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Team Elements – Truth

by Ron Potter January 17, 2019

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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Blog Team Team Series

Team: Introduction

by Ron Potter January 3, 2019

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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How Big is the Pie: Rewards of You-First Leadership

by Ron Potter October 8, 2018

The past couple weeks, we have discussed you-first leadership and the characteristics that make up that kind of leader.
Becoming a “you-first” leader may sound a bit like career suicide. Isn’t this just another way to get trampled while climbing the corporate ladder?

I would say that depends on your view of the pie.

Are you the kind of person who believes in the “fixed pie” view of the world? “There is only so much pie to go around, so if I don’t get mine first, there won’t be any left after everyone takes theirs.”

Or do you believe in an expanding pie? “If we all do a great job, there will be more than enough to go around for all of us.” “You first.”

The Sweet Rewards of You-First Leadership

There are actually great personal and professional rewards awaiting the person intent on taking care of the needs of others first. In the long run compassion, like humility, will be an asset that will propel you into being an admired leader, one whom others will follow. It will also provide you with a great deal of personal satisfaction and delight.

Having a “you-first” attitude will result in a new and better personal leadership paradigm. Instead of viewing employees and others as those in need of control and reshaping, you will move toward becoming a coach who provides people with honest feedback. You will create a safe environment in which people are free to share honestly about your programs, ideas, vision, and initiatives.

Another way to look at yourself and develop good habits is to examine whether you act as an old-style boss, or whether your actions (not intentions, but real actions) are directed toward empowering others.

Zig Ziglar has built a whole career based on the concept that to get everything you want you need to help other people get what they want. “You first.”

A you-first leadership style goes beyond humility. Humility says, “I’m no better than you; we are equally important.” A “you-first” attitude puts the other person out front.

Let’s Discuss

How much are your decisions driven by your own selfishness?
What are you trying to protect by not seeking a “you-first” style when you work with others?
Have you ever experienced personal satisfaction by putting another person first, placing their needs ahead of your own? Explain.

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Blog Culture

Intransigent

by Ron Potter August 30, 2018

The opposite of humility is not ego.

The opposite of humility is intransigence.

Ego is always driven by fear. It’s our need to:

Win
Achieve
Be seen as the best

When we have our fear of falling short, our ego tends to get in the way.

But the opposite of humility is intransigent. I’m probably not going to use that word very much, because I can barely pronounce it, but it’s an interesting word. It means

An unwillingness, or refusing, to change one’s views or to agree.

It’s not necessarily ego where you’re trying to defend a point of view or defend your fear of failure, or your lack of recognition, it’s a conscious unwillingness and refusing to change your mind.

It’s an unwillingness.
It’s a determined refusal to change your view.

In our business world, we see this happen often, but it’s never quite as blatant as it looks. Occasionally, I’ll hear someone on a leadership team saying, “I don’t care what you say. I’m not going to agree with that approach.”

That makes my job and the job of the leader much more difficult when you have someone express that level of stubbornness. In an earlier blog, we talked about Winston Churchill’s humility. He was an incredibly stubborn man, but he would be open to listening to other people and trying to understand their point of view.

The intransigent person is not open. They are not open to understanding. That is not their goal. If you have an intransigent person on your team, I would highly recommend that you find them someplace else to work, someplace else in the organization, maybe in another organization.

Always be very careful not to act too quickly. You should make every effort to grow and develop and help that person change along the way, but if they are truly intransigent, you are not going to reach agreement. You are not going to reach unity. You are not going to move your organization forward without tremendous friction.

The cost of tolerating intransigent at the cost of unity is too high.

As a side note, I’ve talked about the word “tolerant” in previous blogs. I’m not in favor of being tolerant. To start with, the definition means the measure of poison you can ingest before you experience negative effects. Secondly, when people say you should be tolerant, they’re really saying that if you don’t agree with them, they won’t tolerate you. In the usage above, I have used the word as it’s intended. The cost of tolerating intransigent, the poisonous effects of allowing intransigent behavior to exist is too costly.

Be humble, don’t be intransigent. That’s the key.

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Blog Culture

Restoration or Revenge

by Ron Potter August 9, 2018

Team Unity is the most powerful productivity booster that can be applied.

There are several “multipliers” to team productivity. One is trust. Another is respect. And you need both in place to build unity. But unity is the greatest productivity booster of all.

Whenever people are involved there will always be conflict and friction. It’s just the nature of things. How we respond to the conflict and friction will determine the value of the team.

Revenge is a power play. When you take a tit-for-tat approach to conflict and friction it’s because you want to maintain power over the other person. Teams are not built on power, they’re built on unity.

Unity requires reconciliation. Reconciliation requires giving up power and control. This doesn’t mean you need to give up your beliefs and assumptions or cave into another person’s need for power and control but it does take humility. The original definition of humility meant tremendous power under complete control. Being under control means self-control, not controlling others. Restoration helps build trust.

Restoration means reaching out to others. Listening to their point of view. Not arguing or countering every point they make but attempting to understand their background, experiences, beliefs, and assumptions that are leading to their position. Steven Covey addressed this approach in his 7 Habits of Highly Successful People when he said, “Seek to understand first before being understood.” Few people seem to have the patience to fully understand the other person before expressing their point of view but when it does happen, it is very powerful.

However, there are occasions that despite the effort to understand and reconcile, the other person may not be willing to reconcile. In these cases, there is an ancient process that says bring one or two others with you to help reconcile. That doesn’t mean that you bring one or two supporters to overcome your “opponent.” It does mean to bring one or two others to help assure that the process is facilitated well and that both sides are completely understood.

If after making the effort with a good facilitator or two, reconciliation still seems to allude you, this is an issue that needs to come to the team. Letting it fester in the background or simply agreeing to disagree will never bring the trust and unity needed to build a great team. Great teams reach unity and commitment. Without unity and commitment, the full power of the team will never be realized.

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Blog Trust Me

Getting Effective Feedback

by Ron Potter July 2, 2018

Can your team speak freely?

Leadership today is all about two words: It’s all about truth and trust.

When they trust you, you’ll get truth. And if you get truth, you get speed. If you get speed, you’re going to act. That’s how it works.

You and others are willing to work long and hard to accomplish goals. However, as we’ve seen from the stories in recent posts, our efforts can become very scattered and focused on the “urgent.” We need to build accurate, open, reliable feedback systems.

A team leader needs to create a learning environment in which every team member is appreciated, listened to, and respected. In this kind of environment, the opinions of team members are fully explored and understood and are incorporated into the decision-making process. The team actively learns from all members who express their positions and opinions, and as a result, the team is stronger and more efficient.

In the end it will be the ability to endure through the challenges, criticisms, and doubts that distinguishes the great leaders. But if you have staked your reputation on a wrong or unachievable goal, enduring through the challenges will only take your team or organization down the wrong path. What keeps you from that wrong path is good solid feedback. But good solid feedback is hard to come by, especially the higher you climb in an organization.

The power of effective feedback

People don’t like to give the boss bad news or news that doesn’t agree with the boss’s stated position. But without it comes only failure.

Effective Feedback. It’s not just something you ask for. It’s a cherished gift. It’s a wonderful reward for building a trusting organization or team.

An effective feedback apparatus starts with humility. Humble leaders create an atmosphere where feedback from others is desired and honestly requested. Leaders who are focused on growing their people build that growth on feedback. When people know that a leader is committed and wants honest feedback to help reach stated goals, they are more likely to provide the open and honest feedback required. Compassion, integrity, peacemaking—upcoming chapters that will all lead to an atmosphere and culture that is open to and thrives on honest and timely feedback.

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Achievement-Motivated Leaders

by Ron Potter June 11, 2018

We recently discussed leaders motivated by passion. Along with passion, a desire to achieve motivates a leader to a higher level of focus.

I have concluded that leaders with an achievement-motivated style (balanced by humility) have the most constructive approach to work. Typically, they do not waste time on projects or matters outside their vision. They determine what is important, that “something great,” and they seek to achieve it.

For more than twenty years, David C. McClelland and his associates at Harvard University studied people who had the urge to achieve.

McClelland’s research led him to believe that the need for achievement is a distinct human motive that can be distinguished from other needs. [His experiment involved asking participants] to throw rings over a peg from any distance they chose. Most people tended to throw at random—now close, now far away; but individuals with a high need for achievement seemed carefully to measure where they were most likely to get a sense of mastery—not too close to make the task ridiculously easy or too far away to make it impossible. They set moderately difficult but potentially achievable goals.

I’ve determined, based on our experience, that achievable goals are those with a 70 to 80 percent likelihood of success.

McClelland maintains [that]…achievement-motivated people are not gamblers. They prefer to work on a problem rather than leave the outcome to chance.… Achievement-motivated people take the middle ground, preferring a moderate degree of risk because they feel their efforts and abilities will probably influence the outcome. In business, this aggressive realism is the mark of the successful entrepreneur.…

Another characteristic of achievement-motivated people is that they seem to be more concerned with personal achievement than with the rewards of success. They do not reject rewards, but the rewards are not as essential as the accomplishment itself. They get a bigger “kick” out of winning or solving a difficult problem than they get from any money or praise they receive.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.” Every January millions of people watch the Super Bowl. During the awards ceremony after the game, we see players with big smiles. What are they shouting about? Not about money or fame, but about the ring. Each player on the winning team gets a championship ring—a symbol of reaching the pinnacle of the sport. Nothing else compares to having that ring. It is proof of the ultimate achievement in football. That’s what motivates an achievement-oriented person.

Lastly, achievement-motivated people need feedback. They seek situations in which they get concrete feedback that they define as job-relevant. In other words, they want to know the score.

People with a high need for achievement get ahead because, as individuals, they are producers. They get things done.

Sometimes, however, when they are promoted, when their success depends not only on their own work but on the activities of others, they may become less effective. Since they are highly job-oriented and work to their capacity, they tend to expect others to do the same. As a result, they may lack the interpersonal skills (I refer to this as the encouragement or humility leadership style) and patience necessary for being effective managers of people who are not as achievement-motivated.

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Blog Trust Me

Leading by Values

by Ron Potter January 22, 2018

People are searching for a deeper meaning in their lives.”
—M. Scott Peck

The leader who understands this and who responsibly presents a great cause to followers will turn a key in many hearts and unlock vast reservoirs of creativity and productivity.

But just having personal commitment to a great cause is not enough for a leader. The vision for “something beyond” must be successfully transferred to the entire group, whether it be a small staff, a department, an entire organization, a state, or a nation.People are less energized and tend to drift when they are unsure of how they should be operating within an organization. People need to see their leaders’ commitment to values, and they want a part in helping to shape their organization’s core values and vision.

Leaders who form corporate values, vision, and strategy in a vacuum or just in the executive suite lack the humility and commitment to move beyond themselves and include others who have solid ideas and opinions on what should define the company’s values. When leaders don’t talk about the company’s values and vision, people feel alienated and less energized.

When working to plant a vision and sense of a greater cause in a team, you must first ensure that values are understood and owned. This is accomplished initially by cataloging the personal values of individual team members. When the personal values of individuals are understood, team values begin to emerge.

The following story illustrates the steps that one dynamic business leader took to win support for a great cause in his organization.

After agreeing with his executive team on a set of core values, the CEO of this large firm got so interested in employee input on team values that he asked a consulting team to go to six different locations and determine the values of the two hundred to three hundred employees at each site. In team settings, it is often easy to agree on the first five to seven values; however, discussions get very interesting as teams round out the full list of values that will govern their individual behavior and business practices. Using an audience response system, the consultants asked each table-grouping of employees to discuss and develop team values. Next, they worked on “room” values.

Upon completion of the six-city tour, the employee list of values was compared to the executive list. The two lists were surprisingly similar. After some final discussions and some tweaking of the list by the company’s leaders, a final list of values was issued.

Although the operative values came down from on high, every employee who had participated had a personal stake in and loyalty to the list. The company-wide discussion had galvanized the organization not just to a set of core values but to a gigantic something-greater goal pursued by the company’s CEO. This company desperately needed to reverse a quarter-century of declining market share for its products. The CEO used this exercise in determining values as well as a great amount of day-to-day, hands-on involvement with key personnel to successfully “sell” his organization on the dream of a huge reversal of the company’s fortunes. The entire company bought into the dream and now shared his passion for something greater.

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5. Myers-Briggs In-Depth: Attending and Perceiving: Sensing vs iNtuition – Part II

Most successful business people have figured out that they need to balance this function. This balancing act most often takes the form of a trusted partner, colleague or consultant.

Continue Reading…

4. Being Humble is Being Down to Earth

It doesn’t seem to make much sense, but truly great leaders are humble.

The problem comes with how the word is normally used: Humble is thought to mean shy, retiring, unobtrusive, quiet, unassuming. Being humble can seem weak or, horrors, even borrrrrrrriiiiiiinnnnngggggg.

What does it really mean to embrace humility?

Humility is derived from the Latin word humus, meaning “ground.” One way to describe truly humble leaders is that they have their feet on the ground.

Continue Reading…

3. Myers-Briggs In-Depth: Judging vs Perceiving

I have set up the following two signs in a team meeting:

I have to get my work done before I can play.
I can play anytime

I then ask the team to position themselves along the spectrum between those two signs. Once positioned it almost always correlates between their Judging vs Perceiving preference on this scale.

Continue Reading…

2. Absurd!: The More We Communicate, The Less We Communicate

People don’t want more information; they want more meaning. What does this mean? How should we interpret these numbers? Give us meaning. Tell us stories. Help us understand.

Continue Reading…

1. Character vs. Competence

Bob Quinn in his book Deep Change introduced us to the concept of the “Tyranny of Competence.” This is a person that is so good at the skills of their job, leaders will tend to overlook their other flaws in character. They assume the character flaws would never cause enough negative issues to overcome the positive impact of being really good at their job.

Don’t ever think that. The destruction caused by lack of character is always greater than the competency provided.

Continue Reading…

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Blog Trust Me

Leading a Great Cause

by Ron Potter December 11, 2017

Commitment involves rising above our own needs and perspectives to grab hold of a greater good.

Standing for something greater relates directly to the values and vision of an organization. A leader’s stance for something greater not only meets his or her personal desires, but it strongly resonates with peers, direct-reports, and others who have a stake in the organization.

Just having personal commitment to a great cause is not enough for a leader. The vision for “something beyond” must be successfully transferred to the entire group, whether it be a small staff, a department, an entire organization, a state, or a nation.

Many companies start with the right motivation. They talk about their values and they create high aspirations, but these same companies don’t really live by them. People do not like to be put in boxes, and just as important, people do not like to be in the dark, outside the door where company values and vision are shaped. People are less energized and tend to drift when they are unsure of how they should be operating within an organization. People need to see their leaders’ commitment to values, and they want a part in helping to shape their organization’s core values and vision.

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You Need a Mentor Too

by Ron Potter November 6, 2017

Mentoring is a life-changing part of development. The goal is to coach and guide people through life transitions and structures, focusing on the “being” rather than the “doing.”

In many ways, mentoring resembles a parent who lets a child learn how to feed herself. It can be downright messy! Food ends up on the face, in the hair, on the floor, on Mommy and Daddy—and occasionally in the mouth. Milk is spilled so frequently that a whole industry evolved to provide those nearly spill-proof cups! Parents have two choices: Let their child thrash around and learn how to manipulate a spoon, or continue to feed her themselves. But really there is only one good choice—as is true with mentoring. You just can’t spoon-feed a child forever. Neither should you artificially prop up a work associate who must learn to handle responsibilities. You need genuine concern, patience, and a great sense of humor, whether you are teaching a child eating skills or mentoring an employee in how to handle customer complaints. But it’s worth the effort. People committed to growing together through thick and thin accomplish great things.

Research has shown that leaders at all levels need mentoring. Even though you may be mentoring others successfully, you need a mentor too. Just put yourself in the protégé’s shoes.

There are two issues that we want you to be especially cognizant of:

Vulnerability. You must open yourself up to your mentor by being “woundable,” teachable, and receptive to criticism. The essence of vulnerability is a lack of pride. You cannot be proud and vulnerable at the same time. It takes a focus on humility to be vulnerable.
Accountability. Commit yourself wholeheartedly to your mentor (or protégé) and put some teeth in the relationship by establishing goals and expected behavior.

Accountability should include:

“Being willing to explain one’s actions.
Being open, unguarded, and nondefensive about one’s motives.
Answering for one’s life.
Supplying the reasons why.”*

Like vulnerability, accountability cannot exist alongside pride. Pride must take a backseat to a person’s need to know how she or he is doing and to be held accountable by someone who is trusted. People who are accountable are humble enough to allow people to come close and support them, and, when they drift off course, they welcome the act of restoration without the pride that says, “I don’t need anyone.”

Be vulnerable and open to being held accountable. Leaders at all levels need mentoring, and you need a mentor too.

* From Dropping Your Gaurd by Charles R. Swindoll

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Pharrell Williams’ Most Important Lesson

by Ron Potter August 24, 2017

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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