Yesterday, while Scott Allen and I were talking, he said, “”Bad leaders don’t always produce bad results” — ain’t that the truth! Actually, I’ve worked for a lot of “98% great” leaders really fantastic in a lot of areas, but had one blind spot — one Achilles heel — that got them and in every case, I could tell exactly what it was. In fact, in every case, I told them exactly what it was, but they still didn’t listen.

I’m not a yes-man, and they’d tell me that they appreciated that about me and then ignore my advice.”

Most of us appreciate the kind of sincere information that Scott offered, but when it comes to the advice, we shy from it, mainly because we believe that no external advice on how to plug a hole is as valuable as what we grow organically.

What we tend to ignore is that if we could grow that particular plug organically we probably wouldn’t have a hole there in the first place.

Of course, as I said to Scott, you also have the leaders who are 98% bad, but who are saved by the 2% of luck, brilliance, or blindness in the peanut gallery.

And of those three saving graces, two are cosmic jokes and responsibility for the third rests squarely on the followers.

************************

Attention any entrepreneurs reading this. Be sure to check out my channel’s cool contest just for you, details at TaxGirl.

Michael Hyatt wrote a post on which is more important, influence or control when leading. It’s actually pretty obvious, since no one person truly controls another, except through threats, which eventually lose their power.

He says, “However, while you can’t control anyone (except perhaps yourself), you can influence nearly everyone.”

Unfortunately, that’s a very true statement.

I say unfortunately because I don’t believe that the ability to lead/influence is linked to any particular ethical stance.

He continues, “By this definition, Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King were great leaders. They had control of virtually no one, yet their influence changed the course of history.”

The same can be said for Genghis Kahn and Hitler, it was their ability to influence and draw people to their views that underlay all they did.

A few days ago I wrote that while ethical stances seem the same, the definitions change with the times—“Universally, murder has always been considered bad, but what constitutes murder is ever changing.”

You need to recognize that

• leaders are not by definition “good;”
• they aren’t always positive role models;
• one person’s “good” leader is another person’s demon; and that
• there are always at least two sides to any subject or person.

Knowing this, it’s up to you to choose the one that “fits” you best.

Smells are said to be a major source of memories and anchor them in our mind; that’s what writing does for me, it reminds me of things that have happened.

My earlier post reminded me of an uncomfortable time I had with a brilliant manager, uncomfortable because I had to help her see the unconscious bigotry in her own and her team’s actions—one of the most diverse in the company.

Huh? How could someone who had recruited, hired, built, and retained a multi-ethnic group composed of both gay and straight, and including a variety of religions, be a bigot? How could that diverse a team be bigoted? And how in the world would it be noticeable to an outsider (me)?

It’s simple, and can be summed up in the current lexicon as, “It’s the jokes, stupid.”

I don’t mean telling overtly bigoted <fill in the subject> jokes, I mean sharing those ubiquitous Internet jokes and cartoons about Polish/Irish/Black/Southern/blonde/fat/old/young/etc.

Sure, some are funny, and I’ve passed along my share, but as intolerance has grown greater in recent years, I find myself deleting more and more of them. Not because I’m some kind of saint, but rather because I change the reference to one that applies to me or a good friend and then see if it’s still funny. If it is, I send it on, if not, I delete it.

Many years ago, I knew a woman who was always telling me religious jokes (yes, they were funny). We laughed a lot at them, so one day when she was over I played The Vatican Rag from my favorite Tom Lehrer album, That Was The Week That Was.

She went up like a Roman candle, we’re talking totally ballistic, screaming about sacrilege and words of the devil, etc. Now, this was someone who never went to church or mentioned being Catholic in the six or so years that I knew her and told jokes involving, as far as I remembered, every religion.

Obviously, I remembered incorrectly.

And that’s when it hit me, an unconscious bigot is someone willing to joke about “them,” but can’t take a joke about “us.”

I’m sure many of you saw the story abut the escalating talent war between Vmware and Google,“Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research, estimated that Palo Alto, California-based VMware is paying $130,000 to $160,000, plus stock options –compensation that only Google can match, he said.

The programmers I know say that most offers are still tied closely to industry averages and that no one “wants to see the craziness of the ’90’s again”—except, of course, the programmers who are getting those salaries and the ones who feel they should be.

But many managers will still blow their in-house salary curves and start throwing in sign-on bonuses and other perks when chasing talent, totally ignoring the proven adage that “people who join you just for money and stock, will leave you for more money and stock.”

When the talent market gets tight is the time to remember that the best performers didn’t necessarily

• have the best grades;
• attend a prestigious school;
• work for your competitor or
• even in your industry;
• have a full head of hair that has no gray; or
• fits easily into your comfort zone.

This is the time when your hiring skill really matters; when your ability to recognize jewels where others see only lumps of coal.

Real loyalty can’t be bought with either money or stock options, it’s earned through your actions, your willingness to take a chance, to provide the place where the coal has the opportunity to become a diamond.

Back when I was accumulating, developing and refining what eventually became MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy)TM I realized that it’s truly the one thing that’s totally within your control, even beyond your thoughts and actions, because they are predicated on it.In my reading and in working with hundreds of people, I’ve found scores of stories of people who changed their life by changing their MAP, some through example and others through conscious choice, but change it they did.

To change any part of your MAP you need to

1. really want it, changing MAP isn’t a casual decision or one you make for the sake of others;
2. develop a strong, objective awareness that constantly monitors whatever you are working to change;
3. progress through each of the four levels of competence:

1. unconscious incompetence,
2. conscious incompetence,
3. conscious competence, and
4. unconscious competence.

Just by bringing an item to the second level you’ll notice a giant difference, once you recognize incompetent behavior, whether thought, word, or deed, you’ll be in a position to correct it-unless you allow your ego to get in the way.

And don’t worry about achieving number four, by the time you’re there you won’t be thinking about it—that’s why it’s unconscious.

Most of all, don’t worry about trying and failing. My own definition of “failure” is death. I’ve always believed that as long as I could get up (no matter how slowly) and try again that I hadn’t failed I’d just postponed success.

More good commentary from decency guru Steve Harrison in a Knowledge@Wharton article, and I definitely agree with the Maya Angelou quote, “People will forget what you said, they will even forget what you did, but they will never forget what you made them feel.”It’s especially true when you consider the “aftertaste” of how you felt. The aftertaste is how you feel several days/weeks/months later after rethinking/reliving what was said and done-that is truly what you never forget.

Also in the article is information from public speaking coach Richard Greene. It’s good information on simple things you can do to speak more effectively, particularly the idea to focus on them, them, them, instead of you, you, you.

However, I do have a certain amount of disappointment that all the examples are about positive people, leading one to believe that only those who have positive goals use these speaking skills effectively.

Mr. Green says, when speaking of Martin Luther King, “He had this ability to reach inside his heart and soul and just bring out what was there. What he cared about at every moment was just getting his message across. He wasn’t worrying about how he looked.”

I totally agree, but that statement could also be applied to Hitler.

It is a wise follower who expends energy focusing on the content and avoids being caught up by the oratory and/or charisma.

As you all know, I assumed the bloggership at Leadership Turn on August 16 and, to be honest, I’m still getting organized (a task that will likely continue through the rest of the year), digging though a lot of emails, etc., which, by the way, is no excuse.On August 22, Rich McIver of Inside CRM sent a great list they had compiled called The Manager’s Cheat Sheet: 101 Common-Sense Rules for Leaders that was buried until today, when I spent a lot of time digging out (and still not done <sigh>).

It’s a great list, but I did spot one glaring error—the title indicates that it’s for managers, whereas I think the scope is much larger.

You say, “Management is all about connecting with the people on your team,” but that’s actually a great description of life.

With slight language changes the items on the list apply equally well to workers, parents, kids, basically every person who wants some guidance getting on/getting along in this world.

What do you think, Rick? I’d love to see our readers tweak it to apply to other parts of their lives.

An interesting pair of articles came my way this weekend. The first, was in Canada’s Vancouver Sun regarding the exiting of women from law firms.“Of 1,400 Canadian lawyers surveyed, 84 per cent of women and 66 per cent of men rated “an environment supportive of my family and personal commitments” as an important factor in choosing to work at another firm. Money and career advancement were well down the list. And nearly a third of the women and half the men said they expected to leave their current employer within five years.

Work-life balance may have become something of a cliche but the evidence is incontrovertible: Professionals — yes, even lawyers — want a life as well as a career.”

Back to corporate culture, where much of the management talk doesn’t match individual managers’ walk. If you’re struggling with the similar turnover, then the key words you should focus on aren’t what people want, but what it costs per hire to ignore it.

“Focus isn’t the problem. Every organization, public and private, should keep an eye on the bottom line. The question is whether a model that incurs a dropout rate of experienced, talented women that’s twice the rate of men makes any business sense. One estimate put the cost of an associate’s departure — taking into account recruitment, training and severance — at $315,000.”

Yours may not be that high, but considering the same items, you can rough your cost by figuring one to three times the annual salary of the position, whether it’s a receptionist or CEO.

And please don’t be tempted to snicker thinking it’s a Canadian problem, it’s a global problem, and it’s going to get worse.

The second article, in Boston.com, talks about the lengths some companies are going to to recruit moms—those women who took time out to have kids and the potential for flexibility that should be built into future careers.

“In just the past few years, spurred largely by a tight market for white-collar labor, firms such as the investment banks Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs have launched targeted recruiting programs. A new class of headhunters and human resources consultants has emerged to help smaller companies do the same. Other companies, including the accounting firm Ernst and Young and management consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton…. Elite business schools like Dartmouth’s Tuck School and the Harvard Business School have programs similar to Wharton’s, and the how-tos of finding and hiring women coming off a career break – women who are “onramping,” in the current human-resources parlance – are hot topics in business school classrooms.”

“And it shouldn’t just be women of child-bearing age who take advantage of them, according to many of the executives and academics working on these programs. The broader goal, they say, is for careers with periodic off- and onramps to become a mainstream option for men and women.”

“We’re starting to look at flexibility over the course of a career rather than just in the course of a year or week,” says Carolyn Buck Luce, a global managing partner at Ernst and Young and chair of the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force. “It’s just the beginning.”

It may be just beginning, but the shortage of people at all levels and in all fields, not just professionals, is now, so for the smartest CEOs, the future culture is now, too.