Candor is King

Friends,

Jack came home this week frustrated with the environment in his classroom.  Some students were lagging behind, the classroom had become too social, and so his teacher had cracked down.  Jack felt the freedom at the heart of the Montessori system was being squeezed out.  It was unfair, he said for everyone to feel the crackdown, and he also thought the teacher would get more with carrots than with punitive sticks.  So, Jack announced to me that he had asked for and been promised a meeting with his teacher and the principal.  As parents we admired the little man’s gumption, and we were amused by the birth of this righteous spirit.

Most of all, I was blown away (again) by the school’s culture.  They flat-out welcomed dissent! In many “normal” schools, this is not how the dissent would have been managed.  The easiest thing (as with businesses) would be to just not take the kid seriously.  After all, he’s ten and culture is the domain of adults (supervisors).  If he persisted, the school could - and could have in this case - shift the focus to the student’s failings.  In this case, the school saw Jack’s dissent as a wonderful opportunity to teach and learn about culture, about how groups balance freedom and responsibility, about the tough choices of those in authority, and about Jack’s own role.  He left feeling heard, and no doubt spreading the word throughout the already positive culture that it was okay to raise issues with the authorities.

Imagine the workplaces we would have if more of our schools created such learning cultures!  Imagine the lawsuits avoided at work!  Imagine the shared learning if people were more open to understanding the diverse perspectives of work.  Where Jack was welcomed to dissent, I find that people come to me to find an end run when they feel they have not been heard.*  And when I raise their issues I sometimes end up being the “shot at messenger,” who is really just trying to invite people to listen and engage, instead of feeling like they are being attacked.

There are tens of studies that have demonstrated that openness and candor in the workplace – especially in the 21st century economy – promote innovation, speed, quality, and productivity.  When it comes to cultures that generate results, candor is king.

But as a supervisor, manager, or if you’re even higher in the food chain, YOU MUST PROACTIVELY WORK to generate an atmosphere of  candor.  (Sorry for all the bolds, caps and underlines, but I’m TRYING TO SCREAM THE POINT: be proactive.  When someone has an issue, do you absolutely welcome it as an opportunity to learn and to teach, to engage and improve?  More importantly, if I asked your people this, would they say, “Totally, s/he loves it when we challenge to make things work better!”   You’ve got to work to create that kind of culture and so to

Lead with your best self!

Dan

NOTE: This Saturday on my radio show, I’ll be joined by Stephen Covey, author of perhaps the best book ever written on personal effectiveness, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (a great gift, by the way, for approaching graduations).  Listen to the show at 7 am ET through www.danmulhern.com

** yes, some ARE just “whiners,” but some have important data that needs to be heard.

Regular People, We Lead

Friends,

So I was at Easter Mass in a small town “up north.”  I judged: This seems to be a very average little church.  Modest outside and in.  The priest, preaching, choir, all seemed to me stunningly regular.  One of the stained glass windows had a brown puppy in the foreground.  Some average voice of an angel in my own mind noticed all this rating and judging I was doing.  It asked me to ponder what might lie within the joy of different folks, as at that moment they lifted their regular old arms and their regular old small town hearts at the end of the “Our Father” prayer.  Perhaps they celebrated triumphs over cancer, alcoholism, a soldier son come home from Iraq, or some other avoidance of threat, evil, or ill.  Who could know what kind of rebirths they were giving thanks for?  And who was I to judge the significance of their lives?

Two young teenage girls, perhaps sisters, sang a duet from the pulpit after communion.  With every measure their nervousness faded, and their enthusiasm rose, ‘til in the end they were singing for all they were worth.  In full voice, they sang as Joni Mitchell once wrote of a street musician, “real good, for free.”  And I thought: What a gift to lead in our own average worlds!  Where life matters to each of us, and we live for those times when we can lift our arms in joy or our hearts in shared songs.

We don’t have to make it to the Sweet Sixteen or the Final Four or the cover of Time to have what we do matter.  It helps to remember, reminded by your better angels, that we’re all in the end regular, normal people, whose lives are improved when you

Lead with your best self,

Dan

Listen for Stephen Covey who joins me on my radio show on Saturday, April 5th at 7:00 AM.  We’ll chat about the “7 Habits” and his upcoming program at Eagle Eye Resort on April 9th.  You can listen across the Michigan Talk Network or from my website, www.danmulhern.com.

The Spiritual Game of Leadership

Friends,

A healthy exchange with author Kathi Elster* on my radio show The Winner’s Circle prompts me to write about the fundamentally spiritual game that a leader plays.  A government worker asked me in an email to discuss the issue of how you motivate your peers.  I suggested that part of the answer was “modeling the way.”  I said if you want a workplace, for instance, where people are cooperative, proactive, and get outside their own boxes to make things work, then act that way yourself.  You might begin to ask people on your team, even an uncooperative type, “How can I help you?”  Kathi was unpersuaded, as she argued that my cheery recommendation would likely result in person being taken advantage of.  From that basic human standpoint, Kathy was right on the money about motivating a peer.  She said squarely: “That’s not your job.  That’s the supervisor’s job.”

In the world of basic human relations, Kathi’s advice was more prudent than mine.  But the game of leadership is vastly different than assessing probable human responses.  The leadership game is much more spiritual.  First, a leader is not primarily concerned with her own survival and comfort.  She thinks and acts as though she is responsible for the group, whether or not she is empowered, paid, or expected to do so.  Her standpoint toward the world is essentially generous or generative.  She chooses to rise above ego and role and instead repeatedly seeks the welfare of the world about her.  So she gives to her peers in the hope that she will create a more cooperative world, even if it means for some time that she will have more to do. 

Second, great leaders act in faith: they believe it before they see it.  Kathi is probably right, that a long-term employee with an “it’s-not-my-job” attitude, or who says, “why should I do it if they’re not paying me for it?” will likely take advantage of a coworker who repeatedly asks, “How can I help you?” But a great leader steers by his vision of what he wants the world to look like, not by probabilities about reality.   No one put it better than Mohandas Gandhi when he wrote, “you must be the change you wish to see in the world.”  Great leaders are slow to give up on people, and great leaders don’t let the Winny Winers and the Marty Mopers steal their vision of what can be.  They press forward regardless of the number or volume of naysayers.  Faith in a better way moves things and moves people. 

A leader’s generosity and acts of faith come out of a third spiritual belief:  a radical belief that at each moment we can choose our standpoint.  Kent Keith speaks an unusual wisdom to Kathi’s realistic assessment of human behavior in his remarkable “paradoxical commandments,” in his book Anyway.  The first and last of his 10 commandments seem particularly apropos here: “1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway…10. Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.”

Choose to act freely, foster a generous attitude and a spirit of faith, and you will assuredly

Lead with your best self!

Dan

*I’ve written before about Kathi’s book Working With You is Killing Me, co-authored by Katherine Crowley.  Kathi and Katherine will be back with me on Saturday the 29^th of March.

Do You Know What They’re Whispering?

Friends,

A fascinating issue popped up on my “Winner’s Circle” radio show on Saturday.  It prompts me to ask you “bosses” out there:  Do you know what they’re whispering about you?  Yes, they are whispering!  On the show, my guest, Kathi Elster talked about a boss who admitted she was aware of the whispers:  “People sometimes say I’m ‘intimidating.’”  Kathi knew those were the audible whispers, but what they were saying when she wasn’t around was, “she’s a bully.”

What they’re whispering matters, because the things they’re saying are not just talk.  For instance, how do you act when the authority is a bully?  Most of us shut down, we quit taking risks, we don’t share important but bad news, we may even fudge the truth to stay out of trouble.  So, being a bully or a “commanding presence,” or “a leader who demands accountability” may come at a high cost that we may never see, if we don’t begin to hear what they’re whispering.

On the other hand, if you know what they’re whispering or saying (or screaming when they know you’re out of town), you have the ability to learn and to change.  People have certainly whispered about me: “every day the guy’s got a new project that he thinks is so totally cool we should all drop everything else (like yesterday’s really cool ideas) and get it done.”  The first step for me was awareness – Houston we have a problem!  That meant and means giving my co-workers permission to say, “I think you’re doing it again.”  Two of the most helpful words we have around our shop are “scope creep,” and everyone has explicit permission to utter them.

Do you know your Achilles heel(s). what they’re whispering about you?  Because you can bet your team does.  And the shortcomings of the manager get multiplied through the system.  If you have the courage and the love for truth, you might ask your team (or your kids) to tell you – or tell you again:  “What thing or things am I doing that are getting in the way of your doing a great job?”  And, if anyone has ever whispered – as they did about the boss above – that they were “intimidated” by you – no matter how crazy you think that is – then you might invite them to anonymously write down your questionable behaviors.

You have to hear what they’re whispering and face the brutal facts if you’re going to

Lead with your best self!

Dan

Leading Up

Friends,

An editorial note:  an AOL spam filter refused RFL to 1300 readers last week.  Please mark me as a “safe sender.”

Two weeks ago I wrote about a question raised by a caller to the Winner’s Circle, my Saturday morning radio show (streaming live from 7-9 AM on Saturdays).  The gentleman, an upper level manager in a business that was going through a change in management, was looking for advice about his situation: rumors flying, people unfocused, uncertainty abounding. My colleagues on the radio talked about the importance that he communicate as much as he can.

But could he do anything about the organization as a whole?  Is there anything you can do when the higher-ups aren’t talking?  I received a similar question in an email from a State of Michigan manager, who was suffering from a lack of information that would be so helpful to him and his team in their work. These pleas for information are, of course, examples of a broader question:  How do you lead up?  What do you do when people above you really don’t seem to see, or care about, something that seems so obviously important?  Isn’t this last question a huge part of our lives at work, and our frustrations.  It’s a ubiquitous question, for we were frustrated with how our parents and teachers “didn’t get it,” and now how politicians, and bosses, just don’t see what’s so obvious to us?

Enough questions.  Here are some answers:

1.     Don’t quit on your desire to have the authorities see what you believe is important.  If you don’t speak up, you’ll never be led well.  And to do that . . . you have to put yourself in the authority’s shoes.  You have to make your case, but by seeing their world:

2.     Make your point based on the values you know matter to them.  They might value profit, respect, excellence, or any number of other things.  In our callers’ case, you can bet the owners – new and old – care about the productivity of the company.  Understanding that productivity was suffering from all the misinformation, would matter to them.  Much as we complain about authorities, they have values.  We need to see them and speak to them.

3.     Make your point based on realities you see.  Often we assume that the authorities see what we see.  They don’t.  They’re in the “corner office,” they’re in the middle of things.  One gift we can give is data.  And people like gifts.  So speak to them about what is concretely happening.  And, of course, connect it to values – to what they want to happen.

4.     Be ready with solutions.  Concrete.  Practical.  Thought out.

What do you think?  Why not share some stories of success you’ve had leading up at my blog on this topic.  Some of the best Reading for Leading is found there by those who

Lead with their best self!

Dan

**Traditionally, March has been known around the nation as Reading Month.  As RfL focuses so much on “reading and leading” at home and in the workplace, I wanted to encourage you to both write on my blogsite and read some of the great comments there.  In the next three weeks, I’ll be reading the blog entries.  I’ll pick the best entries and offer the authors a choice of a number of interesting leadership books that are on my shelf.  Please remember to include your email address on your comment so we may contact you to get your preferences and shipping information!