Michael Lee Stallard's Blog, page 24

Leadership “Moment of Truth” for FC Barcelona’s Lionel Messi

A few moments of truth often capture the essence of a leader’s character and define his legacy. One such moment for Carles Puyol, former center back and club captain of FC Barcelona, occurred in 2011 when he led the team to the Champions League title.

As club captain, Puyol was expected to celebrate by raising the cup on behalf of the team. Instead, he passed both his captain armband and the trophy to defender Éric Abidal, who, just weeks earlier, had undergone a liver transplant as part of treatment for liver cancer. It was a moment Barça fans will forever treasure.

Another moment of truth in Puyol’s career came when he stopped two teammates from excessive celebrating following a goal. Puyol felt it was inconsiderate and disrespectful to Barcelona’s opponent.

Puyol the gentleman is also a warrior. Although he wasn’t the most naturally talented, he played with tremendous heart. He gave 100 percent, 100 percent of the time, and encouraged his teammates to play all out to the end. It’s called competitive greatness. Puyol had it in spades.

Not Your Stereotypical Leader

When Puyol came off the bench during the 1999-2000 season, a period when FC Barcelona was struggling, many weren’t quite sure what to make of him. With a mop of curly hair, polite demeanor, and introverted personality (he described book reading as one of his favorite forms of relaxation), Puyol did not fit the stereotype of a footballer, much less a leader.

But looks can be deceiving.

Even before he was named club captain, Puyol had a positive influence on his teammates. Many a player has recounted times when Puyol encouraged him on and off the pitch. Teammates, coaches, and competitors praised Puyol for being an honest athlete and selfless leader. Through his words and his actions, he showed his teammates that he valued them and their hard work.

Reading the comments of those who played with Puyol you get the impression he brought out the best in his teammates and always had their backs. Fellow defender Gerard Pique wrote about Puyol: “My generation and those that come after do not know what the club will be like without Puyi. … I met you six years ago. You were the captain and the emblem of the team and I was just a kid arriving, set on conquering the world. From day one we had a great relationship, both on and off the field. By your side I felt protected and I knew that if one day I made a mistake you’d always be there to save me. You were my guardian angel.”

Although Puyol has said he did not consider himself to be captain material, his former teammates would strongly disagree. The results speak volumes. During his ten-year run as club captain, Puyol led FC Barcelona to 21 major titles. By the time of his retirement in 2014, FC Barcelona fans would find it difficult to imagine anyone other than Puyol as FC Barcelona’s captain.

Like all great leaders, Carles Puyol cares about people, excellence and achieving results.

Messi’s Moment

On June 6, FC Barcelona will return to the Champions League final for the first time since 2011. Wearing the captain armband will be superstar forward Lionel Messi.

Considered to be one of the best players ever, Messi is a master of task excellence. This alone, however, is not enough and many an excellent player has come up short as a leader. Task excellence is but one part of the equation for sustainable superior performance.

Lionel Messi needs to prove he is a leader who cares about the people he is responsible for leading and that he values relationship excellence in addition to skill, agility, and goal-making.

Has Messi communicated an inspiring vision for the team and lived it? Has he truly valued his teammates as people rather than thinking of them as means to an end? Has he given them a voice in decisions? The answers to these questions will determine whether Messi has created a team culture that leads players to pull together for the sake of the team or a culture where self-interest is paramount.

Will Messi rise to the occasion and make the transition from great player to great leader? His legacy, and FC Barcelona’s future, depends on it.

Adapted from Connection Culture: The Competitive Advantage of Shared Identity, Empathy and Understanding at Work. This article originally appeared on Fox Business and ConnectionCulture.com.

Elizabeth Stallard, an intern at E Pluribus Partners, co-authored this article.

Photo Credit: “FC Barcelona Team 2, 2011” by Christopher Johnson – FC Barcelona Team. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Facilitate Connection with a “Getting Connected in Our Community” Guide

#85 Create a “Getting Connected in Our Community” Guide

Facilitate connection by providing the members of your community with a directory of community members that includes names, photos, contact information and other information that identifies responsibilities, strengths, expertise and interests outside of work. The directory could be online or in print.

This is the eighty-fifth post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.

 

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Michael Jordan’s Transformation Contributed to His Success

What sports fan in the 1980s and 1990s wasn’t inspired by Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player ever? His last-second jump shots, airborne dunks, and tenacious defensive coverage made him a crowd-pleasing favorite. Now Jordan has been recognized as the first professional athlete to become a billionaire. What can we learn from his success?

When Michael Jordan began playing in the NBA, he epitomized excellence as an individual contributor. His superhuman feats during his first five seasons with the Chicago Bulls, however, were not enough to make them champions. Not until Phil Jackson became head coach and began to influence the young superstar did the Bulls finally make it to the big game.

Jackson helped Jordan see the need to go beyond being a star and become what Jackson called a player “who surrenders the me for the we.” In the context of the Bulls, this meant playing as a team within the triangle offense that Jackson taught, not as an individual.

Until that time Jordan felt he needed to win games on his own because he didn’t have confidence that his teammates would perform in the clutch. But a one-man show, even if it was a show put on by one of the game’s greatest players, was never going to be enough to get the Bulls to the top. Furthermore, Jordan spent little social time with his teammates and instead hung out with his entourage that followed him around on the road. Jordan’s self-reliance and social separation made his teammates feel like supporting actors on the Michael Jordan show.

Phil Jackson could see the problem. So he went to Jordan and told him that the team needed his leadership, which would require his presence and effort to get to know his teammates personally. Having Jordan present with the team would strengthen the Bulls’ culture. Jordan’s presence and the trust he would put in his teammates would show he valued them as basketball players and as people.

Convinced that Jackson was right, Jordan transformed himself into a force for connection. He began spending more time with his teammates on and off the court. Phil Jackson observed: “Jordan’s presence [affected] the psyche of the team . . . he challenged everyone to step up . . . before practice I often found him working one-on-one with young players.”

Jordan no doubt learned from Jackson’s philosophy that everyone should feel like they have a seat at the table by keeping people informed and listening to their viewpoints.  Jackson encouraged his players’ commitment to the team by quoting a passage from Rudyard Kipling’s The Second Jungle Book that describes the law of the jungle: “…the strength of the pack is the Wolf and the strength of the Wolf is the pack.”

Jordan and Jackson worked together to convince the other Bulls players that they were a team that deserved the world championship. Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen pushed the team to reach a new level of physical conditioning and preparation, which reinforced the players’ beliefs that no team worked as hard or deserved a world championship more than they did.

Jackson’s Chicago Bulls team accepted his philosophy of teamwork as a path to basketball greatness. As the strength of relationships among the team improved, the Bulls’ success rose to a new level. Beginning in 1991 when the Bulls won their first world championship, Jordan’s teammates sometimes made dramatic contributions to the games. In the past, when the score was close at the end of a game, Jordan always wanted the ball. After Jordan’s transformation, he trusted his teammates to make the big play during several pivotal situations.

One such instance occurred in game six of the 1993 championship when the Bulls played the Phoenix Suns. Near the end of the game, down by a score of 98 to 96, the Bulls came down court and, instead of the expected pass to Jordan, the ball went to John Paxson who shot and scored a three-point jumper just before the buzzer went off to win the game. The press hailed it as “the shot heard around the world.” The following year in the final championship game against the Utah Jazz, Jordan passed the ball to his teammate Steve Kerr who hit a jump shot just before the buzzer to clinch another championship for the Bulls. Over the course of eight years, the Chicago Bulls won six championship titles.

Michael Jordan responded by humbly making a personal commitment to his team and teammates rather than pridefully continuing as a one-man show, to the detriment of his team’s performance. The resulting connection and unity among the team and the performance that it made possible was the catalyst that transformed Jordan from being a great player into becoming a basketball legend.

Michael Jordan is a leader who cares about people and cares about results. This is a powerful combination that is essential to successful leadership. These qualities contributed to Michael’s success as a businessman and basketball franchise owner. They helped him learn how to pull a team together to get through the inevitable tough times. They helped him become a leader who people want to follow.

I expect he will accomplish even greater things in the years and decades ahead. Just as Jackson mentored Jordan, you can bet Jordan is mentoring other future leaders who go on to achieve success of their own. Their accomplishment will further enhance the leadership legacy of one of the game’s greats.

This article originally appeared on Fox Business and ConnectionCulture.com. 

Photo Credit: Diegoestefano97. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported via Wikimedia Commons.

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Look for the Three Social Cultures

#84 Be on the Lookout for the Three Social Cultures

Intentional connectors understand that there are three types of social cultures: cultures of control, cultures of indifference and connection cultures. 

In cultures of control, people with power, control, influence and status rule over others and as a result the others feel left out. In cultures of indifference, people are so busy chasing money, power and status that they fail to invest the time necessary to develop healthy, supportive relationships. In these cultures many people struggle with loneliness.

Unlike cultures of control and indifference, in a connection culture people care about others, they invest time to develop healthy relationships, and they care about their work because it benefits other human beings. They reach out to help others in need rather than being indifferent to them. In connection cultures the bond among people overcomes differences that historically divided people. As a result, there is a sense of connection, community and unity that makes every feel included.

Which description fits your organization and/or team? Take this nine-question culture quiz to find out.

This is the eighty-fourth post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.

The post Look for the Three Social Cultures appeared first on Michael Lee Stallard.

Q&A: What is a Connection Culture?

I recently did a Q&A interview with Katie Russell, editor of ConnectionCulture.com, about the unique advantages that a connection culture provides. Here is our conversation:

1. What does it mean to be a part of a “connection culture?” When you are part of a connection culture, you feel connected to others, included and part of the team versus feeling unsupported, left out or lonely. Although most leaders overlook it, connection is critical to success because it makes people more productive, healthier and happier. Disconnection sabotages individual and organizational performance. Unfortunately, two-thirds of American workers, and 87 percent globally, don’t feel connected at work. It’s a huge opportunity for leaders and organizations.

2. Why is creating a connection culture at your organization more important now than ever before? Today the world is moving at a very fast pace. Many people are feeling overwhelmed. Furthermore, more than half of Americans struggle with anxiety, depression or addiction, which is more likely to occur when people feel disconnected. Connection gives us the psychological resources to perform well and makes us less vulnerable to stress, ultimately resulting in a more productive workforce.

3. Why do you think the business world in particular has neglected the value of connection? The business world tends to focus on what is most visible – which is not necessarily what is most important. Tasks are tangible and give us a sense of accomplishment, whereas relationships are not as visible and are often overlooked.

4. How does a connection culture differ from a culture of control and a culture of indifference? In a culture of control, those with power, control, status and influence rule over others. In a culture of indifference, everyone is so busy they don’t take time for relationships. In a connection culture, people develop supportive, cooperative and collaborative relationships. In essence, connection cultures excel at relationships while cultures of control and indifference do not.

5. How does an emotional connection between management, employees, and customers actually provide a competitive advantage? Emotional connection gives people more energy and makes them more enthusiastic. It also makes them more creative and better decision-makers. All of these benefits are performance enhancers that provide a competitive advantage to an organization.

6. How does a connection culture affect the bottom line? A connection culture affects the bottom line in four ways. When people feel connected they give their best efforts at work. They also align their behavior with the leader’s goals so everyone is pulling in the same direction. Additionally, they communicate more, which gives decision-makers the best information to make optimal decisions. Finally, they participate in activities to help improve the organization through innovation. All four of these actions have a positive effect on the bottom line.

7. Doesn’t culture change have to start at the top of an organization? It’s ideal for the leaders at the top to be intentional about creating a connection culture but not necessary. Local culture (subculture) matters the most. If a leader of a unit of an organization creates a connection culture, the people in that unit thrive and so will the unit’s performance. Every organization I’ve seen has a mix of subcultures. The challenge for leaders at the top is to get as many of the subcultures as possible to become connection cultures that contribute positively to the organization’s performance rather than subcultures of control or indifference that undermine sustainable success.

8. Doesn’t culture change take a long time? If you get a leader at the top who understands how to create a connection culture and has the courage of his or her convictions, culture change can happen fast. In Connection Culture I describe how CNO Admiral Vern Clark changed the culture of the U.S. Navy, which resulted in a surge in first term reenlistment within 18 months. The Navy went from being concerned about having enough sailors to having more sailors than it needed. Sailors liked the Navy’s connection culture so much they didn’t want to leave.

To discover what type of culture is dominant in your organization, take the nine-question culture quiz.

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