We thought we hired employees, but people showed up instead.  ~Unknown

I’ve used this quote frequently with clients; unfortunately, I don’t know the original source.  But the sentiment has resonated with clients on many occasions. While it states the obvious, that the employees we hire are people and consequently bring along all of the talents and trials of working with human beings, we still hope for “employees” to show up on Monday morning.

Simon Sinek takes this concept one step further in Leaders Eat Last. He asks, “If you were having a hard year, would you get rid of one of your children”? Sinek says, “Being a good leader is like being a good parent. We want to give those in our care opportunities, education, discipline when necessary, all so they can grow and achieve more than we could for ourselves.”

Many of you may be in agreement with all of this, so far. Then the example Sinek uses to make his point is a mid-size organization. When their economic foundation shifted along with every other organization, they chose to look for alternatives to layoffs. They instituted a four-week mandatory furlough for every employee, top to bottom. The CEO introduced the strategy and said, “It is better for all of us to suffer a little than for some of us to suffer a lot.” Much like a family wouldn’t get rid of one of their children.

I’ll admit, I’ve worked both with, and for, organizations that came upon hard times and I couldn’t see another option but to reduce the workforce, which they did. So I was a little cynical about Sinek’s perspective (pardon the pun). If you’ve never had the pressure of creditors hanging over your head, then it’s much easier to say there are alternatives to layoffs.

Then I read a book that altered my perspective. In Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs Peter Cappelli describes a hiring process problem more than an unemployment problem. We’ve taken that “employee” mindset so far that we believe we can craft a detailed and specific job description, run it through a database of hundreds of candidates, and find a perfect match, the perfect employee. And, since there’s a plethora of people looking for jobs, we can hire and fire, almost as if employees are disposable resources, and not people.

The term employee is still fairly recent, relatively speaking; hence, so is the employee mindset.  Employee was first used in the U.S. in 1854 referencing railroad workers. Labor unions began forming soon after, and in the early twentieth century we began using the term “human resources.”

Getting back to Sinek’s analogy of getting rid of one of our children, is it time that we start hiring people, and consequently view them more like family members instead of resources? In some regards that’s counter-cultural because we’ve been taught to think in an employee mindset. However, many, if not most of our organizations in the 21^st century require a people mindset in order to function effectively.  It’s as if our mindset hasn’t quite caught up with reality.

We can keep hiring employees, but people are going to keep showing up!

People don’t resist change. They resist being changed! ~Peter Senge

What is one thing we can learn from the 2016 election? I believe that the election solidified that change is driven more by how we feel than by analysis. This presidential campaign was teeming with visual images, emotional manipulation, and appeals interconnected to how we feel.

Author John P. Kotter begins The Heart of Change with this statement: “The single most important message in this book is very simple. People change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.”

To get us all on the same page, the definition of change management is “The discipline that guides how we prepare, equip, and support individuals to successfully adopt change in order to drive organizational success and outcomes (Prosci.com).” In my own words, change management is about helping people emotionally and psychologically adopt change. Or, recognizing that we change more because of how we feel, not as much because of what we think.

I recently spent a day observing a leadership team of a global organization go through change management training. The day was filled with models like the change reaction curve (our emotional response to change), detailed processes how to influence change of both individual and collective behavior, and all the various roles necessary to influence change. Closing out the day with how to create metaphors to communicate a truth to influence how others feel about change.

(Sigh!) After all of that focus on how to help people feel their way through change, and on the cusp of an election cycle that capitalized on feelings, there were still leaders in this group at the end of the day saying, “I think we need to talk more about the “business case” (analysis) for implementing change.” Argh! Really?! At least that’s what I was thinking in the back of the room.

When faced with a decision, how we feel about something many times (if not most of the time) determines our final choice. Think about the last time you made a big decision (bought a home, moved to a new city, quit your job, etc.). When you made that final decision, did you say to yourself, or to someone else, “this just feels like the right choice”? The data and analysis will frequently narrow the choices, but at the end of the day, we choose to change, or not, by how we feel about it.

Personal opinion, I believe that frequently leaders are promoted because they are skilled at making analytical decisions. But, those decisions can’t be effectively implemented if others aren’t following. And others will follow, or not, based upon how they feel about what’s being proposed. The process to garner support and followers (AKA: change management) is quite different from the process to make the analytical, strategic, or technical changes (AKA: project management). If you want to lead and bring people with you, they have to feel it.

Is your organization currently going through a change? What are you showing them to influence their feelings about the change?  “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” ~Charles Darwin

Being the best is great, it means you’re number one. But being unique is greater because you’re the only one. ~Anonymous

Not just unique, but uniquely better. That was Andy Stanley’s topic at the recent Global Leadership Summit. I always enjoy listening to Andy Stanley. His keen insights coupled with practical application leave me walking away with ideas, strategies, and concepts I’m anxious to implement the next day. Following is my quick summary of the insights I gleaned from Stanley’s presentation earlier this month.

What is uniquely better? Consumers/customers know what it is, but it’s being done in a unique/different way. It’s not about creating a new category (i.e., Blue Ocean Strategy); it’s about doing something uniquely better than the competition.

Both words are important. It may be easy to come up with something unique/different. But is it really better?

Stanley says, “Our best hope and responsibility is to create organizational cultures that recognize, not resist, uniquely better.” Discovering uniquely better is virtually impossible. But recognizing uniquely better is much more likely. Stanley provides four ways to create a culture to recognize uniquely better.

1. Be a student not a critic. We tend to naturally resist what we don’t understand or can’t control. When we start criticizing, we stop learning.
2. Keep your eyes and mind wide open! The “next generation” product or idea never comes from the previous generation. We need to listen to outsiders (outside our organization, outside our industry, outside our generation) because they aren’t bound by our assumptions. Closed-minded leaders, close minds.
3. Wow ideas to life, don’t how them to death. When someone says “How?” when a new idea is suggested, the idea dies. Leaders don’t gain anything if they don’t know what people are dreaming about. So when someone suggests a new idea, respond first with “Wow!” not “How?”
4. Ask the uniquely better questions. Ask the questions and then give candid answers.
   1. Is this unique?
   2. What would make it unique?
   3. Is it better?
   4. Is it better…really?

Uniquely better will come along for every industry. Because somebody, somewhere, is messing with the prevailing model. The question is, will you (and your organization) be positioned to recognize it? Here are a few examples that come to mind that could be organizations who were positioned to recognize uniquely better.

Is Starbucks coffee uniquely better?

Are Apple products uniquely better?

Is Amazon a uniquely better way of shopping?

Is Uber uniquely better than a taxi?

Is an ice bucket challenge a uniquely better way to fundraise?

Is your culture ready to recognize uniquely better, or will it pass you by and will your organization be left behind?

Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do.  The visible signs of artful leadership are expressed, ultimately, in its practice.  ~Max DePree

This week we lost a great example of leadership. Max DePree was 92. Through his personal example and insightful writing, he influenced millions of people regarding how we do leadership.

Upon learning of Max’s death, the first thing that came to mind was this example of his influence written by a university president back in 2000. He wrote this about Max.

Several years ago Max DePree came to speak to our university trustees. Max, as most of you know, is a successful businessman and a prominent and wise voice on leadership. The day after Max and Esther left, we received a call from the hotel manager where they had stayed. This manager was amazed. He said that Mr. DePree had made a huge impact on his staff. Everyone was talking about his kindness, about the generosity of his spirit. This manager thanked me for sending this guest. His staff would never be the same, he said.

I want to learn better how to carry myself with the posture of Max DePree. Can we do this for each other, so that we experience the joy of love among us, but most of all can we do it to model grace and love for the world that desperately seeks a way out of its mean-spiritedness, its alienation, its viciousness?

This is probably not a comfortable question for any of us to answer, but when was the last time we stayed in a hotel and made such an impression that the manager had to call and thank someone for sending us to their hotel? Well for me, never.

How we live our lives, day in and day out, is a visible expression of the condition of our heart. Max simply stayed at a hotel. He wasn’t hired to provide leadership coaching or consulting, he wasn’t sought out to give an inspiring speech to the hotel staff. He just went about his ordinary routine, one that happened to be expressed through uncommon kindness, grace, and generosity of spirit.

Sam Adeyemi said, “Whatever people SEE and HEAR consistently over time will enter their hearts and put their lives on autopilot.”  What people saw and heard from Max DePree was kindness, grace, and generosity of spirit. And it entered their hearts.

Now more than ever, all leaders need to pause and ask, what do people see and hear consistently from me? What is entering their hearts?

Max DePree leaves a legacy and an example that will stretch nearly all of us to a higher form of leadership. Remembering Max’s words: “The visible signs of artful leadership are expressed, ultimately, in its practice. Leadership is a condition of the heart.”