Michigan closed. In my view – go ahead, call me a curmudgeon – it wasn’t dangerous roads that closed the schools. It was the hype and what it generated: thousands of sure-to-be-hyper kids who would be practically unteachable. And I imagine no school superintendent wanted to be the one to keep her or his schools open while all the rest were closed. As a result, millions of student-school hours were lost. Instead of listening to teachers, they were listening to meteorologist Mike Malarchy and his Dopler 10,000. Oh yes, and watching advertisements like the one that says, “you will probably be shopping for a thousand dollar flat screen TV this weekend.” Really? I will?
If you want good for your people and for those they serve, encourage them to ask questions, challenge assumptions, look at the data, and be half as wary of group-opinion as they are of group leaders. If you’ve got independent thinkers around you, you’ll have a much better chance to
Lead with your best self!
Dan
NEWS FLASH: On Saturday, February 9th, we will premiere across Michigan “The Winner’s Circle with Dan Mulhern” on the Michigan Talk (radio) Network. I decided to move to Saturday mornings from my daily evening show, because that show was taking away precious family time. I had to walk the walk, as I discussed in last week’s RFL on “managing our appetites.” I am excited about the new show which will be all about “making your work really work for you.” It will air on Saturday mornings from 7 AM until 9 AM. I will have great guests in the first hour, and the entire second hour will be devoted to trouble-shooting issues at work with live callers. For example, what do you do with a micro-managing boss, a manipulative co-worker, or a lazy direct report who your boss won’t let you discipline? Call in at 888-900-9966 to get advice on a work issue that you can bet others are struggling with as well. You can also send your workplace challenges to me at radiofeedback@danmulhern.com. The show will stream as well at our home station www.wjimam.com.
