Bill Treasurer's Blog, page 22

Six Habits of Courageous Women

Around the world, women make up roughly 61 percent of the labor market and are attaining college-level degrees at a faster rate than their male counterparts. Yet women only account for about 18 percent of top leadership positions in the United States despite the fact that almost 90 percent of the general public consistently report being comfortable having women in such roles.

This disparity is particularly troublesome considering that recent studies suggest women often outperform their male counterparts in top-level jobs. Public companies with female board members, for example, perform significantly better than those that don’t have women on their boards.

These studies suggest that any organization that cares about profits and performance would be well-served to include more women at the top. So what hinders women from climbing higher up the leadership ladder?

The Barriers In The Workplace

Underrepresentation of women in top leadership roles is not necessarily because of blatant exclusionary or discriminatory practices. Rather it is more a result of subtle, invisible barriers and cultural beliefs around gender, as well as workplace structures and patterns of interaction that inadvertently favor men.

More opportunities are available than ever before for women to pursue the leadership roles they want. For too many years, our messages to women–whether through advertising, mentorship, books, or speaking–have been: follow the rules, keep your head down, don’t take risks, and be demure and poised at all times in order to succeed. For example, although men in leadership roles are admired for being strong and assertive, women who exhibit the same attributes are sometimes judged as too aggressive and, therefore, unlikable.

For many women poised for leadership, the experience of being turned down for a promotion or watching a younger or inexperienced male colleague move into a higher position can be a devastating blow to one’s internal bravery and self-confidence.

Part of the solution to overcoming these structural biases and self-defeating perspectives is through the intentional application of courage. Courage, fortunately, is a teachable and learnable skill. Although having courage is critical to all aspiring leaders, it is particularly important for women.

Our company, Giant Leap Consulting, is a courage-building training firm. For more than a decade we have led courage-building workshops for thousands of executives across the globe, including sessions exclusively for women leaders. We have identified four types of courage that are crucial to effective leadership development:

try courage
trust courage
tell courage
take-in courage

 

Try courage

Women who are successful in achieving their career goals do so because they are willing to take chances when opportunity knocks, even if success is not guaranteed. Having try courage means taking the initiative to do something new despite the natural hesitancy that fear may produce.

A good example comes from Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx. Blakely graced the cover of Forbes Magazine as the youngest self-made female billionaire. Much of her success can be attributed to her willingness to move forward despite being afraid. As she explains, “In every situation where I was ever courageous, you could substitute the word afraid for courageous. I was afraid when I started Spanx with $5,000 in savings. I was afraid when I knocked on the doors of textile mills begging them to manufacture my new footless pantyhose. … I was afraid when I traveled to Dallas to meet the buyer at Neiman Marcus to interest her in selling Spanx products. I was afraid the first time I was a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Courage means to act despite being afraid.

Trust courage

Trust takes courage, especially if you’ve been betrayed in the past. And who hasn’t? But trust is essential for forming strong bonds between leaders and followers. Without trust, relationships cannot progress. Trusting others is particularly challenging for women who fall prey to the “superwoman” myth, believing they have to “do it all” to be successful.

Given that four out of 10 women in the U.S. workforce are their household’s primary breadwinners, the number of women under the spell of this myth is likely significant. Superwomen aren’t the only people who may have difficulty trusting others. People who are controlling by nature, such as perfectionists, also struggle with trust.

In our workshops we often ask people to raise their hands if they’ve ever been described as controlling. Many hands go up. Then we ask, “Raise your hands again if you absolutely love

to be controlled by other people.” Guess what? No hands go up. People like to be in control, but they don’t like to be controlled. Having trust courage requires letting go of the need to control or to always be right. It means being vulnerable and open despite knowing that you could be betrayed and hurt.

Tell courage

Speaking up, sharing your ideas, asking questions, and delivering constructive feedback all require courage. Tell courage requires being a truth-teller.

It’s important for women to speak up when they identify policies or workplace practices that exclude women or cause them to be overlooked. Most organizations are made up of good people who are not always aware of how their policies or company culture contribute to bias.

Inflexible work scheduling practices, for example, often make it difficult for working mothers to succeed and advance. Applying tell courage can help instigate positive change.

Women sometimes find speaking with conviction challenging. They will hedge their statements with opening remarks such as, “I might be wrong but …” or “I don’t know, but it seems to me that ….” Such self-dismissing statements transmit a lack of confidence on the part of the leader. If you don’t stand up for your ideas, no one else will either. For that reason, building tell courage is critical to the aspiring women leader.

Take-in courage

Too many people react defensively to constructive feedback, as if their identity were under assault. Take-in courage involves being able to listen to feedback without feeling threatened or punished.

Surprisingly, even positive feedback often is resisted, particularly by women. For example, we notice that some women dismiss positive feedback by saying things such as “It really wasn’t a big deal” or “Anyone could have done it.” Getting feedback from others may be uncomfortable, but it’s essential to growth and development. Olympic athletes such as Gabby Douglas or Hope Solo may not have always been happy with the specific feedback they received from their coaches and trainers, but without it they wouldn’t be gold medal winners. Excellence is a function of making small changes based on constant feedback. Thus, having take-in courage can advance your career.

How do you find or increase the courage within you? Here are six characteristics of brave women in leadership roles.

 

They don’t wait for bravery. Everyone has fear inside of them. It’s what you do with that fear that separates you from the pack. Fear can often paralyze us for years or even decades, and we stagnate in our growth. To achieve your goals, you don’t have to magically flip a switch to find your bravery. You simply need to to prioritize your dreams over your fears. By keeping your dream or big goal in focus and pushing down fear, bravery will naturally rise to the occasion to help you take your steps to achieve the goal in front of you.
They don’t mind “sticking out” from the crowd. Courageous leaders aren’t afraid to appear as a “black sheep,” or to choose the road less traveled. Doors open when you close others. That means you’ll need to say ‘no’ to opportunities that don’t feel 100% aligned with your goals. The more you say no and draw boundaries while pursuing the path that is right for you, the braver you’ll feel with each passing day.
They quiet their minds. In order to take the right risk, courageous women know they must learn to “be still.” Whether through meditation, walking, sitting in a closet like Oprah Winfrey, or simply “breathe in confidence, exhale doubt,” you can find what works for you to draw boundaries and center your mind and body to make the best decision for your next step.  
They love a reality check. Courageous women ask themselves, “What’s the worst that could happen?” They take the time to write down these worst-case scenarios. When you get it out of your head and onto paper, the physical act of writing down the reality of a potential choice and its outcomes can turn out to be…not as scary as you thought. Instead of reliving dramatic stories in our heads that haven’t even happened yet, get them out and dispel fears.
They are proactive in supporting and paving the way for others. Courageous women don’t just accept the red carpet or cleared path…they roll it out or bushwhack it for the next group of women. By taking what you’ve learned through your experience and sharing it with others, teaching, mentoring, or simply opening the door, you help to strengthen your core purpose because you see your journey reflected in others.
They don’t let fear drive the car. Courageous leaders know how to move forward with their fear, rather than allowing their fear to become a complete dead-end roadblock on their journey. 

Courage won’t eliminate fear or risk, but it can help women (and men) counter fear and assess risk. On balance, the executive who tries new things, builds trust with others, candidly asserts her ideas, and is receptive to constructive feedback will be more successful than the executive who doesn’t. The world of work needs more courageous leaders. Elizabeth Gilbert says it best: “Fear should always have an opinion, a say, in what’s happening. But it’s proper place is in the backseat, buckled up tight and along for the ride. It doesn’t get to navigate (your life) and it sure-as-hell doesn’t get to drive.”

 

Why “Always Be Hustling” Is Bad Leadership Advice

In the mid 1990’s, a regional communications company launched a billboard advertising campaign that implored people to “Never Stand Still!” The underlying message was that to be successful, you must perpetually be on the go. God forbid you be still! Stillness is for weaklings and has-beens; the new breed of winners are those who are furiously busy and fully accessible. The ad was essentially saying: If you want to avoid missing out on emerging opportunities, you’ve got to be continually refreshed with up-to-date information, you need “all the news all the time,” and you’ve got to be electronically connected. You’ll be productive only to the extent that you are permanently interruptible.

Today, we see this same advice, day in and day out, as “entrepreneurship” trends upward. “Always be hustling!” This slogan is printed on billboards, across ads, pasted in Instagram captions, printed on T-shirts and coffee mugs, and adorns office walls as inspirational posters.

But “Never Stand Still” and “Always Be Hustling” are terrible pieces of advice. And dangerous, too.

If you are never still, you’ll never access what I call your Golden Silence. In my book, Right Risk, I emphasize the importance of finding a silence that emanates from the center of yourself, where your best decisions and your risks are calculated and taken with clarity. If you’re always hustling, then your risks will be taken in a haze of distraction.

Instead, standing still is exactly what we need to do before taking a risk.

Standing still teaches us composure and poise. Stillness helps focus the risk-taker, enabling her to regulate her emotions and discern the right course of action.

The importance of stillness was well described by Oprah Winfrey in an editorial in O Magazine. In running her production company, Harpo, Oprah was pulled in many different directions by many different people. To get centered, she walks into the closet, sits on the floor, and–in her words–goes “still as a stone.” She writes, “When I walk out, I am centered on what’s most important and can make decisions based on what’s right for me, not on what everyone else wants or needs. I’ve learned that the more stressful or chaotic things are on the outside, the calmer you need to be on the inside.”

The French mathematician Blaise Pascal famously said that all of man’s problems stem from the inability to sit alone quietly in a room.

Those words are more relevant today than they were in his time. We seem to have lost the ability to saunter, to carry on a lingering conversation, to kick back and relax. Instead, anxiety and worry are talked about with pride. With a good deal of self-importance, business leaders often talk about what keeps them up at night or how they’re always hustling and grinding. Imagine if stress-induced insomnia were an actual key to professional success! Fortunately, it isn’t.

Busyness has become the preoccupation of our age.

The only quiet moment we seem to get is that brief interlude in the morning while we are waiting for our computer to boot up, or social media to load. We seem hell-bent on keeping ourselves distracted. We crank up the radio volume in our car, subscribe to podcasts and apps and platforms, unwind with bingewatching Netflix, cut deals on our smartphone at the playground, and spoon-feed our minds with Internet news. We work harder to buy more laborsaving devices. And the more we acquire, the unhappier we seem to get. For as much as our phones and tech have put us in touch with others, they have put us way out of touch with ourselves.

The problem with “always hustling” and the boundary-less world is just that–we have no boundaries. We allow the world in with no filter to help us decide the relative importance of this information. When everything is urgent, all things get trivialized. Henry Thoreau’s writing is instructive here. He noted that when we fritter back and forth at the whim of the external world, we dull our ability to prioritize what is truly important. In his last book, Walking, he writes that this kind of undisciplined thinking results in more than just mental laziness, it can permanently profane how we think.

The scariest part for most “hustlers?” They’re afraid to stop…because they might not feel comfortable with the company they keep (themselves).

But slowing down, drawing boundaries, and centering yourself helps you get to know the real you. You’ll find that, over time and with practice, the more you can teach yourself to be still, the stronger your self-assurance will grow. With this growth is a clarity you need as a leader.

Real leaders don’t hustle 24/7. They prioritize their goals, and go after them with a steady centeredness, taking risks that will provide big returns because they know which ones will best serve them, not the whims of the external world.

Learn more about our Leadership Development program to help you stop hustling and start growing in a sustainable way that’s right for your leadership style. 

These Former Navy SEALs Have Two Secrets To Success

Wow! June already..…where has almost half a year gone?

For my part, I’ve been busy with Bill writing and now finishing up our new book, and conducting final interviews before we send the draft for editing. I’m extremely excited about the book, and it’s been a whole lot of fun writing it with Bill!  We both believe the book is very relevant, and much needed in today’s leadership environment.

I recently returned from a week in my favorite city, San Diego. While there, Bill and I conducted book interviews with two former SEAL buddies of mine: Mark Divine, SEALFIT Founder and CEO, and Randy Hetrick, TRX Founder and CEO. Both were solid SEAL officers/operators, and both are now highly successful business entrepreneurs. Bill and I had a great time picking the brains of these two leaders, stud athletes (in their minds), authors, fitness social media regulars, podcasters, and most of the time, good guys.

Poor Bill had to suffer through an initial deluge of frivolity from both Mark and Randy, as they did their best to convince him that they were both better SEALs than poor, little old me back in the day, and that the only reason they agreed to do the interviews was that Bill had such a solid reputation as an author, business owner and leadership coach! Like I said, good guys…most of the time!

Once done with the jocularity, Mark and Randy shared their perspectives on leadership hubris…the main theme of the book Bill and I are working on. While a lot of ground was covered, I’d like to share two key takeaways that Bill and I got from the interviews. Specifically:

From Mark: “A good leader needs to remain humble. To be (and remain) humble, a leader has to practice humility on a daily basis. Just like physical exercise, a good leader needs to develop a routine and find the time to practice being humble.” Some of Mark’s suggestions to practicing humility: meditation and breathing exercises!

From Randy: Be appreciative of what you have. Become a leader who motivates rather than intimidates. “Focus a little less on the gaps and a little more on the gots.”

Coach’s tip(s) for this month: Great takeaways from Mark and Randy!

One tool I used in the Navy that helped keep me grounded, was to constantly remind myself to never believe one word written about me in any of my annual fitness reports, an evaluation form utilized by the Navy that chronicles an officer’s performance in various assignments throughout their careers. And why? Because I wrote them all!

I wrote these performance reports because my reporting seniors were usually “too busy”, and so it would be delegated down to me to write my own reviews. And I learned very quickly that it was not an uncommon practice for fitness reports to be “overinflated,” with the intent to make an officer look more worthy for future promotion and assignment opportunities. Evaluating and writing about myself always proved extremely nauseating for me every time I had to do it, but in the end, even though I could never make myself sound like the next John Paul Jones, Chester Nimitz or Bull Halsey, I usually did my best to come close!

Does Your Mission Statement Still Apply To Current Goals? Use This Test.

As a leader, you have an obligation to keep your team moving together to achieve goals. One way to align your company, organization, or group is through a mission statement. A mission statement is more than some plaque on the wall in your reception area: it’s a cornerstone of your company culture, and serves as a constant reminder of why you do what you do. Whenever the organization faces a challenge, a setback, or overwhelm, any member of your group can return to the mission statement and remember why they began their journey in the first place.

Yes, a mission statement is that important.

It’s time to take a good look at your statement and ask yourself: does this mission statement still align with our current goals and how our company or organization is operating today?

“That sounds great, but we’ve gone through so much consulting and meeting and restructuring…I don’t even remember what a mission statement should be.”

We hear this a lot. So, this is friendly reminder of what a mission statement:

A mission statement is a statement of direction that is brief, flexible, and distinctive. A mission should express an organization’s reason for being. It should answer what you do, why you do it, and the benefits that may be derived from your work.

 

Check out these examples:

Southwest Airlines: Dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit.

Amazon: To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can fi nd and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.

Coca-Cola: To refresh the world…To inspire moments of optimism and happiness…To create value and make a difference.

Microsoft : To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential.

Starbucks : Establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles while we grow.

“Help! Our mission statement is muddled/boring/outdated.”

As part of your strategic planning and setting the 1-, 3- or 5-year goals for the organization, you should aside time to take a fresh look at the mission statement and see if you can even recreate it from a blank worksheet and come up with the same answers.

Assemble your leadership group or key stakeholders. Using a whiteboard or paper, answer the following questions:

What does this organization do?
Who does this organization do it for?
How do they benefit?

If your current statement is outdated or unclear, it may be because the answers to these questions have changed since the organization or company started. That’s okay! Update your mission statement accordingly. It will be an instant boost of clarity and confidence for your team.

Move your mission statement from good to great.

You can test the quality of your mission statement by using this checklist:

Does the mission describe your reason for existing?
Does it indicate the audience served and how they benefit?
Does it distinguish and differentiate you from others?
Will the mission motivate your team members?

Once you finalize your refreshed Mission Statement, distribute copies to the whole team, celebrate the new focus of the organization, and hang up a framed copy where everyone can visit it in the future.

Why Good Leaders Shouldn’t Use The Phrase: “Just Make It Happen!”

“Just make it happen!”

Jeez! During my 30+ years in the Navy, I can’t tell you how many times I heard that phrase from senior leaders. And it wasn’t exactly helpful: a vague, open-ended statement like this (what I call “JMIH”) provided no direction, no guidance on how to achieve our goals.

There is a difference between good and bad delegation.

Over the years, I eventually came to the conclusion that JMIH guidance really meant one of two things:

The boss had complete and total confidence in me to figure out what needed to be done without needing them tell me what, or more importantly, how to do something, or….
The boss had absolutely no clue how something needed to be done, and they were hoping I would just run with their delegation and figure the “what/how” piece out on my own.

In most cases during my career, it was usually the latter definition that applied.

Nowhere was this Just make it happen! (JMIH) guidance more prevalent than during my last deployment to Iraq in 2011, when President Obama announced that the full withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel from Iraq would be accomplished by the end of that year. With no previous experience or information to draw upon, our special operations task force had approximately two months to develop and execute a plan for how we would move all of our assigned equipment and personnel out of Iraq to meet the President’s deadline. Like I wrote before, this daunting task all started with my boss looking at me and saying, “Make it happen, Coach.”

 

I also vividly remember my introduction to Just make it happen! guidance when I was a young junior officer, fresh out of BUD/S training.

One of my first Operations Officers (OpsO) enjoyed tasking me to make Powerpoint presentations for the Commanding Officer (CO). The OpsO would only tell me the topic and the due date for the brief review. So like a good junior officer, I would head back to my desk, and to the best of my abilities, develop a brief that hopefully met the CO’s (and OpsO’s) expectations. And despite my best efforts, I routinely would be “counselled” by the OpsO on how my work sucked (the actual words he normally used aren’t appropriate here). He would go on to tell me how the work was not what the CO wanted, and that I needed to return to my desk and not leave until I “made it happen.”

 

During one of these so-called counsellings, I grew angry and commented that it might be nice to get some better guidance on what exactly the CO wanted in his brief before I spent hours (and sometimes days) prepping a presentation that never seemed to meet the mark.

This was a bad move on my part. Suddenly, my OpsO was in my face, sternly reminding me that it was my duty to figure out what the CO wanted, and that if I couldn’t, I didn’t belong in the Navy.

In hindsight, I guess it was my OpsO’s way of educating me as the new kid on the block on what was expected of a junior officer. But what I know now is I lost countless hours of my life I would never get back. It also taught me to realize the kind of officer I didn’t want to become if I ultimately decided to make the military a career. (Thanks, Ops!)

 

Coach’s tip(s) for this month: When I was in charge, I did my best to follow this delegation routine:

Get smart and know the big picture. First, I “got smart.” To me, nothing was more frustrating in the military than a senior officer who didn’t understand the “the bigger picture,” then faked it by providing vague and worthless guidance to their troops.
Give direction and value to the task. Second, I personally sat down with the lucky junior selected to complete the task. During this meeting, I did not get into the weeds with micromanaging and too many details but I passed along enough big picture guidance that my subordinate had a good understanding of what the task required…and why reaching the goal mattered.
Let them step into their genius. Lastly, before they left my office, I told them to “dazzle me.” And surprisingly, in most cases, they did!

Have a great May, and don’t forget that Memorial Day is a federal holiday to remember those Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice with their lives in service to this great country! Please take a moment to thank them!

CAPT John “Coach” Havlik, USN (Ret), retired from the Navy in 2014 after 31 years of distinguished service in the Naval Special Warfare (SEAL) community. He has served on SEAL teams on both coasts, including the famed SEAL Team SIX. Coach completed graduate studies at the Naval War College in Newport, RI, receiving an M.A. in National Security and Strategic Studies. He graduated from West Virginia University with a B.S. in Business Administration and is a 2017 inductee into the WVU Sports Hall of Fame.

Coach Havlik is a Special Advisor to Giant Leap Consulting and regularly speaks about  leading high performance teams  under arduous and stressful conditions. 

Are You Delegating Out of Necessity or Trust?

Delegation: it’s an art form, but too often, managers and leaders don’t see it that way. In fact, most of them don’t delegate enough and end up completing tasks and projects themselves. As a result, 78% of workers believe their boss routinely does work that would be more effectively done by someone else.

Why don’t we delegate more?

Nod your head if you’ve thought any of the following in your daily work:

“It’s easier for me to do this assignment myself.”
“My work is the best.”
“I don’t want my subordinates to take the credit…what if the boss replaces me?”
“I feel guilty for giving more work to everyone, so I’ll just do it.”

As a leader, one of the core concepts you must learn to embody is the concept of allowing others to get things done. Managing involves getting a lot of things done through otherpeople. The essential element of this process is delegating. Accepting that you can’t do everything yourself is the critical first step!

You can achieve greater results by empowering and motivating others to carry out tasks. But this can’t just be performed out of necessity (read: you simply have too many things to do). It needs to be assigned with complete trust in your team.

This is the key difference between automating a company and building a company culture of leadership.

Good leaders delegate out of trust.

Bad leaders delegate out of necessity or don’t delegate at all.

So, how do you begin delegating tasks?

The Delegation Steps to Success:

Know what task you want to delegate.
Have a desired outcome/goal in mind.
Find the right person based on their level of experience, style/skill, and workload (in that order).
Share with them the results you desire.
Explain why the task is important. (This is a BIG step most leaders forget!)
Acknowledge how performing this task or project will benefit them.
Ask them how they plan to get it done.
Determine the time frame and finish date.
Reconfirm deadline.
Follow up at an agreed-upon time.

Good leaders delegate while trusting and observing the person to whom they’ve assigned the task.

By observing (not micro-managing), you learn to let go while also noting what can be improved in the workflow. Perfecting the processes and workflows for delegated tasks is a combined effort and has a worthwhile payoff…you’ll be able to relax, knowing the job is handled. This is how companies and legacies are built: with smart delegation and trust in your team. Otherwise, you’re a cog in the wheel that could force the entire future of your operation to get stuck.

What is one task or project you could delegate this week to a team member you trust? Feel free to share in the comments (it helps with accountability, too!)

When Leaders Go Bad

When you think of the word “leadership,” what comes up?

Most people view leadership as connoting the best of the best, the demonstration of high ideals, and living and acting with high integrity.

But as long as there have been leaders, there have been leaders who compromised their integrity.

In fact, the very first story ever put to the written word, The Epic of Gilgamesh, centers on immoral leadership. Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, brings us the idea of droit de seigneur, or “lord’s right”, which is the right of the leader to exercise jus primae noctis – the king gets to deflower the community’s virgins on their wedding nights. Why? Because he could, that’s why.

It’s the behavioral latitude, the “because I can” freedom, that necessitates the joining of morality to leadership. Just because you can do things that non-leader’s can’t, doesn’t mean you should. But it is also the “because I can” freedom that cause some leaders to lead in a compromised and self-serving way. The unwritten understanding that leaders and followers share is that when you’re the one who set the rules, judge others’ performance, and doles out the rewards, you have more power and freedom than those who don’t get to do these things. Others serve at your pleasure and are accountable to you, not the other way around.

The fact that not everyone gets to be a leader suggests that they are born of a different cloth, a cut above the rest of us mere mortals.

Leadership is massively important, particularly during times of intense challenge and change. But leadership is also massively seductive. Leaders are constantly being told how special they are. Think, for example, of the privileges that leaders are afforded that non-leaders don’t get.

Leaders get bigger office spaces, more agenda airtime, better perks, more deference, and fatter salaries. They also get less flak when they show up late for meetings, interrupt people, or skirt around policies or processes that everyone else has to follow. Even the simple fact that there are far fewer leaders than followers illustrates their comparative specialness. The fact that not everyone gets to be a leader suggests that they are born of a different cloth, a cut above the rest of us mere mortals.

Followers, too, as the hands who build the pedestals that leaders sit on, contribute to, and often enable, the embellishment of the specialness of leadership. Every time followers bite their tongues, say “yes” when thinking “no”, mimic their leaders’ style, or capitulate to unethical directives, the specialness of leadership is reinforced. Very often, the more special followers treat leaders, the more leaders start to believe in their own specialness. It feels good to have ones ego stroked by eager-to-please followers, and, before long, some leaders start surrounding themselves with suck-ups and sycophants just to keep the pampering going.

Given how special leaders are told they are, is it really surprising that some would be seduced into thinking that they are “better” than everyone else, that they deserve more of the spoils, or that they should be free to act with impunity?

Should it really catch our attention that some leaders are more concerned with the privileges that they can get by being a leader, instead of being grateful for the deep privilege it is to make a positive and lasting impact on people’s lives when you’re entrusted with leading them?

Is it really shocking that some would succumb to thinking that they are the focal point of leadership and not the people that they’re charged with leading?

There really isn’t anything surprising or shocking about it. Hubris is what you get when a leader becomes spoiled.

Above all, leadership is a tradition that is carried and passed from generation to generation.

While all of the real-time costs of hubris are high, perhaps none is as costly as the sheer loss of potential for all the good that could have been done–and all the lives the leader could have positively impacted–had he not become so enamored with his own power. The most damaging impact these “leadership killers” have is on a leader’s potential legacy.

The primary job of a leader is to develop other leaders.

Above all, leadership is a tradition that is carried and passed from generation to generation. A leader’s legacy is built by nurturing and developing the talent and skills of the people who are doing the work on the leader’s behalf during his tenure.

At the core, a leader’s most important job is not to acquire more power, but to help empower others so they, too, can find their leadership and do some good in this world, thus extending the tradition of leadership. The potential to inspire new generations of leaders gets snuffed out when the “leadership killers,” including hubris, are calling all the shots.

THINK ABOUT: How are your actions today going to affect your legacy tomorrow? What will those whom you’ve lead in the past will say about you long after you are gone?

 

Subscribe and receive an excerpt from Bill’s forthcoming book, The Leadership Killers,” co-authored with Captain John Havlik, before it debuts!

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Leaders Answer Their Emails

I’m in a particularly ornery mood this month! Maybe it’s the slow start of the Orioles in the new baseball season. Maybe I’m tired of telling some of the trainers at my local gym that they’re not failures and to not totally buy-in on all the hype they’re hearing from various former special ops podcasters out there: messages proclaiming that if you can’t run through a brick wall, do one thousand one arm pull-ups in an hour or run up and down Mt. Everest in only a Speedo, your life is unfulfilled.

Whatever “it” was, it proved to be the impetus for this month’s article.

Over the past few months, Bill and I have contacted several respected leaders across the business/military/political/athletic spectrum for interviews as we co-write our upcoming book. Some folks have been extremely cooperative, responding to our requests in a timely manner, and freely sharing their thoughts on leadership vices.

A select few have replied back, politely declining our requests for an interview.

However, about half have failed to even reply back to our requests with a simple “No can do,” even after repeated requests on our part (and yes, the email addresses have been correct).

Nothing irks me more than a “leader” who doesn’t reply back to your email. Yes, I know people are busy, but a simple “Yes” or “No” acknowledges that the leader has, at the very minimum, opened your email. At least you know they had the common courtesy to open your email and reply back.

Coach’s Tip(s) For This Month:

Answer your emails, especially when you direct a subordinate to get you some piece of vital information as soon as possible.  Nobody is that busy! A simple “Got it, thanks! Let me get back with you!” works really well, and tells people that you recognize and appreciate their efforts to get you timely information. Failing to reply back is totally unprofessional on a leader’s part.
NEVER, EVER publicly criticize or express doubt in your people’s abilities to do their job! In today’s social media frenzy, this happens way too much, and it is easily the most unprofessional leadership trait you can demonstrate, since it fosters a lack of confidence in your workers if they see their leaders not united! If your people are under-performing, pull them aside out of the public’s view or ask them to come to your office, close the door and talk to them.
Accept both the good and bad of being a leader. Everybody likes shaking hands, handing out bonuses and awards, recognizing Employee of the Month/Year performers, and telling everyone how great they (and you) are doing. But when things go south, some leaders like to run off and push off the bad “stuff” to their lower minions so that they don’t come off looking like the bad guy. I saw (and experienced) a lot of this during my military career, especially when it came time for annual performance report reviews. As the boss, it’s your duty to personally meet your subordinates to review their performance, tell them what they did right (and what they did wrong), and what your expectations of them for the future are, for your top performers as well as those who may be underperforming. It comes with the job: don’t pawn this responsibility as the boss off to someone else!

CAPT John “Coach” Havlik, USN (Ret), retired from the Navy in 2014 after 31 years of distinguished service in the Naval Special Warfare (SEAL) community. He has served on all SEAL teams on both coasts, including the famed SEAL Team SIX. Coach completed graduate studies at the Naval War College in Newport, RI, receiving an M.A. in National Security and Strategic Studies and also completed a course of instruction in Spanish at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA. Coach graduated from West Virginia University with a B.S. in Business Administration and was a member of the Men’s Swim Team for 4 years. 

Coach Havlik is a Special Advisor to Giant Leap Consulting and regularly speaks about leadership and working as a team under arduous and stressful conditions.

Clients Depend on You…and You on Them

I’ve been blessed to have many mentors over the years. One who stands out is Hines Brannan, my former boss during my years working at Accenture, a large management consulting company. Though I haven’t worked for Accenture in sixteen years, and Hines retired about the time I left, he still gives me good business advice. A central lesson that Hines taught me is: always deliver value beyond the fees you charge.

I believe in the value of long-term relationships, including with my clients. Back in graduate school, one of the foundational lessons that my organizational development professors harped on was to never create a dependency relationship with your clients. Provide them with strategy, tools, and approaches that they can use after you’re gone. Don’t do the fishing for them, teach them how to fish.

I hate that advice, because it’s arrogant. It assumes that your clients don’t know how to fish. Your clients have probably been fishing longer than you have. While they might benefit from exploring new fishing holes, or upgrading their fishing equipment, it’s arrogant to for a consultant to think that they alone have the special fishing knowledge to impart. Your clients aren’t hapless yellowtail snappers.

I am constantly learning from my clients, through the situations and challenges they confront, their perspectives and expertise, and ideas and insights they share that enhance my own. I depend on them as a major source of my business learning.

They’ve got great ideas and deep wisdom about the inner workings of their organizations. And we are mutually dependent upon each other. Yes, dependent! They depend on me always keeping their interests at heart. They depend on me to deliver exceptional work. They depend on me to learn about their business, build respectful relationships with their personnel, and partner with them to co-create solutions and initiatives that get results.

My clients often teach me how to fish…in their waters. I am constantly learning from my clients, through the situations and challenges they confront, their perspectives and expertise, and ideas and insights they share that enhance my own. I depend on them as a major source of my business learning. I depend on them to provide me with opportunities to test new ideas and approaches. I even depend on them to provide me with the stories that enrich my books. And, yes, I depend on them for my livelihood…which I will have as long as they can depend on me to deliver value beyond my fees. The dependency is mutual.

Years ago I made a conscious decision to minimize the number of one-and-done “gigs” my company and I take on. A gig is where my company comes in or I arrive on the scene, we catch a few fish to give to a customer, and move on. It has almost no lasting value. While we still do a few of them, the bulk of my business is with long-term client relationships, often with an established retainer.

In Chicago alone, Giant Leap has three retainer relationships. We’ve been working with one of those companies for fifteen years.

Here’s my advice: go fishing with your clients! Meaning, put on your waders, step into the mudholes, and be in it with them for the long-haul. When you’re committed to fishing with your clients for the long-haul, you become invested in the growth and development of many of the company’s personnel.

Check out this quick video on leadership and authenticity:

For example, each year Giant Leap facilitates a 3-day strategic planning offsite for one of our clients. The people who are now setting the company’s strategy (many of them EVPs and VPs), weren’t even in the room when we started. We’ve seen them progress from awkward plebes in their first management jobs to confident executives presenting the company’s strategy. Few things are as gratifying than contributing to the growth of a person’s career. And when your client relationships are long-term in nature, there’s a real possibility of making that contribution.

When you’re in a long-term, mutually dependent, and deeply respectful relationship, everyone gets enhanced. As my company and I learn more about our client and its industry, we are able to add more value to the work we deliver. They know that we “get it,” and that we want their success as much as they do. Because their success, employing strategies and approaches that we’ve contributed to, is the key to our longevity as a business.

Let me be clear, I am proud to be fully dependent on my clients!

I’m even prouder to know that they can depend on me! My aim will always be to employ my mentor’s advice and deliver value beyond my fees…as me and my clients continue to fish together.

What would your organization look like if it were pursuing a bolder vision? Find out and reach your goals with our strategic planning services.

Upcoming Leadership Development Events With Giant Leap Consulting

At Giant Leap Consulting, we offer powerful ways to strengthen teams, develop leaders in your company, strategically plan to help your organization succeed. The following are private and public events coming up in the next few months for Giant Leap Consulting. Stay tuned for details on upcoming keynotes and workshops! 

March 28 & 29 Leadership Development (client coaching)
April 10 Leadership Development (client coaching)
April 11 & 12 Courageous Leadership workshop (Houston)
April 13 Leadership Development (client coaching)
April 16 “Design Day” with client (Chicago)
April 17 Leadership development (client coaching)
April 18 Courageous Leadership workshop (Chicago)
April 19 VP executive development workshop (Chicago)
April 20 Leadership Development (client coaching)
April 24 Business planning facilitation (Chicago)
April 25 Leaders Open Doors seminar (Detroit)
April 26 Leadership development (client coaching)
April 30 Author/client seminar for GetAbstract in NJ
May 1 Author/client seminar for GetAbstract in Manhattan
May 3 – 8 Association for Talent Development International Conference and Expo, multiple Giant Leap seminars (San Diego)
May 10 Keynote Workshop for the Autism Society of North Carolina
May 15 Courageous Leadership workshop (Toronto)
May 16 Leading Teams workshop (Chicago)
May 17 Leadership Essentials keynote (Colorado Springs)
May 22 Risk-taking workshop and train-the-trainer (Topeka, KS)
May 29 Leadership cohort planning (Chicago)
May 30 Team strategic planning (Chicago)
June 4 & 5 Project Manager Academy (Chicago)
June 6 Leadership Summit (Chicago)
June 7 Motivation workshop (Chicago)
June 8 Train-the-trainer sessions
June 11 CEO “download” meeting (Chicago)
June 12 VP executive development program (Chicago)
June 13 VP Teambuilding (Chicago)
June 19 & 20 Project Manager Academy (Chicago)
June 21 & 22 Strategic planning
June 26 Courageous Leadership Keynote (Manilla)

To learn more about what solution is right for your company, or to schedule a Strategic Planning, Leadership Development, or Team Building workshop with Giant Leap Consulting, please contact us.