When Leadership Fails February 7, 2010
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“Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.” Aldous Huxley
The following post was written by John Burnley. John is a graduate of the U of Iowa MBA program for Professionals Managers and a former student in my Leadership Course taught as part of that program. John and I are interested in creating a dialogue amongst all of you blog readers around lessons you’ve learned from other leaders. Many of the lessons learned come from poor leaders as well as those who inspire us to be our best. What has been your experience? Here is a true story from John.
They come from all walks of life – our bosses, executive management, social, civic and political leaders, or even close knit friends. No one is exempt from the possibility of taking the wrong turn that inevitably came back to haunt them.
We have all heard the tales from friends and coworkers. How many times have you cringed from the descriptions and stories? Have you ever stood still in fear that you would trip over your dropping jaw? At some point in your professional career, you will witness one example for yourself. What, you ask? It is when good people do crazy things that impact their ability to lead others.
Let’s face it, some people are poor leaders. But as Ginny has taught hundreds (or thousands) of students, good leadership practices and behaviors can be learned and incorporated into our everyday lives. I’ve had the opportunity to benefit from her tutelage, as many others reading this blog posting have.
When I first approached Ginny with the idea for ‘When Leadership Fails’, it was to provide a forum for Integrity Integrated clients and friends to continue to learn about leadership practices. The intent is to provide situational information and let the group comment, with Ginny including her comments as appropriate. The examples will ideally be based on real organizations and individuals, however, anonymity rules the day as organizations and individuals will never be named.
How can you join the discussion? Post your comments on examples posted and keep the conversation going. And send your own examples to Ginny at gwpeters@integrityintegrated.com.
So let’s get started and have some fun! Our first example is simple and straight forward.
Over the last 15 years, a small manufacturing company experienced tremendous growth resulting not only in satellite operations nationwide, but multiple facilities in the metro area where corporate headquarters was located. The growth was so fast that it was somewhat hard to manage.
Eventually, the growth slowed to a more reasonable rate. However, the organization had outgrown facilities at all locations in the headquarters area. The senior management team decided to seek a larger facility that would allow the company to consolidate into one location.
A site was soon selected and preparations began for the build out and eventual physical move. The facility transformation was on schedule, when market forces unexpectedly turned unfavorable. Sales plummeted and as the company lost market share, adjustments were made by eliminating staff. The leadership team also postponed some of the new facilities build out, delaying until the organization was more financially viable. Over the next year the economic climate did not improve resulting in another seven rounds of layoffs.
The CEO regularly held company wide town hall meetings where important issues were discussed. Technology allowed all employees to participate regardless of location. The executive leadership team, comprised of several Vice Presidents and the CEO, manned the various conference rooms not only to be visible to the employees, but to help explain and deliver a common message to staff. Each Vice President would get a turn to speak and update the organization on their respective area of responsibility. As you might expect, financial metrics were always on the focal point of staff’s interest.
During one of these company wide meetings, the CEO explained how the build out of the new facility would not be completed before moving into the facility. However, as business recovered and staffing grew, the project would be completed. The CEO also explained that the new facility had a parking garage in the basement – a first for any company building. However, the company was not going to use the garage as it would lower the lease payment. The CEO continued and stated that everyone would be treated the same. This seemed to be an important point as the leader repeated it several times.
Months later during the long winter, the building was completed and the organization moved operations to the new facility. Not long after the move completed, staff noticed one of the Vice Presidents parking in the underground garage. The organizational grapevine became very active and it was soon discovered that the entire executive leadership team and their administrative assistants, including the CEO, were utilizing the underground and heated parking facility.
Did leadership fail?
Does that make me a Weak Competitor or a Strong One? January 9, 2010
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I kept trying to disguise it, name it something more positive, but it didn’t work. It continued to gnaw at me until I decided to fully own it: jealousy. In a number of situations, I was feeling jealous of individuals who were accomplishing more than me—in better physical shape, better teachers, better consultants, better stepmoms. You name it, in one way or another, each of these has reared its ugly head in the past few months. And the funny thing is that work-wise I’ve had a very successful 2009 and the prospects for 2010 are even brighter. So Ginny, what’s up with this jealousy thing?
In late December I posted a note on our Facebook fan page that said, “ABUNDANCE* is the word I’m choosing to focus on in 2010. What’s your word for 2010?” And then it hit me in the shower one morning this past week. Jealously comes from a place of scarcity thinking. And scarcity thinking is the opposite of abundance. In times when I was feeling jealous, it’s quite possible that I was also thinking that just because “they” had something I wanted, that meant that I couldn’t have the same thing.
I’m also trying to reconcile the idea of competition and wanting the best for myself. I fell into the hole of confusing competition with jealousy. Competition is a good thing, for me and for everyone. But I want to make sure I am competing mostly with myself—am I doing the VERY best that I can do—and in a way that focuses on the things I’m good at? For me, competition isn’t about looking to beat out someone else, but rather going after what I want. In the process sometimes it will be necessary for me to beat someone else, especially when it comes to obtaining new client work. The difference for me is going after something because I want it, not because I want to prevent someone else from getting it.
Does that make me a weak competitor or a strong one?
What is your word for 2010? If you want to see what others said, check out our Integrity Integrated fan page. http://tinyurl.com/yzoo4vx
Recommended Reading: “Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us” by Daniel Pink. See Dan speak about this in a video at http://tinyurl.com/nfxme9
Good article by Martha Beck about abundance and scarcity thinking: http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200904-omag-beck
The Game of Personal Mastery November 30, 2009
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“Wow, that must be an intense email you’re in the middle of.” I was sitting on the couch and my husband Greg was watching me on my Blackberry. But I wasn’t on email, I was in the midst of a newly found addiction, the game of BrickBreaker. BrickBreaker is a simple, yet challenging game where you move a ball around the screen to break bricks. The version on my Blackberry has 34 “levels”. The highest I’ve made it so far is to the nineteenth level.
As I was entering my high score I had a realization: that high score came after a great deal of practice. I certainly hadn’t scored high the first few times I played the game. In fact, the high score came after a few hours of practicing and a fair amount of frustration. And even as I entered the high score, I found myself ready to get back in the game and play again and again. It was fun, and I was getting better—and I like to win.
The leadership learning from my BrickBreaker experience is not lost on me. Developing mastery in any area of our life requires practice, and the ideal is to be able to practice doing something we’re passionate about and where we have natural talent.
Daniel Levitin in This is Your Brain on Music talks about the theory of 10,000 hours:… ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is the equivalent to roughly three hours per day, or twenty hours per week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people don’t seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.
A discussion of mastery isn’t complete without talking about using our strengths to practice in arenas where we are passionate. Teaching is a passion for me, and one for which I’ve been blessed with some natural talent. In the Spring of 2008 I had the pleasure of teaching two MBA Leadership classes simultanesouly. In addition to the other work I was doing through Integrity Integrated Inc I spent one month teaching one class on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 6-10 PM and the second class on the weekends (Friday nights from 6-9:30 and Saturdays from 8:30-3:30). In total there were 89 students which meant in addition to the hours in the classroom I was grading a large volume of reflective paper assignments.
Sound exhausting? Not for me. I can honestly say that at the end of the weekend, I was often as much, if not more, energized than when I started the week. I’m not sure where I stand relative to my 10,000 hours of teaching but I can say that I was operating solidly out of a passionate strength and that goes a long way towards personal mastery.
My MBA teaching experience meets all of the criteria for Strengths-based Activities, as defined in “Go Put your Strengths to Work” by Marcus Buckingham.
What does operating out of a strength feel like?
- When you do it, you feel EFFECTIVE.
- Before you do it, you actively LOOK FORWARD to it.
- While you are doing it, you feel INQUISITIVE and FOCUSED.
- After you’ve done it, you feel FULFILLED and AUTHENTIC.
I don’t plan to spend the necessary hours to develop mastery in Brickbreaker—which means I may never make it to the 34th level…but teaching, now that is a different story.
For more about mastery, success and working with strengths, I recommend all of the following books:
“Outliers: The Story of Success” by Malcolm Galdwell
“Strengthfinders 2.0” by Tom Rath
“Strengths-Based Leadership” by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie
