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Favored Are Those with Fortitude

by Ron Potter April 22, 2019

What does fortitude look like?

He had failed repeatedly.

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

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

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

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

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

The pillars of leadership

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

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

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

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

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

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Favored Are Those with Unshakable Ethics

by Ron Potter October 15, 2018

In their book Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It, James Kouzes and Barry Posner surveyed thousands of people across this country and around the world. In the process they completed over four hundred written case studies. As they identified characteristics most people desire in a leader, honesty or ethics was identified more frequently than any other trait.

That seems to make perfect sense. People are most willing to follow someone they can trust. They want to know that leaders will be straight with them, will be consistent, will follow through on what they say, and will be true to a set of values. They want leaders with unshakable ethics.

So what has happened to us? As we write this book, corporate America is hurting. Never before have so many executives been under investigation, and never before have so many not been trusted. USA Today reports,

More than seven in 10 Americans say they distrust CEOs of large corporations. Nearly eight in 10 believe that top executives of large companies will take “improper actions” to help themselves at the expense of their companies. In the past nine months, the percentage of Americans who say they see Big Business as an actual threat to the nation’s future has nearly doubled, to 38%.

This lack of trust seems to have resulted from a corporate culture in which leaders have shown a complete disregard for personal ethics.

BusinessWeek Online reported that on February 7, 1999, the audit committee of Enron Corporation’s board of directors heard the company auditors describe Enron’s accounting practices as “high risk.” In response, none of the directors objected to the procedures, requested a second opinion, or demanded more prudent measures. Further, a Senate subcommittee investigation found that similar reports by Arthur Andersen personnel occurred once or twice each year from 1999 through 2001 with the same result: Not one director drilled deep enough into the details or objected to the high-risk practices.

Building trust with employees, peers, and investors starts and ends with integrity. Consciously or subconsciously, all leaders decide what values to adopt. Either they choose truth, honesty, and fairness or they choose “cooking the books,” “image managing,” and winning at all costs.

If integrity is so important to people, why don’t our leaders seek to live it? Is it a quality you seek in your own life? If people do not believe your words or if they doubt the credibility of your actions, how will you accomplish anything of value? Who will take you seriously?

Jesus said that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Integrity represents a great treasure. Seek it with all your heart.

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Favored Are Those Who Calm the Waters

by Ron Potter June 13, 2016

A passionate man turns even good into evil and easily believes evil; a good, peaceable man converts all things into good.
—Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

Does it seem puzzling to find the term peacemaker included in a list of qualities necessary for a trusted leader? Does peace sound a bit too passive in today’s business environment?
We are desperately in need of some peace and quiet. Work—all of life—is more stressful than ever before. James Citrin writes:

Late nights in the office. Early mornings to clear overnight e-mails. Weekends to catch up on all the things you didn’t have time to do during the week. Most people in business simply cannot work harder or faster than they are at present—we’re all sprinting just to keep up. As the old saw says, the race goes to the swift. And in the now-distant boom times, being first to market and hurrying obsessively to get out ahead made working in overdrive the norm.
But in our collective rush to get ahead, maybe we have lost something…certain actions, decisions, and initiatives do have their own rhythms, and we should be sensitive to them. Don’t you agree that on some days, things just flow, while on other days, no matter how hard you push, things just don’t move forward?

A peacemaker is a leader who seeks to create calm within the storms of office politics, decision making, shareholder demands, cash-flow crunches, and the endless change of things the organization cannot control such as the economy, the weather, the fleeting loyalty of today’s consumer, and a host of other constantly evolving issues.

One of the jobs of a leader is to prepare the organization for times of great demand. There have been many studies on the effects of overtime work. When additional hours of work are initially introduced, productivity climbs. However, research also shows that if the overtime continues for more than about two months, productivity falls back to its original level in spite of the additional hours worked. Leaders who neglect to give the organization rest will not be prepared when the real push comes. And, in fact, they are not getting a good return on their investment by keeping everyone working long hours over extended periods of time.

Leaders need to know when to let the organization (people) slow down and rest a bit so that they are ready to go when those two or three tough times during the year require that extra effort.

Take a look at your world. Some people on your team are fed up with the daily push and shove. They are overworked and worn out. They feel vulnerable and fearful, and they are seeking personal peace to do a job they feel they can do but for whatever reason cannot.
A good leader knows the value of bringing some calm to stressful situations. As Jesus once said to those under his leadership, “Peace I leave with you.… Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

Peace means equilibrium, understanding, justice, mercy, caring, and harmony. To be a peacemaker means to quench the desire for revenge and replace it with the desire to put others first for their well-being.

However, peacemaking does not mean seeking peace at any cost, for the peacemaker realizes that peace at any price will usually result in events that are anything but peaceful. A peacemaker is not an appeaser. He or she is not a person who is easy to shove around and who refuses to take a position. We are not talking about wimpy leaders who avoid confrontation. Quite the contrary. A peacemaker understands the positive role of conflict in building a solid team. A peacemaker is one who through strength and knowledge establishes good relationships between estranged parties—relationships based on truth and fairness.

Peacemaking leaders encourage open discussion and honest debate, which actually improves relationships. Harmony comes from the trust that is developed, not from the suppression of discussion and debate. In fact, great peacemaking leaders create more energized debate than normal.

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Favored Are the Caring

by Ron Potter October 26, 2015

Source: Paulo Philippidis, Creative Commons

Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.
—Mason Cooley, City Aphorisms, Twelfth Selection

Dr. Albert Schweitzer was already an old man when Andrew C. Davison paid a visit to Schweitzer’s jungle hospital in Lambaréné, on the banks of the Ogowe River in Gabon, Africa. The three-day visit had a deep and profound effect on Davison, who later wrote of one event during the trip that impressed him in a special way:

It was about eleven in the morning. The equatorial sun was beating down mercilessly, and we were walking up a hill with Dr. Schweitzer. Suddenly he left us and strode across the slope of the hill to a place where an African woman was struggling upward with a huge armload of wood for the cookfires. I watched with both admiration and concern as the eighty-five-year-old man took the entire load of wood and carried it on up the hill for the relieved woman. When we all reached the top of the hill, one of the members of our group asked Dr. Schweitzer why he did things like that, implying that in that heat and at his age he should not.
Albert Schweitzer, looking right at all of us and pointing to the woman, said simply, “No one should ever have to carry a burden like that alone.”

Schweitzer obviously understood compassion. As a leader he decided to care for someone else, to fully understand the woman’s burden and seek to relieve it. In doing this he was supporting ideas taught by a compassionate Jesus who urged his followers to care for those who were hungry, sick, unclothed, in prison, and burdened with other problems—“Whatever you did for one of the least of these…you did for me.”
Compassion, as we define it here, involves two primary ideas: First is the ability to see people from their perspective, their level of interest, and their need. Coupled with that other-focused vision, though, is the deep internal craving to help them gain their full potential.
J. Oswald Sanders wrote,

The true leader regards the welfare of others rather than his own comfort and prestige as of primary concern. He manifests sympathy and concern for those under him in their problems, difficulties, and cares, but it is a sympathy that fortifies and stimulates, not that softens and weakens.

Compassion is a strong character quality that seeks to both understand people and motivate them to great personal and professional achievement. Compassion should not be confused with weak sentimentality. Instead, compassion involves caring strength, a selfless desire, and energy that elevates others to first place in all human affairs.

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Favored Are Those Desperate for Excellence

by Ron Potter August 24, 2015

He reduced complexities to essentials, making the game easier to learn. He wanted simple things done with consistent excellence rather than complicated things done poorly.

—Journalist William Furlong on Vince Lombardi

Image source: Wojciech Kulicki, Creative Commons

The game of golf requires proper equipment, good skills, countless hours of practice, tons of patience, and luck. But maybe more than any of these, golf requires a highly refined ability to concentrate. Another word for this is focus.

Chi Chi Rodriguez, a golfer on tour some years ago, was wildly popular with fans. During one Bob Hope Desert Classic, the easygoing Chi Chi (who tackled difficult putts with a toreador’s look in his eye, drawing his putter like a sword from an invisible scabbard) was in rare form. Every ball flew from his club face with tremendous power and accuracy. He tore up the course, having a birdie chance on nearly every hole. Chi Chi was confident, in control of his game, and having fun.

Having fun? Yes. On this day, like most days for Rodriguez, he was having fun. He talked nonstop to the crowd, joking and wisecracking his way down each fairway, until he reached his golf ball. Then, for a few minutes, he was all business. He practiced his swing. He measured the distance to the green. He practiced again. Then he got into his stance, riveted his eyes on the ball, and “whap!” he hit the ball straight down the fairway or near the pin.

After he noted the path of his shot, back he went to talking and performing for the crowd.

Chi Chi Rodriguez is an example of a focused person: one minute a jokester, the next a serious professional golfer, ready to fire off a sensational shot. Although he could make the crowd roar with enjoyment, when it was time to hit the ball, Chi Chi focused himself, reviewed his goal and objective, and pursued his desired result. Nothing could distract him.

Leaders need that kind of focus. It has been said that no one “can serve two masters.” That’s a reality in all of life and certainly supports the importance of focus for leaders who want to keep themselves and their teams on target.

We have all had days when a variety of organizational “fires” needed our attention. We devoted long hours to doing “good” and often important tasks. But as darkness fell and we headed for home, we knew we had not done the most important thing. That’s what happens without focus.

Focus and passion are like blood brothers in achieving goals.

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Favored Are the Steadfast

by Ron Potter July 13, 2015

Commitment without reflection is fanaticism in action.
But reflection without commitment is the paralysis of all action.
—COACH JOHN MCKAY

Image Source: Ed Schipul, Creative Commons

William Wallace personified commitment.

The movie Braveheart tells the story of this hero-leader. He is the warrior-poet who became the liberator of Scotland in the early 1300s. As the film begins we see that Scotland has been under the iron fist of English monarchs for centuries. Wallace is the first to defy the English oppressors and emerges as the leader of an upstart rebellion. Eventually he and his followers stand up to their tyrants in a pivotal battle.

Wallace inspires his “army” as he shouts, “Sons of Scotland, you have come here to fight as free men, and free men you are!”
That battle is won. Later, though, Wallace is captured by the English and, after refusing to support the king, dies a terrible, torturous death. His last word? “FREEDOM!”

As a leader, Wallace understood the need to commit to personal core values, and he was able to inspire others to join him to the death for a noble, transcending vision: the cause of freedom.

This kind of response from others is what’s possible for leaders who understand the clarifying and galvanizing strength of commitment.

Commitment to Values

Knowing what you want is very important.

It’s surprising how many people, even those in leadership roles in large organizations, do not really know what they want. They are good people with good motives and good ideas. They work hard and get a lot done. But their values are inconsistent; their vision is not clear. They are wandering in fog.

To ultimately realize the power of commitment, you must be sure of where you are going and what attitudes and behavior will ensure that you arrive at your destination with your head held high.

Origins of Commitment

Commitment has its origins in clearly perceived values and vision.

Long ago, when I was growing up and forming my first understanding of life, I was mentored by a father who knew what kind of boy he wanted around the family house. Both men were committed to a simple core value: honesty.

Telling a lie was the worst thing one could do. Such an act brought great disappointment to my father and resulted in immediate sentencing and punishment. I quickly gained a deep appreciation for the wisdom of telling the truth. Looking back, I recognize that learning the value of honesty so young has served me well ever since. Being truthful has made me a better man and better leader. Such deep commitment to integrity began when my father focused my attention on honesty.

What my dad did also reveals how values and vision interrelate. My father had a vision for the kind of offspring he wanted to produce: a man of integrity. He knew that honesty would be a key foundation stone in building an individual with that type of character.

Commitment is not worth much if you have a distorted vision and rotten values. It is crucial, then, for leaders to develop the right core values. Right actions flow out of right values such as integrity, honesty, human dignity, service, excellence, growth, and evenhandedness. This set of values will determine much about the vision that leaders create and how they work with and through people—essentially how they lead and to what they are committed.

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Favored Are the Realists

by Ron Potter April 20, 2015

Management’s imperative is to cultivate its human resources. —Zig Ziglar, Top Performance

Photo credit: U.S. Department of Education, Creative Commons

Leaders are defined by the leaders they develop. If they cannot or choose not to develop others, chances are good they will not be leaders for long.

Personal humility establishes a healthy foundation in a leader’s outlook. Leaders also need to develop the right qualities in ourselves and others.

C. William Pollard, chairman of the board at ServiceMaster, relates how he and his team finally grasped this principle:

Several years ago the ServiceMaster board of directors had a two-day session with Peter Drucker. The purpose of our time was to review how we could be more effective in our planning and governance. Peter started off the seminar with one of his famous questions: “What is your business?” The responses were varied and included the identification of markets we serve, such as our health care, education, and residential; and the services we deliver, such as food service, housekeeping, and maid service.

After about five minutes of listening to the responses regarding our markets and services, Peter told our board something that I have never been able to tell them. He said, “You are all wrong. Your business is simply the training and development of people. You package it all different ways to meet the needs and demands of the customer, but your basic business is people training and motivation. You are delivering services. You can’t deliver services without people. You can’t deliver quality service to the customer without motivated and trained people.”

Development requires a humble attitude and a long-term commitment to growth and improvement. Benjamin Franklin once said, “You can’t expect an empty bag to stand up straight.” Neither can leaders expect people to grow, achieve goals, and improve the organization without investing the time necessary to develop them into top performers and men and women of character.

Growth must first take place in leaders’ lives. There are some attitudes and habits close to home that must be cleaned up. Some strenuous self-examination is always a good first step.

After we let go of a few personal “planks” and seek to understand the reality of the environment where we lead, we will then be ready to powerfully develop others.

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Favored Are Those Not Full of Themselves

by Ron Potter December 15, 2014

In a humble state, you learn better. I can’t find anything else very exciting about humility, but at least there’s that.
—John Dooner, Chairman and CEO of Interpublic, as quoted in Fast Company magazine, November 2001

The pathway to greatness as a leader begins, ironically, with a step down. We have seen this over and over. It’s not the loud, take-control, arrogant, hotshot “world beaters” who excel as leaders over the long term. No, the really great ones don’t draw that much attention to themselves. They are, well, humble.

Image Credit: S@Z, Creative Commons

To many people, humility seems like a vice, weakness, or disease to avoid at all costs. Isn’t a humble person a wimp or, worse, a cringing and despicable coward? Won’t a humble leader be the object of contempt and abuse, the kind of person who gets trampled by all the aggressive ladder climbers in an organization?

This perception may have seemed accurate in the past, but not any longer. Jim Collins, author of the business book megaseller Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t, has this to say:

Level 5 leaders [individuals who blend extreme personal humility with intense professional will] channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.

Sounds a lot like humility, doesn’t it?

Humility requires leaders to shed all their prejudices and biases. Humility requires you as a leader to examine who you are and what you have become. Humility requires a completely new way to evaluate people (and yourself). Just because individuals have made it to a higher position on the corporate ladder does not make them any smarter, any more correct in their decisions, or any more valuable than others within an organization. True humility leads to openness, teachability, and flexibility.

Much of the business world still believes that the take-charge, proud hero-leader is the answer to every company’s prayers for a robust bottom line. This thinking may have made sense at one time, but no longer, as some of the world’s largest companies have stumbled in shame under leadership styles that will never be described as humble.

So, can’t an aggressive leader be effective? Of course. However, studies show when an aggressive leader (one lacking in humility) tries to force his or her own ideas on others, the rate of success is not as high as when the leader is open to new ideas and willing to listen, bend, change, and seek commitment from his or her people.

Pride focuses the attention of leaders onto themselves; humility focuses the attention of leaders onto others. The proud leader wants success that brings him perks. The humble leader wants success that brings enduring health to others and the organization. Which leader would you want to work for? Which one would you trust?

Humble leaders may not lead cheers for themselves, but neither are they retiring and shy people. These men and women stand firmly for their core beliefs and values. When you watch them work, their performance is graceful and smooth. They are a joy to talk to because they give no indication that they are an ounce more important than you are. Oh, and one more critical detail: These humble leaders produce incredible results.

Of course, there is more to being a trusted leader than having a humble attitude. There’s a bad-news/good-news aspect to the quality of humility. The bad news is that, to be honest, I have encountered only a few truly humble leaders. If they were an animal species, they would definitely be on the endangered list. The good news is that, if you will learn how to humble yourself, the upside for you and your organization will be substantial. There isn’t that much competition.

The path to greatness begins with a step down to humility.

I’m sure you have worked for both type of leaders. Tell us how you react to each in terms of your trust and your productivity/engagement.

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