I was driving in to work one morning in a very dense fog. There were a handful of cars heading down a fast stretch of road. The speed limit said 55, but it would have been dangerous to do anything over 25. It was tough to see more than 10 feet.

I tried the same thing I always do in heavy fog – the high beams. Yes I know it makes it worse, but yet I still try it every time. It’s like watching a recorded football game expecting a different score at the end.

Back to the low beams.

I was getting annoyed with drivers riding my bumper, obviously thinking I was going too slow. Then I noticed a pattern develop. These cars would tailgate for a bit, pass me, and then slow down to the same speed we were originally going. I would appreciate this if we were on bikes – it’s called drafting. I doubt that was their intent.

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It was Sunday morning at North Point Community Church. Andy Stanley had just finished his sermon and was about to pray when a voice from the back took center stage.
For about 45 seconds an unknown man had the opportunity to reach thousands of people and enlighten people on why Andy was not preaching the way God intended.

If you were Andy, how would you have responded?

The PR handbook teaches us to ignore the distraction and move on. No sense in giving credibility to the event by acknowledging it happened. Or would you simply look to the audience and say, “My apologies for the distraction?” Maybe just look up and shrug your shoulders and a bit of a perplexed look? How about a quick heckler comeback?

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Would 75% of the people in the world writing vision and mission statements please stop.

Seriously. Just stop now. They are bad and doing more harm than good.

If you are president of a company and want to know if yours is worth a sparrow’s fart, just ask your employees. Scared to do that? Try the Mission Generator website and see if it sounds anything like yours.

It shouldn’t.

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My mom is an amazing woman. Actually, she’s not my mom, she’s Beth’s mom. I just refuse to add the “in-law” tag as she defies all the imagery of a typical in-law.

This week Mom reminded me of how important it is to show your homework.

Mom and her family business bank at one of the mega corporations here in Atlanta. She loves this place. She loves the people, the service, and the way they make her feel special when she walks in the door. Not your typical mega-bank.

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We have a great expression in the South that you never want to receive from a friend – “Bless your heart.” It’s somewhere between “he just doesn’t know any better” to “that boy is as dumb as a ‘possum.”

I hear myself saying this a lot when new managers enter the ranks. I definitely heard it a lot when I started. Usually it is because they believe one thing to be true about how to lead and you know that in time they will discover otherwise.

The one that I wish I could get others to appreciate is to not judge their success by the size of their team. So many managers think that they are more important if their team is bigger. I once thought that as well. (more…)

 

Why is it we often think we have better answers than those that know more about a situation? I ask this of myself often and never get a satisfactory answer. This came to a head this week with the recent events in the execution of Troy Davis.

What makes us believe that we are smarter than a jury of 12, countless appellate court judges and an investigative panel? Why is it that we think we know more than the commanding military generals in Iraq? Considering that the President of the US has far more confidential information about a situation why do we still think we have a better answer? Even as a teenager your mom was always wrong despite her years of experience.

Why is that? (more…)

 

Pet sitting for friends is like being a grandparent – spoil them rotten and then send them home to be disciplined by their owners. We get great joy out of being the spoiler with Cassie, my brother-in-law Brian’s beautiful dog.

Rescued later in life, Cassie was clearly abused in her younger years. She is extremely skittish whenever someone moves near her, having her head down in fear for any human contact other than Brian.

Cassie has no reason to behave like this any longer. Brian is a wonderful, loving caretaker and we are equally loving with her every time she comes over. Yet Cassie is still scared after many, many years of interaction with us.

Cassie is afraid because she knows what a human is capable of doing. She has experienced something that she cannot forget – something stuck. It may have been a series of events or one really bad moment – we don’t know. (more…)

 

Why is it we seem to allow behavior in executives that we won’t tolerate in first level managers?

I’m not saying that all executives behave poorly; I think the vast majority are excellent role models. But why then do I see the screamers, the plotters, the hard-asses, the dictators, the debasers and the inherent desire to weaken others, in much larger proportion at the higher levels of management than the lower levels? It reminded me of why I stopped playing competitive tennis many years ago.
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I spent time this week with my boss and peers reviewing a difficult situation that we had to face. I am betting that you have had a similar circumstance – one where many people over a long period of time have made many mistakes that now culminate into one much more difficult problem. You really can’t point at one person and say this is why we are here today.

At the end of the conversation my boss looked at us and asked

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I was thinking back to a point 15 years ago when my kids were 2 and 3 years old. I thnk the first word they learned was “mine.”

That stuck-in-my-head memory came as a result of listening to two managers talk about moving an employee from one group to the other. I was fully expecting to hear “I’ll let him join your group if you give me a bushel of corn and a couple of otter skins.”

What is it about being a manager that makes many of us so territorial and possessive? It’s almost as if deep down we feel we own our employees, as if our value and importance rises by the number of people we manage. (more…)

 

If you are in your forties or later you probably remember that little 3 minute cartoon from Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday mornings. Three indeed is a magic number.

Did you know that the triangle is the only shape that cannot be deformed without changing the length of one of its sides? This is why the triangle is the basic element of structures called trusses used in bridge design as well as construction of house roofs. If you need strength, three is your number.

The human brain tends to remember things more effectively in groups of three as well. Writers learned this long ago and developed a word for it – the tricolon.

“Vini Vidi, Vici” – Julius Caesar

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people.” – Abraham Lincoln

Even famous quotes like Churchill’s “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” are pared down and remembered as blood, sweat and tears.

Photographers don’t use the Rule of Fourths, you never hear Old Fashioned Love Songs come down in four part harmony and Christians don’t worship the Holy Quad.

Three is a big deal.
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I was a huge fan of Whose Line Is It Anyway, the British and later US improv comedy show. Those guys and gals were amazing. Having watched a lot of bad improv I can appreciate how difficult it must be to pull this off successfully so I wanted to learn the secrets of the trade.

Using the search phrase “improv comedy rules” I found that nearly all of the sites list the number one rule as “Do Not Block”. Blocking is when one actor sets up a line like “my you are a fine looking rooster” and the other doesn’t like the setup so replies with “I’m not a rooster, I’m a penguin” because he knows that penguins are funnier. This is never funny, it insults the previous comedian, and actually makes the newly self-titled penguin look weak – he wasn’t up to the task given to him.

It dawned on me that I see the same roosters and penguins conversation daily at work; (more…)

 

I never really understood the obligatory post-game handshake between two football teams. Here are two teams that just finished the last three hours beating the snot out of each other and now they are expected to raise a smile and say “nice game”. While they will eventually get to that point, I am pretty sure that they don’t feel it at that moment.

Don’t get me wrong, I totally believe in sportsmanship and dealing graciously with winning and losing. I just don’t know how one can expect such a dramatic change in two minutes.

That’s because you can’t – and it is no different in the business world or any other part of life. We all have what a friend of mine calls “take-up time” If you want to lead others with a new idea you have to really understand this simple piece of human psychology. (more…)

 

If you can’t help people grow you aren’t likely going to be worth much as a leader.

Unfortunately it is one of the areas that I see managers most often fail. Growth is one of the critical components that separates the two.

Developing people is hard; it often involves taking someone from a place of comfort to a place that is very unfamiliar. It’s like trying to convince someone reading their favorite book in a big comfy chair next to the roaring fireplace that they need to put on a blindfold and go for a car ride in the dead of winter. Why would anyone want to do that?

There are two parts to helping someone grow. First you have to understand the natural loss they will feel leaving the comfort of their chair. Second, you have to convince them that where they are going is of value to them.

One of the reasons people have a hard time moving from one stage to another is that we all have a built in psychological equation that values loss twice as much as gain – this is called loss aversion. In a well known study by Amos Tversky it was shown that people feel twice as much unhappiness from losing $100 as they do joy from winning that same $100. (more…)

 

I love those stirring moments in a movie when all appears lost and the soon to be hero of the movie fights with everything they have to not give up. It’s those feel good moments that reach deep inside and tug at our emotions so powerfully that we continue to dole out $11 a person to watch it play out time and again.

But is “never say it’s over” always the best philosophy? How do you know?

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There are a lot of good reasons why people can suck at their jobs. One of the biggest may be you, their manager. Yet it is very possible that the entire rest of your team may have had a fantastic year for the very same reason – you, their manager.

So is the problem you or your poor performing employee? Yes and Yes or possibly No and No or maybe Neither. Some situations may require you to back away from assigning blame and instead look at the environment.

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Did you know that Pittsburgh Penguins hockey star Sidney Crosby is one of the few players in the league that increases the average goals per game for those on his line no matter what line he plays with? Did you also know that the average goals per game of players on his former line decrease when he moves to another?

Lest you think he is just a great assists guy keep in mind that he currently leads the NHL in goals.

Simply put, Sidney makes those around him better. It’s a real life example of the old equation 1+1=3.
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Did you ever consider that the pastor of a church could be one of the least influential people in the church? I say that after 14 years of being influenced by one of the most inspiring pastors in America, Andy Stanley.

The difficulty is that Andy is part of the church staff. Every staff member of a church has a vested interest in having others become part of their community much like every employee of a company has a vested interest in selling what they produce.
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How good are you at your profession? Do you think you are the best person on your team? Top 10%? Above average?

If your team were large enough I believe that most of you could find someone else that was at least as good as you. I would also put money on it that the majority of you believe you are in the top 10% of that same group. From a leadership perspective this is important to understand.

A few interesting tidbits:

• In 1981 University of Sweden researcher Ola Svenson did a study of US drivers to find out how they viewed their driving skills. A surprising 93% of the participants thought they were “above average” drivers.
• In a Wall Street Journal poll earlier this year, 79% of those polled disapproved of the job Congress was doing and thought we should “throw the bums out.” Only 16% thought their congressman should be one of them.
• In the town of Lake Wobegon all the children are above average.

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Nothing can kill employee morale more than a corporate performance review. Nothing can kill leadership morale then having to give them. It doesn’t have to be this way and I have a very simple solution.

The critical mistake that most mid to large sized companies make is that they confuse dollars with performance. Dollars are an economic scarcity – there are only a limited amount of them available and they must me applied judiciously when it comes time to offer raises.

Performance is not. In great companies performance is in abundance – it has no limits. It is absolutely possible that everyone on your team has done an outstanding job this past year yet due to the economic of the situation you may be forced to declare 10% of them “underperformers.” Sound familiar?
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