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Why Pride Causes Blindness

Posted by on May 24, 2017

Pride is a terrible thing. It causes you to focus only on what is in your personal interest and blinds you to the reality of what you are doing to hurt other people.

The public spectacle that played out in the news concerning Reverend Wright and Barack Obama was been painful to watch. In this tragedy you have two people who once genuinely cared for each other now forced to publicly attack the other person because of what has been said.

Pride also causes you to lose touch with the truth about yourself and what you really believe. You literally become like the thing you hate but you cannot see it.

The great irony about some of the positions being advocated by the Reverend Wright on the extreme right of black liberation theology is they are really no different than those of other hate speech being advocated by the leaders of the extreme right of white liberation theology.

The only difference between the two groups is literally the color of their skin and if they heard that they would deny it to the death. What should we all take away from this?

This is not a story just about politics. It is about every relationship we have in our lives.

When you think the other person is always wrong and you are always right be careful. The reason you may be able to see their faults is because you are looking at them through the mirror of your own life.

We as Christians are told to always clean up our own issues before we even begin to criticize someone else. God does resist the proud but he will give His grace to the humble.

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How To Have Difficult Conversations When You Hate Conflict

Posted by on May 24, 2017

This issue is one of the hardest things I have to deal with in working with leaders who are wired to avoid conflict. My only effective coaching strategy is to show them through their own experience that the longer they wait the higher the price. So if you hate all the drama, deal with it early and the outcome will be well worth the risk. Excellent post by Joel Garfinkle:

“Avoiding or delaying a difficult conversation can hurt your relationships and create other negative outcomes. It may not feel natural at first, especially if you dread discord, but you can learn to dive into these tough talks by reframing your thoughts.

Begin from a place of curiosity and respect, and stop worrying about being liked. Conflict avoiders are often worried about their likability. While it’s natural to want to be liked, that’s not always the most important thing. Lean into the conversation with an open attitude and a genuine desire to learn. Start from a place of curiosity and respect — for both yourself and the other person. Genuine respect and vulnerability typically produce more of the same: mutual respect and shared vulnerability.”

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Your Team Is Brainstorming All Wrong

Posted by on May 22, 2017

It is often said in sports that how you prepare before the game will determine how well you play in the game. I believe that is also true about meeting effectiveness as well. The amount of work that is done before the meeting will determine how well your team can actually use collaboration to obtain great work. This HBR post is excellent:

“When your team is tasked with generating ideas to solve a problem, suggesting a brainstorming session is a natural reaction. But does that approach actually work? Although the term “brainstorming” is now used as a generic term for having groups develop ideas, it began as the name of a specific technique proposed by advertising executive Alex Osborn in the 1950s. He codified the basic rules that many of us follow when getting people together to generate ideas: Toss out as many ideas as possible.”

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3 Steps To Resolving Conflict

Posted by on May 19, 2017

All of us at some point in time will have conflict and disagreements with someone else either in our personal lives or professionally at work. These situations can be painful at times but seeking resolution is the only way to maintain positive momentum in your life.

There are at least three critical steps that you must take if you want to restore the relationship and move forward in your own life.

Own Your Part—In every disagreement there are always two sides to the story. I have never known a situation where there was not some responsibility for the problem with both parties. If we think the other party is the major offender then we tend to wait for them to make the first move. Instead we need to take whatever percentage of the problem is ours even if it’s minor and do what we need to do to admit it and ask for forgiveness regardless of what the other person does.
Talk To Person Privately—Most of the time when we are having problems with another person we tend to go to other people first and complain or try to find emotional support. What we should do is go privately to the person who offended us first and tell them in a respectful way why we are offended and give them a chance to respond. When we are talking about someone else to another person rather than talking to them the situation will only get worse.
Give Them Benefit Of Doubt—When we sense that a conversation is not going well and we can tell it may hurt us we have a decision to make. We can either assume the worst about the other person’s motives or we can believe the best. Many times if we can give them the benefit of the doubt at this critical moment then even though it may still hurt there will be no lasting damage because we give them a pass because we trust their heart.

The reason many times we can so easily see problems in other people is those same things live within us.

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10 Things You Will Hear In A Toxic Workplace

Posted by on May 17, 2017

One of the hardest things I have to deal with as an executive coach is to help any leader improve when in reality they are working in a toxic culture. I remember Jim Collins describing it as a place where the truth can no longer be told because leaders keep shooting the messenger. Trust has been lost and silos have been built to protect everyone from each other and the organization. Liz Ryan is always excellent:

“Just because you don’t like your job doesn’t mean you are any less talented, capable, smart or creative than you ever were. You are growing new muscles through this painful experience that stinks to live through but will make you stronger in the end.”

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How To Make Time For What Matters Most

Posted by on May 15, 2017

The skill sets involved in personal productivity will ensure that you can get more things done faster. However, they can not tell you if those things should be done at all. Everyone really needs to develop a life plan that defines the major priorities in their life. Michael Hyatt’s Living Forward is an excellent tool. This post by Sherry Swift is also helpful:

“So many of us suffer from the unrealistic, anxiety-based feeling that “there is never enough time.” This feeling usually comes from living a distracted life — one that is constantly interrupted by something noisy and new. As a result of this lifestyle, we are often left feeling disjointed, incomplete and unsuccessful.”

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The Role Of Storytelling In Creating Your Culture

Posted by on May 12, 2017

Every leader is constantly trying to find new and creative ways to communicate the culture of their organization both internally and externally. I have found no better way than storytelling.

The simplest definition of storytelling is when you can link existing personnel, ongoing priorities and outstanding performance then you have a story to tell. This will allow you to reinforce core values and celebrate success by acknowledging over and above situations that give credit to your people and remind everyone of what is really important.

In essence, if you have no stories to tell, then you are not performing in critical areas. The good news is that in most organizations there are character driven people that are doing an outstanding job. The bad news is their stories are not being told.

I have never seen this work informally by just asking people for outstanding results during a meeting or telling a few stories during annual meetings. This will probably require formalizing this entire process to create a system where stories can be routinely asked for and submitted to someone who can evaluate them and then find an appropriate platform for communication.

This must not though feel like a monthly performance review system where everyone is checked against their numbers. It needs to be like what happened great in your area this month that would encourage everyone in the organization to know.

The formula is simple existing personnel + ongoing priorities + outstanding performance = Success. The only missing piece is telling the story.

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6 Ways To Energize Your Team

Posted by on May 10, 2017

I have often said that leaders more than anything else are dealers in hope. You are the emotional thermostat for your team. If they sense your positive attitude it will give them the confidence that we will get through this and win in the end. This Michael Hyatt post is excellent as always:

“As a leader, you have an effect on people. When you leave the room, people either feel taller or smaller. This is an almost super-hero power, but, unfortunately, leaders are often unconscious of it. A few years ago, I met with an author I had always admired. It wasn’t our first meeting; I had met with him a few times previously. I had always enjoyed being with him and left our encounters with a renewed commitment to serve him well.

But this time was different. He marched into the meeting with an entourage of assistants and a heavy dose of entitlement. Something had changed.”

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The 3 Critical Steps Of Execution

Posted by on May 5, 2017

It is amazing to me how all of the most respected people in the field of leadership are so consistently saying the same things about the most important things that all organizations need to be doing. It really started when Steven Covey wrote Seven Habits of Highly Effective People followed by Jim Collins Good to Great and now every bestselling book on leadership prioritizes the same factors.

Execution is a great read by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. They define execution as the discipline of getting things done.

They start with the number one issue of the day the personal character of the leader. If you are not able to execute your own personal priorities then you will never be able to establish execution as a priority for your organization.

In the spirit of Good to Great they insist that the leader must never delegate their most important responsibility of getting the right people on the team. This factor more than any other will determine if you r people can consistently move beyond creative development and project planning to actually get the job done.

The next priority is to create a culture of discipline where execution is valued. A great insight is that we don’t think ourselves into a new way of acting, we act ourselves into a new way of thinking. Translation, at some point in time we need to stop talking about the problem and start doing something to solve it.

Finally, after the leader has set clear goals and priorities you must evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy. Then it is extremely important to reward the doers who are actually getting the job done and this will move execution to the top of your leadership core values.

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An Early Warning System For Your Team's Stress Level

Posted by on May 3, 2017

Because everyone is under such incredible stress, we have grown to accept abnormal behavior and just right it off as no margin. However, there is a line beyond which some people pass that impacts their ability to make it back to being productive and really enjoying their work again. This HBR post gives leaders some excellent training:

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!” This had always been Michel’s response when his senior executives started “wilting under pressure” and letting him down. As the CEO of a global oil company who had risen through the ranks, Michel had faced many stressful events on off-shore rigs early in his career, and considered himself to be a tough guy with no tolerance for wimps.

But with intense media and regulatory focus on oil prices adding complexity to a current restructuring in the organization, Michel was now facing an internal crisis that he had not foreseen. His blunt approach to fixing low performers in his executive committee wasn’t working.”

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