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BlogLeadership

How to Raise An Adult

by Ron Potter
Source: Norbert Reimer, Creative Commons

Source: Norbert Reimer, Creative Commons

Danial Pink conducts a fun interview on his “irregular and irreverent newsletter”. A recent one was with Julie Lythcott-Haims, former Stanford University Dean of Freshmen. She has a new book coming out titled: How to Raise An Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success.

As I looked at her list of things to do as a parent, I thought it made a great list of things to do as a leader. In a sense, that’s what leaders are doing as well, raising adults. Let me share with you her list of what to do as a good parent and alongside that list, what we should be doing as good leaders:

Teach kids/leaders to fend for themselves:

Advice to Kids Advice to Employees
wake themselves up Be a self-starter
make a meal Feed your own growth
keep track of their stuff Be organized
do their own work Don’t take credit for others work
meet deadlines Meet deadlines
get places Get around the organization
talk to others Talk/listen to others
advocate for their needs Advocate for their needs
bounce back from adversity Bounce back from adversity

Julie goes on to say “Here’s an easy four step method for teaching kids any skill:

  1. do it for them
  2. do it with them
  3. watch them do it
  4. then they do it completely independently.

Great advice for kids and future leaders.

Pick up the book, Trust Me and learn all the great steps for being great leaders and creating great leaders.

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BlogLeadership

Are you Curious?

by Ron Potter

Be careful how you answer, it may define your chances of success!

Source: Beverly & Pack, Creative Commons

Source: Beverly & Pack, Creative Commons

I’ve been reading A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life by Brian Grazer.  Most of us know Brian because of his movie making partnership with Ron Howard.  Look at their film biography sometime.  All great films.

But the reason I started reading the book was not because of who Brain was but because of the title, A Curious Mind.  For much of my consulting career, the word curious has been an important concept in my work.  One issue that I seem to be working on with many leaders and in fact the one that seems to gain them the most traction in becoming better leaders is listening.  I try to help them grasp the concept and practice of listening with an intention to understand rather than listening with the intention to respond.  It really makes a difference in people’s lives and in our learning ability if we can make this shift to listening to the other person to completely understand what they’re saying and what’s behind or driving what they’re saying.  Stop trying to figure out how you’re going to respond to the person and just listen to understand them.

When my clients ask for help at getting better at listening to understand I talk to them about curiosity.  Everyone seems to be curious about something.  Everyone seems to have at least one topic that they enjoy, are passionate about, never tire of learning about, and are tremendously curious about.

What happens to your mind when you’re pursuing that curiosity?

  • How are you thinking about the topic?
  • Why do you want to learn more about the topic?
  • What happens when you learn a whole new aspect of the topic?
  • What happens when you learn something that seems to be counter to what you’ve learned in the past or thought you already knew or understood?

What’s happening is that you’re unleashing your curiosity.

Humble leaders listen to others with curiosity.  They want to learn.  They want their beliefs challenged and upset.  They’re gaining new perspectives.  Warren Berger really fleshes this out in his book A More Beautiful Question.

A few of the quotes that caught my eye from Brian included:

  • “Life isn’t about finding the answers, it’s about asking the questions.”
  • “I’ve discovered that even when you’re in charge, you are often much more effective asking questions than giving orders.”
  • “I’m a boss—Ron Howard and I run Imagine together—but I’m not much of an order giver. My management style is to ask questions. If someone’s doing something I don’t understand, or don’t like, if someone who works for me is doing something unexpected, I start out asking questions. Being curious.”

Are you curious?  Are you a leader?  You won’t be good at leading if you’re not good with curiosity!

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BlogLeadership

Character vs. Competence

by Ron Potter
Source: contemplativechristian, Creative Commons

Source: contemplativechristian, Creative Commons

Tyranny of Competence

Bob Quinn in his book Deep Change introduced us to the concept of the “Tyranny of Competence.” This is a person that is so good at the skills of their job, leaders will tend to overlook their other flaws in character.  They assume the character flaws would never cause enough negative issues to overcome the positive impact of being really good at their job.

Don’t ever think that.  The destruction caused by lack of character is always greater than the competency provided.

Steven Covey gave us the image of leadership, being equal parts character and competency. You can be the most competent person ever, but without good character, you’ll never become a great leader.  Conversely, you can be a person of utmost integrity and character, but without being competent at what you do, you’re no longer trustworthy and therefore will never make a trusted leader.

I’ve always been a little surprised at the lack of visibility around this issue. I’ve often thought that maybe I’m more tuned into the destructive aftermath of this character issue than the executives I work with.  And quite honestly, the measurement systems of our corporate environments tend to be more competency based than character based.

Rock Stars of Competency

Then one morning I experienced a little incident that added some clarity.  Because of a heart operation and subsequent complicating factors, I had been living in a hospital environment. Beyond dealing with my own personal health issues, the thing that occupied me the most was observing the culture of an operating hospital from a patient’s (customer’s) point of view.

Now, a hospital is certainly competency-based. Without a doubt, I want the most competent surgeon handling my heart so I can get healthy. But it’s amazing that even at this “rock star” level of medicine, how much of a difference character makes. From the patient’s point of view, the doctors I consider the best are the ones that treat me as a human being. I have been very blessed with great doctors but what’s even more interesting is how the hospital staff reacts to these surgeons.

The high character surgeon treats the staff with respect and relates to them as human beings, even as simple as using their name. The entire staff is very eager to provide to the patient whatever the doctor thinks necessary for the health and well-being of the patient. However, when the doctor forgets to exhibit that good character to the staff, the patient actually suffers. The staff goes back to a checklist approach.  It’s clear that the overall care of the patient diminishes when the providing doctor doesn’t demonstrate good character, but assumes it is only great competency that gets the job done.

Character Based Environments

Below the doctors are the nurses and the rest of the caring staff. Down here, it’s character that makes the difference. Without exception, these nurses and “techs” (one nurse and one tech assigned to each patient) are there to help you get well. There are still competence issues of taking “values”—pressure, temperature, weight, etc. and administering meds—but for the most part they mainly want to know how you’re doing and what they can do to make your stay more comfortable. The most precious commodity is sleep. And while the timing of the system conspires against you, many of the nurses and techs will delay almost anything if they think it will allow you to sleep just a little bit longer. Except Alex!

Don’t Be Like Alex

Alex is a young, energetic tech who was new to me until one morning. At 5:00 a.m. (one of the few times during the day that I could actually fall into a deep sleep) Alex bounded into my room, turned on the lights, and asked if he could check my weight. My answer was, “No!” Undaunted, Alex wheels in the scale (light still on) and offers to help me out of bed. It’s obvious he’s not going to leave so I slowly bring myself to consciousness, drag myself out of bed, stand on the scale, and satisfy Alex that he’s done his job. He even encourages me to get some sleep as he departs with his poundage figures in hand.

My reaction to Alex’s overall performance?

Competent? Yes.

Showed character? No.

Overall, rude, obtrusive, failure as a tech.

In competency based environments, lack of character is always destructive but may be under the radar.  In character based environments, lack of character is seen as complete failure.

The message in all of this is balance, balance, balance.

Regardless of which aspect is more valued in each environment the best leaders, the most cherished and valued people are the ones with both great competencies and the same time exhibit the greatest of character. They are respectful and treat others with great dignity.

If you yearn for success, be the best you can be and at the same time, care and respect those around you for who they are.

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5 Steps to Standing for Something GreaterBlogTrust Me

5 Steps to Stand for Something Greater

by Ron Potter
Image source: Frank Kovalchek, Creative Commons

Image source: Frank Kovalchek, Creative Commons

As a leader, how do you get from here to there if a vision for something greater currently does not exist within your organization? Consider the following ideas.

1. Clean up your act.

It is difficult to convince others to stand for something greater if your own life and values are mediocre. Make no mistake: Regardless of what you hear from assorted voices, your personal moral standards are inseparably linked to long-term leadership success.

I once worked with a vice president of a large company who appeared very successful but did not adhere to high personal standards. He was very good at what he did and had a magnificent reputation.

This V.P. liked to call himself “a player.” Essentially, being a player meant that he messed around outside of marriage. He did not see this as wrong (pride talking) and told us it would not affect his people or the quality of the job they were doing (pride again).

Twenty-four months later, the vice president’s inability to control his pride and lust cost him everything, including his job. His clever scheme fell apart. His self-focus swallowed him up.

It’s fun to be a leader, flattering to have influence, and invigorating to have a room full of people cheering your every word. It is a powerful boost to set a direction for the troops and then draw them out to march toward the goal. However, nothing will spoil this pretty picture more quickly than a willful, proud attitude. Pride can cause an uncontrolled will, which is fatal in a leader’s life.

2. Examine your values.

While attending seminary, Martin Luther King Jr. read extensively in the areas of history, philosophy, and religion. As he read, learned, and reflected, he molded his values and vision on the anvil of discovery, questioning what he truly believed.

This kind of personal searching is essential for every good leader. How can you clarify values, set vision, get beyond yourself, and stand for something greater if you have not participated in the intense, personal struggle to clarify, define, and establish who you are as a person? As a leader you will be asked many questions—economic, moral, and personal. How will you know what answers to give unless you have wrestled with some of the questions?

The result of this struggle is personal integrity and credibility.

3. Elevate people to a higher purpose.

Lincoln motivated people by leaving his office and spending time with everyone in the government and military hierarchy. One hundred and twenty years later, Tom Peters dubbed this kind of management style as “management by walking around.” When a leader gets out and interacts with all the people, the vision is communicated, the values are acted upon, the leader is observed, and the people are inspired.

Whether or not leaders literally walk around, the important factor is elevating and transforming people to serve a higher purpose. People respond by seeking higher moral standards for themselves and the organization. A higher purpose serves to develop common ground, and the common ground leads to energy in attaining goals. It creates a center of importance around which the team can rally and be unified.

4. Seize the higher ground.

John Gardner, Stanford professor, former secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and founding chairperson of Common Cause, has written that there are four moral goals of leadership:

  1. Releasing human potential
  2. Balancing the needs of the individual and the community
  3. Defending the fundamental values of the community
  4. Instilling in individuals a sense of initiative and responsibility.

Gardner notes that concentrating on these aspects will direct you to higher purposes. They take the focus off of you and place it on the people around you. They enable you to let go of the things in life that do not matter and instead make time and create energy for the things that do matter: the welfare of others, the organization, and the larger community.

5. Recognize the cost.

Standing for something greater often exacts a significant price. Senator John McCain, told the story about a special soldier whom he met while a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

McCain spent over five years imprisoned by the North Vietnamese in what was called the “Hanoi Hilton.” One of the men in Senator McCain’s cell was Mike Christian.

The men were allowed to receive packages from home. McCain stated, “In some of these packages were handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of clothing.” The prisoners’ uniforms were basic blue, and Mike Christian took some white and red cloth from the gifts and fashioned an American flag inside his shirt.

Mike’s shirt became a symbol for the imprisoned Americans. Every day, after lunch, they would put Mike’s shirt on the wall and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. You can imagine that, for these men, this was an emotional and significant daily event.

One day the Vietnamese found Mike Christian’s homemade flag. They destroyed it and beat Mike for over two hours.

McCain remembers, “I went to lie down to go to sleep. As I did, I happened to look in the corner of the room. Sitting there beneath that dim light bulb, with a piece of white cloth a piece of red cloth, and another shirt and bamboo needle was my friend, Mike Christian. Sitting there with his eyes almost shut from beating, making another American flag.”

Lt. Commander Mike Christian is a real-life example of how leaders can shift their focus away from themselves, their power, and their potential to something outside themselves, seeking the greater good for others as well as for the organization and the community at large.

 

Standing for something greater moves leaders past their own interests to something that benefits everyone. It takes controlled strength not to fall back to the shortsightedness of doing things only for selfish gain or selfish reasons.

Standing for something greater means standing for something other than yourself. The cause is not “all for you”; it is something greater of which you are part. You bring value, but so do others. People whose view doesn’t reach outside themselves are ultimately limited to their own box of knowledge and vision.

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BlogLeadership

6 Steps to Establish a Vision

by Ron Potter
Image source: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons

Image source: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons

Producing the Vision

In previous posts, we’ve been looking at how vision and values intersect to produce trusting and successful teams.
Abraham Lincoln united his followers with the vision of preserving the Union and abolishing slavery. Lincoln successfully gathered people to his vision, based on a strong set of personal values, and he accomplished an incredible feat. How was Lincoln able to do this? How is any leader able to set vision into reality? Consider the following suggestions:

1. Establish a clear direction.

Have you ever taught someone to drive a car? Both of us have been the “driver’s ed” teachers in our respective families. We have seen that as teens learn to drive, their first instinct is to watch the road directly in front of the car. This results in constant course correction—the front wheels turn sharply as the car swerves from roadside shoulder to the center divider, back and forth. When you approach a curve, the swerving worsens! But when young motorists learn to look as far down the road as possible while they drive, the car’s path straightens out. They are then able to negotiate corners, obstacles, and other dangers much more smoothly. A distant reference point makes the path straighter.

2. Focus your attention.

We often focus on too many methods and alternatives. Building vision means focusing our attention on that vision. Focus is necessary so that lower priorities do not steal time from the central vision. If the vision is deeply planted in your heart and mind, you can proactively, rather than reactively, respond to outside forces and issues.

3. Articulate values.

Leaders need to clearly express their inner values. On what values is a vision based? Team members need to know—and leaders need to share—this basic insight. People knew that Abraham Lincoln was a man of integrity, honesty, hard work, and fairness. These basic values supported his vision of a unified country.

4. Enlist others to help with implementation.

In his book Leading Change, John Kotter writes:

No one individual, even a monarch-like CEO, is ever able to develop the right vision, communicate it to large numbers of people, eliminate all the key obstacles, generate short-term wins, lead and manage dozens of change projects, and anchor new approaches deep in the organization’s culture. Weak committees are even worse. A strong guiding coalition is always needed—one with the right composition, level of trust, and shared objective. Building such a team is always an essential part of the early stages of any effort to restructure, reengineer, or retool a set of strategies [or, we may add, move a vision to reality].

5. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Leaders who want to create and implement a vision need to start a fire in the belly of the people they lead. They need to use all available forms of communication to get the word out. It is akin to brand management. A company that wants to launch a new brand will use every form of communication available to get people to try the new products. The same is true with implementing a vision. Leaders cannot over-communicate what they see in the future.

6. Empower followers.

In order to implement a vision, leaders need to encourage clear buy-in from the people. This requires moving beyond communication to collaboration. The goal is to develop a supportive environment and bring along other people with differing talents and abilities. It also means that when the followers truly understand the vision, the leader needs to step aside and let them do the work to “produce” the vision. The leader needs to give them the authority and responsibility to do the work necessary in order to bring his or her vision to fruition.

I witnessed a meeting recently in which the leader brought together a cross-functional group to brainstorm some marketing campaign ideas for the company. People from different departments assembled and were led through a planned exercise on corporate marketing focus for the following year. The best idea came from a person far removed from the marketing department. She quite innocently blurted out just the right direction and even suggested a great theme for the entire campaign.

If the leaders of this organization had simply called together the “marketing types,” they would have missed a tremendous idea. Or if the leader had done the work alone and not opened it up to input from others, he might not have secured the necessary buy-in from the staff to implement the project. Studies show that when people understand the values and are part of the vision and decision-making process, they can better handle conflicting demands of work and higher levels of stress.

The leadership would also have missed the energy these employees gained from simply being included in a “vision” meeting. After the session several employees came to the leadership and thanked them for the opportunity to help. Those leaders have obviously climbed above the fog and know what they are committed to.

Your values are your platform. They continually communicate who you are and how you work and lead. Your vision sets the agenda. Whether you are part of a small department, a large organization, or a global giant, your vision will set the direction and purpose of the enterprise. You will need a strong sense of commitment and trust to set your vision in motion and deliver it.

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BlogLeadership

How’s Your Vision?

by Ron Potter
Image source: noir imp, Creative Commons

Image source: noir imp, Creative Commons

In a previous blog post, I discussed the importance of values. Developing and committing to values is only part of the equation. Leaders also need to form a vision. These two ideas—values and vision—are inseparable. Vision flows from our values, and the values we live by form the platform for our vision. A leader’s strength of commitment determines how well he or she will stick to either one.

Developing Vision

It is important for a leader to be committed to a vision. When professors Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus studied the lives of ninety leaders, they found that “attention through vision” was one of their key leadership strategies. Vision is the ability to look beyond today, beyond the obstacles, beyond the majority opinion and gaze across the horizon of time and imagine greater things ahead. It is the ability to see what is not yet reality.

Vision includes foresight as well as insight. It requires a future orientation. Vision is a mental picture of what could be. It also suggests uniqueness, an implication that something special is going to happen.

How do you develop a vision? Writers James Kouzes and Barry Posner suggest the following:

You feel a strong inner sense of dissatisfaction with the way things are in your community, congregation or company and have an equally strong belief that things don’t have to be this way. Envisioning the future begins with a vague desire to do something that would challenge yourself and others. As the desire grows in intensity, so does your determination. The strength of this internal energy forces you to clarify what it is that you really want to do. You begin to get a sense of what you want the organization to look like, feel like, and be like when you and others have completed the journey.

When you have vision, it affects your attitude. You are more optimistic. You envision possibilities rather than probabilities.

Vision requires belief. It requires that you refuse to give in to temptation, doubt, or fear. It is a belief that sustains you through the difficult times. Vision requires commitment and endurance. It takes a willingness to be stretched.

Leaders with vision assume anything is possible. Without vision, we can see a difficulty in every opportunity. As we develop vision, we see an opportunity in every difficulty.

Vision asks leaders to hang tough. There is no magic formula that says, “Everything I see in the future will be fine and will fall into place.” Vision differentiates us from others; it sets us apart. It helps leaders attract and retain employees who share a common vision.

Vision is a statement of destination. Leaders need to occupy their time with thinking about how things could be and project themselves into that future. Vision is thinking ahead.

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BlogLeadership

Evolving Wisdom Institute

by Ron Potter

4404847454_0c83c68cac_zAn article in the paper today mentioned a person and her credentials as a faculty member of the Evolving Wisdom Institute. Now, I know nothing about the person or the institute so this is not a comment on what they do or who they are. But the two words, “evolving institute” seem to be an oxymoron to me. Wisdom is considered one of the four cardinal virtues. Plato identified the four cardinal virtues in The Republic. Aristotle’s Rhetoric lists the virtues including wisdom. Thomas Aquinas is associated with wisdom and of course there is the entire book of Proverbs (from Latin: proverbium: a simple and concrete saying that expresses a truth based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity).

Wisdom doesn’t seem to evolve. Wisdom is solid and stable and is continually being re-discovered with every new study on human nature. It seems to me that every time a new business book or research study comes out (Starting with the granddaddy of them all: In Search of Excellence) they end up discovering the:

  • best leadership or
  • best business practices or
  • amazing brain research or
  • studies on human nature,

they always point back to what these ancient philosophers and writers have been telling us for thousands of years. Wisdom has been the same throughout the history of man. Don’t assume it is evolving and you need to figure out where it’s going next. Assume your evolving with new ideas and assumptions (many of them good.) But periodically you need re-ground yourself in and re-discover the ancient wisdom and four cardinal virtues. They will always make you a better leader.

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BlogLeadership

How to Mentor

by Ron Potter
Image Source: Allstar/Cinetext/WARNER BROS Allstar/Cinetext/WARNER BROS/Allstar/Cinetext/WARNER BRO

Image Source: Allstar/Cinetext/WARNER BROS Allstar/Cinetext/WARNER BROS/Allstar/Cinetext/WARNER BRO

The opportunity to mentor exists in every setting where people need to draw on one another’s talents to accomplish a goal.

Frank Darabont, director of The Green Mile, reflected on Tom Hanks’s selfless commitment to helping rising actor Michael Duncan achieve his best:

Fifteen, twenty years from now, what will I remember [about filming The Green Mile]? There was one thing—and I’ll never forget this: When [Tom] Hanks was playing a scene with Michael Duncan…

As we’re shooting, [the camera] is on Michael first, and I’m realizing that I’m getting distracted by Hanks. Hanks is delivering an Academy Award–winning performance, off-camera, for Michael Duncan—to give him every possible thing he needs or can use to deliver the best possible performance.

He wanted Michael to do so well. He wanted him to look so good. I’ll never forget that.

In 1999, Michael Clarke Duncan was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Actor in a Supporting Role category. Tom Hanks, however, was not nominated.

Starting the Process

Here, then, are some thoughts on how to begin mentoring others:

First, the best mentoring plans focus primarily on character development and then on skills. As Jim Collins reports, “The good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience.”

Second, we see many mentoring attempts fail because the participants do not sit down together to discuss and set boundaries and expectations. The process flows much better if the participants take time to understand each other’s goals, needs, and approaches than if they take a laid-back, let’s-get-together approach.

Any mentoring relationship should start with a firm foundation of mutual understanding about goals and expectations. A mentoring plan should be constructed by both individuals, even if it calls for spontaneity in the approach. Nothing is more powerful than motive and heart. Both of the people involved need to fully understand what is driving each of them to want this deeper experience of growth and commitment.

Need a Mentor Yourself?

Research has shown that leaders at all levels need mentoring. Even though you may be mentoring others successfully, you need a mentor too.

There are two issues that we want you to be especially cognizant of:

  • Vulnerability. You must open yourself up to your mentor by being “woundable,” teachable, and receptive to criticism. The essence of vulnerability is a lack of pride. You cannot be proud and vulnerable at the same time. It takes a focus on humility to be vulnerable.
  • Accountability. Commit yourself wholeheartedly to your mentor (or protégé) and put some teeth in the relationship by establishing goals and expected behavior. Accountability should include:
  • Being willing to explain one’s actions.
  • Being open, unguarded, and nondefensive about one’s motives.
  • Answering for one’s life.
  • Supplying the reasons why.

Like vulnerability, accountability cannot exist alongside pride. Pride must take a backseat to a person’s need to know how she or he is doing and to be held accountable by someone who is trusted. People who are accountable are humble enough to allow people to come close and support them, and, when they drift off course, they welcome the act of restoration without the pride that says, “I don’t need anyone.”

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BlogLeadership

Change and Innovation are Difficult

by Ron Potter
Image source: Creative Commons HQ, Creative Commons

Image source: Creative Commons HQ, Creative Commons

Almost all of my clients (all successful business leaders) are in their mid-forties to mid-sixties. That means they were born between 1950 and 1970 and developed their approach to leadership at their first jobs in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Think about what was making our businesses strong and prosperous during that era and later:

  • Constantly increasing productivity
  • Getting as lean as possible
  • Creating ever-increasing efficiencies
  • Precision in operational systems
  • World Changing logistics

Change and innovation in this environment is risky. Corporate boards and investors don’t have much stomach for anything beyond the list above. And, by the way, get better at each of them every quarter! This doesn’t leave much room for trying something new, bringing forth a new idea or innovative approach or certainly launching a disruptive product that is going to be self-disruptive.

In a meeting the other day, one VP said, “I think we can reduce the number of jobs in one area and then use the saved headcount to put toward some change initiatives.” The second VP immediately responded with “I’m pretty sure if we found out how to reduce headcount, we would simply make the reduction  in order to get the cost savings. We don’t have any other choice.”

He’s probably right. Reducing the headcount this quarter and for the next three quarters will be highly rewarding but I’ll guarantee you that someone, somewhere is launching a disruptive idea today that has you in the crosshairs four quarters from now.

Change and innovation is hard, really. Lack of change and innovation is deadly, really.

What restraints have you seen that makes it difficult to change and innovate?

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BlogLeadership

Letting Go: Embracing Failure

by Ron Potter
Image source: John Athayde, Creative Commons

Image source: John Athayde, Creative Commons

Developing your own untapped and unrefined potential is a bit like remodeling an old house: First, you have to tear out some things—like pride or extreme self-sufficiency or bullheadedness or trying to overcontrol people or ___________ (fill in the blank with some attitude or behavior of yours that makes you say “ouch!”). Today I’ll continue the discussion of letting go of perfection and look at embracing failure.

Letting go will often appear counterintuitive. Let’s imagine you are grasping a rope that is dangling you from a window of a three-story house, which happens to be on fire. Hanging on for your life makes sense only until the firemen come and are stationed below to catch you. Now it makes sense to let go.

Setting the Bar

Rather than setting unrealistic expectations, leaders should expect people to fail and be ready to forgive and move on. Leaders can help an organization learn from its mistakes and push ahead to new innovation and creativity. This idea has been referred to as “failing forward.” People learn from each failure, and the lessons learned are quickly channeled into modifying the plan, design, or strategy.

One of my clients is especially good at learning from failure. This man never seems to be interested in who is at fault but is simply interested in what the current situation is and how to move ahead. That keeps the situation positive as well as focused on learning and making improvements. The person who made the mistake or failed is not forgotten but is mentored and developed for future growth. Or at times the person who failed is assisted in finding another job elsewhere in the company or even with another firm where there’s a better chance for personal success. But the failure is always seen by this effective executive as a learning opportunity rather than an occasion to assign blame.

The irony is that seeking perfection and setting ridiculously high expectations is almost a guaranteed means of lowering performance. It makes everybody uptight. And people “playing tight” are mistake-prone. Failing may become the norm.

You don’t want yourself or others to become dispirited, unable to create or innovate because something deep inside whispers, “What’s the use? I’ll fail anyway.” The way out of this trap is to win some small victories so that confidence returns. Small successes, as they accumulate, can morph into large victories and help restore individual and team trust.

The Flashback Failure

Some leaders are stuck in the past. They may have won big “back in ’09,” and now that shining moment is enshrined in their mental hall of fame. A huge past mistake can have the same result; leaders no longer trust their judgment and can’t move ahead boldly.

Rather than dwelling on past mistakes, leaders need to use those experiences to create new and different solutions.

Do yourself a favor and don’t just become acquainted with failure: Make it your friend.

Get a Grip—Let Go!

Every leader is constantly making choices. Is there a way to make more correct turns at each crossroads we encounter instead of taking long, circuitous routes that cost us time and productivity?

Of course the answer is yes. In fact, once you grasp the concept of letting go, you will be well on your way to successfully developing great qualities in yourself and others.

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BlogLeadership

Letting Go of a Bad Idea

by Ron Potter

In a previous post, we looked at bad attitudes that leaders must let go of to lead well. There is something else a growing leader must let go of that’s so important it has been assigned a category of its own. It is the enormously flawed idea that in making your way through life, only success is of any value.

The truth is that one of the most “successful” things you can ever learn is how to profit from a good failure. Let’s face it, reality teaches us that failure is inevitable. Since this is the case, we had better learn how to accept failure and make the most of it.

Image Source: mark sebastian, Creative Commons

Image Source: mark sebastian, Creative Commons

Everybody makes mistakes, including great leaders. Nobody—repeat, nobody—normally gets it right the first time. (Most of us don’t get it right the second, third, or fourth times either!) Winston Churchill said it best: “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” This was born out in Churchill’s own life and in his political career in Great Britain when he blew one assignment after another. Finally, as prime minister during World War II, he faced the greatest leadership challenge of his career as he tried to hold together a struggling nation under the constant threat of bombings, lack of provisions, and fear. Having learned from past mistakes, he rose to the challenge and saved his country.

Consider the record of several successful people who maintained great enthusiasm while failing repeatedly:

  • Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times. He also hit 714 home runs.
  • “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Thomas Edison
  • Abraham Lincoln failed twice in business and was defeated in six state and national elections before winning the presidency.
  • Theodor S. Geisel (Dr. Seuss) had his first children’s book rejected by twenty-three publishers in a row. The twenty-fourth accepted the manuscript, and it sold six million copies.

Why is it that with all that is written about the benefit of failure so many leaders struggle to allow their people or organizations to “fail successfully”? The following reasons have been given at one time or another.

“It has to be somebody’s fault.”

Many organizations fear failure and make attempts to cover up mistakes or failed initiatives. To compensate for their fears, leaders often create a culture of blame. Something goes wrong, and immediately the leadership looks for someone or something to blame. Nobody takes personal responsibility; it’s much easier to find someone to blame. This is everywhere—in large corporations, small businesses, charitable organizations, government agencies, even in churches. If there is a problem, a scapegoat must be found to bear the blame.

Denial

Perhaps the most widely embraced delusion in business today is that it’s possible and even desirable to create organizations in which mistakes are rare rather than a necessary cost of doing business. The problem with embracing this fantasy is that it encourages you and your associates to hide mistakes, shift the blame for them, or pretend they don’t exist for as long as you possibly can.

“Small mistakes are great learning opportunities,” says Dennis Matthies, a Bellevue, Washington–based learning consultant. “They show ‘cracks’—areas of vulnerability—where you don’t pay the price now but might later.”

Too Tall of an Order

“We expect perfection.” Although most leaders certainly grasp the possibility if not the inevitability of failure, they still don’t like the concept. In their hearts they simply cannot tolerate anything but an absolute zero-defects mentality. They really seem to believe that if their people really try they will not fail. The leaders are either embarrassed by failure, too proud to admit failure, or do not want the “mess” that some failures can cause.

Tom Peters advances a more sane approach:

The goal is to be more tolerant of slip-ups. You must be like [Les] Wexner [Limited founder] and actively encourage failure. Talk it up. Laugh about it. Go around the table at a project group meeting or morning staff meeting: Start with your own most interesting foul-up. Then have everyone follow suit. What mistakes did you make this week? What were the most interesting ones? How can we help you make more mistakes, faster?…Look to catch someone doing something wrong!

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BlogLeadership

Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little and Hope

by Ron Potter
Image source: Paul K, Creative Commons

Image source: Paul K, Creative Commons

Once again, my favorite blogger Shane Parrish at Farnam Street Blog exposed a wonderful little piece.

He talks about E.B. White, the author of the above books, writing to someone who had lost faith in humanity.

In White’s letter, he says, “Hope is the thing that is left to us. In a bad time I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock as a contribution to order and steadfastness.” Now my mind tends to go to something deeper (or higher) on Sunday morning than a clock, but his point is a good one. Keep on keeping on. We have hope for the future.

One observation I’ve had of myself and every team I’ve worked with through the years is that for whatever reason the human mind tends to project in straight lines. When things are going bad we can only imagine them getting worse.  When things are going good, we seem to think the good times will just keep rolling.

Maybe this is why it bothers me that people don’t seem to know history as much anymore. It doesn’t take much historical examination of our personal lives, our companies track, the fate of nations to realize that life runs in cycles, not straight lines. Part of the reason for knowing this is hope and preparedness. Hope that the bad times will be followed by good and we must be prepared for the down turns that eventually come.

E.B. White ends his letter with “Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”

Keep adjusting your vision and keep working toward it.

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