Tag Archives: Encouraging the Heart

Fundamentals of Exemplary Leadership at the May FFBS

LearningLeadershipCoverAt the May First Friday Book Synopsis, I will present a synopsis of James Kouzes and Barry Posner‘s newest best-seller, Learning Leadership: The Five Fundamentals of Becoming an Exemplary Leader (San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, 2016).

Kouzes (left, below) and Posner (right, below) ve become some of the most powerful and influential writers about the subject of leadership, all published by Jossey-Bass from San Francisco.  You are aware that The Leadership Challenge (6th edition to be released on May 1) remains one of the best-sellers of all time, and is in its 25th anniversary commemoration.  We have presented synopsis of several of their books, including Encouraging the Heart (2003).

KouzesPicturePosnerPicture

I won’t spoil the story for you, because I want you to attend the synopsis, and hear what is between the lines for each of the five fundamentals.

But, here they are:

1. Believe you can.
2. Aspire to excellence.
3. Challenge yourself.
4. Engage support.
5. Practice deliberately.

The authors treat the fundamentals separately, but recognize the strong interdependence among them.

And, please note that they are not talking about just any leader – this book is about becoming an exemplary one!

 

Empathy Training May Not Be Genuine

We have presented several books over the years that have featured empathy as an important skill for managers to exhibit.  Obviously, the Kouzes and Posner best-seller, Encouraging the Heart (Jossey-Bass, 2003), includes many different references to empathy as a management tool in recognizing and reinforcing employee behavior.

I was interested in a recent syndicated article entitled “The Impact of Empathy,” oirignally writtten by Matthew Gutierrez for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on July 11, 2016.  You can read his article by clicking HERE.

His premise is that companies often benefit when managers receive and use the tools to become more understanding of their direct reports.  He cites an imporant program taken by local YWCA managers, who claim they are more effective after receiving empathy trainilng.  Gutierrez state that about 20 percent of employers offer empathy training for managers, and he provides documentation from Development Dimensions International (DDI), that top-to-bottom, the copmanies perform better with this training, as much as 50% more income per employee.

I love the end, but not the means.  I don’t have a lot of good to say about people who exhibit the skill of empathy, without the underlying heart that contains it.

Any manager can learn a series of statements and questions that show interest in others.  And, there is some likelihood that those behaviors will result in positive outcomes for the employees who receive them.  But for how long?  When does the facade wear off?  How much time will it take for someone who really doesn’t care about another person to finally show true colors?

I’m not too interested in showing anyone how to use a skill such as displaying empathy who does not have cotresponding empathy in the heart.  If you really don’t care, then how better off is anyone, if all you do is fool someone into thinking that you care?

I don’t mind this training for people who really do care, but have trouble expressing it.  That is worthwhile training for them, for it builds proper skills that they need to exhibit.

But, we’ve already got enough problems in the workplace than do add phony skills for phony people to exhibit who really don’t care.  Just be honest – tell us you don’t care, go do your job, and don’t build false hopes and promises by being non-transparent.

What do you think?  Hit reply and let me know.

 

 

Twyla Tharp and Steve Jobs – (There are Good Tough Bosses and Bad Tough Bosses…)

Everybody probably has a bad boss horror story or two.  And there are some genuine horror stories out there.

But, there are good bad tough bosses and bad tough bosses.  What is the difference?  One difference may be this:  is the boss tough because the end result is worth all the coaching, coaxing, demonstrating, demanding, until the people get it right?

I think Steve Jobs and Twyla Tharp are two great exemplars of this kind of tough boss.

Twyla Tharp:

I recently ran across this wonderful 2006 article about the Kennedy Center Honoree Twyla Tharp, To Dance Beneath the Diamond Skies by Alex Witchel.  Here are some key excerpts:

But it is probably time to say this: There was not a person in that theater, including the 19 performers, musicians and production staff, who did not admire Tharp. Those new to her are scared of her, those used to her are over her, because they know that behind the barking lies a devotion to them, to the work — always, always the work — that is religious in its fervor. Yes, she is a control freak, a perfectionist, a zealot in forming a vision and stopping at nothing to see it realized. But when it is realized, when her dances are good-better-best, flying off the stage like some biblical fire on a mountaintop, there is nothing in the world like them. Twenty-three years ago, Robert Joffrey said that Tharp’s work “didn’t look like anyone else’s.” It still doesn’t.

“There is nothing in the world like them.”  The end result may just be worth the cost it took to get there.  She simply made the best better.  And she also made the “average” much better than ever before.  In her book, The Collaborative Habit, Tharp wrote:

As a choreographer, my task is to make the best possible work with the dancers I find in the room on any given day. 

This is simply the greatest description of the day-to-day work of being the boss I have ever read.  It is the job of the boss (manager, supervisor) to make the best possible work with the people in the room, on the team, at any given time.

By the way, there is a wonderful story in the article about the time Twyla Tharp had to show Baryshnikov how it needed to be done:

Huot sat at one of the computers and played footage of Baryshnikov in rehearsal.  “What’s that?” Tharp asked shortly.  “This is the one where he can’t do what you do,” Huot said, his tone gently teasing. “It’s your favorite thing in the world, which is why I kept it for you.” On the tape, Baryshnikov held a cigarette, shirtless, as Tharp demonstrated the steps. Hers were vivid, crisp. His were blurry, indistinct. Impatiently, she showed him again. He turned away.

“That’s right, go pout,” Tharp said mockingly to the screen. The next shots were of him in performance, his steps breathtaking. “Yeah, he got it,” Tharp said.

She knew how to do the steps; she demonstrated the steps, and she pushed Baryshnikov until he “got it.”

…To be a Tharp dancer is to master complex, intricate movements and steps that can defy gravity — in 1975 Baryshnikov told The Times: “It is very difficult to learn her steps.. . .One variation alone took me three weeks to learn, working a few hours every day.”

Steve Jobs:

Regarding Jobs, the stories are endless, and somewhat legendary.  He certainly could be something of a world-class pain to work with.  But, he too could bring out the very best in people – more than they knew they had in them.  Consider these revealing excerpts from the Walter Isaacson book, Steve Jobs:

For all of his obnoxious behavior, Jobs also had the ability to instill in his team an esprit de corps. After tearing people down, he would find ways to lift them up and make them feel that being part of the Macintosh project was an amazing mission. Every six months he would take most of his team on a two-day retreat at a nearby resort.

Jobs had latched onto what he believed was a key management lesson from his Macintosh experience: You have to be ruthless if you want to build a team of A players. “It’s too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players,” he recalled. “The Macintosh experience taught me that A players like to work only with other A players, which means you can’t indulge B players.”

“What I’m best at doing is finding a group of talented people and making things with them,” he told the magazine.

Business Week asked him why he treated employees so harshly, Jobs said it made the company better.

…and his great talent, Jobs said, was to “get A performances out of B players.” At Apple, Jobs told him, he would get to work with A players.

The literature about leadership is pretty unanimous about this key role a leader plays.  In Liz Wiseman’s book, Multipliers, she writes that the leader has to “multiply” the good effects of the workers, and never diminish them.  A good leader “multiplies’ the results of the workers he/she leads.  In Kouzes and Pozner’s Encouraging the Heart, they argue that for people to be their best, they must be encouraged, in their hearts, by the one who leads them.  And when they are so encouraged, they become more productive, actually better at their jobs.

Whatever Twyla Tharp and Steve Jobs had, or did, it worked.  They both developed quite a track record of bringing out the very best in the people who worked for them.  (Of course, Twyla Tharp is still at it…).

If you are a leader, this is the test, isn’t it?  Are you making your people better?  Are you pushing them to do more than they even knew they could do?  Are you making the average much better, and the best even better still?

If not, you’ve got some leadership skills to develop.

We Need More Good Stories, with Fewer Simple Chronicles

You might not realize it, but you are a creature of an imaginative realm called Neverland.  Neverland is your home, and before you die, you will spend decades there. 
Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal:  How Stories Make Us Human

If you say, “The queen died, and the king died,” that is a chronicle.
If you say, “The queen died, and the king died, from grief,” that is a story.  (Joe Lambert and Nina Mullen, drawing from E. M. Forster).
Bob Johansen:  Get There Early:  Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present

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I heard Krys Boyd on KERA interview Jonathan Gottschall about his book, The Storytelling Animal.  (Krys is a great interviewer).  And I remembered the brief description of the difference between a chronicle and a story from Get There Early.

We care about stories.  We learn from stories.  We place ourselves within stories, because we all know that every story, is, in some way, our own story.  Last night I watched House.  Wilson has cancer.  A very close friend of my wife has cancer.  The fictional story is her story – our story.  You know…

Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.  
(John Donne, For Whom the Bell Tolls)

In the interview, Gottschall observed that stories always include two elements:  some form of dilemma, and some form of resolution.  It is the old “problem-solution” formula for persuasion.  And when a story is told well, it always makes us stop and ask:  “What is my dilemma?  Can I find a way out; a solution; a resolution that works for me, and hopefully for others?”

I read a lot of nonfiction books — but, sadly, too little fiction.  Gottschall observed in the interview that people who expose themselves to more fiction have an easier time interacting with others.  They are more socially connected; better connected.  And, thankfully, he reminded us that stories preceded printed books, so maybe I get almost enough fiction from my favorite television shows.  I guarantee that, in House alone, there is enough dilemma and conflict to last a while.

In my own reading, I have come to realize that the best nonfiction writers are, in fact, superior story tellers.  I think this explains the popularity of Malcolm Gladwell, and why I have so warmed to The Power of Habit and Imagine just recently.  They are both written by superior story tellers  (Charles Duhigg and Jonah Lehrer).  Books that are principle-rich and story-poor just aren’t quite as engaging or gripping.  Or insightful.

And I think it is why I remember some books I read years ago more than others.  David Halberstam is always at the top of my list, because he was such a wonderful story teller.

In the realm of organizational culture, story plays a major role.  To build corporate culture, to build corporate strength, to build a true community, tell the stories of your organization.  Yes, tell the good stories, the stories of success — but tell especially the “struggle” stories.  “This is what we faced.  This is how we overcame it.”  A well-told struggle story can help a current struggle seem not quite so overwhelming.

We love a good story.  And, it turns out, we need a steady dose of good stories.

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Good stories move us. They touch us, they teach us, and they cause us to remember.  They enable the listener to put the behavior in a real context and understand what has to be done in that context to live up to expectations. 
…storytelling is the ultimate leadership tool.   (Elizabeth Weil).
James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Pozner:  Encouraging the Heart — A Leaders Guide to Rewarding and Encouraging Others

Cory Weismann, two Coaches, and a Story Told by Frank Deford

We lead by being human. We do not lead by being corporate, professional, or institutional.  (Paul G. Hawken, founder, Smith and Hawken)
Quoted by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Pozner — Encouraging the Heart:  A Leaders Guide to Rewarding and Encouraging Others

————–

Frank Deford

A suggestion – stop what you are doing and listen to this segment on NPR’s Morning Editon by Frank Deford:  When There’s More To Winning Than Winning.   (audio, plus transcript, available here).  (Frank Deford’s commentaries are consistnegly great treasures).

Here’s how he starts:

When last we left the NCAA, it was February madness, colleges were jumping conferences, suing each other, coaches were claiming rivals had cheated in recruiting — the usual nobility of college sports.
And then, in the midst of all this, the men’s basketball team at Washington College of Chestertown, Md., journeyed to Pennsylvania to play Gettysburg College in a Division III Centennial Conference game.
It was senior night, and the loudest cheers went to Cory Weissman, No. 3, 5 feet 11 inches, a team captain — especially when he walked out onto the court as one of Gettysburg’s starting five.
Yes, he was a captain, but it was, you see, the first start of his college career. Cory had played a few minutes on the varsity as a freshman, never even scoring. But then, after that season, although he was only 18 years old, he suffered a major stroke. He was unable to walk for two weeks. His whole left side was paralyzed. He lost his memory, had seizures.

The story is one that will stop you in your tracks.  It is a about a basketball coach, and another basketball coach, and a group of players, who remembered that being human was more important than anything else.

Cory had worked so very hard — to walk, to run, to participate in the pre-game drills.  But he was far from being a college-level basketball player after his stroke.

On the last game of his last season, the coach started Cory Weissman.  He played just a few moments.  But what moments!

And then, at the end of the game, with the game fully decided, the coach put him back in the game.  The other team’s coach called time out, and asked his players to intentionally foul Cory to give him a shot, a chance to score a point from the free throw line.

Shot number two:  The ball left his hand and flew true – swish, all net.

Deford ended with this:

The assistant vice president for athletics at Gettysburg, David Wright, wrote to Washington College: “Your coach, Rob Nugent, along with his staff and student-athletes, displayed a measure of compassion that I have never witnessed in over 30 years of involvement in intercollegiate athletics.”
Cory Weissman had made a point. Washington College had made an even larger one.

“We lead by being human.”  Yes, we do.

Cory Weismann -- "The ball left his hand and flew true - swish, all net."

“The Story Needs A Great Storyteller” – Alan Rickman (Severus Snape) Reminds Us Of The Centrality of Story

Severus Snape (Alan Rickman)

It is an ancient need to be told stories.  But the story needs a great storyteller.  Thanks for all of it, Jo.
Alan Rickman, speaking to/of Jo Rowling, shortly after his “final moments” as Severus Snape

————

There’s a letter making the rounds.  Alan Rickman wrote it, and put it in a full-page ad in Empire to say his very sweet good-bye.

In Encouraging the Heart, Kouzes and Posner write:

Marshall McLuhan is reported to have said, “Those who think there’s a difference between education and entertainment don’t know the first thing about either one.” 
Good stories move us. They touch us, they teach us, and they cause us to remember.  They enable the listener to put the behavior in a real context and understand what has to be done in that context to live up to expectations.

We need more, a lot more!, good communication going on in the corporate world.  This is a really nice reminder that story – good storytelling – is at the heart of all good communication.

Here’s the full letter:

 

Click on letter for full view