ImpetUs...Or...ImpedeUs

The wisest leaders I know are masters at empowering those on their team. They provide Impetus to the team by engaging in the following "juicers"...

• Vision -- They work with us to craft a very clear vision of the better future we can make together.
• Comms -- They provide a relentless drumbeat of communication, internal and external, around that Vision.
• Relate -- They choose to know us well and engage with us authentically.
• Study -- They are driven to learn more and understand deeply, and pull us right along with them in that learning.
• Service -- They model exemplary Servant Leadership, and expect the same from each of us.

And then.......there's the other type of leader. They "get in the way," quite a lot. They're the ones who Impede Us rather than provide the Impetus we need to make that better future we envision.

Championship

Championship is more verb than noun. It springs from intention and daily discipline.

The verb Championship embodies the enactment of several other verbs:

• Optimize -- pushing the talents/gifts to the limit.
• LEARN -- studying best practices and practitioners, adopting the habits of both.
• Commit -- investing the time, effort, and resources to pursue excellence.
• Work -- knowing it to be the foundational verb.
• Collect -- assembling a similarly focused team of partners and experts.

Trophies are nice but you can't eat them and they are notorious dust collectors.

Champions smile, take pictures, glow briefly in the acclaim, then.............get up in the morning and get back to work.

Why? Because Champions know that Championship is more verb than noun.

UnknowingCraftiness

The very best leaders I know know A LOT. However, they skillfully pull off the art of Not Knowing, in the interest of making better teams and producing better outcomes.

How do these wise, knowledgeable, and experienced leaders practice the occult art of not being know-it-alls? They employ an array of strategies that pull from the rest of us a high level of engagement. These skill leaders tap into our best collective and individual gifts by Not Knowing.

Some of their Not Knowing strategies include...

• Suspend assumptions -- Other than the one that assumes we don't yet know all we need to. 
• Curiosity rules -- Each engagement is built on a foundation of curiosity and authentic openness. 
• Inquiry steriods -- Proffer deep questions that probe intention, motivation, strategy, forecasts, logistics, challenges, technical considerations, opportunities. 
• Learn-centric -- Work always and forever from a position of we-haven't-learned-enough-yet.
• Collective wisdom -- Understand always that we are smarter than any one or few of us.
• LISTEN -- To what is said, and just as importantly, to what is not said.
• Document -- Most of what is not somehow recorded, is lost. Capture thinking, somehow, for future scaffolding and dialogue.

Looks like we have more to learn...

RegretPower

 I recently read The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel Pink (2022). 

My top takeaways:

• Healthy regret clarifies, instructs, lifts us up, makes us better.
• Regrets fall into four core categories: foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets.
• Regret is better understood as a process, not a “thing.” (Verb, not noun.)
• Healthy regret may make us feel worse today, but better tomorrow.
• Regret’s three broad benefits: 1) sharpen our decision-making, 2) elevates our performance, and 3) strengthens our sense of meaning and connectedness.
• Regret deepens our persistence.
• We’re more likely to regret the chances we didn’t take than those we did.
• Hearing ourselves say “too much” or “too little” is a signal of Foundation Regrets.
• Intentional reflection on our regrets is fuel for our growth.
• Beliefs about morality across societies coalesce around five themes: Care/harm, Fairness/cheating, Loyalty/disloyalty, Authority/subversion, and Purity/desecration.
• If an important relationship is broken….place the call, make that visit, say what you feel. Initiate the mend.
• Self-disclosure builds affinity much more often than it triggers judgment.

My favorite quotes:

 

“One influential study found that roughly 95 percent of the regrets that people express involve situations they controlled rather than external circumstances.” (p. 22)

 

“All deep structure regrets reveal a need and yield a lesson.” (p. 129)

 

“George Vaillant, another Harvard psychiatrist, headed the Grant Study for more than thirty years. In an unpublished 2012 manuscript, he reflected on what he’d learned from the experience. After eight decades, hundreds of subjects, thousands of interviews, and millions of data points, he said he could summarize the conclusion of the longest-running examination of human flourishing in five words: ‘Happiness is love. Full stop.’” (p. 144)

 

“Regret depends on storytelling. We are both the authors and the actors. We can shape the plot but not fully. We can toss aside the script but not always. We live at the intersection of free will and circumstance.” (p. 209)

 

Dan Pink always makes me think. He takes me to unexpected places, and causes me to reflect deeply on my beliefs and my enactments. A very worthy read.

LeadershipEnergy

Business folks often talk in terms of Return On Investment (ROI). We sometimes refer to that concept as "bang for the buck." The bottom line is this: Resources are finite and almost always limited. That is especially true of human energy. 

Energy is in short supply. Personal energy is in short supply. Team energy is in short supply. Leaders' energy is in short supply.

With that "shortage" in mind, the best and wisest leaders I know are masters of directing their finite stores of energy. These smart, effective, influential, and impactful cookies do the following with remarkable diligence:

• They stay relentlessly focused on the VISION, the BIG PICTURE, the WHY of their lives and the organizations they lead. 
• They deliberately work at crafting a Culture of Continuous Improvement.
• They exhibit and demand from others consistent Respectful Behavior toward all stakeholders, both internal and external.
• They insist on constant examination of important metrics (aka meaningful and relevant data) and on having open and honest conversations around that data.
•  They work mightily to assemble and empower teams of folks who are smart, efficient, effective, attentive, and committed to excellence.

One of the biggest energy sucks on the planet is misdirected energy. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Excellain't

Excellence is a state, one that occurs when a person, team, organization, or community chooses to break out of the customary and usual way of doing things. It is always the result of choices made, choices to be different. 

Excellence is never accidental. It springs from a deep aspiration for betterness. Excellence -- whether in individual athletic performance or international business success -- emerges on the heels of deep commitment, high attention, and extraordinary discipline. Never is it the result of dumb luck or a flip of a coin.  

Excellence is not a permanent state. Even if achieved today, it can evaporate on us tomorrow. How in the world can that happen? 

Excellent turns into Excellain't when we become satisfied and/or comfortable. When our state of mind changes from how-can-we-get-better to how-can-we-preserve-what-we-have, we have crossed that line. Good news: We can always turn around and cross the line in the other direction.

Excellent or Excellain't. We get to choose. And, tomorrow, we get to choose again.

Friction

When humans gather.........there's friction. When humans work together ......... there's friction. When humans compete ......... there's friction. When humans attempt great things ......... there's friction. 

The friction is triggered by:

• Who or who does not get the drumstick from the plate of fried chicken.
• Who or who does not get to shower first each evening.
• Who or who does not get the prime property in the inheritance.
• Who or who does not get named deacon.
• Who or who does not get the job promotion.
• Who or who does not get to make the final decision.
• Who or who does not get front-row seating.

The friction exists at the family, church, school, city, county, state, national, and international levels. Almost always, friction results over concerns related to status, privilege, or resources.

The wisest leaders I know somehow "manage" the inevitable friction. How?

• They invite all to the table and honor the various perspectives.
• They exhibit respectful behavior, persistently.
• They LISTEN -- carefully, fully, relationally.
• They guide us in crafting a clear vision of betterness, then communicate it relentlessly.
• They clarify roles so that everyone knows how they can contribute meaningfully.
• They press for the WE achievements, and resist creating winner-loser structures.
• They honor how we "feel" but pull our attention and discussion always back to the data that describes our desired outcomes.
• They help us understand when the friction impedes our progress. 

Honorable leadership practice is a tough slog. Probably the reason leaders of that ilk are so hard to find.

JackassAvoidance

Most of us have dealt with jackasses. They're not much fun.....to be around, to work with, or to work for.

Even worse is when we begin to sense that we may be displaying some jackass-ish behaviors ourselves. Seeing and admitting that we may, in fact, being emanating some of those off-putting manifestations is an excellent way to start the process of shelving them.

What do jackasses look and sound like?

• We/They don't listen to others deeply and with an open mind.
• We/They forget to focus on the BIG picture stuff, perseverating on the inconsequential.
• We/They view others (including teammates) as enemies and competitors. 
• We/They seem completely unwilling to change our/their minds.
• We/They attempt to drown out or censor the voices/opinions of others, instead of engaging in authentic discourse and dialogue.

Looking at the jackass in the mirror is an excellent way to keep more friends, enjoy the workplace a bit more, affect more productivity in our endeavors, improve personal and organizational outcomes.....................................and be a little happier with ourselves.

There's always a mirror handy.