Jul

18

Can we make it any CLEARER?

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Friends,

Thanks to the 800+ of you who responded to last week’s survey, we’ve got a crystal clear picture of what people want in a boss . . . and what’s often missing.  Here’s the bummer: What we most want is what’s most often missing: CLARITY!  So, this morning’s invitation to everyday leaders is to double back and clarify.

For those who didn’t take the survey or check out the full results, here’s the top takeaway: When asked to select from a list, what three attributes were most important in a boss, people said as follows:  Honesty 43.2%;  Clear goals 43.1%; and Clear feedback 38.5%. People want their boss to be straightforward in saying where they’re going, and to tell them clearly how they’re performing along the way.   Here are the survey’s top answers:

ChartExport (2)

What is remarkable is that when I offered people a host of negative boss behaviors, and asked which ones were most frequent, 4 of the top 5 had to do with these same attributes of honesty and clarity.  Topping the list were: vagueness, mixed messages, favoritism, lack of feedback and flip-flopping. Here are the top vote-getters:

ChartExport (3)

The message could not be clearer for all of us.  Clarify the goals, the ends, the aims – what it is we’re trying to accomplish, and frequently and clearly let people know how they are doing against those objectives.  Do it to:

Lead with your best self,

Dan

Jul

11

Bosses Good and Not So

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Friends,

This week on my Everyday Leadership radio show we’ll hear from Curt Coffman, who with Marcus Buckingham co-authored the highly popular Gallup-data based book, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently.  They weren’t the first to say it, but said it best: when it comes to employee satisfaction and engagement, “managers trump companies.”  They argue persuasively that you’re better off with a great manager in an average company, than with an average manager in a great company.  To help build knowledge and learn what people think makes a good (or a vexing) boss, please take the 3-question survey; it will immediately give you results.

Introducing some great real managers.  In the Habitat for Humanity First Family Build, forty five of my relatives came together over two weeks for a “family reunion with a purpose,” and we built a home from scratch.  I was uplifted by the managers on the project. Jackie Frencher ran our construction project. I’m of a gender-and-generation that I confess to doing a double-take when I watch a twenty-some year old, African American woman instructing everyone on a building site, and when I see her wielding tools like the working class men in my neighborhood whose hands were greasy, strong, and a little gnarly.  (They got some yucks out of my  dad whose idea of using his hands was tying a necktie or bow tie.)  On the work site, we all looked up to Jackie for her skills, but also for her calm and her wisdom. I watched her with admiration, not just for the amazing breadth of her knowledge but also for how she sought advice and listened to input.  I love a boss confident enough to ask for help.

My “direct supervisor” was Renee, a real estate agent who spends every Wednesday and Saturday volunteering for Habitat. (The beautiful thing about volunteer work is you can usually pick your boss). I picked Renee because she had great tools (I mean her skills, as well as her overflowing toolbelt), and because she had an outrageous laugh, kindly aimed half the time at others and half the time at herself.  Aren’t those further examples of self confidence in a leader?

Renee had two more skills I look for in a leader: tremendous competence at what she does, and the ability to continually empower others. She could do anything five times faster than most volunteers (and ten times faster than I), but she kept giving us instructions, and then slack to try. We could go back to her if we were confused or struggling. She’d give advice, but she never took the job back. I was a bit timid. After all, I hated the idea that Kenyota’s house would end up with mold or crooked siding on account of my botched workmanship.  But with Renee’s patience we workers learned our jobs, climbed the learning curve (sometimes by redoing things we did wrong), and performed in a satisfactory way. By being given opportunities we learned both our limits – what we weren’t quite ready to take on – as well as our limitlessness, as we tried power tools, caulk guns, and drills that were at first intimidating.

I look forward to Curt Coffman’s wisdom.  And I will look back to Renee’s: to wit: share my tools, believe in my team members, be ready to help, and keep laughing at myself!  Do take two minutes to complete the survey to let us know what you think makes a great or a lousy boss.

Lead with your best self!

Dan

Jul

5

I Blew it on Independence Day

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Friends,

Last week I wrote – boasted? – that I was going to work on my repetitive behavior patterns, “because too often I repeat irritations, avoidances, and misunderstandings.” And on the 4th of July I completely missed a chance to do so. I completely blew it. I was judging the behavior of a family member, and I knee-jerk confronted, then knee-jerk turned my “inquiry” of them into a debate and then an indictment. And I caused real hurt.

I felt bad about it all the next day. On a long run and then a long car ride, my mind went through the same old mental muscle memory cycles: proving I was justified, finding fault in the other, then slowly beginning to think through ways I could take responsibility for my role. I thought of things to say, explanations, even apologies, but my mind, kept slipping into the same rut, screaming: “Heck, I was right in the first place, I was the one affronted, and it wasn’t my problem.” I am totally convinced that what I experienced may be a one-two mental trap that costs us billions in productivity and billions of hours of personal heartbreak. Trap number one: for some reason, we see others’ behavior and we feel attacked. We counter-attack. And our counter-attack creates a total self-fulfilling prophecy. How? Well, the other strikes back, just as we predicted! We knew they were a threat! We mentally play out their offenses (glossing over our own) over and over to prove we are right, victims, trapped not by our thoughts but by them.

A second possibility – and a second trap – may present themselves. If we are lucky enough, blessed enough by wise counselors and friends and lovers, we realize we’re really not perfect, we probably contributed to the problem, so we should figure out how and what to do. But so comes the second vicious rut that I described above. We feel attacked by ourselves for our failings (or feel attacked by a friend when we start to confide in them and they try to help us see how perhaps we have contributed to the problem). It’s feels like a psychic auto-immune disease, our mind or conscience is attacking us. So we fight away the thought. Our defensive mind “reasons” that the “other” person is still out there – our wife, or brother-in-law, sales competitor, or political enemy – lurking on some horizon, probably poised for another round of attack. We can’t let our guard down, undermining ourselves, and revealing our weakness. So, what do we do? We beat back the self-recrimination, as I did on my long run and continue to play the old tape: “I was right” and “s/he has wronged me.”

I am grateful that my daughter Kate has worn enough paths for me to get a little ways out of my ruts of self defense. And tonight Jennifer helped me to step up to my bad behavior and see what I needed to acknowledge and apologize for. Now, I’ve got to watch for that tendency to judge in the future – tomorrow and the next day. We humans are nuts! Why we create the need to initially judge others and turn them into adversaries is itself peculiar. Why we help to then create or evoke this lousy reality into being is further mystery. And how we find the ability to calm the sense of attack and fear of our self-inquiry is yet another hill to climb (trusted, loving fellow travelers seem essential on that trip). I suspect that this journey is really worth it. How many marriages, businesses, or political wars might be eased if we managed our own mental patterns a little more effectively?

I’m deeply curious about your thoughts and especially your experience with this anatomy of judgment, hurt and denial, and especially with your experiences of early awareness and mental adjustment.

Searching for best-self leadership,

Dan

Jun

27

Inner Freedom at 81st and Broadway

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Friends,

I was running in New York City two weeks ago. Up and down Central Park’s hills (yes, it’s hilly in the middle of Manhattan!) The teeming life caused me to overrun my stamina, so I wearily began ambling home – west and about 30 blocks south from the northern edge of the park. I was grateful for New York’s pragmatically numbered streets.  I took Columbus Avenue and ticked down 97th, 96th, 95th, turned west on 92nd, jogging over to Amsterdam, where I turned left and headed further south.  I kept it up:  south a handful of streets then turning west to the next avenue.

As I turned from Broadway to 81st Street something happened that’s happened to me on a hundred runs – in woods, trails or cities. I had turned at the exact same corner Jennifer and I had turned after dinner the night before.  A trivial repetition? Of course! A coincidence? NOT. The body repeats patterns. Whether the muscle memory resides in the mind or in the muscles, as some scientists now argue, it resides and it operates a lot. Maybe it’s some ancient evolutionary survival technique, as my mind in a neural firing, yanked me down 81st, as if it were saying, “You were safe on this (strange city) street yesterday, so odds are good it’ll be safe today.” Or, maybe the mind was lowering anxiety in a more general way to free up RAM for other tasks.

Have you experienced this uncanny power of repetition?  Even the most quirky, random and imaginative of us will head to the coffee pot or flip on the computer on Monday morning in the exact same way as we did on Friday. We start our toothbrush or floss in the very same spot – top, right back molar, maybe – sit in the same seat on the bus, stop at the same gas station. But in an incredibly fast and changing world, our automatic moves – like my turn at 81st Street and Broadway – may not be as useful as they were the week before. For kids, work, computer programs, the competition are constantly morphing. Repetition may not be so safe.

With 4th of July coming I plan to raise my awareness of my own freedom and especially the ways I limit it.  Last night I reviewed my goals from January (can you believe we’re at the midpoint of 2010?), because those goals are a map of free intention not repetition. I am recommitting to my values, because they are my guides of free intention not repetition. And I am going to watch my behavior patterns with others, because too often I repeat irritations, avoidances, and misunderstandings. I want to set paths of learning and creativity and engagement instead. Care to join me – on the intention of freedom?

I hope Mick (the Poet from the Keewenaw Peninsula) will weigh in on the topic today. He’s been sharing with me how he’s really found a radical freedom, where his mind has been released from tired and tiring, repetitive patterns, and he’s seeing things afresh.  Let us hear from you, Mick!  I welcome all comments on freedom at our blog community.  How free are you? What gets you free to see with new eyes and turn down new streets? How have you made choices that re-sparked work or relationships, dislodging them from old patterns that just weren’t so helpful any longer?  And if it’s your pattern to occasionally think “I should write a comment one of these day,” but you never do, maybe it’s your day to cut a new swath, to be free and to

Lead with your best self!

Dan

Jun

24

This Week On “Everyday Leadership” Radio

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This week, we’ll be discussing unions and organized labor from all different angles and industries.  Dan will also be talking to experts about right-to-work laws and the possible impact they would have on labor.

Guests for the show include Bill Borch (president of the Tri-County Building Trades Council and business agent for the Saginaw office of Iron Workers Local 25), Bill Black (Michigan Teamster’s Legislative and Community Affairs Director),  Andrew Samrick (CEO of Mill Steel), Michele Martin (UAW Director of Public Relations), and Jared Rodriguez (Grand Rapids Chamber Senior Vice President of Government Affairs).

Jun

20

Christine Leads A Family Reunion With a Purpose

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Friends,

It began with the desire to do something good.  I have had a deep love for New Orleans since the early ’80s when I ran a neighborhood social service center for the Catholic Diocese there.  Watching Katrina/Rita and seeing the maps of flooding were personally painful. So, I’d been thinking I’d do something. The next time I did a life-planning retreat down there I’d invite my clients to take an extra day and work on a Habitat for Humanity site. My love was rekindled when I dropped off my daughter Cece for a year of service with City Year New Orleans.  And I was so impressed and proud when I heard my cousin Christine Bitonti and my Aunt Susan Sanitate had visited her when they, of all things, went to the 9th Ward for a week-long blitz build with Habitat. For some reason, though, my thinking about helping changed…

Much as New Orleans needed and needs help, I thought: Let Brad Pitt and the Neville Brothers and Dr. John do that work, but Detroit has been hit by its own hurricane and is beset with its own difficulties. So, why go to New Orleans? Why not organize a family reunion of sorts, where we build a house in our own homeland, Detroit? Maybe on Garland, the street that my mom and Christine’s mom grew up on. I knew I neither had the time, nor the skills to organize it. So I called Christine and pitched her on it: What if we get the family together for a reunion with a purpose, stop whining about “what’s happened to Detroit” and instead we’ll “happen” to Detroit. I explained that I couldn’t make it happen but  I thought she’d be great, and she answered with three words, “I’m your girl.”

That was about 6 months ago. With Christine’s leadership we’ve raised over $15,000 to help pay for the house.  This past week with brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, my 79-year old mom, and lots of other awesome Habitat volunteers, we put up walls, roof, studs aplenty, and siding. Now the skilled tradesmen are in. We reconvene after July 4th for a week to complete the house – cabinets, trim, paint, sod – the whole works. Our relatives are coming back from NY, Delaware, Illinois, Florida, California and other parts to make it happen; forty in all have committed to work.  My sister Ann and niece Gigi were there every day this week. Christine was there too. She’d run the Facebook page, coordinated volunteers, worked with Habitat; if that wasn’t enough she and her husband Lou provided food for 100 workers at the site on Thursday.  Chris’ mom raised 8 kids, then became a school secretary, and then published two novels. Chris is fast in her mom’s footsteps, leading at home, the most important place we’ll lead, and then organizing a much bigger corner of the world.

I salute her this morning, an everyday leader, leading with her best self!

Dan

P.S. When my Aunt Margaret, the senior member of my dad’s side of the family – herself a mother of eight – heard what we were doing, she said the Mulhern’s are going to do it, too, and look out cousins, she’s on the phone!!!  Is your family due for a reunion?

Jun

15

Last Week on “Everyday Leadership” Radio

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Last Week: Just Working is Hard Enough!

The daily tasks at work are hard enough, but what do you do when you have the added challenges of things such as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or depression slowing you down? Learn ways to cope with additional challenges at work from our expert guests. working in the dark

Authors Fawn Fitter and Beth Gulas discuss depression at work and their book, Working in the Dark: Keeping Your Job While Dealing With Depression.

Dan was also be joined by ADD coaches Kate Kelly and Peggy Ramundo (authors of You Mean I’m Not Crazy, Stupid, or Lazy? The Classic Self-Help Book for Adults With Attention Deficit Disorder) and John Greden from The University of Michigan Depression Center

Jun

13

Home Leadership – Father’s Week

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Friends,

“Sorry. We did not find any results with the search terms you provided. Please try your search again.” I’ll leave you to wonder for a second what I was searching for on the Barnes & Noble magazine database.  Frustrated at finding nothing, I searched for “parents” and got 59 results.  Of the first 10, one had only text on the cover; of those with cover photos, nine had babies or toddlers, seven had moms (or mom-models), and one had a dog.  Maybe you can guess who was missing.  I went through the other 6 screens of 10 magazines at the site.  Kudos to Family Digest and Catholic Digest – the only ones with a dad (the former, further exceptional in that it had an African American family). Oh, the first search of course was for “dad” or “fathers” – no magazines turned up.

With Father’s Day ahead I’m thinking about dads and moms.  Cheers to moms!!! Especially those who parent the 30% of all American children who won’t have a dad present at home. Moms are rocking it out.  Not just leading at home but often at work as well.

And kudos to so many dads stepping up in new ways. But Man! we’ve got a long way to go with so many men not stepping up, and so many of us trying to adjust to the new rules. Still, the future can be golden. As men increasingly step up to the opportunity to lead at home, we’ll have stronger and happier children, grateful and freer women, and men who are more whole and fulfilled.  It’s the trifecta – everyone stands to win!

So as we enter Father’s Week (heck, we need much more than a day), how can we support men as they see and seize this fantastic opportunity to lead at home, and sometimes to lead our wives from behind?!  Here’s some conversation-starter questions and an invitation for you to share yours:

1.  Ask a man this week what’s the best part of being a dad (and or grandpa).

2.  Ask a man to what degree he sees his leading at home as an opportunity and to what degree he sees it as obligation.

3.  Ask a man if it’s better to be a husband/dad/man now, or when his dad was living the role. How does he see the role changed and changing?

4.  Ask a man what he was raised to think “strength” is, and what he would say “strength” is today.

5.  Ask a boy what he thinks about becoming a stay-at-home dad for part of his period of child-rearing when he grows up.

I wonder two more things and invite your thoughts about them and/or the conversation-starters above. First, to men in particular: are you more comfortable talking about these things with a woman or with another man? Talk to me!  To men and women: how (or should we) change the way we are raising men in this world of women’s ascendancy? How do we prepare boys for roles that men my age were never trained for?

It’s a cool time to be a dude.  I only wish I had more years and more young children to continue to learn to be a good dad and to

Lead with my best self,

Dan

Jun

9

Previously on “Everyday Leadership” Radio

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Previously on “Everyday Leadership” Radio: Who’s Making Work Work in Grand Rapids?

Earlier this month, you heard all about the leaders that are making work work in Detroit and across the state, but who’s making it work in Grand Rapids?  Dan took the show on the road again to Grand Rapids to find out! Guests included  John Zwarensteyn (The Grand Rapids Business Journal), Laurie Forte (COO of the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce), Matt Gryczan (Rapid Growth), Jim Swoboda (President of CultureMD), and Carl Erickson (President of Atomic Object).

Jun

6

Just a minute here!

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Friends,

Life is so crazy – how one day, one minute, even one split second, and one interaction can change everything. Over the weekend a friend told me about a guy he’s befriended who’s hoping for parole. This prisoner was a good athlete, student, kid and had a manager’s job in his early 20s when he made one crazy stupid decision.  Someone was killed as a result, and he’s now been in prison for over half his life, with no end in sight.

In a minute’s time, back in 1999, my wife made the decision to mentor Britney, an 8-year old girl.  Brit’s parents had perhaps faced two or three of those split second decisions of their own – only they chose poorly.  Britney ended up first homeless, then in foster care, motherless, and finally adopted by Sheila – a step-sister in Georgia whom she hardly knew. Sheila rose up heroically in her own moment of fate.  Last week Jennifer flew to Atlanta and drove hours  on the back roads of rural Georgia; and the three women – Jen, Sheila, and Britney – shared a celebratory moment, savoring Britney’s graduation from high school and enrollment in college.

My troika of stories ends with Bert and Monique – he a full-time lawyer and longtime little league coach and board member for the utterly awesome non-profit Think Detroit PAL, and she the executive director of  a great eastside community service center called Franklin Wright Settlement. Parents themselves, with full-time and extra-curricular commitments to kids, for the last year or so they’ve been doing the real life version of The Blind Side. They welcomed a young man on the edge into their own home, treating him like their own.

“Just a minute, ” we say, often adding, “I’m busy here.”  Just a minute. And just a minute can change everything: news of an accident, a doctor’s sober tone, a phone call from your kids or the school.  I took a minute to visit a young friend in the Ingham County juvenile detention facility yesterday.  I left with Michelle Obama’s words ringing in my head. I’ve heard her say about youth who are spiritually, socially, and emotionally needy: They didn’t choose to be born in dangerous neighborhoods, to have broken schools and a lack of role models.  It’s up to us, she says, adults – not children- to make the difference in their lives.

I’ve always been fond of two lines from scripture.  The first, often sung between readings, says: “If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts.”  And it comes together with the other in which Jesus rests his hands on the shoulders of a small child before him and says, “Whoever welcomes a child like this one, in my name, welcomes me.”  Busy as we all are, when we are awake to this kind of moment, we may find the most life(s)-changing opportunity to truly

Lead with your best self,

Dan

If you’re thinking this might be your moment, check out : Mentor Michigan, or if you’re outside Michigan, go to Mentoring.org.

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