Growing Up Globally Aware in America-A Key to Your Children’s Future Success
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Leading the Generations, Life and Business, Social Commentary, Values
Note from Art: I don’t often write about parenting, but it is most definitely leadership…and you/we are most definitely responsible for raising tomorrow’s leaders. It’s time we stepped up our game a bit on diversity and global education.
As if parenting isn’t challenging enough for most of us, there’s another task to add to a list that doesn’t seem to lack for things to do. This one may require foregoing a few soccer games, conducting some more of those “talks” and putting the effort forth to create new educational opportunities and family experiences
I’m talking about ensuring that our future generations of leaders grow up globally aware and highly familiar with the rich and complicated level of diversity, customs, practices and subtle and significant variations across cultures, countries and religions.
Six Reasons Why this is Really Important?
- The last time I looked, everything that we understood as children of the 70’s and as parents of the 90’s children has changed. Our context is steeped in the world of our parents and of our youth. Tomorrow on this pale blue dot called earth does not look like yesterday.
- The global economy is more interconnected and infinitely more complex to navigate and compete in than ever before.
- The stakes for jobs, careers and even the prosperity of countries and regions are now very, very real.
- The world of work involves collaborating and cooperating and building bridges with people across cultures, religions and geographies. You must be a boundary and culture spanner to survive and succeed.
- The people your children will be both collaborating with and competing against are well-steeped in languages, cultural issues and understanding and they are most definitely aware of the opportunities. They are also aware of the relative ignorance of their American counterparts on these issues.
- The world of work involves identifying and successfully competing in far away places that don’t look like Most Towns, U.S.A. This requires insight, knowledge, context and skills that our parents would not understand.
The Problem: We Don’t Think Globally
Most of us…and especially our children have no context for where things come from…how they got there and what the implications are for the entire value chain backwards from the retailers to somewhere in the world where the materials and labor came together. We buy and consume mindless and heedless of our connection to a complex global economic value chain and ecosystem.
My observation is that there is a naïve idealism born of parental sheltering in some of our youth that life unfolds easily and predictably. You go to school, a good job waits for you on the other end and you exceed the life achievements of your parents. For a reality check, see also the note that everything changed.
An initial instinct is to point at our education system and wonder what they can do to solve this issue. School is an important part of the opportunity to improve, but the primary responsibilities for adding a global dimension to our children’s life experiences is ours as parents. Easy words, I know.
Seven Ideas for Helping Improve Your Child’s Global and Cultural I.Q.
1. Make a conscious effort to teach your children about the broader world at an early age. This transcends looking at maps and involves actually spending time studying different cultures and creating related experiences including trips to libraries, restaurants, museums and different types of cultural events. And yes, this means you might be challenged to learn yourself. Remember, you just need to stay one lesson ahead of your child.
2. Teach your children about economics and politics and help them stay abreast of current global events. Discuss these at the dinner table.
3. Encourage reading activities or create reading lists that draw on global authors and sources. Your librarian will be happy to help you with this.
4. Increase the emphasis on learning foreign languages (plural) at a young age. Don’t wait for 7th grade Spanish. There are resources available on the web or via other service providers and tutors. Yeah, this takes money and time. So do soccer, hockey, football, dance, music lessons etc.
5. If your financial conditions allow, skip the third trip to Disney and go somewhere that requires travelling over an ocean. Spend time reading and preparing for the visit and try to build an itinerary that includes something other than the usual tourist stops.
6. Host an exchange student. Better yet, do this several times.
7. At the right age, encourage your children to become exchange students or to take advantage of study abroad programs.
The Bottom-Line for Now
It’s easy to get lost in this big country and in our daily family lives in our communities and lose track of the world around us. It’s more important than ever to create a broader global consciousness in the minds of our children or they are in for a rough wake-up call. The distance from soccer field in Sometown, U.S.A. to expectant job seeker and erstwhile professional is very short, and global preparation is now a prerequisite for survival and success.
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!
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.
Leadership Caffeine: Teach, Don’t Tell
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leadership Skills, Performance, Talent Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
I discovered a long time ago that I was much more effective as a leader and as a father (a much harder job to get right!) if I adopted an approach that emphasized teaching over telling.
While there are circumstances where telling is appropriate…the battlefield, the operating room, perhaps the football field and a few others that I’m sure that I would think of if given enough time, most people prefer to learn, not to carry out orders.
Learning engages the senses, opens the mind, creates new neural connections and challenges us to push beyond our routine thoughts and actions.
Good leaders develop an approach that incorporates teaching while emphasizing performance. The two are not only, not mutually exclusive, they are complementary.
Consider:
- The sales manager that observes and coaches her sales representatives will win out every year over the manager that berates poor performers and then demands performance at the end of a metaphorical gun barrel.
- The CEO that consistently and respectfully asks tough strategic and execution questions is teaching his team members how to focus on the important issues of value creation and performance.
- The shop floor supervisor that asks for input on solving quality problems is teaching people that their ideas count when it comes to making improvements.
- The journeyman carpenter that teaches by showing and then leaving the apprentice alone to try the same task, is inspiring by showing confidence and encouraging independent effort.
5 Rules for Teaching Leaders to Live By:
- Recognize that the additional time investment that you make in teaching will come back to you in dividends many times over.
- Resist the urge to bark an order even if you know exactly what needs to be done.
- Use questions as powerful teaching tools.
- If you must “Tell,” provide an explanation. Proper context for a “do this” ensures that some learning takes place.
- Mistakes are teachable moments. Resist the urge to pounce and strive to help all parties extract the lessons.
And as a parent, try doubling or tripling the amount of time that you spend teaching and please resist the urge to pull out the infamous, “Because I said so.”
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The old model of command and control leadership falls on rebellious and increasingly deaf ears in a workplace of boomers reinventing themselves, millennials finding their way and all of us striving to deal with the new complexity that is our world. It’s time to step up and teach.
I am reminded of a comment attributed to the late and great jazz trumpeter and band leader, Maynard Ferguson, who devoted an incredible amount of time to teaching and inspiring aspiring band students around the country. While I’m certain that I’m grossly paraphrasing his comment, it went something like, Why would you do anything else, when you can teach? His band members of course referred to him as The Boss.
It’s time to quit telling and start teaching. Why not start today?
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