Ron’s Short Review: Yes, you will enjoy this more if you’re a Michigan fan but Bo Schembechler was a great coach and leader and his leadership lessons are timeless. Even if you’re green or scarlet I still think you’ll enjoy this one.
Ron’s Short Review:
I consider Edgar Schein one of the fathers of Organizational Culture thinking. Read anything by Edgar and you’ll be learning something worthwhile. In this simple book however, he gives some astounding advice on helping people in the most impactful way from your employee to your spouse to your child. His framework of the roles of client and helper will quickly explain so much about why attempting to help sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.
Ron’s Short Review:
The subtitle says it all: Change the way you lead forever! This quick, small book with seven great questions will change the way you lead. Worth reading.
Ron’s Short Review: General McChrystal really nails this one and helps us see why the ONLY way we’ll experience success in today’s fast changing world is to build great teams. A must read.
Ron’s Short Review: Benjamin Tallmadge was George Washington’s spy master during the revolutionary war. He wrote this as a memoir to his children. Short read (less than 100 pages). Fascinating.
Image source: subflux, Creative Commons
I was having coffee this morning with an old dear friend. He has lived a life so rich and diverse and global that it would astound most people. He also has a heavenly view of this world that helps him see things in a simple framework that brings clarity to very complex issues. And yet he said to me today that he regrets career choices that he made many years ago and feels he missed (to some degree) not living as meaningful of a life as he could have. I must admit that I was shocked by his revelation but I also believe that on this topic he was in complete error.
Twenty Years Ago
I shared with him an old Chinese proverb (or at least my paraphrase of it): “When is the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago!”
When is the 2nd Best Time?
My friend contemplated that statement and agreed he had “missed the boat” 20 years ago. But there is second part to the proverb, “When is the second best time to plant a tree? Today!” Just because you didn’t do it 20 years ago doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it today. In fact, a tree planted 20 years ago can be for your own pleasure, a tree planted today will likely bring pleasure to others.
One of the talents of my friend is his technical brilliance. He was teaching us about “Big data” and “cloud computing” before they even had names. And he has an incredible talent for explaining it in simplistic terms that the non-technical person understands. This talent is needed today more than it was 20 years ago. I watch business leaders every day trying to understand the technical side of the business well enough to make good business decisions.
Now is the Time!
Whatever your passion and wherever you find it, now is the time to plant the tree. No regrets only learning.
Creativity coach Ericl Maisel says that when people asks “How can I find the meaning of life?” They’re asking a completely useless question. He says: “we have to construct meaning in our lives based on everyday choices.”
It’s your choice today. Plant that tree now or continue to regret not planting it 20 years ago.
Ron’s Short Review: I’ve liked many of Lencioni’s books but delayed digging into this one because I thought it might be just one more topic. However, he does a great job of pulling many of his concepts together in the form of a “healthy” organization.
In a previous post, I began discussing mentoring relationships. I would like to continue that discussion today, focusing on what it takes to be a good mentoring relationship.
Image source: ashraful kadir,
Creative Commons
Got What it Takes?
A successful mentoring experience does require a significant prerequisite: a quality person to mentor. A leader who hopes to succeed in mentoring must first hire great people. Too often, executives devote too little time to the hiring process. No wonder that down the road the mentoring of a poorly qualified employee resembles corrective discipline more than a shared growth experience.
Assuming the right persons are in the right jobs, a leader must then do everything possible to help those people feel appreciated, supported, empowered, and fully equipped to complete their tasks. In addition, a leader needs to help the other person understand that success is not just “making the numbers” (competency) but includes developing character as well.
It Takes Time
A good mentoring experience also requires longevity. The leader and the protégé need to stay at it long enough for the relationship to bear mature fruit.
In the late nineties I was talking to the CEO with whom I had been working for about four years. As we were chatting comfortably at the end of a session, he said to me, “Ron, all of the work you do for us around team building, leadership development, and culture improvement is worth every penny. But your real value for me as a CEO is when we have these little chats, one on one, in these relaxing, comfortable, and trusting moments.”
At that moment I began to realize that the aspect of the business I found most enjoyable—talking openly and honestly with the leaders I worked with—was also the aspect they experienced as most valuable. Since that time a sizable percentage of my consulting business comes from personally coaching and mentoring business leaders.
During these moments of honest interaction, leaders are able to talk with me about personal doubts, concerns over the performance of another individual, and innovative ways to tackle new situations. We can do trial run-throughs of an upcoming presentation, a conference call, or a one-on-one meeting with a boss or colleague. Almost anything that is critical to their performance is open to discussion in this relaxed environment. Even personal situations and career decisions are fair game. The mentoring or coaching role is mainly about creating a safe environment to discuss any topic.
It Takes Vulnerability
One of the hallmarks of a long-term mentoring relationship is the intentional vulnerability that develops between two people. This means they can easily strip away the outside masks and get down to the issues (both personal and business) that need attention. This kind of openness and willingness to share the truth is a quality found in effective leaders. They refuse to let pride get in the way of open communication that will encourage and assist others and advance the cause of the organization.
If these characteristics of a solid mentoring relationship remind you of a good friendship, you are right. Research data and our experience indicate that, more often than not, mentoring relationships grow over time into lasting friendships.
Ron’s Short Review: This was a re-read for me. First published around 2007. Like many of these “observation of change” books, the author seemed to see it coming but the points of the book are really hitting us now, a few years after the original publication. Worth rethinking as the future unfolds.
I’m just finishing the book American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company
Photo Source: Wikipedia, Ford World Headquarters
Being around and occasionally consulting in the auto industry, I knew many of the stories that Hoffman shares in his book. But when you start stringing the stories together and when they’re put into the context of the darkest days of the American auto industry it becomes a great story about leadership and teamwork.
Two Pillars of Leadership
Mulally displays several characteristics of great leadership but the two most powerful are humility and endurance. If you look in my book Trust Me you’ll find these two characteristics as the book-ends of eight leadership styles of great leaders. If you look in the Jim Collins book Good to Great (written many years before this story occurred) he also points out what he labeled the “Level 5” leader exhibiting humility and a very strong will (endurance). Mulally seemed to possess and demonstrate these characteristics in spades.
Humility
Mulally always seemed to have a smile on his face, openly greeted any member of the Ford team regardless of their level in the organization and demonstrated a true desire to learn from their point of view. This was so contrary to the general level of behavior from the auto industry leaders that it often took people a long time before they actually believed that Alan was genuine in his desire to learn from anyone. I have seen this single characteristic move leaders into a higher class of leadership through the years. Not only do they actually learn by being genuinely open to others, they develop a dedicated organization around them that strives to accomplish the vision just because they feel the leaders has listened to and understood them.
Endurance
There are many times in the story when the economy is falling away faster than the auto company can react even though they are cutting deeper and faster than the industry had ever seen. These were terrifying and crushing days. And yet Alan would constantly check his belief in the process and the goal by always accepting the reality of the situation and then, if he still believed they were on the right track, bear down and continue to pursue the expected results even with the entire industry collapsing around them. This was not Pollyannaish and there were many times when failure was at their doorstep but they endured through unbelievable pressure.
I’ve had a few of my clients suffer through major changes in their industry and the struggle is real. Especially if like Ford, they had been a successfully run businesses for decades and even centuries. I believe there are two very critical conditions that can give companies their best chance of survival, great leadership and pressure-tested teamwork. In my next blog I’ll talk about some of the team work I discovered in Hoffman’s book and I’ve seen in the market place.
What do you think? Can great leadership save a company or are market conditions just too much for any leadership style?
I just love Scrat, the saber-tooth squirrel from the Ice Age movies. He always creates some minor little crack that looks harmless, but as the crack propagates, it begins to create all kinds of havoc in his world with major consequences. Such ‘cracks’ can be destructive and debilitating in corporations.
Image Source: Lars Hammer, Creative Commons
I was working with a couple major functional divisions within one corporation, trying to do some team building. These functions needed to cooperate with each other in order for the company to be healthy and thrive, they just couldn’t seem to get along. After a few of the normal approaches to overcome differences didn’t seem to produce any progress, I began to dig deeper.
The story that began to emerge was that the people in the functions had no problem working with each other and, in fact, preferred it. The problem was that their top leaders wouldn’t allow or, more impact-fully, didn’t want the cooperation to happen.
When I sat down with the first of the two senior VP’s that were responsible for one of the functions and asked about the oppositional position he had with the other senior VP, his response was, “Oh, there’s no opposition between us. We worked that out long ago.” I thought great, an answer exists, we just need to get the message down to the functions. So I asked, “Tell me about the solution the two of you worked out.” His response? “We simply agreed to disagree!” Well, that was very gentlemanly (and lady like in this case) of him but very destructive.
The difference between them didn’t go away, but like Scrat’s minor crack, propagated deeply into the organization. As I would talk to members down in either organization, they knew that their ultimate bosses disagreed and many of them took it on as their job to make sure the other function failed in a belief that their particular boss would be vindicated or somehow pleased.
Senior leaders cannot agree to disagree. They must build consensus. (More about how to build consensus later.) They’re part of a leadership team. If members of a team agree to disagree, there is no team.
Have you experienced a peer who just didn’t agree with you but was also unwilling to even work on the issue, preferring to agree to disagree?
How has disagreement of leaders above you on the org. chart impacted how you work with your peers?
Ron’s Short Review: These guys have a great writing style and cover great topics. Here they cover the 4 villains of decision making and how to overcome them.