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♦ How we Listen for Trust, or Not

By on May 11, 2012 in Business, Culture, Employee Engagement, Executive Excellence, Perspectives, Synergy, Trust, Values

Based on reputable research, no doubt leaders could do more to warrant our trust. BP’s CEO Tony Hayward admitted the criticism of the oil spill and subsequent inability to stop the damage was ‘entirely fair.’  Ok, it was an event, a mishap.  Let’s look at an ordinary, reoccurring issue in the news lately, CEO pay.

Who is culpable, for instance, for extraordinarily high CEO wages?   Considerable finger wagging has been going on in the press at CEOs about this.  It isn’t the CEO who sets his or her own salary; it is the board of directors.  Yet boards of directors were invisible to the press in these stories.  Often our assumptions may lead us to conclusions that malign others without full consideration for the facts.  This disturbs me greatly but I know I have done it, too.  Why is that?

Walking with a friend, I mentioned a situation that was just this kind of wrongful maligning, and she asked me, “How long does it take to find a witch?”  She was referencing the days in Europe from 1480 to 1700 when legally sanctioned and official witchcraft trials resulted in from 40,000 to 100,000 executions. It was decided someone was a witch, and that person was immediately burned at the stake.  Perhaps it is popular to not trust CEOs because the media are on a CEO witch-hunt.

While we’ve moved beyond flagrantly burning people at the stake, we still do character assassinations every day in the form of judgment and gossip.   Some of this finger wagging and witch-hunting and broad-brush painting is projection — making someone else responsible for what we, ourselves, don’t want to be responsible.  So I ask myself, is my promise about business leaders leading with integrity and love and listening for people’s greatness about convincing leaders to be that?  Or is there some culpability in how I, and others listen for a leader to be great?

I believe there’s a pandemic malaise that creates its own dissonance and a noise within which leaders are trying to lead.  The expectation that leaders should be responsible for all wrongs is abdication of personal responsibility, and in the United States anyway (where I live), it is a serious problem.

I would like for EVERY individual in an organization, be it government, non-profit or for-profit, to SEEK OUT and TAKE UP their part in building successful entity, using the energy they spend criticizing leadership and putting it into taking personal responsibility to own their own accountability for results.

For more on this topic you can request on this website, www.accountabilitypays.com, the larger thesis from which this excerpt was taken.

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Vision is Mapping a Future and Steve Jobs is a Visioning Icon

By on May 4, 2012 in Business, Culture, Employee Engagement, Executive Excellence, Leadership, Trust

♦ Leaders Leading Leaders

Seeing into the future is rather like running in heavy fog eyes wide open.  I was recently invited to participate in a strategic planning session for a not-for-profit organization where the CEO wants to see 30 years out into the future.

I proposed a people analysis as part of this process because there is an assumption that some of those folks who are currently in the organization will still be there to carry out this vision.  Some will not, the math doesn’t work.   Age is not your friend in this exercise.  Or in Steve Jobs’ case, illness was not his friend nor was his illness our friend.  I don’t know about you but I miss him!

In the fuzzy environment of the global financial crisis, technology advancements, and unpredictability of the environmental issues, there is something exciting about skipping all of those considerations and saying “this is where we WANT to be.”

Our favorite recent runaway successful leader Steve Jobs said, “ A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them.  Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.” That is vision in the face of a crumbling economy, yes? At Accountability Pays we use all Apple products.

Vision is an inside job that belongs to the leader. Moreover, it differentiates a successful leader from an also-ran leader.   But it isn’t enough to just envision the future, without giving it legs.  Warren Bennis said, “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”

Jobs could have believed in putting quality products into the market and flopped but general consensus says he tenaciously adhered to a winning combination of innovation AND a veracity about quality AND an incredible sensibility for design to differentiate those products from ANY competitor.  He had the capacity and the drive to translate his vision into more market share than any company anywhere in any industry.

Here is a teaser quote to send you on your way to visioning.  Who said this?  “Apple’s market share is bigger than BMW’s or Mercedes’s or Porsche’s in the automotive market. What’s wrong with being BMW or Mercedes?”

Your comments are welcome and invited.  Feel free to give your examples, your stories.

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Clarity. When Missing, all Hell Breaks Loose. When Present, Results Occur.

By on April 13, 2012 in Business, Employee Engagement, Executive Excellence, Perspectives, Uncategorized

Why do I say all hell breaks loose?  Because any organization cannot move together in syncopation without clarity of a common future view, and people cannot do their jobs if there isn’t clarity of their required contribution.

When clarity is present, people have the freedom that is created by clear boundaries.  Employees are freed up to do their work, not protect themselves from attacks by others with different expectations.

Clarity is influenced by the amount of confidence one has in one’s opinion, which is all we really have regarding our view of the world.  Research into successful people in the workplace by Dr. Dan Harrison* showed a paradoxical relationship between two independent variables:  confidence in one’s opinions (certainty), and the tendency to reflect on many different viewpoints (open/reflective).

As a leader desiring to provide a clear vision of the future, or clear boundaries around the responsibilities of a particular role you would want enough certainty to have clarity.  Caveat:  an excess of certainty is dogmatic, when others hear the underlying message, “I’m right, I’m right, I’m right, and I am not changing my opinion.  Ever.”

Conversely, too much open/reflective is inconclusive.  The line outside the door of an inconclusive decision maker who is taking input on a decision favors the last guy in line!  Those in between will hear, “that’s a great idea,” “that’s a great idea,” “that’s a great idea too!”

The optimal relationship between these paradoxical positions is high certainty AND high open/reflective; the tendency to explore different viewpoints and formulate conclusions without becoming fixed in one’s opinions.

My friend Mary Lore wrote a book called Managing Thought.  In addition to selling the book, she delivers it for free one page a day.  http://www.managingthought.com.

Managing our thoughts and clarity go hand in hand.  Can you see this connection?  Your thinking clearly precedes providing clarity for anyone else?  Clear thinking comes from managing thoughts by asking the right questions, by engaging in thinking deeply and long-term about the impact of your words, your actions, and the potential responses from others.  For instance, being reactive (what Mary calls the “faithful-dog brain” and our reticular activation system) will focus on making us right.  The problem is, when stuck in that thinking, you risk becoming dogmatic.

*Evaluation of the impact of paradoxical relationships is unique to the Harrison Assessment which is a hiring assessment.  Dr. Harrison is coming to San Diego June 29th and will present a workshop in the morning on this topic.

If you would like to know more about this event, let me know!

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