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

the leadership dance: 'The Only One Who Really Likes Change...

the leadership dance: 'The Only One Who Really Likes Change...: "...is a wet baby.' Unk. Recently, I had occasion to talk about change as our organization prepares to experience a major change in many ..."

'The Only One Who Really Likes Change...

...is a wet baby.' Unk.

Recently, I had occasion to talk about change as our organization prepares to experience a major change in many important processes. The reality is that even people who handle change well have something they don’t want anyone to mess with! It’s true in our organizations, but it’s just as true in our daily lives. And it is a rare person who goes through life able to stay flexible enough to keep trying new things as they go.

In a few days I turn 55 and the list of things I’ll never do does grow. I’ll never play a professional sport – not that such a goal was ever in my future, but it’s certainly not now. I’ll never get to ride on a supersonic jet that crosses the Atlantic Ocean and lands before it left. I don’t expect to reach the top of Mt. Everest. On the other hand, I have another list – the practice of yoga, teaching yoga, competing in national ballroom dance competitions, writing for people to read (this blog and my office’s bi-weekly newsletter to name two examples) – all things I’ve begun since I turned 40. None of these are really surprising as most flow from activities or kinds of activities I’ve done before and there wasn’t much resistance to overcome.

On the other hand, I’ve been sure for most of my life (54 years or so) that I’m not any more able to draw than, at 5”4’, I’m able to slam dunk a basketball. It didn’t matter that my husband, who can draw wonderfully has told me many times that if I would just take a class I could learn to draw. I knew better. Of course, you know the moral of the story. The picture at the top of this is something I’ve drawn. Now, I haven’t turned out to be an amazing prodigy, but who cares, I’m able to draw and I’m enjoying drawing.

There are so many ways our ideas about what we can and can’t do limit our ability to do those activities and many other things besides. One of the ways we can learn to handle change is to practice changing. One of the ways we can practice changing is to try new activities, stretch our ideas about what we can and can’t do, and in doing so, find out we can survive changes.

So what’s on your list of things you can’t do? Some may be realistic – no Olympic bobsledding for me. But some activities on the list may be there because you’re afraid of trying something new, or are unwilling to do something badly, or any other of the many reasons we’re sure that We. Can’t. Do It!

I suggest you actually write down your list of things you’ll never do and look at the list thoughtfully. You may have to admit that serving on the space shuttle may not be in your future. But you may also have to admit that there are items on the list that you just never tried. Try it – maybe you won’t be any good at it and you can say you were right. But maybe, just maybe, the worst will happen and you’ll have to admit your ideas were the only thing stopping you and you’ll actually learn a new skill!

Have fun,

Gage