Wed • Dec 31st, 2008 • by Tom Nees • Comments 16
In his December 30, Washington Post op-ed piece Richard Cohen acknowledges surprise at President George Bush’s reading list as revealed by his long-time advisor Karl Rove. In what Cohen describes as the most “astounding op-ed piece of the year” in the December 26, Wall Street Journal, Rove describes the reading contest that he and the President have engaged in since New Year’s Eve 2005.
Their goal was to read a book a week — which has been my goal for several years.
Rove writes about 2006:
“We recommended volumes to each other (for example, he encouraged me to read a Mao biography; I suggested a book on Reconstruction’s unhappy end). We discussed the books and wrote thank-you notes to some authors.
At year’s end, I defeated the president, 110 books to 95.”
You can follow the links to see what they read. I was impressed not only by the amount of his reading, but the breadth and depth of the President’s reading schedule.
If the average book is 250 pages you can finish a book a week by reading just 50 pages a day, with a day or two off. Depending on what you are reading and what you are reading for that will take 1 to 2 hours a day. Not that much if you keep a book with you all the time. To keep up with Karl Rove you’d have to read 100 pages a day.
I would like to offer a challenge and an opportunity. Will you join me with a resolution – not a contest – to read a book a week on 2009?
And I would enjoy knowing what you are reading. Most of the books I read are recommendations from people I know and respect. We could learn from one another.
Since some of your reading will probably be about leadership here’s a list of “The Best Leadership Books of 2008” from LeaderShop.
Grace and peace for the New Year!
Tue • Dec 30th, 2008 • by Tom Nees • Comments 6
As there are lists of good leaders for 2008 so there is a list of bad leaders. In the Washington Post “Intelligent Leader” blog, John Baldoni profiles five “exceptionally bad leaders for 2008.”
As we could all compile our own list of good leaders so too we could identify some bad ones. Not necessarily bad people, just bad leaders.
What makes them bad, according to Baldoni is their me-first behavior – their sense of “entitlement.”
“If there is a singular theme that runs through each of these examples, it’s entitlement. That is, I come first. Leaders need to think well of themselves; otherwise they wouldn’t be capable of leading. But when that sense of self overwhelms the needs of the organization, they have failed in their duty.”
Though I am not inclined to focus on the negative, there is much to learn from our own mistakes as well as the mistakes of these and others.
In the heart of his book, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There,” Marshall Goldsmith lists “The Twenty Bad Habits” he has identified in his lifetime of coaching successful leaders.
Over a breakfast conversation before I introduced him to a leadership conference, Goldsmith, in good humor, pointed out some of my bad habits from just the way I talked. That experience motivated me to get a coach to implement a 360-multi rater assessment.
My raters – those who knew me best – were generally affirming, however they left plenty of room for improvement. I’m still working on it.
Goldsmith’s point is that bad leadership habits can be reversed. No one has to be a bad leader. And good leaders can get better.
Sun • Dec 28th, 2008 • by Tom Nees • Comments 11
Here are ten things I recommend that leaders try in 2009.
Find a Coach
In contrast to a tutor or an athletic coach whose job it is to teach a skill or manage from the sidelines an executive coach helps a leader learn. Executive coaching is widespread in corporations. Unfortunately in nonprofit and faith-based organizations it has been slow to catch on. Learn more from a good article from the Harvard Business School, – “What an Executive Coach Can Do For You.”
Solicit Feedback
Politicians hire pollsters because they must have objective, accurate information about how they are perceived and whether or not they have a following. Effective leaders in other fields are just as intentional about knowing what other people know about them that they don’t know. There are many ways of getting feedback, but none better that a 360-degree multi-rater appraisal.
Learn to Follow
The new thinking about “followership” is a reminder that we are all followers. Followers are not subordinates but partners with leaders advancing a common purpose. You will learn a lot about being a good leader by becoming a good follower. Check out the Followership Exchange.
Search for best practices
Benchmarking for Best Practices is a highly-developed business strategy often involving complicated metrics. However, the concept is simple. It is life-long curiosity and constant learning about what others do well and then innovatively adapting what works somewhere else in one’s own situation.
Listen intentionally
Leaders who listen well are more effective than those who do all the talking. Brain science has opened a new field of study called the Language and Behavior Profile with results to prove that it is possible to predict motivation and behavior by asking a few simple questions and listening well. In many situations it’s more important for the leader than for the followers to listen.
Improve match-making skills
One of the most important leadership responsibilities is getting the right people in the right place within an organization. There are reliable assessments for individuals and the group that remove the guess work. iWAM helps gets good matches by assessing motivation and work habits of both individuals and groups.
Join or create a peer learning group
Leaders learn more from one another than from books and conference presentations. Creating or joining a small peer group for occasional conversations or meetings will provide encouragement as well as good information. A peer group can make life at the top a lot less lonely. This brief article from the HBR makes the case for peer learning.
Tell Your Story
Become the hero of your own story. Every person and organization has a story. Strategic Narrative is a method of planning for the future by articulating a compelling story in which everyone has a place or part. A 1998 article in HBR – “Strategic Stories: How 3M Is Rewriting Business Planning” helped get this started. It’s worth reading.
Blog to communicate
Leadership is more about communicating inspiring ideas than managing systems. Blogging is one of the best ways to communicate ideas and create a conversation. Check out “How to Blog” – a few simple tips from Slate.
Assess your Corporate Culture
Do you really know what your associates, members or employees think about their workplace or association quality of life issues? There are metrics to confirm that cultural audits improve profitability. You might try an assessment instrument to help you know what people around you think about what they do together. Denison Consulting offers one of the best tools.
Through Leading To Serve I’m trying to advance all of these suggestions. I can help with the various assessment tools referred to here.
Leaders owe it to themselves as well as their followers to be the best they can be. Leadership development is a life-long journey. There is always room for improvement and lots to learn – in 2009 and beyond. It’s worth a try.
What think ye?
Tom Nees
Sun • Dec 21st, 2008 • by Tom Nees • Comments 6
U.S. News & World Report has published “America’s Best Leaders 2008,” its fourth end-of-the-year list.
In his introductory essay David Gergen, columnist and former Presidential advisor, notes that as a country we are suffering from a lack of good leadership. With Illinois governor Blagojevich and Wall Street’s Bernard Madoff in the headlines it would be easy to be cynical about leaders everywhere, not just politicians and business leaders.
Gergen warns that with all his potential for great leadership, President-elect Obama can’t do it alone. We need good leaders in every walk of life to rise up to the challenge of the crisis facing the nation.
All of these leaders are giving something back. They fit the Leading To Serve point-of-view – that the reward of leading is in helping others succeed. Even the corporate CEOs listed have something more noble in mind than gaining personal wealth, power and fame.
Of the 22 listed, here are quotes from and comments about my favorites.
Lance Armstrong – cyclist and cancer survivor advocate
“I have a very hard time being around pessimism and negativity.”
Regina Benjamin – small town primary care physician
“She believes that living in a tiny rural town shouldn’t mean giving up big-city healthcare.”
Jeff Bezos – Amazon.com CEO
“While we’re crossing the desert, we may be thirsty, but we sincerely believe there’s an oasis on the other side.”
Benjamin Carson – Johns Hopkins Hospital pediatric neurosurgeon
“One of the keys to leadership is recognizing that everyone has gifts and talents.”
Marian Wright Edelman – Children’s Defense Fund
“I just had to do what I had to do.”
Antony Fauci – National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases
“There is more than one way to get to the goal that you want to get to, but once you compromise your own principles, then you’re lost.”
Robert Gates – Secretary of Defense
“In the speech, Gates told officers that in 42 years of service, he had learned two big things: a sense of humility and an appreciation of limits.”
Freeman Hrabowski – University of Maryland-Baltimore County
“The more we expect of children, the more they can do.”
Anne Mulcahy – Xerox CEO
“Do not defend yourself against the inevitable.”
Indra Nooyi – PepsiCo CEO
“We bring together what’s good for the business and what’s good for the world.”
Linda Rottenberg – Endeavor
“I woke up originally with this great vision, and now I come to work every day and try to make other people’s visions work.”
Jeffery Sachs – United Nations Millennium Project
“What I’ve learned on the ground is that poor people face very specific, very practical problems that have very specific and very practical solutions that don’t reach these communities because they’re too poor to undertake them on their own.”
Americans want good leaders, better leaders – protectors not predators, servants not bullies.
“At the end of the day,” said Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo CEO, one of America’s biggest enterprises, “don’t forget that you’re a person, don’t forget you’re a mother, don’t forget you’re a wife, don’t forget you’re a daughter.” When your job is done, “what you’re left is family, friends, and faith.”
Amen to that!
Mon • Dec 15th, 2008 • by Tom Nees • Comments 3
That was the question from a seasoned leader in the prime of his life who for the first time has accepted an executive assignment within a corporate environment. By “making a difference” he wants to be sure that in the relatively few years ahead he does more than just show up and keep things going.
We all know entrepreneurs who have made a difference by starting something new – organizations, businesses, churches, etc.
Like Colleen Copple who this year was compelled to do something to make a difference in the lives of destitute African women living with HIV/AIDS. After several trips to Africa to help channel USAID funds to HIV/AIDS programs she organized the Sister to Sister program. The website is attracting partners and contributors from around the world. She’s making a difference.
During my 20 years at the Community of Hope in Washington, DC, I was constantly asked to evaluate new ideas. I always suggested that there is a way one person can take an idea and make a difference for the good of others as well as their own fulfillment. I’ve helped dozens of these programs get started.
But the question was about making a difference from a position within an organization where entrepreneurs can wreak havoc.
In a recent video interview, Fred Smith, founder of FedEx talked about the difference between being an entrepreneur and a corporate executive. He must now resist the temptation to step in to resolve problems or come up with solutions on his own. “I have to have the self-discipline,” he said, “of operating in a team environment.”
That doesn’t mean just going along to get along. The cause of the recent “massive breakdown in business leadership” Smith said is “groupthink at the highest level.”
Having spent the last 15 years in a corporate setting I’ve had the opportunity to recruit and coach leaders about the rewards, challenges, responsibilities and limitations of serving within a team environment.
Like Fred Smith, most people who start a new organization or enterprise soon find themselves in a team environment where making a difference requires relying on others. That, says Smith, takes the most important leadership skill: self-discipline.
Mon • Dec 8th, 2008 • by Tom Nees • Comments 5
Leaders are expected to be intelligent – perhaps above average. But we’re coming to understand that leadership intelligence is more than brain power or, or Intelligence Quotient—IQ scores, the standard by which we’ve come to measure intelligence.
Being smart still counts. Successful leaders need both knowledge – a grasp of information, and wisdom – the ability to make good decisions.
In partnership with Harvard Business Review, The Washington Post provides an on-line feature called the Intelligent Leader with regular articles and links to other resources. You can take a free assessment to determine your leadership intelligence.
I’m sure the folks at Harvard and The Washington Post understand that there is another kind of intelligence that’s as important as brain power. Emotional intelligence – EI or sometimes EQ – is now recognized as a quality that for leaders is as important, if not more important than IQ.
A whole industry in emotional intelligence books, assessments and resources has emerged since Daniel Goleman wrote Emotional Intelligence in 1995 and Social Intelligence in 2006. Goleman has the metrics and examples to prove that leaders succeed as much or more by their EI or EQ – emotional intelligence – as their IQ.
In Emotional Intelligence, he makes the point that while we are hard-wired for IQ, emotional intelligence can be improved. Self-awareness can lead to self-management. In his words, temperament is not destiny.
He advanced these findings in Social Intelligence to describe the ways our brains unconsciously connect with other people for good or ill. Knowing this we can become aware of and manage how we affect and are affected by other people.
While we can’t increase our brain power or IQ, the good news is that emotional intelligence can improve. Leaders can learn to manage their emotional responses and improve social skills.
In The New York Times last week, Kate Zernike wrote a fascinating article about President-elect Obama’s “Cool Factor.” Coolness is another way of describing emotional control. In “Never Let Them See You Sweat” she described Obama’s “uncommon calmness.”
Zernike cites behavioral development studies to demonstrate that a “calm temperament” or “coolness” can be “cultivated.” But while we want our leaders to be calm or cool under pressure we also want them to show some emotion when the occasion calls for it.
“For leaders,” she writes, “it is a balancing act – to lead, but also to be human.”
In my coaching much of the time is spent in helping leaders listen to and learn from feedback in order to build good and productive relationships with their network of associates. The Leading To Serve point of view is that the reward of leadership is in the success of others. That takes emotional intelligence.
Mon • Dec 1st, 2008 • by Tom Nees • Comments 6
“Adrift with Two Captains,” was the topic of a recent column in the Washington Post by Eugene Robinson. “Having two presidents,” he wrote, “is starting to feel like having no president, and that’s the situation we’ll face until Inauguration Day. Heaven help us.”
We panic when we’re adrift in a storm with no one at the helm and frustrated when our personal lives seem rudderless.
In his book Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity ,
David Whyte recounts his near shipwreck experience as a young crew member on an exploration voyage off the coast of Galapagos.
As his captain slept through an unexpected night storm, the sailboat Bronzewing broke anchorage and drifted perilously close to a rocky coast. Fortunately Whyte woke up in time to start the engine and avoid disaster.
The captain knew immediately that he had risked the lives of the crew by not securing a good anchorage and then sleeping through the storm. Whyte uses this near death experience to reflect on leaders as captains and each of us as captains of our own lives.
“What are the qualities,” he asks, “that make us love the good captains, the good leaders, the good bosses of the world? What is it about them that brings out the best in us?”
· Good leadership, like good captaincy is more than a job.
“Historically,” Whyte writes, “captaincy is not just a post, it is an inhabitation, the boat a second skin. It is parenthood, and even in your sleep an invisible monitoring consciousness should wake to the least whimper, to the most minute change in motion, never mind a dragged anchor and two-mile rocking drift on a rough night sea.”
He adds, “It is not that the captain cannot sleep, but even in sleep theirs should be a cultivated attentiveness, which is essential at sea.”
The sleeping captain became for Whyte a metaphor for leaders who are not “awake people.” They seem unaware of how important they are to those whose trust and lives they hold. Looking back Whyte reflected: “It was the captain’s sleeping through it all that was so shocking. Captains do not sleep when the wind or weather changes, they wake up.”
· On being the captain of your own boat
Whyte’s major theme is that in our work, whatever it is, a sleeping captain is waiting to be awakened to take charge of our lives. “We love a strong captain, but how” he asks, “do we live our own captaincy in the shadow of those who seem to overwhelm our own nursling qualities by the overpowering nature of their character or competency?” Only when we take responsibility for being the captain of our own vessel are we personally fulfilled.
He warns that “to sleep through crucial moments of our work life is to eventually find ourselves on the rocks, to put ourselves or our organization in danger.” “Every human life,” he says, “is also like a vessel that contains innumerable other lives for which we have a deep responsibility.”
· Training captains
David Ralph, superintendent of the Colorado district of the Church of the Nazarene, and I exchange book titles about sailing adventures. In a recent email with a recommendation he added: ”I do a new pastors retreat with a teaching session that I call Captaincy… and take them on a journey of the high seas and help them to see that they are captains of each of their local church ships… kind of fun…”