I cannot overemphasize the importance of being willing to hear candid feedback. Although it might not ultimately change your decisions, it creates opportunities for new ideas to emerge. For the best results, you must suspend all judgments. This is hard to do because we naturally want to evaluate or compartmentalize.
Once you do, go out and ask a group of key people—your leadership team and a select few at all levels of your organization—to get their perspectives. Don’t make the common mistake of asking only members of your leadership team to weigh in first. They might not offer the breadth and depth you want.
You don’t have to do what they say, but rather, their feedback might lead to possibilities you hadn’t thought of.
Remember the scene in Apollo 13 where Ed Harris announces that their space module will run out of fuel and the young scientist says, “Power is everything. Power down everything.” That was the solution they needed. As a leader, you can turn to your team for help—you don’t have to make all the decisions on your own all the time.
When good leaders face high stakes, they combine their own inner evaluations with candid feedback from selected others. This prepares them to bring the issue to a wider audience and to open up ongoing dialogue.
To make the most beneficial decisions, first throw away assumptions, monitor and manage reactions, and listen to your business instincts. Then slowly bring in a diverse group of voices to create the plan. Not everything has to be answered yesterday.
Going inward can give clarity, remove unwanted noise, and yield better decisions. Solitude or a change in environment allows the inner voice, instinct, and third eye to be more available as everyday tools.
Recap
Part 1: Embracing Your Intuition
Move yourself to a different environment, especially when you need to make big decisions.
Schedule “off time” that allows you to reflect and process. Add it to your calendar, and let your team know your off time is off limits.
Slow down.
Learn to say no. Choose to cancel out the noise.
Suspend judgment on all ideas and paths.
Go renegade: If you have the impulse to act, do nothing and sit on it for a while.
Take a long walk.
Postpone conversations if you need the time. People can accept “I can’t right now, but I will get back to you at [a definitive time].”
Practice noticing what your inner voice tells you—write it down
Consider these questions: How do I feel? What do I hear? Do I feel confused or uncomfortable with what I think? How do I react?
Dig in or stay with the process until the discomfort clears.
Be open to your intuition—just because you honor it does not make you crazy or metaphysically gaga. (Practice this in private if you worry about your reputation.)
PART 2
CREATING NEW BEHAVIORS
To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior.
—Maxwell Maltz, scientist
5.
Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
—Andy Warhol, artist
We often hear that leaders get stuck in their ways. Our collective consciousness holds fast to the idea that people don’t change.
According to the old paradigm, our brains stop growing and changing at a young age, and very little can be done to alter the structure and dynamics of our brains and nervous system later in life. Modern neuroscience tells a very different story. Recent research now confirms the revolutionary idea of “neuroplasticity”—that our brains remain flexible and malleable throughout our lives. In other words, we can and do generate new pathways in our brains. And changes in our brains result in new behavior.
Neuroplasticity is the capacity of the brain to change its function through both mental and physical events. Prior to the “neuroplasticity revolution” beginning in 2007, scientists widely believed that the human brain remained “fixed” after early childhood.
Recent neuroplasticity research shows, for example, that long-term meditation actually “rewires” the brain. In other words, we now know we can intentionally change how our brains function by choosing to engage in different mental and physical exercises. You can change the way you feel, think, and behave.
If leaders and those they lead can unlearn bad behaviors, habits, and responses, then the possibilities for positive change can radically alter their organizations. Because of neuroplasticity, we do not need to remain slaves to the past—we can creatively and intentionally bring about a new and more productive future.
Change involves a disruption of sorts. Something new or different reorganizes energy, stops the current flow, and replaces it with something else. For change to occur and get established, we need to experience the difference—and that often involves a change of stimulus.
If leaders can consciously change the stimulus they receive, they can dramatically change their organization.
To create change in our brains, something must change physically—and because our brains and minds are intimately connected, the stimulus for neural change gets activated by emotions. As our emotions shift, our minds interrupt the nerve impulses sparking between the brain’s synapses. This shift could come from a significant emotional event like an accident, or from an unanticipated response, like a call from a long-lost friend.
Before attempting to transform an organization, leaders need to embody the desired change themselves and manage their own responses first.
Here is a story that shows we can all change.
The day was long and memorable for all the wrong reasons. In three separate meetings, my client, a corporate leader, had lost his patience and yelled out profanities at his team and workforce. He had been combative the entire week. I didn’t know him well, but as I observed him, I began to worry about how to stop his tirades. They just created ill will and frustration.
Two weeks before, we had met for the first time as client and coach. I was hired to support his program and help him accelerate performance. I could tell he was uneasy, but it wasn’t clear why. On the positive side, he was willing to jump in and use my coaching to improve his team’s performance, be more successful, and reach company objectives. He came across as both excited and measured at the same time.
I asked him about his vision for his legacy—he had been a leader for many years in major defense construction. Without hesitation, he answered, “I want to be known and remembered as the man who championed the workforce and brought them together to work with leadership to achieve goals and create a better workplace.”
One of a rare breed of managers, he spent most of his time on the shop floor with the workers instead of in his office high above the construction area. This made him well-known in his industry.
After I watched him lose patience and control in the three consecutive meetings, my gut told me somebody had to give him feedback. He couldn’t afford another tomorrow like today.
I called him. “Jack, we need to talk. You said your door was always open. I’m coming up.”
“No, you are not.”
“Can you please give me five minutes in person?”
“Not going to happen.”
I knew that I had to give him the feedback right then. My inner voice urged me on—despite his high level of frustration, anger, and unwillingness to engage. How could I get him to a safe place and diffuse the barrage of negative energy?
I thought quickly and gently asked him not to hang up. “Can you give me five minutes now on the phone?”
“Okay.”
I paused and reflected on what I should say. I needed to go where he was and to honor him. “Jack, what legacy do you want when you leave the company?”
“I want to be known and rem
embered as the champion of the workforce and a leader who led from the trenches with them and met our goals as the best in the business.”
Bingo.
Feeling a little nervous, but with a calm, clear voice, I asked, “After today’s three meetings, what do you think your legacy will be?”
Silence. Then he took a deep breath and whispered an expletive.
I let it be and let him be with that moment.
After a few seconds that seemed like an hour, he said, “I’ll call you back later.” He hung up but never called me back. And that was fine. I knew he had heard me.
The next day, as I went into his office for our morning huddle, he reached out his hand and said, “Thank you for talking me down off the ledge.” His famous smile and energy had returned, radiant as it should be.
He was even more committed to reaching his objectives. He knew he had to change the way he communicated with his team. He apologized to every team member, both in group settings and individually, throughout the following two days.
We both learned some powerful lessons in this crisis:
Seek to understand and go to where that person is.
Move beyond emotions, however intense or thick they might be.
Listen to your inner voice, or at least consider it before taking any action.
Show up differently. Trust depends on presence and action, not on words. Jack worked hard to change his internal filter and communication style.
Be humble and cultivate the ability to recognize your own errors.
Because I honored Jack’s values, he could hear me and process my feedback, creating a lifelong baseline of trust and candid communication between us. His willingness to “learn new tricks” made the difference. I knew he had my back, and he knew I had his. The tirades stopped, and he went on to lead a very successful program with his workforce. He is now retired, and his legacy truly lives on, as he wished.
Reconstructing new responses means taking risks, trying out new things, testing, and observing. The only way to change something that isn’t working is to stop it, by either interrupting it or taking different actions. Recognizing and admitting we have a weakness or risk to deal with is often the challenge.
To recap: As humans, we can relearn anything or create new behaviors. The circuit has to be broken in some way—through failure, a new lesson, different actions, a crisis—something that takes our focus away from the present, even for a moment.
6.
The Action Illusion
Value-Added Execution
Appearances are often deceiving.
—Aesop, ancient Greek storyteller
We all get fooled every day by the world revealed through our senses. In the business world, we get fooled by the biggest behavior con of all: activity.
In business, we often assume that any action at all trumps staying put with the status quo. But sometimes we need “plateaus of peace”—moments or periods of stability and rest to recharge before the next burst of energy and action. Many folks believe they always need to act (think Type A personalities!). You could say that some people feel addicted to taking action. True enough—all change and progress require action of some kind. But taking action alone rarely achieves the desired result.
We tend to overlook the critical importance of timing. Because the entire world around us quivers with action and activity (mostly unseen), we need to skillfully time our actions to fit the rhythms of the systems we find ourselves in. Rogue leaders have great, instinctive timing.
Here is an example: One of my client’s team members gave a presentation to the VP of her entire organization—an early adopter and fan of continuous improvement, or CI. As with other leaders I have worked with, she held the vision that one day they wouldn’t need any separate department or initiative because that would be how they normally did business. They would improve naturally and continuously. She constantly communicated that message.
I spoke with the team beforehand, and I reinforced that they had to be able to express to the VP the value of their work, money, and effort. I felt intuitively that they needed to be aware of their audience, and not declaring victory without results that backed that premise up. It would be activity without added value.
The senior leader in charge of presenting updates chose not to listen. He ran through the statistics and proudly reported that they had more than one hundred improvement events in the past five years.
When the VP asked him for details, in actual dollars, of the return on investing in the CI training and program, the manager could not answer. Even though he hadn’t taken the time to evaluate what the CI program did for their profitability, everyone seemed comfortable with the “spend.” In fact, they held it up as a badge of honor to her. In reality, the program might not have added any value at all, as it wasn’t being measured properly. It was the moment she lost confidence in their efforts.
I call this a “staticmatic” event—meaning that’s as deep as it goes. Everyone can “check the box” and feel good about the volume. Measuring activity instead of measuring results clouds the judgment of many managers. As noted earlier, instead of “any action,” we need to time the “right action.”
Not all “activity” qualifies as right or value-added action.
Do you allow your team to be busy instead of being productive? Can you create more impact without spending more time?
I hear the same complaint across all cultures and multiple international assignments: “I am so busy, and my people are so busy. I don’t have the time to do X.” But if you continue this kind of approach, you will lose money and, perhaps, frustrate your workforce.
When your middle manager shows you a full calendar of to-dos, it fits your comfort zone. Meetings, events, and more meetings can easily camouflage unfocused activities. As a leader, get in the habit of asking yourself and your team, “What do we get out of spending all this time fulfilling our schedules?”
7.
Embracing Failure and Risk
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
—Thomas A. Edison, inventor
I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being—forgive me—rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.
—J. K. Rowling, author
The glass-framed board outside the CEO’s office featured a nice framed photo of one of the employees. Beneath, engraved in big, bright letters, it proclaimed: “Failure of the Month.” How do you react when you read this?
For most of us, the reaction would probably be laughter, a smile, or just plain incredulousness at the absurdity of such a thing.
Fear of failure drives so many of our actions. At a very young age, we begin to notice we get praise for doing well and feel shame when we miss the mark. Competition is good, but like sex, drugs, and alcohol (not rock ’n’ roll), it’s better in moderation.
The professional world puts a premium on success, driving us to shine and stand out. At the same time, we all need the space to fail and the ability to learn from our mistakes. We are so focused on the “wins,” we don’t give failure its proper due. As a result, we miss a lot of learning opportunities.
In other words, most leaders fail when it comes to failing.
Although it might sound like a paradox, failure should be celebrated in our success-obsessed culture. If handled right, mistakes and failure can guide us back on course.
Unless leaders develop and follow a purposeful approach to failure, using it as a catalyst or tool for improvement, their organization will continue to fail. Because that kind of environment is so common, very few people in business are willing to take risks, push the envelope, or try new ideas. To survive and thrive using this model, we must let go of all we know and approach challenges in a radically different way.
Our childhoods are defined by experimenting—t
rying, observing, and changing. But when we enter adulthood and become leaders, we move away from that, losing one of the most important traits that can bring about success.
When I was a kid and played around with my chemistry set, I blew up more than a few things—all in an exploratory spirit. In short, I didn’t avoid mistakes and failure, but instead, I learned from them.
When one of the most brilliant business leaders I know sold his business for hundreds of millions of dollars, he succeeded because he paid attention to his failures. Risk-averse leaders block creativity and often get in the way of moving their business forward. Hockey player Wayne Gretsky’s famous quote sums it up well: “I scored more goals because I took more shots.”
We need to evaluate risk in a new light. If we truly want a different world, we have to tear down the old one. That can seem overwhelming to some people. But it doesn’t have to happen overnight. It just has to happen.
Even if your current culture doesn’t embrace risk and failure in a transparent way, you can still learn from the innovation that comes from a “think tank” environment. An effective solution would be to set up a standalone area or department as an incubator for new ideas where failure is allowed, and learning follows from trial and error.
But you don’t need a formal incubator to learn from failure. Every organization can take steps every day to ensure they don’t stifle innovation and performance. They achieve this by capturing and learning meaningful lessons.
Failure has been the greatest teacher in my life. My success rides on the fact that I have failed so many times. Often, I have either not known what I was doing or made colossal mistakes. I have been stupid, arrogant, overconfident, and hardheaded. Just to be clear, though: I am not asking for forgiveness.
Rogue Leadership Page 3