Yesterday I shared emails from a reader who, at the end of the day, realized that he was over-reacting, his boss was insanely busy and nothing was wrong.
Today I want to share another story with you, only this one happened shortly after I entered the workforce.
There were seven of us in the office, everyone pulled their weight and we were a very congenial group often going out together for lunch or a drink after work.
One day “Jenny” didn’t come in and the next day she was late. Over the next few months she became cranky and very touchy. Her work slipped and the rest of us found ourselves picking up the slack. People started grumbling and, as they always do, the grumbles got back to our boss.
Fortunately, we had a very smart, proactive boss. He called a brief meeting on a morning that Jenny was absent and explained to us that her mother had been diagnosed with cancer; she was getting treatment, but in the meantime Jenny had to fill in for her.
We all knew that Jen had two younger sisters and that her dad had been out of the picture for years, so suddenly the dark circles, grouchiness, and missed days all started making sense. He told us that Jenny hadn’t said anything because she wasn’t looking for pity and the best thing we could do was to wait until she told us herself. In the meantime, he would appreciate it if we would desist from the grumbling and not-so-subtle comments.
That episode taught me a great lesson.
From then on, when someone didn’t do as expected or let me down in some way, my memory would flash to Jenny and I would take a deep breath and stomp on my reaction, because I didn’t know what was going on in their world.
I’d love to say that I always did this, but that would be a lie. But the older I got the more successful I was and I never regretted it. If the behavior continued I look for reasons and more often than not I found them.
Sure, there were times nothing was wrong and the person was just taking advantage of me and others, but more often they were under the gun, whether a derringer or a bazooka, and I was glad I didn’t make it worse.
So the next time someone lets you down, think about Jenny and cut them some slack; you’ll be glad you did.
When you’re the leader, the person out front, you need to motivate and to achieve a commitment from your people you need more than a vision—your people need to know that they matter and that you believe in them. And they need to know before the fact—you can’t wait until they prove themselves by their actions. You need to trust them before they will trust you; the ball always starts in your court.
The US Navel Academy prides itself on teaching leadership, but the students you’ll see in this video haven’t realized yet that what they learn in class needs to permeate their MAP, their entire life and every thing they do to be truly authentic.
Watch the video and think about what kind of reception Kings Firecracker should have received based on the first paragraph.
There is much talk about building winning teams and how to lead them and much of that centers on “influence” and “visions.”
The ledgendary Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, an expert on winning teams, provided a far simpler approach that you can be implement in a matter of seconds.
The only caveat is that once started it must be followed exactly and whole-heartedly.
“If anything goes bad, I did it.
If anything goes semi-good, we did it.
If anything goes really good, then you did it.
That’s all it takes to get people to win football games for you.”
If more “leaders” followed this path we wouldn’t be where we are today.
Do you have the courage to implement Bryant’s approach?
Southwest Airlines, like Zappos, has a corporate culture that is head and shoulders above most and is the envy of their competitors.
Southwest’s culture is so important that the company walked away from a deal to buy Frontier Air Lines.
It is that culture has helped Southwest weather the current financial storm and it zealously guards that culture because it knows it is the true foundation of its strength..
As Gary C. Kelly, Chairman, President and CEO, said in the during the Q2 Earnings Call,
“Excluding special items, we reported a second quarter profit of $59 million and that was $0.08 a share. And I would say given the deep recession that that is a very solid performance and, of course, I’m very proud of our people on every front. We continue to manage through the economic crisis with a lot of change and all the while our folks are delivering a very high-quality operation and outstanding customer service, so I’m very, very proud of them.”
The call was primarily with analysts, although many investors probably joined it, and the introduction included the following statement,
“This call will also include references to non-GAAP results; therefore, please see our earnings press release in the Investor Relations section of our website at Southwest.com for further information regarding our forward-looking statements and for a reconciliation of our non-GAAP results to our GAAP results.”
So if you’re Southwest and known for a fun culture, how do you incorporate that into something as eye-glazing as explaining GAAP, AKA Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, at your annual meeting?
Easily. You just ask David Holmes, known as the Rapping Flight Attendant, to explain it.
Leadership, people either covet it, are tired of hearing about it, ignore it or some, like me, see it as an abdication of personal responsibility (let the leader decide).
By definition, if you are a leader you must have followers, and Dan McCarthy over at Great Leadership wrote a terrific post listing 10 actions required to be a great follower.
I hate to disagree with Dan, but he’s wrong saying they are for followers when, in fact, the 10 actions he listed are just as important for the designated leaders—or for any human interfacing with others.
But nobody would be interested in 10 Ways To Be a Great Employee/Boss/Teacher/Student/Parent/Kid/Etc./Etc.; plus it would be lousy SEO and it probably wouldn’t sink in.
Now, Dan is a terrific guy and I have enormous respect for him, but I also couldn’t resist having a little fun by using his post to illustrate my point, which is this.
Skill and action lists aren’t just for the group described as the target audience. Yes, they may need to be tweaked a bit to fit your own particular situation, but they can be applied to anyone.
Maybe they should all be titled along the lines of ‘<whatever> To Be A Great Mensch’, but that wouldn’t fly with Google.
The silly blow-up over President Obama’s back-to-school speech drove home once again how I am that won’t be around when the current crop of kids take the reins of political, social and business so-called leadership roles.
I am continually amazed and revolted as I watch so-called conservatives of all stripes work to be sure their children are exposed to nothing that conflicts with whatever ideology they are steeping them in.
I say ‘conservatives’ because so-called liberals seem more flexible within their stands. (Please note that I said ‘flexible, not changeable.)
What exactly was in this speech, that some kids weren’t allowed to hear? Here are some excerpts that I found especially uplifting to hear—and if you think I cherry-picked the contents you can read it in its entirety and decide for yourself.
But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, the best schools in the world — and none of it will make a difference, none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities, unless you show up to those schools, unless you pay attention to those teachers, unless you listen to your parents and grandparents and other adults and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. That’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education.
You cannot drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to train for it and work for it and learn for it.
What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. The future of America depends on you. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents and your skills and your intellect so you can help us old folks solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that — if you quit on school — you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life — what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home — none of that is an excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. There is no excuse for not trying.
[After describing specific kids’ situations] But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their lives, for their education, and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.
I know that sometimes you get that sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star. Chances are you’re not going to be any of those things. The truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject that you study. You won’t click with every teacher that you have. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right at this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength because it shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and that then allows you to learn something new.
So today, I want to ask all of you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a President who comes here in 20 or 50 or 100 years say about what all of you did for this country?
Why? Because he encouraged them to take responsibility for themselves? Because he said that our country’s future depends on them? Because he was raised by a single mom? Because he told them that success was a function of very hard work?
Or is it the closed-minded attitude of the ideologue represented by 15-year-old Andrew Quick, near Orlando, Fla., who said “he considered the speech to be a potentially disruptive interruption of his school day, so decided not to watch it. “I’m a Republican,” he said, “and I really don’t like Obama all that much.”
I translate that to mean ‘I don’t listen to anyone who doesn’t think as I think and agree with me’, an attitude that doesn’t bode well for our country’s future.
Exactly what in this speech was of such concern to the conservative agenda that their kids should not hear it?
Perhaps the problem is the message that, in the end, they are each responsible for what they become—not their parents or teachers or politicians and certainly not God—just them.
That they will be what they choose to be and whether that choice is active or passive; it’s their choice as thinking individuals—assuming they choose to think and not just blindly follow a given ideology.
“The US has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space. (The Self Storage Association notes that, with more than seven square feet for every man, woman and child, it’s now “physically possible that every American could stand — all at the same time — under the total canopy of self-storage roofing. …one out of every 10 households in the country rents a unit…”
According to Derek Naylor, president of the consultant group Storage Marketing Solutions, “Human laziness has always been a big friend of self-storage operators, because once they’re in, nobody likes to spend all day moving their stuff out of storage. As long as they can afford it, and feel psychologically that they can afford it, they’ll leave that stuff in there forever.”
I’ve said for years that people aren’t water faucets, able to turn off emotions and thoughts or change their MAP just because they change environments from home to work or vice versa.
Reading the article made me realize a hidden reason that makes changing culture so difficult.
It’s not just that the parts of the culture changes, but that the employees won’t let go of the parts that are changing or being replaced; instead they store them away to sort later.
But later never comes, so, like the stuff in the storage units, it sits in the back of their minds running up a bill that is paid in energy, focus and productivity.
As a result of the economy, many of the thousands of the units that were in use for no other reason than laziness are being cleared out, or at least downsized, and the stuff gotten rid of.
Perhaps this is a good time to work with your employees to clean out their mental storage places; to purge the cultural residue and clutter that fills them up.
So clear out the rubbish, open the windows and let the fresh air flow through reenergizing everyone.
I don’t understand the current obsession with other people’s lives, in fact, I find it very weird.
Whether it is a public figure or not, the desire (need?) to know every little detail, what they are doing every minute of their lives, the products they use, their ups and downs to be almost obsessional.
This kind of interest used to be reserved for the intimacy of real friendship or close family relations—and even then there were boundaries—but now anyone is fair game.
Apparently I’m not as out of it as I thought; many people are shutting down their Facebook pages for a variety of reasons, not the least of which are the effects they notice on their own MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).
Others are leaving because they don’t like the commercialization, which I find amusing. Any mass human congregating, past, present or future, will attract those who want to sell their product. Why anyone would think it would be different because the location is in the cyber-world is beyond me.
Other than malicious intent, two things happen on social media.
Not thinking, which causes people to post stuff to venues in which it doesn’t belong and giving access to “friends”—who may not be next week.
Not focusing, which leads to pilot error though the ease and simplicity of clicking the wrong button.
Consider this post, sent to me by a friend, as a great example of the dangers of multitasking while updating Facebook.
Can you imagine the reaction of hiring managers, potential mates or future kids? Even if it had been posted privately there is nothing to stop a “friend” who is angry from reposting it.
Once it’s out there it’s out there forever—definitely the wrong kind of immortality.
I’ve said many times, both here and at MAPping Company Success that social media never dies and people need to think about that.
Are you aware of the new teaching approach in middle school English classes that gives kids a say in which books they read?
The approach is known as “reading workshop” and “…students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading…”
I sent the article to my niece, who alternates between teaching and being a school librarian. She started as a teacher, was driven out of it by internal politics and unreasonable parents, got a Master of Library Science and spent a few years as school librarian and is now back to teaching.
She wrote back, “This is how I teach! Cool! Thanks for sending it. It is controversial and some English teachers think I’m nuts but I love it!”
My niece, along with many others, is the type of teachers we need more of—they love reading and learning and work to pass that love on.
But there is a lot of opposition to moving away from the way reading has been taught.
“In the method familiar to generations of students, an entire class reads a novel — often a classic — together to draw out the themes and study literary craft. That tradition, proponents say, builds a shared literary culture among students, exposes all readers to works of quality and complexity and is the best way to prepare students for standardized tests.”
I bolded the last five words because they are the crux of the problem.
Is the purpose of school to prepare for standardized tests or to teach kids to think?
Are communities stronger and the workforce more cohesive because the people all read To Kill A Mockingbird in eighth grade? And what of those educated elsewhere?
What serves the future better, a love of learning and reading or the skill to ace a standardized test?
Every manager loves the folks who come to work champing at the bit, raring to go and bust their butt all day long. They love to talk about the high level of engagement their team has and brag about their productivity and innovative ideas.
If you want a group like this then make no mistake, It’s your responsibility to engender that attitude, i.e., engage them.
It’s not going to happen by accident and you can’t order your people be engaged.
Engagement happens because you, and hopefully your company are engaging.
This isn’t doubletalk or smoke, think about it. Think about what engages you.
The guideline is the same thread that has run through every major philosophy and religion for thousands of years—treat your people s you want to be treated—whether your boss treats you that way or not.
Authenticity is the current buzz word, but it translates simply to be honest, open and do what you say; never fudge, let alone lie, intentionally or otherwise.
There are absolutely no circumstances that warrant or excuse the messenger being killed. None. Because if you do, there’s no going back—ever.
If your company doesn’t have an engaging culture then you must be an umbrella for your people, because you can create one below you, even if you can’t change it above.
While managers may not be able to control overall corporate culture there are many things they can do within their own group’s culture to foster engagement.
The number one approach is to show your appreciation of your people. Study after study confirms employees’ desire to feel valued; to make a difference and be credited for it. But how, with budgets cut below bone level?
Here are four simple actions that you can implement at no financial cost and that don’t require approval from anyone.
Ask everyone for input, ideas, suggestions and opinions—not just your so-called stars.
Listen and really hear what is said, discuss it, think about it.
Use what you get as often as possible, whether in whole or in part, or as the springboard that leads to something totally different.
Credit the source(s), both up and down, publicly and privately, thank them, compliment them, congratulate them.
If you’re sincere, you can’t lay it on too thick; if you’re faking it, they’ll know.
And if you’re stupid enough to steal the credit for yourself in the mistaken name of job security you’ll have the fun of explaining to your boss the plummeting productivity and soaring turnover that accompanies the thefts.
Think ALUC; pin a note on your wall that says ALUC.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Yesterday I shared emails from a reader who, at the end of the day, realized that he was over-reacting, his boss was insanely busy and nothing was wrong.
By definition, if you are a leader you must have followers, and Dan McCarthy over at Great Leadership wrote a terrific post listing 
I am continually amazed and revolted as I watch so-called conservatives of all stripes work to be sure their children are exposed to nothing that conflicts with whatever ideology they are steeping them in.
The approach is known as “reading workshop” and “…students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading…”
If you want a group like this then make no mistake, It’s your responsibility to engender that attitude, i.e., engage them.
