Listen, Learn, Then Lead

I’m really enjoying the TED talks I am finding on leadership. (see last week’s post for background on this)

This week I watched a talk titled “Listen, Learn, Then Lead…” by four-star general Stanley McChrystal. He shared what he has learned about leadership over his decades in the military. Fascinating stuff and very relevant to the realm of business leadership.

He talks about traditional ideals of leadership, (what we and many would call the “command and control” model), with leaders like Robert E. Lee, and John Buford at Gettysburg. Many have noted that there is a shift away from this type of leadership, and now, apparently even in the military, this is changing.

The key points he makes which I think are extremely relevant for business are:

• In the past you could gather a team together and build confidence and trust “eye-to-eye.” This is no longer always possible with forces dispersed all over the world. The same is true in business. With portions of the work force being “virtual” and the global nature of business how do leaders build trust and faith when the team can’t always be together?
• Building consensus and shared purpose vs. giving orders. This is something very “near and dear” to the heart of 2130 Partners’ work.We constantly work with leadership teams about creating a “Yonder Star,” (meaning a powerful shared purpose), and then aligning teams around that purpose. Working collaboratively instead of “tops down.” It’s interesting to note that even in the military, these notions are taking root.
• Generational differences. How do you create a “shared purpose and shared consciousness” when you are dealing with people of different generations? They have a different view on history, life experiences, different skill sets with different media and often a different vocabulary. This is true in organizations as well. How do you create this “shared sense” and transcend these differences?
• Inversion of expertise. What do you do when things that senior leaders grew up doing are no longer being done? When the younger generations understand the new tactics, approaches and tools better than you do? How do you maintain credibility and legitimacy when you are leading people in this scenario?

I was fascinated by what he recommended to leaders about dealing with these new conditions. What he talks about is surely relevant to all leaders:

• More transparency.
• Be a lot more willing to listen.
• Be willing to be “reverse mentored” from the people below you.

He also talked about the fact that “relationships are the sinew that holds it all together.” Again, something very close to the heart of 2130 Partners’ work. We focus a lot on productive interactions and how to work together successfully in “the human dimension.”

The piece he raises about relationships could be a real revelation in business. He talks about the Ranger regiment and their six stanza creed they recite each day. The line he says most of us probably have heard is about, “we will never leave a fallen comrade.” As he so eloquently states, “this is not a mantra or a poem, but a promise that no matter what it costs me, I’m coming for you. Every ranger gets this from every other ranger and because they have lived it and lived up to it he says it has even more power.” It got me thinking – what if instead of being competitive, organizational teams were like this? What if some part of your organization was failing or some initiative failed and instead of writing people up and firing them, or sending them into political exile, the promise from leadership was, “I’m coming for you. No matter what it costs me and I won’t let you fail.” What an extraordinary shift in business! What new outcomes could happen?

And since he is so eloquent, we’ll let General McChrystal have the last word with these quotes:

“Leaders aren’t good because they are right. They are good because they are willing to learn, and to trust.”

“This isn’t easy stuff… and it isn’t always fair. You can get knocked down and it hurts and it leaves scars. If you are a leader, the people you’ve counted on will help you up, and if you are a leader who people count on, they need you on your feet.”

Why Are There Too Few Women Leaders?

I have been listening to a fascinating TED talk on iTunes on “Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders” by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. Before we dive in, you have heard of TED – right? [TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading." There are many hundreds of free talks online, or as they say on the TED web site,“Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.” If you are not familiar with TED – get thee to the TED site!] The other piece of this is - yes! You can watch the videos via an iTunes podcast so you can check that out too.

Ok, to the main topic. At 2130 Partners we have a strong commitment to women’s leadership. In addition to our corporate work, we have been investor activists with The Hunger Project for years. It is clear that the solution to world hunger is empowering women. I won’t go into all the details about that here, but the role of women and women’s leadership is an enormous overarching issue in the realm of “leadership” and it’s critical that we as leaders understand the barriers and come up with solutions.

In Sandberg’s talk she cites the following statistics for the current state of women’s leadership in the world:

• Of 190 heads of state, 9 are women
• Of all the parliaments in the world, just 13% of members are women
• In top corporate jobs, only 15-16% are held by women
• In the non-profit world, top jobs are held by about 20% women

Rather than focus on corporate policies and such, Sheryl focuses on the messages we should be giving to women and what they should be thinking about if they choose to be leaders. According to her, they are:

• Women need to “sit at the table” – what she talks about here is how women have radically different self images from men particularly in underestimating themselves. This is something that has been shown in research studies for too many years.
  • Women systematically underestimate their own abilities.
  • Women don’t negotiate for themselves in the workforce.
  • Men attribute their success to themselves and women attribute it to other external factors.
• “Make Your Partner a Real Partner”
  • This is about the power of equality in marriage/committed relationships as far as the distribution of responsibilities and also about society being more supportive of those who choose to work from home. This makes an enormous difference for women’s success.
• “Don’t Leave Before You Leave”
  • This is about women “mentally leaving” or taking the foot off the gas pedal of their careers as they start to envision having families and children, often far in advance of these events happening. Her point is to stay in the game until you are really leaving.

As Sandberg says in this talk, there are no easy answers and it will take a true cultural shift for the number of women in the population to be equally represented in various leadership roles. The thing is don’t you want this for your daughter? For your niece? For your grand-daughter? Don’t you want it to be true when you tell them they can be anything they want to be when they grow up?

The Strategy of a Learning Culture

(This post is an edited version of a new article by Suzanne Mayo Frindt. To get the complete text click here.) Excellent companies have Financial Strategies, Operational Strategies, Marketing and Sales Strategies, and commensurate Resource Allocation Strategies (including People, Time, Money, Equipment/Assets, etc.) How many companies actually have a Cultural Strategy? Yet all companies have a culture, implicitly if not explicitly developed on a historical basis. A company culture can be defined as “a cognitive framework consisting of attitudes, values, behavioral norms, and expectations’’ (Greenberg and Baron, 1997), “the collective thoughts, habits, attitudes, feelings, and patterns of behavior’’ (Clemente and Greenspan, 1999), and “the pattern of arrangement, material or behavior which has been adopted by a society (corporation, group, or team) as the accepted way of solving problems’’ (Ahmed et al., 1999).^[1] A company’s culture dramatically impacts the success or failure of all other strategies, and yet little if any attention is consciously placed on the care and feeding of a productive, learning culture. It is the invisible glue that binds together ever more diverse workforces including people from many cultures and generations. Most executives are not conscious of culture or of the implications of their decisions on the development of or degradation of culture. Without a culture strategy, where are they aiming anyway?

All development and training is built on the platform of culture. It is the 'context' that determines whether the financial, operational or marketing strategies succeed or fail. A human resource focus on recruiting, retention and succession planning by definition focuses on the experience and skill building of individuals and often misses the broader perspective of the cultural influence and implications. And whose job is it to develop a conscious strategy for culture? Whose job is it to continually feed and nurture a productive culture? We would say it lands squarely with Leadership!

What is a Learning Culture and How Does it Get Developed? A Learning Culture is one where the individuals and teams consciously invest in growing and developing themselves. In a Learning Culture executives are purposeful about the impact of decisions and strategies on the fabric of cultural development. There is a focus on reducing friction and waste in communications and developing productive working relationships. People know there is an expectation for growing and learning. Hiring decisions are made with an interest in an individual’s ability to learn, adapt, grow and shift. An atmosphere of curiosity, forward thinking and ‘how can we learn from this’ thinking permeates. It becomes the foundation or platform on which everything else is built.

What Are The Payoffs of a Learning Culture? For an organization, this type of culture provides much more innovation, creativity, agility, and expedited problem solving capabilities.

For individuals, it provides opportunities for learning and growth. It also provides forums to be challenged, to add value, and to contribute at a high level.

How Can We Develop a Learning Culture? There are many books and articles about learning organizations including work by Senge^[2] and Argyris^[3] that explain in depth about the what and how of learning organizations. Our 2130 methodology, (and terminology adaptation in some instances), ties to the 5 aspects of a learning organization that are generally accepted by leadership ‘gurus’ as follows:

1. Systems Thinking: Understanding how things influence each other as a whole. Our view is that executives and organizational leadership are accountable to the entire organization and all stakeholders for this larger view, including strategy development, planning, implementation, review and adjustment. In addition to a responsibility for systems thinking on an individual executive basis it is also critical that the entire executive team itself operate as a productive, learning system.
2. Shared Vision/Values: “A vehicle for building shared meaning” from Peter Senge’s “Fifth Discipline.” Unfortunately, this often looks more like the version from Dilbert “A long meaningless statement that proves management’s inability to focus.” Over the last 20+ years we have worked with organizations to develop Vision, Mission and Values in our methodology ‘Vision-Focused Leadership’. Absent a shared vision, individual agendas rule the day and gaining personal power becomes a major executive focus.
3. Productive Mental Framework: We talk about busting mental barriers, increasing mental agility and increasing capacities to deal with the unrelenting pace of change and increased complexity of issues facing leadership today. It is critical to become aware of our blind spots and biases to be able to think clearly in the present to make the best decisions in a complex business environment.
4. Personal Mastery: This is the commitment of every person in the organization to improve, develop and challenge themselves to be more than they are today. Individuals who insist on status quo and structural barriers to communication usually self-select out of a Learning Culture.
5. Team Mastery: Organizations must realize that groups of people, (of any size of 2 or more), create yet another ‘entity’ with its own dynamics and productivity levels. There are group skills and developmental opportunities that build on, yet are distinct from individual capacities. When groups develop these capacities we call that increasing their collaborative capital.

So What Will You Do Now? Take stock of your culture. What are the stories being told about your organization by employees, clients and vendors? What stories would you like to be told? Where are the gaps? Are you willing to commit to your role in your organization’s culture?

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^[1] From  “Developing a Corporate Culture as a Competitive Advantage”;  Golnaz Sadri and Brian Lees

^[2] Peter Michael Senge is an American scientist and director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is known as author of the book The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization from 1990 (new edition 2006). (Courtesy wikipedia.com)

^[3] Chris Argyris is an American business theorist, Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School, and a Thought Leader at Monitor Group.[1] He is commonly known for seminal work in the area of "Learning Organizations". (Courtesy wikipedia.com)

The Myth of Time Management

A Google search for time management blogs produces more than 20,000,000 results. Charles Kettering’s well known phrase “a problem well stated is a problem half solved” gives us a clue as to why so many people are writing and speaking about time management and yet we see a huge percentage of our clients suffering trying to manage their time. We believe the problem neeeds to be "well stated" or reframed. The “Frindt Correlate” to Mr. Kettering’s thoughtful phrase is “a problem misnamed is a problem stuck!” If you think about it for more than a second or two, it’s clear that you can’t manage time! Time passes tick-tock. In our normal world, (excluding quantum physics from this discussion), it does not go faster or slower and no one has more or less of it than you do. If you want to push that examination to another level, notice that it is always and only ever now. Even when you get to that concept you call the future it will still be now.

Language is the software that drives our brain’s problem-solving efforts. As a result of misnaming, the brain is working on the wrong issue and the pain continues. So how can you think about this subject in a way that produces more valuable outcomes, reduces your stress, and allows you to lead an integrated life? 

First, be accurate in your thoughts and spoken words. Describe what you can actually manage. You can, for example, manage your priorities. You can manage which ones you act on and how much time you spend on them. You can manage your conversations, both the ones you have and with whom you have them. 

To gain real power in the aforementioned management steps, create a vision, or what we would call a “Yonder Star” for yourself and share it with your teams – or in your family for that matter. This step will give you a sense of direction and allow you to sort out your priorities in a meaningful way. In the absence of a vision or goal, and alignment with those around you, “any road will get you there…” or, as the Zen Master said, “if we don’t change directions, we will likely end up where we are headed.”  In the case of many unexamined lives, that is mostly around in circles.

As we examined last week in our post about Pavlov’s dog, it is important to examine the associative learning you have that drives your current behavior. You may find that you will be required to have a number of difficult conversations with some of those around you to gain control of the ability to set your priorities or at least to freely choose priorities that are imposed by others. If you discover that too many of those types of priorities are driving your life and that they actually conflict with your own authentic priorities, it will be time for a career decision!

The Operating Principles that we employ in our engagements, and aspire to live by in our personal lives, will be important to keep in mind as you engage in shared priority conversations. Our book, Accelerate, was created to empower you in such pursuits, as is our e-course, and new materials that we will be launching over the next few months. 

Take action, log your thoughts so you can manage your brain more productively and be at the Leadership Choice Point more frequently.  Notice how, with practice, you are spending more time on what’s important to you, feeling less stressed, have more free time, and are experiencing fulfillment.

What If Pavlov's Dog Had a PDA?

In the 1920s Ivan Pavlov conducted a series of very famous experiments in which he taught dogs to salivate at the ringing of a bell. If PDAs had been invented, he could have taught the dog to salivate when his cell phone received a call, email or text. He might have even taught the dog to bark so he would never miss an “incoming!” Much of what we observe in the behavior of those around us looks very similar. Despite frequent complaints about the number of emails and the expectations of immediate responses, PDAs are everywhere and constantly being checked. In our executive groups, members used to talk with each other at breaks. Now they all tend to get on their PDAs, and a good number are peeking throughout the meeting as well.  Are you a victim of your PDA? What in the world is it all about?

According to Wikipedia, “classical conditioning, (also Pavlovian or respondent conditioning, Pavlovian reinforcement), is a form of associative learning that was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov in 1927. Associative learning is the process by which an element is taught through association with a separate, pre-occurring element.”  In the case of the dog’s brain, that pre-occurring association was the smell of meat powder. What are your (probably multiple) prior associations that cause you to frantically and fanatically check your mobile device? A good friend, Brian Stuhlmuller of Distinctions, Inc., points out that most of us are unconsciously afraid that one of those emails in that unmanageable onslaught of incoming that we get every day, (and generally don’t get to all of), “is going to get us.” Failure to respond will cost us a deal, a relationship or something we highly value. It’s “the boogeyman just below the window on your iPad screen.”

I have been reflecting on myself in this regard and can see that I have unconscious concerns that someone is going to be mad at me, think I’m a flake, or perhaps even drop me from their circle. A client might have asked for something important to them and decided I’m unreliable or worse, irresponsible. I even see that there are some old beliefs in my group of associations like “in a well run office, people answer the phone in two rings or less.”

If you recognize you have your own version of Pavlov’s dog, and would like to break out of it, take bold action. For example, delete all of your inbox at midnight on New Year’s Eve and on regular dates throughout the year. If that’s too bold, go “off line” for significant parts of your day and week. Listen to your mind. Log the internal dialogue. Discover the associative learning that runs your life around email and texting. Self-observation is the key to freedom.

If you can recognize what’s driving you, you are at the Leadership Choice Point™. Perhaps it’s all fear that has you dancing to your PDA or maybe it’s just trying to manage your circumstances so you can survive another day. Is that really any different? You are either on the Red Line or the Blue Line of the diagram.  Choosing to pursue your vision/intention and your own priorities over reacting will start you up the Green Line.

Which path will have your life more productive, satisfying, and fulfilling? If you are leading a company or a team, which way will have your associates be more productive and less stressed? What are you waiting for?

Leadership: An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

In a recent conference call with a group of our affiliated facilitators, I was struck by the high level of interest in becoming experts in conflict resolution.  From divorce counseling to working on international negotiations, their attention was focused on what I call the “seen” portion of communication and relationship.  It’s the part where fight, flight, freeze or appease behaviors are very observable and running the show. It’s also the part where people are very appreciative when someone helps pull the thorn out of their proverbial paw. The obviously large market of people, groups and nations in conflict is clearly calling to them.  Those in pain seem to be much more more willing to pay to reduce or eliminate the pain versus figuring out how to avoid it in the first place. In the physical world, that translates into Western medicine being largely focused on managing disease and illness instead of prevention.  In the “unseen” world of our psyche, it translates into therapists, lawyers, and judges dominating the world of struggling marriages and breakdowns in business relationships.

Isn’t all of this a demonstration of the old saying about “closing the barn door after the horse is gone?”

Sure it is an enormous market, especially when the expenditures for both mental and physical issues are included. My question is where does real leadership fit into this picture?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to engage early and regularly in developing capacities for well being - learning to eat well, exercise, and manage your health and learning how to effectively and successfully work with and communicate with others? 

What if you were known as someone around whom issues could be raised and resolved productively? What if you developed the “muscles” to step into difficult conversations and move them forward to conclusions that were valuable to all concerned?  What if you summoned the courage to stay with it when the discussion became scary? What can be added if you explored another person’s reality, confronted real issues together, and kept generating mutual trust, respect and safety throughout the discussion?

Wikipedia defines conflict resolution as a range of methods of eliminating sources of conflict. The term "conflict resolution" is sometimes used interchangeably with the term dispute resolution or alternative dispute resolution. It further defines crisis intervention as “emergency psychological care aimed at assisting individuals in a crisis situation to restore equilibrium...” and crisis as “one’s perception or experiencing of an event or situation as an intolerable difficulty that exceeds the person’s current resources and coping mechanisms.” 

Too often clients call us for coaching for one of their people as the last stop before they fire the person. In many cases they are shocked when the “loser” breaks through and becomes a valuable employee.  Think of the cost, however.  One-to-one coaching, especially with a top coach, is expensive and time consuming. What’s much worse, however, is all the lost productivity from that person and all the others who had to interact with them in a dysfunctional way, perhaps for years. 

After a very successful engagement with one of his people, one of our clients recently lamented “how many potentially excellent people have been fired without anyone ever being willing to invest in their success?”

We call this type of work “triage” which Merriam-Webster defines as 1) “a sorting of and allocation of treatment to patients and especially battle and disaster victims...” and 2) the assigning of priority order to funds on the basis of where funds an other resources can best be used, are most needed, or are most likely to achieve success.”  When I recall my mom saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” the whole cultural spending priority seems backwards to me.

Combining the definitions of conflict resolution and triage it becomes clear that people are often sent to coaching having suffered “battle damage” beyond their resources and capacity to cope.  Since part of triage is assigning funds to where they are most likely to achieve success and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, doesn’t it become obvious that a smart leader directs investment into expanding her own and her team members’ capacities to interact productively?

Are you building strengths in self-generated accountability and in developing a culture of mutual trust, respect, and safety? Is your budget bigger for building capacities or for turnover costs - hiring, firing, severance, etc.?  How much of your turnover represents lost opportunities?  How high are stress levels - yours and those around you? 

How willing are you to take on shifting the paradigm in which you live and work from damage control to productive interactions?

What's The Big Deal About 'No'?

I have periodically noticed there seem to be a lot of issues around the word “no.” Not so much about saying it, but about not saying it. It is the absence of no, at times when it is the best answer, which seems to create all sorts of problems. The dictionary says simply that ‘no’ means “a negative response; a denial or refusal.” In and of itself that meaning certainly doesn’t seem to be a big deal. So what’s the issue? During an exploration of his “stressed out” state, one of our clients recently blurted out, “If I say no, the whole house of cards will come down! People will find out that I’m inadequate…I have to say yes to everything that comes at me to please everyone, even though the demands are killing me!” This client is not the exception and he is likely correct, this need to perpetuate a “superman” image is probably killing him and it could be killing you and/or your team members. As a leader it’s important to consider this. Do you have a culture that does not allow “no?” What are the consequences?

One of the consequences around this “no/yes” issue is that many don’t necessarily say yes as much as they imply yes because they don’t feel safe giving a straight out decline and they are afraid they can’t deliver to a ‘committed yes.’ These people often feel burdened and in a state of sacrifice and when the eventual ‘expose’ happens, they point out they never really agreed to or said yes to XY or Z. This leaves the person failing to say yes a victim, feeling very overloaded, and probably greatly stressed and the person or project they implied the ‘yes’ to swinging in the breeze.

So what do we do? On a personal level, I managed to essentially cure myself of this disease through an agreement I made with Joanna, a wonderful staff person at an organization I have been active in for more than 30 years, The Hunger Project. As many of you have experienced, if you say yes to volunteering or funding, you will most certainly be asked again. If you perform, the requests will become more frequent. It’s the old saying “if you want something done, ask a busy person.” At a certain point, I noticed myself avoiding Joanna’s calls and that did not work for me.

So I cut a deal with Joanna in which I promised to take her calls, no matter what, and she never had to feel guilty about making another request, even if the last one was just yesterday. In return I would genuinely consider the request and unless I was really interested, most of the time I would simply say no. No stories, excuses, apologies, etc. Just no.

It took a while for me to get over feeling uncomfortable. The little voice in my head would start with things like “she really needs help and you certainly could give it,” “if you were really committed you would have said yes,” “the really good volunteers would have said yes,” yada-yada-yada...

It didn’t take long before I noticed how much energy I had when I did say yes and how much more fun those projects were. Joanna was happier because she could always connect with me – no chasing – and have a conversation about the project she was working on. Many times that produced a creative brainstorm.

If you find yourself identifying with this “no” problem, find someone you trust and make the deal. Be sure that when you practice saying ‘no’ you remember you are declining a request, not the person making it. This is a key distinction and will shift your discomfort. The practice is not to say ‘no’ to people on a personal level, but simply to whatever they are asking you to participate in.

Also, make careful note of what pops into your head when you get a request. If you learn to self observe, you will discover keys to transforming your life. Those little negative conversations that were embedded in your mental ‘File Cabinet’ at an early age have been shaping your life and have had an iron grip on you. Expose them and you get to make a free choice, as an adult, about whether you are going to listen to the noise or prime your brain with more productive conversations.

Leadership Lesson From the Middle East

Witnessing the recent events in the Middle East has provoked feelings and reactions on many levels. Since this blog focuses on leadership, we want to point out a leadership lesson that we see. (Note: Because this is a leadership blog we are NOT making any comments about the political, economic or larger social implications of what is happening. We recognize that what is happening is complex.  We are going to pull out and comment on a particular thread.) When a situation is large scale and extreme, it creates a “stark relief map” where things become  vividly visible. This is why looking at the leadership in the Middle East is relevant to leadership within organizations. Similar dynamics can and do happen within many organizations, just on a more subtle and less complex level.

At its core, we are seeing the consequences of autocratic leadership - most often referred to in organizational terms as “command and control” leadership. One of the issues that is driving people in these countries (Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, et al.) to rebel is that they aren’t being listened to – they are not able to contribute to, collaborate on, or have self-determination regarding their lives and and social experience. The leadership is stubbornly, (and even violently), determined to set the agenda. A handful of people are deciding how everyone lives.

Organizational leaders often do similar things and create a similar atmosphere and culture. Like the Middle Eastern leaders, they feel entirely entitled to do so.  After all, they are the leaders right? Recently this has been most apparent in larger corporations, particularly those that have failed or nearly failed. CEOs have been very separate from the day-to-day work and workers and paid enormous salaries. There have been many examples of their workers losing their jobs and subsequently their retirements and homes while these CEOs walk off with multi-million dollar golden parachutes. This is similar to many of the Middle Eastern countries where leaders are living incredibly well and will continue to, even if they are forced out,  while their people don’t have enough to eat or real economic opportunities.

Paraphrasing a quote in the Wall Street Journal by a rebelling university educator in Bahrain, “We wanted some simple changes. They wouldn’t listen, they killed us, and now the king has to go.” This is the peril of leaders who don’t include, collaborate, respect and listen to their people. Your teams may not be able to rebel and overthrow you, but they will quickly learn their best efforts are not respected, so why bother? The best will leave. Resignation will set in for the rest and, at best, you will get vicious obedience or malicious compliance.  As gossip and complaining builds, the culture becomes poisoned. When your team is not listened to and does not have inclusion and opportunity, (just like the citizens of the Middle East), creativity disappears and productivity drops to a minimum relative to what's possible.

So does this mean as a leader you must live in fear of your people? That you must make sure everybody likes you? Try to please 100% of the people 100% of the time? Reach perfect consensus on everything? Of course not, but you will likely be surprised how far respectful listening, inclusion, positive feedback and validation will get you. People know when they are truly valued and when they are being strung along or are fundamentally disrespected. They also know when there are opportunities for advancement, for growth, for creating a job/role function that is needed and when jobs are a dead-end. This goes back to our post last week, “Viva The Naysayers,” – if your team is just your “hands and feet” or you are “deriding the naysayers and wet blankets” you are in the same leadership spectrum as the Middle Eastern leaders. Your way or the highway just doesn’t work anymore.

We are in a new year. Are you ready to re-evaluate your leadership style and skills? Are you ready to do some self-reflection and decide what kind of leader you really want to be? Are you ready to be part of your team?  Consider that you may not be able to that by yourself.  If you are serious, get intervention!  We, of course, say do our courses, study our book, and get coached, (yes, shameless plug noted).  If not us, then go find another great resource and get to work!

Viva the Naysayers

Many business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals are “visionaries” – independent minded self-starters with lots of creativity and ideas. They often have a deep belief and confidence in their own point-of-view. If you are one of these people and have been successful, these traits have served you well. The challenge is that, at some point, to increase your level of productivity and success, it will take a team around you. “My Team Are My Hands and Feet.” – Do you hire people as extensions of yourself? Meaning, you want them to just execute what you have in mind without questions - just to be an “extra pair of hands and feet.” If you have not developed the ability to clearly articulate your vision and goals in a way that is inclusive, everyone else is left wondering and waiting for you next set of instructions. This reinforces your sense of “I should just do it myself,” or, “if I could just do it myself.”

Rather than looking for more hands and feet, the real high leverage opportunity is to hire people who have their own skills, talents, and intelligence to bring to the table. Find people with approaches and styles complementary to your own. Develop your ability to explore their perspectives on what and how to do things. Be slow to understand rather than cutting them off or assuming you already know what they will say. Learn to create a shared vision or Yonder Star with them and them give them the power to execute based on their competence and understanding. If, as a leader, you can’t tolerate, let alone lead, people who think for themselves, bring added dimensions to the party, or approach things differently than you, you will drastically limit your organization’s growth and pay a lot of money for very minimal results.

“Wet Blankets and Naysayers.” – As your team grows, there will inevitably be people who ask questions, ask for clarification, ask for more information and potentially challenge ideas. Do you interpret these folks as “wet blankets,” “naysayers,” or “whiners.” Do you resent having your vision and creativity questioned? Perhaps that is not what is actually happening. Consider the following:

1. People have different styles of learning, understanding and processing information. Rather than questioning you as a person, they may well be going through their process of understanding your thinking.
2. The larger the team, the further you are as a leader from doing the actual work. During the “ideation phase” your team is likely to bring up important potential issues and consequences that are best thought through well in advance of jumping into execution. Since they are closer to the action than you, these conversations can present valuable intelligence and probably avoid serious mistakes later.
3. Some people are just excellent at identifying obstacles. Rather than brushing them off or assuming they are being “negative,” pay attention. A good “obstacle finder” is actually a great addition to the team. They can save you valuable time by helping you identify and address issues in advance.
4. Most of all, remember that what surfaces as a complaint or negativity is generally an access to what the individual is truly committed to and how they feel thwarted in that commitment. Flip the complaint over to a positive statement and you may be surprised by what you learn.

“What Are You Really Good At?” – No matter how gifted, talented, and intelligent you are, you still have a “zone of excellence,” (as author Gay Hendricks would say), and zones of competence and incompetence. Your highest and best use is your zone of excellence.

Richard Strozzi-Heckler of The Strozzi Institute talks about what he calls a “rhythm of excitement.” It is a rich topic that he reviews in his book, “The Anatomy of Change.” To paraphrase and simplify, essentially there are 4 stages where people feel energized or “excited.” The stages are Awakening, Increasing, Containment, and Completion. People tend to be energized largely in one of these stages. “Awakeners” are “idea people.” “Increasers” are people that tend to grab on to ideas and make them even bigger. They fill the ideas out. “Containers” take ideas and say, “let’s move on it.” “Completers” implement and get things done. There are very important skills and strengths in each area. Awakeners and Increasers tend to be entrepreneurs and business owners. This is their “zone of excellence.” It’s important to know where you are energized, know what you are good at, and then fill out your teams with the other stages. Find people you respect and trust who have the skills you are lacking, listen to them, and organize in such a way that each team member is in position to contribute their highest and best.

It's 2011 - Dream Big

To move into a New Year powerfully and to create the results you want there are some key steps to take. The first is creating an "elegant ending" to the past. Last week we posted about "letting go of 2010," and included a free download of a worksheet to help you do it. Now it’s time to move on to envisioning and documenting your 2011 "Yonder Star(s)" and creating plans for fulfillment. (Note: The first part of this post talks about how to effectively map out your personal goals. If you want to move straight into planning for your business check out the last paragraph of this post. We've got a Hot Wired Strategic Plan template for you as a free download.) One way to help yourself succeed is to make your resolutions “public” to others. To put more wind in your sails, promise others that you will deliver! You can ask someone you trust to be a “committed listener.” This involves a commitment from them to listen to you as you talk about the status of your plans, your struggles and your successes. It does not involve them giving advice or telling you what to do next, (unless you make a specific request for it). Another way to succeed is to hire a coach. Someone who is trained to support people in achieving their dreams and plans. If you are a bit more experienced at this process, take a step up in rigor and create a set of goals for the different areas of your life. Categories you might include are: 1) Career/Financial 2) Well-Being or Health 3) Relationships 4) Spiritual 5) Personal 6) Wild Card How bold are you willing to be setting your goals? If you are completely certain you can make the goals are you stretching yourself enough? Focus on designing the most catalytic, highly leveraged action steps you can. By "catalytic" we mean that your actions produce the intended results without your being used up in the process. By "highly leveraged," we mean you produce very big results with minimal resources.

If you’ve been successful at this level of work and/or are ready to take on your first effort at a Strategic Plan for your company or affiliation, we suggest using what we call our “2130 Partners Hot Wired Strategic Plan.” We call it Hot Wired because it covers many of the levels and topics of an elaborate plan and yet you can produce a decent draft in a couple of hours. The next pass can then be developed to whatever level of detail you wish. The key, however, is to get the initial draft knocked out in as short a time as you can so that you shift your paradigm about goals and actions as you develop the more detailed plans. You can download the worksheet for our 2130 Partners Hot Wired plan by clicking here.

Ready for 2011? Better Let Go of 2010...

It’s the time of year when many of us conduct annual rituals that may include everything from strategic planning sessions for business to making New Year’s resolutions or setting Bold Goals for 2011 and beyond. We’ve found any such process to be much harder to do when we haven’t completed and let go of the past.  It’s very difficult, (impossible?), to really move forward when we are carting the past along with us. The process of letting go can include changing your attitude and perceptions about what the economy did to you, to digging very deep and letting go of some of the childhood stuff that shapes your life. On the fun end of the spectrum, we have for many years put flip chart paper all over our walls when we have a New Year’s Eve party with a simple question on each, such as “What did I start and not complete?” or “What did I accomplish that I haven’t been acknowledged for?” or “What did I screw up that I didn’t get caught for?”  Guests write on the charts all evening with colored markers and sometimes get even more creative with a touch of artistic display as well.  On a number of occasions we have taken them all down at midnight and symbolically burned them.

On a business note, we do a similar exercise with our executive clients where we pass out a page with questions for them to fill out that explores accomplishments and failures in their businesses, practice of leadership, and lives. (We have a free download of this exercise sheet at the bottom of this blog post.)  One of my favorites is “What must I communicate to be complete with 2010 and to whom?”

A few of the highlights from these types of executive discussions include discoveries of attachments participants did not realize were holding them back, people around them who they had failed to acknowledge, and places where they were not leading by example.

We also know that for many folks the holidays can include a lot of upset, ranging form anxiety around gift giving and office party attendance to remembrances of lost loved ones or unhappy childhood experiences related to the holidays.  The latter is fertile ground for completion work.

Some of the comments we get about these exercises can be summed up as, “transition/transformation is a lot of work!”  If you are intending to be powerful in 2011, have big goals, and produce great results, we highly recommend you spend the next couple of weeks completing and letting go of 2010, (and earlier if you need to), in order to create fertile ground for your 2011 vision to come alive.

If you would like to try our exercise format we have included it here as a free download.

Wishing you a happy ending to your 2010 and a fabulous 2011!

Will You Live The Opportunity Before You?

I'm watching my alma mater, Northwestern University, play football while flying the first leg of our trip to Ecuador. As a very small school playing in the Big 10, NU teams have always struggled to hold their own in the conference and, once in a while, produce a team that excels. When they do, they do it with heart and commitment that far exceeds their talent and depth. In this game, the announcers are praising NU's quarterback, Dan Persa, (who is not one of the big names in the country), as someone who "will always get whatever is there to get." In fact, he has just run for his second touchdown and then thrown for his third and they are still in the first quarter of the game! This has got me thinking about great leaders. They know how “to get whatever is there to get”- meaning they find the opportunities big and small in every situation and leverage them for all they are worth.

As a leader, do you "get what whatever there is to get" with every opportunity? Have you been playing it safe, doing what you know how to do? Do you see new opportunities that require you to risk and then find reasons to play safe? Does the idea of bold goals that we posted about last time seem like a good idea for someone else?

You are not alone! Most of us are playing it safe in all or part of our lives, preferring "the devil we know to the devil we don't." What is the cost? What are you missing by not playing like the NU quarterback is playing?

One level of examination that can get you "some running room" is to get very clear about what stops you. That requires developing your ability to self observe - listen to your thoughts and observe your actions while you are in the action.

A more highly leveraged approach is to spend your energy getting as clear as you can about the opportunity before you. Get clear about your vision for your future, what we fondly call “your Yonder Star.” Remember, it is a creation - it has not happened yet. If you are to fulfill your Yonder Star, it will take commitment. Said another way, surrender to the call of your Yonder Star and let it pull your life forward. If you do, your forward motion will displace the noise in your head from your fears and concerns. They probably won't go away, but they will lose their grip on you. When you forget and your concerns seem to be taking over, refocus on your Yonder Star and get into action! We call this the "Leadership Choice Point." You may have to re-choose many times to fulfill your Yonder Star. As you do, however, you will be building your capacity to work from vision and opportunity, to "get whatever is there to get."

As we are landing and I have to turn off the TV, Penn State has tied the game. NU may once again fall short of the win. I won't get to see it, either way. If they do, however, it won't be because they failed to play all out for their Yonder Star!

Creating Your Bold Vision

This is the time of year when the majority of our clients and friends are working on "what’s next."  The effort ranges from New Year’s resolutions, to budgets, to creating an entirely new vision and, (hopefully), strategy to go with it. Most often, we find these efforts produce predictions based on past experience, rather than launching a truly bold vision. Vision has more to do with a dream for the future than what's happened in the past.  (We talk a lot about the differences in our book, Accelerate, in the section on Leadership Choice Point.) 

In the book we emphasize that most "leadership" activity is based on looking backwards, reviewing results to-date, and building a plan forwards from that past.  There is nothing wrong with this. As human beings our minds and memories are constructed to have a "database" that builds on past experience. If we didn't have a "cumulative learning ability" we would be helpless. Every moment would be new. We wouldn’t be able to find home at night, wouldn’t recognize it when we got there, and strangers would occupy it if we couldn’t draw effectively from our past experience.  That’s the good news part.

The bad news part is that past-based predictions also keep us enslaved to what’s stored in our mental database, (or what we fondly call "the mental File Cabinet.")  It keeps our attention on our limitations.  For example, we know of a current head-hunter who is working on a placement. He has recently talked with a potential candidate and told him, “I can’t present you for this CEO job, for which you are an excellent candidate, because you don’t have a chemistry degree." By the way, the last CEO, (who failed),  had a chemistry degree and the Board of Directors insists on the new candidates having one also. So it's an interesting issue. In this example, if a chemistry degree could predict and determine success, why did the previous guy fail? Why does it make it a given that this other outstanding candidate will fail because he doesn't have one? Somewhere in the past, this notion became a "predictor of success" and even in the face of evidence to the contrary, it's still being pursued. (This is why we used the strong language "enslaved" in the first sentence of this paragraph.)

It gets worse when we are in this predictive state and also creating and executing on a vision. Check your own thoughts here and see how often you can be truly creative and go for something that is not a projection of the current path of your life, your resume, your finances, your job – you know the drill…  Borrowing from the article I will cite below, this is simply “remembering the future.”

The Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition on 12-12-10 included an article, “Why The Mind Sees the Future in the Past Tense,” by Matt Ridley in which the author points out that recent neuroscience studies show that the same parts of the mind hold our episodic memories and or imagined futures. Given the evidence here, it's no wonder the "predictable" dominates our thinking.

What excited me about the article were the studies that show that, “the more unexpected something is, the more conscious we are of it.”  Your brain has to work harder when what shows up doesn’t match prediction, or expectation. What this means to me is that the most highly leveraged way to get yourself and your team in to powerful action is to start throwing new stuff in front of your collective brains. Create a BOLD vision that you can’t prove based on the past. You will be stimulated, more conscious, and therefore more present. You will be unleashing creativity instead of invoking your past experience, circumstances, knowledge (or lack of it), and limitations.

I am not being "Pollyanna" or encouraging "woo-woo" here. Once your new bold vision, or as we call it, “Yonder Star” is created, it’s time to be responsible for the past. It’s time to get very clear about your situation - “the way that it is and the way that it isn’t.”  Looking from your Yonder Star as if it is already fulfilled, your mind will start discovering what it did to get there. It will get very excited about remembering. (Our partner, Alanna Levenson, calls that “creating future memories.”)

In his blog post, “Strategy Slam’”, a long-time colleague, Russ Phillips, recommends going to Denny’s by yourself with a pen and pad to do your creative thinking. I am much more creative in dialogue with other committed players.  Many people wait for adversity to set in, and it will, sooner or later, to force themselves and their associates to get creative…"sort of a create or die strategy"…There are lots of ways to "get yourself there." What gets you in action for a bold inquiry?  What’s your most creative environment? What calls forth your commitment? What stops you? These may be the most powerful questions you can ask yourself as you start planning for the next year.

Accelerate: High Leverage Leadership for Today's World Is Here

Debut Book From Suzanne Mayo Frindt and Dwight Frindt Provides a Simple, Elegant and Insightful Approach to Consistently Produce Extraordinary Results

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SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, CA--(Marketwire - November 15, 2010) - Suzanne Mayo Frindt and Dwight Frindt work closely with leaders and executive teams to unleash creativity and effectiveness throughout their organizations. Their practical methodologies reduce the friction and waste in daily conversations and inspire highly productive teams that regularly deliver on bold commitments. Their collaborative leadership practices are not steeped in academia -- they are carefully crafted methodologies based on their years of hands-on experience counseling executives combined with a global business perspective derived from their active involvement with business cultures around the world. The Frindts are co-founders of 2130 Partners (www.2130Partners.com), a leadership development and education firm training leaders to create focus, alignment, and collaboration for a sustainable shared vision. In their debut book, Accelerate: High Leverage Leadership for Today's World, the authors provide a remarkably simple, elegant and insightful approach to consistently producing extraordinary results.

We live in a world of unprecedented and accelerating changes in our lives and work. Now, at a time when previous business models and assumptions are being turned on their heads, individual livelihoods and whole firms are disappearing or springing up newly on a regular basis. Successful businesses are transforming themselves and finding ways to prosper in the evolving new realities. The leadership required for these firms is radically agile, proactive, and creative. Success will accrue to those who learn to tap the creativity and productivity gains available through being aware and effective in the human, collaborative dimension, while laggards will suffer in the face of the unrelenting change.

Accelerate is a match for the challenging times in which we live, where leaders are facing problems and issues that are complex beyond any previous era. The authors provide readers with deceptively simple access to meaningful transformation in their work and lives. Unlike other leadership books, Accelerate starts with whom to BE rather than what to DO to produce effective leadership. You will find proven principles and practices to expand your leadership capacities for productive thought and interaction, to create a culture of self-generated accountability, and to turn friction and waste into real productivity gains.

Always with a keen eye on the future, the authors have just returned from several weeks in China, now eclipsing Japan as the second largest economy in the world. There they participated in The World Academy for the Future of Women, and in the Fourth Annual Women's Symposium at Sias International University (www.sias.edu.cn/en). Suzanne Mayo Frindt created curriculum, both served as instructors for the Academy, and Dwight Frindt delivered a keynote speech at the Symposium.

Sias University is the first solely owned American university in Central China. It develops well-rounded trans-national professionals by combining Chinese and Western educational philosophies, providing students with a broad based learning perspective and alternative ways of thinking about their lives, careers, and leadership aspirations.

About Suzanne Mayo Frindt and Dwight Frindt The Frindts are co-founders of 2130 Partners, a leadership development and education firm founded in 1990. 2130 Partners is dedicated to facilitating executive leadership potential through Vision-Focused Leadership™, a methodology grounded in shared vision and built through collaboration.

They are often called upon to give keynotes and lead programs in such diverse locations as Bismarck, North Dakota and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. In addition to their extensive business leadership experience and educational credentials, they credit their 30 plus years as investors in, and activists for, The Hunger Project (http://www.thp.org) for its profound influence on their work and lives. They have traveled throughout Africa, India, Bangladesh and Latin America to support the organization's goals in mobilizing local people to create lasting society-wide progress in health, education, nutrition, family incomes and the empowerment of women.

Events 2130 Partners will hold public workshops and book signing events:

November 2010 19 -- Seattle, Wash.

December 2010 3 -- Orange County, Calif.

February 2011 2 -- Los Angeles, Calif.

For event information, please go to: www.2130partners.com/whats-new.

About 2130 Partners 2130 Partners is celebrating its 20th year of facilitating executive leadership potential. The name 2130 Partners and the firm's core philosophy are derived from the Native American principle that leaders are accountable in their decision making for their impact on each of the next seven generations. Seven generations from its founding in 1990, or 140 years, is year 2130. Clients and 2130 Partners are asked to consider what input we might get from the people who will be alive in the year 2130 about how we spend our lives, the decisions we make and the focus of our leadership. The firm serves clients around the world, with offices in Orange County, Calif. and Seattle, Wash. Visit www.2130partners.com.

Accelerate: High Leverage Leadership for Today's World ISBN: 143926664, available at www.2130partners.com/accelerate-the-book or amazon.com Authors: Suzanne Mayo Frindt and Dwight Frindt Published in 2010

For more information about Accelerate: High Leverage Leadership for Today's World, please visit www.2130partners.com/accelerate-the-book or contact: Kathleen Janson, (949) 654-2512

Why Would We Say "Don't Read Our New Book?"

Our book, "Accelerate: High Leverage Leadership for Today's World" actually debuted in July of this year. We haven't been saying alot about it and doing lots of publicity and such because first, we wanted to find out if it had value to readers. We spent more than five years developing the content; researching, writing and editing it and it's based on 20 years experience in the field of executive leadership development. We have literally put tens of thousands of hours into working with leaders and their teams and we compiled this knowledge into a book we are very proud of, but the question still remained, would it be of use to anybody else? So we decided to do a "soft launch" and we have been using the book with clients, soliciting feedback from peers and colleagues and conducting "informal testing" of the material.  We now have enough feedback from enough people to feel like we can say with all humility, we have actually written a very valuable book, (and we are SO grateful to all who have put in time and given us this feedback!)  What we have heard is that the book is dense with rich content and yet easy to read.  It has breakthrough mental models, powerful Operating Principles, and a set of Practical Applications that are all immediately useful.  So why is the title of this blog post, "don't read our new book?"

We all know there are lots of great books to "read" and there are lots of great leadership books to read. What he have found with the folks who have invested time with our book is that the best way to use our book is as a reference manual and resource for solving your leadership issues for when you truly don't know how to get into action, have already failed over and over, or simply would rather have a root canal than even try. It's a real world guide for real issues that leaders face day in and day out.

So don't "read" our book from cover-to-cover, and then put it on the book shelf where it joins your other volumes of "shelf help," (books you enjoyed, had "a ha" moments while reading, then put away and forgot about). If you want a reference to help you navigate your daily leadership challenges buy the book and get familiar with the table of contents, the models, the nature of the Operating Principles, and the subject of each of the Practical Applications.

When you are ready to start building your conversational capacities, use it like you were going to the gym. Pick out an Essential Notion, an Operating Principle and a Practical Application that call to you. Read them and practice in your real life situations during the week. In the following week, pick another set, read, and practice. Within three months you will build a new basic level of leadership effectiveness in your interactions.  Then you can start the process over again and raise yourself another level.

When you confront communication breakdowns, organizational upsets, resistance to change, or any of the many the other leadership issues that drive you crazy, grab the book and read the relevant sections.  Fill out the the worksheet in the Practical Applications section, meet with the appropriate people, and get to work. 

Keep your focus on learning and applying, rather than "reading" and filling your brain with new intellectual notions and you will achieve real results!  Meanwhile you can "read" all those other books piled on your night stand ;-)

Leadership and Lazy Labels

In a workshop the other day, 2130 Partners' co-founder, Suzanne Frindt, (who is also my wife), used the term "Lazy Labels" to capture the instant, automatic, and unexamined statements many, if not all of us make on a fairly regular basis. These statements could also be called "knee jerk reactions." In this highly charged season of political sound-bites, such Lazy Labels seem to be flying everywhere!  What we notice about "Lazy Labels" is that they seem to be a convenient way to suppress complex topics you don't actually understand, don't want to examine, or have "already made up your mind about."  The issue with this is that their use diminishes your effectiveness as a vision-focused leader. Let me explain. Lazy Labels often have the effect of "shutting things down" like diagloue and conversations. If you stop dialogue, healthy inquiry, and curiosity-based listening with one of those quick labels/statements, you and those around you, will never learn more about each others' knowledge, perspectives and feelings. In fact your brain has a mechanism to be sure you don't learn anything that disagrees with your Lazy Label.  You won't be learning anything new about the subject at all.  You will only see evidence that agrees with you. As we have written about often, we believe this is the era of collaborative leadership. We need each other's skills, competencies, knowledge and perspective now more than ever, so shutting yourself and/or your team members down is dangerous.

Lou Tice of The Pacific Institute in Seattle, WA teaches about "scotomas" which are our blindness to data that doesn't match our beliefs about the world.  (Scotomas are literally an area of diminished vision within the visual field, a blind spot. It comes from the Greek word skotos (to darken) and means a spot on the visual field in which vision is absent or deficient.) What we are talking about here are "mental scotomas," meaning a figurative blind spot in a person's psychological awareness, the person being unable to gain insight into or to understand their mental problems; lack of insight. There are many great examples of how we can't see things right in front of us that we are not open to.  A common example is when you get a new car and then suddenly see similar models everywhere. Where were they yesterday? 

I am going to suggest that the scotomas created by your Lazy Labels protect you from the discomfort or flat out fear of stepping into the unknown. After all, if you drop the Lazy Label and actually engage in a real dialogue about a subject with someoone, you may hear things that may make you uncertain, uncomfortable, or downright scared. If you open up to, and actually consider ideas, perspectives, and data that differ from your previous ideas, you will be in unknown territory.  You may even be permanently changed by the interaction. 

If that happens, you might find yourself in a complex web of relationships and agreements built on who you were and how you thought before you opened up in this new dimension.  Before you even get the chance to find your new footing you will have to get to work in new conversations with many people.  You might even run into resistance, mocking or rejection.  (No one ever said leadership growth would be easy...)

Even if you believe you are more evolved than I am describing, what about the folks that work with and for you?  Are you getting a sense of how some of your great ideas for change may land with some of them at times? Do members of your team react to you with Lazy Labels?

We have posted on a number of occasions about being present, being with the unknown (courage), and making the choice to work from a shared Yonder Star, (or shared vision).  In a recent post we looked at the assertion that "anything you can't be with owns your life." Now we are upping that challenge.  We are asking you to look newly under your Lazy Labels when you hear them come out of your mouth and encourage those around you to do the same. 

If you are willing to get serious about kicking yourself into a new learning orbit, start making lists of Lazy Labels you have for family members, people and programs at work, "the government," community servants, religious groups, scientific data and theories, etc., etc.  Engage with and learn from people on the other side of those Lazy Labels. Be intentionally slow to understand. In this era of "faster, faster, faster' it will be a challenge, but it will be worth it.

Leadership: What You Can’t Be With Owns Your Life

In her November 5, 2009 blog post entitled, “Courage is a decision we make every day”, Seattle-based speaker and author Nancy D. Solomon draws a distinction between courage and deliberate courage. 

Nancy defines deliberate courage as “...an attitude or a frame of mind; it’s a way of being in the world where the intention behind our actions points in a singular direction—to our authenticity.  Yes, real courage is the willingness, the intention, the ambition of being authentic; of dropping pretense, ego and arrogance in favor of truth, transparency and transformation.”

While we use different language in our book “Accelerate: High Leverage Leadership for Today's World” to get at these "distinctions in being," I was immediately sparked and moved into reflection by reading Nancy’s wonderful definition.  To me, in the phrase ‘the intention behind our actions points in a singular direction,” the intention that is being pointed to is your ‘Yonder Star’ (which we define as your vision, mission, and purpose).  The authenticity she speaks of is an absolute prerequisite for real, meaningful progress in fulfilling your Yonder Star.

The biggest detractors from that pursuit are our fears and circumstances, (see our Leadership Choice Point model and related discussion in "Accelerate"). We're not talking about any old circumstances, since, after all, circumstances are all around us all the time.  Specifically, we are referencing the circumstances to which we give over our power. When circumstances have power your ability to be an effective leader and really, your ability to lead at all are significantly hampered.

It’s the “I can’t do that because of ...[insert person, place, or thing du jour]. " It’s the circumstances that seem to justify playing small or not doing anything at all. It’s the distraction that jumps up in the middle of a situation where deliberate courage would be required to keep moving you forward and yet the circumstance seems to require “taking a breather,” “handling another responsibility,” or simply “shutting down."

The toughest of all is the circumstance you simply can’t face. This is the one that runs the show instead of your dedication to your Yonder Star. 

Deliberate courage is required in this case. What this means is letting the situation "be," and giving up the meaning you were putting on it. The moment you give circumstances power, you have lost yours.  The circumstance owns your life unless and until you give it up and let it be. 

So where in your life are there circumstances to which you are obsessively attached or feel anxiety when you think about them?  Perhaps you spend time talking with others about it, (time you could have been working on your Yonder Star).  Right now I hear lots of our clients who are frozen in inaction by the economic conversations, the political wrangling, or the pace of global change. Some get all caught up in family and relationship drama, and are some are enfeebled by a grieving cycle.  I mean no disrespect and I am not asserting that these things aren’t “real.” I am saying that giving your power over to any such conversation blocks you from choice and powerful action towards your Yonder Star.  Letting go of your attachment, letting it be, and deliberate courage are the antidote.

Try identifying three circumstances, beliefs, or relationships that you have been saying you can’t change, can’t stand, or always upset you.  Ask yourself if you are willing to let go?  What would be lost if you did?  How much of your time would be freed up? What power would you gain? What joy and satisfaction might be available to you and those around you?  What return might be available from devoting your newfound time and energy to fulfilling your Yonder Star?  How about getting to work?!

(Footnote: Apologies to whoever it was that first spoke the line that is my title today.  I have no idea where I got it, I rely on it often for my own freedom, and I greatly appreciate the gift.)

Yonder Star: Dare to Dream The Impossible Dream

During a conversation with one of our CEO clients this morning, we saw more deeply into something that I’ve been puzzling about for a long time that was both helpful and a bit entertaining for him.  My puzzle has been ‘what makes it so hard for most of us to fully articulate and then share our real dreams with those around us? ‘ What came clear out of our conversation is that there is great personal risk in fully speaking a dream, even to yourself.  Our histories, (which we fondly refer to metaphorically at 2130 Partners as "File Cabinets"),  have lots of evidence stored in them about things that haven’t turned out, limiting beliefs, and circumstances that will prevent success.  These "historical files" may well be aggregated under the section tab called "Impossible."

Even getting close to speaking about really big dreams often brings up despair and resignation, given the weight of evidence in most people's "File Cabinets" against these dreams ever coming true.

To avoid the risk and pain of certain failure, people often start to speak predictions, which are dramatically reduced versions of real dreams. These reductions are ones that can likely be realized and if they don't work out, won’t hurt very much.  These reduced dreams can usually be shared with others without fear of ridicule or rejection. Some of us even predict, and work hard to produce more of the same in our lives, since we know we survived our past o.k. - the known is less frightening than the unknown.  (A note: Predictability -  that’s the middle line of our Leadership Choice Point Model for those of you who have done our programs or read our book.)

So what would really happen if you started sharing the biggest, boldest, riskiest dream for your life that you possibly stand to say out loud? What if you shared it with friends, trusted advisors, and as many others as you can?  What if you used the process to discover the worst of what you are afraid will happen if you fall short? Since much of our file cabinets contain beliefs and decisions made in childhood, ask your adult self if you can stand this. 

We would suggest that if you do this investigation, the worst case scenario will be something like this: everyone is gathered at your funeral and, when it’s time for your eulogy, the speaker enumerates all the ways you failed to reach your goals and dreams.  The audience breaks out in laughter that turns to boos.  They are kicking you out of the club!  They are going to go off to play without you! Worse, someone shoots a video of the whole scene on their Flip camera and puts it on YouTube for the whole world to see.  Soon the whole world is laughing at what a failure you are.

When written out it seems ludicrous doesn't it? Could the worst case really be anywhere near that bad? Is something like this really what you are afraid of at some deep, dark level?

Is it trulyworth it to sell yourself and your life short for some fears, that when faced, are so unlikely to come true? Are you ready to chase this boogieman out from under your bed and start sharing your bold goals and dreams?

Leadership: How Much "Would" Would a Wood Chuck Chuck?

This twist on an old tongue twister is a light-hearted access to something we have been noticing more and more recently. What we are seeing is a phenonmenon of  clients "speaking in woulds."  Instead of speaking in a direct and declarative way, e.g. “I’d say it’s time to deal with that topic, take action, etc. we are hearing people say “What I would say about that topic is...”  It seems to have become a fairly common way to speak in meetings and such, yet it leaves me wondering what is actually going on with the speaker? It seems very similar to when people speak about a personal experience using "you" to explain it. For example, “well, you know, when you’re cold and tired...” except they are speaking about their own hiking adventure or whatever.  Whether you are "speaking in woulds" or "speaking in yous," in both cases you are subconsciously distancing yourself from your own experience and turning a valuable opportunity for real connection and sharing into just distant story or removed opinion. 

The issue for leaders is that if you are speaking in a distant or disconnected fashion your team and co-workers feel it and know it. In order to be able to follow a leader in a truly committed and positive way, teams need to feel some level of safety. (Mind you, we know there are many leaders who are followed by using a bully stick and that's not the type of leadership we are talking about here.) 

If you are going to really lead you must declare yourself. You must be able to put a stake in the ground. This does not mean being aggressive, antagonistic or being a bully. It means being clear about your point-of-view and being able to articulate it clearly from a place of being open, present and connected with those to whom you are speaking.

Take a minute to self-observe. Have you been a "would-chuck?"  When you hear a “what I would say...” come out of your mouth, what's going on?  What we believe is that it boils down to the level of safety within a group so how safe do you feel with the group you are with?  How confident are you of your own authentic perspective on the matter?  Are you sending up a “trial balloon” to see if it gets shot down?  After all, if it does, it was only what you "would say," not anything you really said with your own heart and soul and commitment behind it.  No one would expect to hold you to a mere trial balloon would they?

To raise the stakes and accelerate the action in your conversations, try cleaning up your speaking by using "I" statements without "woulds" and other caveats. Say what you really mean with commitment behind it.  You may notice the “pucker factor” goes up when you speak this way.  So will the productivity and effectiveness of your interactions.

One word about self-observation. We all have to make it on our own 99% of the time, even if we have one or more great coaches and we’re regularly in courses and programs for personal development.  This means, to gain the leverage we want in our leadership conversations, we will be self-coaching most of the time or just repeating our regular level of effectiveness.  Self-coaching means listening to the words that come out of your mouth and noticing how they land with others. You must learn to recognize your impact and, as we have said before, "the emotional wake" you leave behind. (Credit again to Fierce, Inc. for the "emotional wake" terminology.)  

When you can hear it/see it happening in the moment, only then will you actually have a real choice to shift. You will have a real moment to coach yourself to high leverage leadership.

Dwight and Suzanne Frindt Featured in Lighthouse Consulting Article

The work of 2130 Partners is featured in this article by Dana Borowka of Lighthouse Consulting. Recently, we have had a number of conversations with CEOs and key executives regarding what they are planning for their businesses for 2011. We have found two categories of individuals. Those that have a vision through listening to others in the market place, reaching out for support, gathering industry data, looking for trends and opportunities. The other group is totally focused on overhead reduction, darting around and focusing on the bad news in the world, taxes, health bills, and any information that they can grab onto to help justify why they are so scared.

Here is the Question for the Day

Which category do you fit into? Your answer will determine how your company is doing today and will be doing in the future. Those that think they know everything are closing themselves off from amazing opportunities.

Certainly all companies need to be constantly looking at overhead and keeping up with the news. However, when the focus is fear driven then our thoughts begin to justify our fears. That wastes time as it creates the continual loop of fear, depression, anxiety, etc.

The group that is forward thinking has a completely different outlook on life. That’s not to say that they don’t have concerns but rather they are using this time to plan ahead, remain clear headed and open to ideas. That is the key – to be still enough in order to listen. Then act on what we are seeing as immediate and future potential for new products and services, improvement in retention of current business as well as ideas for gaining additional market share.

Your focus will tell you immediately where you stand! First, we will explore leadership and how to deal with the fear. Then we’ll share what a group of business owners did that has separated them from many other companies.

How to Become a Vision-Focused Leader

The answer is leadership. It is time to become a vision-focused leader around whom issues can be raised and resolved productively. That’s the view of Suzanne and Dwight Frindt, the founders of 2130 Partners, a leadership development and education firm that facilitates focused vision, inspired teams, and sustained commitment for its clients and co-authors of Accelerate: High Leverage Leadership for Today’s World.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Are your conversations with your team generating the results you want?
• Does your team successfully raise and resolve issues relevant to business success?
• Can you identify and deal with emotional upsets, in both yourself and others?

Exactly what is this leadership that is vision-focused? "We love Warren Bennis’ definition: 'Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it,'" says Suzanne Frindt. "Our approach is the same whether we are working with individuals or with entire leadership teams. We believe the greatest opportunities are created by the development of people and action in a coordinated direction. We assert that the only sustainable strategies engage the heart and soul and are simultaneously grounded in sound business practices."

Power of Shared Vision

In a 1996 article in the Harvard Business Review entitled "Building Your Company’s Vision," Jim Collins and Jerry Porras said that companies that enjoy enduring success have a core purpose and core values that remain fixed while their strategies and practices endlessly adapt to a changing world. The rare ability to balance continuity and change—requiring a consciously practiced discipline—is closely linked to the ability to develop a vision.

"Without a vision, what is the point?" says Suzanne Frindt. "A Yonder Star unleashes the energy to galvanize yourself and your employees so you can achieve phenomenal things."

When group members share a vision, it creates an opportunity for totally different conversations between a manager and members of their team. Focus on the shared vision creates alignment and provides a powerful context for creating mission, strategic initiatives, objectives, goals, roles, and finally all the way down through action plans.

Being a manager means making choices. At any moment in time you have a decision to make. Suzanne urges that when it comes time to make a decision being present in the moment, not on automatic pilot, is essential to the quality and relevance of the decision. You can then make the choice based on your Yonder Star, your shared vision of something to which you aspire, versus more of the same or your fear of some worst-case scenario.

"Worries are about envisioning a worst-case scenario, what you fear most," says Suzanne Frindt. "Whatever we envision is affecting us right now. What we envision impacts us in this moment. There are consequences for managing based on fears that you may not want. Your Yonder Star is the shared vision you aspire to. The star is what you envision, and what you envision shapes both the present moment and the quality of your choices about your actions."

Something else she recommends avoiding is being past-focused. This is when you make decisions based solely on what you have done in the past. Instead of having an inspiring vision for your team, all you are working for with a past based focus is attempting to minimize perceived risk and making incremental improvements.

"Many companies are past-focused when they do strategic planning," says Suzanne Frindt. "What did the company do last year and then let’s add 10 percent or 20 percent. We are all tempted to try hard to make yesterday look like today. Or if we didn’t like yesterday, then we try to make it different or better."

She adds that only by having a vision, a Yonder Star, can teams create breakthroughs to unprecedented results. Equally important is that it is a shared vision, one that is based on shared values and shared operating principles. This is how you create an environment for real collaboration.

Overcoming Emotional Barriers

 "The ability to identify and clear upsets, in myself and others, is the single most significant key to productivity gains in our economy today," says Dwight Frindt. "We have asked our executive-leadership clients a simple question: 'What time could you go home if everyone in the company simply came to work, did their jobs, and went home?' The answer used to surprise us until it kept being repeated. On average, our clients say, ‘Between 10:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.'"

That begs a second question. If so many executives claim they could go home before lunch if everyone just showed up and did their work, what’s taking so much of our leaders' time? The Frindts' clients tell them flat out: distress, commonly known as upsets. The most time-consuming part of their job is managing the distressed interactions within their teams so that those teams can actually get to the business at hand.

"Even if executives will never be able to consistently leave by noon, it is entirely reasonable for them to expect to save at least two hours of their time, every day. Alternatively they could increase their productivity 15–30%" says Dwight Frindt.

That’s nearly 500 extra hours a year leaders can devote to creative thinking, visioning, and strategizing rather than on repairing relationships and soothing bruised egos. At the opportunity cost of most executives’ time, that amounts to very substantial savings. Of course, the same can be said for everyone in the organization. An inordinate amount of productive time and payroll dollars and worse yet, opportunities, are lost daily, monthly and annually to the distraction caused by unresolved emotional distress.

Replacing that time, energy, and resource loss is of paramount importance. Doing so can create a culture that is both highly productive and emotionally resilient and rewarding. It requires a fundamental, transformative shift in two steps: 1) fewer emotionally driven issues in the workplace; and 2) leaders and their team members becoming self-sufficient in handling emotional distress issues when they occur.

"Let’s clarify what we mean by emotional distress," says Dwight Frindt. "We’re using the term to summarize a wide range of reactions that temporarily disable people with regard to thoughtful and productive behavior. These reactions can vary from mild frustration to full-blown anger, and include embarrassment, sadness, impatience, agitation, worry, and fear. In each case the person is left in a condition where, whether realized or not, they are acting as if their very survival is threatened."

The Causes of Emotional Distress

The Frindts' studies and their clients' experiences make it clear that the most common root causes of workplace emotional distress are 1) the perception that a promise has been broken (usually by leadership); 2) when positive intentions "fail"; and 3) when commitments seem thwarted. In addition to these three internal triggers, there are many times when personal distress is brought to the workplace from the rest of the person’s life. These other sources can be especially difficult to address, due to varying perspectives on what constitutes personal-professional boundaries.

The impact on the productivity and organizational effectiveness of people attempting to work while "stressed out" (or surrounded by others who are) is enormous. Yet it’s been the Frindts’ observation that most leaders overlook this as the place to start any efforts in business improvement. Most are far more comfortable with cost cutting, process development, process improvement, reorganizing, or some other business change that does not directly address the human dimension.

Long Term Vision & Working the Plan

Back in 2006/2007, a group of business owners saw the writing on the wall regarding the long term economic change. While some people thumbed their noses at the possibility and buried their heads in the sand… purely out of fear. The forward looking group sought feedback from others who had been through similar business cycles and discovered the following ideas:

• Create your vision: The goal is to have a long range vision for your company.
• Think outside your box: What else can you provide? What other opportunities can you look at? What are some other possibilities that will help others to fulfill their vision?
• What is needed: Listen to the market place and offer valuable services.
• Know your numbers: Where are you and where are you going?
• Work the plan: Develop measurable marketing, sales, financial, internal operations plans then execute and don’t wait. This avoids waste and preserves valuable resources. Through proper planning the dollars can be used to gain market share while other organizations could be financially drained and in a constant state of fear! The forward business group took a three year outlook and developed various action plans and worked the plan.
• Be on the lookout for top "A" and "B" players for hiring top people who have vision.
• Team vision: Have clear goals and objectives for all staff members.
• For new hires at all levels do the most thorough interviewing based on 30-60-90-180-12 month goals.
• Do in-depth work style and personality assessment testing to get a clear picture of who you are about to bring aboard to best manage the individuals so they can be successful.
• Maintain a collaborative team environment where everyone can provide input to create internal efficiencies, all are listening to customer and market needs, and respond in a timely way so your company is always engaged as the business environment has needs.

This is the time to be moving forward by offering fresh ideas, solutions, and support that will add value to all those you come in contact with and in return your business will thrive!

To find out more about these topics you can read our book, Cracking The Personality Code by visiting www.lighthouseconsulting.com. Or if you’d like to find out about the various workshops we provide to help your organization lead into the future visits www.crackingthepersonalitycode.com. We are looking forward to hearing from you.

We offer monthly Open Line web conferences on topics ranging from creating a collaborative environment, how to offer incentives to staff during challenging time, and how to turn fear into strength. We will be having a global futurist as a guest – so please join us. Visit www.lighthouseconsulting.com for a list of our programs.

Permission is needed from Lighthouse Consulting Services to reproduce any portion provided in this article. © 2010

If you would like additional information on this topic or others, please contact your Human Resources department or Lighthouse Consulting Services LLC, 3130 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 550, Santa Monica, CA  90403 & our website: www.lighthouseconsulting.com

Lighthouse Consulting Services, LLC provides a variety of services, including in-depth work style assessments for new hires & staff development, team building, interpersonal & communication training, career guidance & transition, conflict management, workshops, and executive & employee coaching.  To order the book, "Cracking the Personality Code" please go to www.crackingthepersonalitycode.com