Leadership Challenge

Erase the Haze

I discovered a new icebreaker the other day that allows participants to understand perspective a bit better. I intend to use it more frequently with audiences because it takes only a minute or less and there are no props involved. Simple is always better.

It got me thinking about how we, in our day-to-day blurry world, can see things so differently from time-to-time. Then, as thoughts tend to do (at least mine), I randomly recalled the day I got glasses for the first time.

I was probably 11 or 12 years old and learned that because of all the reading I did, my eyesight was less than perfect.

You know how we (okay, maybe it’s just me again) somehow take a snapshot of various situations in our life. Well, for some strange reason I can remember vividly the ride home from the optometrist’s office. Go figure!

I was in the backseat of our red and white ’55 Buick marveling at my new world. I remember rolling down the window (yes, rolling) and being able to see things much more clearly.

Until the doctor visit, I didn’t know I was seeing the world through a foggy haze. Once I donned the new Clark Kent specs…bingo…there were road signs I could read, leaves on trees instead of splotches and grey specks of hair on the back of my Dad’s head. (He wasn’t pleased with that improvement.)

Wouldn’t it be nice if every once in a while we could go “in” for a perspective check? Perhaps we would look through a perspective scope of sorts and someone would ask “is this better or this one?” How about 3? Is it better than 5?

Unfortunately, for many of us, changing our perspective or perception of things doesn’t appear to quite work that way. Most “experts” tell us that how we see the world seems to be a sum total of our family upbringing, present environment, daily interactions and many other life shapers. Education and our desire to continue learning about the world and ourselves might fit that mold as well.

In short and inclusive of the above, I think our perspective is derived from what we focus on. And what we focus on is a clear contributor to our behavior. Moreover, you are the only one who can go “in” and do the check.

That’s where my version of real leadership comes in. Leadership is not a title or position, it’s about the choices we make in each and every moment of the day. It can be as simple as how we respond to a success or a slight. So, if your perspective is that the world is ugly and bad, that’s what you will see. There will be plenty of evidence.

- Posted by Robert Thompson, The Leadership Challenge Workshop Master Facilitator and author of The Offsite.

The Positive Power of Positive Leadership

In the first chapter of The Leadership Challenge, 4th edition, we tell the story of Claire Owen, founder and Leader of Vision & Values of the SG Group in London, England. The SG Group is a 110-person firm that's a collection of four businesses designed to meet the marketing and human resource recruitment needs of agencies and corporations. Claire is a living example of the phrase, "enthusiasm is infectious." In one interview with Claire, she said to me: "If you are excited about the business, and if you are excited about where it is going and what is happening in it, then there is a buzz, a physical buzz. It’s my job to create that kind of place.”

Knowing the effect this kind of leadership has on others, Claire added, "You see that I get excited about things. When I do, people go, 'Well, Claire is excited by it, so I'm going to get excited by it. She believes in and she thinks it is going to be great—well I think it is going to be great.' That's really all I do."

Creating a workplace with "buzz" should be every leader's objective. People want leaders who are positive and optimistic. They want leaders who are inspiring and full of hope for the future, and Claire takes that to heart.

I mention this example because in these volatile economic times, when the news is worrisome at best, and downright scary at times, it's pretty easy for folks to go negative. And people go negative even faster if their leaders preach gloom and doom. Or even when they just mope around a bit.

For example, read what Eric Vyverberg said about his own contagious leadership experiment. Eric is a small business owner who understands from direct experience how emotions are catching. As Eric tells it in his blog, the dynamics of his five-person office are like a "Petri dish." That can be good and bad, he says. The bad is when someone comes in with a bug or cold, everyone catches it. "Being such a small/interactive office," Eric writes, "Everyone gets sick. This 2000 square foot Petri dish cultivates infectious disease."

But good also grows there. "As a leader in our office," he reports, "it is my responsibility to bring a winning attitude every day. Just like an illness that goes around from person to person, if either of the partners in the business brings a negative attitude to the office, it infects the others around us. It even infects the sub-contractors that work for us!"

One day not too long ago, Eric tested his Petri dish observations. He decided he would see what happened when he intentionally exhibited a negative mood. "I moped my way around the office one morning (academy award winning stuff I might add). I made it very clear through my actions (and not anything verbal), that I was not interested in anyone or anything around the office. I moped upstairs and closed my door. Aside from the other partner, everyone fed off of this. Later that afternoon, I had one employee stumble into my office and say, 'I don’t know why but I’m just not motivated to do anything else today.'" "AMAZING!!!!!!," (capital letters are his) was he conclusion.

Claire's and Eric's experiences illustrate the positive power of positive leadership—and the negative influence of those who exude pessimism, or are just in a bad mood. People feed off of their leaders' moods and their leaders' views of the world. Positive leadership breeds positive emotions. Negative leadership breeds negative emotions. In uncertain and challenging times, it's especially important for leaders to be mindful of how important it is to accentuate the positive.

This doesn't mean leaders should ignore reality. Leaders shouldn't be Pollyannas anymore than they should be killjoys. In a blog I wrote in May of this year, I quoted what the late Norman Cousins had to say about the how we need to face the facts. Cousins is the former editor of Saturday Review and author of 20 books, including Head First: The Biology of Hope and the Healing Power of the Human Spirit. That book is about people with serious illnesses who beat the medical odds. In it he wrote, "They responded with a fierce determination to overcome. They didn't deny the diagnosis. They denied the verdict that is usually associated with it." It's essential that leaders define the reality of our illness. It's also important that they defy the verdict of our doom.

Leaders must be honest with their constituents about the state of the organization's or the nation's health. Then they have a choice. They can tell us we're doomed or they can tell us that if we apply ourselves—and if we're willing to struggle and suffer—we shall overcome one day.

Call it the physics of leadership: positives attract, negatives repel. In order for us get through the mess we're in, we have to believe that there is a positive future out there. It's imperative that leaders paint that attractive picture and generate the human energy necessary to enact it. As Claire says, it's the leaders job to create that kind of a place. It's the leaders job to create buzz.

Posted by Jim Kouzes

California Academy of Sciences - Realizing a Dream

The San Francisco Bay Area is buzzing with excitement around the reopening of the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.  The media buzz included a front page article in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday.  As I was enjoying my Sunday morning coffee and reading about this fabulous new place to take my children, I became intrigued by the history of this massive project.  Back in 1997 the academy, which included a natural history museum, planetarium, aquarium, and a live animal exhibit, was an aging, dilapidated icon.  Several years and some $488 million later, our city has been blessed with a "cultural gem."  As with most every large, complicated, and important project, the road was a windy one.  The story, however, included an important lesson about Inspiring a Shared Vision.  "As soon as you allow yourself to start dreaming big, you start to realize, maybe it could happen," said Meagan Levitan, who handled the Academy of Science's community outreach at the time. 

Most leaders have great ideas and grand schemes coming out of their ears.  However, those maybe-it-could-happen moments are quite rare.  And given the current business climate, I suspect that leaders will be even less likely to "envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities."  How do we as leaders and developers of leaders resist the "hunker down" mentality?

Posted by Lisa Shannon

Are We Becoming Pancake Leaders?

"Is Google making us stupid?" That's the provocative question Nicholas Carr asks in his article by that title in the July/August 2008 of The Atlantic.com. Lisa Shannon, our senior editor at Pfeiffer, an imprint of John Wiley & Sons, referred me to this piece, and it's a must-read for anyone even the least bit concerned about what the affect that the World Wide Web might be having on our capacity to think.

Carr writes, "Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortable feeling that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory." And it's not been for the better. That someone, or something, is the Web. Carr is not alone in his feelings. University of Michigan professor and pathologist Bruce Friedman, for example, comments that "I have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print." Maryanne Wolf, developmental psychologist at Tufts University, observers that "We are not only what we read. We are how we read." Reading a book has a different effect on us than reading a blog. A personal history of reading books will wire our brains differently than one of reading only blogs.

The problem is that we may be reading more on the Web than we did in print, but we are really only skimming the surface. We land on a page, read a bit, and then move on. We don't dive as deep. We don't reflect. In an evocative metaphor about the eventual impact of our point-and-click habits, playwright Richard Foreman wonders if we are all becoming "'pancake people' — spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button."

So, what's this got to do with leadership? Two thoughts: First, our Google culture is a reflection of the reality that leaders confront every day. A reality full of constant interruption. A reality of jumping from one thing to another, one person to another. "We don’t have work days – we have work minutes that last all day," observes UC Irvine computer science professor Gloria Mark. She and her team shadowed information workers – managers are included in this group – and timed every event. What they found is that the "average amount of time that people spent on any single event before being interrupted or before switching was … three minutes and five seconds, on average." (That does not include formal meetings where people are captive, though having attended thousands of meetings in my life, I would guess the attention-interruption ratio is about the same.)

The life of a leader is not one where we attend to any one thing for very long. It's just the nature of our work. Leaders have to learn how to influence others in brief moments. They just don't have people's attention for very long. Our Googling habits are just another indication of how "we work minutes that last all day."

But my second reaction is one of great concern. That's because the one thing that differentiates leaders from other credible people is being forward-looking. It's a leadership prerequisite. The capacity to envision an uplifting and ennobling future and enlist others in a shared vision — what we refer to as Inspire a Shared Vision — is the practice that sets leaders apart. If leaders can't do that, they aren't going to be able to take people to places they've never been before. Well, envisioning the future takes reflection and deep thought, and that requires time and attention. There's just no way we can imagine an exciting and meaningful future in three minutes and five seconds. There's just no way we can find a common purpose while constantly being interrupted. There's just no way we can spread ourselves wide and thin like a pancake and expect to create innovative new products and services and build a world-class organization. There are no three-minute visions.

Leaders who read more deeply, and read more broadly, studies show, are better able to look farther ahead than those who read narrowly and thinly. The Internet can certainly help us in our search for breadth, but it apparently isn't aiding us with depth or attention. Full disclosure requires that I tell you I did a lot of Googling for this blog….and I Google daily. I'm not a Luddite, and neither is Nicholas Carr. It's just that informing ourselves about the future will require us to do a lot less Googling and a lot more thinking. So, pack a few books and journals, grab that pen and paper, leave your Internet connection at home, and head for the beach, the mountains, or the lake. Take your mind for a walk and wander without a watch. The interruptions will return soon enough.

Posted by Jim Kouzes

Values and Feedback at PepsiCo

I was reading ASTD’s (American Society for Training and Development) T & D Magazine last week when I discovered a new leader that I liked immediately.  Indra Nooyi is the CEO of PepsiCo and under her leadership (she has been CEO since 2006), she has helped rally her organization behind their vision: “Performance with Purpose.”  In the magazine interview Ms. Nooyi explained what that vision means and trust me, it’s as awe-inspiring as it sounds.  The piece of the interview that stopped me in my Leadership Challenge tracks, however, came towards the end.  When asked about how she supports and values Pepsico employees, she spoke of building a culture that inspires, motivates, and brings out the best in people.  She then went onto explain, “First, it’s important to create an inclusive culture:  a place where people can ‘bring their whole selves to work.’ A place where diverse values, beliefs, and practices are treated with respect.  It’s also vital that people are shown respect by speaking to them with truth and candor.  Give people honest feedback.  Let them know where they stand.” 

Values and feedback…two ideas that are really at the heart of The Leadership Challenge model.  It struck me that bringing your whole self to work is really the result of getting clear about your own values as well as your organization’s values. 

And on the feedback side… I love how she has flipped the notion, causing me to look at it from the other side.  The Leadership Challenge teaches that extraordinary leaders are good at asking for feedback.  Ms. Nooyi’s words make me think that in our role as followers and/or colleagues, we are all obligated to give honest feedback to our leaders…whether they ask for it or not.

Let me know what you think.

Posted by Lisa Shannon

Where Are We Headed? It’s What Every Employee Wants to Know

Last week Watson Wyatt Worldwide released a report on "Bridging the Employee Engagement Gap" based on data from the WorkEurope™ survey report. According to that study "The top three drivers of both engagement and retention among European employees are strategic direction and leadership, communication, and customer focus." Not only is this true in Europe, in prior studies Watson Wyatt found this to also be true in the United States and Asia. "Business leaders who articulate the business strategy give employees a clear 'line of sight' to how they can best contribute to the performance of their company," said Andrew Cocks, a senior consultant at Watson Wyatt.

None of this should be a surprise to readers of The Leadership Challenge who know that in our research we find that Inspiring a Shared Vision is one of the Five Practices that contributes to getting extraordinary things done, and that being forward-looking is the quality that differentiated admired leaders from other credible people. That's the good news. Here's the bad news: Ever since we started measuring leadership practices this is the competency that's the least understood, appreciated, and demonstrated. Leaders report that they're not very good at or comfortable with envisioning the future and enlisting others in a common vision. The feedback from their constituents is even more negative. This is the skill set at which the vast majority of leaders need to become significantly more capable.

If there's reliable evidence and general consensus that it's so important for leaders to articulate a vision and get others excited about it, why do leaders do so poorly at it? We talked about this in an essay in A Leader's Legacy where we wrote that whenever we ask our clients and students about these low scores the most frequent explanation is that people and organizations today are hostage to the present. The demands of our business culture, people say, keep us focused on the quarterly profits, preventing leaders from spending enough time thinking beyond the next three months. In nonprofits and government agencies, it's the current crisis that consumes the majority of our time.

Is there anything leaders and leadership developers can do? Yes, absolutely! Despite the daily pressures that hold our minds hostage, we can be more future-oriented. As counterintuitive as it might seem, the best place to start creating the future is by being more mindful in the present. Our failure at being forward-looking may be more due to our mindlessness in the present than any other factor. We operate on automatic pilot, not really noticing what's going on around us, believing that we know everything we need to know, viewing the world through pre-established categories, and operating from a single point of view. We're not really "present" at all. Our bodies may be in the room, but our mind has been turned off.

To increase our ability to conceive of new and creative solutions to today's problems, we have to stop, look, and listen. We have to stop doing for some amount of time each day. We have to remind ourselves that most of the disruptive electronic devices have an off switch. Turn off the cell phone, the pager, the Instant Messaging, the email, the PDA, and the browser. Stop being in motion.

Perhaps the single most important resolution we can make for the New Year that is fast approaching is to pay attention. Look around. Look at the familiar in novel ways. Look for differences and distinctions. Look for patterns. Look at things from multiple perspectives. Look for unmet needs. Listen to the weak signals. Listen to the unheard voices. Listen for things you've never heard before. When we stop, look, and listen we're always amazed at all the possibilities.

Happy holidays.

Posted by

Jim Kouzes

Did You Know?

The world is viral. Okay, you already knew that. The other day my brother, Dick, forwarded an email to me that had been sent to him by a friend who had received it from another friend, who had received it ….. you know the story.  Here’s what he said: “ Worth watching – Shift Happens – May you live in exponential times (to paraphrase a Chinese curse).” My brother is a man of few words. Comes from being a physicist I guess. I clicked on the link, and arrived at a page on YouTube.  From there I was taken on a fascinating ride into the future. What I experienced I highly recommend you experience. It’s a PowerPoint slide show set to music entitled “Did You Know?”  It was developed by a high school teacher, Karl Fisch, at Arapahoe High School in Littleton, Colorado, and it was originally intended to help introduce his fellow teacher to the kind of world—particularly the world of technology—that their students would be facing.  But you don’t have to be a high school teacher or student to find Karl’s show beneficial. You can learn more about the future in the 6 minutes and 15 seconds of this show than in most documentaries on PBS.  I got hooked on it, and I have also started to read Karl’s blog, The Fischbowl—another entertaining and fascinating destination on the Web. You’ll find more there about his original version of “Did You Know?” and if you surf around a bit from there, you’ll be connected to some other interesting resources.  Enjoy.

Posted by Jim Kouzes