Leadership Challenge

Pirates and Popcorn

If you subscribe to my Leadership Path newsletter, you know that I just moved from one abode to another and that I was without television/internet connection for four days. Imagine the horror!

Once I got used to the idea of being in the dark, so to speak, I had time to catch up on reading and browsing through my DVD collection. Like you, I have an assortment of movies and music in a variety of formats. I even have a few 16-RPM records hanging around with no way to play them. But that’s a different story for a different day.

With all of the stress associated with moving, I was settling down one evening looking for a few laughs. One of the old movies I selected was Down Periscope. If you have not seen it, I encourage you to do so.  It is very relevant from a leadership training perspective. I use segments from this comedy in some of my presentations.

The screenwriters, Hugh Wilson, Andrew Kurtzman, and Eliot Wald are brilliant. You could almost swear they were trying to share the principles of The Leadership Challenge under the guise of a Hollywood script. It is very funny at least for my funny bone.

The premise plots a veteran skipper played by Kelsey Grammer, who is everything but a textbook officer, against Bruce Dern, the agitated admiral. Grammer is given a promotion test and command of a diesel-powered WWII sub crewed by a collection of maladjusted, mistake-prone misfits. He is then ordered to take on the U.S.Navy’s best in a crucial war game…belching diesel versus nuclear sub.
Not close to Oscar material of course, but along with Grammer, the key actors Lauren Holly, Rob Schneider, Bruce Dern, William H. Macy and Rip Torn are supported by a superb cast of rebel oddballs.

Rob Schneider is the obnoxious first officer who challenges Grammer’s credibility with the team to his own downfall. He is forced to walk the plank blindfolded while the crew don’s pirate costumes straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean. Argh Matey! One can’t help but think of the precepts of Model the Way as he falls into a nearby fishing boat and is returned to base unharmed except for his fragile ego.

Bruce Dern plays everyone’s worst nightmare as a boss. When boarding Macy’s ship, Macy welcomes him aboard and Dern responds, “Just what is that suppose to mean.” If you ever wanted to see the ill effects of the reverse of Enable Others to Act and Encourage the Heart, Dern’s character is a great example.

Lauren Holly beautifully portrays the first woman officer on a submarine. She is the object of much desire and derision early on but becomes the hero with Grammer’s help as you see a great illustration of Enabling Others to Act.

Rip Torn, as the good admiral, sets up the test as a means of Challenging the Process for Grammer’s promotion opportunity. He seems to get just as much enjoyment from Grammer’s success as Dern’s failure.

Grammer plays his role as easy as Frasier Crane. He masterfully goes outside the box while Inspiring a Shared Vision and Challenges the Process with artful innovation and with a bit of a scary (only in the movies) situation.

Of course, unlike your workplace, this is Hollywood and so it all comes out perfectly (except for Dern).

One of the best ways to use films like this is to share it with your team during a half-day gathering. Then use the time immediately after to discuss their observations and how it might relate to your workplace.

Don’t forget the popcorn.

- Posted by Robert Thomson, author of The Offsite: A Leadership Challenge Fable and The Leadership Challenge Workshop Master Facilitator.

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

Gifts from Gen "Y" ...or "Why Not"

Recently I ran a pilot leadership program for the School of Government at the University of North Carolina. The group was made up of local public officials from all around the state. Titles ran the gamut: Town Planner, County Manager, Public Works Supervisor, Sr. Community Improvement Specialist, Director of Information Technology, etc..  The participants were as varied as the titles they held, a mix of gender, race and generation. At the beginning of the workshop as we introduced ourselves, one of the youngest members responded to the inquiry about why they were attending the class with "there are a lot of older people in my town who are getting ready to retire…or at least I hope they are." This raised an "ohhhhhhh!" response from the other participants and relentless teasing for the rest of the day. The issue of generational differences had entered the room with no chance of disappearing quietly. This same young woman approached me about her "Vision" assignment after class that day. She talked about her frustration with her town not being able to see beyond their current pains to a future that could be bright for the community. "Why can't we think about a beautification program even though we have areas of poverty? Why can't we dream of producing top notch students from our schools, even though we have problems with gangs?" she said. That was the heart of her vision. Now the task was to refine it and make it accessible.

The next day the participants presented their visions. My young friend delivered a simple, sincere presentation incorporating technologies that felt familiar to her. She had the room with her first "I say 'Why not?'". Being part of the older generation, I found myself thinking back to Robert Kennedy's inspirational speech when he asked "Some people see things as they are and ask why. I see things as they might be and ask 'Why not?'" I felt 20 again. Hopeful, inspired, energized.

The next day I checked in with the group and asked what had resonated for people from the previous days. Several participants, baby boomers I will add, said they had been touched and inspired by the young leaders words. Her authenticity and her enthusiasm had them reflecting on their own state of mind. They found themselves committing to a new level of openness and positive thinking. It had even moved one member to craft small rope knots, "Y-Knots" as a symbol of the vision of positive change she articulated for all of us.

Each of us is a unique leader. Our situation, race, gender, and absolutely our age all contribute to that special formula that drives our perspective, our vision. There is unique wisdom to be gathered from these perspectives if we can stay open to receiving it. As leaders, there is so much to be gained by cultivating an open mind/open heart culture that lets the generations learn from each other. There is so little to be lost and so much to be gained, so….Y Knot.
Posted by Beth High

CLO Magazine Website

I've been reading the CLO Magazine e-Newsletter for a couple of years now, but I hadn't spent time on the website until this morning.  Wow!  It's a fantastic source of information for leadership development professionals.  I just listened to a CLO-Radio interview with Tom Griffin from US Cellular.  In just a few minutes, Tom described his organization's approach to leadership development and shared quite a few specifics on what they do and how and why they do it.  I also read an interesting article by Brandon Hall on Social Media and Training Implementations.  While the information was fairly basic, the real world examples from Jet Blue University, IBM's Center for Advanced Learning, Sun Microsystems, and HP got my creative juices flowing.  I've been thinking a lot about how we might integrate some of the Web 2.0 technologies into the next edition of The Leadership Challenge Workshop materials.  Let me know if you have any suggestions.

- Posted by Lisa Shannon

Jim Kouzes on Between the Lines with Barry Kibrick

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Twitter About Leadership!

I was recently discussing with a colleague the value of Twitter. Although we agreed their was little value in updating the world on our daily nonsense, she pointed out that Twitter could be an excellent tool for blogging. How many of us have created a blog with the intention of updating it frequently and find a year later, when visiting the blog, that it has been a year since we have updated it? I have done this a few times.

But Twitter might be just the solution I am looking for to blog. Blogging takes time. Twittering does not. Twittering is one of those things you can do on the go, at the doctors, eating lunch, watching TV, etc. If you are like me, time is life's greatest commodity. I have found that although I think often about the nuances of leadership, I rarely have the time to articulate them. Additionally, I find it even harder to sit down and complete and string together thoughts about leadership. What I find in abundance are principles of leadership. So for the past few weeks I have been Twittering my thoughts on leadership.

Twittering is quite simple. Sign-up. Save Twitter in your address book on your phone. Make sure you are signed up for unlimited text messaging with your service provider and Twitter away. Soon you will be competing with your son or daughter for the most text messages in a month.

Seriously though, Jim and Barry have been talking a lot lately about practicing leadership. What a better way to keep leadership on your mind than journaling about it all day everyday. I look forward to seeing you on Twitter. Check me out on Twitter - leadership101.

Daren Blonski