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Leadership Connections

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

It’s always fun to find interesting people via the web. I just returned from San Francisco to check my morning emails and this delightful message was waiting for me. TED talks are a way for all of us to learn from each other. The founder of TED, Richard Saul Wurman graciously endorsed my book “Don’t Bring It to Work” and it is amazing to see how his idea for a think tank of creative people has spread word wide.

Thank you Alan for sending this to me and now I am pleased to send it to my readers. Enjoy.  

I recently discovered your blog, and I have become a frequent reader. My name is Alan with Bestcollegesonline.com and we recently published an article “12 Essential TED Talks for Writers” that dovetails well with your audience. Perhaps you would be interested in sharing with them? Here’s the link to the article if you would like to take a quick look for yourself: (http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2010/08/17/12-essential-ted-talks-for-writers/).

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Posted in Leaders, Leadership | No Comments »

Fast Company and Randy Komisar

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Randy Komisar

The following interview with Randy Komisar underlines the requirement for leaders to have interpersonal skills that stand head and shoulders above the rest. This is where the leap from average to amazing occurs. Just one humorous note: as I read the article there is a sentence I first read as “people are not fun”. “Huh” was my thought as I reread and what it really said was “People are not fungible”. Now that is not the most common everyday word, so no wonder I skipped over it too quickly. However, this is a vastly important thought. People are not fungible; they are not interchangeable. Of course you can always get a replacement. Yet, that is not the point. We are all unique and if our skills and talents are helped to grow we all can work together to create success, as Randy states, “success is created by a group of people and not by a single individual”. Good thoughts to ponder.

What Breed Is Your CEO? Randy Komisar on Leadership and Management

BY Kermit Pattison

In the life of a company, every dog has its day. So says Randy Komisar, a veteran Silicon Valley venture capitalist and entrepreneur who has spent the last 25 years launching technology startups. Komisar is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers where he specializes in working with technology entrepreneurs. “I’m not attracted to them because of the bottom line,” he says. “I’m attracted to them to them because of the top line–they change they can make.” His own pedigree: co-founder of Claris Corporation, CEO of LucasArts Entertainment, CEO of Crystal Dynamics, founding director of TiVo, senior counsel at Apple Computer, author of two books, and “virtual CEO” to an array of fledgling companies. In this Q&A, he warns of the classic mistakes of manager-wannabe-leaders, the perils of too many bullets and not enough Zen, and why CEOs are like dogs.

Kermit Pattison: What are the classic pitfalls you see entrepreneurs making over and over again?

Randy Komisar: Mistaking the difference between leadership and management. A lot of people believe the two are the same and believe that, because they have been effective or excellent managers, that they’re capable of leading. While the two ideally come together, the qualities and attributes of a leader and a manager are not exactly the same.

In your mind, what’s the difference between management and leadership?

Management is more operationally focused. It’s more of a supervisory role of setting priorities, allocating resources, and directing the execution. Leadership is more forward thinking, more about enabling the organization, empowering individuals, developing the right people, thinking strategically about opportunities, and driving alignment. Mind you, the line is not black and white. But it’s a classic mistake that because someone is a good manager that they’ll necessarily be a good leader.

In early stage projects, the CEO oftentimes is effectively a project manager. I’ve seen some of those people over-think leadership–literally start to compound the challenges by thinking too big and not immediate enough.

They start to think, “Oh, I’ve got to be a leader, I’ve got to start reading books and learning theory?”

Exactly–I need a vision statement, I need to define my culture in five bullet points. When I started running companies 20-something years ago, I learned that the first thing to do was to define my culture, which meant sitting down and writing up a cute little vision statement. What I realized, after being involved with enough companies, is that these vision statements all look alike, the words are gobbledygook and they’re not very meaningful.

Now what I usually say is, “We’re going to come up with a culture statement a year after we formed.” Put it on the calendar. Why after a year? Because then we can actually see what out culture is–what we don’t like about it and what we do like about it.

How much of leadership is natural versus a discipline that can be learned?

The first thing to realize is how many different styles of leadership can be successful. There isn’t one style of leadership that is innately more successful than others. There are certain skills sets, which are learnable, that are very important. You need to be able to communicate. If you can’t communicate well, you won’t be able to inspire, motivate and attract the resources necessary for success.

Prioritization is a really important skill. You’ve got to know what’s more important than the other thing. It’s amazing how many really smart people can’t prioritize. Only a minority of people can effectively prioritize and focus.

And you need to have effective interpersonal skills. That doesn’t mean you need to be social and it doesn’t mean you need to be outgoing. But it means that when you sit down in your office with somebody who’s relying on you for leadership, you’ve got to be able to emphatically communicate with them around their challenges, figure out how to help them be more successful and resolve their conflicts so they can do their job better than they thought they could.

You say companies need different breeds of leaders at different stages. How are CEOs like dogs?

I call the first CEO the retriever–the leader who has to go out and assemble the resources. They have to go out and find the people, the money and the partners. That person is really great sales person–they have sell the vision every day. They’re asking people to believe in something that doesn’t exist and take a substantial leap of faith.

The next is the bloodhound CEO. You got to find out where that value proposition is going to find paydirt so you can actually build a business around it. You’ve got something now, but how do you optimize it? You’ve got to sleuth that out.

The husky is the next one. Now you’ve got a product, a value proposition, and you’ve figured out your business model. Now you’ve got to pull this sled as it gets heavier with people, products and customers up a hill, which is essentially the hill of building a big successful business.

The one dog you never really want pulling your company is the St. Bernard.

The rescue dog.

Right. Because at that point you know you’ve got big trouble.

Even a great leader, if the wrong breed at the wrong time, can be a mismatch?

Absolutely. There are different talents in the creation of businesses and running of businesses that need to be taken into consideration. A mistake often made in the venture investment business is rushing to bring in a big CEO into what is still a small venture. The mismatch of skills is severe. The big CEO needs resources, needs a strong sense of direction and momentum, and is not very effective day-to-day with a bunch of people putting bits and bytes together. The other mismatch that’s harder to foresee is the small company with momentum. You say, great, let’s bring in the guy who can grow it to $100 million and take it public. The problem is that you may face yet another significant right or left hand turn in your business which that CEO may be completely unqualified to do.

I liken it to a story a friend of mine told me many years ago about driving through the Sahara. For three nights the road through the sand was dead straight to the south. On the third night, there was a right hand turn. At the base of that turn, it’s full of crashed trucks. I think about that CEO the same way. If you’re not an agile, venture CEO you are very likely to end up crashing at that turn.

What episode earlier in your career were formative experiences on leadership?

At Go Corporation I worked for Bill Campbell, who has absolutely been formative to me. Bill showed me, first and foremost, that business was worth doing. At that point, I was a lawyer and I certainly had no inclination to go into business. To me, business was about buying low and selling high–a fun game, but not an interesting life. Bill taught me the high art and that what was interesting are the people you work with, the people you sell to, the constituents and stakeholders you bring together, the art of being able to manage them all together to succeed, and to create potential beyond the obvious. I just found that mesmerizing–that’s why I do what I do today.

If you look at the ranks of CEOs today, who strikes strike you as being particularly thoughtful about leadership?

When I read interviews with CEOs lately around leadership, I’ve got to tell you, the stuff that gets published seems awfully conventional. I’m not seeing any brilliant insights about leadership lately from the leaders who get a following out there.

I’ve given up on the guru model and think more in the Zen model: things will change and that’s okay. What we need is a set of constant provocations. What I like to read are those things that really challenge my assumptions, authors who are willing to think differently, no matter whether I agree with them or not, because they at least broaden my own thinking. What I don’t like reading is the pablum–the 10 habits of great leaders or whatever. Those are constraining and not very effective for the average person.

Speaking of bad advice, what’s the worst advice about leadership you ever heard?

One of the most important lessons I learned is that people are not fungible. I’ve had bosses who said, “We’re not going to pay well, incent, or develop our people because there’s always somebody to take their place.” The problem with that logic is, while it might be statistically true, it fundamentally indicates a culture that is not going to invest in anybody. Nobody is going to become very effective.

The other piece of leadership that somebody tried to teach me, which I dismissed, is manage by the numbers–if you manage by the numbers everything else takes care of itself. Just get people to execute, measure, hold people accountable, and that’s enough. That’s not enough. Yes, it is important to instill accountability in organization, it’s important to have good metrics, to discipline the process, reward people, and withdraw those rewards when they’re not being effective. But that won’t get you greatness.

So what does get you greatness?

When I am most successful, it’s because the people around me have made me successful. It comes down to the fact that success is created by a group of people and not by any single individual. How do you get people to come together around a goal and objective and be great? It’s establishing a sense of common purpose. Greatness doesn’t come from a tactical sense of execution. Greatness comes having a vision that goes beyond yourself and even beyond the organization.

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Posted in Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Strategies, PatternAware, Patterns, Power, leadership development | 1 Comment »

Business Week: Your Leadership Portfolio

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Here is a thorough article for those who have technical skills and are transitioning into leadership settings. I was specifically struck by the part that talks about those in CIO positions being proactive change leaders. What was said rings true: “Proactive change leaders take actions to influence specific individuals, giving them parts to play in the change effort. They engage with people throughout the change process, addressing emotional reactions and maintaining commitment.”

My value add is that it is critical for these proactive change leaders to understand the behavior patterns that lie underneath the emotional reactions. This does not mean leaders need to become depth coaches or see themselves as therapists (that is an old model of thinking). What they need to do is ask open ended questions and find out how their direct reports have responded to change in the past. That is the clue to helping move things forward in a positive way.

In “Don’t Bring It to Work” the 13 most common behavior patterns in the workplace are discussed. There is even a quiz you can take at www.sylvialafair.com to observe your patterns and have your employees take the quiz. It is a great eye opener for the emotional areas of change that will show up whether we want them to or not.

Article: Your Leadership Portfolio: The View from C-Level

Former senior IT leaders who rise to head of the function are often surprised by the competencies that they are expected to have at the C-level. As we discussed in the second installment in this series (“Your Leadership Portfolio: The Critical Move from Senior IT Leader to the C-Level,” May 28, 2010), the key competencies for senior IT leaders are Team Leadership, Collaboration & Influencing and People & Organization Development. These are largely people skills, requiring the ability to influence and lead high-performing teams. As the Leadership Competencies Development Journey graphic (below) indicates, the progression to IT Function Head CIO requires the individual to place a much greater emphasis on the development of broad business skills, underpinned by people skills.

Not surprisingly, many very capable IT leaders struggle to master this critical inflection point, which demands more active engagement outside the IT organization. They can prepare for this challenging transition by actively seeking opportunities to get hands-on business experience, while taking care not to derail their IT careers. Ideally, such experience would mean responsibility for a P&L, but it could mean taking responsibility for a business project and its budget, or participating as an equal partner–not just as an IT representative–on a committee focused on some key aspect of the business. They can also look for ways to collaborate more closely with business-unit heads, or other top business leaders, on market challenges. Then, when they step into the C-suite, they will be prepared for the vastly changed perspective it brings.

The Function Head CIO: Leveraging Where and How the Company Makes Money

What does a Function Head CIO really do? Instead of focusing primarily on the IT organization, as the Senior IT Leader does, the Function Head CIO must look out across the entire enterprise, work with C-level peers, and become an active and credible provider to the business. This change of perspective brings three critical competencies, and their associated behaviors, to the fore:

* Market Knowledge: This is about understanding where the company makes money. At the reactive performance level (shown on the y-axis of the Journey graphic), one may have only a general understanding of the company’s marketplace. But IT Function Head CIOs at the active level demonstrate a detailed understanding of the market, the competitors, the suppliers, and, where appropriate, the regulatory environment. At the proactive level, they identify market sub-segments and understand the profit potential of each.

Proactive performers look beyond the current environment and identify emerging trends and segments, understand how competitor actions affect competitive dynamics, and the implications for their company’s technology landscape. They use their detailed market knowledge to create innovative ways to engage and serve customers, partner with suppliers and blunt competitive threats. At the very highest level, which is rarely attained but is worth noting, the result can be new products or services that reshape the market.

* Commercial Orientation: This is about how the company makes money. At the reactive level, the individual understands the importance of commercial success, works toward financial goals, and understands how various functions contribute to profitability but may lack a thorough understanding of how to link activities to financial metrics. Active performers identify areas of the function that can contribute to profitability, and they act quickly on commercial opportunities. The proactive leader generates profit-making initiatives beyond their immediate area, drives commercial behavior throughout the organization, and finds new ways to maximize profitability from each step of the value chain. At the highest level of performance–again, rarely attained–the leader is able to create long-term advantage by reshaping the business model of the industry.

* Change Leadership: As the graphic indicates, competency in change leadership is also important at this stage and becomes even more critical for the Business Strategist CIO. Performers at the reactive level of Change Leadership tolerate change, while active change leaders are adept at advocating change and communicating a clear and compelling new direction. In pushing for change, they set clear targets that focus people and activities on achieving the change agenda and develop metrics that both monitor and motivate change.

Proactive change leaders take actions to influence specific individuals, giving them parts to play in the change effort. They engage with people throughout the change process, addressing emotional reactions and maintaining commitment. And they build coalitions of such people and create champions who then mobilize others. The even more proactive are also as at home with process as with people. They introduce high-impact actions such as redesigning organization structures, processes and systems to drive and reinforce the desired changes. In rare cases, that ability coupled with their relentless drive for renewal creates and embeds a culture of change that continually adapts to new and evolving markets.

The Transformational CIO: Bringing the Customer into Focus

Having proactively demonstrated Market Knowledge and Commercial Orientation, the Function Head CIO will be poised to take on the role of Transformational CIO with its additional demanding competency of External Customer Focus.

* Customer Focus: Many IT people are accustomed to thinking of customers inside the four walls of the company. But for the Transformational CIO, the focus widens to include the external customer. At the reactive level, Customer Focus is essentially order-taking, a stance the Transformational CIO will have moved far beyond. At the active level, Customer Focus is about actively digging into and understanding the customer’s needs, seeing services from the customer’s perspective, and identifying the unique key measures of success with a given customer. These behaviors are used internally by the outstanding IT Function Head CIO, but will be extended outward for the outstanding Transformational CIO.

At the proactive level, the benchmark behaviors include delivering improved customer offerings with win/win impact, developing best practices for working with the customer, and championing those best practices internally. The highly proactive Transformational CIO initiates and manages multiple contacts with the customer’s organization, creating impact far beyond individual transactions and in some cases becoming a trusted advisor to the customer and contributing to strategic discussions in the customer organization. In rare instances, the most accomplished Transformational CIO is able to partner with the customer to develop new supplier relationship models that can change industry dynamics and force competitors to follow or fall behind.

In the next installment in this series, we take an even deeper dive into this critical stage of the journey, the last stop before its culmination in the role of Business Strategist CIO.

Steve Kelner is a partner in the Boston office of Egon Zehnder International. He is a leader of the firm’s Leadership Strategy Services practice, specializing in management appraisals and team effectiveness. He can be reached at steve.kelner@ezi.net.

Chris Patrick is a partner in the Dallas office of Egon Zehnder International. He leads the Global CIO Practice. A former practicing CIO, he helps firms across all industries identify, assess and recruit top technology talent. He can be reached at chris.patrick@ezi.net.

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Posted in Advice, Business, Communication, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Ethics, Executive Teams, Human Resources, Integrity, Leaders | No Comments »

Surviving Stress at Work

Monday, July 19th, 2010

It really doesn’t matter where you live, or where you work, stress can be a killer. If not handled, stress can creep in and become physical and emotional symptoms and can even ruin relationships. Here is an article from Australia that could be about the company around the corner from wherever you are. See where you fit in the continuum of stress and burnout.

 

Most of us have had to deal with stress in the workplace at some point. But how do you manage it and what are the warning signs that you need help?

Your mobile phone won’t stop ringing, your inbox is overflowing and deadlines are piling up. You’re working longer hours and there seems no end to the increasing demands on you. Fed up and feeling undervalued and unappreciated, you struggle to remember why you liked your job in the first place. Sound familiar?

Spend a reasonable amount of time in the lunchroom of many workplaces and chances are you will hear staff talking about feeling ’stressed out’.

One reason for this is that many workers feel they have very little control over their work lives. Workplace stress, like other forms of stress, occurs when people feel they are not able to meet the demands placed on them. A report into workplace stress (published by private health insurer Medibank Private) found people are more likely to experience high levels of stress at work when they are placed under pressure, in terms of workload and responsibility, but feel they are unable to meet their deadlines or control their output.

Another reason we’re feeling stressed is that figures suggest many Australians are working hard, or at least long hours. Almost one quarter of full-time employees work 50 hours or more every week, and the average working week for Australian men is almost 46 hours per week, compared to 43 hours in most other industrialised nations. (It’s harder to get a clear picture of the women’s working hours as many work casual or part-time, but OECD figures show more Australian women work part-time than their counterparts in other industrialised nations.)

Stress-related illness costs the Australian economy $14.81 billion a year in absenteeism and presenteeism, where people come to work but have low levels of productivity. The direct cost to employers is $10.11 billion and, on average, more than three days are lost to stress per worker per year.

And when stress at work becomes overwhelming it can cause a workplace psychological injury. While these injuries represent less than 10 per cent of the total workers compensation claims in Australia, figures suggest these numbers are increasing.

Burning out

Workplace stress can also have a dramatic effect on your job satisfaction, morale, physical and mental health, self-care, and relationships – both in and out of the workplace. And in some instances it can lead to ‘burnout’.

“True burnout is pretty bad and is an extreme state of exhaustion,” says organisational psychologist Rachel Clements, director of Psychological Services at the Centre for Corporate Health.

Burnout is not a clinical diagnosis, and as such, it does not come with a list of specific symptoms or treatments. But it’s a term commonly used by health professionals and the wider community and it comes under the umbrella of psychological injury.

“The formal definition of burnout is that the person must have three components: they are emotionally, physically and mentally exhausted,” Clements says.

“We see people with burnout, but we can’t classify them as that.”

When assessed, these people are likely to receive a diagnosis of ‘adjustment disorder’ or ‘major depressive disorder’.

When people put in claims for psychological injury, Clements’ role is to conduct employee assessments for WorkCover NSW and other insurers. She says the people she sees with burnout show signs of depression, lethargy and exhaustion.

But workplace stress manifest itself in a range or ways including nervousness, tension, strain, anxiety, depression and a decreased ability to cope with stressful situations.

What makes work stressful?

Long working hours, insufficient breaks, lack of resources and unrealistic deadlines all contribute to workplace stress. As can relationships with co-workers and managers, especially if these relationships involve conflict, harassment or bullying.

But each of us responds to these stressors differently. So a work environment that just makes one person feel a little uptight, might push another person to breaking point.

There are, however, certain factors that can put you at greater risk of experiencing workplace stress, burnout or psychological injury.

A pre-existing mental health condition can make work really difficult for some people, says David Crosbie, CEO of the Mental Health Council of Australia. Another factor is that some people are less resilient and struggle to cope with stress.

“If people are already struggling to cope and then work becomes even more difficult, that can lead to an increase in their symptoms and a deterioration in their mental health and wellbeing,” Crosbie says.

“Often it is not necessarily caused by work. (Work) is an exacerbating factor.”

Although, Crosbie adds, people without a pre-existing mental illness can still experience extreme workplace stress and burnout.

Meanwhile, Clements believes personality can also play a role in a person’s predisposition to workplace stress. People who are more susceptible to workplace stress are often perfectionists, who tend to be very conscientious, hard-working and are prepared to take on excessive workloads.

“Also, people who are high in what we call emotionality: people who have a tendency to become more emotional, more sensitive (when things get busy or go wrong),” says Clements.

But even the most resilient of us can be affected by workplace stress, which is why environmental factors – such as a lack of team or managerial support, polices or procedures that generate low morale, a lack of value attached to the work and poor communication – can also affect workers, especially if these stressors are ongoing.

“We know that team support, manager support and job morale are the biggest buffers [to preventing burnout],” says Clements.

Workplace stress warning signs

Unfortunately, people do miss the early warning signs that they are stressed.

“We are called in (to assess people) when they are eight or nine on the stress scale of 10, when everyone is noticing it,” adds Clements.

But there are some warning signs that tell you heading towards the upper end of the stress scale, these can include:

  • Struggling to cope at work and not speaking up or seeking help to improve your situation.
  • Not setting boundaries between your work and home life – taking work home with you, checking your emails outside work hours, or just thinking about work in non-work time.
  • Having low morale – this includes not feeling supported, not being able to find meaning in your work and feeling undervalued.
  • Engaging in negative, irrational and catastrophising thinking patterns such as: “I have to be responsible for everything.” “Everything will collapse without me.” “I have to perform to 100 per cent.”
  • A real or perceived lack of control over your job and how you do it.
  • Feeling undervalued by your managers and colleagues.
  • Feeling disconnected from your colleagues and other people in your life. This is sometimes a problem for people who do shift work, or work in jobs that require extensive travel away from family or friends or periods of isolation.
  • Taking days off work when you are not sick or going to work but not being productive (presenteeism).

Other red flags include: poor performance at work, avoiding family or friends and adopting maladaptive coping strategies (such as drinking too much or using drugs).

Stress can also manifest as new physical ailments or a worsening of existing conditions.

“Mental illness exacerbates all physical illnesses and increases the degree to which those diseases impact on people’s capacity to function,” Crosbie says.

Getting help

In some cases, people ignore the warning signs of burnout – or simply don’t notice them – until they reach breaking point and need to take time out to recover.

Although the recovery time varies for individuals, the average time off work for a psychological injury through WorkCover NSW in 2008-09 was 13.5 weeks. In Queensland it was 28 weeks, and 27 weeks in Western Australia (the longest of any injury claim in that state).

But Crosbie urges people not to withdraw from the workforce for too long. He says it can be counterproductive for people with pre-existing mental health issues as it can further disconnect them from life.

Meaningful work can provide meaning in life and ‘hold them through the difficult times’, says Crosbie.

And even when you do identify that you are stressed, you still need to address some of the issues that are causing your stress and ask for help.

In many cases, the best place to start is with your boss or manager, especially if your stress stems from being unclear about your role or responsibilities. Your manager should be able to provide you with a job plan or description and give you feedback on how they expect you to do your job. They are also the people to approach if you feel you need extra resources – such as equipment or training – to be able to do your job effectively.

Unfortunately, in some cases, the manager contributes to the problem through their poor communication, leadership style, lack of support or even bullying. In these instances it can help to approach your company’s human resources (HR) team or a trusted work colleague.

Many workplaces also offer Employee Assistance Programs (EAP), which are run by external providers. If problems are identified, intervention strategies may include mediation between an employer, employee and a HR representative, assertive skills training and/or counselling programs for the individual.

 

 

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Posted in Business, Communication, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Strategies, Stress, leadership development, motivation | 1 Comment »

Leadership: Diving for Pearls

Friday, July 16th, 2010
 
 
 

Avil Beckford

Avil Beckford is a woman who does not like to skim the surface. Her life and her mission are to go beyond the obvious, beyond the superficial, go into the hidden world and bring back the pearls.

Guess what the name of her successful blog is: The Invisible Mentor. It is well worth reading, there is a wealth to learn. The concept is great. In my interview with Avil, she stated “Some of my best mentors have been books I have read.” And she wants to give all of us access to these mentors that can live deeply inside our psyches even though they come in the form of words on paper or on a computer.

She is clear. “My work is not fluff. I want to reach people who are interested in learning, people who want to deepen.” I would say she wants people, well, people like us!

She has also written a book, “Tales of People Who Get It” (2007)

The book helps to shine a light on the inner workings of individuals who learned to deal with the challenges of growing and becoming, of learning how to master conflict, and how to develop and build teams.

Avil thought of this idea and was amazed that in her research she read about Napoleon Hill, that invisible mentor who has helped thousands learn what he felt was the secret of success. Hill had his “invisible counselors” and would have “imaginary council meetings” where he would get advice from those he called together. Not a bad idea.

Think about who you respect and would love to discuss your work issues with. What if you sat quietly and called them into your own private council and asked the questions that are haunting you. Then just sit and listen. Keep a pen and paper close. You may be surprised at what you learn. And then you can thank Avil for keeping that wonderful method alive.

Go to her site, sign up, you will be delighted. And buy her book, you will have a treasure trove of new “invisible mentors” to help you in your career journey. Happy travels!

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Posted in Advice, Books, Character, Communication, Conflict, Conflict Resolution, Leaders, Leadership, motivation | No Comments »

I Will Survive

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Article on Huffington Post: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/13/auschwitz-i-will-survive_n_645067.html

Jane Korman and her father, Holocaust survivor Adolek Kohn, spoke with BBC Tuesdayto defend the video they made last summer, which shows the two accompanied by Kohn’s three grandchildren dancing to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” in front of Auschwitz and other Holocaust sites.

“Despite the systematic brutality and cruelty endured, we have still survived,” she said about the video’s intentions. Korman told the BBC that it was about creating something that young people could connect with:

“It was really important for me to create some sort of work that had a fresh interpretation of the Holocaust. Especially for the younger generation, because I could see that even the word ‘Holocaust’ and the images that one sees of the Holocaust were numbing and in fact, they weren’t even interested.”

 

Since it was put on YouTube in January, the video has received over 330,000 hits and over 2,000 comments from viewers, who have called it everything from ‘heart-warming’ to ‘despicable.’

YouTube user colonelcandoo said “I am sure the millions of peopled who died here would be ecstatic? that you and your family are alive and dancing here. Keep on dancing…”

Other viewers found a different message in Korman’s art, however, which she said is “a tribute to the tenacity of the human spirit and a celebration of life.”

“This video is touching. Thank you!” Said user zeonchar.

Kohn, who dances throughout the video with the word ‘Survivor’ on his shirt, said that he did not mind dancing.

“If somebody had asked me then that I would come 62 years later with my grandchildren to Auschwitz, I would send him to a madhouse,” he said.

My Responses to this Video: 

The video has stopped me from doing other work today. I am fascinated with comments from all over the globe. My book “Don’t Bring It to Work” talks about how patterns of behavior are passed from generation to generation and how they repeat and repeat until someone says “it will stop with me”. Three generations are making their own statement about freedom of speech, of expression, to dance and sing and release the past, it is fabulous. They are creating, not harming! Each of us can give to children, grandchildren great grandchildren the joy of transformation, that is a gift worth giving and giving!

What can we hand to next generations? Adolek Kohn hands his grandchildren a magnificent gift; the ability to go back to places of pain and horror, to see that the past can be cleared, can be honored. He did not defile nor destroy, he danced! And they took his hand and they danced. Children, grandchildren, great grandchildren of those who have suffered atrocities in holocausts through time bear an invisible burden until they can come together, to discuss, dialogue, and ultimately to heal.

Thank you to this beautiful family for being courageous enough to show, not just the capacity to survive, also the capacity to flourish. What if we could all come together, to sing, to dance, to join hands together to release, no longer to ignore, negate, nor wallow in history; rather to transform the past and free the present? It’s about all of us, it’s about you, it’s about me, and it’s about time!

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Posted in Fear, Honor, Leaders, Media | No Comments »

Leadership From the Heart Not the Street

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

There is a great interview by Adi Ignatuis with Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks that is well worth reading.

Here are some thoughts after reading the article. Schultz and Starbucks have been fascinating to follow over the years. The original concept of community hangout, “Let’s meet at Starbucks” was a standard for so many folks; it moved to “OMG, another Starbucks, when is enough enough“?

I began to think Schultz was a reincarnation of King Midas. Remember that king? He wished to be the richest ruler in all the lands and he was kindly granted that wonderful wish. Told that whatever he touched would turn to gold, he was a happy camper. Silverware turned to gold, drinking goblets turned to gold, coffee mugs turned to gold.

The story is a “BEWARE” story. When Midas’s daughter ran to give him a hug, you guessed it, she also turned to gold. And the moral of the story is to question when is enough enough?

For a period of time it sure looked like Shultz was on a Midas mission to rule the world through lattes and the like. Then the bubble burst, and I remember thinking it serves him right. There are more important subjects to tackle, like global warming and oil spills.

Back to the interview; there is one part where I thought, hey maybe it would be worth it to meet Howard Schultz and have a dopper espresso macchiato with him. He was asked for an example of a decision he had made that Wall Street didn’t like.

His answer: health care. He just couldn’t cut the benefits, no matter how perfect it was to do so during a down economy. A shareholder complained and he stood his ground, telling the man to sell his stock, he would not budge on this issue.

This brought to mind the Schultz I first read about years ago, the man I decided to check out and follow as a leader of substance. That Howard was determined to always have full health care for his employees after growing up watching his father struggle. His dad had an accident and was laid off from his job and the family lost their health care benefits.

At a young age Schultz internalized the pain of this family crisis and vowed to be more caring if he ever made it in business. During the recent downturn for Starbucks he could have stayed in the Midas mentality. Instead he stayed true to himself.

In the interview he goes on to say that it is important for him to look in the mirror and feel he has done something that has meaning and relevancy, something people can respect. He stayed with his heart and took on “the street“.

Question: what do you see when you look in the mirror?

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Working With The Enemy

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

 

Workplace Conflict

So long as we see co-workers as the enemy, and conflict in a negative light we will almost never make real change happen. The following article is good one with interesting ideas. The thought of bringing guns to work with all the stress does seem crazy to me. If we revert to childish patterns, then suggesting we bring guns to work is akin to giving your five year old the keys to the car and telling them to have a good day!

If you think your workplace is toxic, get a load of this. Legislators in an American town called Nottingham have voted to allow employees to bring their guns to work. Despite an online poll showing that 73 per cent of people support the move, the decision was reversed last week due to public outrage. So, here are some tips on dealing with workplace conflict…without the weapons.

 

The most comprehensive study I could find on the topic was released in 2008 by CPP Inc, the publishers of the Myers-Briggs profiling tools. In their global research, which didn’t include Australia, they found that employees in the UK spent 1.8 hours a week dealing with workplace conflict. In the US it was 2.8 hours a week. I’m not sure where Australia sits on the time-wasting continuum, but even if it’s just an hour a week, that’s intense.  Globally, 85 per cent of employees say it’s been a problem for them.

 

Workplace conflict is often unavoidable. Whether it’s colleague to colleague (I’ve had female employees threaten to stab each other), or between a boss and a staff member (I was once the recipient of death threats from an aggrieved worker), clashes are inevitable when you get different personalities working together for eight hours a day. The question becomes:  what should you do when it happens?

 

Vivian Scott is a professional mediator and the author of Conflict Resolution at Work for Dummies.  I asked her for five suggestions on what people can do when they’re confronted by conflict at work.

 

“The first thing is to just keep in mind that the other person is not against you,” she says. “They’re just for themselves. If something feels personal, it’s probably not. It’s just the other person trying to achieve something personally.”

 

To add to her first tip, conflict isn’t always bad. Healthy competition can be excellent for productivity and idea generation. But when it transforms into verbal warfare and open hostility, absenteeism spikes up and the conflict frequently doesn’t end until someone resigns. 

 

“Secondly, try to figure out what it is they value. It might be respect, security, or economy, that kind of thing. If you spend some time trying to discover that information, then it’s easier for you to come up with a solution that could work for both of you.”

 

She’s on to something with respect. There was a big survey conducted by AchieveGlobal in 2009 where employees across all generations were asked for the most valued attribute at work. Respect came out on top.

 

“Thirdly, deal directly with the other person,” adds Scott. “Often it’s tempting to talk to third parties and that doesn’t solve anything. Building armies, amassing allies, and separating yourself from the other person rarely solves the issue. As much as possible, if you have a problem with someone, go to them.”

 

That might be tough in Australia. Several years ago, extensive research by Human Synergistics of 35,000 managers here and in New Zealand found that the most common style of management in this country was ‘avoidance’.

 

“Control what you can control and that means you,” is Scott’s fourth tip. “Control your own emotions and how you’re going to handle the situation. Adhere to a professional code of conduct despite what the other person is doing.”

 

I polled 2,400 employees to discover what they hated the most at work, and the results came as a total shock.  The aspect of work that employees detest with the greatest ferocity? Their colleagues. Interestingly, what they also love the most are… their colleagues. So, if their workmates are brilliant, they’re in heaven. But if their workmates suck, they’re in hell.

 

“And lastly, find the learning experience,” she says. “Find the thing that’s going to move you ahead in terms of your professional conduct. Was there something you said or did that made this situation go longer or worse than it should have?”

 

Vivian Scott’s five suggestions aren’t exhaustive. But at the very least, they won’t have trigger-friendly employees reaching for the holster.

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Written by James Adonis, author of ‘Corporate Punishment: Smashing the management cliches for leaders in a new world’. 

 

Sylvia Lafair’s Comment:

Good article, yet too simple. What I know is that when stress hits the hot button we all revert to behavior patterns we learned in our original organization, the family. That is where we learned about fairness, favoritism, arguing, authenticity, and whining. So, if your co-worker is acting like a baby…you’re right!

In “Don’t Bring It to Work” there are the 13 most common patterns we bring to work and tips on how to change them to their positive opposite.

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Fast Company: Summer Reading

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

William C. Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company offered us the opportunity to pause, take stock, and dive under the sound bites of today’s living. There appears to be so little time to dig down and as he says, “think deeper, look broader, and reflect” on what questions are worth asking.

The books on his list for summer reading and the comments by well respected individuals hopefully will give you the impetus to order one or two that strike your fancy. Let me know what books have impacted your life view and why. The more lists of great books that folks can choose from, the better.

I’d like to add two of my all time favorites. “Jitterbug Perfume” by Tom Robbins, tells a tale that takes us to New Orleans and then links us with our roots from, well, the beginnings of when we got past talking in “ugg” and “mugg” sound bites. Another is “Steps to an Ecology of Mind” by anthropologist Gregory Bateson that requests we think in terms of systems and how everything is connected. It’s what the world needs now.

In this day and age reading almost seems an extravagance. It’s not. It is essential for us to slow down and savor words and sentences, thoughts and ideas and then find others with whom we can, as Taylor suggests, “think deeper, look broader and reflect” on what really matters.

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Teaching Leadership

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

There has been a fascinating discussion going on for several weeks on the Leadership Think Tank Group on LinkedIn. The question is “If you could teach one thing to a young leader what would it be?”

There have been over 250 responses and the vast array of answers creates a composite of the myriad aspects of  leadership development. It does seem that the largest number of answers believe that leadership is an art and craft that can be learned.

One particular answer by Tom Tavares caught my attention. He talks about helping leaders with the vital skill of problem solving under pressure. He states “Based on 500 in-depth profiles of leaders in a wide variety of industries, 80% or more fall back on their own problem-solving skills when under pressure. Leaders start their careers as specialists and are strong problem-solvers. When pressure builds, fixing things themselves provides a sense of control.”

This is so true and is something we all need to consider when the going is tough. In “Don’t Bring It to Work” I talk about the fact that when stress hits the hot button we all tend to revert to patterns of behavior learned in our original organization, the family and that is what we bring into the workplace.

Think about how you coped under pressure when you were eight or ten or fourteen. Now, look at how you problem solve in your adult life at work? What are the common threads? this will help you find the way out to new and more effective behavior.

In the third session of our Total Leadership Connections program problem solving is a key theme. Participants have the opportunity to do a “Pep Talk” concerning a problem-solving issue of their choosing. They can decide to address a work issue or one closer to home. Pep Talk stands for “Pattern Encounter Process” and there is the opportunity to look at the long-term behavior patterns, the coping mechanisms that absolutely pop-up unconsciously when there is stress and anxiety.

What is amazing is how hard it is to see it on ourselves when we are in those stress-filled moments. We learned how to survive when we were kids. How do I know? Just look in the mirror; we’re still here. Trouble is what worked for us as youngsters is not always the best solution as an adult.

Think about it; did you take the fight or flight route? Many a young leader both takes the offensive and is a persecutor and finger pointer in getting through tough times. Others take the avoider route and figures everything will handle itself if I just wait long enough. Others become the victim, some the rescuers. There are the deniers who look a problem square in the face and say “No big deal”.

We can see so many of the patterned responses playing out in the tragedy of the BP oil fiasco. But wait, before you cast the first stone, look inside and think about your own leadership manner of working through tough times at work.

Back to Tom Tavares advice; he suggests leaders take the route of collaboration saying “one mind and many hands is less intelligent than many minds in solving problems from the outset.”  I agree that this can help stop the old patterned responses from taking over. Being able to use your leadership team in a cooperative manner and making sure there is openness to question decisions can lead to better and best decisions in the long run.

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