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Dream Team

by Ron Potter

Do you love the dream or do you love the team?

There’s a very famous quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a survivor of the Holocaust. His quote says,

He who loves the dream of what he wants his group to be more than he loves the members destroys the group.

That may take a while to sink in, but the power of that quote is incredible to me. As I work with leadership teams, there’s always a great vision, a great desire, tremendous amounts of energy, a willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty, to achieve the dream. The dream is always out there.

It doesn’t make any difference which industry I’m working in. It can be the food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the automotive industry, the transportation industry. But it’s this image of the dream of what we’re going to do together that continues to propel the leadership team.

However, often the people on the team are ignored, not given credit, not listened to, and in some cases, even sacrificed to the altar of the dream. Bonhoeffer tells us that he who loves the dream of what he wants his group to be, more than he loves the members, destroys the group.

If we don’t build strong respectful, may I use the word “loving”, relationships on our leadership team, we love the dream more than we love the members.

The dream always seems to be the focus. It’s couched in words like:

  • Strategy
  • Vision
  • Next quarter’s goals
  • Initiatives for this year

but it’s always the task in front of them.

When I’m working with a team I’ll say to them “We’ll talk about your dreams (or any one of those words that describe it) later, but first, we’re going talk about the people. We’re going to talk about

  • who we are
  • what we contribute
  • what our individual dreams are
  • where we’re going together
  • how we’re going get there together.

Without fail, when we get to the strategy/vision/task/dream portion of the session, it always goes much better when we’ve spent the time to build the fabric of the team.

Do you love the dream of what you want the team to be more than the people on the team? You’re going to be disappointed.

Love the people of the team. Build the fabric of the team. Many of my clients refer to this as team building. I don’t believe it’s team building. I believe it’s building team! You’ll be happier and more productive in the end.

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BlogTeam

How to Focus on Your Passion

by Ron Potter

Staying focused is virtually impossible without passion. So how do you identify and capitalize on your passion in the leadership setting?

Passion is a craving deep within us, that yearning for something we feel we just must have. It surfaces in a multitude of ways. For example, consider the story of Patrick (Pádraic) Henry Pearse.

Headmaster at St. Edna’s, a small private college south of Dublin, Pearse’s passion was Ireland’s heritage, something he feared was being destroyed by the domination of the English.

Pearse was by nature a gentle man who could never harm even the smallest creature. He had spent his life helping his students understand and pursue their own big dreams. Pearse certainly was not considered a militant or a revolutionary. Yet he was driven by his passion for Ireland.

No longer able to watch the nation’s language, culture, and history eroding, he felt it was time “to pursue his own great goals that, in his words, ‘were dreamed in the heart and that only the heart could hold.’ ”

He embraced the cause to reclaim Ireland and within a year was a leader of the Easter Rising, the Irish rebellion of 1916. After days of intense fighting, the British army defeated the revolutionaries, and on May 3, 1916, Pearse and others were executed in a jail in Dublin. The British leaders mistakenly thought this would put an end to the rebellion. But they did not understand the power of a person’s passion, as people across Ireland embraced Pearse’s ideas for saving Ireland and dreaming big dreams.

In 1921, Ireland declared freedom from England, and Pearse’s passion and dreams for the Irish culture came to fruition. Pádraic Henry Pearse’s passion ultimately forced a nation to find itself.

Finding our passion includes dreaming big. Ask yourself some questions:

  • What is my burning passion?
  • What work do I find absorbing, involving, engrossing?
  • What mission in life absolutely absorbs me?
  • What is my distinctive skill?

Answers to questions like these will point you to your passion.

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BlogCulture

Social Proof or Social Poof?

by Ron Potter

In one of my recent posts about Balance, I spoke to the human need of balancing certainty and uncertainty.

A really good quote from Warren Buffett is “The five most dangerous words in business are: ‘Everybody else is doing it.”

He’s speaking of the need for Social Proof. When we are uncertain, we observe those around us to figure out how we should behave or how we should think. This need for certainty plus the need for belonging (also addressed in the Balance Blog) can combine for a deadly combination. That’s why Buffett describes them as dangerous.

This combines with another experience I (and likely you) have had when one of my parents discovered that I had done something stupid and asked “Would you jump off a building just because all your friends were doing it? Unfortunately, there are a few examples in history of people doing exactly that.

So how do we turn a moment of Social Proof into a moment of Social Poof? Magicians make things go “poof.” They disappear in a poof of smoke or a flurry of bright handkerchiefs. Why did they go, poof? Because they were illusions. They weren’t real. They were figments of our imaginations. The magician wanted us to “see” them so he could make them disappear.

Our marketing world is full of these Social Proof poofs.

You’re really somebody when you drive one of our cars.

Everybody who’s anybody drinks our beverage.

“Hi, I’m a professional actor and I endorse this product. You should want to buy it.” (Check out the Ted Danson Smirnoff commercials. They’re a great spoof of this concept.)

But, back to the purpose of this post. “The five most dangerous words in business.” Social Proof is a dangerous practice for leadership teams. I’ve seen these environments emerge when

  • A leader is so competitive that it turns into a win-lose atmosphere. The leader expects total loyalty. If you’re not a “team player” you must be the enemy.
  • The smartest person in the room syndrome. This may be a leader or simply a subject matter expert. But when the smartest person in the room exists, everyone else should get in line.
  • I worked with a CEO once who told me (and I think actually believed) that he always listened to everyone on his team. When there was a position to be taken he would ask each person on the team what they thought and where they stood on the issue. But subtly, he would quietly listen to the person who had an opposite view without comment. While he would reinforce each person who agreed with his position. You knew immediately which side you were on.

Great teams break down these barriers and attempts at Social Proof by trusting and respecting diverse points of view and honestly dialoguing through them.

Make your Social Proofs go Poof! You and the team will be better off and better balanced.

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BlogCulture

The Number One Habit You Should Drop to be Successful

by Ron Potter

Success.com recently published a list entitled “10 ‘Harmless’ Habits to Drop If You Want to Be Successful.”

Based on the experience I’ve had with successful teams the last several years, I would say just being successful at dropping the first habit will get you a long way toward success.

Number One: Saying Yes When You Want to Say No!

I’ve taught many teams recently the true meaning of the word decide. Top corporate teams are filled with high achievers. They have all been getting things done since an early age. They’ve been rewarded in academics, sports, arts, and business for getting things done. Getting them done faster and in more volume than anyone else. They’re “doers”!

So, it’s very natural to believe that when corporate leadership teams get together they should decide what to do!

But that’s not what the word means. The “cide” part of the word means to cut off, put to death, publicly execute. Think for a minute about the words pesticide or homicide. The one habit that is keeping most teams and leaders from success is concluding that they should be doing more and more. Corporations and individuals don’t have the resources, energy, time or fortitude to keep doing more and more. Successful teams and leaders decide what to kill, what to stop doing.

There are so many variables related to success and failure in the auto industry that I honestly don’t know if this one issue will spell success or failure for General Motors (GM). But, I need to applaud their courage in shifting their measure of success from being the number one car maker in the world by volume. That seemed to be the driving force in GM for decades. But today, they’ve decided to stop producing vehicles in many parts of the world. That takes courage. Will it be successful? I don’t know. As I said, there are many factors to success and failure. But I do believe that deciding where to stop putting your resources is a big factor.

Saying No is Difficult

I really don’t know many leaders who reward and praise their people for not doing something. But they should. Research and my direct experience with many great leaders validate that focusing on the top three issues you face is the best route to success. Rewarding your people for not doing the 10th item on their priority list (and 9, 8, 7, …) will lead to more success than you can imagine. Leaders and organizations never have enough resources to do everything. The assumption is they just need more resources or more productivity out of the resources they have. That’s the wrong assumption. The real answer is assuming you’re trying to do too many things. Deciding not to do the low priority items will help you realize that you have all the resources you need to accomplish your top priorities. And it will lead to greater success as well.

Figure out how to say No!

The Power of a Positive No by William Ury is a great resource. Deciding to say no will be one of the most productive practices you ever learn.

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Blog

Trade Up

by Ron Potter

Mile markers

While visiting the middle east I observed some of the stone mile markers left by the Romans when they were mapping out and connecting the known world.

Physical mile markers are one thing. Life mile markers are even more fascinating.

The interesting thing about life mile markers is that when you look back, many of them are now clear when they were totaling confusing at the time. And, the more life you’ve experienced the more mile markers exist.

The first mile marker of my career appears around the age of 12. My grandfather taught me how to survey and I worked with him and my cousin as we did the layout work for a subdivision. That marker started me down a path to my engineering degree.

After ten years in the engineering business, I hit another mile marker. I say my first microcomputer. That mile marker may seem obvious now but at the time no one knew Apple or Microsoft and the IBM PC was yet to be invented. But that mile marker headed me down another decade in the software industry.

There had been other mile markers along the way that lead me to depart the software industry and step into the Leadership Development Consulting business where I have spent my time and talents over more than two decades. But that mile marker had nowhere near the clarity of the first two. It wasn’t very long after starting the business when I reached the point of no money, no clients, and no prospects. As my wife and I faced this moment that felt like complete failure she asked me “Are you suppose to be doing something else?” My answer was very clear to me. No! I felt I had been called to this work. It was what I was supposed to do! After this rough start, my career began to get on track and I’ve enjoyed years of satisfaction.

Half Time

Some years after that moment the framework and model that explained it all was identified by Bob Bufford in his book Half Time. Bob’s book identified a pattern of survival, success, significance. That pattern immediately made sense to me and the mile markers were then much clearer. I can’t count the number of clients that I’ve helped understand this concept. By all measures, they were being incredibility successful but seemed to be missing something in their lives. They needed to move from success to significance.

Dean Niewolny, now CEO of Halftime Institute, tells a personal journey from success to significance in his newly published book Trade Up. In the book, Dean reaches that moment when all the success in the world doesn’t satisfy. It requires moving beyond success to significance. In his journey, he shares some steps along the way that, looking back along his mile markers, have become clear to him. His sharing of those steps may help you find your path to significance.

Check it out. Trade Up: How to move from just making money to making a difference by Dean Niewolny.

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BlogCulture

How Being Pretty Good Leads to Great Success

by Ron Potter

I came across an old article by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, talking about career success. It’s hard to take Adams seriously on any topic if you’ve read any of his Dilbert cartoons but he seems to be quite serious on this advice and I think it’s pretty sound.

He says: If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But, if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:

  1. Become the best at one specific thing.
  2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.

Yes, Scott said very good and I said pretty good but I think you can put the top 25% in either category.

He also goes on to say don’t try path # 1, it’s way too difficult and takes way too much sacrifice. But, path number # 2 is within most people’s reach.

I am often struck by how many people seem to fall into the “it doesn’t take much planning” part of average success. “I didn’t really plan for any of this, it just seemed to happen” is a story line I hear. But it doesn’t take too much planning to push toward the extraordinary as Scott defines it.

Try this exercise and don’t be shy, you don’t really have to write down your assessment in a blog where people will see it: What would I consider the few areas where I would place myself in the top 25% of anything?

This caused some reflection on my part.

  • I read a lot. I have no idea if I’m in the top 25% but it does seem to be more than average (See my post on Read your way to success)
  • I get to talk with lots of leaders in lots of industries. Most consultants will be high on this one but I find it to be really useful for cross pollination of ideas.
  • I have no fear of working in front of a group of people (probably out of shear ignorance)
  • And, I can’t really think of anything else I would claim to be in the top 25%.

So, what does all this prove? You don’t have to be really good at anything and the things that you are somewhat good at don’t have to be very spectacular. Just as Scott says, just be in the top 25% in two or more areas and you’ll experience something above average success. No joke, I think he’s right.

But, there are two key premises to his statement: Be pretty good at two or more things and plan! It doesn’t happen without planning.

What are your two areas? Are you getting better at each one of them? Are you trying to add a third? What’s your plan? Plans are not about yesterday. Plans are about what comes next. What will you do different tomorrow to begin building for an extraordinary future?

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Absurd!BlogIn-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: Organizations That Need Help Most Will Benefit from it Least

by Ron Potter

photo-1459499362902-55a20553e082

I’m continuing my series on an in-depth look at a wonderful little book that’s twenty years old this year.  Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson.  You may want to consider dropping back and reading the previous blogs about ABSURD!  I think it will put each new one in great context.

One tag line that I’ve always lived by since I started my consulting business is “I only work with companies that want to be helped.”  I guess I learned early that I can’t teach anyone anything, I can only help them learn.  If they’re not interested in learning, I will never be effective at teaching them anything.  In fact, it’s always amazed me that the companies and individual leaders that look like they need very little help are always the ones that will dig the deepest into the learning in order to improve in any way they can.

Our author really clarifies this with a couple of statements.  “Deeply troubled companies don’t usually seek help.  And when they do, they have a hard time benefiting from it. The situation parallels one in psychotherapy.  Psychotherapy is usually ineffective for severely mentally ill people; it works better for well people.  The healthier you are psychologically, or the less you may seem to need to change, the more you can change.”

This statement reflects exactly what I’ve seen consistently over decades of consulting work.  The healthiest leaders with the greatest self-esteem (comfortable with who they are) are the ones that want to learn and improve the most.

Farson goes on to state “The consultant’s essential role is to hold up a mirror to the organization, reflecting the processes that may be limiting its growth.  As might be expected, the most critical issues center around leadership, not performance down the line.  Small wonder, then, that leaders of troubled companies tend to shy away from calling in consultants. They know that they will have to do some serious self-examination.”

Daniel Goleman wrote his Emotional Intelligence many years ago.  While there’s never been any correlation found between IQ and success, there is almost complete correlation between EQ (Emotional Quotient) and success.  At the base of your Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Quotient is self-awareness.  And more interesting is that self-awareness can’t be fully understand simply from within yourself.  Self-awareness requires feedback.  Are you open to feedback?  Without it you’re not even going to be self-aware enough to even know you need help or to seek out the help you need.

team-leadership-culture-meme-12

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