Make Meaning as a Leader
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leading Change, Life and Business, Organizational Transformation, Performance
Guy Kawasaki’s “Make Meaning” encouragement for entrepreneurs described in his book, The Art of the Start, and here by Guy himself in this brief video clip, has always resonated with me as a rallying cry for leaders hoping in their own way to make a difference.
Kawasaki suggests that the most successful start-ups aren’t preoccupied on making money, but rather they are focused on changing the world in some unique way…fundamentally on making the world a better place. While he describes his belief as perhaps naïve and romantic, in my opinion, the most successful firms and leaders incorporate a hefty dose of big dreaming as rocket fuel for their efforts.
Dream big and the nature of work changes to the art and thrill of creation. Fail to identify a dream to chase and work becomes a series of endless tasks without meaning.
The best leaders that I know are driven by an internal belief and desire to create something good and significant through their leadership efforts. They are egotistical enough to understand that they want to pursue greatness in some terms, and they are humble enough to know that none of this is about them, but rather it is for and with and by others that this something can be achieved.
They also are confident enough to recognize that the big dream might just be in the mind of a soft-spoken team member or in the collective consciousness of a team that has long wrestled with serving customers. Their job is not fundamentally to create the dream, but rather to extract and form it and make it tangible. Their job is to give meaning to a dream.
Kawasaki offers three suggestions for “making meaning” on a societal scale as an entrepreneur:
- Increase the quality of life
- Right a wrong
- Prevent the end of something good
While the scale may shrink a bit depending upon your leadership view, you will be well served to operate with a “make meaning” mindset and to help your team frame and chase a dream. The alternative is that all of this is just work.
March Leadership Development Carnival at Great Leadership
Filed under: Career, Current Affairs, Leadership, Leadership Carnivals, Leadership Skills, Life and Business, Professional Growth, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
I’m still chuckling over Dan McCarthy’s creativity with his Special Academy Awards Edition of the Leadership Development Carnival! In addition to great content from so many Red Carpet bloggers, Dan has me doing the opening musical and dance number. He clearly forgot to consult with my wife who would have informed him that I have two feet…both left, and my best songs are truly the ones that no one can hear outside of the range of my shower!
Thanks to Dan as always for doing a great job with the Carnival and for adding a fun twist to some great material! If you are looking to continue the festivities as you move through your work week, and you need a little inspiration along the way, the March Leadership Development Carnival is your ideal destination!
Friday Leadership Highs and Lows
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Skills, Life and Business, Professional Growth, Social Commentary, Values
The High with a Leadership Low: Leaders, Have You Seen Your Humility Lately?
One of the highlights for me of the past few academic years has been the invitation from Sarah Sullivan, a Lead Business Instructor at McHenry County College to guest speak in her Creative Leadership class. Sarah teaches this class in the school’s Academy for High Performance, and as the name implies, it is filled with highly motivated, experienced adults that are hungry to learn and not afraid to question.
What makes this guest speaking experience particularly enjoyable is the fact that Sarah has used my book (with Rich Petro), Practical Lessons in Leadership-A Guidebook for Aspiring and Experienced Leaders, as part of the class, so I’m on tap to both explain the genesis of the book and to support the premise that leadership is a profession and expand on the additional guidance that Rich and I serve up over our 200 pages.
This week’s session included two highlights. The first was the opportunity to re-engage with an outstanding group of professionals that survived my class in Global Business late last year. I’ve rarely encountered a sharper and more engaging group of adult learners!
The other highlight was a comment at the end of our session that should make all of us stop and pause. While I don’t remember the exact wording, this insightful individual offered that she understood the emphasis in leadership writing and speaking on great leaders as humble leaders fiercely committed to their firm’s success and the success of their team members, (think Jim Collins, Level 5), she found herself wondering where all of these leaders were. In her opinion and based on significant experience, she had observed that the oversized egos of most leaders get in the way of any genuine humility.
I suspect that her observation can serve as a safe generalization for the experiences of many individuals in the workforce. Sad but true.
How Low Can You Go: Milton Bradley (the baseball player, not the game company), Your External Locus of Control is Showing.
I tend not to comment on sports or athletes here for a number of good reasons, including the fact that almost everyone knows more about sports and current events in sports than I do. Nonetheless, the local Chicago television news this morning continues to trumpet a story on former Cub, Milton Bradley…a highly paid player that the Cubs brought to Chicago for a King’s Ransom of a salary, only to watch this player turn in a miserable year and earn the media label: Clubhouse Cancer. While I’ve not heard that phrase or label before, it doesn’t sound positive!
Now that he is no longer part of the Cubs, he has lashed out with a line of reasoning to the effect that he had been good in prior years, he did not do well in Chicago and therefore it must be Chicago’s fault.
Ponder.
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Enjoy your weekends! I’ve got to get a jump on next week’s Leadership Caffeine post. Monday is not far behind!
Beware Contracting “I’m Right, You’re Wrong” Disease?
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Skills, Management Education, Professional Growth, Surviving Lousy Leaders, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
It’s time to add another malady to the long list of things that bedevil the many lousy leaders walking unencumbered through our workplaces. It’s called, “I’m Right and You’re Wrong” (IRYW) disease, and while it’s not fatal, it’s clearly annoying to people and debilitating to performance.
Frankly, leaders that suffer from IRYW disease just piss other people off, while stifling creativity and innovation and casually squashing the souls of everyone they encounter.
IRYW sufferers take on many forms, depending upon how far along the disease is in warping their personalities. You might recognize it in one of the following forms:
- The boss that encourages input but never takes it. Ever.
- The boss or co-worker that gets visibly angry when someone disagrees with him/her.
- The manager that habitually throws dissenters under the bus.
- The manager or co-worker that always has to have the last word.
- The leaders that look at you as if you’ve grown two heads when you gather up the courage to share an idea or offer an alternative option.
Unfortunately, we run into this malady in our personal lives as well. We almost all have the relative or friend that is the self-anointed expert and this can be particularly problematic in households when it is a significant other or even an in-law. Feel free to offer up your own coping strategies from these examples…we’ll all learn in the process.
How You Can Avoid Catching “I’m Right, You’re Wrong” Disease:
-Take a daily dose of humility. Remind yourself when you walk in the door that your role is to help others to succeed, not to show everyone how smart you are.
-Set up an early warning system. While granted that it takes a fair amount of emotional intelligence to recognize that this is good, many brilliant and successful leaders cultivate peer relationships where they encourage feedback, including the “quit acting like a jerk” kind. I’ve had two of these colleagues for years, and their occasional clubbing over the head has been remarkably helpful.
-While it’s cliché, hire people smarter than you. Do this right and you’ll not only gain the benefits of their considerable intelligence, but you’ll double your efforts to help them and earn their respect, as you certainly won’t be able to play and get away with IRYW.
-Stay out of environments where you might be tempted to incorrectly assert yourself and damage the group dynamics. Some bosses have no business in group brainstorming sessions. If you’re one, find something else to do.
Surviving a Boss with “I’m Right, You’re Wrong” Disease:
-Recognize that for this individual, it’s really important to feel like they are right. Since were not psychologists here, we’ll have to pass on analyzing childhood issues or assessing other compensating factors and fous on developing some patience.
-A fair number of IRYW sufferers are harmless. They revel in their own seeming brilliance, but their survival instinct allows them to accept ideas and input…especially if they think they prompted the ideas. Again, we’re not psychologists, but you should use some psychology here. Hey, if you are as smart as you think you are, this one should be easy!
-For those that are in the advanced and more dangerous stages of IRYW, this is truly a challenge. I have no qualms attempting to give my boss quality feedback, even if I’m politely telling her that she is an ass, but in these lean job times, many will shy away from that tactic. Either develop moral courage, developing a coping strategy or start looking.
-If this boss provides you latitude to do your work, stay out of his/her way, execute, provide clear, formal updates and if you face a controversial decision, ask for input. Your very professional demeanor may have a neutralizing affect (to some extent) and your asking for input is a reasonable form of managing upwards in this case.
If you as readers have any other advice, we’re all ears!
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Make no bones about it, my emphasis is on working with good people wanting to become great. The failing in all of the writing and talking about effective leadership is that the lousy leaders rarely pay attention and definitely don’t recognize themselves. To those non-readers, enjoy your life For those of you aspiring and growing as professionals, take this as a polite reminder that you don’t need to be right all of the time. If you suddenly finding everyone agreeing with you, you may want to phone a friend and ask for a quick attitude adjustment.
Leadership Caffeine-Learning to Lead in the Project-Focused World
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Management Education, Performance, Project Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
The rise of “the project” as an important means of competing and creating value has profound implications for those in leadership roles. Unfortunately, in many cases, the evolution in leadership practices has not kept pace with the needs of project teams or the needs of organizations struggling to develop competence at executing on projects.
Our traditional models of leadership emphasize the development of skills and practices that focus on individuals and teams generally operating under the umbrella of a single functional leader. However, firms moving towards a project-focused culture tend to start by overlaying a matrix form project management structure on top of the traditional functional orientation. This new and non-traditional environment offers a host of new problems and challenges for leaders used to being masters of their own domains.
As a sidebar, while the project management discipline is well established and the role of the formal project manager is growing in importance and popularity, both my own anecdotal evidence and the many reports and studies on project performance indicate that we’ve not yet cracked the code on managing projects for success. In my work as a consultant and as a project management educator at the graduate level, I have few qualms in suggesting that the majority of the organizations that attempt what I’ve described above…imposing a matrix format on a functional orientation, struggle and flounder with their projects. Leadership or the lack of appropriate leadership support is a key issue in project failure.
8 Suggestions for Leading and Succeeding Inside the Project Matrix
- First, recognize that the rules of the game have changed. Your mission is no longer about optimizing results within your functional boundaries. Your emphasis is on providing resources and support for teams that aren’t yours.
- You enhance your position by supplying the strongest possible talent for work on project teams, not by hoarding this talent for your own purposes. Pony up.
- Your talent development efforts must now incorporate the development of skills and experience working within the matrix. Translation: you need to help teach and develop individuals that are comfortable and competent working on multiple initiatives for multiple teams.
- From time to time, complex project challenges will require your functional area’s direct support for resolution. This is a time for you and your colleagues to shine. Run, don’t walk and offer your help.
- Be aware of fluctuations and perturbations in the matrix. The brunt of the stress and complexity falls on the people doing the work. Communication, problem-solving, negotiation and prioritization are all complex in a matrix environment, and you can help by stepping in and facilitating solution development. Your efforts to reduce stress and complexity will pay off in the form of increased team performance and improved project execution.
- Hug a project manager today. OK, maybe not literally, but it’s a great practice to reach out and cultivate a relationship with your firm’s project managers. These busy individuals are at the epicenter of a firm’s key initiatives and have a unique view on the challenges, opportunities and the organization’s talent pool. Plus, develop a good reputation for supporting the project managers and this will pay dividends when you are looking for support for initiatives that impact your area of responsibility.
- Leverage the emerging project environment to expand your reach and grow your career. Top management is looking for leaders that understand how to help make things happen in an increasingly complex and hostile global marketplace. Your active involvement and contribution to project team success will highlight that you’ve moved beyond yesterday’s approaches to leading.
- Master the role of project sponsor. If you are at the level where you are eligible to serve as a project sponsor, sign-on and do everything possible to help the project succeed. Don’t make the common mistake of viewing this role as a token or honorary position. Good sponsors work hard to support their project teams. And don’t forget the Kevlar vest for others outside your project team that will have plenty of reason to take aim should things go wrong. This is the time when great sponsors shine.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Never turn down an opportunity to enhance your leadership skills. The increasingly important project-orientation of organizations offers a myriad of opportunities for you to develop new skills and try on new approaches. You can remain stubborn and insist on leading from a functional view-point, but in this case, your view might just be from the back of the unemployment line. It’s time to enter the matrix.
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