9/11 and the Power of Story
I’m writing these words a few days before the 18th anniversary of what we all remember as 9/11—those horrible attacks on the US that led to the deaths of thousands. Most of you remember that day. You have a personal story or two. You know where you were and what you felt. Even though you’ll be receiving this a few days after the day of commemoration, I want you to ponder something with me. Let me “go broad” to explain it. Many times in these Leading Thoughts, I’ve urged you to get good at “story.” We are learning that story[read more]
Your Next Hire is a Chance for Change
Ponder this question with me. When you need to make a new hire, what pool do you look to? In other words, where do you go for the new blood you need? Hiring is a tremendous opportunity. It is not just a chance to fill a void, but to broaden, to deepen, to add freshness and creativity. It is a moment in which you can both redefine your firm a bit but also take it closer to your vision. Yet most leaders hire lazily, fearfully. I hope this isn’t you. Many leaders play it too safe when they bring in[read more]
Summer’s End Q&A
This is the last Leading Thoughts of August 2019. Next week we step into “emotional fall.” I know the astronomists tell us that fall doesn’t start for a while yet, but our kids and grandkids are off to school, football teams of every type are practicing, temperatures are starting to moderate a bit, and I walked through an Atlanta airport mid-day yesterday that was nearly empty. Summer is over, folks. It’s fall, dang it! So before we get all focused on fall agendas and leadership, let’s close out the summer in this Leading Thoughts. I’ve received a lot of questions[read more]
Managing Phone Interference
In these Leading Thoughts, I usually talk about big broad themes of leadership and the care of a leader’s soul. Sometimes, though, the matters I find hindering leaders are so practical and personal that they are almost embarrassing to bring up. Still, if mentioning them will help you, I’ll do it. Here’s one of them. Suppose I told you that because of an irritating personal habit, I’ve seen a person get passed over for promotion recently. What if I also said that this same habit kept another person from being hired and assured that a third person was targeted for[read more]
Get Trusted Feedback
It is mid-August. We are back from our summer vacations. The kids are heading off to school. Most of us are diving back into agendas and goals for the last part of the calendar year. We are eager to achieve and end the year well. So, it is at this time of year that many of the people I work with start asking me a question: “What is one thing I can do that will rapidly upgrade my leadership impact on others?” Happy to help. Here it is: Get raw, trusted feedback at the most practical level. Here’s why. Most[read more]
What is a Happy Warrior?
There is a phrase I use often. It has great meaning for me. Recently, a number of you have asked me to define what it means for leaders. I’m happy to do this. In fact, this request has brought me home to what I believe about this phrase and, given the world news we’ve all been enduring of late, I’m eager to offer this vision to you. The phrase is “happy warrior.” In my mind right now is an image from a favorite movie, Chariots of Fire. I hope you’ve seen it. The movie opens with a scene of athletes[read more]
Emerging into the New
Let me describe to you an art that is going to be increasingly essential in our generation. It is an art of innovation, but it comes first from seeing our lives and work in a certain light. We hear often that someone has “reinvented themselves.” This happens when someone develops something completely new in their lives that has little connection to what they did previously. The actor became a brain surgeon, for example. I admire these types of transformations but most of us won’t undergo anything quite so dramatic. Instead, we will “emerge” into new things that grow out of[read more]
Become a Champion
Let me tell you about one of the biggest mistakes I ever made in leadership. When I was just out of college, I went to work in West Texas. Now, my life prior to that had been about as foreign to West Texas as it could have been. I grew up the son of a US Army officer and largely in Europe. I moved often and had a highly international perspective on the world given where I lived and my father’s work in military intelligence. The people I met in West Texas at that time were wonderful, but they were[read more]
Transforming Teams
There is a single question I want you to ask of yourself regarding every person who works for you. If you do, it will make a massive difference in how you lead. Let me explain. There is no question that business is about offering services and creating products in pursuit of profit. It is fine to define business this way—in part. Yet it is also important for us to view business as a means of enhancing lives, both the lives of our customers and those on our team. Let’s talk about the team. One of your goals as a leader[read more]
Consider the History
I’ve watched a clumsy mistake cause some leaders vast problems recently. I want to describe this mistake and help you avoid it. It has to do with heritage. Not ethnic or racial heritage, but work heritage. You see, people long to feel themselves as part of forces that move through time. They want to feel united with the people who came before them. They want to belong to purposes that preceded them and will continue after them. They also long for feeling that their work makes a contribution to history, whether it is the history of their company, their people,[read more]