"Being demoralized and offended...never propelled anyone further along the path of creativity."

This quote by Jean Flaherty in a blog from The Chronicle of Higher Education, caught my eye earlier this week. The rhetoric about education here in Texas when added to the economic realities most campuses are facing could easily lead people to feel demoralized, offended or both. This quote reminded me that my response to difficult times or comments is my choice. I can let myself be demoralized or I can choose to be creative in my reactions. I can hide my head in the sand and wish things were like they used to be or I can find ways to support the good work being done all around. Whether we realize it or not, we always have a choice in our response, at least in our attitude, even, or maybe especially in difficult times.

Our leadership task is to remember this fact and to help others find their way through the difficult times to creativity. Not one of the easier leadership tasks, but one of great importance. Good luck!

Best wishes,

Gage

Space for Quiet

Each of us wants and needs to have space for quiet,

to get inspired.

Go outside, find space for those serene, lonely moments amidst the simple beauty of nature.

Connect with your inner self.

Be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature, and God.

Learn how to listen. You have to wait for clarity.

Just go with the flow and the answer will come.

Rest your gaze. Open your eyes,

for then one begins to see with the eyes of the heart.

Reflect on the beauty of a simple life.

Wise choice leads to feelings of liberation, even exhilaration.

Better follow your heart,

to trust it.

In the book Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art, author Quinn McDonald suggests a process for creating 'found poetry'. The above poem came from words I cut from a variety of articles printed in Yoga Journal and Oprah's magazine. I decided to share it today because I have had a couple of conversations lately regarding the need for leaders to find time for quiet and reflection. It's not easy to do, but it is one of the most important leadership tasks we have. I hope this poem will inspire you to make space in your busy life for quiet and that you are able to follow your heart to your best leadership.

Best wishes,

Gage

Leadership Courage

I found a great quote today. "With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity." Keshavan Nair. I have to say I love this quote because it is the opposite of the way we usually think and talk about courage.

Courage is a big, blustery thing. Courage helps us stand up to the bullies of life. Heros have courage, not ordinary people. Courage is what is needed to do really Big Things like rescue a person in distress or save the corporation from bankruptcy. Courage is about leaping tall buildings and running faster than speeding bullets. Courage is what Leaders have - definitely with a capital L.

In my opinion those ideas about leadership are linked to the idea of Leadership as something that only special people can achieve, Leadership as ordained or only belonging to a special group of people, to the ones with the special titles.

But Nair’s quote points us in another direction. Look at all the words in this quote. Dare to risk, that sounds like the big blustery idea of courage and our traditional ideas of leadership. Strength and wisdom are words we use to describe leaders, but compassion and humility? Not the traditional words. Add them all together and the concept of courage becomes a little less blustery, but a great deal richer. Courage doesn’t take us over the tall buildings, but into conversation with others in a way that teaches us empathy and compassion. Courage may help us risk being humble enough to ask a question or let another lead rather than trusting only ourselves to complete the task.

Compassion and humility, in my opinion these are critical to effective leadership and Keshavan Nair reminds us that they are not easily lived, that it takes courage.

What other non-traditional traits or behaviors do you believe are essential for leaders? Where do you need courage to be the most effective leader possible? I hope you’ll share your answers with me.

Best wishes,

Gage

*Keshavan Nair was born in Patalia, India, and as a young man began his study of Gandhi. Educated in the British and American systems, Nair had a background in Eastern philosophy and religion, engineering, and decision and risk analysis. He was a corporate executive and served on the faculties of Ohio State University and the Indian Institute of Technology in Kampur, India. Nair passed away in 2002

E-mail as a Leadership Task

When teaching about leadership, I remind participants that whether they realize it or not, their colleagues are watching them and paying attention to their behaviors. My usual examples are about whether leaders’ behaviors and actions are in sync. If you say people are important, do you actions show that people are important? There are numerous examples, but today I want to suggest that leaders need to pay attention to their e-mails. Think for a minute - what messages do you receive from the e-mails sent by the people in leadership in your organization; what messages do you send through your e-mails? I don’t mean in the text, I mean from the messages themselves, the number and the time they are sent.

Yes, it is important for a leader to inform others. In fact, one of the attributes of an effective leader is a willingness to share information rather than hoard it. Yet, if leaders don’t pay attention to the way they send e-mails, the information sharing may be more stressful than helpful. Leaders who send e-mails constantly, all weekend, at all hours of the day and night may think they are keeping staff informed, but in reality they are sending messages about expectations concerning the way to work in their organization. Often this ‘e-mail message’ is in direct contraction to stated messages about healthy work/life balance. Of course staff are quick to pick up on that message. A message of ‘do as I say, not as I do’ is never going to be believed by staff members.

As a leader in a large organization, I work the hours needed to get the job done, but I also practice creating a balanced life and I encourage that mix for the people I work with. As a result, once I get home, I glance at e-mail occasionally, but unless there is an emergency, I don’t respond until the next day. I rarely send an e-mail on the weekend or after traditional work hours unless there is a specific need.

E-mail management is a challenge for all of us in many ways. I just recently learned the term ‘e-mail bankruptcy’ though it has been around for a while. In case you don’t know it, people declare e-mail bankruptcy when they have gotten so far behind in their e-mails that they can never catch up – so they delete them all! (Does the very idea give you hives or a sense of relief? Both responses make sense to me.) What would happen if we changed our thoughts about e-mails from a management question to a leadership question? Thinking about the messages we send beyond the text by paying attention to the timing of our e-mails and the number of the e-mails is a leadership task. Take a moment to look at your Sent Mail and pay attention to details. Remember staff members pay attention to what their leaders do. How well are your words and actions matching? Are your e-mails sending the message you intend? Something to think about….

Best wishes,

Gage

Mission and Creativity

This past week I interacted with two very different organizations, an airline and a college, but they had something in common – a strong sense of mission. The airline was Southwest Airlines, which is celebrating its 40^th anniversary. The Southwest mission says the airline is dedicated to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride and Company Spirit. Nowhere in that statement does it list the things needed to run an airline or even fly an airplane, but it sets a very clear tone. It also sets the mark for customer service and employee behavior. That mark leads to phenomenal stories of staff going above and beyond to help customers. That mark leaves Southwest with one of the best safety records in the industry even though safety is never mentioned in the mission statement. Neither are turnaround time, timely-departures, etc., all of which are ways in which Southwest excels.

I traveled on Southwest to work with the staff at a college in the south. I interviewed 16 people and read the survey results from about 40. In this economic environment, this small college is facing financial challenges severe enough that the division I was working with has cut 10 positions in the last year or so, resulting in several people working the equivalent of 2 or more jobs. And yet, while people ,of course, identified staffing as an area of concern, no one was complaining about it. One might expect the morale to be low, and people certainly are feeling anxiety, but pride was evident as they talked about their work and their college. I believe this was due to everyone having a clear sense of the mission. When I asked what should never be changed, no one repeated the mission word for word, but all of them talked about the same values and ideals – they have clarity and congruence in mission.

What I found interesting about these two organizations is the impact of this mission clarity on individual and organizational behavior. A well thought-out mission statement defines the boundaries for decision-making and program-development: in other words, a well-understood mission opens the possibility for creativity by the members of the organization. The amazing customer service stories from Southwest are possible because the employees understand the mission and know they not only have organizational space to be creative, they are encouraged to find the best way to make things right. In this college I visited, people know that times are tight, but they know what is important in this organization and within those boundaries they are being wonderfully creative in finding ways to create programs and solve problems that support the college’s purpose.

If you find yourself wondering why your organization isn’t more creative, perhaps it’s worth taking a step back to look at the mission. Do people understand it? Do organizational policy and decision making follow the mission? People who know they are in sync with the organizational mission will feel more comfortable trying new ideas in part because there is less risk that they will move outside the organizational tolerances. Supervisors will be more comfortable with staff initiative because they are confident people understand the necessary boundaries. What will members of your organization say if they were asked about their mission? I suspect those answers will tell you something important about organizational creativity.

Best wishes,

Gage