Reality, fantasy, or strategy?

Leadership
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.  ~Jack Welch

Reality.  This has been a topic on my mind a lot this past week.  My recent interactions with several clients have been a profound reminder of the challenge to define reality.  The discussion of reality could quickly fall into an endless chasm of varied philosophical thought.  That’s not where I’m going. 

Part of my work includes asking leaders within organizations detailed questions about their view, perspective, opinion, belief, etc. about their organization.  Then I try to piece together everyone’s view and experience into one cohesive picture of reality.  In some circumstances this is easier said than done because the views of reality can be extremely diverse.

Recently, I’ve had leaders within the same organization describe their current state as everything from solid/sustainable to a crisis.  Another organization’s leaders rated their level of effectiveness on a new project on a 10-point scale from 3 to 10.  I recall a board meeting several years ago where I was the board chair sitting right next to the organization’s leader.  The following morning she called and said, “I think we had consensus on a number of items.”  I said, “I don’t think we reached consensus on anything.”  Two people sat right next to each other in a meeting, then walked out the door with two very different views of reality.

Max De Pree, who I’ve quoted before, said (in 1987), “The first job of a leader is to define reality.”  I’ve been wondering lately if it’s evolved to more than just defining reality.  Because we live in a state of change that is moving at a faster pace than any point in history, reality is not a static state, but a dynamic state with constant twists and turns, false starts, and experimentation.  Is a leader’s job more than defining reality?  Is it also about keeping the organization connected to reality, harnessing reality, and leveraging it for all it’s worth?  By harnessing reality I’m not suggesting that leaders don’t create change or shape the future.  I am suggesting that decisions are being made within the context of an accurate view of reality, not false assumptions or hollow aspirations.

How do you do that?  In real estate the long-time maxim has been “location, location, location.”  In our current state of unbridled change, I’d suggest the maxim for leadership is “listen, listen, listen, communicate, communicate, communicate.”  Leaders must listen more intentionally now than ever before because everything is changing.  No one single person’s view of reality (including their own) is going to be accurate.  The only way to see reality that has constant moving parts is to see it through many different eyes.  That means listen, listen, listen.  Paul Watzlawick said, “The belief that one’s own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous of all delusions.”

Once you’ve listened, then harness reality by communicating, communicating, communicating.  I think plans are great!  I make a living by helping organizations create plans and they’re an important part of organizational communication.  However, I think we’re all a bit naive if we believe that those plans won’t be fraught with false starts, re-dos, and adjustments.  That’s what it means to be harnessed to reality.  When employees feel the whiplash of a sudden shift in direction, they need to know that the change is not a result of chaos or indecision, but of a discipline to stay connected to reality.
Reality:  We define it by listening (a lot!).  We harness and leverage it by communicating (a lot!).  We stay connected to it by being disciplined (a lot!).

Tell me more!

Leadership
“Can you tell me more?”  Ask it often.  It is to conversations what fresh-baked bread with soft creamery butter is to a meal.  ~Andrew Sobel & Jerold Panas

Tell me more, tell me more…For those of us who can remember back to 1978, that’s when John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John starred in the musical film Grease.  If you remember the film then you can probably hum the tune of Summer Nightswith the lyrics, “tell me more, tell me more.”

Tell me more…three very simple and powerful words that are used way too rarely.  Those in leadership will frequently say that they believe they need to listen more.  I agree!  However, listening does not include providing a solution, a fix, or a defense.   All of those things require talking and talking is not listening.  The point of listening is for someone to feel heard.  How can we feel heard if our statements are met with a defense or a fix that seems utterly obvious to the person offering it?

One of the hardest things for leaders, especially CEOs, is to just listen, nothing else, just listen.  When an employee is venting about their dislike of a policy or their disenchantment with how leadership is living out the organization’s values, imagine if that CEO said something like, “You sound really frustrated, could you tell me more?”  As opposed to providing a mini three-point sermon as to how that employee’s perspective is totally and absolutely incorrect.

BONO has referenced an illustration used frequently to demonstrate the power of really listening.  “It has been said that after meeting with the great British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, you left feeling he was the smartest person in the world, but after meeting with his rival Benjamin Disraeli, you left thinking you were the smartest person.”  I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if Disraeli used that simple but powerful question, “Can you tell me more?”  

In order to ask that question, it may mean we have to harness our own angst and desire to “correct” or “fix” and let the other person continue.  Or, it may mean we need to let the need to share our own similar success stay in our head and not pass over our lips.

“Tell me more” builds relationships and strengthens trust.  “Tell me more” communicates that you care.  “Tell me more” makes people feel heard!

Andrew, one of the authors of today’s quote tells a story of agreeing to a lunch meeting with his business banker.  Something he’d been putting off.  They went to lunch.  Throughout their meal, she (his banker) talked about the progression of her career at the bank, her vacation, and showed him pictures of her grandchildren.  Suddenly, she realizes how much time has gone by and announces that she has to leave.  Andrew is left nearly speechless.  She didn’t ask him a single question.  She knows nothing about his experience at the bank, his future plans, to say the least about who he is personally.  Even one question followed by “tell me more” could have created a completely different experience for Andrew, and ultimately for his bank!

Ralph G. Nichols, author of Are You Listening and pioneer in the study of listening skills said, “The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood.  The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”  

Why not ask someone today, “Could you tell me more?”

Are you busy?

Leadership
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.  Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!  I say let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen.  ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Thoreau’s Cabin on Walden Pond
Are you busy?  

That’s a question I get asked frequently.  It’s part of the culture of owning a small business and/or being self-employed.  And I do the same; I ask my business friends “Are you busy?”  For some reason when I was asked that question recently, it struck me differently somehow.  I suddenly thought to myself, is that really how we’ve come to judge our success?  Is being busy good and not being busy bad?

With just a couple of minutes of research I discovered that I’m certainly not the first person to ask that question.  Below are a few quotes I pulled from an article in the NY Times entitled, “Too Busy to Notice that You’re too Busy.”

While those who are overworked and overwhelmed complain ceaselessly, it is often with an undertone of boastfulness; the hidden message is that I’m so busy because I’m so important. 

It’s a status symbol. 

We avoid dealing with life’s really big issues — death, global warming, AIDS, terrorism — by running from task to task. 

It is a kind of high. 

Paradoxically, Dr. Hallowell writes in “CrazyBusy,” it is in part the desire for control that has led people to lose it.  “You can feel like a tin can surrounded by a circle of a hundred powerful magnets,” he writes. “Many people are excessively busy because they allow themselves to respond to every magnet: tracking too much data, processing too much information, answering to too many people, taking on too many tasks — all in the sense that this is the way they must live in order to keep up and stay in control. But it’s the magnets that have the control.”

So when and where did I succumb to the idea that “busy” is something to be idolized?  To be put on a pedestal?  To define success?  Like many things in life, I think it happened slowly and gradually over time and it wasn’t until I had been asked the question for maybe the 100th time that I finally started to wonder if I too was associating busy with success or importance.
As leaders, should we be identifying ourselves with “busy?”  Are we imposing that same expectation onto others without even realizing it?  And, is busy really good anyway?
When I look back on my life I don’t think I want to look back and see that I was “busy” and somehow equate that with a legacy I want to leave behind.  To change that, I could start by taking “busy” off of the pedestal of importance and no longer ask people “Are you busy?”  Maybe I could change that obligatory business networking question to something like, “What have you learned lately?” or “What’s the greatest difference you’ve made or impact you’ve been able to have this year?” or “What have you been working on that’s brought you personal fulfillment?”  The list could go on, but beginning to associate my conversation openers with something I value more than busyness seems like a good start.

Do you resist being changed?

Leadership

People don’t resist change; they resist being changed.  ~Peter Senge

Change.  It’s a topic that continues to challenge leaders and followers alike.  I don’t typically quote Debbie Reynolds as a leadership expert; however, I think something she said describes most of us at some point in time.  She said, “I wanted to get that sense of peace and even boredom that comes with long familiarity.”  

Recently, while sitting on my deck at my lake cottage in Michigan, I listened to many familiar sounds and found comfort in the familiar.  I could hear a variety of birds, many of which I couldn’t specifically identify, but yet they were very familiar.  I could hear boats and skiers on the lake, children laughing, the bark of a dog or two, and a train whistle in the distance. 

When I transition to my condo balcony in downtown Chicago I hear many familiar sounds there as well, but the sounds are very different.  I hear the constant hum of the city, sirens passing by, a conversation or two, and the clang of wine and beer bottles being tossed into the dumpster from the restaurant across the alley.  Different yes, but still very familiar.

Contrast this with my trip to Africa in 2010 and I can still recall lying in bed listening to hippos down river having an intense debate, the baboons jumping right outside the door, an elephant or two rearing its trunk to call family members, and the occasional awful shriek of some creature that I could never identify.  At first, these sounds brought excitement and curiosity, trying to match a mental image with each new sound.  But after awhile, it became frustrating.  The sounds were not at all familiar and didn’t bring me any comfort.  Instead they brought irritation because I couldn’t fall asleep.

Why did I share my experience with all of these sounds?  Because I realized last week the true power of familiarity.  Once something becomes familiar, it brings us comfort.  Even in downtown Chicago, I actually find comfort in the hum of the city and the occasional siren.  Why?  Because it’s familiar, I can identify it and in some ways I even identify with it.  It’s a reminder of home, of something that brings me comfort.  And in Africa, nothing was familiar.  So even with all of the adventure I still wanted to fall asleep at night and I believed it was the comfort of the familiar that would allow me to get a good night’s rest.

We live in an age of constant change and we can probably all agree that’s not going to be any different in the near future.  But that knowledge doesn’t seem to make adjusting to change, or being changed, any easier.  Raymond Lindquist said, “Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.” As leaders, when we are asking others to embrace change and to let go of the familiar, we’re really asking them to be courageous. 
Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977, said “It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of a leader to transcend it.”  I agree with Kissinger.  However, we’re no longer living in 1977.  Thirty-six years later, change is rampant; it is no longer enough for only the leader to transcend the familiar.  The leader must now bring others along on that courageous journey – to transcend the familiar and be changed.

Effective leaders manage their energy, not their time.

Leadership
Your first and foremost job as a leader is to manage your own energy, and help manage the energy of those around you.  ~Peter Drucker

Author, Tony Schwartz, wrote the following in his Harvard Business Review Article entitled, “Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time.”  “The core problem with working longer hours is that time is a finite resource.  Energy is a different story.  Energy can be systematically expanded and regularly renewed by establishing specific rituals – behaviors that are intentionally practiced and precisely scheduled, with the goal of making them unconscious and automatic as quickly as possible.  To recharge themselves, individuals need to recognize the costs of energy-depleting behaviors and then take responsibility for changing them, regardless of the circumstances they’re facing.”

Tony shares a number of examples of rituals throughout the article that have increased executives’ energy.  You may read the suggestions I chose to include in this list and say, “I knew that.”  Well, then I’ll ask, if you knew it, then why don’t you do it?

  • Take brief but regular breaks at specific intervals throughout the workday – always leaving your desk.
  • As little as several minutes can allow you to disengage.  This could range from getting up to talk to a colleague about something other than work, listening to music on an iPod, to walking up and down stairs in an office building.
  • To defuse negative emotions, take several deep abdominal breaths.  Exhaling slowly for five or six seconds induces relaxation and recovery.
  •  Fuel positive emotions by expressing appreciation to others – write a handwritten note, send an email, or make a call.  The more detailed and specific, the more the impact for both you and the receiver.
  • Remove all distractions.  Yes, all, including email, phones, etc.  Work on a project with no distractions or interruptions for 90 to 120 minutes.  This may mean finding your own secret remote office from time to time.
  • Answer email only two or maybe three times a day.  Not every time a new message pops up on your screen.
  • Start your day on the most important topic, before email and returning messages.  You may feel like you’ve already had a productive day before 10am!
  • Do what you do best and enjoy the most at work, and consciously (that means intentionally!) allocate time and energy to the parts of your life that you deem most important.  Live your core values in your daily behavior.

Ironically, while writing this blog an executive returned my phone call and I asked, “How are you?”  He hesitated and then said, “Well, I only had three hours of airplane sleep last night.”  So of course I asked, “Why are you at the office?”  His reply, “Because I’m stupid.”
Effective leaders manage their energy, not their time.