Leading Effectively Blog

Keen Eye, Good Choices - John Ryan on WashingtonPost.com

CCL's President and CEO, John Ryan, has been asked by the Washington Post to serve as a panelist for On Leadership, an open and lively forum for discussion of what makes for great leadership. Read his post from this week, join the discussion by leaving a comment there or here,  and watch for more posts in the near future.

Bill Walsh Had One - What is Your Leadership Legacy?

The Super Bowl - the championship game of the American National Football League -  is Sunday, February 1. That got me thinking about past coaches who have won the Super Bowl. The coach who sticks out in my mind the most is Bill Walsh. He coached three Super Bowl winners for the San Francisco 49ers. What could be even more impressive is his legacy, shown through his “coaching tree.” Look at his assistants who became head coaches, and their assistants who became head coaches, and their assistants who became head coaches. One tree is here  but is a little outdated.

Here is another example that is a little bigger, a little more up-to-date as well:

Six coaches from the tree have eight Super Bowl wins between them (Holmgren, Gruden, Shanahan, Seifert, Billick, Dungy), still others have gotten to the Super Bowl, but lost (Callahan, Fassel, Fisher, Fox, Reid, L. Smith, Wyche; Holmgren also has Super Bowl loses). A lot of former and current NFL head coaches are on the Walsh Coaching Tree.

You can even trace one of the coaches of this year’s Super Bowl, the Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, back to Walsh. Tomlin was an assistant under Tony Dungy, who was an assistant under Dennis Green, who was an assistant under Bill Walsh. Oddly enough, Dennis Green helped build, shape, and draft much of the present roster of the other team in this year’s Super Bowl, the Arizona Cardinals, before he was fired in 2007.

That’s an impressive legacy. Consider though, Walsh is a branch off of legendary coach Paul Brown’s coaching tree – who are others on that tree? Don Shula (2 Super Bowl victories, most career NFL wins), Bud Grant (4 Super Bowl loses with Minnesota Vikings), Weeb Ewbank (won a Super Bowl coaching the New York Jets, what many consider the most important game in NFL history), and Chuck Knoll (4 Super Bowl victories).

Another Bill Walsh legacy that I just found out: Walsh pushed the cause for black coaches in the NFL. He worked with the NFL office to help black NFL assistants prepare for being head coaches by creating the Minority Coaching Fellowship.

With a new U.S. president, that also got me thinking about legacy. Bush guiding the U.S. through the 9/11 terrorist attacks and not having a terrorist attack on American soil after 9/11 could be one of his lasting legacies. Financial support of AIDS research could be another legacy. Troubles in Iraq or a bad economy are more than likely what many would consider to be his legacy, at least right now.

Will Barack Obama’s legacy be largely that he is the first African American president of the United States, or will some act, some policy, some deed, be his legacy?

Research conducted at CCL found that a majority of the 182 leaders surveyed wanted their legacy to be around an improved organizational culture or financial stability. Development/retention of employees and enhancing business operations were not that far behind.

What is your leadership legacy? Will it be the people who worked for you or who you mentored? Will it be some act or decision you make? Will it be that you averted disaster or brought prosperity? Will it be that you raised a family, were an outstanding husband, father, wife, mother? Will it be your ethical nature?

Let’s hear your thoughts – how do you as a leader want to be remembered? What is your leadership legacy? I look forward to seeing what you write.

Creative Thinking: Leadership and the Walnut Root

We had a small walnut tree in our back yard.  I guess the squirrels loved the nuts, because we never got very many of them.  Finally the tree just died.  My husband carefully saved all of the pieces and made beautiful handles for things—knives, axes, hammers.  They would just show up under the Christmas tree as exquisite gifts for several years.  He also made several walking sticks and finally an elegant highly polished sculpture for me this year, I guess from the trunk.  It was like “the giving tree.”  Never hugely noticeable in its life, the tree had been gracious and generous in its death.

Just when I thought all the gifts from the tree and my creative husband were finished, this week Richard dug up the root of the tree, which was rather remarkably big.  He couldn’t get it all, because a piece of it had already made its way under the fence and into the neighbor’s yard.  I wondered if they mightn’t have been willing for him to get it, but he said he had already poured concrete over it to make the foundation for the fence he is building.  So, no.

So now he has taken several pictures of that big root and he studies it on his computer to see what he might do with it.  He looks at it from different angles, perspectives; considers different opportunities for it.  What a shame we as leaders don’t get to consider our problems from so many perspectives.  He can do anything with that root.  All possibilities are open.  Base for a table.  Another sculpture.  Base for a lamp.  A bowl, a dish, a clock.  He wanders back by the computer screen and investigates it again and again, patiently, like a predator gaining on its prey.

What a blessing it would be if we had time to examine our colleagues and our clients with such consideration.  Everyone and everything is in much too much a hurry.  No time to come back and look again.  Decisions must be made.  Projects must be planned.  People must be assigned.  Budgets must be developed.

Such a hurry and rush approach does limit us, though.  It’s hard to do really creative things without giving our “right brains” time to work.  Our right brains are very efficient, but they do not operate in a linear fashion like our left brains.  We must have some time available so we can come back to something patiently, consider it over time.  Put it up on our computer screen and look at it casually as we walk by.  Like a stealthy predator:  “I don’t see you.  You’re safe over there.”  And all the time our minds are working.  All the time, we’re gaining on it.

The wonderful thing about the way the right brain works is that we do not have to be conscious of what it’s doing for it to be effective.  We can be deeply involved in other things.  We have all experienced an “aha!” while we were showering, driving the interstate, or drifting off to sleep.

Good creative leadership allows such thought processes, and is ready to take advantage of them.  We must acknowledge the efficacy of such workings of our brains and be ready to claim the harvest.  We must find ways to inspire such thinking.  Sometimes “sleeping on it” really is the best idea.

Nonverbal Obama on BusinessWeek.com

My commentary on this political season for BusinessWeek.com ends with an article about the nonverbal communication in President Obama's inaugural address.  I review his use of eye contact, hand gestures, tone of voice, and facial expressions while delivering his honest, motivational, and inspirational speech today.  I welcome your thoughts both there and here.

New Leadership

Congratulations President Obama!

Now we have it. Our first official taste of the "new leadership" in the United States.

So how did he do communicatively? What’s your opinion of the inaugural address? In what ways did it sound, look, or feel like leadership?

I’ll tell you if you tell me . . .

Tony Dungy: A Quiet Leader with a Higher Purpose

Tony Dungy said this week that he was retiring as head coach of the Indianapolis Colts in the National Football League. Tony Dungy made history in 2006, as the first African American coach in the NFL to win a Superbowl. Since his Colts lost in the first round of this year’s playoffs, rumors abounded whether he was going to come back next season or retire.

People may have this stereotype of a football coach who yells, screams, throws things, is angry all the time. Dungy was the polar opposite – quiet, reserved, positive, family-focused, and faith-based. Many people said he was a silent person, but commanded respect by his mere presence.

Three things struck me about this man, three things I think leaders should think about.

First, a higher purpose. Dungy felt his life had a higher purpose than coaching football and winning championships. Dungy has been involved in prison ministries, and is a big advocate of volunteering, family-first groups, and for fathers to be involved with their children. Dungy believes his ultimate purpose in life is to be a father, husband, serve in the community, and make his country better.

Are you as a leader working towards your higher purpose? Are you as a leader prioritizing your life correctly with work, home, community, faith, etc?

Second, caring. One of my professors from graduate school e-mailed me this piece that told a story about Dungy. I encourage you to read it. In short, when coaching for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (before the Colts), his kicker, Michael Husted, was suddenly missing kicks, and losing football games when the team depended on him the most. Most coaches go through kickers all the time – if the kicker is not getting the ball through the uprights, many coaches let them go (cut them) and find another one the next day. Dungy was different – he found out his kicker was dealing with a personal issue, his mother dying of cancer. He brought Husted into his office, and said to him “You're a Buccaneer. You're part of our family. You're our kicker.” Husted actually made the game-winning kick the next game – all the pressure was gone. From the article, Husted said “What he did was relieve the pressure from me. A lot of other coaches would have just let me go. I'm forever grateful to Tony for how he handled that. It speaks a lot about the type of individual he is and how he's not going to let outside forces influence what he knows is right.”

Are you as a leader caring for each of your followers? Do you as a leader actually care how your followers are doing individually?

Finally, faith. One of Dungy’s sons committed suicide in 2005 near the end of the football season, when the Colts were trying to go undefeated. A devout Christian, Dungy handled the situation with humility, grace, and class. Watching how he and his family coped back then made me realize it takes deep, unshakeable faith, and love and support from friends and family to get through that type of situation.

In times of distress, whatever faith a leader has, faith can help a leader through. Whatever your faith, is it helping you lead?

What best sums up Dungy as a leader may be this quote from Colts’ president, Bill Polian:

"What an incredible privilege it has been to work with this extraordinary man," Polian said. "We'll miss his faith. We'll miss his optimism. We'll miss his patience. . . . What a joy it was to come to work with Tony Dungy every day."

  Wouldn’t that be a great thing for someone to say about you when you retire?

A Samurai Linebacker as a Leader

My favorite football team growing up was the Chicago Bears. They were tough, especially their linebacker, Mike Singletary. I have a clear memory of his eyes wide open before the snap, just waiting to tackle. He was intense. He had a nickname – Samurai.

After his hall-of-fame career, he became an assistant coach. He became interim head coach of the San Francisco 49ers after Mike Nolan was fired in October 2008. The 49ers were once a proud franchise that fell on hard times lately. There was a lot of losing, not many playoff games, and a lot of underachieving.

You knew what kind of coach, what kind of leader, Singletary was going to be his first game as head coach.

During halftime of his first game as head coach, he gave a “pep talk” by pulling down his pants, showing that the team was getting their you-know-what kicked.

Near the end of his first game, Singletary sent one of those high-profile, high-paid, underachievers, Vernon Davis, to the showers early after making an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Singletary said that Davis would better serve his team by taking a shower and coming back out to watch the team play than going back out on the field.

The post-game interview sounded like Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction (The Dan Patrick Radio Show did a great parody of this, it was hard to tell the difference). In the post-game interview, he said that he was not going to tolerate players who thought it was all about them when in reality, it should be all about the team. He also said “We can not make decisions that cost the team.” Singletary even said that he would rather play with 10 players (and be one player short), than play with 11 when that 11th player is not sold on being part of the team.

“It is more about them than it is about the team…cannot play with them, cannot win with them, cannot coach with them, can’t do it. I want winners. I want people that want to win.”

He said the team will change because the team wants to change and wants to be champions. He said the mindset needed to change, and he wanted to know who really wants to win. Many players had been there so long under unsuccessful times, the players become part of the problem rather than the solution. He wants players that are solution oriented.

What can leaders learn from this? First, I would not recommend pulling your pants down. But, Singletary’s “pep talk” though unconventional, got his point across. Communication is important. Second, it is very hard to change a culture of losing. The same goes for sports teams as much as it does organizations. When there is a culture of underachieving, of losing, or apathy, a leader who comes in sometimes needs to be forceful, set a tone, be strict, be results-oriented, and maybe “call people out” or “cut the fat” for the betterment of the organization in the future. Those that aren’t part of the solution are part of the problem. Third, to go from a culture of losing to a culture of winning, buy in from everyone is needed. Those who don’t believe in the vision or direction the team is going, don’t buy into the vision or direction, or are not sold on the vision or direction, are just not going to be useful as the team goes into a different direction. A leader must be visionary, and get buy-in from followers.

Singletary is now the permanent head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, after winning 4 of the last 5 games. In the locker room after the final game of the season, the announcement was made in front of all his players that this December would be the last December that the 49ers were going to have their last game in December – in other words, the Samurai linebacker who is now head football coach, was going to lead the team to a winning record and playoff games in January next year. Through communication, vision, and selling people on a direction, leaders can start to turn a culture of losing into a culture of winning and success.

What's Drawing Got To Do With It?

We used to have a course at CCL called "Leading Creatively," for which I was a lead instructor. It was a course that used art as a metaphor for leadership. It wasn’t easy. It was a difficult five-day journey, and its graduates were immensely grateful, tremendously loyal. They learned a huge amount about themselves, about others, and about leadership. We haven’t offered it as an open enrollment program for several years, although is it still sometimes requested as a custom program. I still think nostalgically about it from time to time because it was one of the most powerful programs I have ever had the privilege to lead, even though it was a dragon to market. We just couldn’t talk people into it ahead of time.  I can’t tell you about the entire course in one little blog, but I can introduce you into one small part—the art of drawing.

One of my opportunities as a trainer was to lead our participants, over the course of several days, to the place where they finally drew their own beautiful hands. The results were without exception astonishing. Breathtaking. Leaders who accomplished this after thinking for three days that they could not were thunderstruck at the results. We used Dr. Betty Edwards’ technology and gave out copies of her flagship text, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The reason we used it was not only for its successful drawing instruction but also because it was connected with Dr. Edwards’ extensive research into how the brain works at Cal State Long Beach.

   

Dr. Edwards was involved in split-brain research from an early day. She had a vivid understanding about the two different ways in which the brain thinks, and developed a brilliant vision about how to integrate both ways into whole-brain thinking, actually making people smarter by using the “two sides” of their brains together. Most of us use our so-called left brains very effectively. (Linear, rational, verbal, logical, symbolic, and so on.) It’s our right side of the brain that needs a bit of work. (Aesthetic, emotional, musical, imaginative, visual, and so on.) And then some work on integrating the two. The very best in science, art, business and leadership always integrates the two.

Everything we do at CCL has to do with leadership. Always. Even if it also has to do with creativity, or with how the brain works, or with making people smarter. So how does drawing relate to leadership?

Making a drawing is very like solving a difficult problem. The best way to start is to examine the problem very closely, like a serious detective solving a tough cold case. Not looking for short cuts that will only lead one down the path of what’s already been seen, but down the more difficult path of what’s been missed. Draw what you actually see before you, not what you think you see, we said emphatically over and over. Our expectations can so mislead us, not only in drawing, but also in problem-solving and certainly in leadership—especially when they mislead us into missing what is actually there. The results in drawing can be disappointing or amusing. The results in leadership can be disastrous.

The technology of excellent drawing requires us to slow down so we can see. Once we have learned to do this, paradoxically, we can learn to do it quickly. As leaders, being able to slow ourselves down quickly keeps us from going off half-cocked, half-ready, half-aimed. It’s too soon to fire before we can actually see what’s before us. Police officers have to slow themselves down quickly in simulated shooting tests so they don’t shoot the little girl with the puppy. The same on the street, with higher stakes. In drawing, the stakes are low. We practice with a sketchbook instead of a pistol or a nuclear weapon.

When we draw, we learn to look at the boundaries. What part of this is my hand and what part of it is a shadow? Sometimes we can see more effectively if we change the light, or look at the empty spaces. Drawing forces us too look at the edges of the “problem,” because we are drawing with a line. There are no “lines,” in nature, just as nature does not always create actual “boundaries” between countries. They are artificial boundaries, just like pencil lines. Knowing the difference between what’s “real” and what’s contrived can make the difference between strong and weak leadership. As leaders we have to learn not to be deceived by our own press, or any other contrivance of our own leadership. We have to know what part of the problem is real.

As drawing artists, we also have to look at the whole picture, not just the one line we are drawing. We have to check the fit of the line with the other lines that are already there. We have to look at the gestalt. Check the entire picture and rely on our sharpened intuition to tell us if it looks right. In leadership, we must be aware of the whole system. Those reporting to us rely on us to be aware of the things that they cannot see. That’s why we’re the leader, after all. We have that vision. We have that insight.

In drawing, as in leadership, we have to develop our ability to see things accurately and represent them effectively. We have to learn to not be deceived by our own expectations and our hopes and fears. We have to learn to put everything into perspective, including our own leadership.

Happy New Year!

A year that takes you beyond the boundaries of current challenges to a place transformed by new ideas, new partnerships, new hopes and new dreams—for yourself, your organisation and our world. Americas*Asia-Pacific*Europe, Middle East, Africa