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Monday Morning Moment – The 3 I’s of Leaders Who Get Things Done and Loyalty Won

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Photo Credit: ITD Assessments

Happy Monday Morning! Let’s talk about leadership. It’s one of my favorite learning curves. Not so I can tell others how to lead (a terrible temptation – like it’s my job…sheesh) but more to celebrate those who lead well. Leading well doesn’t necessarily come with the job description…more, it comes with the three “I’s” in this piece. Leading well is learned and developed through life for all of us. So no discouragement here. I am thankful for those who lead (me and others) well, for sure. So here we go, and here’s what inspired this post.

Earlier this morning, while working at my desk, I could hear the excited tones of a phone conversation. You could tell by the rise and fall of the voice that his office door was open and he was walking around. It was fortunately impossible to hear the content of the conversation – muffled by physical distance – but the intensity of the conversation was clear. Positive, urgent, engaging intensity!

While I was passively aware of the happy drone of the above conversation, a piece by writer, pastor Eric Geiger popped up on my Twitter feed. He shared the 2 Qualities in All Great Leaders. His focus was intensity and intentionality.

It inspired my thinking and stirred me to add a third “I” to his characteristics – inclusivity. [I love alliteration – happy it worked.]

Intensity – Geiger emphasized: “The passion of the team will rarely rise above the passion of the leader.” As leaders, we need intensity in our direction in the execution of our vision. This is a high-burn characteristic and can, over time and tension, lose the heat and edge necessary for razor focus. Intensity can give way to a sense of “We all know what needs to be done” or “Keep doing what you’re doing”… without the urgency that keeps us from mission drift in our work. Intensity is a heart issue – with a high sense of personal responsibility. We lead like the future depends on it…as well as today. To keep intensity in our leadership requires intentionality and inclusivity.

Intentionality – Geiger’s take on intentionality is brilliant: “Leadership without intentionality results in chaos for the people on the team and for those being served…Intentionality means having a clear understanding of your mission, your culture, and where you are headed. Great leaders fight the drift away from intentionality and toward a plethora of competing directions.”

Intentionality is not just an ongoing earnestness to serve a team or organizational vision. It is the dogged determination of a leader, fixed on the goal, to bring every resource to bear on reaching it. This is less task-orientation and more a resource-orientation. Less an “urgent need” focus (although urgent needs matter as well) and more a big picture focus. A daily plan for execution…or we too easily veer into the ditch.

Inclusivity is what I add to Geiger’s excellent qualities for great leaders. By “inclusivity”, I mean a leader’s openness to bringing varying opinions and expertise to the table and providing a vehicle to do this on a regular basis.  It is the messier, less controllable aspect of leadership. A proverb comes to mind when thinking of workplace inclusion or inclusivity:

“Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of oxen.” – Proverbs 14:4

Writer pastor Jason Jackson‘s brief commentary on the proverb above supports inclusivity:

“Oxen are the tools for an abundant harvest. Their cost and inconvenience does not compare with their productivity.

Solomon is not simply giving a lesson in agriculture. Here are two principles:

  1. get the right tools [people] for the job you need to do, and
  2. the cost [to the leader] of the right tool is worth it.”

Leading Through Inclusion: Traits to Help Us Be Better Leaders – Maja Egnell

Inclusivity reminds us of the great lessons on leadership we have from Jim Collins. He has written extensively on great companies and great leaders. Collins urges leaders to not only get the right people on the bus, but also the right persons in the right seat.

Leaders of Great Companies Ask: First Who, Then What? – Wendy Maynard

Inclusivity is a lot of work for the leader but it creates a much more empowering and impactful workplace and a better outcome in the end. When decisions are being made or products/services are being developed, who needs to be at the table? Same folks each time may not get us where we hope to go. It definitely will not urge a team toward the goal, or the vision, or an engaged sense of belonging.

Photo Credit: John C. Maxwell, Brainy Quote

Here’s to intensity, intentionality, and inclusivity in our leaders. Thanks, Eric Geiger, for your inspiration this morning…as well as that guy on the phone down the hall.

2 Qualities in All Great Leaders – Eric Geiger

6 Questions That Reveal If You Are an Inclusive Leader – Ryan Jenkins

6 Reasons to Be an Inclusive Leader – Ryan Jenkins

3 I’s of Effective Leadership (Integrity, Influence, Impact) – Naphtali Hoff

The Three I’s of a Great Leader (Initiative, Inspiration, Intuition) – Joy Ruhmann

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Monday Morning Moment – Strengthening Decision-making with Collaborative Conversations

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Blog - Collaborative ConversationsPhoto Credit: AJCarlisle.files.wordpress.com

[Adapted from the Archives]

Change is normal, and resisting change is normal as well. You may be part of an organization or company where sweeping changes are being implemented, even this week. Or maybe you are not on the inside loop of these decisions, so you are not privy to the change coming. Whether you are part of that process or not, consider how you might have a role in making change work, in your sphere of influence, among your colleagues.

You may already have read and profited from the book Crucial Conversations. Now consider collaborative conversations. Collaboration, simply defined, is “working together towards shared goals”. Collaborative conversations bring a collective intelligence to bear on the problem to be solved, vision to be defined, or direction to be changed.Blog - Collaborative ConversationsPhoto Credit: ThoughtFarmer.com

David Perkins, a Harvard professor, wrote about collaborative conversations in the workplace, using the metaphor of King Arthur’s round table. He described the beneficial nature of bringing several principal players (or stakeholders) to the table and treating each one with an equal or autonomous voice.

Perkins’ book King Arthur’s Round Table: How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart Organizations is a tremendous resource in developing this kind of decision-making work environment. An Executive Book Summary* can help you get started.

“A round table makes it a little easier to pool mental effort. A round table makes a group a little more intelligent…For a group to display intelligence in a sustained way, the members have to value their exchanges and stick together to keep making them. This depends on positive symbolic conduct [side messages sent by our words and behavior]…and collaboration… It’s not ideas, but people with ideas that make things happen.” – David Perkins

“One of the simplest ways to immunize a culture against broken trust, corruption, and animosity is to build a common vision.” – David Perkins

I personally thrive in such a setting and intuitively understand the value-adding nature of collaborative conversations. In researching this workplace topic, and choosing the links below, I came across a fascinating paper** by Heather Davis, a professor of RMIT University Australia.

Davis presented her paper at the 14th International Conference on Thinking (2009, Malaysia). She discussed how workplace leaders often choose “languages of war” in making and communicating decisions and creating change. Her paper is heady stuff but if you read her thoughts below you will want to read the whole paper. It gives huge support to the role of collaborative conversations.

“In [leadership’s] ‘language of zealous allegiance’, there are expectations of allegiance [in the workplace] that lay a path for uncritical acceptance and passivity. This manifests in an expectation that followers be conscripted wholly to the cause. There is little room for questioning. ‘Conscription means one important thing: there is no questioning of orders, one only executes them; “either you’re with us or you’re against us”.’ “

“Rhetoric plays out in the workplace too and can be tested by how well leaders:

  • hear and acknowledge the ‘other’ point of view,
  • see the ‘other’ as people rather than pawns or simply abstractions,
  • manage the distance, materially and metaphorically, between themselves and the people and sites affected by their decisions.”

“In the corporate world there are many examples of executives living and working in gated communities or otherwise removed by dint of corporate hierarchy or geography from the people and conditions affected by their decisions. Often, these leaders are also surrounded by people who can only agree, leading to little opportunity for double loop learning or deeply reasoned decision making processes. Whether our leaders live in gated communities is their business, but if they think, work and take refuge within a ‘gated’ mindset then we all need to be concerned. These conditions lead to hubris and have been the undoing of many leaders and corporations.”

“The role of the organisation is ‘to know its purpose and not be diverted from it’ (Drucker, 1993). This is a timely reminder here – easier said than done in times of flux, complexity and discontinuous change.”

“The main difference between Perkins’ languages of war and peace are that the war metaphor is founded on exclusivity and a preference for limiting discourse to its [leadership’s] own narrowly defined boundaries. Perkins’s peace metaphor is founded on inclusivity and opening up the space for conversations and conflicting views [i.e., collaborative conversations].”

“Oppositional language and the pitting of one deeply held worldview against another will not lead to resolving the underlying problems of the workplace. Rather, space for conversations to surface underlying assumptions is required. Perkins’ language of peace metaphor confirms that that there are always other lenses to view the world through, not just the one that [leadership] prefers.” – Heather Davis

Provocative reading from this Australian educator.

Bottom line: Those of us in leadership carry a great burden of responsibility. We at times must make difficult and sometimes painful decisions. Adding voices to that decision-making can generate even more challenging processes to negotiate. However, we will make more sustainable decisions for “better futures” if we bring those most affected (or most experienced or insightful) to the table. Whenever possible. That’s the gain of collaborative conversations – working together toward shared vision and shared ownership.

Stay engaged in your workplace. Don’t entertain indifference. Stay in the conversation. You can make a difference.

*King Arthur’s Round Table – How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart Organizations by David Perkins – an Executive Book Summary

**Troubling Invisible Barriers to Better Futures: Surfacing the “Five Languages of War” in the Workplace – a scholarly paper by Heather Davis, presented at the 14th International Conference on Thinking

Leadership Lessons from King Arthur – a Review of Harvard Professor David Perkins’ book King Arthur’s Round Table

The Five Literacies of Global Leadership – What Authentic Leaders Know and You Need to Find Out – by David Hames – Business Book Summary

The Perils of Indifference – a Speech by Elie Wiesel

How to Lead When Change is the New Normal – Emer Coleman

The Art of Collaboration (Collaborative Behaviors) – by Steve Dale (includes a SlideShare)

Collaboration: What Does It Really Mean? – Carlos Dominguez

What Is a Coaching Conversation? from Opening the Door to Coaching Conversations by Linda Gross Cheliotes and Marceta Fleming Reilly 

Cutting Through the Hype – What “Collaboration” Really Means – ThoughtFarmer.com

5 Choices You’ll Regret Forever – Travis Bradberry

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Monday Morning Moment – Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary – The Fred Factor

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Photo Credit: SlideShare

Happy Monday, Friends! This weekend’s activities included a visit with friends in their home in the Virginia mountains. The wife is an artisan, and the husband is on staff at a nearby university. He, in fact, mentors student leaders as part of his work. In my little gift bag for them was a favorite leadership story by Mark Sanborn. Its odd title is The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary. 

Sanborn uses his experience of a mail carrier named Fred as the hero of his story. Fred, because of his commitment to personal care and service, elevates a seemingly mundane job into the stuff of excellence and fulfillment. On the long drive over, I opened the book and re-read the bits of wisdom we can learn from such a person’s character. We actually have such a mail carrier in our daily lives, and the mail delivery when he is on vacation is very different than when he is on the job.

[Our leader guy friend is a deep thinker who actually referred us to one of his favorite books as well: The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene. When we returned home we promptly ordered it and will be reading it by mid-week. Our friend can easily read the little book we gave him in a quick evening. My re-reading it on the drive over stirred its wisdom in my heart and my desire to share it with you as well. One day, I’ll share what Robert Greene teaches us from The 33 Strategies of War.]

The Fred Factor includes five distinctive features:Photo Credit: SlideShare

We can determine to deliver excellence in our action and attitude at work, no matter our situation. Mail carrier Fred demonstrated that and modeled the content for Sanborn’s book.

Just to give you a taste of his writing, I list four quotes from the book:

1) “When those who know are able to show, those who learn are able to grow.” – Mark Sanborn

A clear lesson here is to note your personnel who have shown mastery in their work and make opportunities for them to mentor those who are eager learners. It is a perfect win-win. Leadership development is an often-discussed topic but isn’t always executed in effective ways.

2) “When people feel that their contributions are unappreciated, they will stop trying. And when that happens, innovation dies.” – Mark Sanborn

Excellent employees don’t need appreciation or acknowledgement to keep them at the task. However, over time, they will weary of the task (and the vision meant to inspire innovation) if they don’t see how what they do fits in the larger picture. One strategy that prevents stagnation or disengagement is going back to 1) – teaming up mentors and those ready to learn.

3) “You are the spark that sets others on fire when you initiate.” – Mark Sanborn

Initiative is rewarded in a culture where there is freedom to create and ownership of work. Control is at a minimum and inclusion in problem-solving is high. For us as employees, nurturing our initiative is huge. For us as leaders, we do ourselves and our employees good when we guard against waning initiative.

One Behavior Separates the Successful from the Average – Benjamin P. Hardy

Six Simple Ways to Rekindle Your Employees’ Love For Their Job – Lama Ataya

4) “Faithfully doing your best, independent of the support, acknowledgment, or reward of others, is a key determinant in a fulfilling career.” – Mark Sanborn

At the end of the day, for all of us, we are the masters of our own work, in terms of excellence. The greatest challenge to how our day goes is our own attitude. We all know this. Still, it’s easy for us to allow the negative impact of others diminish who we are or what we do. We are wise to keep learning on the job, especially from folks like Fred (and writer Mark Sanborn).

Photo Credit: SlideShare

The Fred Factor – SlideShare – Jitendra Gupta

GoodReads Quotes – The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary by Mark Sanborn

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Monday Morning Moment – Audacious Leadership – Lead Like Jesus

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Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds, Flickr

Today’s workplace bends with the culture. Historical and current contexts are present in our work culture, whether or not we acknowledge it.  What if our culture has lost its interest in history…in experience… in the wisdom of the ages? What does that mean for those of us in the workplace, when cultural context isn’t seasoned by what we learn from the past? What does history teach us about leadership, about work, about each other?

When I think of audacious leaders, by definition, they can be two different sorts of folks:

  1. Courageous bold risk-takers, or
  2. Arrogant, impudent decision-makers

A negatively audacious leader demands followership. A positively audacious leader, in his own way, also demands followership. Still the most followable leader is the one who leads with both courage AND care.

Hopefully your experience of audacity in leadership is the most a positive one (as will be spelled out more below). Two things leaders always communicate, either positively or negatively, is that “work matters” and “people matter”. Context and history both matter, also, even though the trend in thinking is toward the ever-changing “latest and greatest”.

I am sounding really old here, but fortunately those who speak with much greater authority across the business world are starting to sound the same clarion call. Take Steve Farber and Paul Sohn.

What do they say about radical, audacious history-changing leadership?

In leadership coach Steve Farber‘s article What Is Extreme Leadership?, he talks about taking a “radical leap”. He asks the question: “What can I do, right now, regardless of what others around here are or are not doing, to change my piece of this world/company/organization for the better”?

The acronym is LEAP:

  1. L – Cultivate love.
  2. E – Generate energy.
  3. A – Inspire audacity.
  4. P – Provide proof.

Photo Credit: Extreme Leadership, Steve Farber

The Radical Leap – a Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership – Steve Farber

I love Farber’s definition of extreme (audacious) leadership and I’ve had the great fortune of working with leaders like that.

Paul Sohn, also a leadership coach, write about a bold leadership model – one that incorporates the practices and wisdom of Jesus of Nazareth.

[Sidebar: It’s a shame that most think of Jesus as belonging to Christianity. I wonder, even, if only Christians read to this point of the piece. There is so much to learn and appreciate in the teachings of Jesus. Being put off by how we as clay-footed believers represent him at times is part of our dilemma today. Please don’t miss the wisdom and understanding his life offers to all of us.]

In Sohn’s article, 12 Leadership Lessons Every Leader Should Learn From Jesus, he lists out these lessons and gives context and commentary. Click on the link above to read more.

  1. To serve is to be great.
  2. There is a cure for worry.
  3. Love conquers all.
  4. Follow the Golden Rule.
  5. Ask for what you need.
  6. Judge not.
  7. Keep your word.
  8. Give in secret.
  9. Forgive others.
  10. Speak good words.
  11. Nothing is impossible if you have faith.
  12. Use it or lose it.                        – Paul Sohn from the teachings of Jesus

12 Leadership Lessons Everyone Should Learn from Jesus

On Sohn’s bio page, he showcases this quote:

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

“One will weave the canvas; another will fell a tree by the light of his ax. Yet another will forge nails, and there will be others who observe the stars to learn how to navigate. And yet all will be as one. Building a boat isn’t about weaving canvas, forging nails, or reading the sky. It’s about giving a shared taste for the sea, by the light of which you will see nothing contradictory but rather a community of love.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

This is such a beautiful picture of audacious leadership in the most positive sense. We who work together to develop a product or deliver a service can create something better together. Not only is the product or service better suited for the customer, but we are changed in the process.Photo Credit: George Couros, Flickr

I do actually think it matters who the leader is, because our whole culture moves and shifts in response to who’s making decisions. However, we can determine (as leaders or as team players) to honor and elevate one another…as servant leader Jesus demonstrated in his life and teaching. We can build capacity, caring, and community, as Farber and Sohn prescribe, in how we lead and work.

We look back to what history has taught us; we consider the context of current culture; and we work forward to, hopefully, a better future. It’s only in giving up, that we fail. Be audacious in moving forward. It’s Monday…lots can happen.

The People Skills of Jesus – William Beausay II

The Management Methods of Jesus – Bob Briner

Lead Like Jesus Revisited – Ken Blanchard, Phil Hodges, Phyllis Hendry

Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast – Paul Sohn

Wisdom for the Workplace – The Christian Working Woman – Mary Lowman

17 Powerful Workplace Scriptures – Work Matters – Whitney Gaines

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5 Friday Faves – Beyond the Guitar’s Latest, Designed ‘We’, Tour de France, Franklin Engraving, and Mission BBQ

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Another Friday has gloriously arrived. Before we head off our computer and into the weekend’s activities (great idea to do life unplugged for a couple of days if you can…me, not so much), here are my favorite finds for this week.

1) Beyond the Guitar’s Latest – Another TV season of the series Game of Thrones debuts this weekend. We’re not HBO subscribers but also wouldn’t watch it because of the graphic violence and explicit sex. Still, the music apparently is epic. Nathan Mills, at Beyond the Guitar, does justice, on his one classical guitar, to Photo Credit: YouTube, BeyondtheGuitar

this gorgeous orchestral theme song. Watch Beyond the Guitar’s arrangement here or below:

Game of Thrones – What Parents Need to Know – Common Sense Media

Beyond the Guitar – Patreon

2) Designed ‘We’ – One of my husband’s core values is “We is better than me.” I had not seen the news report about the Air Canada flight that almost landed on a crowded taxiway this past week. When Dave told me about it, he talked about how in air traffic control, there is actually a “designed ‘We'”.Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

With the Air Canada flight, the controller instructed the pilot to land on one runway, but he descended to the taxiway right beside where he was instructed to land. I would have thought the controller would have seen the pilot was coming in wrong, but, before it was too late “an unidentified voice”  (on the audio released) interjected. He saw the error and the pilot was able to correct before plowing through four other planes lined up on the taxiway. Whew!

The skill of pilot and copilot and their working in team relieves all of us who travel often by air. Also crucial is the role of the air traffic controller and team is crucial for our safety in the air and on airport take-offs and landings.  The film Sully demonstrated this real life situation masterfully…the critical importance of team, or many eyes on a situation, and fast thinking and execution.

Designed redundancy (the American use of that word) is worked into the air control team structure. News reports allude to the possibility the controller was working alone (we will know more after the investigation). Still this sort of team makeup is vital in situations where there can be no tolerance for error. We rarely ever hear of a crash based on air traffic control error because of such a built-in team fail-safe.

Something to think about, not just in safety situations, but in any workplace where the outcomes really matter. To establish a “designed ‘we’ and never just a me”.

CNN article – Air Canada Plane Nearly Lands on a Crowded Taxiway at San Francisco Airport (by Eric Levenson, Stella Chan, Carma Hassan and Jon Ostrower, CNN)

SFO Near-Miss – Matthias Gafni

Teamwork in Air Traffic Control – SKYbrary

3) Tour de France – You are either a fan or not so much. Even with the years of doping scandals, this race remains an annual summer favorite in our home. In fact, the only reason we have cable TV is the easy access to NFL Football and this bike race. The Tour de France is an amazing spectacle of beauty, skill, endurance, and fan support.Photo Credit: NBCSN, Screen Shot

This year’s race, a week in and a week to go, has been full of drama and incredible finishes. Amazing bikers abound every year While the current favorite is Christopher Froome,  several this year have a chance to wear the Yellow Jersey and win it all. Yesterday’s Stage 12 is an example of how this year’s Tour is going. Here are highlights:

4) Franklin Engraving – Just a shout-out to a artist in Virginia. Katie Franklin is an engraver and has now incorporated as a small business. Franklin Engraving. She pours her energy, intelligence, and creativity into beautiful and personal works of art made to order. Check out her Facebook page to order. Her webpage will be up shortly.

Photo Credit: Franklin Engraving

5) Mission BBQ – Rewarding customers with great products, ambiance, and service can turn all of us from occasional consumers to regulars. A further step is to get us back is to extend hospitality through special offers like Birthday Clubs. I love Mission BBQ‘s strategy on this. Sign up online for a birthday club and get a free sandwich on your birthday. Not bombarding my inbox with emails…just an occasional invitation to remind us of special days (veterans and first responders are also fed free on holidays). This restaurant is all about America in honoring ways. Do you have one in your city? Or a restaurant like Mission BBQ?

That’s my Five. How about you? Any favorites from your week you would share in Comments below. I had so many great finds, the bonuses follow. You might find some useful or inspiring. Have a great and safe weekend.

Bonuses

National Park Senior Citizen’s Lifetime Pass – Buy or Renew Now Before the Price Goes Way Up.

Photo Credit: NPS

Spinach Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Photo Credit: Basil and Bubbly

The Most Post-Christian Cities in America: 2017

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Monday Morning Moment – Servant Leadership – Trending Forward

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Photo Credit: Tri Pham, FLickr

The servant-leader is servant first.

It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve. Then
conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The best test is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? — Robert K. Greenleaf
“…more likely themselves to become leaders” – Isn’t that how you thought Greenleaf would end that sentence? I read it that way. We don’t naturally think of aspiring to serve – “moving up the ranks” to better position ourselves to serve.
Why write about servant leadership?
So much has been and continues to be written about servant leadership. The terms change and trend a bit differently over time. Of late, relational leadership has gained in popularity. This type of leadership is defined as “as a relational process of people together attempting to accomplish change or make a difference to benefit the common good.”
I love that concept and style of leading, but servant leadership goes even farther. Relational leaders can focus on their particular team or tribe, in a mentoring, collaborative role…for the good of those leaders and the organization and client base. Servant leaders aspire to a wide reach. Not just leader to leader, but to permeate the whole of the organization with an ethic that everyone, at every level, matters. This is a huge aspiration but the gains are huge as well.

Marcel Schwantes, founder of Leadership from the Core, has written a piece on the 10 Leadership Habits Found in the World’s Best Leaders. These ten habits are derived by Larry Spears from the Robert Greenleaf‘s pioneer work in servant leadership. Read the article for Schwantes full commentary, but the 10 habits follow:

  • Listening
  • Empathy
  • Healing
  • Awareness
  • Persuasion
  • Conceptualization
  • Foresight
  • Stewardship
  • Commitment to the Growth of People
  • Building Community

Another list of qualities to consider is posted by business leader Skip Prichard‘s 9 Qualities of the Servant Leader. Both Prichard’s list below and Schwantes’ list above are excellent markers for your own leadership:

  • Values diverse opinions
  • Cultivates a culture of trust
  • Develops other leaders
  • Helps people with life issues
  • Encourages
  • Sells instead of tells
  • Thinks you, not me
  • Thinks long-term
  • Acts with humility

Finish the whole of his article here (and don’t miss the comments – fascinating).

Photo Credit: Virginia Guard Public Affairs, Flickr

Marcel Schwantes has also written 10 Compelling Reasons Servant Leadership May Be the Best, Says Science. In this piece Schwantes tackles the misconceptions about servant leadership as well as the many reasons why it’s the best form of leadership. I personally love this article because the evidence of the kind of company that prospers under servant leadership is undeniable. We know these organizations by their service – like Chick-Fil-A, Southwest Airlines, Home Depot, Ritz Carlton, FedEx, UPS, U.S. Marine Corps, and many others. Very persuasive.

Finally, I’d like to share General Stanley McChrystal‘s view of leading “like gardeners”. My husband is a gardener. Even after a long, tiring day at his regular job, he puts in the time necessary to tend the plants he’s growing. Bent over, on his knees sometimes, doing the work of nurturing them to reach their maximum fruitfulness.

“Regular visits by good gardeners are not pro forma gestures of concern—they leave the crop stronger. So it is with leaders.”

Employees and customers know the experience (or lack thereof) of the leader who truly attends to their needs. No drive-by visits here. No sprinkling of some corporate fairy-dust just by the sheer presence of the leader in the room, or the building, or on podcast/commercial.

McChrystal warns against the leader who becomes too important to personally serve his personnel or customers.

“I would tell my staff about the “dinosaur’s tail”: As a leader grows more senior, his bulk and tail become huge, but like the brontosaurus, his brain remains modestly small. When plans are changed and the huge beast turns, its tail often thoughtlessly knocks over people and things. That the destruction was unintentional doesn’t make it any better.”

Always in thinking of leadership, we are tempted to look to our own leaders…to measure them by the scale of excellence (seen above). The servant leader is servant first. Don’t get muddled up by checking off what your leader is not. Serve that leader, as you serve other personnel and customers. Serve. Serve by leading. Lead by serving.
“Servant-leadership is more than a concept, it is a fact. Any great leader, by which I also mean an ethical leader of any group, will see herself or himself as a servant of that group and will act accordingly.”
[Please don’t miss the links below…especially those not mentioned in this blog. Also please share examples (in Comments section below) of servant leadership you have experienced…or your own personal journey in becoming a servant leader.]
Journey strong. Serve long.

YouTube Video – Servant Leadership – Leadership From the Core – Marcel Schwantes

10 Compelling Reasons Servant Leadership May Be the Best, Says Science – Marcel Schwantes

9 Qualities of the Servant Leader – Skip Prichard

The Understanding and Practice of Servant-Leadership – Larry C. Spears

General Stanley McChrystal: We Should All Lead Like Gardeners

Glassdoor’s 2017 Best Places to Work Rankings: The Importance of Common Purpose – Barry Sanders

Monday Morning Moment – True Humility in Leadership – So Not Cliché – Deb Mills

Monday Morning Moment – 7 Skills of the Top Leaders of Tomorrow – Whatever Your Age or Stage – With Matt Monge – Deb Mills

Larry C. Spears and Robert K. Greenleaf

The World’s 10 Top CEOs (They Lead in a Totally Unique Way) – Marcel Schwantes

World-Class Customer Service – The Key Is Caring – Horst Schulze on a Culture of Service – Deb Mills

Monday Morning Moment – 3 Quick Reads on Leadership – to Help You Stay the Course, Not Be a Jerk, While Being Innovative – Deb Mills

Happily Ever After – What Makes Relationships Work – Poster – Frank Sonnenberg

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5 Friday Faves – The Office, Accents, Resilience, Community, and Long Goodbyes

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We’re rolling into the weekend with gorgeous Spring weather to draw us outside. The fact that the grass must be cut before the neighbors organize an intervention also motivates. Beauty surrounds us here as April moves to May and the flowers bust out.

For your Friday refreshment, here are my five favorite finds for this week:

1) The Office – What a funny TV show! The Office (not to be confused with the British version) ran from 2005-2013 and still has a huge cult following. It is a parody of the American workplace. This mockumentary gives us an opportunity off-the-job to chuckle at the quizzical nature of some of our workplaces and relationships within them. Nathan Mills has done a brilliant guitar arrangement of both the show’s theme as well as musical interludes in several of the episodes.

Watch, enjoy, and remember this show that has humor and an innocence very different from many of today’s TV sitcoms.

YouTube Video – The Office Meets Classical Guitar – Beyond the Guitar

2) Accents – I love languages. Over the course of life, I’ve tackled Spanish, Arabic, and a bit of French. Living in North Africa for many years allowed me to be immersed in languages different from my own mother tongue. Language learning is such a useful discipline for all of us and I’m thrilled when I see parents helping their children become multi-lingual. The younger we are when learning languages the better able we are to naturalize our accents in those languages – substantiated here and here.  Don’t let the fear of a Southern (or other) drawl keep you from learning and speaking in a newly acquired language. Dialect coach Sammi Grant gives some interesting advice in her YouTube video How to Do 12 Different Accents .

3) Resilience – I just started following Jordan Harbinger recently, and here’s his take on resilience – Becoming Resilient – the Art and Science of Grit. Resilience has been intriguing to me for many years, and I wrote some months ago (here) on another author Jon Acuff’s counsel on grit.

Photo Credit: Crystal Coleman, Flickr

Read Harbinger’s piece on resilience.

When I talk about resilience, I’m talking about the ability to stay engaged with a person, project, or circumstance — to stay in the game — through its inevitable ups and downs…we’re talking about our ability to handle life, in all its unpredictable and maddening difficulty, without falling off, going crazy, or hurting ourselves in the process.

Harbinger goes on to talk (podcast and blog) about the journey of becoming resilient, or gritty. We all have life occurrences that input into whether we grow resilience or take on a victim’s worldview. We can’t change the situations maybe but we can change how we respond to them. Having strong, nurturing relationships and choosing to learn as much as we can from adverse experiences are two processes of becoming resilient.

I want to be resilient in the hard places and help those I love to be the same. Hard things happen, but we don’t have to be devastated by them. Learn from these guys, and others, about the resilient life.

4) Community – There are no words really that express well enough the great value of community. Deep caring friendships reflecting love of a nature only God can infuse. We experience in this small group of folks in our local church. Community is also a part of our work, neighborhood, and family. I hope you know true community as well. Tell us about in Comments below.

5) Long Goodbyes – Saying and experiencing long goodbyes – It’s part of what we walked with Dad and what we learned about God, each other, and our own hearts in the process. Saying goodbye (for awhile) to a dear friend. The final closing of an office. They can both wear you out and leave you totally satisfied…you did all you could do to honor that passing.
Bonuses

 

 

 

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Monday Morning Moment – Résumé vs. Eulogy – On Befriending Our Colleagues

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Photo Credit: Tangram

Don’t you hate when, out of all the positive exchanges we have at work, there’s that one negative that hangs in our memory? It was a team-building exercise on trust really early in my career. One of the people on my team, with whom I worked at the time, just wouldn’t engage. She finally said, “You are just my co-workers. We are not friends.”

We are not friends.

Slayed.

Throughout my career, I’ve made it a goal to befriend colleagues – those close to me and up and down the ranks. Befriending isn’t becoming best buddies necessarily. By definition, it is “to act as a friend to; to help; to aid”.

When this coworker, in my professionally formative past, expressed openly that we were just a part of her job…I was surprised and schooled. For some, relationships at work are compartmentalized in such a way as to keep them formal and shallow.

There is a measure of safety in keeping work relationships at a distance. I get that. However…

When we spend more waking hours with our colleagues than with even the closest of our loved ones, they bear some significance.

I’ve just begun reading Scott Sauls’ book Befriend: Create Belonging in an Age of Judgment, Isolation, and Fear.   I wrote about it here a few weeks back as the next book on my reading list. The author Scott Sauls is a pastor, but more than that, he is a friend. Not because I know him personally, but because the imprint of Jesus is on his writing and life. He is not preachy or churchy (in the way it was never meant to be). Sauls is wise, loving, and inclusive. Whether you are a person of faith or not, if you want to deepen your friendships and work relationships, sampling the pages of this book will aid you on your way. This book itself, like Sauls, actually befriends you.

Photo Credit: Amazon

My Monday blogs are often reserved for workplace matters – either the culture of our workplace or our very careers. Sauls talks early in the book about how we view success in life. He recalls David Brooks‘s take on our achievement culture.

“We live by two sets of virtues: the résumé virtues – things we bring to the marketplace – and the eulogy virtues – things we want said about us at our funerals. Brooks concludes, ‘In [our] secular achievement culture, we all know the eulogy virtues are more important, but we spend more time on the résumé virtues.'”

What people think of me when I’m gone is less important than truly making a difference in this life. When it comes to our work, I think we all want to add value, not just to the product, but to the people with whom we work and for whom we provide services.

We can get caught in the press of beefing up our résumé and lose sight of the people, real flesh-and-blood people, all around us. Oh, we may not call our focus résumé-building, but when we take a moment to check our motives, it becomes more clear. Ambition, self-promotion, and exclusive control can crush work relationships. We often think it’s someone else but before long it can become us.

I will never forget a colleague who shared about his own pivotal relationship with someone he once considered a difficult boss. They argued over every idea, every decision, every action plan…at least, as this man remembers. His boss was always asking hard questions and pushing him to think more and more outside the box. Yet, in the middle of his heatedly trying to persuade his boss of the rightness of his ideas, the boss would look at his watch and say, “Let’s go get some lunch.” This would infuriate the man re-telling his story.

However, over the years, he began to see something in his boss he didn’t notice at first. This older man genuinely cared for his young protégé. The banter back and forth was to encourage excellence and innovation but never at the expense of valuing the relationship. That’s why lunch together was all part of the exchange. He mattered to his boss.Photo Credit: Free Stock Photos

Later the older man retired and the younger man advanced in his career. Their paths rarely crossed after that. When the older man finally died, his wife called this colleague and asked for him to be a pallbearer at his funeral. The older man had come to consider the younger a friend…and the younger man, as he teared up in remembering, was the better for it.

I’ve written often on complicated work relationships – the us vs. them situations and dealing with contemptuous colleagues among others. We can be tempted NOT to befriend.

Photo Credit: QuotationOf

However, we are the ones who lose the most in not extending a hand of befriending (acting as a friend) to those with whom we work. It changes us, from the inside out, and we live only in the land of résumé-building, rather than eulogy-making.

Sauls writes about expanding our “us”. In the workplace, this can be extraordinarily counter-cultural. To look out for our own status and position is expected. To consider how we might take down silos and create a work community where “the rising tide lifts all boats” (Adam Grant) – something remarkable and memorable.

That is the legacy, years ago, of that coworker/”friend” of mine. She made me more resolved than ever. I want to be a befriender, a boat-raiser, and a person willing to expand the “us”.

Sauls closes this chapter by asking the question, “Where is your greatest opportunity to expand your “us”? It has me thinking. How about you?

“Compelled by the love of Christ, we must not withhold kindness or friendship from any person or people group, and we must not engage in any sort of us-against-them posturing. This in itself is countercultural in modern society. Compelled by the truth of Christ, we must honor and obey the Creator’s design—even when his design is countercultural and, at times, counterintuitive to us. His ways and his thoughts are higher than ours.”

20 Quotes From Scott Sauls’s New Book on Friendship – Matt Smethurst

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Monday Morning Moment – 7 Skills of the Top Leaders of Tomorrow – Whatever Your Age or Stage – with Matt Monge

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Blog - Tomorrow's Leaders - Mojo companyPhoto Credit: The Mojo Company

[From the Archives]

Leaders of Tomorrow. What age group came to mind? Probably not your own. Maybe that’s one of our dilemmas in life and work. We either think we have already arrived as tomorrow’s leader today (ugh!). Or we stop thinking of how we can develop into that change agent of tomorrow because we’ve fixed our course…or settled into what we know already. It’s served us well so far, right?

Here’s my Monday morning gift to you: an introduction to the person, writing, and wisdom of Matt Monge.  Earlier in his career, he worked in finance (credit unions, in particular), and had fascinating titles like Chief Culture Officer and Vice-President of People and  Development. Currently he is is president of The Mojo Company, a leadership development consulting firm. His Facebook page bio reads: “My mission? Make the world a better place by helping people, leaders, & workplaces be more human. Depression fighter. Keynote speaker. Head of The Mojo Co.”

Blog - Monday Morning - Matt Monge - Leadership is about serving - FacebookPhoto Credit: Matt Monge Facebook Page

I read everything Matt Monge writes. Even his promotional video taught me more about leadership (you’ll want to take notes).

Monge posted a blog a few weeks back and I’ve been thinking through it since… It’s his 7 Skills Tomorrow’s Top Leaders Are Developing Today. I decided to post his bullet points here and how they stirred my thoughts on skill development today. [Don’t miss reading his thinking on this and other leadership topics in links.]

  1. Being Others-Oriented – While other employee development folks have moved away from “servant leadership” language, Matt Monge continues wisely to be a strong supporter of it. I, too, am delighted by leaders who continue to seek out the greatest good for both employees and customers. The bottom line is best served here. As the years go by, or as tribes are built, our temptation is to coast in this area…making the negative assumption that someone else is serving while we’re the idea leaders. As leaders go, so go the organizations.
  2. Persuasion, Logic, & Negotiation – First, Monge sees top leaders as practicing persuasion and negotiation differently “not with power, position, coercion, or even deception; but rather through logic, reason, and with an eye toward the good of the whole.” It’s funny how unaware leaders can be in thinking that manipulation and coercion go unnoticed by employees under their authority. It’s always better to do the work of taking the high road of negotiating and persuading. When we engage in the give-and-take of healthy debate and problem-solving, it’s a win-win for everyone. It does require time, trust, homework, and humility.
  3. Reframing – This is a discipline of looking at a problem or situation from different perspectives. Monge talks about doing this in such a way that we wrestle with our own biases and blind spots. Reframing can make for a decision or problem solved that have wider success or effectiveness.
  4. Knowing How to Think about and Make Decisions – Monge makes the distinction of being decisive vs. being a good decision-maker. I love this because often we experience leaders who get the job because they are decisive. Period. Full-stop. What does it take though to be a good decision-maker? To become an effective leader is to examine how we make decisions – what are my decision-making processes, who are my guides, what are those factors that always weigh in on my decisions? [Monge names those factors as presuppositions and core values. We need to think about what those are.]
  5. The Ability to Work and Build Community with Others – This is such a core value of mine and yet after years in my career, it bears refreshing. I’m reminded, as Monge writes about this, of the Old Boys’ Network. Today, maybe it’s less-gender-defined and called other things, like C-Suite executives, or even tribe. Still, if it’s a few making decisions for the many, it’s not community. Monge’s constant message is that the strength and health of an organization is in the community. Leaders must do the work of leaning in to their colleagues (outside the executive suite) to draw on the wealth of knowledge there and to affirm the value and varied roles of those coworkers.Blog - Matt Monge - human - twitterPhoto Credit: Twitter
  6. Leadership – The leaders of tomorrow are continuing to develop themselves toward that future. We can be always learning, always growing – not necessarily just like other leaders in our lives, but learning what we need to learn to remain relevant/useful. Resting on the laurels of past successes or doing “what we’ve always done” will eventually pull us to the sidelines. I’m in the painful, personal throes of dealing with this right now myself. Shaking it off and moving forward!
  7. Understanding Humanness & Emotional Intelligence – Monge defines emotional intelligence as having “four basic components: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management”. Foundational to emotional intelligence, in Monge’s thinking, is this whole element of humanness. As the workplaces of the future give way to more and more technology, we will be wise in tuning into the growing need for humanizing our organizations and our human employee experience. Being tech-savvy and not people-savvy misses what could be. Leaders of tomorrow, take note.

So that’s it for today. I love Mondays because they bring another opportunity to hit “the refresh” key of our work lives. We are not only motivated for the week ahead – differently than Fridays when the focus is the weekend – but we’re fresh in our view of our work community…and hopeful.

Matt Monge and others like him give me the encouragement I need to cast off from the safe, still shore and re-enter the fast and deep water of today’s work environment, determined to maneuver well there…and maybe even coax other quality people back in from the shallows. Whatever our ages or sensibilities, we can work toward being tomorrow’s leaders of excellence.

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Monday Morning Moment – 22 Influencers and Thought Leaders You Want In Your Life

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Photo Credit: Arnold Street

Who are the influencers in your life? Those people who hold your attention, who cause you to think, who give impetus to change. Who are those thought leaders who challenge you – those whose reach exceeds their grasp?Photo Credit: Inc.

It wasn’t so long ago, in the training division of our company, that our director actually reprimanded new employees about their phone use during a session. It wasn’t so long ago…but it seems so. These days, no matter who is speaking at the front of the room, heads are down in the audience, folks pounding out texts or scrolling for their amusement. How do we fight this mental and relational disconnect?Photo Credit: PC World

What has helped me in recent years is finding people both inside and outside of my organization whose thinking inspires me…and learn from them. We have so many helps in print and electronic form. So much encouragement and possibility…in the words, attitudes, and actions of these business and professional leaders.Photo Credit: Hashmeta

In 2012, I became a Twitter user. It was a boon for me intellectually and a huge assist as I began a very new and challenging job. I began by following people I knew and respected in my field and then chose from whom they followed. Social media can keep you from deep thinking and problem-solving UNLESS you use these networks to broaden your understanding of people and processes. Twitter has done that for me.

[Sidebar: Social media has also been a source of professional encouragement for me. When Patrick Lencioni followed me on Twitter after I wrote about his influence in my professional thinking, it was, as you can imagine, huge for me. Such a small thing…but so significant for a novice writer and workplace thinker.]

Below you will find 22 influencers in my life, in alphabetical order, most of whom I discovered via Twitter. [These are just a few, but as I was going through my Twitter follows, these are the ones I wanted to showcase first.] Give them a look-see and a follow if they scratch your particular itch…professionally. You can find them via their websites also, especially if you’re not interested in subscribing to Twitter. It’s been akin to graduate education for me (but much more practical and timely, given where I am career-wise).

Moe Abdou – Founder of 33 Voices – interviews (podcasts and blog) with a wide array of entrepreneurs, innovators, thought leaders.

Sam Adeyemi – Senior Pastor of Daystar Christian Centre, based in Lagos, Nigeria. International speaker and a positive force in casting vision and leadership development for a new Nigeria…and Africa.

Ron Carucci –  Cofounder of Navalent –  best-selling writer, consultant, and speaker on executive leadership, change, and strategy. He is one of the good guys…how do I know? He actually follows ME on Twitter and has even read my blog. Sharp and people-smart. I’ve also learned from one of his teammates: Jarrod Shappell.

Randy Conley –  Works with Ken Blanchard and writes for Leading With Trust. Selected as one of the Top 100 Trust Leaders (2012).

Mark C. Crowley – Authored the book Lead From the Heart and writes at his website on the same topic. Speaker and consultant. Love his thinking.

Brian Dodd – Writes at Brian Dodd on Leadership. Prolific and brilliant maker of bulleted lists. My goal is to make one of his lists one day. Dodd serves pastors but helps all of us with leadership insights from a huge range of sources – athletes and coaches, and a myriad of other cultural icons.

Tom Elliff – Tom is not on Twitter but you will want to hear him speak any chance you can. He also writes at Living In The Word. Author of many books, his latest is The Unwanted Gift focusing on his and his wife’s journey with God through cancer and grief. Tom is a master story-teller, effective encourager, and all-round good guy.

Christopher Gray – Founder of My Scholly. While in high school with no means to go to college, he did the work of applying for every scholarship for which he was a candidate. Tedious, tedious effort that paid off. This deserving young man was awarded 1.3 million dollars in scholarship monies. He was able to both pay for his college education and set up a business to help other young people, as well, find the means to pay for their college education. Amazing story.

Mike Henry Sr. – Founder of Lead Change Group. Writing for global leaders who want to apply Christian principles to their business. Solid practical training/teaching/mentoring no matter your beliefs.

Photo Credit: Inbound Growth

Ryan Holmes  – Founder of Hootsuite – a great help to us in juggling our workplace or personal social media needs. Holmes is also an insightful futurist who writes and consults to prepare us for what’s next in the business world. He has written on Generation C and old-school hacks for building a 2017 work culture. Fascinating stuff.

Gerald Leonard PfMP – Writer, consultant and speaker on business processes and work culture.  Author of Culture Is The Bass. A business thinker, Leonard is also a bass player and uses music as a platform for teaching on culture. Great teaching (written and video) on his website Principles of Execution.

Susan Mazza – Speaker, trainer, leadership coach. Writes at Random Acts of Leadership.

Ron McIntyre – Principle leadership coach at TLGCoach. Consultant and writer. Great helps on website.

David Mills – Google this guy and you will find a professor, writer, atheist, and actor…none of whom are him. He is a quiet man with strong integrity. A PhD. in chemistry and a couple of decades working overseas. He was leading from the heart years before Crowley’s excellent book came out on the same topic. Mills’ workplace and leadership insights inform much of my thinking. He follows me on Twitter and I follow him…not surprisingly since I’ve been following him for more than 30 years…wherever life takes us.

Michael A. Milton – Founder and president of Faith for Living, Inc. He is a theologian, song-writer, and teacher. Author of the book Silent: No More: a Biblical Call for the Church to Speak to State and Culture. His tweets and writing on his website inspire and challenge.

Mark Modesti – Consultant with UPS Customer Solutions. TED Talk – The Argument for Trouble – Disruption in BusinessGreat leadership resource on Twitter.

Matt Monge – Founder of The Mojo Company.  He consults and writes on all things business, leadership, and work culture. He has also endured through depression which gives him particular insight into some of the things that make us want to give up. If you work, you want to learn from Matt Monge. Full stop. And HE follows me on Twitter.

Carey Nieuwhof – Pastor, blogger, podcaster. His is one of the few blogs that I welcome to my inbox. He has authored Lasting Impact and Leading Change. He writes to leaders, some of whom are pastors.

Star Parker – President and founder of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (Urban CURE) – political conservative confronting poverty in our country with real substantive solutions (quoted here). Inspiring and courageous voice.

Srinivas Rao – CEO of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast. I learn so much from this guy and his varied guests – all unmistakably creative.

Paul Sohn – Award-winning blogger, speaker, leadership coach. Author of Quarter-Life Calling. Appreciate his blogs so much.

Liz Wiseman – President of The Wiseman Group. Author of Multipliers. Heard her speak at the Global Leadership Summit and just wanted to follow her around and bring her coffee. Truly smart and encouraging.

That’s it for now…would love to know who some of your influencers and thought leaders are. Please share in Comments for all of us. Thanks.

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