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Leadership: The Good and Bad on a Grand Scale
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I have been thinking about grand scale ‘leaders’. Who are those leaders who
come to life in the pages of our history books by way of their exceptional
actions and deeds? What do they teach us? There are those who have managed to
garner a level of respected integrity and honor throughout time – people we like
to quote as teachers and game changers: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Moliere, Da
Vinci, Galileo, Caesar Augustus, caesar salad (just checking if you’re still
reading) and leaping forward; Washington, Lincoln, Adams, Jefferson, Ben
Franklin, Roosevelt(s), Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Anwar Sadat, Mahatma
Ghandi, Golda Meir, and Steve Jobs to name just a few. These people leave
behind mostly positive legacies, though, to be sure, there will always be some
people who find fault and have less than savory things to say about them. But
all in all, those on the above list could justly claim the title ‘leader’.
Then there are those whose names inspire anxiety, dread, and mistrust and yet lived as leaders at least during portions of their lives: Vlad Dracula, Attila the Hun, Stalin, Hitler, Ivan the Terrible (it’s in his name), Idi Amin, Charles Taylor, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, and that list goes on and on too. These horrible leaders in history had followers; you know your average neighbor: your butcher, blacksmith, teacher, religious leader, attorney, doctor, housewife, mother, student, salesman, and that list goes on and on too. Average people inspired to support some dark message that they would see as a means to an end that would no doubt help to make their lives better when such promises materialized. And support they did – no leader can do his bidding without the help of at least some of the population. But instead, what materialized was a whole lot of damage, destruction, and despair. Those same people, who locked step with ‘said’ awful leader’s message, when the destruction had finally come to pass and the smoke had cleared, distanced themselves from their allegiances right quick. And yet, all in all, those on the above list could justly claim the title ‘leader’ too.
And here is the big problem; my great leader might be your worst nightmare and vice versa. But ‘the masses’ have a way of deciding pretty quickly where someone sits on the continuum of greatness in the end. And so in any given sweep of time or when choosing a leader to follow, I think it is useful to ask myself a set of questions: How will history judge this leader, this situation over time? Will I be on the right side of history or on the wrong side? How can I properly judge if things go awry? Am I so hung up with my own ego and what my choices represent that I unwittingly fail to see when I march to the wrong drum? How can I possibly know?
I don’t ask these questions in some overly detailed, minuscule point of order, but rather, in the big sweep of human history.
There are clues. Building people up, moving human kind forward in some way, granting rights instead of taking away, acceptance of diversity, listening, constructing, building, understanding, and helping are some clues. Such endeavor generally ends up on the valiant side of history. Destruction, intractability, making people less than, taking rights away, deciding who gets and who does not, invoking a holy messenger to do the damage, scapegoating, and murder; these acts never really serve anything productive in the history books except as bellwethers of awful reminders of the dark side of our human folly that we seem to continue to repeat.
Then there are those whose names inspire anxiety, dread, and mistrust and yet lived as leaders at least during portions of their lives: Vlad Dracula, Attila the Hun, Stalin, Hitler, Ivan the Terrible (it’s in his name), Idi Amin, Charles Taylor, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, and that list goes on and on too. These horrible leaders in history had followers; you know your average neighbor: your butcher, blacksmith, teacher, religious leader, attorney, doctor, housewife, mother, student, salesman, and that list goes on and on too. Average people inspired to support some dark message that they would see as a means to an end that would no doubt help to make their lives better when such promises materialized. And support they did – no leader can do his bidding without the help of at least some of the population. But instead, what materialized was a whole lot of damage, destruction, and despair. Those same people, who locked step with ‘said’ awful leader’s message, when the destruction had finally come to pass and the smoke had cleared, distanced themselves from their allegiances right quick. And yet, all in all, those on the above list could justly claim the title ‘leader’ too.
And here is the big problem; my great leader might be your worst nightmare and vice versa. But ‘the masses’ have a way of deciding pretty quickly where someone sits on the continuum of greatness in the end. And so in any given sweep of time or when choosing a leader to follow, I think it is useful to ask myself a set of questions: How will history judge this leader, this situation over time? Will I be on the right side of history or on the wrong side? How can I properly judge if things go awry? Am I so hung up with my own ego and what my choices represent that I unwittingly fail to see when I march to the wrong drum? How can I possibly know?
I don’t ask these questions in some overly detailed, minuscule point of order, but rather, in the big sweep of human history.
There are clues. Building people up, moving human kind forward in some way, granting rights instead of taking away, acceptance of diversity, listening, constructing, building, understanding, and helping are some clues. Such endeavor generally ends up on the valiant side of history. Destruction, intractability, making people less than, taking rights away, deciding who gets and who does not, invoking a holy messenger to do the damage, scapegoating, and murder; these acts never really serve anything productive in the history books except as bellwethers of awful reminders of the dark side of our human folly that we seem to continue to repeat.
Leadership on a grand
scale exists both in the good and bad realms of humanity. How and who we choose
to follow is important, vital really. Can we, as human beings, try harder to be
somewhat objective and try to see ourselves on a timeline in history so much
larger than our mere existences? Can we, like the child in the story, “The
Emperor Wears No Clothes” ever find the courage to say, we’re following the
wrong leader! Like Joseph
Welch who bravely exclaimed “have you no decency sir…” to Joseph McCarthy at
yet another of his many witch hunt hearings, we need to have the courage to call
it when things get out of hand. We can say ‘we made a mistake’. For heaven’s
sake, what’s the worst that could happen if you admitted you made a mistake;
it’s got to be better than the unintended consequences of letting bad stuff play
out. Look at the clues. If we thought about them then maybe, possibly, might we
see, someday, fewer bad leaders on that list?
What Does a Museum Spark?
Last week, while
on vacation, my husband and I went to The Art Institute of Chicago. This is an
incredible museum with gorgeous stained glass panels by Chagall,one of the
biggest collections of paintings by the Impressionists, ancient artifacts from
all over the world, and a timeline of humanity that is utterly
in-comprehensively comprehensive. The building that houses this museum contains
the history of the human race! And here’s the thing: the museum was
crowded…with loads of people. People were waiting at the doors every morning
just to beat the crowds!
I have had the good fortune in my life to have traveled a lot and have
developed a certain approach when I arrive in a new city. See the local food
markets, hit the museums, do some walking tours, venture into the neighborhoods,
and eat at the neighborhood restaurants. I feel like I get a good overview that
way. And in every single city I have ever visited I have found the museums
crowded with people, the world over! It’s really quite unbelievable. And you
watch people staring at paintings, discussing the artists’ strokes, light and
shading, subject matter and so on; they are taking it seriously. There is so
much to learn in a matter of hours.What does this tell me? That humans seek inspiration whenever possible. The more crowded and fast our world becomes the more we seek out the continuity of the arc of history that these works of art gift to us.
Yet, since we spend so much time at work, how are we doing in helping to inspire our work force to understand why they do what they do and who it serves? Customer service can be inspired and it can be depressing. We have a choice. People are in search of soul inspiring and creative connections; just go to a museum and you won’t believe how you’ll feel when you come out. How can leaders remember to get stuff done while helping us dig into our inspired and creative selves?
Tim Gallwey, in his
inspired book called, “The
Inner Game of Work” describes a simple model companies really ought to think
about. He drew a triangle and labeled one base “enjoyment”, another ‘learning’
and the top of the triangle was labeled ‘performance. His contention is that in
order to achieve breakthrough performances people need to be given the
opportunity to learn new material to help them with their work and to tie
enjoyment into their daily work lives. These 3 actions need to interplay in
order to get the most out of people. I have asked people to fill in this
triangle based on their different work environments and the results are
startling; performance soars when learning and enjoyment are happening. So as
you go forward, think about visiting a museum and notice how much you learn and
enjoy in the process and what that does to your performance on the day of your
visit.
This Book on Introverts Doesn’t Keep Me Quiet
I just finished ‘scanning’ a new read for my book group. It’s called “Quiet:
The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain. I
was eager to read it as my work crosses into the arena of personality and how
people can work more effectively both alone and together. I was utterly curious
to see what this ‘well researched’ book had to say. At page 100, I stopped
reading. Frankly, Ms. Cain’s ‘loud’ bias was irritating the hell out of me. Was
this an author making a fair case about the value of introverts or an author
with a life worn vendetta against extroverts and all the misery they had impaled
upon her? If the goal in writing such a book is to rally the troops of
introverts out there to be more authentic and reject the climate of the
extroverted world we live in then she should warn any extroverted readers of her
bias at the outset and have supplies ready for introverts to take up arms!
If on the other hand, her ideas were meant to open eyes and build good will from those ‘lamp-shade wearing loudmouths’ who have so overrun society, then she fell far short of her goal. When George Bush was president, his and his party’s constant polarizing talk of who was or wasn’t a true American Patriot pushed me away from their narrow view and into the arms of the more progressive party. Before him, I had mostly toggled somewhere in the political middle having voted for both republicans (Bush included) and democrats in the past. But, what I would consider Bush’s very narrow, biased rhetoric and actions worked to repel me from his cause. Interestingly, this is exactly how I felt reading Susan Cain’s book on introverts. For an ‘ambivert’ like me (one who sits somewhere between an extreme extrovert and extreme introvert and has qualities of both though leans more extrovert) her book was so biased in her assessments and research with some glaring holes, that it was hard to believe that reviewers were not questioning her conclusions chapter by chapter, using those important critical thinking skills that she loudly ascribes to introverts.
To be fair, I just couldn’t finish this book so my opinion is based on half a read. But from the half the book I did read including the conclusions at the end, Ms. Cain (herself an introvert, of course) wants you to know that introverts are smarter, better developed because they can sit quietly thinking for hours on end, being productive and helpful to society while extroverts take up air time blathering on about some not-well-thought-out-concept that they then speak of in ‘grand’ terms forcing others to listen while ‘cooped’ up in their gregarious presence. Do such people exist? You bet. Do they define an entire group of people? Um, no. (The adjectives used to describe extroverts in this book were unflattering at best.) Poor introverts have been forced to live in a louder and louder world with companies insisting on group think and open office plans. She credits the internet and social media for being founded by brilliant introverts but faults increased youth anxiety to the pressures of that same social media. In other words, kids choosing to communicate on ubiquitous social media sites and the ‘loudness’ of it has increased anxiety in our youth from the 1970’s to now. But she never knocks those same introverted inventors with adding to the problem of a faster, louder world thanks to their pioneering technological inventions. Rather, according to her, it’s the extroverts that make it so challenging until you later find out that many introverts have taken on extroverted online avatars, quite possibly adding to that very social media stress she laments. BTW, she never points out these correlations, those are connections my addled, extroverted brain came up with while taking a break from being loud…to think. She heads to organizations like Harvard Business School and an enormous Christian Evangelical organization to speak with introverts forced to work in such arenas. She never once thinks to talk to an extrovert and get their views about such places and any difficulties they might experience in working in institutions that insist on extreme extroversion; such research might have taken her somewhere else, perhaps to a more nuanced, open-minded conclusion. Here’s a bulletin: not all extroverts love our fast-paced, super loud, look-at-me culture either.
I have no problem with the assertion that extreme extroversion is not all that enticing or useful but neither is extreme introversion. (When I have to facilitate a room full of introverts my job becomes much more difficult as they are so much harder to read than extroverts are. They often look blankly at you and then may later tell you how much they enjoyed it. Really? I’m always amazed when that happens since I was pretty sure their faces were telling me that the session compared unfavorably to being water boarded than having had experienced any enjoyment at all!)
Haven’t we yet begun to discover the joys of nuance? Must everything be an either/or? Isn’t it possible that people in the middle bring a lot of value? Those numerous people like me who enjoy being around folks and might gain a lot of energy from the experiences of human interaction but then also look forward to going back to silence and downtime and being alone for long stretches of time to think, write, come up with ideas? Here’s the thing. The people she names as examples of extroverts are George W. Bush and Jeffrey Skilling of Enron fame. Period! The list of introverts is long including the many developers/inventors of the internet and social media and greats like Da Vinci, JK Rowling, Van Gogh, and Eleanor Roosevelt (and many, many more). Artists, inventors, authors, and even Moses she claims as introverts but apparently the only 2 noteworthy extroverts are the two dubious characters mentioned above. There are no ‘less than savory’ introverts mentioned such as the likes of Bernie Madoff (an introverted version of Jeffrey Skilling) or the Unabomber. According to Ms. Cain (in other articles she has written; I took time out from all that partying to do some research) such people have an illness and yes, while they were quiet and timid kids she does not claim them as introverts because they are aberrant. But Jeffrey Skilling, with his poor moral compass and criminal ways, he’s a perfect example of an extrovert. Extroverts, for the purposes of her book, aren’t apparently allowed to claim notable achievers like Franklin Roosevelt, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Earnest Hemingway, or Stephen Colbert.
So much biased rubbish. Even the experiments that she calls out made me suspicious so I looked some of them up. One, by a guy named Grant, who did research on sales results of pizza and t-shirt companies, found that there was a correlation between extroverted sales people working with lame brains and introverted sales people outperforming them with motivated self-starters (duh). But when you look up Grant’s actual conclusion, the people who outperformed them all were the ambiverts. While introverts and extroverts in his experiment achieved just about the same middling results, the ambiverts’ results were much greater. Ms. Cain never took the reader there; the word ambivert was barely mentioned in her well researched book.
When I work with teams I always stress the importance of people being able to use their unique talents in a way that gets more, not less out of them. I have not found that insulting and dismissing people is a terribly motivating course of action, but hey that’s just me. I was a kid who loved going to the library and reading in the stacks, and writing, and thinking, and playing, and being with friends, and planning parties, and cooking, and listening to music. I love to laugh and travel and be with people and have fun and then be alone. I love both loud parties and intimate conversations with friends. Weird. I think there are a lot more people like me than in the extreme other two camps. An extrovert can no more be different from who they are than an introvert can be different from who they are. If she wants us to accept the introverts why all the extrovert bashing? We are born hard wired. Anyone who has ever had multiple children can tell you that. In meetings when this comes up and the introverts say, ‘I just want them to stop talking so that I can say something’, I always respond with, “did you ever think that the extroverts want you to jump in and start talking?” Both sides need to be responsible, one is not a victim of the other. Why does one side have to accommodate the other? I also say in those sessions that extroverts should ask themselves, “do I really need to say ‘x’ right now?” and that introverts should tell themselves. “I need to speak up now and say this valuable thought.”
Human interactions always have a time limit; it’s what you do within the confines of those time constraints that matters. Don’t make people be like you, allow them space to be like them and try not to insult people’s capabilities and innate talents along the way. I find that’s always a good place to start. But I totally agree with Ms. Cain in one assertion she makes; people should indeed be critical thinkers and not just take what we read at its word- I just didn’t know that my critical thinking skills meant that I must be an introvert.
If on the other hand, her ideas were meant to open eyes and build good will from those ‘lamp-shade wearing loudmouths’ who have so overrun society, then she fell far short of her goal. When George Bush was president, his and his party’s constant polarizing talk of who was or wasn’t a true American Patriot pushed me away from their narrow view and into the arms of the more progressive party. Before him, I had mostly toggled somewhere in the political middle having voted for both republicans (Bush included) and democrats in the past. But, what I would consider Bush’s very narrow, biased rhetoric and actions worked to repel me from his cause. Interestingly, this is exactly how I felt reading Susan Cain’s book on introverts. For an ‘ambivert’ like me (one who sits somewhere between an extreme extrovert and extreme introvert and has qualities of both though leans more extrovert) her book was so biased in her assessments and research with some glaring holes, that it was hard to believe that reviewers were not questioning her conclusions chapter by chapter, using those important critical thinking skills that she loudly ascribes to introverts.
To be fair, I just couldn’t finish this book so my opinion is based on half a read. But from the half the book I did read including the conclusions at the end, Ms. Cain (herself an introvert, of course) wants you to know that introverts are smarter, better developed because they can sit quietly thinking for hours on end, being productive and helpful to society while extroverts take up air time blathering on about some not-well-thought-out-concept that they then speak of in ‘grand’ terms forcing others to listen while ‘cooped’ up in their gregarious presence. Do such people exist? You bet. Do they define an entire group of people? Um, no. (The adjectives used to describe extroverts in this book were unflattering at best.) Poor introverts have been forced to live in a louder and louder world with companies insisting on group think and open office plans. She credits the internet and social media for being founded by brilliant introverts but faults increased youth anxiety to the pressures of that same social media. In other words, kids choosing to communicate on ubiquitous social media sites and the ‘loudness’ of it has increased anxiety in our youth from the 1970’s to now. But she never knocks those same introverted inventors with adding to the problem of a faster, louder world thanks to their pioneering technological inventions. Rather, according to her, it’s the extroverts that make it so challenging until you later find out that many introverts have taken on extroverted online avatars, quite possibly adding to that very social media stress she laments. BTW, she never points out these correlations, those are connections my addled, extroverted brain came up with while taking a break from being loud…to think. She heads to organizations like Harvard Business School and an enormous Christian Evangelical organization to speak with introverts forced to work in such arenas. She never once thinks to talk to an extrovert and get their views about such places and any difficulties they might experience in working in institutions that insist on extreme extroversion; such research might have taken her somewhere else, perhaps to a more nuanced, open-minded conclusion. Here’s a bulletin: not all extroverts love our fast-paced, super loud, look-at-me culture either.
I have no problem with the assertion that extreme extroversion is not all that enticing or useful but neither is extreme introversion. (When I have to facilitate a room full of introverts my job becomes much more difficult as they are so much harder to read than extroverts are. They often look blankly at you and then may later tell you how much they enjoyed it. Really? I’m always amazed when that happens since I was pretty sure their faces were telling me that the session compared unfavorably to being water boarded than having had experienced any enjoyment at all!)
Haven’t we yet begun to discover the joys of nuance? Must everything be an either/or? Isn’t it possible that people in the middle bring a lot of value? Those numerous people like me who enjoy being around folks and might gain a lot of energy from the experiences of human interaction but then also look forward to going back to silence and downtime and being alone for long stretches of time to think, write, come up with ideas? Here’s the thing. The people she names as examples of extroverts are George W. Bush and Jeffrey Skilling of Enron fame. Period! The list of introverts is long including the many developers/inventors of the internet and social media and greats like Da Vinci, JK Rowling, Van Gogh, and Eleanor Roosevelt (and many, many more). Artists, inventors, authors, and even Moses she claims as introverts but apparently the only 2 noteworthy extroverts are the two dubious characters mentioned above. There are no ‘less than savory’ introverts mentioned such as the likes of Bernie Madoff (an introverted version of Jeffrey Skilling) or the Unabomber. According to Ms. Cain (in other articles she has written; I took time out from all that partying to do some research) such people have an illness and yes, while they were quiet and timid kids she does not claim them as introverts because they are aberrant. But Jeffrey Skilling, with his poor moral compass and criminal ways, he’s a perfect example of an extrovert. Extroverts, for the purposes of her book, aren’t apparently allowed to claim notable achievers like Franklin Roosevelt, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Earnest Hemingway, or Stephen Colbert.
So much biased rubbish. Even the experiments that she calls out made me suspicious so I looked some of them up. One, by a guy named Grant, who did research on sales results of pizza and t-shirt companies, found that there was a correlation between extroverted sales people working with lame brains and introverted sales people outperforming them with motivated self-starters (duh). But when you look up Grant’s actual conclusion, the people who outperformed them all were the ambiverts. While introverts and extroverts in his experiment achieved just about the same middling results, the ambiverts’ results were much greater. Ms. Cain never took the reader there; the word ambivert was barely mentioned in her well researched book.
When I work with teams I always stress the importance of people being able to use their unique talents in a way that gets more, not less out of them. I have not found that insulting and dismissing people is a terribly motivating course of action, but hey that’s just me. I was a kid who loved going to the library and reading in the stacks, and writing, and thinking, and playing, and being with friends, and planning parties, and cooking, and listening to music. I love to laugh and travel and be with people and have fun and then be alone. I love both loud parties and intimate conversations with friends. Weird. I think there are a lot more people like me than in the extreme other two camps. An extrovert can no more be different from who they are than an introvert can be different from who they are. If she wants us to accept the introverts why all the extrovert bashing? We are born hard wired. Anyone who has ever had multiple children can tell you that. In meetings when this comes up and the introverts say, ‘I just want them to stop talking so that I can say something’, I always respond with, “did you ever think that the extroverts want you to jump in and start talking?” Both sides need to be responsible, one is not a victim of the other. Why does one side have to accommodate the other? I also say in those sessions that extroverts should ask themselves, “do I really need to say ‘x’ right now?” and that introverts should tell themselves. “I need to speak up now and say this valuable thought.”
Human interactions always have a time limit; it’s what you do within the confines of those time constraints that matters. Don’t make people be like you, allow them space to be like them and try not to insult people’s capabilities and innate talents along the way. I find that’s always a good place to start. But I totally agree with Ms. Cain in one assertion she makes; people should indeed be critical thinkers and not just take what we read at its word- I just didn’t know that my critical thinking skills meant that I must be an introvert.
To Persuade or Manipulate, That is the Question
Something that has come up a lot this year in my workshops is a fascinating
discussion around the ‘art of persuasion’. I ask participants what ‘to
persuade’ means and someone inevitably points to ‘manipulation’ and then many
other heads nod passionately in agreement.
As I have mentioned many times in my blogs, I am a big believer in the ‘continuum’ for just about everything. Continuums work for anything that has a polarity: love-hate, rich-poor, success-fail, you get the idea. Communication works on a continuum as well and persuasion and manipulation make a lovely continuum.
So rather than hear me expound on the difference between the two, “let’s”, as my high school English teacher Mr. Wrigley used to say, “see what Mr. Webster has to say, huh?” So here goes:
Merriam Webster online:
1: to treat or operate with or as if with the hands or by mechanical means especially in a skillful manner
2a : to manage or utilize skillfully
2b : to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one’s own advantage
3: to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one’s purpose
As you can see, persuasion would sit on the positive end of the continuum whereas manipulation would sit more on the negative end. Both actions are based on intentions and motives – always a good thing to self-check when trying to get someone to do something. Start noticing at work when you are being asked to persuade or to manipulate and see what kind of result you get based on the intention behind the action. Let me know what you learn because I find this very interesting and what you learn will teach you something about how to motivate people.
As I have mentioned many times in my blogs, I am a big believer in the ‘continuum’ for just about everything. Continuums work for anything that has a polarity: love-hate, rich-poor, success-fail, you get the idea. Communication works on a continuum as well and persuasion and manipulation make a lovely continuum.
So rather than hear me expound on the difference between the two, “let’s”, as my high school English teacher Mr. Wrigley used to say, “see what Mr. Webster has to say, huh?” So here goes:
Merriam Webster online:
Persuade:
1: to move by argument, entreaty, or expostulation to a belief, position, or course of action
2: to plead with: urge
Manipulate:1: to move by argument, entreaty, or expostulation to a belief, position, or course of action
2: to plead with: urge
1: to treat or operate with or as if with the hands or by mechanical means especially in a skillful manner
2a : to manage or utilize skillfully
2b : to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one’s own advantage
3: to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one’s purpose
As you can see, persuasion would sit on the positive end of the continuum whereas manipulation would sit more on the negative end. Both actions are based on intentions and motives – always a good thing to self-check when trying to get someone to do something. Start noticing at work when you are being asked to persuade or to manipulate and see what kind of result you get based on the intention behind the action. Let me know what you learn because I find this very interesting and what you learn will teach you something about how to motivate people.
The Best Companies Do Well by Their Employees
As I write this blog entry, it is Labor Day, 2013. Opinions are flying on the
evolution of the state of ‘the worker’ in America. But, instead of adding to
that chorus of voices, which would be super easy to do, I decided to do a bit of
snooping into companies whose employees actually rate them pretty highly for a
desirable place to spend their work life. So here are some factoids on what
companies are doing FOR their employees to keep them productive and innovative
and happily employed with them.
From the Fortune
Magazine yearly poll, at the top of the pack is…ta da…Google! While Google is a company
that expects high productivity from its well-schooled employees it creates an
atmosphere unlike most any other company. It provides wellness centers, a
seven-acre sports complex with a roller hockey rink; courts for basketball,
bocce ball, shuffle ball, horseshoe pits; subsidized massages, and
transportation to and from the office via the famous Google vans.
A company that many have
never heard of but follows Google in the number 2 position is SAS, a privately held data analytics company. One
employee cites SAS’s “creative anarchy” as conducive to innovation. This year
they added an organic farm to the campus to help create culinary wonders at the
4 on-site cafeterias. People love this place and they receive thousands of
resumes from the best possible candidates. Perhaps the ‘privately-held’ status
allows for more flexibility in focusing on happy employees.
CGI Healthcare, a healthcare staffing
company is big on fun clocking in at number 3. They have trivia contests,
talent shows, and costume days. Extra paid time off is awarded to teams who
meet their goals. They recently added 2 new health centers on-site to make for
not only happy employees but healthy ones too.
The Boston
Consulting Group checks in at number 4 and they encourage employees to focus
on a ‘work-life’ balance. They issue a ‘red-zone report’ when they find
employees that are working too many long weeks. Also, new consultants can delay
their start date by 6 months and receive $10,000 to volunteer at a
non-profit.
Number 5 is a place I’ve
never heard of because it’s an east coast company; Wegmans
Food Markets. Turnover at Wegmans is a low 3.6%! Employees reward each
other with gift cards for great customer service and they bring their family
members in to become employees as well because they love it so much; one in 5
employees are related!
These are just the top 5 companies people like working for on the Fortune
Magazine list. When you scroll through the whole list, you will be gratified to
know that there are companies that still want you to be happy and are not just
sweat shops tethered to Wall Street. Many of these companies are, in fact,
tethered to Wall Street and yet, I think, they meet their numbers AND do many
things right for their employees. Somehow they still understand, in this era of
short term profit-thinking, that employees are the collective energy to get a
company to hit its numbers. It’s so simple to remember that happy people are
easier to work with than unhappy people and will ultimately be more productive
for YOU if they know you are there for THEM. Look over these companies and see
what they bring to the table to make their employees happy. Then show the list
to your boss.Build, Build, Build
Yesterday I wrote about working to shift perspectives simply for the purpose
to understand another view, way of being, thinking, living. Not for the purpose
of trying to affect a change in that other view. The work being done by so many
coaches and communication practitioners today is to help people add useful tools
to their communication tool-kits largely to create greater empathy as a bridge
to understanding differences and ultimately finding common ground. I do this
work as do many, many others.
When I go out and work with groups of people or individuals, I am always profoundly impressed with the curiosity and willingness people bring to learning about other people even as much as themselves. There is a hunger out there to bridge the communication challenges that so fill our lives whether at work, home, or with others with whom we interact.
When I go out and work with groups of people or individuals, I am always profoundly impressed with the curiosity and willingness people bring to learning about other people even as much as themselves. There is a hunger out there to bridge the communication challenges that so fill our lives whether at work, home, or with others with whom we interact.
The
following article is a wonderful distillation of the six steps to being a more
empathetic person as you navigate the world and the interactions that keep
you engaged.
In my view, curiosity is key to being a more empathetic person. And as I
talk to people outside of the work arena, I am often struck by how few people
are actually curious about anybody else. How often do people ask you interesting
questions about you – really curious questions, not to interrogate but to know
you on a deeper level? Start noticing. Now notice, how often do you ask people
questions that reflect your curiosity about them? Try practicing that with
people as you go about your day. Try to ask at least one curious question a day
and pay attention to how your interactions and relationships change. Now really
listen to what those people actually say, stay curious in the conversation,
deeply listening and it’s likely another, even more interesting question will
pop into your mind from the listening you were just doing. Next time you see
them ask about something they told you previously…remember what they share.
Such interactions build…build…build.Here Comes Honey Uh-OH
Last night after a full day of work and a beautiful evening walk along the
river near my house, I sunk in to our cushy couch with the remote. My husband
was out of town and the TV was calling. NOTHING was on. I scrolled through the
offerings and came upon “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”, a show I’d never seen but
had heard of lots through comic references. I hit OK.
I think producers of these shows could come up with a whole different kind of reality show, a show of people’s faces at home while we watch the reality shows they produce. I can only imagine what my face looked like as I stepped into the world of McIntyre, Georgia and the people that inhabit Honey Boo Boo’s world. Holy moly!! Talk about 2 different worlds! So after a couple of minutes of shock, I picked up the remote to move on and then, instead, I thought of trying an experiment.
Yesterday morning had been spent with me facilitating a workshop on communication and the importance of really understanding another person’s perspective. Now, here were Alana and her family offering me that very opportunity: an attempt at trying to understand the perspectives of people so completely at the other end of the spectrum from my family and friends. So with my new found zeal to find the good, I watched on. Three full episodes of this unusual tribe of folks sucked up my evening as I traversed the events of their lives with them.
Dressed primarily in sweats, jeans, and sweatshirts to hide their plumpish silhouettes, mama, her 3 teenage daughters, little Honey Boo Boo and a baby named GiGi (from the oldest teenage daughter and ironically the thinnest by far) loudly approached life in a small white house in the middle of what appeared to be nowhere.
One daughter felt that she needed to lose weight because she was a teenager being ostracized at school. So the extra-large family made the attempt to eat some vegetables, a food source never brought into their home; mama June made a cabbage soup. They approached the soup like it was a poison from some fable with the mother even throwing it up (really!), perhaps her body rejecting it as a toxin to the corn, cheese, meat, and gummy worms that was her preferred form of nourishment. No matter, I looked for the best. They were trying, at the very least, something new.
Moving on, they attempted to exercise as a way to scale down which was interesting in itself. 5 large women and girls sitting in one small room bouncing on big rubber balls, hoola hooping, and snapping elastic bands was a visual I will have to extract from my mind’s eye. It was a feeble attempt at best but still I rooted for them. Their exercise regimen was short-lived and I fear the equipment got a better workout than the participants.
Mama June and her boyfriend, Sugar Bear decided that instead of getting married (Sugar Bear wanted to, June did not) they would have a ‘commitment ceremony’ and so I watched as the troop set about planning the ceremony on a minimal budget after getting laughed out of a wedding planner’s office. June’s daughters’ surprised her with a bridal shower at a pizza parlor with pizza and wings (their fav.) while friends and family turned out to celebrate. After smashing tiramisu cake in her mother’s face, ‘Pumpkin’ wept silently as her mother thanked everyone for coming, for the gifts, and for their importance in June and her family’s lives. It was actually touching. When I saw Pumpkin crying quietly, I recognized the profound love there.
In one episode, the girls tried on one truly horrible bridesmaid dress after another (perhaps a fashion reality show ought to stop by) until they all did finally settle on the best of the bunch, June tried on wedding dresses until she realized they were not authentically her, and Sugar Bear cleaned himself up into a tux to where he actually looked pretty good.
So after following the perspective of looking for the good for an hour and a half, I was able to see Boo Boo’s family as people eking out a life in small town Georgia and truly caring for each other deeply. Sugar Bear, at one point ended up in the hospital pretty seriously ill, and the family rallied with such care and concern that it was touching. Even June, a loud, brash, uneducated woman spoke to the camera of shielding the girls from the gravity of how sick he was and keeping them focused on his eventual homecoming. That seemed like some higher level thinking right there in protecting them and shouldering the lion’s shares of the worry. They are a pretty simple people with a staggering lack of education, in fact, not once did I see the 4 daughters do any kind of homework, read, or do anything really but sit and roll around on beds making really unpleasant sounds. But they were there for each other and while they were playful the way you might expect animals in the wild to be playful, they were never mean.
Here’s what I learned, they were authentically themselves and I preach being authentic so good for them. They made no apology for who they are and they wake up every day getting through it with fairly cheery dispositions. Will I watch again? Um, no. It was a little like me going through ‘transference’ in Young Frankenstein. Could they do a lot of things differently and better for the sake of their future generations? Yes. But perspective shifting isn’t about trying to get people to be like me or you, it’s about learning to appreciate the lives and perspectives of others – that alone is an important exercise – it gives us a larger toolkit for communicating and learning ways to ‘speak the language’ of people not like us, and there are mostly people not like us. So when is Duck Dynasty on?
I think producers of these shows could come up with a whole different kind of reality show, a show of people’s faces at home while we watch the reality shows they produce. I can only imagine what my face looked like as I stepped into the world of McIntyre, Georgia and the people that inhabit Honey Boo Boo’s world. Holy moly!! Talk about 2 different worlds! So after a couple of minutes of shock, I picked up the remote to move on and then, instead, I thought of trying an experiment.
Yesterday morning had been spent with me facilitating a workshop on communication and the importance of really understanding another person’s perspective. Now, here were Alana and her family offering me that very opportunity: an attempt at trying to understand the perspectives of people so completely at the other end of the spectrum from my family and friends. So with my new found zeal to find the good, I watched on. Three full episodes of this unusual tribe of folks sucked up my evening as I traversed the events of their lives with them.
Dressed primarily in sweats, jeans, and sweatshirts to hide their plumpish silhouettes, mama, her 3 teenage daughters, little Honey Boo Boo and a baby named GiGi (from the oldest teenage daughter and ironically the thinnest by far) loudly approached life in a small white house in the middle of what appeared to be nowhere.
One daughter felt that she needed to lose weight because she was a teenager being ostracized at school. So the extra-large family made the attempt to eat some vegetables, a food source never brought into their home; mama June made a cabbage soup. They approached the soup like it was a poison from some fable with the mother even throwing it up (really!), perhaps her body rejecting it as a toxin to the corn, cheese, meat, and gummy worms that was her preferred form of nourishment. No matter, I looked for the best. They were trying, at the very least, something new.
Moving on, they attempted to exercise as a way to scale down which was interesting in itself. 5 large women and girls sitting in one small room bouncing on big rubber balls, hoola hooping, and snapping elastic bands was a visual I will have to extract from my mind’s eye. It was a feeble attempt at best but still I rooted for them. Their exercise regimen was short-lived and I fear the equipment got a better workout than the participants.
Mama June and her boyfriend, Sugar Bear decided that instead of getting married (Sugar Bear wanted to, June did not) they would have a ‘commitment ceremony’ and so I watched as the troop set about planning the ceremony on a minimal budget after getting laughed out of a wedding planner’s office. June’s daughters’ surprised her with a bridal shower at a pizza parlor with pizza and wings (their fav.) while friends and family turned out to celebrate. After smashing tiramisu cake in her mother’s face, ‘Pumpkin’ wept silently as her mother thanked everyone for coming, for the gifts, and for their importance in June and her family’s lives. It was actually touching. When I saw Pumpkin crying quietly, I recognized the profound love there.
In one episode, the girls tried on one truly horrible bridesmaid dress after another (perhaps a fashion reality show ought to stop by) until they all did finally settle on the best of the bunch, June tried on wedding dresses until she realized they were not authentically her, and Sugar Bear cleaned himself up into a tux to where he actually looked pretty good.
So after following the perspective of looking for the good for an hour and a half, I was able to see Boo Boo’s family as people eking out a life in small town Georgia and truly caring for each other deeply. Sugar Bear, at one point ended up in the hospital pretty seriously ill, and the family rallied with such care and concern that it was touching. Even June, a loud, brash, uneducated woman spoke to the camera of shielding the girls from the gravity of how sick he was and keeping them focused on his eventual homecoming. That seemed like some higher level thinking right there in protecting them and shouldering the lion’s shares of the worry. They are a pretty simple people with a staggering lack of education, in fact, not once did I see the 4 daughters do any kind of homework, read, or do anything really but sit and roll around on beds making really unpleasant sounds. But they were there for each other and while they were playful the way you might expect animals in the wild to be playful, they were never mean.
Here’s what I learned, they were authentically themselves and I preach being authentic so good for them. They made no apology for who they are and they wake up every day getting through it with fairly cheery dispositions. Will I watch again? Um, no. It was a little like me going through ‘transference’ in Young Frankenstein. Could they do a lot of things differently and better for the sake of their future generations? Yes. But perspective shifting isn’t about trying to get people to be like me or you, it’s about learning to appreciate the lives and perspectives of others – that alone is an important exercise – it gives us a larger toolkit for communicating and learning ways to ‘speak the language’ of people not like us, and there are mostly people not like us. So when is Duck Dynasty on?
Making the Decision Right
Adam Grant, a management professor at the Wharton School of Business in
Pennsylvania says:
“You’ll face plenty of win-win choices in your life. The quality of the decision you make will be determined not by picking the right one, but by the actions you take post-decision to make the most of it.”
The most valuable advice he ever received on making choices was:
“You’ll face plenty of win-win choices in your life. The quality of the decision you make will be determined not by picking the right one, but by the actions you take post-decision to make the most of it.”
The most valuable advice he ever received on making choices was:
“Don’t make the right
decision; make the decision right.” – Ellen Langer
That seems like pretty good advice to me.The Kindness and The Courage
“Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things that stand like stone,
Kindness in another’s troubles,
Courage in your own.”
- Adam Lindsay Gordon -
Two things that stand like stone,
Kindness in another’s troubles,
Courage in your own.”
- Adam Lindsay Gordon -
Guest Blog: Hans Hickler: The Signals We Send
I have seen quite a few appalling meeting behaviors in my time:
Meeting leader starts to read the paper in the middle of a presentation – when confronted he said he had seen the material and that the presentation was for the benefit of the others.
Board member regularly falls asleep during meetings – justification was that this is a cultural thing and in his country that happens. (Chairman went on to justify that once the board member wakes up from his power nap he is really focused!)
Meeting leader gets up in the middle of her meeting to step outside and make a call, citing that this is really important and that the team should just go on without her.
These experiences are so extreme, that it is easy to point out how disrespectful they are to the individuals that have to experience them. It goes without saying that the message that these leaders send is “what you do is not important enough for me”.
One of the most important leadership traits is self-awareness of our style, our behaviors. While we would like to think that we don’t exhibit extreme behaviors such as these,the reality is we all do things at times that send negative signals- we just aren’t aware:
We rush into the meeting late – we signal that the meeting isn’t important enough to be on time and its OK to keep others waiting.
We look at our watch while talking to someone – we signal that we have to be someone else and are looking to wrap things up.
We cancel a meeting last minute – we signal that its ok to upset other’s days to accommodate ours.
We glance at our blackberry in a meeting; or worse, start texting – we signal that the person talking is not worth listening to.
Be aware of the little things we do and the effect they can have. As a leader, the smallest things are amplified with the megaphone effect.
Meeting leader starts to read the paper in the middle of a presentation – when confronted he said he had seen the material and that the presentation was for the benefit of the others.
Board member regularly falls asleep during meetings – justification was that this is a cultural thing and in his country that happens. (Chairman went on to justify that once the board member wakes up from his power nap he is really focused!)
Meeting leader gets up in the middle of her meeting to step outside and make a call, citing that this is really important and that the team should just go on without her.
These experiences are so extreme, that it is easy to point out how disrespectful they are to the individuals that have to experience them. It goes without saying that the message that these leaders send is “what you do is not important enough for me”.
One of the most important leadership traits is self-awareness of our style, our behaviors. While we would like to think that we don’t exhibit extreme behaviors such as these,the reality is we all do things at times that send negative signals- we just aren’t aware:
We rush into the meeting late – we signal that the meeting isn’t important enough to be on time and its OK to keep others waiting.
We look at our watch while talking to someone – we signal that we have to be someone else and are looking to wrap things up.
We cancel a meeting last minute – we signal that its ok to upset other’s days to accommodate ours.
We glance at our blackberry in a meeting; or worse, start texting – we signal that the person talking is not worth listening to.
Be aware of the little things we do and the effect they can have. As a leader, the smallest things are amplified with the megaphone effect.
