What word would you use if your boss just told you that he resigned? Was that a wishful smirk on your face? Are you off creating mental images of green fields, warm sun and unicorns all around?

I’ve been fortunate to only have one boss from hell. Most of the others were either very strong leaders, or at least managers that I could work with to develop a strong working relationship.

This week, unfortunately, I lost one of the best. My heart sunk when I heard the words “Joe, I’m resigning.” It was an unusual feeling, something that I had felt only once before in this type of situation.

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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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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…)

 

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…)

 

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 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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I once worked with a great friend that loved to pull pranks. Let’s call him Dave, um, because that’s his name. Due to the advent of caller id Dave has had to retire one of his longest running pranks – the 3 Way.

Dave would get the phone numbers of two people or organizations that were either competitors or often had passionate but radically opposing views. With his multi-line phone and very quick fingers he would put his phone on mute, call both numbers, and bridge them together. This left each side wondering why the other had called them and the ensuing conversation of discovery left us in stitches. I’ll never forget the day that he (more…)

 

Interviews suck.

They can be one of the most anxiety soaked events that leave you feeling spent and judged. Today, though, let’s take away a little of the anxiety by disclosing one critical thing you can do to get to the final stages of the process.

The ancient Greeks said it best.
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This week has been both fun and a real challenge for me. I hope it was for you as well. It’s been interesting reading all of the private email and phone calls I get about the topics. I often wonder why y’all are afraid to post them into comments. You have some great ideas and thoughts.

That is what leads us to the subject of the last day of the Week of Living Consciously – your ideas. All of the subjects this week as well as every week come from your ideas. All I do is assemble what others have taught me over the years and try to make them accessible. I read a lot, I listen a lot and I practice a lot but there is one catalyst that has moved me further than any other, (more…)

 

According to relationship expert John Gottman, “the best single predictor of whether a couple is going to divorce is contempt” Seriously? Not finances, sex or boredom? Nope – contempt. (more…)

 

I’m a big fan of LinkedIn if for nothing more than the same interest that draws me to watch people at Wal-Mart – it’s a sociologist’s playground. My favorite part is when people start performing “job nesting” – you know that flurry of activity that happens when one has decided to begin a job search. (more…)