I propose a new year’s resolution:  Take your leadership insecurities to your peer group for review.  Consider that you might sometimes be “being right” when you are really being arrogant, and it is costing you credibility.

The downside of “being right” when dealing with a subordinate, can be costly.  For example, if an employee isn’t feeling heard, that employee might begin to withhold information which can begin the slippery slope of  mis-information, mis-interpretation, and bad feelings.

If you are feeling the least bit uncomfortable while considering the above possibility of arrogance, it might mean you are tapping into your conscience.

Here lies an opportunity to distinguish between arrogance parading as self-esteem, and challenging your assumptions.  One source for reflection on that topic is “Acting as if your assumptions are the truth,” number two in the downloadable free report on this website, “Seven Costly Mistakes Senior Executives Make that Cause Performance, Productivity and People to Suffer.”

What if you took your inquiry — or any internal discomfort as a leader— to your peers, not as gossip but as an opportunity to seek suggestions in the name of collaboration, cooperation, teamwork, productivity, authenticity, contributing and being contributed to?

As an executive coach I have witnessed the value of doing so.  One manager in particular was reluctant to expose herself to her peers, believing they would think less of her.  However, she took the coaching, rallied her courage, and the result was unexpected.  She actually garnered MORE respect for having been vulnerable in a situation everyone knew anyway!  It was a real lesson for her that the elephant in the room is more visible than most people want to admit.

I recently submitted a white paper for consideration to present at the Conference for Global Transformation in the spring of 2012, the root of which was an inquiry into trustworthiness of business leaders.

The chairman of the review committee said, in accepting the paper for presentation, “I found your paper to be very interesting, particularly how you questioned your own views.  I think this is really an important point that should be brought forward….”  As a result of that feedback I changed the title of my paper from “Transforming Leadership in Business…” to  “Transforming the Leader Within:  Questioning Self as Access to Expanded Thinking Capacity.”

What does this bring up for you?  Your questions and thoughts make a rich dialog.

A Wrap-up of the University Club’s Roundtable on the Tech Industry

Christine Benton

The biggest challenge facing the technology industry is people. Or more specifically, the lack thereof, according to tech industry leaders at a recent San Diego business breakfast. The event, hosted by the University Club San Diego, brought together executives from a broad swath of the technology industry to discuss the state of the industry in San Diego and beyond. The discussion was led by Jim Goldman, chairman of the U.S. Technology Practice at public relations firm Burson-Marsteller and former CNBC Silicon Valley bureau chief.

The panelists didn’t identify capital or revenue as the greatest challenge facing tech industry companies. They said their biggest challenge was staffing and recruiting tech-related positions—such as software engineers, managers, marketers and salespeople.

In a time of double-digit unemployment, “there are more than 6,000 technology-related positions open in San Diego alone,” said David Titus, president of the San Diego Venture Group and managing director at venture capital firm Windward Ventures.

George Mathew, president and COO of Irvine-based Alteryx, nodded. “Fifty percent of my time is spent on staffing and recruiting,” he said.

While a few were surprised by this, Titus backed up Mathews, saying that when he looks at companies to invest in, he looks for senior executives who spend a significant amount of time on staffing, pointing out that these executives are more realistic than those who turn to recruiting and staffing as a second or third priority.

The challenge is exacerbated by U.S. immigration policy, said Titus, which currently requires foreign students who matriculate and earn advanced degrees at U.S. universities to return to their home countries after graduation. “We are educating them and then sending them back,” noted Titus. “Why not allow them to work here and make our companies and economy stronger?” He urged people to support the STAPLE Act, which would authorize certain students from foreign countries to be admitted for permanent residence after earning a PhD from a U.S. university in the field of science, technology, engineering or mathematics.

Admiral Jim Zortman, sector vice president of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, shared a few ways that he has approached the staffing issue, including working with high schools and colleges within the framework of internship programs. “If you have a good internship program, by the time the intern is in his or her third year of internship you have a pretty good idea of whether they’re a good fit for your company,” he said.

In addition, he pointed out, “Not everyone peaks at the moment of graduation.” While other companies go for the top graduates, he may aim a few spots down, looking for qualities in a candidate that will help them to be strong in the long-term. Zortman mentions that, like others on the panel, his team has been able to lure candidates to move to San Diego from other parts of the country by giving them a taste of Southern California in the winter. However, many leave after two to three years, so he has learned to focus on candidates he believes will be here for the long run.

Do you share the same challenges in your industry? Use the comment section below to let us know!

Christine Benton is a director in the Technology Practice at Burson-Marsteller. Based in North County San Diego, she is an avid lover of both San Diego and Technology. You can reach her at christine.benton[at]bm.com.

In our relatively short conversation, I got something incredibly valuable. There are some key distinctions regarding Employee Engagement that, if you don’t know deeply what they mean and how to use them, will stifle any attempt to transform a corporate culture. I am clear John Schierer is a master in these distinctions.

Employee engagement means that people at work will give you their discretionary time and attention. They don’t just show up; they show up engaged, excited, and enthusiastic about making their unique contribution, and accountable for producing results.

Situational. That means you have to first understand the culture you are in before you can expect to garner employee engagement. This takes time, effort, and study. Where is the company in its organizational life cycle? Is it small and growing? Or large and complex? Is it in transition from one stage to another?

Desired Behaviors. Before taking on any transformational efforts, know the outcome you want — greater productivity, quality — improvement over the current state. Here, John collaborated with Sandy and came up with behaviors and created a code of conduct based on Sandy’s book, Excellence at Work: The Six Keys to Inspire Passion in the Workplace (World at Work Press, 2007).

Language. Having clear behavioral outcomes created common definitions, language and understanding for not only employees, but also for the supervisors. Language is unique to a culture, and having intentional language can add strength to the culture. New people pick up on it very quickly.

Alignment. If you hold values, or a code of conduct high, are those values/is that code of conduct in the performance appraisals and the compensation structure? Are you interviewing for preferences around those values? Are you asking employees about them through 360’s?

Buckets. If your language is built around alignment with those values that are aligned throughout the organization, then people will begin to express upsets in the language that mirrors the buckets that were formed. New employees will quickly align to the language and also begin to relate to the buckets. Structural integrity is very quickly discernable.

Transparency. If people know the mission and are aligned, they are self-informed because everything is transparent to them. Transparency is taught by being modeled. It can be tracked anecdotally, by learning where transparency is being rewarded.

Thinking in these terms will help you ask the right questions, so that if you believe, as the Jurdy cartoon suggests, that something is missing from employee engagement, you can look deeply for what will make a significant, measurable, positive difference, as John and Sandy and their team did at Cobham.

Perhaps you have terms that you have found key to employee engagement.  Please share by leaving a comment.

One disturbing finding that led to these conversations is that only 17 percent of the 35-64 year old “informed publics” trust information given by a CEO about his or her company.  This was six-year low.

For better or for worse, my understanding is that, in terms of influence, it only takes about 15% of people agreeing to anything (a philosophy, a code of behavior, a belief) to change the tide and move the masses.  Robert Porter Lynch, who has done considerable research in the area of trust and leaders, posits that trust is the bedrock of democracy, and when our trust is damaged, we are doing damage to the very principles upon which this country is founded.  We are precipitously close to that tipping point.

Since I coach CEOs and their executive teams, I was personally appalled.  But more appalling than the sense that our business leaders have behaved badly and deserve this reputation — some do and most don’t — is my concern that all CEOs have been painted with the same brush as those who deserve to be penalized and put away for a very long time, damaging others’ reputations by association.  There are leaders who do wrong intentionally, and others who are simply careless.  In a Financial Times some months ago, for example, BP’s CEO Tony Hayward admitted that they were not prepared for a category disaster he called “low probability, high risk.” Indeed.

BP, after an estimated $20 bn leak with costs to our environment and the human psyche that are unconscionable and immeasurable finally began looking into their strategy and tools to resolve such risks.  Tony Hayward is not a bad person, but inadequate thinking and planning has exacted an extraordinarily high toll.  Regardless, whether they make a mistake of wrongful thinking, or they are out to get us as was the case with Bernie Madoff, bad decisions of those in power cost us trust in leaders inclusively.

A MUST READ for every executive is Herb Baum’s The Transparent Leader, in which Baum said, “A lot of executives who made headlines (because of a scandal) were just plain white-collar thieves who deserved to do time.  And there were others who were basically good people who made compromises when they shouldn’t have.  They stretched the truth because they thought they had to, and they made some business decisions that were short on integrity. They had risen to leadership positions, but they failed because they didn’t understand how to be open with various constituents and they were unable to build a culture base on trust in the organizations they led.”

Let’s assume leaders should do more to warrant our trust.  BP’s Hayward has 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 factor.  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 they are invisible to the press in these stories.  So often our assumptions 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 alluding to 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 next thing you know that person was burned at the stake.

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 these finger wagging and witch-hunting and broad-brush painting are projections — making someone else responsible for what we, ourselves, don’t want to be responsible.

I had the opportunity to make the opening remarks at the University Club’s Distinguished Speaker Series presentation on the Future Evolution of Higher Education: What we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong, and how we need to evolve. Moderated by the consummate professional Robert McNeely, Senior Executive Advisor at Union Bank, the panel included Dr. Lynn Reaser, Chief Economist at Point Loma Nazarene University, Dr. Constance Carroll, Chancellor at San Diego Community College District, and Dr. Randolph Ward, County Superintendent of Schools. They are thoughtful, caring, committed educators and each brought amazing perspective to the subject of the future of education. I have my own view.

Without talking about age, just let me say that once upon a time I was an educator, and I taught primarily English and Journalism. I also have taught in higher education from time to time, including one semester at the University of San Diego, my MBA Alma Mater, in their Masters program, and I currently mentor USD MBA students. I care deeply about education and the future of education, and I think you should too, and here’s why.

Children starting primary school this year will be retiring in about 2070. They start out with extraordinary capacities. I am a big fan of Sir Ken Robinson and I once saw him speak. He is an expert on education and particularly creativity, and he contends that all kids have tremendous talents and we squander them. “Kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they’ll have a go. “ And I can’t help but mention the standout economic value of creativity to Steve Jobs and Apple.

In a TED talk in 2006, Sir Robinson said, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original, and by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They are afraid to be wrong. We run our companies like this, we stigmatize mistakes. We are now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. “ Sir Robinson asserts that we are educating our children out of their creative capacities by focusing on not making mistakes.

“We don’t grow into our capacity to be creative, we grow OUT of it,” he asserted. He proposed that the whole education system is designed “to educate progressively from the waist up, focusing on their heads and slightly to the right side of their heads, and there’s a significant human potential cost to the lack of attention to dance, art and other creative endeavors. When education cuts the budget, those are the first things to go in favor of the more “practical” things.”

Here’s another interesting perspective which I got from the same talk. Jonas Salk said, “In 50 years, if all insects were to disappear all forms of life on earth would end. If all human beings were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life would thrive.” Consider that it is possible we are in our own way and we aren’t maturing very fast as a human race at all!

Personally, I assess senior executives for a living, and one indicator that I look at in my assessment tool of choice, the Harrison Assessment is the paradoxical relationship between a preference for an analytical approach to decision-making and an intuitive one. Highly successful people, the research shows, have a preference for BOTH. Mostly, in almost a thousand experiences, I observe that there is a preference for analytical over intuitive among senior executives. Not good, not bad, just very interesting.

I am particularly aware of the paradoxical relationship between both the need for education and the demands being put on education to pull rabbits out of hats to please many constituents, and that Americans aren’t particularly generous when it comes to their spending on things that don’t directly benefit them. It is my opinion that there is a tendency toward popularity rather than common sense being the driver of how decisions are made in the public sector.

So my empathy is great for the job these educators have. My call to action is that we all muster the courage and commitment to look at any limiting beliefs of decision makers in Sacramento (let’s just tackle California for now), and how their limitations keep Dr. Ward, for instance, from being able to provide the progressive education using technology that would enhance student learning as they come to higher education. Stick your nose into education and look at the product we’re bringing into the workforce. Do NOT stick your head in the sand! What I garnered from the presentation is that Legislators want butts in seats to matter, but the world has moved on. Dr. Ward is a proponent of education that is current and relevant. You should care, and you should ask, and you should vote.

I am a BIG fan of Robert Edelman’s because he has managed to quantify a very difficult phenomenon to quantify. Trust lives in the “in between,” it isn’t my job nor is it your job to foster trust, trust is in the realm of the relationship and we are both accountable for it. I liken trust to marriage — I have a friend who jokes, “marriage is an institution, and I’m not ready for an institution yet.” Marriage is an AGREEMENT between to people that implies a lot of behaviors must align for the marriage to withhold the test of time.

Similarly, trust is created and destroyed by the actions and words that occur over time between people. By the aggregate of those actions and those words, trust is either buttressed like a fortress or torn down.

Edelman’s message here is that today’s trust buttressing involves more than it used to for corporations, and the U.S. as an aggregate corporate community has been slipping, other countries have been gaining ground.

There is much that could be inferred by this slippage of trust. Suffice it to say, as Robert Porter Lynch says, trust is the bedrock of democracy and we are hanging by a thin thread. We just don’t know when or how our Tsunami might happen, and we are precipitously close to that event, or those events.

I have spent considerable time speaking with business friends about trust in leaders.  These conversations were prompted by last year’s results of the 10-year annual Edelman Trust Barometer survey.  They sampled 4,475 opinion leaders in two age groups (25-34 and 35-64) in 20 countries, a 30-minute telephone survey of “informed publics.”  (www.edelman.com/trust/2009/)

One disturbing finding that led to these conversations is that only 17 percent of the 35-64 year old “informed publics” trust information given by a CEO about his or her company.  This is six-year low.

For better or for worse, my understanding is that, in terms of influence, it only takes about 15% of people agreeing to anything (a philosophy, a code of behavior, a belief) to change the tide and move the masses.  Robert Porter Lynch, who has done considerable research in the area of trust and leaders, posits that trust is the bedrock of democracy, and when our trust is damaged, we are doing damage to the very principles upon which this country is founded.  We are precipitously close to that tipping point.

Since I coach CEOs and their executive teams, I am personally appalled.  But more appalling than the sense that our business leaders have behaved badly and deserve this reputation — some do and most don’t — is my concern that all CEOs have been painted with the same brush as those who deserve to be penalized and put away for a very long time, damaging others’ reputations by association.  There are leaders who do wrong intentionally, and others who are simply careless.  In a Financial Times some months ago, for example, BP’s CEO Tony Hayward admitted that they were not prepared for a category disaster he called “low probability, high risk.” Indeed.

BP, after an estimated $20 bn leak with costs to our environment and the human psyche that are unconscionable and immeasurable finally began looking into their strategy and tools to resolve such risks.  Tony Hayward is not a bad person, but inadequate thinking and planning has exacted an extraordinarily high toll.  Regardless, whether they make a mistake of wrongful thinking, or they are out to get us as was the case with Bernie Madoff, bad decisions of those in power cost us trust in leaders inclusively.

A recent release that should be a MUST READ for every executive in the world is Herb Baum’s The Transparent Leader, in which Baum said, “A lot of executives who made headlines (because of a scandal) were just plain white-collar thieves who deserved to do time.  And there were others who were basically good people who made compromises when they shouldn’t have.  They stretched the truth because they thought they had to, and they made some business decisions that were short on integrity. They had risen to leadership positions, but they failed because they didn’t understand how to be open with various constituents and they were unable to build a culture base on trust in the organizations they led.”

Let’s assume leaders should do more to warrant our trust.  BP’s Hayward has 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 factor.  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 they are invisible to the press in these stories.  So often our assumptions 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 alluding to 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 next thing you know that person was burned at the stake.

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.

Remember Tiny Tim?  OK, that dates me.  It occurs that many, many people are not trusting today, and I’ve recently read a book that describes perhaps the CORRELATION and not the CAUSE of this lack of trust.  I have a client, a master of analytics, who reminded me of that distinction.  It is a good one. Where do you go to get challenged in your assumptions about how the world works? I have had my teeth rattled by the book, “Healthy at 100,” by John Robbins.

While the book points to cultures that have proven to not be as old as John Robbins (and others) espouse, the Okinawan culture seems to have hit upon a way to live that is life-giving.  What is important to me (as someone working to improve relationships and hiring within businesses) is that the life-giving factor in some — or perhaps all — of these cultures is how we relate to one another.  Where there is trust and openness and love, there is health.  Where there is protection and survival of the fittest, there is dis-ease.

Now I personally have found myself cranky lately, and fortunately for those who are running into me these days, I’m taking some retreat and reflect time over Thanksgiving to get back to giving thanks.  So I apologize in advance to anyone having to deal with me between now and then.  I’m still cranky. And I know it is not healthy.

I am cranky about the lack of commitment to commitments.  We SAY we want to be healthy and take unhealthy actions.  We SAY we want to improve communications and don’t reach out to say what needs to be said.  We SAY we’re interested in transforming our relationships, and we continue to act like jerks…  I’m not the only cranky one here. Is it just me, or do you get this experience as well?

Part of what makes me cranky is the feeling that I’m tiptoeing through tulips because I’m not sure what’s on the other side of my walk…. if I’m straight about my VIEW of what’s happening, I might just get whammed with another lesson in life, another opportunity to be reminded that my truth is not everyone’s truth. I already know that!

I think Tiny Tim was having more fun tiptoeing through his tulips than I am these days — it feels more like an aversion to standing up for some of the basics, like clear tax laws, clear health care rules, clear anything!  Why are billions of dollars NOT going to innovation?  Because everyone is afraid, nothing is clear. I would almost settle for bad news over no news these days.  Forget I just said that.  Now I’m back to tiptoeing….

What I WANT is some clarity in the U.S. today, and I would clearly like to see a move toward trust, relationship, caring for the whole as well as the individuals.  I would like to see it in the Wall Street Journal and the business magazines and in our newspapers.  What we pay attention to is what we get more of.  That is a universal principle.  Seems like we’re paying a TON of attention to what does NOT work, and we get progressively more of that.

Thanks to Mary Lore, here is my inquiry. I wonder what I (we) might explore as a community conversation that would engender more trust?

In that same weekend I heard Dick Bruso talk about the importance of the congruence of your brand with your authentic self (Heard Above the Noise), and Carol Desmond talk about the Alphabet Soup of Trademarks (see my prior blog), and Steve Cohen, author of Mess Management; Lessons from a Corporate Hit Man talk about what he does as a corporate hit man, which is extract businesses from their messy people problems.  I got to see Tom Hill interview Peter Strople, a powerful force for good.  Peter and his wife have started a foster care agency for children, Refuge House Foster Care and Adoption Agency.  At our November gathering, Larry and I had dinner with Peter — what a delightful man with a very big heart.

Tom Hill, the magician who created these great gatherings of people, is a magnet for the likes of Peter, Dick, Steve, Carol and Laurie, and fortunately for me — me!  As I continue to be privileged to garner his support and this group’s support in growing myself and my business, I will continue to share their insights from time to time.

What strikes me is that these committed, educated, outstanding presenters are all leaders in their lives who have stepped forward to help leaders be better leaders.  Laurie’s experience and insights combined with building on the work of James Fisher is valuable for the perspective that it can bring anyone trying to lead today.  It answers the questions, “What stage are we at in our business growth process?” and “How should I, as the leader, act now?”

A focus of mine with leaders is bench strength, which partners well with Laurie’s focus on growth stages and appropriate actions as a leader, because if you do not have the right people in the right seat on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus (Good to Great, Jim Collins) you (leader) are not going to take that bus too darned far or fast! I will have the pleasure of pleasure of presenting that emphasis at the next conference in February. Can’t wait!

Without some troops I would not tackle a project like shifting the locus of my business from my computer to another system so that others could share it.  Having that locus of control shifted makes many things possible that weren’t possible before.

While I have them (before they move on with their REAL lives), Ipek (on the left) and Semih (on the right) are making possible this transition to Cooler Email and other great tools of productivity.

On a related topic, I attended a business gathering last evening where we talked about execution of strategy.  The overarching theme of the evening was that for there to be a shift in the collective consciousness of bringing our heart to the business world, and not just our head, we all need to work for the common good and make decisions with the common good in mind, not just our selfish interests.

This is a theme of mine, and fortunately not JUST mine!  Working for the common good means that as we go about our regular work, we bring in the fine art of considering how what WE do will impact others.

I have helped Semih find a school where he will get his MBA, and I will help Ipek get a job.  I met these two young adults through an earlier intern, Orcun, whom I helped find a job and in doing so I lost him as an intern.  He replaced himself by introducing me to his two friends who needed internships.  THAT, my friends, is the FINE art of getting things done!  When I released my need for Orcun to be my intern, little did I know that I would end up doubling my workforce of interns!  My deciding based on the common good turned out to be good for me, good for Orcun, and good for Ipek and Semih.

I think that’s the way the world REALLY works, and it is NOT intuitive any more than leaning into the curve on a motorcycle is intuitive.  It is a choice, and in the end things get done that should get done, even though in the beginning we don’t see the whole picture.