I asked folks to send in stories about those who have helped them personally or who they have encountered who make a difference. Here is a powerful one from Katherine Matson who is a participant in our “Total Leadership Connections Program“.
Katherine is a skilled technology expert who spent years at IBM. She is also an individual who cares about making the world a better place and developing models for user friendly work settings, both technically and relationally.
Sylvia asked us to share stories about one person making a difference. Last week my oldest daughter called me to tell me about a guest speaker in her Public Policy class, a young man named John Dau. Dau was one of the “Lost Boys” of Sudan, one of 27,000 who walked over one thousand miles to reach freedom. I know some came here to Michigan, and perhaps there are some in your area as well.
Dau arrived in Syracuse in 2001 just before 9/11. From never having seen electricity (they had to show him how to turn the lights on and off) he has graduated from Syracuse University, started a foundation, and has finished building a clinic in Sudan. A few weeks ago he was honored with a Caring People award (along with Colin Powell and Dalai Lama). Helping Sudan has become his life’s work.
Every leadership development programshould have a module on burnout; how to avoid it and what to do when yikes, too late, it’s right there in front of you.
Burnout is one of the leading causes ofconflict in the workplace. When you are exhausted even the softest squeaky wheel will set your teeth on edge. Burnout causes you to be irritable, unfocused, and less willing to hear others.
In a great article by Joe Duffy in FastCompany.com (Oct.27)he talks about creative types and how to keep their mojo. His advice works equally well for the rest of us worker bees, those of us who think we are the drudges at work.
Drudge is an interesting word. It is a word from Old English that means to work, to suffer. Fascinating how work and suffering are so often linked together.
So, ask yourself, are you a creator or a drudge? Is your life about finding the new in the mundane? Is your life about being a suffering servant to others? Once you claim the mantle of being a creative type everything in your life will take on new colors and dimensions.
So, whether you have the freedom to come and go at work that Joe suggests, or you are a 9 to 5’er, you can garner new ideas and help spark the inspiration of your whole team. Here are a few suggestions:
* Go for a brief 20 minute walk by yourself
* Close your eyes for 20 minutes and hum to yourself
* Check out a joke site and have a few laughs
* Share the laughs with colleagues
* Call someone and say thank you
* Keep crayons in your desk and take 20 minutes to scribble
* Take a new route home from work or to work the next day
Give power to the creative part of you and burnout will have to find another home! We were born to create not drudge!!!!
Last month we were in the middle of our 41st “Total Leadership Connections” program and the context was integration. Mainly about how things are connected and what to look for when people work together.
The group consists of highly trained, very competentexecutiveswho want to take their careers to a higher level. Their skills in marketing, education, and sales are exemplary. What we were discussing was how people who work together can find a new point of connection when they are more open with each other. The idea is about a group hug, it’s about innovation and creativity.
I must admit, other than a few companies we have worked with, the traditional way is to be rather closed about ourselves. In most executive training programs the focus is on strategy and structure. The human part of capitol is still behind a wall of self protection.
As we sat and grappled with how open is appropriate I could feel the discomfort in the room. Finally, one of the more courageous participants talked about how he had gotten burned by sharing a story in which he had been open with his boss and it came back to haunt him. That started a rash of “me too” stories that proved the point it is better to be safe behind walls.
I really wondered if the group would break through and at least experience what real camaraderie feels like, even for just a brief time. Everyone talks about, yearns for a trusting environment at work, yet, until truth is told and someone is willing to risk being the first truth teller there continues to be a stagnant quality in the air.
Finally someone began to be real. He told about a failure that had set him back and diminished his belief in openness at work. On and on they went telling their truths. I watched. They were really listening to each other. No one interrupted, no one judged, no one made dumb jokes.
When we took a break one of the high potentialson her way to a marvelous career looked at the group and said “I finally get it. It really is about human capital and how we create cultures that have a foundation of openness, fun, and being real. Think about it. Someone willing to talk about an embarrassing failure, one that he had kept deep inside for years was the start of thirteen other people finding their own voices.”
Maybe, just maybe we can learn to be real with each other at work. I wonder if this a way to keep health care costs down. Less stress and more community may well be better than any of the anti-anxiety pills on the market.
I was watching an “expert” talk about how to get a team motivated. His question was “Is threatening people a good idea”? In less than the two minute YouTube response his answer was basically “yes, that if people are not living up to our expectations we need to confront them and tell them what is wrong and what they have to do.”
Needless to say, I was frustrated with this simplistic and one step answer. My concern is that while we want, and the internet prefers, easy answers we are losing the capacity to search deeply and broadly for what really works in terms of motivating and developing leaders as well as valued employees. This concept of how to motivate and engage was front and center a few days ago.
I was facilitating the third session of our “Total Leadership Connections”(TLC) program which focuses on team integration, how situations and people are connected at a core level. At one point there was dissatisfaction with an earlier process and someone felt he had not received enough time to complete his presentation. He sat quietly and it was clear he was disengaged.
So, what does a facilitator do? Easier to ignore and talk off line? Easier to give the time and be late for other parts of the session? Easier to ignore? What isn’t easy is to stop the flow of the meeting and tend to the problem right there and then, with the whole group in attendance. This is meant not to threaten people; it is to help them learn an art that is not well practiced. However, when we stop a meeting to face the “elephant” in the room, it is, for most people threatening.
In my book, “Don’t Bring It to Work” there are several chapters designed to address the most effective ways to create an atmosphere where dialogue can be sustained. These chapters consider what is missing when we give simplistic answers to complex themes.
No, we don’t need abstract tomes and tons of verbiage to get to the answers. We do, however, need to think more deeply about the interactions in relationships and what can be done to disarm threatened employees (or relatives or neighbors) and help them hear and be willing to change rather than the old version of threaten and confront.
What happened in the TLC session is that as this very bright, competent man was able to verbalize his deepest disappointment, it opened the door for others to face their own fear of addressing uncomfortable issues in a group.
By the time we finished you could feel the dark energy of disappointment begin to dissipate and a new level of dialogue and collegiality open.
The old confront/threaten model that we all learned to accept as children, from mild time- outs to intense and often abusive spankings/beatings has never gotten anyone to feel safe enough to find a better way. Maybe it looks effective and efficient. In my experience it only had people put up their shields and over time they won’t even peer over the thick wall of defensiveness that has been created. And then we have such a waste of human capital and workers who become robots just to get their pay check.
You can take the pattern aware quiz on line www.sylvialafair.com/quiz.html as a first step at understanding your own reactions and then you can learn better ways to lead rather than using old outmoded ways of getting solutions through threatening others.
I just found a note I wrote when I was putting the information together for my book “Don’t Bring It to Work”.It was a simple statement, “Anger at work and at home costs a lot of money”.
I began to think about all the arguments I have had, at least the BIG ones that I can remember, actually, the ones I know I will never forget. And I decided to see what it would be like to put a cash amount on each one. I finally stopped when I realized I had exceeded the national debt.
Then I looked at research about the cost of anger in the workplace. I took out violence that belongs in another category. I just wanted to look at law suits, wasted time, people quitting, people being fired. Again, it was way beyond what this country owes the Chinese.
Why, I wondered, do we have such a hard time getting along? Why do we create so many opposite stands so that we are hell bent on proving each other wrong?
I know part of the issues concerns what I have written about. Thepatterns from childhood are hard wired and we carry them with us into all other relationships. So if we saw and participated in divisiveness as kids, just think about the neighborhood bully and the havoc he or she could cause, we carried these memories into our adult lives and they became the way we treat each other.
So, here is my question: what would it take to show compassion and kindness instead of anger and revenge? If any one has some good ideas I’d like to hear them. Maybe we could create a collage out of the responses of new ways past old anger.
I was in a discussion with a colleague about the key drivers for leadership success and what core elements in leadership developmentwould make the greatest long term difference.
Think about it for a minute; what would you say is the #1 factor for success. I want to underline, long term success. What does it take to get to the top? I want to underline, to get to the top and stay there!
We have seen so many CEO’s topple from their positions in maybe, two years. And often when they fall, they fall hard with a long list of things that were done poorly or not done at all. Most of the CEO’s who are no longer CEO’s were good strategic thinkers and had excellent business knowledge. So what was lacking?
Why these skills are so critical is that they are the ones that help people work through the tough issues and come out the other side with little damage. It is the discomfort that takes place when decisions are made that can stall a team, even a highly skilled team, and where there is often sabotage and office politics.
So, allleadership development programsneed to focus on the systemic aspect of group interactions and how to be a leader able to let conflict resolve without angry losers and ego-bound winners.
Communicationskills are so much more than simply saying what you need to say in a clear and concise way. It is about being a master weaver and helping the interpersonal communications become a masterpiece of collaboration, strand by strand by strand.
Last week there was an article inBNETdiscussingwhy women are so unhappy. Many good points were covered; yet, that is not what I want to write about today. I have been fascinated by the number (almost 150) by count on Sunday of responses to this article.
Most of the reactions were from women, and an occasional man who also put his thoughts in the commentary section. I began to look for thepatterns that would give some understanding to the angst that is in the atmosphere around the men vs. woman debate that is still going strong.
I must admit, I am a strong advocate of partnership and have not been willing to take a strong stand for or against women being put upon. I have been fortunate in my career to be able to speak up and be heard. I also chose a career that began in psychology that is more welcoming to women that most.
I am old enough to have taken a strong stand during the hey-days of the feminist movement. Not to the point of bra burning, although pretty close. I went to consciousness raising meetings and began to question child rearing practices while my two daughters were just out of diapers. I questioned everything and must have given Betty Friedan’sbook to dozens of friends as gifts.
I am now a grandmother and watching my daughter struggle with issues around day care, help on the week-ends, sharing the load with her husband I sometimes wonder is we have made real progress.
I am a pattern watcher and what I see is that we have not really moved from polarization of my point of view vs. his point of view. I still hear the “men are from mars” explanations of why “they just don’t get it”.
I would like to hear from women and men who have found new ways to partner together without the recriminations, the disappointments, and the sense of betrayal that is still going on.
I think women’s happiness is linked with men’s happiness and it is really getting old to keep looking at right and wrong rather than the area in-between where there can be harmony. I don’t think it is too much to ask for new dialogues that can get us out of the woods.
What does it mean for the world that President Obamais receiving theNobel Peace prize? Maybe, just maybe it means we are in a turn the corner place for deeper thinking. Maybe, just maybe, we can find ways to care about each other rather than continue to set up polarizing, frozen perspectives.
My curiosity is peeked. How will theRush Limbaughtypes of the world respond to this news? I expect with their same old rhetoric, their same old blaming, judging, and attacking. It is the pattern of communicationthat has garnered them millions of dollars, fame, and a place to talk and talk and talk.
What I do not see in these loud and negative folks is a thought, ever, about conciliation, giving the other side credit, new thinking about how to solve old problems. I listen to them to stay in touch with all perspectives. Often, when I turn off the radio or television I have a sour taste in my mouth, a knot in my stomach. It’s not so much what they say; it’s the anger that is at the core of their commentary.
In studying the lives of people who are making big sounds in today’s market place, be they politicians, in the media, in education, or in business I am struck by how so many who are angry, who lash out to hurt, who need to find losers so they can be winners, are those who have had childhoods where the pain still seems evident today.
While Obama did not grow up with a silver spoon, he did the hard work of researching his past and making peace with it the best he could. In my work with leaders I am convinced that those who are able to include others, to show compassion, to create connections rather than dissention, are those who, regardless of where or how they grew up have done the hard work of reclaiming the positive patterns from their past and transforming the negative pattern to their healthy opposites.
Observing, understanding, and transforming patternsis the work of 21st century leaders and maybe we can make this a priority for all of us. Then, we can really begin the task of weaving together our human family and begin to bring everyone together in new creative, proactive and collaborative ways.
In our leadership programwe teach, first and foremost,” We’re all in it together and no one wins unless we all do”! Congratulations toPresident Obama, great work in difficult times!!!
As I explore the essence of leadership I hear a similar thought from many of my colleagues that goes like this “Too much retread, too much superficial same old same old”.
So when new ideas that make us really think come along I want to share them with the world. Thus, the video of David Logan, on the faculty of USC, who gives us pause to think about how leaders can help get each of us to a new and more effective place in our own leadership development. Enjoy!
There is a new movie out called The Invention of Lying. Great premise: what if no one knew how to lie and only told the truth, the whole truth, no matter what? It would certainly be a different world. Here is an example from the film. People go out to dinner and one woman to the other “I am very threatened by you” is truth sentence rather than a simple “Hi there”.
I was thinking about this when I saw an article written byRachel Zupekfor CareerBuilder.com titled Should You Ever Lie at Work? Good article with ways to tell the truth in common situations we all face.
We all know it is easier to be honest because there is less to remember. Yet, we all want to look good and be in control of our lives. It is super important for us to present a competent and strong image at work. So how do we tell the truth without looking weak and incapable?
First, your real work is to dig down and find the corepatterns that make you feel the need to tell the little (or big) white lies. Usually, the pattern that is most prone to lie is the pleaser who wants to be appreciated all the time and is fearful of being seen as a nay- sayer. This is apattern learned in childhood where it was not safe to speak out, and rocking the boat got you sent to your room.
Once you can go back to your early memories of what it was like to speak out you can begin a new way of responding. I call this strength training. Take a 5 pound weight at a time. Begin by telling someone close to you how you really feel. Next; practice by writing down your feelings before tackling a situation that has been bothering.
In my book “Don’t Bring It to Work”there are examples of truth telling called “Sound Bites” that will give you some ideas of what truth sentences sound like.
And remember: telling the truth is not spilling your guts. Truth sentences are short, perhaps seven to twelve words, sort of like Twitter. Pleasers who transform thepatternof uber-pleasing into truth telling are on the right track for becoming super leaders.
I asked folks to send in stories about those who have helped them personally or who they have encountered who make a difference. Here is a powerful one from Katherine Matson who is a participant in our “Total Leadership Connections Program“.
on her way to a marvelous career looked at the group and said “I finally get it. It really is about human capital and how we create cultures that have a foundation of openness, fun, and being real. Think about it. Someone willing to talk about an embarrassing failure, one that he had kept deep inside for years was the start of thirteen other people finding their own voices.”
The old confront/threaten model that we all learned to accept as children, from mild time- outs to intense and often abusive spankings/beatings has never gotten anyone to feel safe enough to find a better way. Maybe it looks effective and efficient. In my experience it only had people put up their shields and over time they won’t even peer over the thick wall of defensiveness that has been created. And then we have such a waste of human capital and workers who become robots just to get their pay check.
