Sep

29

Forest fires, bailouts and rebirth

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Friends,

I saw the most amazing thing in Yellowstone Park last week.  Perhaps you have seen it.  There was a tremendous fire in 1988 and thousands of acres of trees were lost.  Twenty years later you can still see the signs: hacked off, perfectly straight logpole pines dot the landscape; forty feet high with no branches or needles.  But the most amazing sign of the fire is the dense and rich growth of gorgeous pines 10-15 feet high now.  I asked in disbelief:  “None of these were planted by humans?”  “No” came the answer.  “The forest regenerates naturally, as cones in the soil sprout up in the wake of the fires.”  Scientists predicted the remarkable growth we can now witness there.

 The cycle of death-to-life is surely one of the core laws of life – natural, spiritual, economic and social life.  It makes me wonder about leadership in tough times.

 Consider the current, baffling bailout situation.  Should we just let it all burn down?  Some wildly free market folks say “do nothing and watch the market work.”  They remind me some of those who manage the forests who say “let it burn.”  It will take care of itself.  Although there is a parallel, forests and financial markets can also be distinguished in any number of ways.  And increasingly the architects of the bailout are pointing out that the reforms do involve the market.  The government will be buying (not paying for someone else to maintain) assets, and acquiring them at pretty low prices.  We taxpayers will be investors!  Let’s hope they’re right.  Let’s hope with our investments in assets that have burned nearly down to the forest floor of the market, that same “forest” of capital will soon be teeming with activity.

 I wonder though how we turn around a situation in which people increasingly expect their leaders to solve all their problems.  People took crazy loans and are now eager to be bailed out.  People extended crazy loans and now want to be bailed out.  Of course CEOs made equally if not more ridiculous moves – as they supposedly had knowledge of economic history and basic economic laws.   We have an instinct to “blame the leader” and to expect rescue from the leader.  As well as I can understand it, the markets do need to be supported – and gratefully protections are being put in for Main Street.  But WHAT IF some trees needed to die?  Sometimes the kid needs to feel their mistakes and not be rescued at the school office by the parent and the lawyer.  Sometimes the worker who has made a terrible decision has to be let go, if s/he is to learn and become more effective.  Sometimes we need a few more consequences, which may not be fatal for the individual, and which may strengthen the forest, the business, the economy, or the family.

 Sometimes leaders have to find ways to let people experience the “deaths” that will cause their people to be “reborn” with strength.  Sometimes when you’re leading you need to choose not to rescue in order for you and them to 

 

Lead with your best self,

Dan

 

Sep

22

In Times of Volatility

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Friends,

 This week, a man in his early 80s told me that he thought this was the most uncertain week he had experienced since he was a young man during World War II.  He pointed to many aspects of this great volatility: Hurricane Ike, Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy; governmental takeovers of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG; another volatile, toss-up presidential election; the Detroit mayoral mess; crazy fuel prices, rising unemployment, the ongoing mortgage crisis, and a nearly crashing Wall Street.  Yikes!

 Perhaps in your local world, you could point to added uncertainty and volatility.  Our lives change and get crazy.  In bunches, come graduations, marriages, illnesses and death, layoffs and sweeping changes at work.  What would you assert to be the key guiding principles of leadership in highly volatile times?  I’d suggest these:

 1.    Be more visible.  I remember running at night in downtown Savannah last fall.  I got clear directions from the concierge, but my confidence fell away and uncertainty swirled as I took my first steps in a dark and strange city.  I quickly found patrol cars circling the streets like bees at a cider mill.  My anxiety level fell completely away.  Likewise, the presence of Treasury Secretary Paulson this past week has been important for (as the candidates love to say) “Wall Street and Main Street.”

2.    Interpret reality in a larger context.  President Bush has continually tried to put the insecurity (and suffering) of Iraq into some sensible context.  It hasn’t been credible to all, but he has been consistent and vocal.  My wife continually worked to assure people during the Detroit mayoral crisis that there was a legal process, and that it would be followed.  Parents explain to children in divorce that there is a bigger picture, and that they will still be loved.  Explanations are not easy to hear in tough times, but they are essential to lower anxiety so people can continue to function and attend to their work.

3.    Focus people’s attention on things that make a difference.   This is perhaps hardest.  During crisis people want their authority figures to protect them – to be visible and to be reassuring.  People look for painless, external, authority-created answers – what Ronald Heifetz calls “technical fixes” in his book Leadership Without Easy Answers.  Buying 80% of AIG is a technical fix.  But, beneath the technical problems and fixes are almost always difficult issues that must be faced.  And in this financial crisis, there’s plenty of work to go around: for labor and management, for borrowers and lenders, for regulators and the regulated.  Great leadership points people to do that work.

 You might gauge the level of uncertainty and volatility in the places you lead.  If it’s high, you can bet people are distracted from the work.  And it falls to you to be present, to interpret, and to focus them back on the work at hand.  Let me know what you think, as you…

 Lead with your best self,

Dan

 

 

Sep

15

Fat Discriminating Leading

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Friends, 

Fat!So?  Hmmm.  This past Saturday, on my radio show Everyday Leadership: Making Work Work, Marilyn Wann talked about the unfair treatment of fat people at work.  She’s no whiner.  She is the author of a book, magazine and website, which all go by the name of Fat!So?  (Note: Avoid her website if you can’t handle the sight of exposed derrieres.)  She said she doesn’t like the term “overweight,” because that implies fat people are over some norm, and are bad or wrong or weak for being so.  She noted that many people are big or fat, just as some people are black, female, old, young, or homosexual.  Being fat is part of the wonder of genetic diversity.  She says fat people shouldn’t apologize for it, and we shouldn’t discriminate against people because of it.

The naked truth is that discrimination costs us in productivity.  If I’m an owner or executive director, I want everyone fully involved.  I don’t want anyone feeling like they’re not being listened to, or are being passed over for jobs.  I want pathways to ideas and leadership open to all talent, irrespective of irrelevant considerations of appearance.  I want them fired up and feeling fully engaged and excited about our work. 

Some would say “bias is just perception, and often false perception.”  I would say: perception is truth in this case.  When people FEEL like they are being treated unfairly, a few of them will respond by working that much harder to prove themselves.  But many will start to check-out, complain behind your back, and feel justified in giving less, because they feel they’re getting less.

So, what do we – especially managers – do to keep everyone in the game?  Four things:

1. Examine our own thinking, and our hidden biases, and root out those biases.  Workplace culture follows leaders.  If we think and speak and act in ways that promote diversity, people will follow.  I know I have negative thoughts about some “different” people, because I live in a culture that creates that noise.  I don’t ask for those thoughts but there they are, so I have to catch them and choose to set them aside as irrelevant and unhelpful. 

2. Clearly and frequently articulate that “diversity is in” and discrimination is unacceptable.

3. Proactively ask others whether they feel included and engaged and whether opportunities are fairly given.  You can build your own (free) surveys easily with sites like www.surveymonkey.com, but I strongly recommend the use of diversity trainers who can help you work with the data.

4. Finally, we need a totally different attitude than our typical right-wrong mentality.  Instead, we need to seek first to understand.  I may say something with the best of all intentions, yet someone could have been deeply hurt, or “heard” a message I never intended.  If my culture is safe enough for them to talk to me, and if I listen well, I can hear that they were hurt and learn in the future.  And by listening to me, they can understand what I really meant.  Both perceptions are real.  Neither was “right” nor “wrong” in the first case.  The more hospitably we share ideas, and the more powerfully we seek to listen and learn, the more we can create a shared reality that works for both or all. 
 

You get everyone fully in the game, when you

Lead with your best self.

Dan

 

Sep

8

Positive Presidential Politics

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Friends,

 A few partisans will broil at this one.  A few cynics will call me an idiot.  I promise you, you won’t hear the following from any candidate or party, and you probably won’t hear it from the “mainstream media,” the “right-wing media” or the “liberal media.”  But I think this election offers us cause for extraordinary celebration, and should call us to be the best darned voters and citizens this country has ever seen.  So, I’m calling for an “appreciative inquiry” about all the good that is possible.

 Think about this: after 230 years, which included a century of slavery, we have a man of African heritage nominated to be President.  Not just any man, but one raised by a single mom; he made it to Harvard Law School, where he climbed the meritocratic peak with grades that got him on the Harvard Law Review, and by fellow editors who made him president of that review. I could wax on about his commitment to public service and his courage in standing up against a war that most were afraid to resist, etc.  We should ALL be proud of a system that offers such a candidate.  But wait,

 We have a Republican candidate whose father and grandfather were admirals, who himself served admirably, and who couldn’t be cracked in a P.O.W. camp.  He has fought courageously in the Senate, at times crossing the aisle to work with Democrats to get great things done, often speaking his mind when it was not popular.  Yet we as citizens so often say “those politicians are all the same.” Although the opposing party in the Senate disagrees with what he stands for, very few challenge his integrity and character.  We should ALL be proud of a system that offers such a candidate.  But wait,

 The Republicans have put a woman in the second slot in their ticket, a woman who’s a mom as well as a governor.  People will argue about experience, but few can deny that the system has offered this real live person an amazing route into leadership, and you have to marvel at the way she has stepped up to the task.  But wait,

 Here comes a guy whose wife and young daughter were killed in a car accident just after he was elected to the Senate.  He was going to refuse to be sworn in, but was convinced he could serve his country and still serve his sons.  He commuted (and still does) 4 hours a day to tend to his home life.  He’s fought corruption, at times – unpopularly – supported the president during war, and is now the Dems’ choice for VP.

 We should ALL be proud of a system that offers such candidates.  We get so down on our system.  It’s true:  These candidates, parties, and their supporters will – if the pattern repeats – spend much more time tearing each other down, and defending themselves from attacks than talking about a positive future for us.  They are told by pollsters (who are just reflecting the numbers) that we pay attention to the negatives.  They are being attacked (Biden went after McCain as a Bush-clone, and Palin oozed sarcasm to demean Obama), and they will attack back.

 So here’s a crazy idea for us everyday leaders:  Let’s focus on the strengths.  Have discussions – you’ll need to start them – about whose strengths are really key at this time.  Not who’s evil and bad.  But who can shine the best for our great country.  Not, “whose health care plan sucks,” but who really has a great plan that could work.  By the time we’re done with campaigns, our winner has been so whacked and whittled and wasted that we almost ensure a divided country – where half is angry and skeptical, and the other half has to almost blindly support the winner.  McCain is not a demon.  Neither is Obama.  Nor Biden nor Palin.  The winners will need our help, not our ire.

 Dissent and debate we will have with us.  But we have power to uplift our dialogue, our reasoning, and our national mood, if we bring a civil tone and an appreciative mind, and

Lead with our best self,

Dan

 

Sep

2

How Everyday Leaders Cross the Boundary

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Friends,

I wrote last week about the passing of my friend Colin Hubbell and was reminded of his “best self” everyday leadership as I stood at the foot of the Mackinac Bridge in the Upper Peninsula, just before sunrise yesterday.  I was talking with two of the women who had been selected to run the 4-1/2 mile span of the Bridge as “ambassadors of fitness.”  These 35-ish women had each lost 100 to 150 pounds.  “How did you decide to do it?” I asked.  “What happened that you totally turned things around?”  They told me.

One woman had weighed over 300 pounds, though I could hardly believe it as she looked now to be about 5’2” and perhaps 130 pounds. She told me that people were afraid to say anything; even her doctor said nothing to her.  But a new doctor told her she was overweight and needed to do something about it.  She was initially embarrassed and a little angry.  But she realized the doctor was trying to help, and used the provocation to start a “medical weight loss” program, and she systematically shed the weight.  She now loves running, which she hated at the outset.  The other woman said that she had been in denial about how she had gotten to weigh well over 200 pounds.  She was running a race, totally struggling to finish, and a much older woman passed her.  It got to her.  After the race she happened to see the same woman, and the woman flat out told her (paraphrasing here): “You should really take care of yourself.  You’re overweight and you’re going to cause yourself health problems.”  

Needless to say, she also was affronted, but she got over it quickly and actually asked the woman to help her.  Sure enough the older woman took her under her wing, helped her discover running – she had been athletic back in school – and supported her as she changed her lifestyle. “I knew what I needed to do about my diet,” she told me, “I just had to commit to doing it.”  

The stories reminded me of Colin.  At the funeral home, I had told Colin’s wife Tricia about how touched and grateful Jennifer had been when Colin called her out of the blue one day – the day Jennifer had been criticized on the front page of one of the Detroit dailies.  Colin had said, “You’re being attacked from the outside, and I’m being attacked by cancer on the inside.  God gave us this for a reason.  We have to deal with this pain to help others deal with their pain.”  Jennifer was touched by his proactivity and his faith and courage.  When I recounted this story to Tricia, she thanked me and sweetly said, “Colin never did get the boundary thing.”

Everyday leaders don’t.  Mind you, overweight people don’t want every stranger crossing the invisible boundaries of decorum to holler at them to go on a diet.  And believe me, governors occasionally wish there were a semblance of a boundary when, for example, people hang out of their cars on the Mackinac Bridge and break the peace of a magnificent sunrise and a spirited 4 mile run by crying out, “Governor, fire Kwame.”   Yes, the older woman crossed the boundary, and told her truth, but screaming truth to power – as poetic as it sounds – is sometimes just too easy.  Colin and the old woman reached out not just with truth, but with compassion, too, and with action of their own.  They are heroic everyday leaders, not just because they crossed the boundaries of decorum and authority, but because they backed up their words with heart and action.

 
Everyday leaders cross boundaries with courage and compassion to

Lead with their best self,

Dan

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