Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Invite Inspiration…

Last week my “co-mom” Becky  Fall put this marvelous video on her facebook page. [BTW, Becky is my daughter Rachel's mother-in-law, and when Rachel and Becky's son Will got married 5 years ago, we realized there was no word (at least in English) for our relationship to each other, so we coined one: "co-mom."]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n1GtOaL7XU

I found it hugely inspiring; I fully intend – barring illness or death – to be as active, loving and full of interest and joy in my nineties as Ms. Porchon-Lynch.  It’s wonderful to see it in action; it makes my intention seem more grounded in reality, more achievable.

And it made me realize how helpful it is, when you’re trying to do something that defies common wisdom, to know that others have done it.  It’s much easier for us to break through to a new possibility if we have even a single example of it being possible.

A few weeks ago I was talking to my son-in-law to be (my other daughter’s fiance) about this – he was saying that he felt most people were stuck in old ways of living and thinking, and that even if there were a few innovators here and there, it didn’t really matter.  I disagreed, saying that I see each of those “few innovators” as having a huge ripple effect of positive influence on society.  I gave him the example of Roger Bannister, the first man to run a sub-four-minute mile. Before Bannister’s achievement, in 1954, it was widely believed that running a mile in less than 4 minutes was physiologically impossible.  The record for the fastest running of the mile had been stuck at just over 4 minutes for 9 years.

Once Bannister broke that record (on May 6, 1954, running a mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds), it was only 46 days till someone else broke that record – the psychological barrier was down.

So if you want to do something that most people think is unlikely, or even impossible – be vital and active in your 90s; become a great leader if you’re not a “born” leader; start a successful business without much (or any) business experience…find all the examples you can of others who are actually doing it.

And break through.

The Healing Power of Story

A colleague of mine sent me a really interesting article from the NYT other other day, about the importance of ‘shared narrative’ in making people emotionally healthy. About 20 years ago, some researchers noted that kids who knew a lot about their own families tended to do better in challenging situations.  They then created something they called the “Do You Know?” scale that asked children 20 questions, such as, ”Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know the story of your birth?”

It turned out that the “Do You Know?” questionnaire was an astonishingly accurate predictor.  The article goes on to say, “The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned. The “Do You Know?” scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness.”

This reinforced a deep personal intuition I’ve always had as a parent: when my kids were small, we spent time talking about my parents and siblings; the experiences I’d had growing up; how their dad and I met; what we did in the world of work.  We also talked about what they had been like as babies and small children, how they were alike and different from other members of the family.  Finally, we told them about difficult things that had happened, and trials and tribulations overcome.  Somehow I knew this was an important conversation for them to be a part of – and I was often surprised and saddened by how little the kids’ friends knew about their  families: they often didn’t even know what their parents did for a living.  We’re continuing that into the next generation, telling our granddaughter stories about ourselves and those who came before.

But it also reinforces something I’ve observed as a business consultant for the last thirty years: companies and teams that have a strong, mainly positive shared narrative about themselves also tend to be healthier, more flexible and more resilient in response to difficulty. For example, we worked with someone last year to help us further clarify our Proteus brand.  She interviewed a number of staff members and consultants to find out about our current understanding of our own brand.  And one thing she found is that each of us said very much thing same thing about what it was like working as part of our team, how we treat each other and our clients, what’s important to us.  In other words, even though we needed to get crisper about our brand communication (we did), we had a really strong, consistent shared narrative about Proteus and ourselves as “Proteans.”  I feel the power of that every day: it draws us together and helps us overcome the challenges of distance, the inevitable misunderstandings and disappointments of human interaction, and the ups and downs of growing a business.

We’ve been gathering around the campfire to share our stories since time immemorial…and it sounds like we need to keep doing it.

An Exaltation of Larks

There’s a name for phrases like this: in the English language, collective nouns for groups of a specific animal are called “terms of venery.”  For instance, “a pride of lions,” or “a gaggle of geese.”  As I understand it, this tradition began in Europe in the middle ages – and it became a fun and fashionable thing to do to create whimsical and ever-more-exotic terms of venery.  In fact, in the 15th century there was even a fad for extending terms of venery to groups of human beings (“a sentence of judges,” “a melody of harpers”).

Some of these terms are simply wonderful.  ”An exaltation of larks”  is one of my favorites, but I also like “a murder of crows” and “a clowder of cats.”  I love how these terms were created to capture some essential quality of the animal described.

Over the past couple of days, I was in Austin to attend 800CEOREAD’s Author Pow Wow – an absolutely marvelous, fun, useful yearly conference of business book authors and the people who support and partner with us in the creation of our books: publishers, publicists, social media consultants, presentation skills experts, ghostwriters, agents.

It’s so great.  Spending two days with 40 smart, curious, funny, collaborative people who are trying to figure out how to teach and share important ideas in an industry that’s changing faster than we can name the changes: Exhilarating. Inspiring. Reassuring.

So, my extreme thanks to 800CEOREAD, and Pow Wow sponsors Cave Henricks Communications, Shelton Interactive, and Greenleaf Book Group.

And I’ve decided that the proper term for our Pow Wow group is “an insight of business book authors.”

Six Years and Counting

I started this blog six years ago today (time flies when you’re having fun…)  on the advice of a young publicist who worked for the publisher of my first book, Growing Great Employees, which had just been launched.  I remember clearly being daunted by the suggestion: I knew what a blog was, I had actually read some blogs.  But to create my own?

She recommended that I go to TypePad, where there was a really good, remarkably simple set-up-your-own-blog tutorial. A few hours later: voila!  Blogging!

So here we are, six years later, and social media is not only not daunting to me – it’s fascinating, fun and useful.  My social media platform  has become a big part of my brand – this blog, my Forbes blog, twitter, facebook, the Insider List, our LinkedIn group, Pinterest - and a great way to interact with people who share an interest in our work around leader readiness.  A big change in a fairly short period of time.

But, on the other hand, some things are remarkably consistent over time.  My initial post was about Robert Nardelli, who had just gotten fired from Home Depot. And even that specific situation is no longer current, the point of the article (that leaders ignore the “people part” of business at their peril) is still completely relevant. An excerpt:

At the same time, we’ve relegated the actual nuts-and-bolts people part of leadership – finding great people, bringing them into the organization well, providing them with the skills and knowledge they need in order to support the organization’s success – to a kind of second-class citizenship; it’s there, but it’s not nearly as interesting or sexy. Even though we all nodded wisely when Jim Collins told us, in Good to Great, that the first task of a “Level 5 Leader” is to get the right people on the bus, sitting in the right seats (yes, we knew that! we said to each other), we still behave as though people management is a kind of necessary evil; something that middle managers do when they’re not doing their real jobs. Company sloganeering about “people are our most important asset” and “we grow and develop our people” aside, people leadership is just not that cool these days. Executives even say, disparagingly, of other executives, “Well, I guess he or she is a good manager” – implying that the person is a plodder, not innovative, not much of a leader.

I wrote a post a few months ago at Forbes titled “Manage or Lead? Do Both.” – making pretty much the same point.

In other words, 6 years and over 400 posts later, even though social media has evolved dramatically, creating new business opportunities and consumar expectations in its wake; even though the entire media landscape overall is morphing even as we speak; even though national and global economies are transforming; even though a new generation is coming of age…still, the core elements of leading and managing remain the same – they’re based on timeless human needs and aspirations.

In fact, I’ll make a prediction: I believe that six years from now I’ll still be writing about managing and leading well, in a way that inspires and elicits people’s best, that builds strong teams and organizations and creates great results. I’ll be talking about why it’s important, what gets in the way, and how to do it. I’ll be inviting you to share your experiences and insights as well, so we can all keep developing our understanding and putting it into practice.

I’ll see you there…

Why I Love Talking About Leadership

[NOTE: To all my long-time readers who are used to seeing a post from me at least once a week; we got hacked and had to clean and move the site - it took a while.  My apologies!]

Last week I did an interview about Leading So People Will Follow with Wayne Hurlburt on Blog Talk Radio. Wayne has interviewed me for each of my books, and it’s always a great conversation: he asks thoughtful, insightful questions, and he’s genuinely curious about the answers. Unlike a lot of interviewers, he reads his authors’ books thoroughly and tries to make a personal connection with what he reads…it makes for a great interview.

And I realized, as we were talking - I love talking about leadership.

Here’s why.  If you define leadership, very broadly, as influencing and guiding others toward a positive outcome, then we’re each called upon to lead in various ways throughout our lives.  The opportunity, and the responsibility, to lead well is an intrinsic part of the human condition.  Learning to lead well is critical to success – ours, our followers, our enterprises of all kinds.  It’s really important to help people do it as well as possible.

Those are the rational reasons.  The heart reason, the thing that makes talking about leadership feel like singing, at least to me, is: leadership is a noble endeavor that – done well – calls out the best in us.  It allows us to operate on all cylinders, to inspire and enable people to work together to go beyond their individual limitations and achieve great things.

I love helping people become the best leaders they can be. I get huge satisfaction from supporting people to understand the power of leadership, and their own potential to be leaders, and then offering them the tools they need to undertake that important journey.

So thanks to Wayne, and to all my interviewers, clients, colleagues and readers, who give me the opportunity to sing every day.

Beauty and Collaboration Through Technology

A friend just sent me a very lovely thing the other day.  It’s a ‘virtual choir’ performance of Water Night, a piece of music composed and conducted by Eric Whitacre.

What’s a virtual choir, you might ask?  In this case, it’s over 3,000 people from all over the world, each recording his or her part of the piece individually.  Then the individual voices are edited all together to form a musical whole.  Whitacre sent out an instructional video beforehand, first offering performance information (insights and direction about tempo, expression, style, diction, etc.), then conducting the piece for each singer to use as a guide in recording his or her part.

It’s an amazing accomplishment overall, and there are many wonderful individual stories contained in the creation of it, as well. A women whose village in Africa didn’t have internet spent two days downloading Whitacre’s conducting onto her cell phone. A man whose eyesight had deteriorated to the point where he could no longer see a regular conductor was able to sit close to the screen and blow up Whitacre’s image enough to follow his conducting. A woman who sat in hospice holding her mother’s hand while she recorded her part.

And the result is spine-tingling gorgeous, both aurally and visually. In the video, the thumbnails of the thousands of singers build into  a wall of faces before Whitacre as he conducts and as the haunting harmonies develop.

How marvelous that we can use technology not only to do things faster, better, cheaper – but to create new kinds of beauty, as well.

To All My Charming Gardeners

I just got a wonderful Thanksgiving message from a woman I know only on LinkedIn  – her name is Sheryl Brown, and she’s a member of our Leading So People Will Follow Group.  She sent a heartfelt Thanksgiving communication, thanking all the recipients (folks to whom she’s connected on LinkedIn) for their efforts, and for their positive impact on her life.  I loved the specificity and genuineness of her message – it wasn’t just “thanks for being you”; Sheryl clearly spent some time and thought thinking about what her LinkedIn connections do that makes her life better.

And she started out her post with this marvelous quote:

“Let’s be grateful for those who give us happiness; they are the charming gardeners who make our soul bloom.”

                                          – Marcel Proust

Her post, and that quote, have inspired me to thank all the ‘charming gardeners’ in my life:  I’m surrounded by so very many people who support and catalyze my happiness.  Every day, you – my family, friends, colleagues and clients -  inspire me with your affection, kindness, clarity, and hopefulness.  You remove obstacles for me and others; you cheer  my accomplishments and commiserate with my mistakes.  You allow me to see myself more clearly.  You help me – and you let me help you.

I know that I couldn’t be who I am or do what I do without the love and support of those around me.

So thank you.  And in this season of giving thanks, may all the ways in which you support others come back to you in generous measure.

What I’m Learning From My New Book

This may seem like an odd title for a post from me (e.g., Wait – what?  Don’t you already know the stuff in your own book?), but I’m talking about all the things I’m learning from the experience of publishing it.

Over the last six years, as I’ve lived through 5 pub dates (hardcover and paperback of my first two books, and the hardcover of the new one), the main thing I learned is that an author has to be the CEO of his or her own books. Nobody else will be.  You are the person with the most to gain or lose, and you need to be the keeper of the flame; to be the primary person responsible for assuring success (of course, that also implies that you have to know what success looks like for you – but that’s a whole other post). I feel as though I’ve gotten better and better at this, though I believe I still have lots to learn.

I had a big new ah-ha with this book, though. I experienced much more than in my previous book-CEO incarnations that – just as for the CEO of any company -  the team around that person is critical to the success of the endeavor.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have a truly talented and dedicated team on this book.  Now that the initial push for the book has calmed down, I have the bandwidth to reflect on how supported I’ve felt throughout the process – and how well the team has created a foundation for the continued success of the book.

Celebrating the team’s success – at the launch party

Here’s what I mean. At the beginning of the project, as soon as the deal with Jossey-Bass was finalized, the core team – me, my agent Jim Levine, my editor Susan Williams, publicists Barbara Cave Henricks and Kaila Nickel (traditional media) and Rusty Shelton (social media), my business partner Jeff Mitchell, and my assistant and social media wingman Dan Camins – got together to do a ‘mini-vision and strategy session’ for the book.  From that we created a six-month project calendar that included every key deliverable, who was responsible, and when it was due. (Just to give you a sense of the complexity of the endeavor – there were about 120 items on the project calendar.)

But that was just the core team.  There was a whole separate subteam working on creating and validating the Accepted Leader Assessment, based on the six attributes at the core of Leading So People Will Follow.  That team included Sue Gebelein, a great resource who gave us good counsel and connected us with DSI, our assessment partner (they built and manage the assessment online), and their point person/project manager Carol Brekke, and with Marcia Sysma, our validator. The assessment team also included Cindy Franklin, my lovely Proteus colleague who gave of her time to support the validation effort, and Kishauna DeCarmo in our New York office, who is now the administrative queen of the finished ALA assessment.

And that’s still not all!  My savvy, smart and supportive editor at Jossey-Bass, Susan Williams, has brought along her excellent publishing team, as well – Rob Brandt, Amy Packard, Brian Grimm, Alina Poniewaz-Bolton, Bernadette Walter, Adrian Morgan, Carol Hartland and Sophia Ho: marketing, publicity, sales, art, editorial…all so competent, easy to work with and supportive.

And then there’s my own team:  this time, there was a lot more collaboration internal to Proteus, as well.  Jeff and I stayed connected throughout, to focus on how best to support the book’s launch with products and services.  We worked with our consultants to update our half-day Leading So People Will Follow training module (which has been a part of larger Proteus training programs for a number of years), and to create and begin testing our full 1.5 day Leading leadership development program. We also refined our Leadership Coaching offer, a version of our executive coaching program targeted to very senior leaders and including the Accepted Leader Assessment, and will be making that available through all our executive coaches.

Yet another effort in support of leaders – we started a LinkedIn group, Leading So People Will Follow, to offer a community online for experienced and aspiring leaders to ask questions, offer insights, and share learning – and my team mates on that part of the project are my daughter Rachel Van Carpels, who manages and moderates the site, and Cindy Franklin, who (once again out of the goodness of her heart) offers discussion topics and supports conversations.

And the whole Proteus team came together to create and staff our great book launch and awards ceremony party on October 1st – definitely a community effort!

And finally, there’s my darling husband Patrick.  He is core to the success of this book and any other success I might have, in more ways than I can possibly express. His unequivocal and continual support, joy and love, and his daily efforts on my behalf, make all of this possible.

As you can see, it really has been a team effort.  And, back to the title of the post, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about the power of team throughout this process.  And I also like to think that I’ve followed my own advice: I’m doing my very best to be a fully followable CEO — to be far-sighted, passionate, courageous, wise, generous and trustworthy.  It’s a lesson well worth learning, and I’m making the effort every day.

Getting the Word Out

The publication push for Leading So People Will Follow began about two weeks ago.  First, we had the launch party and awards ceremony, with the initial finished copies of books available for people.  The next day we found out that Amazon’s editors had selected it as one of the 10 Best Business Books for October (and one of the 36 best new books overall).

After that, it became a bit of a blur: emails to all and sundry; an announcement to the Insider List; writing articles and electronic interviews, and having ones I had written previously go up online; the official release on Amazon; asking folks to put up Amazon interviews if they liked the book (many thanks to all who have!).

And then last Thursday, we found out that the book is one of “Jack Covert Selects.” This is a big deal to me – Jack is the founder and CEO of 800CEOREAD, and the author of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, and is widely held to be the arbiter of all things good in business books.  He selects just three books each month (of the 1,000 or so business books published every month) to highlight as his favorites.  I was thrilled and honored to be included.

And it’s still going on – over the next six weeks I’ll do 8 or 10 live interviews, write half a dozen more, give a couple of speeches. All for the purpose of letting people know the book is out there.

Then it’s up to you, and everyone who’s interested in understanding what it means to be a followable leader and how to become one, to hear about the book, read it, and recommend it to others.

It’s kind of like running with kite till it catches the wind…

Pat Langer’s Trustworthiness Makes Change Easier

“Pat Langer is a calming presence.  Partly it’s because she’s very thoughtful and measured in her responses; partly it’s because she’s such a great listener.  But I’m convinced that it’s primarily because she’s so entirely trustworthy: in dealing with her, you immediately relax – you feel safe.

The first time I ever met Pat, she had just been brought on as the head of HR, Legal and Business Affairs for Lifetime Television.  I knew nothing about her or her background: all I knew was that some woman named Patricia had been hired to oversee these key staff functions.

We spent most of that first fairly brief conversation talking about the work that Proteus had been doing with Lifetime over the preceding 3 or 4 years.  As we said goodbye, and I left her office, I realized two things: I had complete faith that she would respect the confidentiality of anything I had told her, and I was quite sure that she would follow through on her commitment to set up a second meeting.

Over the years, that initial sense of Pat’s trustworthiness has been affirmed again and again.  And it’s not just my sense:  when I mentioned to one of her colleagues that I was planning on using Pat as a “trustworthy exemplar” in this book, this person’s response was, “Good choice – Pat’s picture should be in the dictionary under the definition for the word ‘integrity.’”

             — From Chapter 8 of Leading So People Will Follow

I enjoy seeing and experiencing the effects of Pat’s trustworthiness.  Since January of 2011, Pat has been the EVP of HR for NBCUniversal, and it’s been a wild time. She joined right around the time Comcast became the majority owner of NBCUniversal, and so walked into a situation that involved huge change, massive uncertainty and high anxiety for all involved.

I was sure, though, that those around her would quickly come to see her thoughtfulness, honesty and fairness, and that it would have a profound positive influence on the situation.  I’ve seen that happen: both the HR community at NBCUniversal and the folks in the business units now regard her as a core point of stability and clarity as they continue to define their new world.

Observing and working with Pat in this situation has really reinforced for me the importance of having trustworthy leaders during times of great change.  Change is tough for people, and one of the things that makes it hardest is the heightened level of ambiguity. When a leader is trustworthy people can rely on the fact that he or she will tell them the truth about what’s happening and what will happen – which reduces the degree of ambiguity significantly.  A really trustworthy leader will even tell you when he or she can’t tell you!  I’ve seen Pat do this a number of times over the past couple of years, saying some version of, “I’m not free to talk about this yet because of confidentiality issues (or legal issues, or personnel issues); I’ll speak more about it as soon as I’m able.”

Knowing that you’ll get the straight story when everything is up for grabs is enormously reassuring.  It frees people to keep moving ahead and go through the needed change, vs. getting paralyzed or resistant. Given the level of change in nearly every industry right now, trustworthiness in our leaders seems more important than ever before.