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Trust Me

Becoming a Trusted Leader

by Ron Potter June 24, 2019

Grasping leadership greatness starts by letting go:

If we do not let go, we make prisoners of ourselves.…

Let go of the strategies that have worked for us in the past…

Let go of our biases, the foundation of our illusions…

Let go of our grievances, the root source of victimhood…

Let go of our so-often-denied fear…”
—Gordon MacKenzie

Letting go is not a one-time deal. You must do it again and again and again.

Many of the most enduring ideas and values in our lives today have been shaped and molded by modern-day “blacksmiths.” Ancient or modern, the principles are the same: The blacksmith heats the iron at the forge, shapes it on his anvil, and cools it in the water.

The blacksmith heats the metal to prepare it for change. The trusted leader warms people to change through humility and compassion. The blacksmith hammers the metal to form a new shape. The trusted leader shapes an organization through commitment and focus. The blacksmith cools the metal to “settle” its strength. The trusted leader uses peacemaking to give the changed organization meaning and understanding. The forged metal, once cooled, becomes the powerful sword, the productive plow, or the beautiful wrought-iron gate.

By understanding the elements that build and destroy trust, effective leaders shape strong and productive organizations:

At the end of the same session when Jesus shared his Beatitudes with his followers—the ideas on which the eight attributes are based—he told an interesting story. Jesus said that if his team members would put what he had taught them into practice, their lives would be like a man who built his house on a solid rock foundation. No matter what kind of storm hit, Jesus promised that the house would stand. But if these men did not pay attention to the truth Jesus shared, their lives would be like the man who built his house on a foundation of shifting sand. When the storm hit that house, it would crumble and wash away.”

I believe the eight attributes of leadership will have that kind of effect on you. Allow them to permeate you from the inside out, and you will have a career—and a life—built on solid rock. You will be known as a person who can say with clear-eyed conviction, “Trust me.”

And others will follow.

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What Makes for a Great Leader: Two Pillars

by Ron Potter June 17, 2019

Over the last several years, investors suddenly began looking for CEOs who could shake things up and put an end to what was perceived as a business-as-usual approach. A new breed of corporate leader emerged: the charismatic CEO. A fervent and often irrational faith in the power of dynamic leaders became part of our culture.

Rakesh Khurana writes,

Faith is an invaluable, even indispensable gift in human affairs.… In the sphere of business, the faith of entrepreneurs, leaders, and ordinary employees in a company, a product, or an idea can unleash tremendous amounts of innovation and productivity. Yet today’s extraordinary trust in the power of the charismatic CEO resembles less a mature faith than it does a belief in magic. If, however, we are willing to begin rethinking our ideas about leadership, the age of faith can be followed by an era of faith and reason.

The adventure of looking for the charismatic leader sometimes asked us to turn our backs on attributes such as honesty, integrity, sensitivity, commitment, achievement, nurturing, trustworthiness, peacemaking, and courage.

But as Jim Collins explained so convincingly in his best-selling book Good to Great, it is the non-charismatic leader who seems to endure and shine in the long run. Collins writes:

Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders [leaders who have taken companies to unprecedented long-term growth] seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.

In my book Trust Me, I outline eight attributes of a truly great leader. I refer to two of those attributes as the pillars: humility and endurance. Focusing on these two pillars is like so many things (golf included) that are both simple and complex. However, our experience tells us that great leaders allow these two attributes, whether natural or not, to strongly influence their leadership style. They learn how to overcome or “position” their natural tendencies. They let the two pillars “pull them through” their swing of everyday leadership and team building.

Great leaders seek to be humble people who lift up others and keep the spotlight on their companies, not themselves. They have a burning ambition to see tasks completed, and they balance that desire with a deep concern for the growth and development of people. They want to nurture relationships, help others flourish, and shove the fuss away from themselves.

Pressure and mounting fear can drive you away from the two pillars in order to succeed in the short run, but it will not last or create trust. It will only drive a wedge between you and the true success you can have as a leader who focuses on the two pillars and the other attributes.

Once again I want to remind you of the power contained in these qualities—and how the opposite qualities can destroy the great person you want to become and the great organization you want to lead.

We all have the ability to adapt these attributes to our particular leadership styles. You have the ability to start today. Why wait any longer?

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Golf and Preference

by Ron Potter June 10, 2019

Let’s talk about golf!

Golf is an enigma. (Now there’s a classic understatement!)

They say golf is like life, but don’t believe them. It’s more complicated than that.”
—Gardner Dickinson

The sport abounds with perplexity and paradox: fairway and rough, dry land and water, green and sand trap. And then there are all the complexities involving mind and body.

Golf and Hand-Preference

Most of us are born with an arm/hand preference. Some of us are right-handed; others are left-handed. Golf says, “Don’t use what comes naturally! Let your other hand (your out-of-preference side) pull the swing through the ball.”

For example, for many players their right hand is dominant in all other aspects of their lives. But in golf, if they allow the right hand to control their golf swing, the ball hooks—hello rough.

However, if they learn to use their left hand effectively—a new swing style—they will hit the ball straighter and have lower scores (which, of course, in golf is better).

So how is this relevant?

Isn’t that just like leadership? If we allow our dominant preferences to always be in control, we will often not have complete success. However, we can learn to adjust our style away from a dominant (and in some cases damaging) preference and become better leaders if we are willing to make some changes.

To be successful in golf, players need to learn how to overcome or “position” their natural tendencies (or preferences) in order to hit just the right shot.

This is also true with leadership. We look for and focus on our strengths, but we are better leaders when we also allow other qualities to develop and come to the forefront. For example, it is not natural for many of us to be humble team builders. It is much easier to strive for the attention of others and build a personal résumé, ignoring the team’s input and value.

The temptation will always be to head in the other direction—toward the dominant preferences inside us and on every side in our environment. But by intentional effort we can learn to be humble and at the same time increase our success as a leader.

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Persist

by Ron Potter June 6, 2019

Whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy. For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything.”
—James 1:2-4, NLT

Why persist?

When leaders develop endurance or perseverance, they develop maturity—not only within themselves but also within their organizations and teams. Persistence breeds character as we stick to the task, bring others along with us, and develop an enduring organization. According to Julien Phillips and Allan Kennedy,

Success in instilling values appears to have had little to do with charismatic personality. Rather it derives from obvious, sincere, sustained personal commitment to the values the leaders sought to implant, coupled with extraordinary persistence in reinforcing those values.

Bringing Others Along

Leaders who persist understand the importance of bringing every part of the organization along with them. It is a time-consuming and focused activity that will eventually yield tremendous results in overall morale, productivity, and team/employee support.

A leader needs to understand that he or she may quite naturally have an easy time focusing on the future or on how the future will look when certain projects, tasks, or goals are completed. Others within their teams may not be able to clearly or easily see the future, or they may be naturally pessimistic about anything involving the future.

A leader needs the persistence to bring these people along—they are valuable to the team’s overall balance. They may simply need the leader to either ask them questions to propel them into the future or help them visualize steps to the future outcome.

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Holding the Hill

by Ron Potter May 6, 2019

On October 29, 1941, as the world reeled from the onslaught of the Nazi regime in Europe and faced a looming threat from Japan, Winston Churchill was asked to speak at Harrow, his old school. Near the end of his two-page speech, Churchill spoke the now famous words:

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.”

Churchill had experienced many crushing setbacks throughout his life and political career, yet he refused to give up. He was a man of extreme courage and endurance.

Endurance

When leaders make decisions, seek to expand an organization’s borders, or want to execute an innovative idea or create change, they will encounter opposition and face the great temptation to conform or quit. How can they resist and stand strong? How can they acquire the bulldog will of a Winston Churchill and never give up?

Endurance is the result of two foundational character qualities: courage and perseverance. Both are required of leaders seeking the trust of others.

“Holding the hill” when under fire can be a terrifying and lonely experience. A leader will face a long list of challenges, which, if not faced and disarmed, can turn the most competent person into a faltering coward. I have grouped these pitfalls to courage into two categories: doubt and avoidance.

Defeating Doubt

This foe of courageous leadership comes in a variety of flavors.

First, there are the personal doubts

We may doubt our abilities, our judgment, our talents, and even our faith. We look at a problem and cannot find a solution. We attempt to fix it but cannot. Doubt oozes into our minds, and we are frozen into inactivity.

Then there are the doubts about our teams or others we depend upon

Have you ever worked with people who are overwhelmed, stressed out, resistant to change, burned out, not working together, complainers, rumor spreaders, backstabbers, non-communicators, whiners, stubborn hardheads, blamers, or unmotivated negative thinkers? When encountering such bad attitudes and behaviors that stall the progress of our teams, we are tempted to slide into despair, and our backbones turn to mush.

Next is doubt in the organization

We may see the company sliding down a hill to mediocre performance, abandoning the right values and a vibrant vision. It’s one thing to maintain your own personal courage in the place where you have influence. But it’s overwhelming to stand strong when the larger organization is waffling on its mission and embracing plans that seem doomed in the face of aggressive market competition. Your knees start to knock.

To endure as a leader, you will have to disarm doubt with gritty courage.

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The Long Game of Peacemaking

by Ron Potter April 29, 2019

For any leader, they must understand that peacemaking on their team is a long game.

Peacemakers understand the longer-term view

Even as we stop focusing on ourselves, begin building interpersonal relationships, and seek to understand the progressive stages of change, we also need to take a longer-term view of the issues or changes. Too often people make small, short-term improvements that send their organizations into a rapid-fire series of chaotic adjustments; then they make more small changes that rip apart their employees’ morale.

Peter G. Peterson, chairman of The Blackstone Group, said in an interview:

Don’t sacrifice your long-term vital future for the temporary present. Just as it is a mistake to assume that boom times go on forever (an assumption that got us into this e-commerce fiasco in the first place), it’s also a mistake to assume that the business cycle has been repealed and that today’s bad times will go on forever. The latter assumption can lead to so much emphasis on cutting costs today that we forget that we’re also managers of the future.

We are familiar with a company whose former president (and founder) took it through significant short-term changes only to reverse or change his decisions months or even weeks later. The result was a swelling of employee distrust and despair. The upshot of their negative attitude was the formation of an informal vigilante group within the company. The group simply began to ignore the changes or bury them so deeply within the bureaucracy that they were never enacted.
We use a concept called Beliefs and Assumptions to help organizations not only improve quality and interactions but also focus on longer-term solutions and thus avoid the needless pain and suffering that result from short-term chaos.

In the course of everyday business, work is performed and results are achieved. If the actual results do not match the desired results, we apply a fix and try again in an effort to achieve better results. However, this do-the-work-get-the-results-adjust-do-the-work cycle can become very repetitive and tiring. Thus, the TQM and re-engineering evolutions were born.

By examining the systems and processes that drive the work, we can make changes earlier in the cycle to avoid many of the undesirable results without getting caught in the trap of having to constantly fix problems. However, if leaders really want to make sustainable changes, they must examine the underlying beliefs and assumptions that form the basis for the systems and processes. Having a system or process in place is one thing. But the key to success is having people who believe in the process and the importance of implementing it.

When leaders focus on sustainability, they bring peace and a semblance of meaning to change. Rather than relying on knee-jerk responses, such leaders bring peace by looking farther down the road and developing solutions that have lasting power.

Many times leaders want to “fix” problems, so they just do some more work. They tinker with the system rather than providing a lasting solution.

Peacemakers seek long-term solutions

They want to improve the quality of thinking and interactions, not just fix problems. To do this, leaders who make meaning out of chaos work on beliefs and assumptions. They seek to get to the root of an issue and therefore develop a longer-term solution. They are also unwavering in this approach; anything less will cause confusion or chaos within the organization.

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Favored Are Those with Fortitude

by Ron Potter April 22, 2019

What does fortitude look like?

He had failed repeatedly.

On June 19, 2002, the Chicago millionaire Steve Fossett began another attempt to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon, a craft he called SoloSpirit.

Fossett, who already held records in ballooning, sailing, and motorized flight, had this one personal goal to achieve. The five previous attempts to circle the earth in a hot-air balloon had failed, the latest attempt ending in a torrent of thunderstorms in Brazil.

Steve Fossett is a determined man, however. He sees the goal and presses forward to achieve it. Even though his fifth journey had set many ballooning records, the central goal of completely circling the globe wasn’t reached. Steve had to try again; he is a man of endurance.

On July 4, 2002, after fourteen days, nineteen hours, and fifty-one minutes, Steve Fossett realized his dream: He landed smoothly near Lake Yamma Yamma in the east Australian outback. On his trip around the world, he had traveled almost 21,000 miles.

His persistence and uncompromising perseverance had kept him focused—no matter what the odds, the obstacles, or what others believed and said. That is what fortitude looks like.

The pillars of leadership

As I have noted before, endurance—along with humility—is one of the two foundational pillars of effective leadership. Truly great leaders are humble men and women who in the face of extreme stress, trial, failure, and chaos hold on, move forward, and endure. They have grit—fortitude.

By starting with humility, you can be sure that you’re ready for endurance. Holding on until you reach the right target is only accomplished by applying the previous seven principles.

Endurance takes courage—guts. It takes the ability to persevere and stand strong when the tide of public opinion and employee wishes are against whatever you as leader believe must happen. It is a quality that instills confidence in followers and pushes organizations to realize their goals.

I have a friend who is a triathlete. He tells me that anyone can compete in the event. Anyone can buy the necessary outfits, cheer when the gun sounds, and begin the race. However, only those who are in shape will finish or even compete for very long. After a few miles of the first event, participants are grateful that they took the time to build up their endurance. They are glad they held strong to the rigors of their training schedules.

What distinguishes triathletes is the ability to finish strong; they have prepared well. The demonstrate fortitude. Likewise, leaders who want to become great leaders need to develop the ability to endure and hold strong in the face of adversity and discouragement. As they live through hardship and work through pain and setback, they may stumble. But like a good runner, they never lose stride. They consistently stand up to the heat of battle. They finish what needs to be finished, and they stand firm on their values and vision.

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Learning in Chaos

by Ron Potter April 15, 2019

As Peter Senge defines it, a learning organization is an organizational structure in which “people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.”

In this sense, a learning organization is an organization that is continually expanding its ability to create and re-create the very patterns and structures by which it operates.

At least that is the goal.

Quick-Deciding Creates Chaos, Learning Order

Unfortunately, what I have found in my work is that quick decision making has won. In many cases, leaders have abandoned the learning organization in favor of the quick-deciding organization.

In times of chaos, confusion, and change, peacemaking leaders need to focus attention on making sure their organizations are quick learning rather than quick deciding.

The fast-paced environment of product development, competition, and shareholder expectations has forced many organizations to adopt a quick-deciding mentality. In this model, a team (much like a football team needing to score before time expires in the fourth quarter) is in a hurry-up offense. The goal is to make decisions. But as Tom Peters correctly observes, “As competition around the world boils over as never before, firms caught with bloated staffs and dissipating strengths—from Silicon Valley to the Ruhr Valley in Germany—are looking for quick fixes. There are none.”

Leading Toward Learning

So how would a two-pillar, peacemaking leader respond?

The goal of the quick-learning team is to seek out and develop opinion rather than steamrolling over it or quickly mustering forces against it. Feedback is highly desired rather than feared.

In contrast, feedback is offensive when you are a quick-deciding team. You develop “sides” on all issues. The competition heats up. Winning at all costs is what counts.

Members of a quick-learning team are all on the same side of the fence, looking at an issue with differing opinions, experiences, and ideas.

Meeting Agendas

Meeting agendas are often a surprising enemy. Leaders, staring at an agenda, feel compelled to make decisions within the time allotted. In most cases, true discussion of the issues and everyone’s opinions (the rooting-out process) is bypassed in favor of table talk that centers on implementation.

We suggest a meeting agenda that maps out what the team wants to learn about an issue. Learning should be the goal with good decisions the result. Remember that the goal is learning quickly and then making good decisions, not just deciding quickly.

Patience is Key

“Patience,” said Saint Augustine, “is the companion of wisdom.” Problems and day-to-day crises test our wisdom and our ability to make decisions under pressure. Great leaders are people of patience and constant learning.

It is the leader’s job to pull everything together into a quick-learning rather than a quick-deciding environment. The leader holds the dialogue together and asks questions that are designed to help team members clearly communicate their information and thoughts about the agenda item. In this way, the meeting’s goal is met: quick learning—rather than quick deciding—for the purpose of making good decisions.

The leader needs to develop not only an inclusive mind-set but also one that honors people for who they are and what they bring to the process. Each person brings unique strengths and outlooks to the table.

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Treat Employees as Investors

by Ron Potter April 8, 2019

It is interesting to watch privately held companies that seek to go public. They hire IPO (Initial Public Offerings) coaches who work hard with the CEO, CFO, and COO to train them to attract investors. They work with these leaders to help them say the right things in order to sell their companies. They teach them which messages work and which do not.

My question:

“Why don’t companies do the same thing with employees?”

If you do a quick study on employee relations over the last several decades, we think you will discover that how employees are viewed and described has moved along a continuum from workers to commodities to assets. We do not believe that referring to employees as “assets” is a satisfactory description because so many leaders look at assets as disposable or upgradable. Leaders and companies would be more successful in building organizations if they thought of their employees as “investors.”

Leaders need to give their people the same compelling we’re-a-great-company-and-here’s-why-and-where-we-are-going reasons for success that are promoted to IPO investors or current stockholders.

Leaders need to ask:

“How can we get employees excited about what we are doing?”

This approach is basic to team building and goes beyond vision and mission. It’s a way to engage the greatest resource of people—their energy!

Alan Loy McGinnis, in his book Bringing Out the Best in People, tells us, “Talk may be cheap, but the right use of words can generate in your followers a commodity impossible to buy…hearts on fire.”

Isn’t that what all leaders want—team members with hearts ablaze for the company’s vision and goals? The leaders certainly want investors who are loyal, happy, and motivated to give resources. Treating your employees as investors will produce similar results.

Leaders and companies would be more successful in building organizations if they thought of employees as “investors.”

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Managing Conflict

by Ron Potter April 1, 2019

In his book The Fellowship of the Ring, the first book in the series The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien describes the camaraderie of a diverse group banded together by a common cause. Called “the fellowship of the ring,” their quest is to destroy the power of the Dark Lord by destroying the ring in which that power resides. Though they differ in nearly every way—racially, physically, temperamentally—the fellowship is united in its opposition of the Dark Lord.

In a section omitted in the movie, a heated conflict breaks out among the crusaders. Axes are drawn. Bows are bent. Harsh words are spoken. Disaster nearly strikes the small band. When peace finally prevails, a wise counselor observes, “Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.”

Conflict causes estrangement within teams, even the best teams. Therefore, managing conflict is at the heart of the dilemma of the leader who has good relations with individual team members but cannot get the group to work together.

Rivalry causes division. Debate causes hurt feelings or a sense of not being heard or understood. How does a leader keep an aggressive person and a person who easily withdraws engaged?

Kenneth W. Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann created the Conflict Mode Instrument, which is “designed to assess an individual’s behavior in conflict situations.” It measures people’s behavior along two basic dimensions: “(1) assertiveness—the extent to which an individual attempts to satisfy his or her concerns, and (2) cooperativeness—the extent to which an individual attempts to satisfy the other person’s concerns. These two dimensions of behavior can be used to identify five specific methods of dealing with conflicts.” The methods are described as follows:

Avoiding—Low assertiveness and low cooperativeness. The goal is to delay.
Competing—High assertiveness and low cooperativeness. The goal is to win.
Accommodating—Low assertiveness and high cooperativeness. The goal is to yield.
Compromising—Moderate assertiveness and moderate cooperativeness. The goal is to find a middle ground.
Collaborating—High assertiveness and high cooperativeness. The goal is to find a win-win situation.⁸

Leaders need to use the peacemaking qualities defined by the two pillars of humility and endurance to bring conflict to the highest level of resolution: collaboration. The cooperative environment means “I need to be humble.” The assertive environment means “I need to endure.” The two pillars, taken together, cause people to listen, yet hold firm in solving conflict through collaboration. When collaborating, individuals seek to work with others to find a solution that satisfies all parties. It involves digging into hidden concerns, learning, and listening but not competing.

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Humility and Endurance: The Two Pillars of Leadership

by Ron Potter March 25, 2019

My book Trust Me is centered on eight principles of successful leadership. What we call the “two pillars”—the key principles that support and are intertwined with the others—are humility and endurance. A leader who desires to build a great team must first become a leader of humility and endurance. Pride and despair always force leaders to choose incorrect methods and solutions.

It is difficult to build a team when you need to be the center of attention, the only voice, the only one with an idea, and the only one who can make a decision. It is also difficult to build a team when, at every sour turn, the team stumbles and fails or doesn’t learn from failure. Endurance means pushing through struggles together until the results are positive. Leaders, by the way they respond to crisis and chaos, often cause teams to quit sooner than necessary.

Understand, Accept, and Communicate Change

Since the 1980s—or earlier—the business world has begun to see the need for entirely new models of management in order to succeed in regaining and defending competitiveness in today’s world economy. The old paradigm of management that had guided the U.S. economy since the rise of the railroads and the large corporations of the Industrial Revolution no longer seemed to work. Firms struggled to remake themselves in order to be competitive. They followed the advice of many writers and consultants to become organizations that stepped away from Management by Objective and adopted a strategy of learning.

Today we live in a rapidly changing postindustrial society that is becoming increasingly complex and fluid. It is an environment that requires decision making and sometimes rapid change within organizations. Surviving and thriving in this rapidly changing landscape becomes a function of an organization’s ability to learn, grow, and break down institutional structures within the organization that impede growth. Organizations that are ideologically committed to growth and change will be at an advantage in the postindustrial era.

In his book Leading Change, John Kotter explains how leaders can effectively communicate change in their organizations. All of us at one time or another fully understand the confusion caused by change. Kotter writes,

Because the communication of vision [change] is often such a difficult activity, it can easily turn into a screeching, one-way broadcast in which useful feedback is ignored and employees are inadvertently made to feel unimportant. In highly successful change efforts, this rarely happens, because communication always becomes a two-way endeavor.

Even more important than two-way discussion are methods used to help people answer all the questions that occur during times of change and chaos. Clear, simple, often-repeated communication that comes from multiple sources and is inclusive of people’s opinions and fears is extremely helpful and productive.

Humility and endurance guide a ship experiencing change and chaos. A leader who builds a team, but their leadership style, upon the foundation of humility and endurance will see their team through difficult days.

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Peace and Making Meaning

by Ron Potter March 18, 2019

How do leaders create peace in the midst of chaos? How do they restore an organization to the point of balance and productivity? How do leaders reach out to employees during times of uncertainty and worry?

By becoming peacemakers.

The major problem many leaders face is not the mechanics of change or even embedded resistance to change. The chief challenge is helping people understand what is going on around them.

According to a national survey taken by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research in the fall of 2001, only 1 in 5 adults said they felt hopeful about the future as compared with 7 out of 10 who reported feeling this way in a 1990 survey. People are distressed and want someone to bring meaning to their daily lives.

Calm and team effectiveness come when a leader makes meaning out of the jumble of chaos that surrounds employees, suppliers, and consumers. In most situations, every person on a team brings a different point of view, a unique experience, or a personal preference to the table. Every market change brings with it new expectations, new competition, or new hopes. It also brings new opinions, new points of view, and new preferences. How does a leader make meaning out of all that?

Peacemakers focus outside themselves

Leaders who understand the need to make meaning for their teams and organizations understand that it starts with their own style. If we are self-centered and proud, we surrender the ability to see the angst in others. The prideful leader will not see the need for communication or helping others understand what is going on around them. Such leaders hold their cards close to the vest. Their focus is on themselves.

In contrast, leaders who put “you first” and have self-esteem based on humility are able to look beyond themselves and help others see meaning in their circumstances.

Peacemakers maximize opportunities for communication

I have a friend who says, “You need to tell people the story until you vomit—then tell them some more.” Peacemakers take advantage of every opportunity to communicate with people to help them understand chaos and confusion. Communication is not just speaking; it involves listening, too. In true communication, a leader honors everyone’s opinions and frames of reference.

The goal is to learn, not necessarily to check items off the to-do list. This creates a “learning” organization or team that encourages and listens to everyone’s opinions. Before making decisions, leaders of learning organizations probe the dissenters to better understand their opinions. They listen, learn, honor other people, and discover how to make great, lasting decisions.

Peacemakers encourage thinking

Even when people see change or confusion as an opportunity rather than a menace, they still need to feel safe and unafraid. Leaders need to create an environment that is open and flexible.

Leaders need to encourage thinking that seeks the sustainability of improvements, not just the solutions to problems. In order for people to go that far, they need to feel supported and that their thoughts are being heard and acted upon.

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