I’ve met numerous leaders in my career. Some did a better job than others at actually leading. But few were what I would call “inspirational leaders.”
By inspirational, I simply that they had the ability to motivate others to accomplish something significant, perhaps even heroic. William Wallace was such a man.
Remember his speech in BraveHeart before the battle of Stirling Bridge. He said,
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This morning I ran the Country Music Half Marathon. This was the longest race I have ever done. I finished in 2:39:27. This was 11 minutes faster than my goal of 2:50.
When I first began training, I just hoped to finish. Then, as my training progressed, I got a little more ambitious. I set a goal of 2:20. However, about three weeks ago, I came down with a really bad cold that turned into bronchitis. It took me two weeks to heal up, and I was not able to run for this entire time.
Trust is to an organization what oil is to a car engine. It keeps the moving parts from seizing up and stopping forward motion.
But trust is not something you can take for granted. It takes months—sometimes years—to build. Unfortunately, you can lose it overnight.
Some people seem to have a knack for building trust. When they speak, others take them at their word. When they are absent, people speak well of them. Even when they make a mistake, people give them the benefit of the doubt.
I hate cynicism. It is like cancer to the human soul. It is especially deadly when it infects an organization.
I thought we had pretty much eliminated it from Thomas Nelson. I was hoping the disease was in remission. But, this morning I discovered that it is still alive and well—at least in parts of our Company. (In order to protect the guilty, I won’t give any details.) The worst part is that a few of our leaders are manifesting symptoms of the disease.
Dictionary.com defines a cynic as
a person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions and who disbelieves in or minimizes selfless acts or disinterested points of view.
Usually, when people think about selling, they think of something that goes on outside the company. Sales reps call on external customers in an attempt to sell the company’s products or services. But what people often forget is the importance of selling people inside the company.
The truth is that internal selling is far more important than external selling. If you can’t sell the people inside your company on your product or service, you don’t have a chance of selling those outside the company.
Why? Because sooner or later you are dependent on other people inside your organization to get the message out. Before you can do that you have to get the message in. If they are not convinced, they can’t be convincing.
Many years ago, I had a boss that drove me crazy. He insisted on micro-managing me. He wanted to know every move I made. I had to furnish daily status reports with every call, every conversation, every project, etc. It really got to me. I tried to be patient, but I eventually quit. I just couldn’t succeed in that environment.
In this situation, I don’t think I gave him any reason to distrust me. This was just his management style. Everyone complained about it. He was simply a bad boss. Unfortunately, some are like that.
But even the best bosses exercise supervision. That’s their job. Frankly, I don’t mind accountability. You probably don’t either. I just don’t want it to turn into meddling. I don’t want to spend more time managing my boss than managing my work.
I only have 16 days until the Country Music Half Marathon. My training was going pretty well until recently.
I didn’t run at all during Holy Week. I had two authors in town, plus all the additional services at Church. (In our Church, we have lots of services. We often say, “If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the liturgy.”) I just had more to do than I could physically get done.
Today has been a long and busy day. I haven’t had a chance to write until now. And, it’s late, so I am simply going to point you to a provocative article on corporate transparency that ran in the March Issue of Wired magazine. It is called The See-Through CEO by Clive Thompson. (Thanks to Michael Gamma for bringing this article to my attention.)
Don’t dismiss this article because you’re not a CEO. Thompson’s observations and insights apply to everyone in leadership today. He says,
Transparency is a judo move. Your customers are going to poke around in your business anyway, and your workers are going to blab about internal info—so why not make it work for you by turning everyone into a partner in the process and inviting them to do so?
This is an article definitely worth pondering and perhaps even discussing with your colleagues.
Technorati Tags: culture, leadership, transparency
All of us blow it from time to time. But some mistakes are worse than others. Some are so grievous that they threaten to undo a career. Such was the case this week when Don Imus insulted the Rutgers women’s basketball team by using a degrading racial slur to describe them.
It’s hard to imagine the situation getting worse, but it did. Imus added insult to injury by completely botching his apology yesterday on Al Sharpton’s radio show. If there’s anything redemptive in this situation—and I admit there’s not much—it’s the fact that this situation can serve as a vivid example of how not to execute an apology.
I’ve had more than 20 bosses in my career. I worked well with nearly all of them. Most of them were surprisingly average—even forgettable.
One was brilliant and became a role model. He took responsibility when things went badly. He gave others credit when things went well. He exuded integrity and is still a dear friend. But he was the exception.
One boss was malignantly incompetent. He couldn’t do anything right. I dreaded every meeting I ever had with him. He was a nice guy but burned up and checked out. I think he retired mentally about two years before the company let his body go. I was honestly embarrassed to tell anyone I worked for him.
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