Saying no sometimes get you further

When the former CEO of a Fortune 100 company calls, people do what he wants especially if your a new venture backed hi-tech firm, or maybe not. The President, Bob, of this hi-tech firm, knew this particular CEO/Venture Capitalist who was a long standing investor in his company. But this CEO now turned venture capitalist had not yet invested in the Company's last round of funding.

One day the CEO Venture Cap guy calls Bob to suggest that he meets with these guys at an Ivy-league university that are working on some really interesting related technology. Bob after speaking with his partner decided that they would have to pass on the meeting. They had determined that it was not in line with their vision and mission for the business. After Bob turned the CEO's offer down, he immediately said, "Right Answer." And decided to invest in the company. Not only because it is a great new technology but because he knew it was being lead with vision.

How many ideas have you turned down or not even explored because it falls outside of your vision? How many people are judging you because of your desire to run after all the bright shiny objects?

Being totally professional may not be what to stive for

Last night at the Marc Cohn concert (wrote "walking in Memphis") he had such a personable way of being on stage. He literally wrote two songs on the fly that had amusings to him and the audience based on the interactions that were taking place.

It got me thinking about what is happening in the advertising world. With the white markers over pictures. The informality of sharing ideas. A book a recently completed call, On the back of a napkin discusses how presentations on the back of a napkin can be even more powerful than those elaborate power point presentations. The reason for this seems to be that with the advent and ubiquitous availability of technology to edit and change photography and enhance presentation perfect can be done by so many. Having a great power point (perhaps I am overstating this for effect) is not too difficult. Know we must return to our art looking like a craft. It seems that you can only do this if you have the expertise within your domain and the respect of your field (those who can appreciate your competence). If the warm-up singer although good, attempted to be this playful it would have ended up likely on deaf ears, he may have had domain expertise, he did not have the credibility in the field yet. It is only that Marc has such a loyal fan base and thus credibility with fans within field is high. He also had to have the skills from learning his craft within his domain to be able to both deliver and create on the fly.

Have you built the credibility you need in your field? Have you reach the level of expertise in your field or business to create on the fly?

The Three Jesse Test

When faced with a difficult situation in education, or politics Howard Gardner offered the following suggestion of the "Three Jesse Test". Take what ever the issue is and observe in your mind how Jesse Helms, Jesse Ventura, and Jesse Jackson would react to what ever the particular situation is. Because these three never seem to come to agreement on anything it will give you a great indication on how the different audiences may react to your positions or comments.

In the research I have done on exceptional leaders, most all of them have a great ability to observe their environment, culture, organization and situations from multiple perspective. The "Three Jesse Test" is a concrete way to look at different situations in very extreme perspectives.

President Bill Clinton tells a little known story about Nelson Mandela

This week President Clinton met with a small group at the Aspen Ideas Festival. He shared with the group why he holds Nelson Mandela in such high esteem. Nelson Mandela when set free after spending a third of his life imprisoned, he took a walk one last walk around the grounds February 11th, 1990, before he road off. The walk for him was to let go of his hatred of those who had imprisoned him. He new he could not walk through those gates with this anger or he would still be a prisoner. If he had not he knew his hatred would imprison his him for the rest of his life.

Many people know that when he celebrated his freedom he invited the guards that watched over him to the celebration. What many don't know as he rose to power he put those that imprisoned him on his cabinet. He knew it was the only way to bring the country together. This reminded me of Lincolns decision to put together his team of rivals when he was elected to office.

Do you have the capacity to let go of those hateful feeling of those who have hurt you? Do you have the emotional strength to put people close to you who have strongly opposing views? How would you measure your courage to face such adversaries in such a positive light?

Agassei and Graf teach us how to take risk beyond the comfort zone

The other day I had an entry of The First Penguin Award for those who take the biggest risks. When we learn to be great competitors sometimes the risks don't even seem so big. Recently Andre Agassi and Stefanie Graf who demonstrated there competitive skills on the court are giving the world another lesson in moving out of their comfort zone and off the court to building lifestyle developement resorts. Their first venture will be with Fairmont Tamarack at the Tamarack Resort in Donnoellly, Idaho. This is not a small step off the iceberg but a large one estimated at over $300 million. The big step is that this is not just opening a resort but being part of creating a community from start in a remote spot where celebraties have been coming to avoid the media.

When have you stepped out of your comfort zone as a leader from something you know well. In Agassi and Graf's case it is hard to be world class in tennis when you are moving into your late 30s. They obviously have been planning the step for some time. We all have changes in our careers and organizations that should cause us to look for the new, new thing. If you sit with your head in the sand like an ostrich you will likely loose your footing as the leader. When will you or your organization win the First Penguin Award?

Do your employees need to know how you pulled the rabbit out of the hat?

A magician practices his craft for years and when he is ready he shows it to his patrons in hopes to mesmerize them with the art of pulling this cute little rabbit out of his hat and making it look easy. As leaders we are often engaged in difficult synthesis of complex situations trying to determine a direction and vision for a project, department, or the organization as a whole. We spend many hours asking questions broadly inside and outside the organization to help create perspective and to begin to align the many different world views that typically exist in and around any organization among its stakeholders.

Unlike the magician the leader does not only have spectators, (they certainly have that, as well as pundents) they have followers who will need to pick up on the leaders vision and carry it through to fruition.

In my work as a coach I have an opportunity to gain great insight into the many things a leader is considering at any given time. Some of those ideas, stories, concepts, may last for many months or years before they feel they have, a well considered approach to whatever they are dealing with in their organization.

Many will craft along with some on their team a communication strategy laying out this chosen path. Some lay it out humbly while others sell the ideas, stories, concepts with great gravitas. Regardless the the way they do it the one common denominator that seems to catch them off guard frequently is how long it takes for them to get buy in to what they consider is a well considered plan.

That is until they remember how long it took them to rap their heads around the ideas, stories, or concept. There seems to be such a gap in translating how long it takes the thought, inspiration to be considerate to an idea and for it to gain weight in our own mind, and the time that you as a leader take to allow these thoughts of the mind to develop in your teams or organizations mind.
Questions you might ask your self are:

• How long have you been developing the mental model that you have been contemplating?


• How different is this idea from the current situation?


• How much resistance is the idea going to have in the minds of those that you will need to gain alignment within your organization that you are leading?


• What can you do to eliminate the barriers to their resistance without loosing ground on the idea, story, and concept?


• What will accelerate the acceptance of the idea, story, and concept?

If you agree that it is the leaders job to get your co-workers to do what you want them to do, and they have to want to do it, ethically. Then as a leader you will have to evaluate how to get them on board and bring reality of timing into the mix. If you don’t you may loose personal strength on your goals because you inaccurately evaluated the time that it would take to close the gap.

Where are you and your employees most productive?

When you see someone walking in the airport with the little Bluetooth bud hanging from their ear and sounding very businesslike, do they seem like they are making things happen. You know the dialogue, “we are 150% over booked, we will need to get this issue resolved tomorrow or we will lose the deal.” No doubts if you are a business person today who travels, you have had similar conversations.

There is a whole language for our productive work life away from the office. If you get on the plane you will call the time from 10,000 feet (when you can start your laptop or other electronic devices) on takeoff to 10,000 feet before landing (when all toys are put away) “Air Time,” that is when you are likely the most productive in your work life. No one can find you, no phones ringing, no one stopping in your office interrupting while you were working on a document – just undisturbed, focused time.

You have likely made calls from your car – they call this “windshield time”. This is when you are productive while driving from one meeting to another. If you a lawyer travelling from your office to a clients you would call this double billing. Then again if you were a lawyer moving from one client to another and talking on the phone with yet another one, this is when you are triple billing. Billing the client you’re leaving, bill the client you’re going to and the one you are talking to on the phone. Don’t laugh too hard, I have known lawyers who bill like this – remember I am a non-fiction writer.

Perhaps you made an important call while you were in your hotel room while lying in bed. They must call this “Bed Time,” not to be confused with that time during the evening when you put your kids to bed.

We have become such productive creatures. Technology has allowed us to blur the lines of work and non-work life. This is not really advancement, I would imagine, to our ancestors long ago there was little distinction between work life and home life. It was all about survival. We certainly can’t say this blurring today is about survival.

When you know you can be this productive while on the move, how come we don’t see more activities were we can enjoy our activities away from the office and still accomplish our objectives? Meaning couldn’t we think of our office as more mobile and less of a ball and chain for us to be tethered to. For about eight years I had an office that over looked the north shore of Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. The lake is about three miles in circumphrance. Or about a 50 minute walk. I can only think about a handful of times I would have my meetings while walking the lake. Either get the other person to come along for a walk or do what we all do in the airport and hop on a cell phone for a conference call while walking. What is it about us that make us believe we are any less productive in non-work environments than sitting behind a desk at the office?

This notion of finding more flexibility in the work place and thinking differently about time and productivity is getting a lot of press. Two women in particular Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson who helped establish this movement called ROWE “Results-Only Work Environment” at Best Buy. There recent book Work Sucks – And How To Fix It is all about this phenomenon. Check out their website at culturerx.com.

Are you holding your team more accountable for what time they arrive or stay to each day or more about the objectives that they are accountable for within your organization? Are they mutually exclusive? Where do you fair on this topic?

What can you learn from a mime?

As a leader we often do not see ourselves as we are. The question is what you would do if you got solid feedback to demonstrate what your behaviors were really like. Not the feedback that comes with a sanitized 360 instrument that insures you don’t get the tough love because of the firms concerns over law suites, from indigestible and unwanted assessments of a leaders behaviors. The Mayor of Bogotá may have provided great creative solution to this situation. He provided such feedback to help create a safer place to drive for the citizens of his community.
It was apparent to the Mayor that like many of us the citizens of Bogotá were happy to judge each other but not themselves. People in the community were not paying attention to the road signs. So he hired Mimes to mimic the drivers’ behavior to show them what their behavior looked like when they were mirrored back to them. When drivers behaved poorly in traffic they would get a reflection back.
What if there was a mime in your board room. What would they pick-up on, that your team has known for years but lack the confidence to tell you? How would you fair the silent ridicule of the mimes humor? Would you find it funny, would you feel embarrassed of your behaviors, would you feel shameful? How has power evaded your view of yourself?

Are you diving into the deep-end first?

Penguins natural predator is the Leopard Seal. Penguins feed on fish and they must enter the water to feed. It is there that the Leopard Seal hunt the penguins especially when they are alone. There must always be a first of the team of penguins who is willing to initiate the dive into the water first. Going first is very risky in the life of a penguin, because they will be alone if only for a moment. It is in that moment that the Leopard Seal will find his/her dinner. Because of the risks involved the Penguins function as a team. The first one leads and the others do a kind of ritual dance to signal their readiness to jump in together soon after the first one dives in to the water. They jump together because they are much safer being together than they are swimming alone. Just as it is dangerous for the lead penguin to go first it can be equally hazardous for the penguin to go last. Jumping in together is not only about working together it is about surviving.

This behavior is not new to human organizations. Nachshon, according to the Book of Exodus and the Jewish Medrash initiated the the parting of the red sea by walking into the sea before it parted. His name is synonymous with being an initiator.

Todays organizations can't afford to sit on there past accomplishments. Nor can the leaders leading them. It is easy to become comfortable with playing it safe and not initiating new ideas that have a great deal of risk to you as the leader if you believe in them. Just as important is the ability as a leader to make it safe for others to lead and take risks. It may be your courage to allow others to take risks that demonstrates your leadership. Nachshon was not the leader of the jewish slaves out of bondage, that was Moses role. And yet it was Nachson that initiated the parting of the Red Sea by entering the sea first. Some biblical scholars say this is what prompted god to split the seas. God was waiting for the people to initate a solution before s/he would inter-seed.

Professor Randy Pausch from Carnegie Mellon who wrote, The Last Lecture use to give "The First Penguin Award" to those in his class who took the biggest gamble in trying new ideas or technology. Are you rewarding gambles within your organization, or are your words, values, tones, and behaviors keeping greatness bottled up?

How are you as the lead penguin - do you find yourself taking additional risks for the team to safeguard them against the hazards of the free market system. This could be simply protecting your team from the hazards of internal corporate politics or the natural forces of competition. Are you willing to take the high risk of asking the unpopular questions in uncomfortable settings? If you own the business, or have made it to the top of the hierarchical pyramid, are you still pushing as hard as you did in the early years against the status quo? Being a leader within a team, organization, market, or industry is risky business. The good news for you is that it is a lot safer, most of the time, in our organizational life, than it is for the lead penguin. Perhaps it is time to try giving away "The First Penguin Award" in your company.

Leadership Defined

Leadership sets direction, puts the right people in the right positions, and ensures resources are allocated to the highest priority, while engaging people to perform at their highest levels to maximize results. And doing it ethically.

We accomplish this by asking quesions.

Team Performance - Are you working like a team or a group of individuals?

This past weekend my wife and I along with some close friends, road in the MS150. This was a 150 mile ride from Duluth, Minnesota to Minneapolis Minnesota. We trained for approximately four weeks (I would suggest to anyone thinking about this six weeks would have been better).

Throughout our ride our friends were both behind us and in front of us. Mostly in front of us. The only coordination between us and our friends was an occational check in with one another about energy and if we were going to stop at the next rest stop. What you could not help notice while riding for six hours a day, was these energized teams of bikers, coordinated in both their communication with one another and their syncranisity of pedling among the team members. It was amazing watching them speed by us, yelling out quite appropriately, "On your left!" Most all the teams used all the biking language that was taught to us on our way up to the event. To them the communication was essential. To us novices it seemed only a good idea.

As we watched team after team pass us we began to gain curiousity about how and why they do what they do. It seems these biking teams work a bit like geese flying in the air where the leader of the team takes on the toughest position because of air resistance. The others find that they are enveloped into free air in which they gain speed and ease the resistance. Some of these teams like geese will change out leaders when the leader becomes more fatieged, while others will have the leader stay in the position for the entire ride.

As interesting, is that the team must set its pace against the slowest rider not against the strongest. If it set its pace against the fastest the team would fall apart or spread out and loose all the benefits they gain from acting as a group. Much like the novice bike riding group we had formed to paritispate in the MS150.

No matter how much you are driven to meet a certain time as an individual you start and end together. When one of your team members pops a tire, the entire team stops to help. How many organizations do this for their team members? How many of our organizations work with the entire group in mind rather than working like a group of individuals coming together to collectively to accomplish something. Is your team functioning like an effiecient team or a group of individuals?

Common Misconceptions Harm Executive Coaching

1. “I don’t have issues and don’t need coaching.”
   Many individuals think coaching is a sign of a shortcoming rather than a key tool for improving performance or building a business. Coaching as problem solving is perhaps the oldest misconception and, fortunately, it is fading away.
2. "I don’t want others to know I’m being coached.”
   Instead of being kept a secret, coaching should involve others in the process, including superiors, colleagues and subordinates. Many coaches begin with a 360-degree assessment, which is an open process by nature. Openness can foster commitment.
3. “Coaching is now a standard process.”
   Despite efforts to standardize coaching, there are as many approaches as there are coaches, and this will not change. Some coaches continually are developing insights into the process, and it might be wise to seek one who is on the learning edge rather than a coach whose ideas are set.
4. “Women don’t get coaching.”
   Two out of three people who get coaching are probably men, and that reflects their proportionate representation at the managerial and executive levels, but this has been changing steadily. Today, at least one in three of those getting coaching are women, and their presence will only become greater.
5. “Coaching is just for high potentials.”
   In fact, more people are seeking coaching, no matter whether they have been identified as high potentials by senior management. Everyone has barriers, and coaches can help identify them and build bridges.
6. “A coach needs to be certified.”
   Certification might reassure your employer, but it is no guarantee of professionalism, or whether it will be the right fit for your needs. Instead, consider carefully the business experience a coach brings to the table.
7. “A coach is a kind of therapist.”
   Some coaches approach their mission in this way, but executive coaches increasingly address business issues with a practical eye and do not engage in psychotherapy. Most coaching is about empathy, trust and engagement with the client.
8. “Women should coach women.”
   This is no more true than men ought to coach men. Look for professionalism and business experience, not secondary considerations.
9. “A coach needs to be tough.”
   There is the persistent image of the bullying and badgering coach. While this style might work for some, it is really more essential to have a rapport with a coach. If you are not comfortable, it might be time to find a new coach.
10. “I won’t qualify for coaching.”
    There is no such thing as qualifying for coaching, and neither is there any need to wait for HR or top management to tap someone for this vital support. If an individual wants coaching, then ask for it.

Some coaches have a very directive approach, And the great majority try to help discover what is best for that particular individual. Telling a person what to do won’t develop leadership thinking or skills. Instead, a wise coach asks questions and asks for an invitation to pursue solutions.