Living In Interesting Times

“May you live in interesting times.” I’ve been told this is a Chinese curse. Whether or not this is true may be in question. However, after spending many hours with leaders at different levels of many different organizations, a general consensus has surfaced that we do live in interesting times. 

Some leaders see this as the best of times and revel in the progress that is being made. Others find it an extremely challenging time and believe many key problems are surfacing that have long term implications for their organization and for those they serve. Nevertheless, all of them agree that it is quite an interesting and unique time.

When visiting with all of these different leaders, many whom I have know for quite some time, a common phrase and subject surfaces in our conversation. “These sure are interesting times, Geery. It feels like we are going to be working through an extended trough of chaos.” 

I agree with their analysis. There is quite a bit of work ahead. So, starting today through to the Spring Roundtable in early April, I will be sharing my thoughts weekly with all of you about how to work through an extended trough of chaos during interesting times. 

First, let’s remember that some of the concepts and ideas I will share may seem simple if not simplistic. But experience and research tells us that simple is not always easy. True leadership needs to happen not just during happy times. It needs to happen daily through all sorts of technical problems and adaptive challenges. 

Second, we as leaders need to do our own homework just as much as we need to help others do their homework. A personal review is just as powerful as a company or senior team strategic review. The key is to do this because you understand the importance of it rather than do it just because you read it on a blog or in a book.

Third, during interesting times and when working through an extended trough of chaos, integrity is not negotiable. What you say as a leader and what you don’t say as a leader is always noticed in times like this. How you engage with others and how you work with teams is magnified and examined in great detail. So, the best place to start working and living with integrity is to remember the Grandparent Rule: “Would my grandparents be proud of how I treat others, my team and my family during these interesting and challenging times?” If not, change your behavior. If so, continue on.

I bring up the Grandparent Rule here today because over the course of the last six to nine months I have been visiting with people about integrity. What does it mean? What does it look like? How would you know it if you worked with someone with integrity? 

Over and over again, people have talked to me about their grandparents. Some have said, “My grandfather was a kind man who listened carefully and always treated people with respect.” Others explain to me that “My grandmother was always helping people rather than judging them. She knew that hard times happen even to the best of folks.” And more recently, “My grandparents built a relationship based on love and respect. They role modeled that life can be challenging but it does not have to define who some is on the inside.”

While not all our grandparents lived and worked at this level, there is a large percentage who did and many who currently continue to be people of integrity. What I have realized after much reflection is that these people are people of integrity because they took the time to build and maintain relationships with others. Investing time to make connections made face to face rather than with connectivity, i.e. social media, FaceBook, Instagram, texting, etc., is the foundation of their integrity. They got to know you for you and then showed interest and curiosity as you changed and evolved over time.

This week, remember that simple does not always mean easy. Do your own homework in life’s journey. Think about the Grandparent Rule and spend more time building relationships face to face. We live in interesting times and the trough of chaos will be long, but working and living with the utmost integrity is critical to being the kind of leader who helps people and the organization move forward in a successful manner.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Improving Leadership And Management Is A Daily Process

Recently, I was rereading two articles in preparation for the third session of the 2013 From Vision to Action Leadership Training. In the first article called “What Great Managers Do” by Marcus Buckingham, Harvard Business Review, March 2005, the author states that great mangers “discover what is unique about each person and then capitalize on it. Average managers play checkers, while great managers play chess. The difference? In checkers, all the pieces are uniform and move in the same way; they are interchangeable. You need to plan and coordinate their movements, certainly, but they all move at the same pace, on parallel paths. In chess, each type of piece moves in a different way, and you can’t play if you don’t know how each piece moves. More important, you won’t win if you don’t think carefully about how you move the pieces. Great managers know and value the unique abilities and even the eccentricities of their employees, and they learn how best to integrate them into a coordinated plan of attack.”

Right now, as I work with large and small, for-profit and non profit, organizations, I have a discovered a common problem - too many people in management and leadership positions are playing checkers, not chess. They do not comprehend the importance of, and value to their organization of taking the time to play chess. For them, a successful business is based on every one being efficient in how they execute on their goals. Failure is not an option or a learning experience, and all feedback is one way. Furthermore, there is low psychological safety in the work place, and a high degree of accountability, resulting in no innovation, little effective communication, or respect, plus a tremendous amount of anxiety about the future and change. However, if more of these same leaders were to comprehend and understand the importance of “playing chess”, then we would see greater degrees of commitment, motivation and effort through out the organization.

The second article I read in preparation for the third session of the 2013 From Vision to Action Leadership Training was called ““Helping People Achieve Their Goals” by Marshall Goldsmith and Kelly Goldsmith from Leader to Leader magazine, No. 391, Winter 2006. Here, the two authors explore in-depth the common problems around why people give up on achieving their goals. One problem in particular, from my vantage point as a consultant and executive coach, is rampant in the world of leadership and management at this time period. As they explain, “Managers often confuse two terms that appear to be synonymous but are actually quite different: simple and easy. We want to believe that once we understand a simple concept, it will be easy to execute a plan and achieve results. If this were true, everyone who understood that they should eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly would be in shape. Diet and exercise books are almost always at the top of the best-seller lists. Our challenge for getting in shape--as well as changing leadership behavior--is not understanding, it is doing!”

What we forget as leaders and managers of teams, departments or whole organizations is that short and long term change requires real effort. It does not happen overnight and if it did, I suspect it would not be sustainable. The solution is to better educate your current and your potential, future leaders about leadership, strategic planning and execution, and organizational change. 

With the above in mind, now is the time to sign up these key people for the 2014 From Vision to Action Leadership Training. Through a challenging, interactive curriculum which blends lectures, selected readings, small and large group discussions, and how to skill-building exercises, participants in this four part leadership training gain critical knowledge and skills which improve their ability to work on the whole of the organization rather than just within the organization.  

As many of us know from experience, learning to lead in new and better ways is challenging, particularly for busy leaders. Still, if they understand why this level of learning is important, and how it will be helpful, then they will approach it as a long term investment and development process. As John Maxwell wrote many years ago, “Leadership develops daily, not in a day.”

For more information on how to register for the 2014 From Vision to Action Leadership Training, please click on the following link: http://www.chartyourpath.com/VTA-Leadership-Training.html 

Whether we are learning how to “play chess” rather than checkers, or differentiating between simple and easy, now is the time to prepare more people to become better leaders. The From Vision to Action Leadership Training is a great place to start in 2014.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257