"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

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

The Creative Leader Workshop

Last week, I mentioned being intrigued by comments from participants in the workshop entitled the Creative Leader. Before I can share the comment, I need to explain about one part of the workshop.

Over time I have learned that there are many ways to teach leadership concepts and I have used two of my favorite activities as extended metaphors to engage people in an exploration of different aspects of leadership. Leadership Dance and Leadership Yoga are two of the more popular results of this creative effort. Based on comments over the years, this way of using activities or hobbies that I enjoy strikes people as very unusual, as something they are not able to do. So The Creative Leader is one workshop designed to help people demystify this creative process.

The primary activity is simple. I ask everyone in the room to put their favorite hobby on a scrap of paper and hand it over to me. I shuffle them while they get organized into smaller groups of 5-7 people. Then each group draws one hobby from those in my hands. Once we're clear on what the hobby is, some are a bit obscure, I announce that their task is to design a leadership workshop based on that hobby and they have ten minutes to do so.

To the amazement of most participants, they are able to complete the assignment. Some hobbies work better for the topic of leadership than others. Some groups get more involved in their workshop than other groups. Some are very funny and clever whether or not they will actually work. A couple of ideas have been sheer genius! But everyone comes up with enough that with very little work they could develop a full-fledged workshop.

The comment I want to share is a variation on this theme. - 'I never would have thought we could come up with so many workable (clever, creative, useable) ideas so quickly.' It reminds me yet again, that so often it is our ideas about what we can and can't do that limit us. Much more so than money, or time, or The Rules. Our preconceived notions about how much time brainstorming takes keeps us from using small bits of time well. Our conception about our creative ability or the creative ability of others can mean we don't even try something different.

Next time you're stuck and need an idea for a workshop or a presentation or an article, pull out your favorite hobby, something you know well and apply it to the topic at hand. Maybe it will work perfectly, maybe it won't. But I can guarantee you, it will help you find a fresh way of looking at the topic. And that's an important leadership skill for all of us.

Best wishes,

Gage

A Moment of Reflection

Unfortunately, too often it’s the people’s failures that get them to reflect on their experiences. When you’re going along and everything is working well, you don’t sit down and reflect. Which is exactly the moment when you should do it.” ~ Warren Bennis quoting Barbara Corday

Here's a simple quick way to add some times of reflection into your day.

First, grab a sheet of paper and a pen and place them both next to your keyboard.

Next, pick one meeting or conversation that you had today. It could be a meeting that went well or one that was difficult. Your choice, and there is no right or wrong. Just grab the first one that came to mind when you read the first sentence of this paragraph.

As you read this sentence, take a deep breath and then let it out slowly. I’m willing to bet that, whether you intended it or not, just reading that sentence helped your breathing change. Try it one more time – deep breath in and deep breath out.

Now, pick up your pen and on your sheet of paper answer these two questions about the meeting or conversation you selected. (And yes, I really mean write it down. The act of writing helps focus our thoughts and helps us articulate those thoughts more fully. Then our ideas are captured and we remember them more accurately.)

1) What’s one thing I learned from this meeting/conversation?

2) What’s one question I still have?

Simple, isn't it? Reflection is an important leadership task that we make harder than it actually is. Try this every day for the week and at the end of the week spend just a bit longer and see what you have learned. I promise - it's worth the effort.

Best of luck,

Gage

"The only person who really likes change...

.. is a baby with a wet diaper." Unknown

This is one of my favorite quotes about change, because while it is true that there are a few rare individuals who embrace change, the reality is that most of us find it challenging at one level or another. My experience is that even those who say they like change have something that they prefer you not mess with and most of us prefer change we instigate rather than change that is imposed upon us. After all, it is one thing to change something I want to change. It’s another thing entirely for you to tell me what I have to do differently!

But every organization will face imposed change at some time and at some level so there are important leadership tasks involved with both leading and responding to change. Those tasks vary. There are times when leaders understand the need to change before the rest of the organization’s members. There are times when the leader is asked to implement a change whether or not she agrees. There are times when a leaders needs to listen to constituents who are resisting change, not because they are recalcitrant, but rather because they are raising important issues that need to be considered. Which means the most important leadership task is to determine the best response to the particular situation, and that of course, is always the leader’s job and is often the most difficult task of all.

Times of change call for sensitive and creative leaders, leaders who work to set aside their own concerns and focus instead on the good of the organization and its members, leaders who listen well and are not afraid to make decisions and choose a path. Times of change need leaders who are willing to make the toughest change of all – a change in themselves and their habits. This leads me to another favorite quote, this one from Gandhi, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” As with so many thing, change begins with each one of us.

Good luck and take care,

Gage

The Rhythms of Life and Leadership

Some weeks are more difficult than others. That’s just a fact of life. It’s a fact of our leadership life as well. Sometimes problems and issues seem to pile up without an end in sight. Luckily, there are also weeks during which it feels as if everything is going our way and will keep doing so through the future.

The true fact of life, however, is captured in this story of a king asking his chief philosopher to find him a sentence that is true in every circumstance. After much research and thought, the philosopher brought the king this one sentence – “This, too, shall pass.”

Those endless weeks of problems will eventually pass. So too will the good times. The important question for leaders and for all of us in our lives thus becomes, “what will you do in the mean time?” In other words, ‘how do you handle right now?”

This week has been an example of topsy-turvey reality. The beginning of the week was a great trip to an interesting city to attend a professional conference that was fun both personally and professionally. Then I came home to the hard reality that it was time for our 13-year-old Golden Retriever, Millie, to leave us.

In my leadership life there are still tasks to be done and commitments to be kept. And yet, in my daily life, I also need to take time to grieve and to miss Millie. It’s a time to practice leadership tasks that often get overlooked – asking for help and taking care of oneself. Some things can wait and friends and colleagues can handle others if only I’m willing to ask. The time for grieving will pass and later, I’ll be in a position to understand and to help someone else.

Leadership and life both require an understanding of the rhythms of work and fun, of the cycles of good times and difficult ones, and the reality that each day will bring something new. Learning to be in sync with these realities, these rhythms is both the dance of leadership and the dance of life.

Take care,

Gage