Leading Effectively Series
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 I was shocked with the Tiger Woods news of "transgressions" off the golf course this week.
I was also shocked several months ago when Rick Pitino, head college basketball coach of the Louisville Cardinals, admitted to his own “transgressions” which included an extramarital affair and a certain pay-off.
Many people (me included) identified so much with these people. We saw these people as role models and as leaders. Now, many of those same people, including me, can’t look at them the same, can’t see them as role models or leaders anymore, and in fact, may feel betrayed and hurt. Why have I, and many others, lost respect for these people? Why are we appalled and, maybe in the extreme, maybe feeling a physical repulsion against these people?
In psychology, there is a theory called social identity. To help sustain or even boost our self-esteem, and to make us feel like part of a group, we tend to identify with people who are like us and we have a favorable bias for those who tend to be like us. For me, I identified with Tiger Woods – we are both children of mixed-race marriages, we both have Asian mothers, we both play golf, we are both born in December, we are both in our early 30s, our mothers both told us of strong colors to wear (his mother told him red, my mother told me blue). His golf victories felt like mine. For me, I identified with Rick Pitino – we both are Catholic, we both try to teach others (he on the basketball court and in his public speakings, me with my work, writing and my own teaching at NC A&T State University and other speaking engagements). I was always a big fan of his teams.
When an individual we look up to or identify as a leader, suddenly does something that is in complete contrast to what is our own value system, or that of the group to which we thought we belonged, that’s when we feel a dissonance. We have to try to keep our self-esteem in check, so oftentimes, we try to completely remove ourselves from these people. That’s what I’m feeling right now with these two people, and probably what others feel as well. It’s only natural.
When things like “transgressions” happen to our role models or leaders, it still shocks me, but should it really? We are all human. But, we naturally tend to put leaders under the microscope. We just expect more of our leaders. It’s only natural.
If you are in the position of a role model or leader, you just have to accept that role models and leaders will be scrutinized, and you are no different. You will be put on a pedestal and will continually have a spotlight on you at work, away from work, in meetings, in your community, in the airport, in elevators, with your family, with your friends, with children, behind closed doors, or in other places where people, or you deep down inside, may think you should not be.
As closing thoughts, think about these things:
If you are a parent of a star basketball player wanting to go to college, would you want a coach with “transgressions” coming into your house, and convincing you that he/she should coach, teach, and mold, your kid for the next four years on and off the basketball court about how to live life? What type of leader should come into your household? Are you that type of leader?
Another way I myself identified with Tiger, we are both extremely close to our fathers. In talking this week with my major professor from graduate school at UGA, Karl Kuhnert brought this point up: If Tiger’s father, who passed away a couple of years ago, were still around, what do you think he would say to his son about his “transgressions?” If you were Tiger’s mother or father, what would you say?
Finally, what do you think Tiger has to say to his own kids one day about all of this when they are old enough to start understanding, grasping, and comprehending what “transgressions” really are? How can he now be a role model and leader to his kids, or the millions of kids who look up to him, or the millions of kids who are helped by money from his own charity work and foundation?
If you really want to be, or are forced to be, a leader and role model, you just have to accept the fact that more is expected of you.
What do these companies have in common that's related to the current economic situation? Burger King, MTV, CNN, FedEx, Intel and Microsoft?
That’s right; they all began during slow economic times and each has been a significant force in modern culture. There have been 8 U.S. recessions since the Great Depression (1953, 1957-8, 1973-5, 1980 & 81-82, 1990-91, and 2001-2) and interesting things took place in each of them.
-Burger King started in 1954 when the Florida franchisees of the Insta-burger King chain, James McLamore and David Edgerton, began their takeover.
-Fred Smith started FedEx express in 1971 in Arkansas, but lack of support from the airport led him to move to Memphis during the 1973 recession.
-That was also the year that an employee of Honeywell (Paul Allen) and a Harvard student (William Gates, III) were inspired by the appearance of the MITS Altair 8800 computer on the cover of Popular Electronics to create a version of BASIC that would run on it.
-During the double-dip recession that began in 1980 both MTV and CNN got their starts. Ted Turner (CNN) started a music video channel (Cable Music Channel in 1984, but after one money-losing month sold it to MTV who developed it into VH1).
Game-changing innovation doesn’t depend on an abundance of time or resources. It thrives whenever people are energized by possibility. Perhaps it does even better in tough times because a certain discomfort can get us to get up and do something about our discontent. Well, at least, discomfort has been my friend on that front most of my life.
My wish for you this December is sufficient lack of comfort to get you moving on the great ideas incubating in your noggin or that came up in the last late-night bull session. I’m eager to see the next world-changing idea come out of the garage. And this is the right time for it.
Your uncomfortable friend,
Doug
Thanks to Bruce Goodman of the Michigan law firm Varnum in their November Energy newsletter “Watts News," referenced in the ACC news feed: ACC Link 
©iStockphoto.com/pkline
For 35 years I've prided myself on running pretty good meetings. I keep people on the topic, complete the task, ensure everyone has a chance to contribute (even those shy or anxious members), and focus on action outcomes with accountability. But it doesn’t take much for a meeting leave the tracks and plunge into the icy waters below.
In fact, all it takes is forgetting to surface the hidden expectations and assumptions that everyone is carrying when they enter. I had to learn that again recently when I led a meeting to make some policy recommendations for the Center.
On the surface the meeting went well. Everyone spoke, although some more than others. One of the members had written a memo that sparked the meeting, so that person contributed more than others, but that would be expected, wouldn’t it? We’d had over a week of a virtual data collection process in which a wide range of other professional staff had been invited to write their experiences or expert advice. I asked that each person open the meeting with any concerns they’d like to raise and then we proceeded on the basis of proposals. We got them all covered in the two hours allotted and I took the results and wrote a summary.
So, how did I know that the meeting was a flop? Every member of the group (and a few other colleagues) called or wrote me after the meeting with a proposal to either strengthen or revise the recommendations I’d collected in the summary.
Why weren’t these raised in the meeting? Of course, it’s possible some people hadn’t really given the issue enough attention in the days leading up to the meeting. However, when I questioned those who communicated later, I found that a whole set of hidden assumptions had sunk our little ship:
1. “Doug, I expected that you, as an expert in this, would have spoken up more.”
2. “I didn’t want to be seen as just pushing my own agenda.”
3. “I didn’t feel like getting into an open conflict with ______.”
4. “I don’t think I really understood what was being asked of us.”
They all seem reasonable issues to me. They should have been addressed in the meeting.
So, what are the lessons I’m taking from this?
1. When everyone’s attention is stretched thin, it may take two meetings: one to get participants to really focus and understand the issues and context, and another to knock out something that can stand.
2. Taking time to get clear about the purpose of the meeting, the roles to be played by each of the participants, and the group norms can save a lot of time later.
3. I should trust my gut. If I’m feeling hurried or anxious or frustrated, there’s a good chance I’m responding to something emerging in the group. Take time to figure out what it is and if I can’t figure it out, ask the group.
Why is it that the hardest lessons to learn are the ones we have known all along?
Good luck with your meetings,
Doug
How do we develop leadership for public service?
A number of us at CCL have the pleasure of collaborating with colleagues at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University. One question we have explored together is, How do we develop leadership for public service? Wagner sees its relationship to student through this lens of leadership development. Dean Ellen Schall's addressed this year's graduating class and talked about this relationship:
"We have always understood at Wagner that it mattered how we started to engage you, even as prospective students, that we were beginning a conversation, perhaps a relationship--one that could last for years. Two years ago, when many of you applied, we decided to add a particular twist to our application, in part to get your attention, in part to signal we were after a different level of engagement. We gave you the possibility of responding to a photo, a visual image, from a collection of images developed by colleagues at the Center for Creative Leadership. As you may remember, we use Visual Explorer, which is what CCL calls this approach, at orientation as well. The basic idea is that it’s easier to get the conversation started when you have an object in the middle. And we wanted to get a conversation started."This "twist" has worked well.
“It allows us to get a deeper sense of the applicant’s passion for/commitment to an issue, and unlocks the depth of interest in a way that is not always achievable in a standard admissions essay,” says Tracey Gardner, Wagner’s chief of staff.
This Sunday's New York Times published a slide show of the most compelling images and themes.
What does a swimming tiger suggest about public policy, or a pricked finger say about your goals?
Development of leadership in public service begins with engagement. How do you attract and engage students so that learning can be deeper? It can start with a simple question: What do you see?
"Too often," notes Ellen Schall, "applying to graduate school is transactional. We added Visual Explorer because we wanted to signal that the Wagner experience is transformational. Visual Explorer calls for people to slow down enough to reflect on their own experiences, connect their passion for public service to their professional goals, and offer their own perspectives on how to change the world."
Contact Chuck Palus at CCL Labs for more information on using Explorer Tools to create more effective and engaging surveys, and for visual support for collaborative conversations.For more information on this work at NYU Wagner click here.
Warning: shameless, self-serving propaganda alert!
Let me be absolutely clear: what follows is completely self-serving and if this kind of thing bothers you, you should stop reading now.
Glad we cleared that up.
I’ve been at CCL long enough to see some interesting patterns in the ebb and flow of what clients want from CCL. Only a couple of years ago, many clients were focused on building their internal capacity to train leaders. Several large clients had the idea that they would learn what we do and then they could do it themselves. Personally, I’m a great fan of building the capability of clients to do leadership development and talent management with internal resources. However, I’ve seen a shift away in several substantial clients from the focus on doing themselves. Why would this be?
It is not because they don’t have top internal professional staff. The quality of education and preparation I encounter in the learning and development, talent management and organizational development groups in large companies continues to improve all the time.
It’s not because their own trainers can’t learn to do CCL’s industrial strength facilitation of learning experiences. Much of what we’ve developed has become well known in the training community and we've trained thousands to do it.
Rather, there are two big speed bumps that affect this.
The first is that the creation of great learning experiences is amazingly demanding. The staff support and creative energy required merely to duplicate what it takes to create an LDP (Leadership Development Program™) is very costly. But that’s what it takes to create transformative experiences that have lasting impact.
The second speed bump is more important. Although CCL has created great programs, powerful research that’s had significant effects on leadership, a wide range of publications and resources (just look at the burgeoning Explorer series (Visual Explorer, Leadership Metaphor Explorer, Values Explorer), and an impressive array of services (coaching, evaluation services, Leadership Beyond Boundaries, etc.), that’s not why clients want to stay close to us.
Clients want to stay close to us because what’s being created next is always more interesting and valuable than what we’ve already shared. It’s entirely possible to take CCL programs and make them your own. We’ll even train your professional staff to deliver your internal leadership programs. But what’s the point? As leadership changes and the demands on leaders change, what worked yesterday is only a partial solution to what is needed today. It doesn’t begin to meet the needs for tomorrow. We invest in research and collaboration with other practitioners all over the globe because leadership is still a very young field. The most important lessons are yet to be learned.
Stay close to us. The most valuable thing we have to offer is the relationship of collaborative inquiry that leads to life and world-changing discovery. Stay tuned because you don’t want to miss what’s next.
Doug
 When we lack the capacity to effectively communicate with one another, metaphor can provide the means. It has been said that leadership takes heart and requires a certain amount of verbal acumen. Well what happens when we can no longer find our voice and our hearts are literally ripped from our chests? Joss Whedon explores this struggle in his Emmy-nominated, Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, “Hush.”
Those not familiar with the Buffy lore (and shame on you), Buffy Summers is The Chosen One – the one girl chosen in all the world to fight the vampires and demons – all while attempting to survive young adulthood. She juggles the responsibilities of saving the world from certain destruction while trying to discover why she can’t maintain a healthy relationship with the opposite sex. If you thought high school was hell, try living on the Hellmouth.
In this particular episode, a pack of Brothers Grimm-like fiends known as The Gentlemen arrive in the dead of night and proceed to steal the voices of Sunnydale’s residents as they sleep. While it is obviously upsetting to wake and find oneself mute, the true horror of the situation is not made clear until the following night when The Gentlemen begin to collect what they are truly after - the hearts of the townspeople. Losing one’s voice may be unsettling and inconvenient, however terror quickly settles in when you realize that, scream all you want, no one is going to hear you.
But what does any of this have to do with the real world? How does a stake-wielding blonde make her way into a leadership blog? As the Buffy gang sings in another episode, “Where do we go from here?”
We hear time an again how effective communication is imperative. We’re coached on active listening skills, etiquette, and verbiage - yet we rarely discuss within the workplace the emphasis non-verbal communication has on the meaning of our message. Of course personal experiences will play a part in meaning-making, however it is sometimes what is left unsaid that imports the most impact. When a co-worker loses a close family member, the gentle squeeze of a hand can convey so much more than the mere, “I’m so sorry to hear of your loss.”
So where does metaphor come in? Metaphor is a vehicle. It provides us with a means of expression when words fail us or an illustration would better convey our message. Rousseau wrote “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” He is not implying that we are literally chained to our desks, our homes, and our families. Rather, he provides a metaphor that society has saddled us (another metaphor) with certain responsibilities and expectations that is virtually impossible to escape. In the Buffy episode, Whedon uses metaphor on several of levels.
When Sunnydale’s inhabitants literally begin to lose their hearts to the Gentlemen, the survivors find themselves reassessing their current relationships or lack thereof. Suddenly, conversations that seemed too difficult to broach in the past become less complicated without the need to “talk about it.” Actions become more accountable. Up until now, Buffy and her current love interest Riley have had one awkward conversation after another, each trying to conceal their hidden identity from the other. Coincidentally, it’s not until they loose their ability to speak that the characters make any real physical contact. It’s not until they are surprised to find themselves in the same room, holding their own against a common enemy that they begin to understand the depth of one another’s character.
So what is being left unsaid in your workplace?
We're fascinated by the reasons that things go wrong. And they go wrong quite often. Sometimes in spectacularly unpleasant ways; sometimes in a slow slide into irrelevance. Whole industries are devoted to the diagnosis of failure and there are some lovely, detailed models of organizational disaster. I'm persuaded that in many cases there is a simple, accessible common factor that affects us as individuals and as organizations. It's anxiety. Actually, it's rather the difficulty individuals and organizations have managing their anxiety. This lens has been helpful to me as I've watched smart, talented people and organizations drive themselves into the ground.
It happens when the whole focus of attention is on the risks and dangers of living in this difficult world. While I'm not so pollyanna that I think we should only focus on our strengths and opportunities, it isn't difficult to get into an obsessive preoccupation with managing risks, real and imagined. I used to think it was something we could blame on the corporate legal department, because it's their job to identify and hedge the organization against excessive risk. But now I think it has more to do with the way we react to potential risk: we let it control our business choices.
It manifests in a couple of ways in organizational life. One occurs when organizations begin to multiply their policies and rules to cover every potential problem. The paradox is that contracts and policies that build in protections from every type of malfeasance or negligence define the relationship as fundamentally absent of trust. That is, they communicate more than limits or boundaries; they also communicate an implicit expression of the relationship itself. Perhaps more importantly, the multiplication of rules and policies has a chilling effect on creativity and innovation. When there are many rules, it becomes the first responsibility of employees to check to make sure that they are not violating them.
Then comes the documentation. While documentation is important to preserve records of actions and ensure reporting, the need to document everything can mean that 20 to 30% of the creative energy of the organization is diverted from customer service, product development, or business strategy. Some businesses find that filling out forms is their new business model. New rules and requirements in HR policy or in contracts should be subject to their own rigorous risk assessment: do they add sufficient incremental safety to justify the additional negative impact on climate and workload?
Last week I met a consultant whose firm focuses on performance improvement through people policies and practices. She told me several stories of companies who had accelerated the aggregation of HR policies, thereby clearly communicating to the workforce that none of them could be trusted and they were expected to attempt to steal everything possible from the company. She said something that CCL believes most fervently: you can't change performance if you don't address the culture. She has proposed a single sentence HR policy: Every employee is expected to work for the best interests of the company and its customers and employees.
A culture of distrust (and its cousin: control) cannot spawn an organization where everyone gives their best. That kind of culture only comes where leaders believe in the capability and generosity of their follows. Unfortunately, when the market is down and the strategy isn't working all that well, it becomes easy to blame the attitudes of the workforce. Or when someone goes off the track, it's easy to clamp down on everyone. The multiplication of "zero tolerance" policies shows how quickly we accede to the hierarchical solution; even if the result is the arrest of 5-year-olds for carrying camping utensils for show-and-tell.
Compliance is not creativity.
Control is not commitment.
Passion, creativity, commitment: these are all freely given or they are not given at all.
Our culture is flailing in a sea of anxiety...about the economy, about jobs, about competing on the world stage. This is the time to reinforce our commitment to collaboration, to mutual trust, to shared goals. When anxious, our best escape is in a return to core values. We need to line up with people who are leading the way to positive environments, inspiring innovation, making high performance a pleasure.
Find them. Shine a light on their energy and grant others the freedom to do it, too.
Doug
The word "entitlement" basically means getting something because it's your right to have it - it's not a matter of earning it. On the other hand "empowerment" is about building confidence and capacity in order to gain access – to rights, to resources, to information, to services, etc. – in order to shape one’s life and surroundings.
The crossroad where entitlement and empowerment meet is charged with emotion.
Those of us in a dominant status group may be so used to certain rights and privileges, we feel entitled to them and abashed at the thought we wouldn’t have them and feel those without aren't doing something "right." Those of us in a non-dominant group may struggle towards empowerment in order to get glimpses of a life others take for granted, wondering why it has to be so hard.
There are a plethora of indicators, but none that give a sense of the overall feeling people have about their lot. I suspect, based on gut feeling, that with the recent roller-coaster economy more people are realizing that what they thought they were entitled to – a job, a house, a retirement - is no longer in their grasp. And those who still “have” are probably holding on a lot tighter.
 But what does that mean for us – all of us?
Germany, among other nations, has adopted kurzarbeit - shortened work hours so more people can keep their job. In contrast to lay-offs, with kurzarbeit everyone loses a little so everyone can keep a little.
I wonder if this feeling can extend to other areas – beyond a paycheck? I suspect that spreading opportunity (becoming collectively empowered) would do more to move our entire lot forward than having the dream of being able to move into one of the narrowing slots reserved for those who are entitled.
I find it telling that folks in the middle class tend to give more (percentage-wise) to charities than those in more affluent groups. Chances are they have a better idea of what it's like to need a break and that sometimes it has more to do with circumstance than personal character.
I recently worked with a very high-performing team of government leaders. We were working together trying to hone their leadership edge and create an even better synergy within the team.
During the discussions, the team (a group of high performers within the Federal Government) revealed the immensity of their challenges – they had a ton of money to manage, and hundreds of pieces of legislation to track – where would they have time to do leadership development or team building?
As one senior official stated, the plate is overflowing and yet others keep putting more on it.
This is a challenge facing many government agencies – it is both a sign of their importance as well as a unique compliment of others trust in their ability to handle such a difficult workload. The question remains, however, how to manage such a workload?
 This reminds me of the traveler who once asked the village chief how to eat an elephant? ‘One bite at a time’ was the reply.
Like the village chief, this high-performing team may want to look at how they can slowly take little bites and begin to make headway against the overflowing plate. There are a number of options to address overwork or over-tasking. Some include reviewing team roles, updating team priorities, creating efficient processes – and… yes, even making the time for leadership development and teamwork reflection.
I can hear the refrain – we don’t have time!
I wonder if we looked at time differently, a new perspective would enlighten us with an answer. Instead of looking at time as a boundary, lets look at time as an investment. If you invest time now in team building, could it return more time later? Research demonstrates the time spent in learning and reflection results in improved communication, efficiency, and trust within teams.
In addition, CCL research and others have demonstrated time and again the importance of reflective time for senior executives.
Thinking about time as an investment helps us to realize the return on its potential. Instead of looking at everything on the plate. Lets look at how we eat it, the time it takes to eat, and where we are investing that time at the current moment. Performing this quick analysis may reveal the amount of time being wasted, instead of invested in key priorities.
Using this temporal analysis is a wise investment that will help the team address that overloaded plate… one bite at a time.
So, are leaders born or are leaders made?
As a point for debate, the "born" versus "made" question doesn't generate the same heat that it once did. It might be fun to pose the question to undergraduate students who are getting their first exposure to leadership theory, but the grizzled veterans of the leadership game know that leadership is a learned behavior forged from the combination of experience, support, and training.
At CCL we might as well have a sign on the lawn that says ‘leaders made here.’ And yet, along with all we know about how leaders are made, we can’t deny that some are born with certain advantages. There is one specific advantage some are born with that we were able to clearly comprehend even at the tender age of 5 years old.
The advantage is height.
My colleague, Michael Campbell, and I have found the research on height fascinating.
Several studies indicate that taller men are more likely to be successful and that they earn bigger paychecks. In one study, each inch in height amounted to nearly $800 more a year in pay. The average height of US Presidents is, at 5 ft 11 in, about two inches taller than the average man. Corporate CEOs also tend to be taller and a quick look through CCL’s leader database of 4600 senior executives confirm that senior executives also stand taller than the norm.
So how can those who don’t tower over the masses overcome this apparently innate (born) disadvantage? As with many other facets of leadership, your behavior plays a key role in how you are perceived.
Lara Tiedens, an organizational behavior professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, has done extensive research on the ways executives acquire status. According to Tiedens, people often use height, or an inflated appearance of height, to look more powerful. Leaders who look directly at others, use an open stance and vigorous gestures, speak loudly in a deep voice, and lean in close are perceived by others as more competent.
Tieden’s research has also shown that women can mitigate the potentially negative consequences of behaving in a more traditionally male mode by pairing assertive speech with a concern for the relationship and a sense of liking people.
So we’d like to hear from you. What physical characteristics do you associate with leadership?
“One of the hardest tasks of leadership is understanding that you are not what you are, but what you're perceived to be by others.” -Edward L. Flom, CEO of the Florida Steel Corporation, in a speech, May 6, 1987.
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