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BlogLeadership

Enduring Leadership

by Ron Potter

A.B. Meldrum once said,

Bear in mind, if you are going to amount to anything, that your success does not depend upon the brilliancy and the impetuosity with which you take hold, but upon the ever lasting and sanctified bull-doggedness with which you hang on after you have taken hold.”

Most of my clients would probably never hire me if I told them it was going to take five years to complete the major changes we talk about at the beginning of many of my consulting assignments. At one high-tech company, after three years of intensive effort to develop a new leadership style and corporate culture, the leadership team asked me to evaluate how they were doing. I asked them to rank their “completeness” in each of several major change categories. Overall, they ranked themselves at about 60 percent. I admitted that if they had asked me at the beginning of the process how long it was going to take, I would have estimated five years—so 60 percent after three years was just about right.

One strong leader whom I’m working with now took over an assignment three years ago in one of America’s largest corporations. When he was hired he was actually identified as the “change agent” that the company needed. Needed, maybe, but certainly not wanted. After three years of struggling with the internal practices of the company, he has finally assembled a leadership team that should be able to carry out the many changes that are needed to meet the firm’s looming challenges. I can recall many one-on-one conversations with him over the last three years when he wondered if he had the energy to keep going and whether it would be worth it in the end. But he has endured. I believe he will pick the fruit of an enduring company.

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.

Bringing an organization along also involves being particularly effective during times of change. Many on the team will naturally resist change, so leaders need to humbly and calmly coax people along to the new direction or vision.

Throughout the history of man, the greatest achievements have been accomplished by leaders having an against-all-odds tenacity. The unshakable convictions of the rightness of their causes have kept adventurers, explorers, entrepreneurs, and visionaries going despite overwhelming difficulty and fierce competition. They were and continue to be persistent, holding fast to their beliefs and moving the idea or the organization forward.

That’s the path to building an enduring organization.

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BlogTrust Me

Holding the Hill

by Ron Potter

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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BlogCulture

Ancient and Modern Philosophers

by Ron Potter

I’m a big fan of Biblical teachings, ancient philosophers and adages.  All for the same general reason, they each speak of truth and frameworks.  Most of my ancient philosopher exposure is through Aristotle.  To me, he provides frameworks that help me view the world from a certain perspective.

Frameworks are important to our brain because it is either lazy or doesn’t have enough capacity to process all the information it’s receiving every day—probably some of both.

By using frameworks, we can help ourselves and others gain a perspective on the world around us that helps us cope and move forward.

Aristotle was a student of Plato and Socrates.  But these guys lived around 2,500 years ago.  I began to wonder, where have all the philosophers gone or why have we not had one in 2,500 years?

But then I was listening to a Billy Joel song and realized that I had not been looking in the right places for philosophers.

Now with the wisdom of years, I try to reason things out
and the only people I fear are those who never have doubts.
Save us all from arrogant men, and all the causes they’re for.
I won’t be righteous again.
I’m not that sure anymore.

“Shades of Gray”

Or

And take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while
It’s all right; you can afford to lose a day or two
And you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want or you can just get old
You’re gonna kick off before you even get half through

“Vienna”

Let’s take a line from each of these songs and think about what Billy is saying:

“The only people I fear are those who never have doubts.”
“You can get what you want, or you can just get old.”

Why would a person never have doubts?  They must be so sure of they’re view of the world (or situation) that doubt never creeps into their thinking, evaluation or decision making.  As Billy says, that’s someone to fear!  They just can’t accept that someone would have a different perspective that might be valid.  Jordan Peterson’s Rule No. 9 from his book, “12 Rules of Life” says “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.”  Someone who has no doubts is not likely to assume someone else knows what they’re talking about unless that someone else agrees with them.  That’s scary!

In the second song, Billy is not talking about being selfish.  In fact quite the opposite.  He was writing words about being useful, doing meaningful work, maintaining dignity instead of just growing old and doing nothing.  What state is your life today?  Are you just growing old or are you doing meaningful things?  This is not about being old, it’s about growing old.  Everyone one of us is growing old from the start.  Do something meaningful.  It’s a lot more fun.

And then there is my favorite modern day philosopher, George Carlin.  During one of his comedy routines, he said,

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

If people are not going at the same speed as you, they’re either an idiot or a maniac.  If you think about that a minute you realize two things:

  1. You’re either an idiot or a maniac to everyone else around you.
  2. You’ll only be exposed to idiots and maniac because you never see the person going at the same pace as you.  You’ll never pass them, and they’ll never pass you.  You’ll never be exposed to “normal.”

Pay attention to philosophers, both ancient and modern.  They have a wonderful way of observing the world.

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BlogTrust Me

Humility and Endurance: The Two Pillars of Leadership

by Ron Potter

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.

Humility and Endurance quote

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team Elements – Truth

by Ron Potter

Over the last couple of blog posts, we’ve been introducing and preparing ourselves to walk through the elements that make great teams. The first of these is Truth. Great teams can tell the truth. But Truth needs some special understanding.

To create a truthful atmosphere and dynamic teams must:

  • Develop and maintain Trust
  • Be able to share their Beliefs and Assumptions openly and without recrimination
  • Believe that every member of the team has a Valid Perception of the issue.

Trust

The leadership book is titled Trust Me: developing a leadership style people will follow.  In that book, I describe the eight elements that are required to develop and maintain Trust. Let’s take a brief look at each of the eight:

Humility – “I don’t have all the answers”

Humble leaders don’t flaunt or exercise their positional leadership. They’re always open to others and their idea regardless of where those ideas come from (see Beliefs and Assumptions plus Valid Perceptions later). Jordan Peterson in his book 12 Rules of life, An Antidote to Chaos points this out with one of 12 rules for avoiding chaos, “Assume That the Person You Are Listening To Might Know Something You Don’t”

Development – “I want us to grow through the experience”

Another aspect of great leaders is to develop the people around them. Not just those to report to them but all the people around them. Including their boss. As mentioned above, Jordan Peterson wrote his book about 12 Rules of Life needed to avoid chaos. My two daughters made a list of Ron Potter’s 12 Rules of Life. Their rule number 10 says, “You haven’t failed if you learn from your failures.” Helping people or the team learn and grow through the difficulties of life is the purpose.

Another powerful book is The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck. The opening sentence of that book is “Life is difficult.” Peck, a psychiatrist, goes on to explain that if you don’t face and learn from the difficulties of life, the eventual outcome is mental illness.

Focus – “Let’s not get distracted”

I haven’t seen anything written on this, but there seems to be something magical about the number 3. When leaders are good at focus, they seemed to be concentrating on the three things that are most important for them to accomplish. Especially CEO’s who have tremendous demand on their time from many angles. They’re always being asked to speak to an industry group or meet with a customer or talk to an important constituent. All good things for a CEO to be doing. But the ones that have great focus will say, “That’s not one of my three focus points, someone else do that.” It’s a sure sign that humility is present because it’s often ego that says “Sure, I’ll do that.”

Commitment – “We’re looking for the greater good”

One author that I’ve enjoyed in recent years is Simon Sinek. Sinek talks a great deal about why, how, what. He says that all too often when asked what we do we respond with “what” we’re doing. People aren’t interested in that. Even people in the same company. The finance people are not interested in “what” the operations people are doing, as an example. But if you share “why” you’re doing something, now you begin to capture people’s hearts and minds. You must know why you’re doing something, and it must be for the greater good. Simon is quick to point out that making money is not why you’re doing something. Money is a by-product, not an endpoint.

Compassion – “I care about what you think and who you are”

I love adages because they’ve been around for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. Why do they remain that long? Because they speak to a basic and solid truth. One such adage says “I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care.” You can talk, persuade, convince and motivate but if people don’t feel like you care for them as human beings, they will not be committed. They may be compliant, but that never gets the results you need to keep the company on top or keep the team at a high level of performance.

Integrity – “I will not hold back, I will share who I am and what I believe”

Another characteristic that leads to compliance rather than commitment is lack of integrity. Think about it for a minute. If you don’t believe someone has integrity, you’re not interested in being influenced by them. Lack of integrity destroys trust.

Peacemaking – “We want divergent perceptions leading to unity”

This has been a hard word to translate from the old texts. I’ve tried collaboration, but that doesn’t speak to the depth of peacemaking. Peacemaking is not the lack of conflict. Peacemaking encourages conflict, discord and different points of view. It’s the results of peacemaking that moves all of those different views to a united and committed outcome that the team completely embraces. To the world outside the team all they see is total commitment to the single solution, never being fully aware of the discord that was worked through to achieve the unified decision.

Endurance – “We will endure to a committed position”

When Wayne and I were preparing to write Trust Me we were reading the research by Jim Collins that eventually became his book Good to Great. In that book and research, Jim and his researchers described the kind of leader who was in place every time a company went from being a good company to a great company for an extended period. They termed the leader they described as a Level 5 leader, not to be confused with Level 4 Happiness. The two characteristics they attributed to Level 5 leaders were humility and an enduring will. Our first and last characteristic. I have seen a few leaders who are very good at enduring but in the wrong direction. I believe that if you add the other six (development, focus, commitment, compassion, integrity, and peacemaking) between the “bookends” of humility and endurance, you have a better chance of enduring in the right direction.

The other thing that I’ve observed is that every time I’ve been a part of a major change effort, it always feels like failure somewhere along the path. Enduring leaders stick with it.

How many of the eight-leadership element do we need?

Since Trust Me was written I’ve run a little experiment many times. After getting clear definitions of what each of the eight elements means. I ask teams the following questions:

“What kind of leadership style or culture will develop if we eliminate the first pair—humility and development. After they’ve filled out their flip chart with numerous descriptions, I ask them to start with a new sheet assuming humility and development are back but the next two—focus and commitment—are missing and so forth eliminating two elements at a time.

It’s been very revealing through the years is that I’ve always been very careful to set up the exercise with neutral words and tones, no good or bad yet I have never received a positive descriptor. Isn’t that interesting? Neutral set up but not a single positive response. By eliminating and two of the eight, it always leads to a negative culture and leadership style.

And then comes the most telling question when I ask each of them to tell me which culture or leadership style that they described would they want to work for? The answer is always “None of them.” Neither do their people. And so even if I said earlier that you don’t need all eight elements to start making a huge difference. If you completely miss or neglect to develop any of the elements, you won’t become a leader that people want to follow through thick and thin. You need all eight.

Truth Depends on Trust

Without building a foundation of great trust, a team will never be able to get at the truth of any situation. Start with trust.

In the next post, we’ll talk about some of the systematic approaches to getting at the truth once you’ve built the trust.

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BlogTeamTeam Series

Team: Introduction

by Ron Potter

A new year, a new series. Ready to talk teams?

When Wayne Hastings and I began writing our first book, Trust Me, I assumed we would cover all three areas that I focus on, building Teams, Growing Leaders, and creating Cultures—TLC. As we began to work with the publisher, it became obvious that the first book was going to focus on the leadership area. The team and cultures would have to wait their turn to be covered in future books. The good news is that over the years I’ve learned more about what makes great teams work.

A few of the things that I’ve learned about teams include:

  • Hitting the sweet spot of TLC
  • Team is the leading element
  • Being a great leader, functioning as part of a great team and creating great cultures makes you happy!

Hitting the Sweet Spot

When I formed my company in 2000 (I had been in the business for ten years at that point), I wanted to give it a name that described what we did. Reflecting on the previous ten years, one pattern that emerged was that new clients hired me at one of three entry points:

Leadership

I was being asked to help improve the leadership skills of existing or up-and-coming leaders.

Or a slight variation was the young hotshot contributor that the company thought would make a great leader someday but was currently advancing based on some great competency and had not learned the role of being a leader.

Or sometimes I was being asked to help save a derailed leader who had been in the organization for a long time but had gotten off track.

Team building

Team building was the second point of entry into a client. The work wasn’t necessarily related to a leader (at least in their mind), but the team wasn’t performing well.

Many times, these were existing teams where:

  • Productivity had fallen off or never existed.
  • There was a conflict or rift in the team that they couldn’t get past.
  • The team was facing dramatic change they weren’t handling well.

Sometimes they were ad hoc teams where:

  • They were pulled together for a short-term project that needed a quick launch to get productivity levels high as soon as possible.

A side story to that scenario was my first taste of team building when I was a young engineer. My company brought in a consulting firm (HRDA—Human Resource Development Association) to help facilitate communication, understanding, and decision making between ourselves (the constructor) and the design engineers. The process was called “Face-to-Face.”

Both companies had good people. We were all good engineers but weren’t communicating or more importantly, understanding each other. I began to realize that understanding relied more on good relationships and character than it did on competency.

Corporate Culture

My third possible entry point is corporate culture. When I started in the business in the early 1990s, the idea that you had to understand, pay attention to, and mold corporate cultures wasn’t well known, understood, or accepted. By the early 2000s, it had become an accepted fact.

Those seemed to be the solid entry points for me to provide services and add value to all the companies I worked with in those early years of my consulting work—leadership, team building, corporate culture.

Team is the leading element

After ten years I could see that my three entry points were leaders, teams, and cultures. The challenge was what do I name my new company that reflected those points?

Leaders—Teams—Cultures            LTC

Culture—Leaders—Team            CLT

Teams—Culture—Leaders            TCL

Teams—Leaders—Culture            TLC!!

TLC, that was it. Team Leadership Culture, LLC. That was my new company, TLC!

I must admit that I still thought of leadership being at the core and many of my presentations still reflected that belief. But how could I pass on TLC, so that became the name of my company, Team Leadership Culture, LLC.

What’s interesting is that over time, I’ve come to believe that great teams are the essential lead element. I’ve seen more corporate failures caused by the lack of teamwork than either of the other two elements. Great teamwork can overcome mediocre leadership and lack of a good culture, but neither leadership or great culture can overcome a bad team.

TLC is indeed the right sequence.

Happiness

One of my friends is Jim Berlucchi, who is the executive director for The Spitzer Center. Jim introduced me to the four levels of happiness that were described by Aristotle and greatly expanded into a mental model of leadership by Dr. Spitzer.

Aristotle concluded that what makes us uniquely human is our pursuit of happiness. That is why our forefathers included it in the Declaration of Independence.

It seems even more visible when we see the opposite. Despair and depression seem to occur when there is a loss of hope or happiness. If the ability to pursue happiness is lost, depression fills the void.

The pursuit of Happiness has Four Levels

Level 1 drives our basic needs for food, money, and sustenance — anything that relates to the senses. Without level 1, we don’t survive.

Level 2 drives us to win, improve, get better, achieve, grow. Without level 2, we don’t thrive.

Level 3 is focused on providing blessings to others. These are the elements of our book “Trust Me” which provide great leadership.

  • Humility – “I don’t have all the ”
  • Development – “I want us to grow through the ”
  • Focus – “Let’s not get ”
  • Commitment – “We’re looking for the greater ”
  • Compassion – “I care about what you think and who you ”
  • Integrity – “I will not hold back, I will share who I am and what I ”
  • Peacemaking – “We want divergent perceptions leading to ”
  • Endurance – “We will endure to a committed ”

Level 4 is described by Aristotle as

  • Truth
  • Love
  • Purpose
  • Beauty
  • Unity

These become the elements of great teams and deliver the greatest level of happiness.

Over the next several blog posts, we will be exploring each of these “Team” elements in more detail.

The team is the sweet spot. The team is what makes you happier. The team is what provides the greatest value to your organization. A great team will provide the greatest of memories when you think back over your career and lifetime.

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BlogLeadership

Innovation: hovering for takeoff or collapsed?

by Ron Potter

Current Excitement

Three months ago, she had been excited. This was the opportunity she had been working toward since she joined the company three years ago. Meaningful work is one of the more joyous things you can experience. She didn’t want this job because of its prestige or high pay. She wanted this job because it was meaningful to her, her colleagues and clients.

How it Started

When I talked with her three months ago she was riding high. She explained that when she joined the company she had been hired for her skill set and outstanding success in her last assignment. But before she even joined the company she explained to the CEO that this was not her dream job. She would certainly do the job and do it well but in the end, she wanted a different assignment that was more meaningful to her.

Over the three years, she did indeed do the job well. She built a great team and was recognized beyond her company as an outstanding contributor to the industry. And while she enjoyed the work and found great satisfaction in building and growing a great team, she continued to remind the CEO on an annual basis that she was still interested in the job that was more meaningful to her. And now she had it.

Takeoff

She was filled with new energy and new excitement and explained all the things she wanted to accomplish in the new role. Many of them had never even been tried by the company. The breadth and depth of her vision were overwhelming when she explained all the things she wanted to build. I was wondering how any superhuman could possibly accomplish that much.

Collapsed

But now! Have you ever seen a large hot air balloon being deflated? The beautiful, magnificent structure stories high into the sky with a buoyancy that leaves it hovering just above the earth defying gravity. But an instant later the entire structure has gone cold, collapsed to the ground with a heavy thud and lies there motionless and useless on the ground. That was what today’s phone call felt like.

She had just come out of a budget meeting where it was clear the company was not going to meet next year’s goals and drastic cuts needed to be made. In an instant, her carefully crafted team and the multiple goals that had been hovering above the ground, ready for takeoff were now lying on the ground with no visible means of support. Deflated!

Lean Times Require Focus and Innovation

Times of plenty can destroy one of the greatest assets of leadership teams: good decision making. We’ve discussed this in other blog posts, but the concept is always worth reinforcing. The word decide (de-cide) means figure out what to kill or stop doing. In times of plenty, leaders seldom have the spirit or inclination to say “no”. Good deciding means to be clear about what you’re saying “no” to.

The other concept we began to talk about in her time of deflation was innovation and creativity. It has been well documented that the best innovation takes place when the boundaries are the tightest. Again, in times of plenty, it’s much easier to throw some ideas up on the board, try them all and see if any of them produce fruit. Not innovative! Innovation is about simplicity. Doing the most with the least. It’s those times when budget, time or resources are in extremely short supply when the best innovation happens. This was her time of opportunity. The budget was not just going to be tight, it was going to be slashed. She was going to be forced to say no to save that part that absolutely required a yes. And even the items that received the yes would need to be accomplished in the highest quality and the most elegantly simple way possible. Now was the time for true innovation.

Have you figured out how to say no? Have you absolutely insisted that things get accomplish in the most elegant, simple form possible? At some point, you will likely be forced to accomplish those tasks. You might as well get started now. Learn to say no. Do everything as elegantly as possible.

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BlogTrust Me

How Focused is Your Energy?

by Ron Potter

The sun is a powerful source of light as well as energy. Every hour of every day the sun showers the earth with millions, if not billions, of kilowatts of energy. We can, however, actually tame the sun’s power. With sunglasses and sunscreen, the sun’s power is diffused, and we can be out in it with little or no negative effects.

A laser, by contrast, is a weak source of light and energy. A laser takes a few watts of energy and focuses them into a stream of light. This light, however, can cut through steel or perform microsurgery on our eyes. A laser light is a powerful tool when it is correctly focused.

Leaders cease to be powerful tools when they are out of focus and their energy is dispersed rather than targeted.

Rather than resembling a laser, too often we seem like the sun, just going up and down, splashing our energy anywhere and everywhere.

David Allen, one of the world’s most influential thinkers on personal productivity, argues that the challenge is not managing our time, but managing our focus. He believes that with all that is being thrown at leaders, they lose their ability to respond. However, he is quick to add that most leaders create the speed of it all because we allow all that stuff to enter into our lives.

What happens to our energy? Allen says,

If you allow too much dross to accumulate in your “10 acres”—in other words, if you allow too many things that represent undecided, untracked, unmanaged agreements with yourself and with others to gather in your personal space—that will start to weigh on you. It will dull your effectiveness.

Not only will your effectiveness be dulled but so will your power. Instead of being like a steel-cutting laser, you will be like the sun, putting out energy with no focus. There needs to be focus because life is not just about running faster or putting out more energy.

With so much going on around leaders, focus may seem impossible or improbable to achieve. Employees, phones, pagers, e-mail, cell phones, problems, crises, home, family, boards of directors, and other people or things demand so much. We tend to spend our time managing the tyranny of the urgent rather than concentrating our efforts on the relevant and important things that make or break an organization.

So what should we do? Is it possible to better focus your focus?

I have found that two personal qualities combine optimally to create a leader of highly developed focus: passion and achievement. These form the boundaries of focus.

 

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BlogCulture

If you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there.

by Ron Potter

That is a quote from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol.

I like the Yogi Berra version better. “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might wind up someplace else.” I don’t know if a famous person also said, “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know where to turn next.” Maybe that’s just something that came out of my head. But, you’re getting the idea. Where are you going and where are you now

Those are the questions?

Are we there yet?

When our girls were young we lived in the western United States. Once or twice a year we would make the 1,600-mile trip back to Michigan to visit family. IN A TOYOTA! Averaging 50 miles per hour with stops, that was a 32-hour trip.

Within an hour of a very early departure time, from the back seat would come the question “Are we there yet?” After banning that question on the first trip, I needed to come up with a constructive alternative. Giving each girl a detailed map of our entire trip (in the days before Google Maps) I allowed them to ask, as many times as they wanted, “Where are we?”

In addition to becoming good map readers, it soon became apparent to them that this was going to be a long trip. The frequency of questions from the back seat dropped dramatically.

Corporate Roadmaps

Years later, working with several clients who were making heroic efforts to become the best they could be, it became apparent to me they were asking the same question “Are we there yet?” Without any real understanding of their destination or where they were on their journey, they needed a map.

We began by describing a simple five-step map. I asked them to describe, for their business or focus, entry-level behaviors and skills all the way up to world class behaviors, skills, and impact. Now, we had a “map” and we could ask the next question “Where are we now?” It always amazes me how consistent they were identifying their current location along the journey once the journey was mapped out.

You Are Here

Once we had their “You are Here” marker, it was easy to identify the adjustments and improvements they needed to reach the next level of their journey. Once the next steps were identified, a realistic time frame for accomplishing the changes was also much clearer. And, just like our long-ago road trips, the anxiety levels dropped, everyone focused on being productive in a reasonable amount of time. Soon enough we were once again asking, “Where are we now?” and mapping out our next steps.

Do you have a map?

Do you know where you are on the map? I’m part of a team creating an app to help leaders and teams determine what their journey looks like and where they are now. It can be thought of as a GPS for Leaders. I’ll keep you informed as we progress but you can start today. Describe your journey and figure out where you are today.

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BlogCulture

Calm Down People, It’s Just Stress

by Ron Potter

A lot of my consulting time last year was spent helping teams handle the stress of our fast paced, ever changing, globally connected lives.

One of the resources I often turn to is a book titled Performing Under Pressure by Hendrie Weisinger and J. P. Pawliw-Fry.

You may not have noticed the difference but the first paragraph talks about stress, the second one speaks to pressure. As explained in the book, therein lies one of the keys, distinguishing between pressure and stress.

Here are the quick definitions:

  • Pressure: You perceive that something at stake is dependent on the outcome of your performance and there are good and bad consequences.
  • Stress: Stress refers to the situation of too many demands and not enough resources to meet them.

Pressure vs Stress

I learned the difference between these early in my career. My first real job out of engineering school included walking steel 200 feet in the air. This was prior to modern day safety devices. No safety straps, no nets, just 20 stories up with the wind in your face and utter fear and panic in your head.

If you can imagine standing with your back tightly against a vertical steel column, perched on a steel “I” beam with a top flange that was either 6 or 8 inches wide. That is your sidewalk. As you gaze out horizontally your mind can create the illusion of a floor using the grid of horizontal beams spaced 20 to 40 feet apart. But it’s a true illusion. If you lower your eyes even a few degrees below horizontal, you see nothing but vast openings all the way down to the concrete slab 20 floors below.

But I couldn’t just stand there and contemplate my fate, I had to move about the building to do my job. The only way I could move around the building was to put that illusion of a floor to work for me. So I would stand with my back securely pressed against the vertical column, start to slow my heart rate, breathing and thoughts while I visually searched for a distinguishing mark on the destination column 40 feet away. Once I locked on that mark, the illusion of a floor remained while I kept my gaze totally horizontal. Then with one last deep breath, I took the first step and didn’t stop until I reached the other side. All well and good except for my “friends” the ironworkers who thought of me as amusement.

The veteran Ironworkers who seemed to scramble around the structural steel like it was a gym set on a playground were always watching me with amusement.

I’m on my way. First step. The wind is a bit stronger than I anticipated. Stay focused, keep walking. About a third of the across my beam my focus is completely interrupted by an Ironworker, sliding down the column I was concentrating on and walking toward me. I stop and concentrate completely on maintaining my balance.

As we are taught, the Ironworker walks up to me and stands toe-to-toe. He grasps my wrists as I grasp his, encourages me to lean back until our arms are completely extended and our weight becomes balanced, suspending each other at about 30 degrees from vertical. Once we are balanced we begin a tiptoe dance on the beam, keeping all four sets of toes as much on the beam as possible as we swivel 180 degrees together. We regain our vertical positions and the Ironworker walks off casually chuckling.

I, on the other hand am left using every fiber of my being trying to maintain balance, calm my heart rate and slow my breathing while I search for a new focal point on the column in front of me while facing the WRONG DIRECTION!

Stress? That’s easy. Too much demand with too few resources. Stress is easy and meaningless when put into perspective with real pressure.

Will Stress Kill You?

A 10-year study including tens of thousands of subjects was completed a couple of years ago.

At the beginning of the study subjects were asked if they had been exposed to any of the major stressors (death, divorce, job loss, etc) in the year prior to the study. At the conclusion of the study, those who had experienced the major stressors had a much higher fatality rate. But, all subjects had been asked another question, “Do you believe stress is harmful to your health?” Those who said “No” to that question had no greater fatality rate than the norm even though they had experienced one or more of the major stressors. But for those with major stress experiences who also believed stress was harmful to their health, their fatality rate was the highest.

Stress won’t harm you. Believing stress will harm you can be fatal. Relax, it’s only stress.

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BlogLeadership

The two pillars of great leadership

by Ron Potter

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The temptation in leadership will always be to head toward the dominant preferences inside us and on every side in our environment.
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.

There are two pillars that support the attributes of a great leader: 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.

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