Leadership as Learning
Someone exercising leadership is orchestrating the process of getting factions with competing definitions of the problem to start learning from one another.
— Ron Heifetz
Harvard University
Bring the Love
Chris Peterson, Ph.D. reports that the character strength that distinguishes the best leaders at West Point is the capacity to love and be loved.
* * *
Jane Dutton’s work shows that “high quality connections,” which she acknowledges can be understood as love, are the difference between low performing and high performing workplaces.
Soon after I began my work doing one-to-one executive coaching with CEOs I noticed a particular sensation that was present after most of my meetings with clients. I experienced a distinct flavor of (more…)
006 Roadwork for Enduring Results • PODCAST
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I developed this talk for the initial meeting of executive coaching groups to prepare them for the slow, sometimes difficult aspects of their work. I have used it many times to great effect when launching teams into other long-term projects. Some of my coaching clients have even adapted it for their own presentations.
Click below for the video with (more…)
Your identity is what you’ve committed yourself to
Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something.
The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into (more…)
Power of Praise
I prithee tell me;
cram us with praise, and make us
As fat as tame things.
One good deed dying tongueless
Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that.
Your praises are our wages.
You may ride us
With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere
With spur we heat an acre.
–Queen Hermione in
Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale
Becoming coachable
Business Week has a short article about Jerry Levin, the former head of Time Warner. He led the merger with AOL. The merger is generally considered a disaster for Time Warner and Levin left under pressure. What did he learn?
From the article and his life after leaving the executive suite, it sounds like he learned how to learn:
…understanding that it’s O.K. to be open and vulnerable, to ask for help.
To state it in different terms, it’s probably helpful to invoke the feminine principle and be compassionate, empathetic, understanding, give respect to everybody, don’t get deluded by the natural hierarchy. And don’t get too self-satisfied that you have all the answers.
He has gone on to establish a holistic retreat, Moonview, with his wife. What learning is he most eager to share with executives?
My strong advice would be to find a calm, meditative state every day. With the tempo of executive life, that seems almost impossible, but it’s probably the most important thing that you can do.
Namaste, Mr. Levin, and thank you.
See also Gandhi on silence.
See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.
Into the Storm: A Study in Command
Lessons for managers from how the Army re-made itself between Vietnam and Desert Storm.
I was moderating a conference of business owners in the late 1990s as they lamented the poor work habits and other failings of “Gen-Xers.” Finally, I’d had enough so I said, “Say what you will about body piercing and Starbucks, I don’t think that’s the key issue. It looks to me that our generation’s contributions were the drug culture and Vietnam while the present generation has given us the Internet and Desert Storm.” The question becomes, how did this happen? Into the Storm provides part of the answer.
I am a baby-boomer who came of age in the Vietnam era, so my interest in things military was slight and my general opinion of military organization, I’m ashamed to say, came more from Catch-22 and MASH than reality. Yet, the U.S. Army has done some huge and useful things, so I was willing to take a fresh look with this book.
In the aftermath of Vietnam, “the Army began a revolution in (more…)
Truth or Consequences? Beyond the Punishment Model.
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Integrity is usually a major conversation when I coach groups of executives. It almost always comes up in the context of arriving to the meeting on time or returning promptly from breaks.1 This leads to a discussion of consequences, by which people mean punishments for not being on time: fines, humiliation, etc. This opens a powerful examination of monitoring, enforcement, and integrity throughout the organization.
Consequences come in two flavors. Imposed consequences are punishments contrived by an authority exerting its power to compel behavior. Natural consequences are what reality delivers in response to actions. If I (more…)
Reward only results–and lose your right to judge the means
Only the modern age’s conviction that man can know only what he makes, that his allegedly higher capacities depend upon making and that he therefore is primarily homo faber and not an animal rationale, brought forth the much older implications of violence inherent in all interpretations of the realm of human affairs as a sphere of making. [p. 228]
We are perhaps the first generation which has become fully aware of the murderous consequences inherent in (more…)
3 Ds of Delegation
One of my CEO coaching groups recently discussed the creation of the President/COO role in their companies. I came up with this alliterative and highly distilled suggestion.
- Decisions may be:
- Dictated,
- Discussed, or
- Delegated
To help define the duties of your #2, examine the range of decisions you make as head of the company and notice which you will dictate, discuss, or delegate. Core values, for example, are yours to dictate; the COO complies with your decision or leaves. Strategy is something to discuss, create together, and have a healthy back-and-forth conversation about between the CEO and COO. Hiring a sales rep or changing your health care provider are probably best left entirely to the COO; delegate those areas and keep your handsoff.
Also on this blog, Improving Delegation
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