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Balance on the High WireBlogCulture

Balance on the High Wire – Part IV: Human Needs

by Ron Potter

The world is becoming a very fast paced environment. With each step of increased travel velocity, the world has become more interconnected than ever. With the advent of the internet and pipeline speed that velocity has become almost infinite in nature. It seems like a Niagara amount of information, data and connectivity are swirling around us every moment of every day. With each passing day, it becomes more difficult for us to maintain our balance. Without balance, bad things happen.

Over the last few of blog posts, I’ve introduced that Balance is the key ingredient of great decision-making, health, and happiness (human needs). Today let’s explore Human Needs.

A couple of years ago I wrote a short post on human needs described by Tony Robbins. I’m sure Tony didn’t invent these needs, they have been known and observed through human history as being part of who we are as humans. But, Tony has done a nice job of observing and describing the drives behind each.

The six (in my words) are:

  • Certainty—Uncertainty
  • Belonging—Standing out
  • Learning—Teaching

Certainty-Uncertainty

  • I’ve watched corporate leaders attempt to boil down the big-data they need so that it fits on their laptop or tablet. They are searching for certainty and assume that if they have all the data at their fingertips they’ll always make the right decision. If that’s true, why do we need the human element at all? Just let the big-data make the decision. Leadership is dealing with the ambiguity of the situation and making the decision despite the fact you don’t have all the data. Decisions are about the future. The future is difficult (impossible) to know. Life is full of ambiguity and people in general and good leaders are better at dealing with ambiguity than computers.
  • Leadership is about not being certain about the future but also not being afraid. Balance.

Belonging-Standing Out

  • This one is difficult to balance. I believe it takes a trusting team to accomplish. A great team encourages unique abilities, encourages them and helps develop But the goal is to serve the team, not the individual.
  • Individuals have a difficult time accomplishing just the right balance without trusting feedback. One of our great American philosophers, George Carlin once said: Everyone driving faster than you are idiots. Everyone driving slower than you are Morons. Which means you are one or the other to all others on the road. Balance.

Learning – Teaching

  • When both learning and teaching are taking place, both experiences are better. One of my clients explained to me that I provided the greatest value to them when I was teaching them about what I was learning. My energy and enthusiasm came through when I shared with them the insights of what I was learning through my reading and experiences. Balance

I started my career walking steel up to 200 feet in the air. No safety equipment. Just you, the breeze and balance. Up there, balance was life and death. Balance, Balance, Balance!

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Balance on the High WireBlogCulture

Balance on the High Wire – Part III: Stress and Health

by Ron Potter

The world is becoming a very fast paced environment. With each step of increased travel velocity, the world has become more interconnected than ever. With the advent of the internet and pipeline speed that velocity has become almost infinite in nature. It seems like a Niagara amount of information, data and connectivity are swirling around us every moment of every day. With each passing day, it becomes more difficult for us to maintain our balance. Without balance, bad things happen.

Over the last couple of blog posts (Balancing Act and High Wire), I’ve introduced that Balance is the key ingredient of great decision-making, health, and happiness (human needs). Today let’s explore Stress and Health.

Stress

The biggest issue in dealing with stress is founded in the ancient Serenity Prayer:

  • God grant me the serenity to ACCEPT the things I cannot change,
  • the COURAGE to change the things I can,
  • and the WISDOM to know the difference.

It’s the wisdom to know the difference that contains the real power of the Serenity Prayer. In their book “Performing under Pressure – The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most” Hendrie Weisinger, J. P. Pawliw-Fry do a great job of helping us distinguish between pressure and stress. (See the TLC Short Book Reviews)

Stress refers to the situation of too many demands and not enough resources to meet them: Time, money, energy, etc. In a stressful situation, reduction is the goal.

Pressure is when you perceive that something at stake is dependent on the outcome of your performance and there are good and bad consequences. In a pressure moment, success is the goal.

It’s when we don’t balance these two and assume that everything is stressful that we begin to fail in performance and health. Knowing the difference between stress and pressure (wisdom) has a tremendous impact on our health.

Work-Life Balance

I’m going to toss this topic into the Stress category because I see them as interconnected in our work lives. Because of the stress, or by turning even pressure situations into stressful ones, it seems we begin to lose our work-life balance.

Nigel Marsh, author of several books on developing a good work-life balance says “Work-Life Balance is easy when you have no work!” Nigel says it’s too simplistic and destructive to think that it’s simply work vs life. Life is made up of many aspects:

  • Career
  • Family/Friends
  • Significant Other/Romance
  • Fun & Recreation
  • Health
  • Money
  • Personal Growth
  • Physical Environment

It’s when we make the small investments in the right places at the right time that our life feels balanced. Allowing our lives to get out of balance and sacrificing one or more of these areas leads to poor health and a shortening of life.

Balance, Balance, Balance.

Health

Microsleep is defined as a period of mere seconds when

  • Eyelids will partially or fully close
  • The brain becomes oblivious to all channels of perception including visual
  • There is no awareness of any event that occurs during a microsleep

The main victim of microsleeps is concentration. It’s impossible to concentrate when your brain is using microsleeps to recover from sleep deprivation. How much deprivation causes these microsleeps?

  • One night of missed sleep (pulling an all-nighter) causes a 400% increase in microsleeps.
  • Four hours sleep per night for six nights causes the same 400% increase in microsleeps. Eleven nights of 4-hour sleep is equivalent to two back-to-back all-nighters.
  • Ten days of six hours sleep per night is also equivalent to an all-nighter.

Eight hours of sleep per night provides nearly perfect levels of concentration with no microsleeps.

Being awake for 19 straight hours (5 am to midnight) produces the same impairment as being legally drunk.

Long hours of “dedicated” work seems to have gained a level of admiration in corporate circles. It shouldn’t. Longer hours of impaired work and concentration is dangerous for the company and dangerous for the individual. Let alone the shortcomings that are created with the work-life balance issues listed above. Stop doing it. Stop encouraging it. It’s healthier too:

Balance, Balance, Balance.

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Balance on the High WireBlogCulture

Balance on the High Wire – Part II: Decision Making

by Ron Potter

The world is becoming a very fast paced environment. With each step of increased travel velocity, the world has become more interconnected than ever. With the advent of the internet and pipeline speed that velocity has become almost infinite in nature. It seems like a Niagara amount of information, data and connectivity are swirling around us every moment of every day. With each passing day, it becomes more difficult for us to maintain our balance. Without balance, bad things happen.

Over the last couple of blogs (Check out Balancing Act and High Wire), I’ve noted that Balance is the key ingredient of great decision-making, health, and happiness (human needs). Today let’s explore decision-making.

Myers-Briggs teaches us that human decision-making is a two-stage process of taking in information (Perceiving) and then making our decisions based on that perception. It has been my experience through 25+ years of team building and leadership development that we must keep those processes in balance.

My data is rather old (meaning more than a day at this point) but the last I remember seeing is that we create over 50,000 GB of data per second. I’ll let you look up what the size of that number really means.

The human mind can’t come anywhere near absorbing that much data (or even a fraction) every day to use in our decision-making processes. So, the mind needs to use shortcuts, models, and tricks to help us survive and make everyday decisions in our daily lives. Each of us uses a different method of taking in data related to a decision that we’re making. The two key areas that Myers-Briggs describes are:

  • Sensing
    • Facts
    • Details
    • Data
    • What do we know in the present?
    • What have we done so far?
    • What are the next steps?
  • Intuition
    • Bigger picture
    • Future
    • Implications
    • Where are we trying to go in the future?
    • What will the possibilities be?
    • What is the ultimate goal?

As you look at the written list you would likely agree that we need all that information in order to make a good, well-informed decision. The problem is that in our every day lives, our brain tends to focus on and give greater priority to either Sensing or Intuition. It takes a team and a good process to maintain a healthy balance. Without balance you’ll tend to be either too short-term or long-term focused. If this function isn’t balanced it can cause the business to fail.

Once the perceiving function is completed (and hopefully balanced) our “deciding” function kicks-in. Myers-Briggs identifies these as our Thinking and Feeling functions. A better way to think of these is logic and values. All too often in the business world, “feelings” are discounted as being too emotional. Decisions should be made on logic. But values are important to every organization. When values are violated, the culture begins to crumble, and the organization loses a sense of being. Logic and value must be balanced.

Just like on the high wire, goals cannot be met, and trust cannot be build when we lose our balance.

Balance, Balance, Balance.

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BlogCulture

Balancing Act

by Ron Potter

My first job right out of college was working on large engineering projects. When I showed up for my first day of work I was given my assignment… my excitement quickly faded. The project I was working on was in the early stages of construction. The concrete foundation was complete and the majority of the structural steel was in place. My assignment? Make sure the structural frame was straight and plumb and then mark every column at every level so that the coming equipment could be placed properly and would align with all the other equipment to be installed in the plant. Oh, did I mention that the structural steel rose over 200 feet in the air. That’s roughly the height of a 20-story building.

Off I went, riding the construction elevator to the top of the building to begin the several week’s process of working my way down through the building marking columns as I went. Each floor was nothing more than structural steel beams, 6 to 10 inches wide depending on their location and generally 20 feet apart. Nothing else. No floors. No walls. Nothing. Just open air, empty skies, and 200 feet straight down. This was also the days before safety equipment. No nets. Not belts. No safety harnesses.

Focused on a goal

I slowly developed a technique that allowed me to walk across that 20-foot span from one column to the next, step by step on my 6” wide structural beam “sidewalk.” I would stand with my back tightly pressed against a column as I studied the column that was my goal. I would search and search my goal until I could find a visible flaw or mark in the steel where I could lock my eyes. Looking down was death. Once I spotted my goal I would begin to slow my breathing and my heart rate so that I could maintain my focus on that distant spot. When everything seemed to be under control, step one. Followed by step two, three and however many steps it took until I reached that far goal. Never looking down, just staying focused as I moved forward.

After my first couple of days, I thought I had learned a valuable lesson. Picture your goal, stay focused and move forward. But that was just the beginning.

Up in that structural steel with this rookie engineer were veteran and seasoned ironworkers. They would run around up there like they really were on sidewalks. And they were often bored while waiting for the next structural member to be lifted to them by the nearby crane. Bored people look for entertainment. I was entertainment!

Noticing that I had gained a little bit of confidence in my approach to walking steel, they decided to shake up my world a bit. One day as I had completed my routine and was about a third of the way across the beam, an ironworker slid down the column I had targeted and began walking toward me. Now I stood about halfway across the beam, facing a smiling, unshaven, cigar-chomping ironworker with my target column nowhere in sight.

Before going up in the steel I had been taught how to pass someone in these circumstances but certainly never thought I would be using the teaching. The technique required us to get toe-to-toe on the beam, lock each other’s wrists, lean back until our weights were perfectly balanced and then begin a slow swivel keeping our toes on the beam until we were now on opposite sides. In the middle of that process, each of our bodies is suspended over nothingness, 200 feet in the air.

Once we completed our maneuver, the ironworker bid me a good day and walked off laughing in the other direction. I was left with racing breath, heartbeat and a need to find a new focal point so I could make it back to the column. The wrong column because I was now facing in the opposite direction.

Trust your teammates

After I gained some confidence in the maneuver, I thought I had learned the real lesson, trust your teammate. If at any time during that maneuver either one of us had lost trust in the other and tried to take control, the result would have been death for both of us. It amazes me even more now that the ironworker put his life in my hands!

Balance

After all these years I think the real lesson is balance. It doesn’t stand alone: you must be focused on a goal and without trust, you’ll always fall short but my real goal in those situations was to maintain balance. I’m going to start a series on balance and how important it is in many aspects of teams, leadership and culture but I wanted to share my personal journey with you first.

Balance, Balance, Balance.

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Balance on the High WireBlogCulture

Balance on the High Wire – Part I: Introduction

by Ron Potter

In 1974 Phillppe Petit walked a tight rope between the World Trade Center buildings (the ones that came down during the terrorist attack). They were nearly 1,800 feet in the air.

In 2012, Nik Welenda walked a tight rope across Niagara Falls. While Nik’s wire was only about 180 feet in the air, that one seemed more difficult to me. Why, because beneath him the Niagara River was rushing over the falls. Everything was moving. This is not to diminish what Petit did. Both would be terrifying. But it just seems more difficult to me to maintain your balance when everything around you is moving.

I’ve walked structural steel. I’ve also walked over the catwalk of a dam with rushing water under me. Both were terrifying, but it was harder to maintain my balance over the moving water.

In my story about walking structural steel I progressed through three lessons from the experience:

  1. Figure out your goal and stay focused
  2. Reaching your goal requires trust
  3. Balance, Balance, Balance. Without balance you will neither reach your goal or build trust.

The world is becoming a very fast paced environment. With each step of increased travel velocity, the world had become more interconnected. With the advent of the internet and pipeline speed that velocity has become almost infinite in nature. It seems like a Niagara amount of information, data and connectivity is swirling around us every moment of every day. With each passing day it becomes more difficult for us to maintain our balance. Without balance bad things happen.

Over the next few blog posts I’m going to talk about balance with a focus on three key areas:

  • Decision Making
  • Stress and Health
  • Human Needs

It seems that we are all living on the “High Wire” of life these days.

  • How do we maintain our balance?
  • Why is it necessary to maintain our balance?
  • What happens when we lose our balance?

Balance, Balance, Balance.

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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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BlogCulture

Are you fit enough to think?

by Ron Potter

I have a confession to make. I’m not fit. I’ve never been very fit. It’s just never been a priority for me.

I admire people who are fit. I don’t admire the people who have turned fitness into their religion but I do indeed admire fit people.

I’ve used many excuses through the years for not putting in the effort required to be fit. Today I’m going to share one of them.

I’ve always had a desire for learning and understanding. I’m realizing that I can do a great deal of learning but that doesn’t necessarily result in understanding. That will have to be another blog topic.

For this blog post, I’m confessing that I use my quest for learning as an excuse for not being fit. In the morning, I would rather read than exercise. When I have a moment during the day I’ll spend those spare moments reading or writing or thinking.

Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Then I noticed a picture of Rodin’s The Thinker. I’m familiar with the sculpture. I have the image in my mind of the man leaning forward, head resting on his hand, in deep thought. But I never looked closely. I know his position but I never noticed his back, his arms, his thighs, his abs. That sculpture may be one of the fittest men I have ever seen. The Thinker was fit! Incredibility fit.

I’m not going to make a resolution. I’m just not that sure of myself. But I have been inspired. The Thinker was fit. I enjoy being a thinker but I think I would enjoy being a fit thinker even more.

Hope is not a strategy. Inspiration is not a plan. At this point, I only have the inspiration. But inspirations are a required first step in meaningful changes.

What is inspiring you today? Nothing? That’s a problem. Something? Turn it into an action plan. Do something about it.

Let’s share some stories. I’ll keep you informed on mine.

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BlogCulture

Addicted to Being Right

by Ron Potter

We’ve talked about Business Addictions before. In my post “Are you an addict?” from earlier this year, we talked about addiction to accountability, dedication, and productivity. Most of these addictions are “acceptable” in the workplace. People don’t usually call you out for being too dedicated or productive. But they may be aware (and even annoyed) that you can’t get through a meeting without checking your phone. Or you may be falling short of expectations on projects because you made commitments to too many projects.

But there is another business addiction I observe that immediately turns negative and is obvious in its disruption of productivity and a committed path forward. The addiction to being right!

The problem? It sends the signal that all others are wrong. “I’m right, you’re wrong.” “My perception is correct, yours is not.” Once you turn decisions into right vs wrong choices, there will never be a committed team effort to accomplish the goal. Right vs Wrong creates winners and losers. If I’m on the losing side of that equation, I may comply, but I will never commit. If the decision is a Right vs Wrong decision than you’re going to expect me to commit to a direction that I believe is wrong. Human nature keeps that from happening. It’s not realistic.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t have strong ideas and points of view. We don’t’ bring much value to the team if we simply present a cookie-cutter response to the situation. However, we must also realize that others have equally strong and “right” views. We must be dedicated to finding a joint path, shared stories, new movies. Not just proving that we’re right.

If we can frame the decisions that we face in a Right vs Right fashion, we have a better chance of moving forward as a team. Right vs Right turns our decision making away from winning and losing and toward a dilemma. When we face a dilemma, we’re saying there are two equally right answers, we just can’t do both.   We must work out as a team which direction we’re going to head and fully commit to that decision.

Dilemmas are difficult. The concept of being on the “horns of a dilemma” means that you’re going to get gored either way. You’re just choosing which horn will gore you. Dilemmas are difficult.

But, facing our decisions as dilemmas between two or more “right” answers, gives us the chance to come together as a team and accomplish a goal together.

Addiction to being right prevents us from doing things together. It only creates winners and losers.

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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

Walk away from Productivity Blocks

by Ron Potter

I was at my computer at 6:00 am this morning. Three and one-half hours later I was stuck! I was facing a difficult client meeting and it was requiring extreme concentration and creativity to deal with the issue in a constructive way. But, I just got stuck. So, I got up and took a long walk.

Fortunately, I was in a location where I could walk in solitude on a very quiet path through the woods. I took a 45-minute walk. Let me break that walk into thirds for you.

Conscious of my surroundings.

The first third of the walk I was totally conscious of the sounds of my steps, the slight breeze rustling through the trees and the few jays that loudly proclaimed my presence. Nothing else. All my work thoughts were subconscious.

Deep Understanding

Over the next 15 minutes, the concentrated work I had done that morning began to blend with the solitude of my walk. I can’t fully explain it other than my mind began to produce some very high-level understandings. In that 15 minutes, it became clear how I should organize, structure and present the materials.

Blended Experience – Organized Plan

The last 15 minutes of the walk was spent enjoying a little bit of both. I once again became conscious of the sound of my footsteps and jays, but at the same time, I began to see the structure for the meeting, the key points to be emphasized and the steps to success.

High Productivity

Upon returning to my computer the next half hour of work was just incredibly productive. I took all of that thought process from that deep 15 minutes of understanding, put the structure together and began filling in all the pieces. Moving from being stuck to a very satisfying completion with some deep work in between.

Getting past Stuck

When we find ourselves stuck after 3-1/2 hours of concentrated work, most of us will stick with it, stay at the computer, keep hacking away, work until we get at least what feels like a conclusion. And yet, walking away is likely to be the most productive approach. Not to our email. Not to the break room. Not to our news feeds. Just getting up and walking out. Walking through nature in complete silence for 30-45 minutes. That’s when the deep work happens.

Word of Caution

Please understand. I did not decide to spend 15 minutes on each phase of that walk. What I’m sharing with you is my reflection on how I moved from being stuck to some very satisfying work. I didn’t plan to take a walk to solve my problems. I planned to take a walk. Taking a walk lead to some very satisfying productivity.

Deep Work

Deep work! That’s the key. A good walk in the woods. (Note: the book Deep Work by Cal Newport is a great resource.)

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BlogCulture

Are your Values Valuable?

by Ron Potter

Almost every company I walk into has their values displayed somewhere. Often on the wall of the lobby in large font with beautiful art work. Very impressive.

But, it’s immediately evident that the values are either embedded in the culture and achieved every day or they are considered aspirational. The difference is stark!

Aspiration is good. But which type of aspiration are we talking about? There are two very different definitions of the word aspiration.

  1. A hope or ambition of achieving something.
  2. The action or process of drawing breath.

In some organizations, the values are aspirational. I was taken back by one CEO who very proudly proclaimed, “Oh yes, we aspire to these values each and every day.”

“Have you actually achieved any of them?” I asked.

“No, these are aspirational. We attempt to live up to them each day.”

In other companies, the values are aspirational. They are as natural and critical as breathing. When I asked another CEO about their values, his response:

“This is who we are. If we violate these, we die. If anyone violates the values, they’ll be called out immediately, no matter their rank in the company.”

Which aspiration defines your values? It’s obvious to me that the people who work and live in organizations believe values are the breath of the organization. When they’re violated, breath is taken away. Suffocation begins.

When they are treated as the breath of the organization, people know they are to live the values. They know there are consequences for violating the values. They’re quick to tell stories of people who have been asked to leave the company for not living up to the values.

However, when they’re treated as “Hoped for” values, they simply become a list of things that would be nice to have. They seem to come with an understanding that failure will happen but credit should be given for trying.

Sorry. As my grandfather used to say, “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” When those values are displayed on the wall but not achieved every day, the conclusion of the people is lack of integrity. If you lose your integrity you lose your ability to influence. Leadership is only influence.

If you’ve published those values in your company and are not breathing them, you’ve forfeited your leadership. The only resource you have left is power and control and your organization knows it.

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BlogCulture

Pharrell Williams’ Most Important Lesson

by Ron Potter

I like Pharrell Williams. His music is great to my ear and while I couldn’t pull off any of his fashion statements, somehow it looks really good and natural on him.

Jacob Gallagher interviewed Pharrell for The Wall Street Journal. It was titled “20 Odd Questions”. Some of them may have been odd but I found most of them interesting.

  • Favorite places in the world
  • Color
  • Style
  • Favorite art gallery
  • Who would he want to work with

These were some of the questions and categories. But the one topic that jumped out for me was:

The most important life lesson I’ve learned is:

Pharrell may be one of the most recognizable people on the planet today. Fame. Fortune. Wealth. All the things that much of the world seems to be clamoring for. So, what was his answer?

Humility.

“The importance of humility. You want to shine but not so bright that you burn everything in the room. As long as you’ve got your light, people will see you and it’s all good.”

He expresses a clear understanding of humility. It doesn’t mean to stay in the background. “You want to shine…”

It doesn’t mean that you don’t lead the way. “You’ve got your light…”

The original meaning of the word means complete power under control. “Not so bright that you burn everything in the room.”

Humble leaders shine. They light the way. People know who they are and what they stand for. They just don’t burn out everything (and everyone) in the room. Others shine brighter in their presence.

Are people basking in your light or putting on dark sunglasses to keep from burning out their eyes? Be a light. Don’t be a torch.

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