May

31

You’re a Stick Figure – or Two

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Friends,

“Lead with your best self” is the way I close my RFL columns, and I thought in the next few weeks I’d share some of the seeds at the core of that expression.  Fundamental to this exhortation is  the notion that you can present to yourself and to others all kinds of versions of you – some awesome and some way less than your best.  And, in each moment, and in a thousand accumulating moments over time, you have a choice of the self with which you’ll lead.

If there is one great enemy to your best, it is fear.  I know a young guy who’s awesome with other people. He can meet other young people or adults and has an uncanny way of making them feel cared about and connected.  Yet he gets very nervous at the notion of stretching beyond his usual boundaries. He can hardly stand the conversation about joining a new league, activity, or camp. His flight instincts get activated, quite literally, sending him not only out of the conversation, but right out of the room.  Once I drew for him a picture that I’d seen Mary Ann (M.A.) Hastings, my sage business partner, draw for a client: I drew one stick figure about an inch high; and to its right I drew another about 4 inches high. Quoting M.A., I said, while pointing to the small figure, “This one is how you see yourself sometimes; and this one,” pointing to the giant figure next to it, I said, “is how others see you. You are so much more than you imagine yourself to be.”

When that guy learns to manage his natural fears and thereby lead with his best self, oh what a force he will be. I’m convinced that it is fear – natural, biological, genetic, and developmental – that puts him, and us inside that small and, we imagine, safe little stick figure on the left.  Perhaps you ask: fear of what?  All kinds of things: embarrassment, failure, attack, being wrong, being isolated, being different, getting fired!  Note that each is a variant of our most deep and ancient fears: isolation, pain, death.

To lead with your best means to choose to step outside the seeming safety and to engage. Your big stick-figure self will learn so much more by engaging than by laying back and playing small.  So, find your best self – the values or observations or work product or love – that are the best you have and see if there isn’t a way fearlessly to share them in this short week ahead.  Seems like a great game to play and one that will help in the long run for you to

Lead with your best self,

Dan

May

23

Manage the Manager

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I shouldn’t have been surprised that Meryl Runion, who has a series of books on “power phrases” and a website called www.speakstrong.com would shoot right straight to the red dot in the center of the target. She did, as I was interviewing her this past week on the topic of ASSERTIVENESS.  (The show and twenty-five other episodes of Everyday Leadership Radio shows are now available with one-click at my website www.danmulhern.com.)
Meryl said: “You need to manager your manager…”  Do you agree?  And agree from both sides of the equation? Do you agree with respect to your manager – should you manage her or him?  And do you agree with respect to those whom you manage – should they manage you?  I replayed Meryl’s line later in the show, and my guest Dorothy Leeds said, while making another point, “managers wont  like that.”  I pushed back with Dorothy and today perhaps with you, because Meryl’s paradigm shift makes too much sense.*
Let me offer myself as an example. My mind gravitates toward possibility and the big picture. I’m also persuasive, so I can get people to follow me on missions that seem awesome but may be incredibly hard to execute and come with great opportunity costs in terms of the time and energy they will drain from other worthy projects. And I am probably in the bottom quartile of the population when it comes to my natural skills to estimate how long things take, how much resource they demand, how much resistance, and the sequential execution needs. It took me twenty years in management to realize that I often had people working “for” me, like my assistant Tara Adams, who were a thousand time smarter when it came to the intelligence of the practical. So I learned to let Tara manage me in regular two-week meetings and then in between them.  I set priorities, but she asked the realistic questions that tempered my enthusiasm, pointed to the opportunity costs, and generally multiplied my abilities to execute.
Aspects of this situation are unique to my peculiar abilities and disabilities. What’s not unique is that people on our teams have skills we don’t and they see things we can’t. They see their own work. They are often closer to the problem, the client, the customer, and other people who can make a difference. We should push them to manage us. Ask them questions like, “How can I help you succeed? What do you need from me? Is there one thing I can offer that will help you to do your job better?” We have to  take one giant step further.  For in years in passive classrooms and authoritarian households and typical workplaces, many workers have been steeped like soggy tea bag in the culture of dependence. They wait, they listen.  So we have to proactively give more than permission, but the expectation, that our workers should see it as their job to manage us to get results.
Of course, we don’t have to wait for permission to be assertive and (surreptitiously, if necessary) manage our managers.  We can begin by asking ourselves: “What could my boss do differently to get more out of me?”  It might be: give me more clarity about goals. Or, more quickly share information that affects my job. Or, help me understand, “of everything you want me to do, what’s most important to you?”  There’s some great advice on my show on how to assert yourself in these ways, how to manage your manager to get what you need.  But it all begins with the notion that you – not your boss – are responsible for working (with) him or her to get what you need to succeed.  If this makes you uncomfortable as a boss, please push back with a comment and engage in the discussion this week to
Lead with your best self,
Dan
* In fairness to Dorothy, she explained that it wasn’t the concept of managing the manager that she thought would be offensive to managers, but only the language or sound of managing your boss.  Indeed, she has a brilliant approach to using questions that can level the ground with a higher-up so that the worker has genuine power in the situation.

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Friends,

I shouldn’t have been surprised that Meryl Runion, who has a series of books on “Power Phrases” and a website called speakstrong.com would pierce the red dot in the center of the target. She did, as I was interviewing her this past week on the topic of ASSERTIVENESS.  (The show and any of twenty-five other episodes of the Everyday Leadership Radio are now available with one-click at my website www.danmulhern.com.)

Meryl said: “we (do) need to manage our managers, even more than they need to manage us.”  Do you agree?  And agree from both sides of the equation? Do you agree with respect to your manager – should you manage her or him?  And do you agree with respect to those whom you manage – should they manage you?  I replayed Meryl’s line later in the show, and my guest Dorothy Leeds said, “managers don’t want to hear that.”  I pushed back with Dorothy and today perhaps with you, because Meryl’s paradigm shift makes too much sense to let anything stand in the way.*

Let me offer an example from my experience. My mind gravitates toward possibility and the big picture. I’m also persuasive, so I can get people to follow me on missions that seem awesome but may be incredibly hard to execute and come with great opportunity costs in terms of the time and energy they will drain from other worthy projects. Now I am probably in the bottom quartile of the population when it comes to my natural skills to estimate how long things take, how much resource they demand, how much resistance they’ll evoke, and the sequential execution needs. It took me twenty years in management to realize that I often had people working “for” me, like my former assistant Tara Adams, who were a thousand time smarter when it came to what I’d call “the intelligence of the practical.”  So I learned to let Tara manage me in regular two-week meetings and then in between them.  I set priorities, but she asked the realistic questions that tempered my enthusiasm, pointed to the opportunity costs, and generally multiplied my abilities to execute.

Aspects of this situation are unique to my peculiar abilities and disabilities. What’s not unique is that people on our teams have skills we don’t and they see things we can’t. They see their own work. They are often closer to the problem, the client, the customer, and other people who can make a difference. We should push them to manage us. Ask them questions like, “How can I help you succeed? What do you need from me? Is there one thing I can offer that will help you to do your job better?” We have to  take one giant step further.  For in years in passive classrooms and authoritarian households and typical workplaces, many workers have been steeped like soggy tea bags in the culture of dependence. They wait, they listen.  So we have to proactively give more than permission, but the expectation, that they should see it as their job to manage us to get results.

On the other side of the equation, we don’t have to wait for permission to be assertive and – surreptitiously, if necessary – manage our managers.  We can begin by asking ourselves: “What could my boss do differently to get more out of me?”  It might be: give me more clarity about goals; or, share more information that affects my job;  or, help me understand, “of everything you want me to do, what’s most important to you?”  There’s some great advice on my show on how to assert yourself in these ways, how to manage your manager to get what you need.  But it all begins with the notion that you – not your boss – are responsible for working (with) him or her to get what you need to succeed.  If this makes you uncomfortable as a boss, please push back with a comment and engage in the discussion this week to

Lead with your best self,

Dan

* In fairness to Dorothy, she explained that it wasn’t the concept of managing the manager that she thought would be offensive to managers, but only the language or sound of managing your boss.  Indeed, she has a brilliant approach to using questions that can level the ground with a higher-up so that the worker has genuine power in the situation.

May

16

Leaders: Compelling, Persuasive, Articulate – Forget That!

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Friends,

Think of leaders who were powerful communicators: there’s Lincoln’s simple elegance at Gettysburg, FDR on “nothing to fear,” JFK on “ask not what your country can do for you…” and Churchill exhorting England “Never, never, never give up.”  We think of Iacocoa on TV, or Reagan telling Gorbachev, “Tear down that wall.”  Just this month, British voters were surprised and moved by Liberal Party candidate Nick Clegg whose debating skills helped bring down Gordon Brown. We think of Steve Jobs’ brilliant technology talks and Warren Buffet’s convincing homespun speech.

Talk. Talk. Talk. 300 channels of tv talk.  Movies so full of surround sound – like Robin Hood I saw this weekend – and Black Eyes Peas thump-stuttering-truncating-Imabe – that it’s just too fast. A billion tweets a day. Txts on top of emails. “Know your brand. Stick to your message. Get your 20-second elevator pitch ready.”  Who the  heck has time to listen? Am I mirroring any kind of franticness and stimulus overload you feel on a Monday?

What if the most powerful leadership – from home, to shop or office, to city or even nation – comes from listening deeply and fully?  Perhaps what President Obama heard from President Karzai last week was more important for American foreign policy than what our President said to him.  If the job of a leader – whether she’s the boss or not – is to get the best out of others, doesn’t it stand to reason that how she listens may generate more knowledge and more buy-in than what she has to say? Maybe it’s less important to figure out what to say to your kids about their future, drugs, or grades, than how to listen to your kids about these and other topics that matter to them. Maybe heightened listening can take your staff and co-workers and boss to greater clarity, focus, and alignment.

So, why not begin the week considering the power of your listening.  And if you’d like to learn better how to listen powerfully, find some quiet time to listen to my show from Saturday.  I had tremendous expert guests who were all about – of all things – listening!  (That episode and a bunch of other great shows are easily accessible now directly from  my website.)

Listen to lead with your best self,

Dan

P.S.  As I was perusing great Churchill quotes I came across this great one for everyday leadership:  ”Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

May

9

Getting Promoted – The Data and Implications for Everyday Leaders

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Friends,

A big thanks to the 900+ people who answered last week’s brief survey on what gets people job promotions.  The results are fascinating, so I’ll summarize the two clear takeaways.

First,  how fair are promotions?  When asked how people had been treated in promotion situations over their work lives, and given four choices: Totally fairly, fairly, questionably and unfairly the numbers broke like a statistician’s dream.  By a 75-to-25 margin people felt promotions were fair – totally fair (22%) or fair (53%) – over unfair – questionable (20%) or unfair (5%).  I was a bit surprised – are you? – that only one in 20 felt they had been treated unfairly.  In organizations with less than 25 people, a remarkable 2.1% said they’d been treated unfairly, while in organizations with over 1,000 people, the unfair number rose to 7.5%.  That surely tells you something.

Second, what really matters for getting promoted?  I asked about the importance of eight different factors – from “having the qualifications,” to “demonstrating results at your current position” to “having connections” with higher ups, or being seen as “bought in to the culture.” (I threw in “sucking up” because that’s what you hear the groaners say.)  Only two factors were rated as “essential” to promotion.  And these were seen as essential both when people were talking generally about promotion, but also when they were asked about their personal experience.  They were:

1.  Demonstrating results at your current position.

2.  Being seen as a person who goes over and  above what’s expected.

These both out-ranked things like “having connections” or “having credentials” or “having the qualifications” for the open position.  To me they say two things to both managers and those who work for them.  I’ll start with the second of the facts above:  If you want to have a higher-up job, act like you already have it.  Don’t meet expectations, surpass them. Proactivity matters and attitude is critical.  It makes me wonder two things: (1) How many workers have the goal of  exceeding expectations?  And (2) How many managers have the goal of helping their direct reports to exceed expectations?  It would seem the first question leads to promotion and the second leads to productive and loyal workers.

Finally, a word about the # 1 standout factor in promotions: demonstrating results in your current position.  I suspect that the major issue here is truly knowing what those expected results are.  Having completed my last review of a state employee last week – at a time I was poring over these survey results – I was overwhelmed with the importance of being crystal clear to my assistant about what results I expected.  It seems obvious. But so often, critical expectations remain unspoken by managers. No less than 4 of the 5 guests on my radio show on the topic of job promotion this week talked about the importance of “unwritten rules.”  Well, if workers can’t read ‘em, how can they be accountable for them?  We stand to gain so much in productivity of our workers, so much in their growth, so much in their loyalty, and so much in our organizational results if we work to become insanely clear about just what the results are that we’re after.

You can see the summary data of the survey here.  I’d love to hear your comments on the data, my conclusions here, or the role of promotions and management to help you to succeed. Obtaining an online MBA could potentially help you get promoted.

Lead with your best self!

May

3

How Do You Get Ahead at Work?

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Friends,

Today, instead of sharing ideas with you, I’m asking for you to share ideas with me.  This weekend my radio show is on a very practical topic:  What REALLY helps people get ahead at work?

As I scoured Amazon for popular and reliable books on the topic I was shocked to find . . . none.  So, with a little crowd-sourcing, we can learn quickly.

By answering a quick survey, you’ll immediately see the accumulating data, help me engage my listeners, and provide data to your fellow Reading for Leading readers.  This survey has just 4 multiple choice questions, and a quick demographic one.  It’ll just take a couple minutes.

Feel free to share your comments on this question on my blog – before or after you take the survey.

Thanks in advance for helping us all to think about how you get into a position of greater authority; so as from there, to

Lead with your best self!

Apr

25

Perspective and De-Learning

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Audio version of today’s Reading for Leading

Listen to Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies share the remarkable story of his workplace democracy with Dan on the Everyday Leadership show. His interview is the first of the two podcasts in the “Democracy in the Workplace.”

Friends,

Wildly different stories, same darned theme:

STORY ONE.  Had lunch with Mom on Friday. She said she’d gone to the annual women’s club luncheon at the city hall in Lathrup Village, and while there, she signed up to be an alternate driver for Meals on Wheels. She said, “I’d been meaning to do that for a long time.” I love the picture of my 79-1/2 year old mom delivering meals to 65 year olds. Mom keeps gaining new perspectives, and de-learning that she’s supposed to be old, inactive, taking from others and pulling back.

STORY TWO.  I was running my favorite training loop in a cemetery in Lansing on Saturday. After a quick trip to Sunoco to grab a Powerade I came back and having run hundreds of loops over the last couple years thought, “maybe I’ll run in the opposite direction.” As humans we have these unconscious habits of efficiency, repeating things the same way over and over again. So, the perspective shift was crazy: As I ran in the other direction, I felt I was in a completely different place; perspective changed almost everything!

STORY THREE.  I did one of the most fascinating interviews ever on my radio show on Saturday. It was all about workplace democracy – a completely different way of looking at workplace organization, productivity, innovation and even compensation. I spoke with Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, an Indian company with 60,000 employees (or transformers as he likes to call them) in 26 countries. Vineet had written in his Harvard Business Review blog: “executives tend to gravitate toward their zones of comfort as they grow older — and then wonder why the magic has disappeared from work.” He says it’s time to de-learn. Nayar, whose company grew 21% last year, says the only way to compete is to innovate, and the only way to innovate is to de-learn what you think you know.

He argues that democracy at work is the only way to generate enough and fast enough innovation.  This means de-learning how we work. Employees have to de-learn that they just follow directions, and instead must see the business as active owners and creators and collaborators. And instead of managers pretending they know everything, he wants his managers “to suck up to employees” to support their efforts and to learn from their perspective, which after all is at eye-level with the customer.

STORY FOUR.  You’ll begin this week like every other: same trip to coffee machine, same seat at staff meeting (same agenda?), same waiting for others.  To innovate, you’ve got to de-learn, to de-learn you need to find a new perspective.  Take it literally! Run the loop backwards. Sit in another chair. Shake it up to

Lead with your best self,

Dan

Apr

19

Good, good, good

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Friends,

I facilitated a session among a diverse group of health care professionals who have been getting together for about six months to learn how they can create more patient-centered care.  In the session before mine, Margie Hagene an excellent facilitator was debriefing visits that had been made by team leaders to the sites.  She was asking for feedback to the leaders about the visits.  The leaders were in the room.  Of 19 tables, one spoke up and said (paraphrasing here):  We really appreciated the interest and the support; it just makes you feel good to know the leaders care enough about what’s going on to take time from their busy work and listen and encourage.  Margie thanked her for the feedback and said, “Who else would like to offer feedback on the value of the visits?”  The only rumblings came from the air conditioning system.

Now, Margie was obviously a strong and sharp facilitator and so she explained to them that she was not looking for compliments and flattery, and she was very open even if the feedback was constructive. But her point in asking, she said, is that sometimes leaders don’t know what’s most helpful, and they want to be helpful. So, she said, this was a great opportunity to shape the future visits to make them most valuable. And she continued to explain intelligently and solicit feedback with passion.  From this extended invitation, she got one more piece of feedback (just one, or a 100% increase, depending on your perspective).  This second contributor said: It really helped to have the visiting leader remind them of their initial purpose and check and see if they were still on track. And she added, almost apologetically as though she and her colleagues shouldn’t need it, that her clinic appreciated the encouragement for the progress they were making.

As a facilitator, it’s great to watch others work, because you see differently when you don’t have the microphone in your hand.  And here’s what I saw:  First: gosh it’s hard to get people to give honest feedback to their leaders.  So, leaders, you must, as Margie did:  Explain. And make it safe.  And repeat the invitation.  And surely find other ways than the head-on, in-the-group approach to get feedback.  Never forget that at a deep level people are timid about telling the emperor about the clothes he or she is wearing – whether their threads are transparent or made of fine silk.

One thing struck me even more than the need to push for feedback.  Followers, i.e., people, especially adults, and adults-at-work grossly undervalue the role of positive encouragement.  The two groups that spoke both talked in terms like “it was just nice to hear that we were doing okay.”  And so why is that a “just?”  Why did they seem to couch it as if encouragement doesn’t really count, isn’t really important.  It seemed like they were saying if perhaps the leaders had delivered some incredibly piercing insight, or revelatory discovery, that would be truly worthwhile.  But this was “just” encouragement.  Nonsense!  Encouragement is hugely important and we should never stop offering it.

Jack and I were running up and down a field playing catch with lacrosse sticks yesterday. I started out as usual the noisy and irrepressible coach: “see it all the way, Jack” “watch the angle of your stick,” “come on, don’t quit.”  Blah. Blah. Blah. He bristled. Who wouldn’t?  I made myself start counting how many “good’s” or “nice” comments I could make in a row.  (I lost track or blew it at about four.)

You KNOW what happened both with respect to Jack’s efficiency and his joy-factor, when I switched to the positive, right?

These are days of extraordinary challenge change.  I both thank you and applaud you for taking a minute to read something to encourage and stimulate you, and I invite you to be an encourager today, as you

Lead with your best self!

Apr

11

Greek Gods Among Us

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Friends,

Seems to me that if we’re going to lead well and follow well, we’ve got to come to terms with something deep and basic in human nature.  And understanding this odd aspect of our humanity is especially critical when our environments are topsy-turvy, insecure, scarce or scary.  Such an environment could be part of your world now:  anything from a kid going through adolescence, a family grieving the loss or illness of a loved one, a city in crisis, a state in the midst of massive change, or even a globe at risk. You’ll see this aspect of human nature bubbling up in three current events.

Tiger roared back yesterday at the Masters. The media’s yapping after the Pope. And Congressman Bart Stupak has said he’s not running for re-election. Perhaps it’s my son’s fascination with Greek mythology that has me thinking these stories are all a bit like the tales of the Greek gods. We would never call these mere mortals gods, but we certainly put them on lofty pedestals.  The Vatican, for instance is quite literally filled with busts of popes; and how appropriate that Nike – named after the Greek goddess of victory – stood by Tiger. We put these demigods up, and we knock them down.  Indeed, the tea bag crew which claims to have downed Stupak – and the media members chanting for the Pope to account – seem to measure their power precisely in their ability to take their targets down.

So, that’s it. Every leader is mortal and imperfect. Yet we want SO much from them, and we grow so hurt, scared, angry, and crazed when they let us down. In our enlightened age, people in their 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond, continue to wrestle with their disappointments about the mom or dad who let them down. Congregations lurch and spasm for years after a pastor has not fit their impossibly conflicted hopes and expectations. And we still can’t decide about that darned Thomas Jefferson – president, philosopher, scientist and slaveholder.

The main lesson for followers is this: get over the childish expectations that the boss, parent, teacher, mayor, CEO, or school superintendent is going to do everything your way. They’re fallible and so are you!  The fundamental truth they experience is that there’s one of them and usually a whole lot of you’s; if they met your expectations, they’d be dashing someone else’s. I’m not saying, “tolerate everything,” but I am saying, examine your expectations of them with every bit as much passion as you examine their behaviors.

And the main lesson for us as everyday leaders: know you’ll fail them. Don’t scamper too quickly onto anyone’s pedestal, because it’s a lot harder coming down than getting up!  Accept that your job often requires that you fail them (you can’t go on being parent or boss forever! They need to take over more and more.) Part of the work is helping them to keep from careening from infatuation to infuriation with their leaders, to instead focus on their own leadership. You’ve got to be frustrating them a little all the time, if they’re going to do the work they need to do.

A little less exalting, a little less faulting, to

Lead with your best self.

Apr

4

Revolutionary Leadership

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Friends,

On one day a year millions around the world exalt a tale of Insanely Revolutionary Leadership.  Every three or four years, I reprise it in RFL.  And if we tell and hear the story right, everyone is invited to practice revolutionary everyday leadership.

Imagine the greatest leaders of our time: Obama, Putin, Gorbachev, Mandela, Reagan, Hilary and Bill Clinton.  Throw in prophets. As with Michigan strawberries, you pick ‘em:  Dennis Kucinich? Ralph Nader? Sean Hannity? The Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Friedman? (A list inclusive of at least one person sure to drive nearly everyone nuts :-) ).  Toss in business leaders: Sergei and Larry and Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.  Pick your fave.

Now imagine the one you consider most powerful – in a meeting with their team, their closest advisors, their board or inner circle of friends.  Things are good.  Spirits are high.  There’s momentum and huge possibilities in the air. And imagine after dinner, the most powerful leader grabbing a towel and . . . . washing the feet of his or her friends. Later the same night, imagine they’re still together when someone with a gun comes up to kidnap the leader, and when one of his friends intervenes (with a gun, or threats of a lawsuit), the leader says, “Stop. Put away the guns.”  Remotely plausible?  Straining the imagination?

Finally imagine that person is then tried quickly and put to a painful death, all the while choosing not to marshal resources for a counter offensive.  Christians recognize in this the last three days of Jesus’ life and the spirit of his entire time of leadership.  The man or Man totally chose love over fear, and service over self.

What would it be like to have that kind of boss? What would it be like for children to have that kind of mom and dad, or that kind of teacher?  Before you get to the impossibility and impracticality of it all, imagine just for a second the kind of trust you would feel if you were served in that way by your leaders. What if they had no fear – or put it aside completely for love? What if they saw goodness in you beyond what you could possibly see in yourself?

One day a year we ought to fully embrace love and service in our leadership journey. We ought to risk the insane and believe that love will win, no matter the appearances of loss or setback, no matter the monstrous lump of fear in our throats. One day believe and invoke forces of love and service, in magnificent moments to

Lead with our best Self

Mar

28

Seismic Shifts at Work and Home

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Michigan got totally blasted by a slow-coming seismic shift away from low-skill, high-wage manufacturing jobs. Now, in the world of families, work and gender, America’s in the midst of a similarly slow seismic shift. Are we ready? Humans aren’t so good at even seeing such slow change-a-comin’. But awareness – which is arguably the most important word in leadership at home and at work – seems to be on the rise.

Last week I presented on a panel at the 2010 Families and Work Conference with Brad Harrington, who’s the Director of the Center for Work and Family at Boston College. We were discussing the shifts in men’s roles. We were considered experts, yet it was the first time either of us – who speak a lot – had addressed this topic. What does that tell you? The gender shifts are massive. The number of women who earn more than their husbands has gone from 1 in 25 (1970) to 1 in 4 (2007). And in the same time, we went from husbands having more degrees than their wives on a 3:2 ratio, to the opposite, 3 wives with more education for every 2 husbands who out-learned their wives.* Of course, educational attainment ties directly to employment status and income, which partly explains why 60% of the job loss in this recession has fallen on men (during one stretch it was 80%). Ouch!

Yeah! for women, who in three generations have blown the doors off to achievement in the economic and political realms. How great for them, their supportive men, economically benefitting families, and especially for society that can now tap 100% of its talent, instead of 50%. But what about men? And what about our children? This week I’ll be at the White House, where the First Parents will be hosting a forum on workplace flexibility. Every workplace should follow their lead and ask how we optimize flexibility. The old model of mom-at-home can be phenomenal for kids, but it’s just not the norm – not any more than men, shoulder-to-shoulder on the assembly line is the way we make cars. In a land of liberty where women want to work, and in a land of economic pressure where families need the income, two-parent and women-dominated families are here to stay.

I believe one of the most vital things we can do is encourage more Man Talk, so we men rise up to our liberation and we meet the huge needs of our kids. We need individual conversations about paternity leave, supporting high-achieving women, and about how to train our boys for a world that demands new levels of communication and collaboration at home as well as at work. Brothers, is this your Budweiser talk with your friends, or the front-seat conversation with your boys? And we need big public conversations about what it now means to be a great man, a gentleman, a strong man. We really need to figure out how our boys are to keep their confidence when these young women are outshining them. It’s astounding but in a generation and a half we have gone from girls being told not to look smarter than the boys, to some boys telling other boys that being an honors student is a girl-thing.

The last thing we need is a gender war. We need strategies to continue to grow great women, redefine great men, and truly figure out how to have our children get our best when it’s hard to figure out who does what any more, and when there’s less time to do it! For a beginning of the discussion men need to have, I invite you to tune in to the podcast of this past week’s radio show on “making work work,” where we explored shifting male roles. The guests were all-stars and the callers fascinating. (By the way college kids and their parents should tune in this week, Saturday 7-9 AM EST, for a show on what to do after college, especially in this tough environment.)

Let’s talk work place flexibility and home life creativity to

Lead with your best self,

Dan

* Richard Fry, D’Vera Cohn, “New Economics of Marriage: The Rise of Wives,” Pew Research Center, accessed at http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1466/economics-marriage-rise-of-wives?src=prc-latest&proj=peoplepress. It’s hard in a newsletter this short to present these educational attainment numbers with total accuracy. So, an explanatory note on the educational attainment comparisons: about half of all spouses have equal educational attainment levels, so the ratios I presented are only for the remaining half who have different levels of educational attainment.

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