There are three people in particular that you need to be wary of, because you WILL encounter them along the way.  In fact, you’ll see one EVERY DAY.

How can we move these barriers aside, and reach strongly towards our dreams?

Let’s start with Person #1.

The Naysayer

“You can’t do that!”  “Are you out of your mind!”  “No way!”   The Naysayer lives in a bizarro world where nothing gets done, every idea is silly or stupid, and resentment and jealousy are written on their sleeves. I discovered the secret to marginalizing these folks about 25 years ago – at the urging of my first boss, I eliminated the word “CAN’T” from my vocabulary.  Banished it. Cast it off. Once that’s done, an amazing thing happens – you can’t HEAR it on the outside either.  It no longer registers – it’s just there. So when I encounter the Naysayer now, it’s like the “wah wah wahs” you hear on a Peanuts cartoon.

Then, there’s Person #2, a less obvious (but just as dangerous) threat.

The “Frenenvy”

“Oh, that’s interesting…”   “Good luck with that.”   “Geez, I’d like to help, but…..”   The Frenenvy, not to be confused with the “Frenemy”, is someone you know pretty well who is content to let your dreams and ambition essentially “lie there”.  Not a Naysayer, but yet, a person that could “infect” you with the same inertia that they are exhibiting.  It’s one of those 7 deadly sins at work – envy. You are going places, and talking about it. Putting it out there.  And that can make people you know pretty nervous – not about you, but about themselves.  (I know, because earlier in my life I’ve been a Frenenvy). Envy is powerful.  So yes, they stand in your way, but in this case, these persons are your friends, so “the push aside” isn’t necessarily casting them away, or ignoring them.  It’s just that they have issues to work through, so when it comes to your dreams, they just can’t be in that particular glide path.

Which leads us to Person #3, the one you’ll deal with every day (whether you want to or not):

YOU

“I’m scared” “I’m not trusting my instinct” “What if I fail?”    That voice inside your head  -it’s dangerous. It never forgets anything, all the way back to when you messed up in Kindergarten and got called out by the teacher in front of everybody. All those embarrassments and insecurities, buried beneath your dreams. That’s the YOU you need to always be aware of, and the awareness itself it what will save you. Because your instincts ARE good, and as a dreamer, you’ve already taken some of the hardest steps. For us, it’s “coming to terms” with our fear that will keep it at arms length. I wrote a letter to fear that really helped me, and I would encourage you to do the same thing, as crazy as it sounds. Trust yourself,  and all of those internal barriers will fall away.

Here’s to success!!

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“Good Job!”

I used to hear this early in my career and feel pretty satisfied about it – after all, someone was praising me, and succinctly to boot. And hey, who doesn’t want to be praised?

But later on, once I became a business leader myself, I discovered the real and present danger of those two little words.

I first thought that delivering a lot of “good jobs” would help with morale, and spur the team on to greater heights. I was correct on the first part, but oh so totally wrong on the second.

Keep in mind, there’s nothing wrong about appreciating the value of a task completed to your expectations – nothing at all.  That’s what “Thank yous” are for.

The problem comes when your litany of “good jobs” unintentionally stops progress dead in its tracks. Good has suddenly become the new bad.

Here’s the gist of my lesson today:  Leaders CANNOT overpraise work that is just meeting the job description and standards, and nothing more. It sends a signal that “good” is enough, and it can quickly lead to complacency.

This problem can then be made even and dramatically worse by a “regression to the mean” system of annual raises and evaluations, where because everyone is doing a “good job” (since you said so), the standard deviation in the raise pool is way smaller than it should be.

And thus, the financial incentive to do better than “good” disappears, since everyone gets about the same raise.

This “new bad” then gets reinforced by frozen-in-time standards and metrics – achievement numbers that once again represent “good” performance. The bars never get raised, or the assumptions behind the standards challenged.

But at least there’s plenty of opportunity for “good job!”s all around, right?

It’s certainly a pleasant environment to work in, and the essential work is getting done, but something is missing. Something that can push your team and your company beyond the middle of a huge and uncomfortable pack, and into the rarefied air at the top of the heap, where it isn’t very crowded.

Leaders and the teams they lead need to have a passion for greatness.

Leaders HAVE to push for it. Relentlessly. Persistently. Patiently.

And the only way to make it stick is through:

• Expectations that go beyond just “good”
• Standards and metrics that back it up and ask for continuous improvement
• Saving the high praise for exceptional performance
• Better “bell curve” distribution of raises and bonuses
• Talking about the journey to greatness at each and every opportunity

I can tell you from my own experience – once you take on this passion for greatness, and do those things that I’ve outlined here, that success flywheel will start to turn a heck of a lot faster.

Good isn’t good enough in the business world.

It’s time to be great. Let’s go.

Lead well!

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“Terry, don’t you see? A fish stinks from its head down”

It was three months into my maiden voyage as a cable TV executive, at age 27. I was in the middle of going over a laundry list of problems with my boss that had been vexing me for weeks.

They were all coming from one particular region, and because of these problems the region’s financial performance was lagging all the others.

The region’s manager seemed to be on top of things, and was considered a “good guy” and “personable” by all who knew him. My conversations (which at this point were exclusively over the phone) were always fact filled and positive.  “We’ll get better“, he’d promise.

Consequently, I tended to focus more on the problems themselves, and all the nuts and bolts surrounding them. After all, I just came from the public accounting arena as a CPA, which was all about debit and credits, numbers and figures, and processes and controls.

But the problems weren’t getting any better, which is why I decided to visit my boss.

He had been in an executive’s chair for more than 20 years, and it didn’t take long for him to figure out what was going on.  Actually, it took about 2 minutes.

He knew from experience that most problems occur because of failures of leadership – in other words, he knew that to blame the process, or the customer facing staff, or a glitch with the product or service itself, was like treating symptoms instead of finding a cure.

“The fish stinks from the head down”

That mental image really made me sit up in my chair (I’m not a big fan of stinky fish heads).

I had never heard that one before. But I didn’t have to ask my boss what it meant, either.

It was one of the most valuable lessons about leadership, and its importance in a business, I ever got before or since.

A leader’s flaws flow downward, always. And in the 32 years since I had that wonderful mental image of the stinky fish heads, I have found that to be true, time after time after time.

Certainly keep in mind that nobody is without flaws, so it’s a matter of figuring out the ones that “stink” the most, and either correcting them, or, if need be, replacing the leader altogether.

That’s what ended up happening in my case, after that visit to my boss. We replaced that manager, and sure enough, in a few months the problems were resolved.

No more smell.

Yes, leadership is important, and yet, after all my years in this business world, it still never seems to get the attention it deserves in the boardrooms and executive suites. We do a lot of job-specific training and development, but not in the same proportion as leadership training.  We throw a lot of people head first into the water and ask them to swim.

Companies that “get” the image of the stinky fish heads, and devote the time, money and energy towards developing great leaders, are the ones that will thrive, especially in today’s digitally interconnected (and increasingly complicated) world.

We can have all the best products, services, processes, procedures, financial stewardship, talent, and personalities in the world working in our favor, but without the leadership to guide it all,  it just can’t jell.  It won’t sing.  It won’t succeed.

Don’t forget the stinky fish head. I never will.

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But yet, there’s one last thing that you need to do to get it all from “just good” to true greatness.

Yep, it’s gut check time.

How do you really FEEL about this road you’re on?  Are you personally up for the challenge?  It might seem like a strange thing to ask yourself, but the answer is critical.

Why?

Great leadership demands exuberance.

Exuberance is a quality that projects vitality, joy, and enthusiasm for the task at hand. If leaders can show their exuberance in a controlled, personal and authentic way, the resulting effect on the rest of the team can be profound.

It’s the way you show what you think of your job, and your role. If you are exuberant, your team will know that you LOVE your job, and that gives them high hope that they can love their jobs too.

I did this gut check many years ago, and in doing so I discovered that I loved being a more human leader. My need to be good was replaced with a relentless passion to be great.

And so, since that gut check, showing exuberance has never been a problem. Day after day, month after month, and year after year I bound into meeting rooms at any time of the day (or night) full of positive energy, and feeling like I have the best job on earth, showing the way for the group sitting in front of me.

Do you think that attitude makes a big difference? It certainly does.

Of all the feedback I would get from my leadership experiences, my most fulfilling comments were the ones along the lines of “you really inspired me with your energy and enthusiasm“.

Great leadership demands exuberance.

It’s also a very personal thing to put yourself “out there” like that – it can put you in a vulnerable position. That’s why exuberance isn’t a trait you see in every leader.

It takes some intestinal fortitude to bring emotions to the surface like that, but the benefits are well worth the risk.

And besides, exuberance brings something else into play that goes beyond leadership – an enjoyment of life.

Otherwise known as… FUN

(and that’s another “secret benefit” to great leadership  – a heck of a lot of that!)

The late Randy Pausch put it this way in his wonderful book The Last Lecture:

“As I see it, there’s a decision we all have to make, and it seems perfectly captured in the Winnie-The-Pooh characters created by A.A. Milne.  Each of us must decide: Am I a fun-loving Tigger or am I a sad-sack Eeyore. Pick a camp.”

I picked Tigger, and never looked back. That’s why I could (and still can) break into a call and response version of “Bennie and the Jets” in the middle of a staffroom, and it would seem perfectly in context. The smiles would say it all – the underlying message was received loud and clear.

“We’re all in this together, and we’re not only going to succeed, we’re going to enjoy every step of the way.”

Great leadership demands exuberance.

Dig deep inside your own heart, mind, and gut, and make your own decision.  Can you answer the call to greatness and take this last, pivotal step?

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It’s the classic (and critical) business leadership tug of war, and leaders need to be on the winning side, or their business will be banished to the dustbin of mediocrity.

What’s on the opposing sides on this tug of war?  Let’s take a look…..

On one side, there’s the formidable and irresistible  “Done fast”

Because after all, in any business, time is money. Expediency is paramount to greater productivity. More widgets made, more customers served, more money saved.

It’s a world where “good” is good enough, because high volume, low prices, and low cost of goods sold (or services delivered) are the drivers.

Now let’s look at the other side – “Done right”

Here, it’s all about quality. Impeccable quality. Uncompromising quality. That widget is put through a rigorous process that produces a consistently reliable product that delivers over and over and over again. Or the service is delivered with care and precision, without regard to the time it will take, so that the customer isn’t just satisfied, but willing to enthusiastically recommend it to someone else.

This is a world where good is NOT good enough. The target is GREAT. But, prices (and costs) most probably will need to be higher.

Leaders fight this tug of war constantly.  For companies where profit is paramount,  it’s easy to be compelled by the expediency argument – “If we sell more at a cheaper cost, we can get away with lesser quality, and make more money”.

But if the target is higher, then the power shifts to the other side.  That is, if the business leader is focused on complete customer and employee satisfaction, and believes great profits will be a byproduct of that focus, quality becomes the chief concern.

I faced this tug of war in an industry that is typically drawn to the expediency side – cable TV. There was, and still is, a huge pull towards “done fast“.  I won’t soon forget some of the initial discussions I had with fear-filled cable technicians, who had to meet their daily quotas of work for fear of being, in their words, “dinged” by their supervisors.

These technicians were literally leaving jobs unfinished, or badly done, to please their superiors. “Done fast” was winning.

As I became a More Human leader focused on a higher purpose,  I came down firmly on the “done right” side, and with the help of a great core team, began the process of changing the employee mindset.  By doing so we came up with a mantra that became a rally cry:

We will not sacrifice quality on the altar of expediency

It wasn’t without all that the struggle, the gnashing of teeth, and the grunts and sighs – after all, “done fast” had been winning for many many years before our arrival.

But slowly but surely we ultimately prevailed, and we became a better (and more profitable) company.

A few years back I affectionately remember visiting  Hydro Flask, an Oregon maker of insulated water bottles in Bend, OR, who summed up their position on the tug of war with a succinct and effective mantra of their own, very prominently displayed in their meeting room:

Good Enough Sucks

Be More Human, and get on the “done right” side of the classic business tug of war. Your business, your team, and your life, will be the better for it.

Lead well!

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This is a cautionary tale for all aspiring leaders, and a (very painfully) true story……

“They can’t see the scoreboard? What, ARE YOU KIDDING ME????”

That was the bomb that nearly killed my leadership career, just as it was just getting started.

The year was 1991, and I was working for the Washington NFL football team, as an executive overseeing the planning for a new football stadium. I came out to Washington the year before to take this position, after being offered what I thought was a “chance of a lifetime”.

It was an offer that came from my boss at the time (and the owner of the team), who had hired me 3 years earlier to be the VP of Operations of his cable TV company in Los Angeles.

The cable company had just been sold, so the idea of not only escaping the resulting uncertainty, AND also landing safely in a dream position (pro football was my favorite sport, although the Packers were my favorite team), was just too good to pass up.

So I accepted the offer, buried my passion for the Packers, and moved cross-country from Los Angeles to suburban Washington DC.

It was quite the glamorous life for about 7 months, sitting in the owner’s box for home games and getting to meet the DC glitterati, including senators and the vice president – but there was work to be done, and it was all at the whim and direction of one person – my boss, the team owner.

He had a dream –  to build a brand new, state-of-the-art stadium for his team.  And, he wanted to finance it privately, without taxpayer money. For a specific sum of money, NOT to be exceeded.

And so, upon my arrival in Washington, I spent a lot of time working with the architects, vendors and contractors to figure out how to do just that.

I soon discovered that designing a football stadium to fit a tight budget is, like the game of football itself, a game of inches.  A mere one inch of additional legroom for a particular row of seats could cost millions (think about all the additional concrete that has to go ALL around the bowl).

Plus, there was the matter of seat “pitch” and appropriate sight lines – again, a mere inch or two would determine how “nosebleed” and vertigo inducing that last row in the upper deck would be.

The process went relatively smoothly at first, as we defined some of the basic stadium elements. And then we came to the issue of skyboxes. My boss wanted three layers of them, to satisfy the needs of all the business and political players that wanted to wine and dine their clients, and, more importantly, to help finance the place.

That requirement put a lot of stress on the budget, because, as I noted earlier – every inch matters.  And these were a LOT of inches to deal with.

Nevertheless, I pressed on without making much note of this to my boss, since he had tattooed on my brain the fact that the budget was “immutable”.

That was Mistake #1 on the road to near career killing.

I huddled with the architects and they came up with a great looking design that had awesome skyboxes of every desirable size, and, to keep everything on budget, moved the upper deck of seats forward a few feet (that saved a lot of concrete inches).

Great!  We have skyboxes, and we’re on budget!  Let’s tell the boss.

Mistake #2:  I needed to write a great memo to present this plan, and I was always petrified of memos.  My boss was a perfectionist in the art of writing these things, down to the punctuation and proper use of grammar.  So, I focused more on form, and less on the actual content of the memo.

I took a lot of the architect’s descriptions and put them in as an addendum, just to make it a complete package. Because I was so intent on writing the perfect memo, I neglected to fully read those descriptions. Because if I had, I would have come across this nugget:

“Because the upper deck was moved closer to the field, some of the skyboxes will have obstructed views of the main scoreboard”

The scoreboard. As you know, these are now the absolute centerpieces of modern stadium design  -massive multi-functional TV screens that are almost as much of an attraction as the players themselves.

There was a bomb in that memo, but I didn’t know it until….after I had delivered it.

I called the architects and they tried to reassure me that the obstructed view wasn’t a big deal, since every box would have TV sets hanging in every corner, thus negating the need for patrons to look at the scoreboard.  Since they were the “experts”, I decided to “let it (the memo) ride” and use this explanation should the boss ask me about it.

Mistake #3. I relied on “experts” to save me.

A week went by and I didn’t get a response on the memo – and so, since he reads everything, I made the convenient assumption that all systems were go, and we could keep refining the design.

Mistake #4. No news isn’t good news.

But I kept thinking about that bomb. And now, it was fear more than anything else driving the process

Mistake #5 – fear is a poison.

The next step was a more formal presentation to the boss, with the architects present. We got all our ducks in a row, pulling together all the cool design drawings, virtual perspectives and budget numbers to make the “on budget” project as bright and shiny as possible.

That fact, “on budget“, I thought would trump everything else – including the bomb (repeat of Mistake #1).

The meeting went very well, until we got to the part where we describe the skyboxes – and their view (or lack of it).  I knew that we HAD to put it out there at this point.

The boss looked at the perspectives carefully, and then, suddenly, his tone turned colder….

Boss: “Now, this skybox here, is that overhang really that long?”

Me {visibly nervous now}: “Yes sir, it is”

Boss: “So what does that mean, dear boy?” (I knew I was always in trouble when he called me that)

Me (now it just had to come out):  “Those folks won’t be able to see the scoreboard, sir”

BOOM!!  The bomb went off.

“They can’t see the scoreboard? What, ARE YOU KIDDING ME????”

My heart sank – I knew I had done something really bad. His face was now red, his anger palpable.

I then dug my hole a little deeper, by invoking Mistake #3 and punting once again to the “experts”

“We believe that this obstructed view will be compensated by the TV’s within the skybox, sir”

No, no, no, no, no!!  

That’s when all heck broke loose, and then the architects were asked to leave the room. I got a full and total dressing down, and was compared unfavorably to a five year old child. It sure wasn’t pretty. It was my lowest moment as a businessperson.

I had failed in so many ways, but the worst thing was,  I let fear trump good common sense.  I too easily hung my hat on “expert opinion”.

For some reason I was allowed to come back to work the next day, but it was completely different – I was now “dead executive walking“. I spent another couple of years in this purgatory before I was finally let go, although it did afford me the time to have a career epiphany and write my manifesto, which turned everything around.

And the stadium? It took another 6 years before it finally got built (now known as FedEx Field) at a MUCH higher cost – but oh yes indeed, EVERYONE in EVERY skybox can see the scoreboard.

Since that ugly day, I’ve applied those hard-earned lessons to everything I do in the business world:

1) Understand that a “immutable” budget can be a trap door.  Budgets can never be “final”. (Mistake #1)

2) In business, it’s always the content that matters – don’t hide it in a “pretty” format (Mistake #2)

3) Experts don’t “know” everything (Mistake #3)

4) “No News Is Good News” doesn’t apply in business (Mistake #4)

5) Fear poisons everything, and robs your common sense. Conquer it, or suffer the consequences (Mistake #5)

In hindsight, this experience was hugely beneficial to my development as a leader and businessman, so I share it here so others can read it, absorb the lessons, and hopefully avoid having to learn them the hard way.

The post Avoiding The 5 Mistakes That Can End Your Leadership Career (before it even gets started) appeared first on Terry "Starbucker" St. Marie.

Dear First-Time Leader:

Congratulations! You’ve just been given a fantastic opportunity. But before you dive in, I’d like to pass along a little sage advice.

I remember my first day as a leader, 35 years ago.

I was not long out of college and I thought what I had learned in the classroom and my first few years in the working world would be enough. In school, my professors tried to teach me as much as they could about business and leadership, and in turn, I tried to absorb as much as I could.

And in my early work life, I watched closely what my supervisors were doing and saying and tried to pick up pointers from them. So when I got my big opportunity, I thought I had just about every tool I needed to go out into the big old world, make my mark, and lead like I’d been doing it for years.

Well, turns out, I was (very) wrong. I had only begun to scratch the surface of what leadership was all about.

So I can tell you, without any hesitation – you have so much more to learn! There are so many things that you can’t find in any school textbooks, case studies, business simulations, best-selling leadership books, podcasts, and any other outside source in your pre-leadership world that will make the difference on whether you achieve your professional dreams.

First and foremost, please, above all else, never lose your desire to learn. Keep an intellectual curiosity that can never be satisfied. 

Next, make stress your friend. Let me give you a quick example – in school, we all had deadlines for tests and term papers and such, right? Well, in business and especially when leading, there are DEADLINES. It’s a different kind of pressure, and when I felt it for the first time in the working world, it was overwhelming.

But over time, you learn to handle it, use it, and leverage it, to the point that pressure becomes your friend, not your enemy. Because it’s where the most brilliant ideas and innovations come from.

And then, do a LOT of what I call “people learning“. What I mean by that is we spend a lot of time when we learn about business in general, and in our first jobs, looking at it from the outside the fishbowl, so to speak. Once we dive INSIDE the fishbowl as a leader, there are all kinds of complex and different humans that have hearts, minds and souls that need to be attention. How we interact with them, listen to them, teach them, coach them, inspire them, hire them and perhaps even fire them is a whole set of skills that can only be honed and perfected by the wisdom gained from experience.

This isn’t going to be easy – you’ll lose more sleep from people problems than anything else. But take the time to watch and learn from those who do it well. Find a mentor that can help you and provide valuable insights. Listen more than talk.

By becoming a “people person” you’ll pick up another valuable thing: influence. A job title doesn’t mean much unless you learn how to build and channel influence.

You might learn the hard way, like I did many years ago, that simply barking out orders backed up by a process manual does not guarantee that those orders will be done well, or even carried out at all.

They need to trust you. They need to believe in you. They need to know you care about them and their welfare – that’s all influence.

It’s an intangible that can’t be ignored – learn how to build it as soon as you can, and it will serve you well.

And here’s the last learning I’ll pass along before I wish you all the best in your leadership journey. Most of our early education and work experiences try to teach us how to succeed. Out in the business and leadership world, you need to learn how to fail.

That’s right, learn how to fail. Because the fact is, you WILL fail. You will hit brick walls. You will crash and burn. What will separate you from the rest of the pack is how you deal with these failures, and what you take away from them.

Because when you learn how to fail, you learn not to fear it – at least not enough to hold you back. Because (and here’s one last bit of learning), a little fear is actually a good thing.

So there you go, 35 years of real world wisdom for you. And remember – learn, learn, and learn.

Good luck, and lead well!

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To put it even more simply, a more human leader needs to be two things that are seemingly at opposite ends of the spectrum: Tough, AND Nice

Nice, in the ability to nurture, coach, inspire, respect, and truly care for those you lead.

Tough, in driving hard for success, pushing metrics & measurement,  setting high bars, holding people accountable, and making the tough decisions.

Here’s the thing – they aren’t incompatible at all. They are two sides of the same coin.

And here’s why: It’s the combination that produces the most employee engagement and satisfaction, by far.

Because if they trust and respect you, they will WANT you to push them harder. They will believe that the greatness you are driving for is worthy of that effort, and toil, and perhaps personal failure.

How do I know this? From my own personal experience. But that’s a pretty small sample to offer as proof, I understand.

There was some more extensive research released in the Harvard Business Review by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman that makes an even more convincing case.

They did a survey of nearly 161,000 employees working for 31,000 leaders, and asked them to rate their engagement, AND their leaders.

They found the top 10% in terms of their overall engagement & satisfaction, and drilled down into the management styles that produced them.

Here were the results:

8.9% of those who had tough leaders were in the top 10% 

6.7% of those who had nice leaders were in the top 10%

68% of those who had both tough and nice leaders were in the top 10%

Their summary take on the data:

“Leaders with highly engaged employees know how to demand a great deal from employees, but are also seen as considerate, trusting, collaborative, and great developers of people. In our view, the lesson then is that those of you who consider yourself to be drivers should not be afraid to be the “nice [person].” And all of you aspiring nice [people] should not view that as incompatible with setting demanding goals.”

They alluded to something in that summary that I view as critical to combining tough and nice – that is, overcoming the fears of being too “touchy feely”, or conversely, being disliked.

There is some intestinal fortitude demanded here. Despite this research, in many workplaces it’s still a “one or the other” proposition.

I can tell you this – go for it, it will be worth the resistance you may encounter. Be More Human.

As Zenger and Folkman so aptly state,“The two approaches are like the oars of a boat. Both need to be used with equal force” 

Lead well!

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How we deal with these contradictions and find our balance on the seesaw can be the difference between good and great.

There are six in particular that require a delicate balancing act on the seesaw:

1) Process vs. Innovation – On the surface this looks more like a huge battle; the free thinking forces that love chaos and drive change, against the system-driven processors who thrive on order and repetition.  In reality, under great leadership innovation and process work in tandem, where the more solid the processes, the more time is saved for great innovation.

2) Openness vs. Secrecy – There’s a big push for transparency these days in the workplace; where leaders need to put themselves “out there” as more human and open. That’s certainly necessary, and I’m a big believer, but I also know that there is a very fine line here, and oftentimes a modicum of discretion can make a big difference. I’d ask yourself the question “Do they need to know this to help them do their job to the best of their abilities, and, find fulfillment in doing that job?”.

3) Risk-Taking vs. Conservatism –   Leaders have to clearly sway to both sides of the seesaw on this one, because every situation is different, and the stakes on either side are very high. Take a foolish risk, you can bring down the company. Stand still too long, and everyone passes you by. The key here is one word: Facts. The more information and facts you know, the better you can face this contradiction.  I realize that many decisions can’t be made with 100% of the necessary information on hand, but with a focused discipline of good data collection and fact finding you stand a much better chance of getting it right more often.

4) Hubris vs. Humility – This is where leadership has to (almost literally) wear two faces; there’s no question that a confident leader is important, because they set the tone for the entire organization they lead.  On the other hand, showing humility once again emphasizes the human side of the equation, and lets everyone know that it’s not all about you. This balancing act requires nothing more than good old common sense (i.e. if you messed up, you fess up – people will see right through it if you blame somebody else), and a keen awareness of the “pulse” of those you lead.

5) Talking vs. Listening – I look at this like a ratio; if I’m talking more than 50% of the time in any meeting or one-on-one discussion, I’m not doing enough listening. But, there HAS to be balance here. We’ve been told so many time that we need to  “Be a good listener“.  Yes, we do. On the other hand, leaders must show the way, they must teach, they must bring new perspectives to the table, and they must inspire.  And that does require speaking.

6) Accountability vs. Leniency –  Are there occasions where you should give people another chance even though by every objective accountability measurement they should be let go?  Yes. There are intangibles. There is context. There are extenuating circumstances.  Accountability is paramount, no question, and in most cases the lines you draw should be solid ones. But sometimes compassion and foresight need to come into the equation. When it comes to people, thinking before acting is a winning strategy.

I hope these were helpful. Find YOUR balance, and lead well!

The post How To Find Your Balance On The Leadership Seesaw appeared first on Terry "Starbucker" St. Marie.

“We’re in the dark here”

“Nobody knows what’s going on”

“This is an information vacuum!”

Too many times, right?

These are classic signs of a (very) big leadership fail I call “Leadership by Osmosis“.

That is, the expectation that a leader’s knowledge can simply be transferred to others without the benefit of much verbal and written communication – kind of like Mr. Spock doing a bunch of Vulcan mind melds.

Granted, it’s tempting to believe this expectation because it makes a leader’s life pretty easy  – just say something once or twice to a couple of people, add a few magic words,  and presto, a week or two later EVERYONE will know.  Just like that.  And then move on to something else.

But here’s the big problem – Osmosis may work in a laboratory, or on the planet Vulcan, but it doesn’t work in the workplace.

It’s really a huge assumption that quickly becomes an even bigger risk to a leader’s success, because it can even more quickly become a morale and culture killer.

The ever so interesting question is, if Leadership by Osmosis never works, why is this technique still around? Why do we still hear those classic lines from our friends and teammates?

In a nutshell, the reason is this – developing and implementing a real communications strategy that assures full knowledge and information absorption throughout an organization takes a lot of hard work, especially on the part of the leader on top of the organization.

The leader has to get out from behind the desk, and communicate. And not just in the boardrooms and hallways of the corporate office.

Messages need to be sent out, and reinforced, over and over and over again, using every communication means at the leader’s disposal.

Knowledge absorption also needs to be tested, and retested. If that involves the leader actually going into the field, and asking as many employees as possible about their knowledge, so be it.

I was never a believer of Osmosis – at my cable TV company I had a requirement that EVERY single one of the 1,100 employees in my department could recite our 3 key operating metrics (and the latest weekly measurements), and our company values mantra, if I happened to see them and ask them.

And oh yes, I asked. I traveled many thousands of miles to test our knowledge absorption. But it was worth it, because in the end I didn’t assume that they knew. I KNEW they knew.

Consequently, the company was much better off, and more successful, and I never heard those classic lines. The light was on.

And Mr. Spock was nowhere to be found.

Don’t succumb to the temptation to try Osmosis – put in the work. Go that extra mile. Don’t assume anything when it comes to making sure everyone knows what they’re supposed to know.

Fascinating!

The post How To Avoid A Big and Demoralizing Leadership Fail (Unless You Are A Vulcan) appeared first on Terry "Starbucker" St. Marie.