Bill Treasurer's Blog, page 5

Cultivate Growth

As we bid farewell to winter and begin to see signs of spring all around us, my thoughts naturally turn to themes of growth and renewal. This season, I’m reminded of the immense potential that lies dormant within all of us. Like a bulb buried deep in the ground, awaiting its moment to break through the earth. As leaders, it is our responsibility to cultivate growth in our teams.

Just as it takes the gentle warmth of sunlight to coax a flower into revealing its beauty, so too does it require the light of encouragement, support, and belief to illuminate the path for our team members to grow to their full potential.

This spring, how we can be that light for one another? How can we, as leaders and colleagues, nurture an environment where every individual feels valued not just for the tasks they complete but for the possibilities that lie within them? How do we create a culture where the seeds of potential are watered with opportunities for personal and professional development? Where can we find opportunities for each team member to blossom into their most vibrant selves?

How Leaders Can Be the Light

As leaders, our mission extends beyond mere management. We are the catalysts for growth, change, and development within our teams. Here are some action items to help you become the light that guides your team to their full potential:

Provide Continuous Learning Opportunities: Encourage personal and professional development by offering access to training, workshops, and seminars. Growth thrives when we create an environment rich with learning opportunities.Offer Constructive Feedback: Just like plants need water to grow, team members need regular, constructive feedback to flourish. Praise their strengths and gently guide them in areas for improvement.Foster a Culture of Support: Create an environment where team members feel supported and valued, where they can take risks and stretch their capabilities without fear of failure.Celebrate Milestones: Recognize and celebrate both individual and team achievements. Acknowledging progress is like the sunlight that encourages a plant to continue growing.Lead by Example: Embody the qualities you wish to see in your team. Show them what commitment to growth looks like, and face challenges with courage, and to never stop learning.Encourage Collaboration and Idea Sharing: Like cross-pollination leads to the most beautiful blooms, encouraging collaboration and the exchange of ideas can lead to innovation and growth within your team.Cultivating Tomorrow’s Garden Today

Growth and change, much like the emergence of spring flowers, are processes filled with both beauty and challenge. They require patience, care, and a deep-rooted belief in the eventual outcome. Be gardeners of potential. Cultivate an atmosphere where every team member can thrive, transform, and reveal the full magnitude of their capabilities.

Draw inspiration from the growth and renewal of spring. Be the light that guides your team toward growth, change, and the fulfillment of their highest potential. Foster an environment where the blossoming of individual talents contributes to a vibrant, flourishing garden of collective success.

What techniques or strategies have you found effective in encouraging growth and development within your team?

Photo by Marc Schulte on Unsplash.

The post Cultivate Growth appeared first on Giant Leap Consulting.

Risk Being Yourself

Risk being yourself. This concept is far from new. Throughout the ages, the most consistent prescription for personal well-being is this: Be who you must be. The Greek poet Pindar said, “Grow into what you are.” Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Insist on yourself, never imitate.” Famed psychologist Erich Fromm said, “Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is.” Robert Louis Stevenson said, “To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life.” Abraham Maslow said, “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.”

These sages said explicitly what we all know implicitly, that when you have become far removed from who you are supposed to be, when your work-self and personal-self are wholly different people, and when the masks you wear don’t look anything like your real face, you expend too much energy living a life of pretense.

Who Are You?

When the person we portray to the world is the same as the person we truly are, we are being our authentic selves. When we are authentic, we are who we are, take us or leave us. To live authentically is to live without pretense, and to express and assert the gift of your individuality. Living authentically means being psychologically patriotic, and proud of who you are. The benefit of being our authentic selves is that instead of wasting time pretending to be someone we are not, we have more impassioned energy to get on with the business of living. Living a life of authenticity represents the end of an exhausting game of make-believe.

What about you? Are you living authentically? Would you know if you were? Ask yourself these tough questions:

Are you living a lie?Does your life stand for anything? What?Are you selling out in some area of your life? Have
slow, incremental compromises turned you into the
person you never wanted to be?Would the person you are at work be welcomed into
your home?Do you judge others mainly by their appearances?Does your life revolve around money? Which of these
do you equate it with freedom, happiness, security,
status, and/or power?Would people describe you as “genuine,” “real,” or
“down to earth”? Are you?Is your true self the self that the world gets to see?Are you the person that you always wanted to become?Don’t Like the Answers?

If you are disappointed with your answers, take heart. Living authentically does not have to be forever. Like Dante, the main character in Alighieri’s seminal work Inferno—the first part of the 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy, it is never too late to save your life. But, like Dante, to become the person you are supposed to become, you may have to go through hell to get there. Why? Because being our authentic selves is a huge risk.

Yes, the greatest risk of all is to be yourself, even if being yourself means losing stature, money, prestige, or the identity that others prefer. Living a life of authenticity is an act of personal fidelity. When we stop betraying ourselves, our life takes on meaning, substance, and relevance. You cannot escape the longings of your soul, nor should you. The closer you get to your authentic self, the less you diverge from your own identity. It all starts with a choice, the exercise of prerogative. Will you be who you are, or will you be who you are not?

Risk Being Yourself with Authenticity

Taking the risk of authenticity means embarking on a journey of liberation, the journey of your destiny, your own personal freedom march. There are no maps, few boundaries, and plenty of hazards. Yes, you will have to give up a lot, and yes, you will suffer through hardship. You will be called to do what is uncomfortable and inconvenient, to stand alone and face your fears, and then to bring the full potency of your authenticity back into the world.

Why do it? For the same reasons, you take any other Right Risk. In the struggle to overcome your fears, in the courage to face your demons, and in your willingness to take a stand for what you believe in, you build and fortify your integrity. When you risk because you feel called to do so, when you risk out of your authenticity, you risk with greater confidence and less regret. Right Risk-taking, then, is about something much more important than adrenaline, control, or machismo. Each Right Risk becomes a projection of your character, an external manifestation of your theology. Thus, the greatest reward for each Right Risk taken is an intimate encounter with the magnificence of your soul.

Are you living a life of authenticity? Decide today how you’re going to risk being yourself.

This post is based on an excerpt from Right Risk: 10 Powerful Principles for Taking Giant Leaps with Your Life.

Want to learn more about the benefits of taking risks? You might like these other blog posts:

To Risk or Not to Risk, that is THE Question!Put Yourself on the Line: Learning to Take Risks

The post Risk Being Yourself appeared first on Giant Leap Consulting.

Why Should You Train for Courage?

If you are wondering, “What is this courage stuff, and why should I train for courage?” I’ve got some answers to those questions in this post, plus at the end, I’ve got a free downloadable resource for you.

If you want to learn about courage, you also have to learn about fear.

The intricate dance between courage and fear is a prevalent theme in many aspects of life. Especially within the confines of our workplaces. Sadly, in numerous organizational settings, fear is wielded as a tool by leaders in an attempt to spur motivation among their teams. Yet, it’s important to recognize that fear doesn’t just reside in the corner office; it permeates throughout the entire organization. What we must acknowledge is that fear is detrimental to the vitality of any business. While it may initially drive employees to work harder, faster, or longer, it ultimately stifles their inclination to tackle new challenges or voice crucial insights.

Are you witnessing employees attempting to divert attention from issues or conceal mistakes? Are you noticing a decline in overall engagement? Do you see your teams adhering to the status quo, devoid of innovative ideas? Are high levels of distrust and dysfunction becoming commonplace? Is turnover plaguing your organization?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’re undoubtedly grappling with the corrosive effects of fear.

Courage serves as the foundation, the cornerstone upon which other virtues are built and fortified. By nurturing courage within your organization, tasks such as leadership, teamwork, communication, change management, and continuous improvement become markedly more manageable. I firmly believe that everyone possesses the capacity for courage; it merely requires activation.

Train for Courage Illustrated

Allow me to illustrate how courage can catalyze transformative change. I am thoroughly enamored with my work. Whether planning and leading training sessions for clients, delivering speeches at conferences, or engaging with remarkable individuals at expos, I am deeply fulfilled by my role. Embracing challenges wholeheartedly, I immersed myself in podcasts, devoured books, and charted ambitious plans for the year ahead. Rather than succumbing to intimidation or fear, I seized the opportunity with gusto, fueled by an unwavering belief in the growth potential.

This underscores the critical need for courage within organizations. When individuals operate from a place of courage and conviction, they exhibit heightened levels of personal accountability, engage in confident upward communication, embrace change with enthusiasm, foster transparency, and openness, and proactively seize initiative, among other attributes.

Therefore, you and your organization must prioritize and cultivate courage through targeted training initiatives. By instilling a culture of courage, you empower your teams to navigate challenges with resilience, creativity, and unwavering determination, thereby propelling your organization toward sustainable success.

I think courage can show up in the workplace in three ways:

Try Courage – the courage of action and pioneering first attemptsTrust Courage – the courage to rely on the actions of othersTell Courage – the courage of using your voice and speaking upAdditional Resources

I’ve prepared a free PDF download that tells you even more about the three types of courage and some tips for activating your courage in each area. Just click here to access it.

What action have you been avoiding in your professional life, and what are the reasons behind you not taking the plunge?

 

Updated February 2024

Image by Alexa from Pixabay.

The post Why Should You Train for Courage? appeared first on Giant Leap Consulting.

Leading People

The old saying is true: if you claim to be a leader and you turn around and nobody is following you, you’re not a leader. You’re just out for a walk. The impact you have on people can, potentially, be positive and enduring. In the same way that good leaders before you influenced who you are, the people you’re now leading deserve to be enhanced by your leadership.

It sounds simple, but how do we make that happen? By building a trustful and psychologically safe environment where people can unreservedly express and be themselves. As a new leader, you are now part of a long tradition. Leaders who came before you nurtured your growth, enabling you to assume greater responsibility. As they did, you developed the leader inside you. Now you can nurture the development of the people you lead so that they can become leaders. This section is about developing the best leadership for everyone.

Leading People with Trust

Can I trust you? Every person you have the privilege to lead needs to answer that question affirmatively and confidently before giving their best. However, they won’t be able to answer that question instantly. They’ll form their answer based on your actions, the environment you foster, and your treatment of each team member. But they’ll need to be able to settle the question before they fully believe that you are on their side. So, let me pose the question slightly differently: are you trustworthy?

Trust is a complex and very personal subject, impacted by such things as the stability of your upbringing, your perception of your self-worth, your personality disposition and how open or scrutinizing it is, and the degree to which you have suffered through betrayals and violations in your life. All of this impacts you before even taking into consideration the people with whom you’re hoping to build trust or before considering whether you can trust each of them.

All of us seem to exist on a grand continuum that ranges from extreme naiveté to extreme self-protection. Ignorance resides at the far end of either side. Ignorance is being open to the point of trusting those who are bound to take advantage of our trust, but it’s also being untrusting to the point of not being able to develop any relationships. Either end is dangerous either to you or others. Whatever your background, and wherever you reside on the continuum, as a leader, you have to find a way to trust those you’re responsible for leading or you will fail. Trust is elemental to developing the strong interpersonal bonds that underpin healthy relationships between leaders and those they’re leading.

Lead with Safety

If you had to choose between employees who comfortably played it safe and those who consistently acted with courage, who would you rather have reporting to you? The answer should be easy and obvious: you’d rather have courageous employees. In times of change and uncertainty, though, it’s common for people to hunker down and seek safety as they take stock of the shifting terrain. It’s also common during unstable times for fear to direct their behavior. They become distracted, suspicious, and unproductive. Here’s the thing: in today’s work world, change, uncertainty, and instability are constants. Thus, a lot of workers are in a constant state of fear and safety-seeking. Dangerously so.

Your aim should be to inspire courageous behavior among those you are leading. Courage is the antidote to fear and safety-seeking. Courage causes people to show initiative and ‘step up to the plate,’ speak with assertiveness and honesty, and embrace the uncertainties that accompany change. It gives people the backbone to face fierce challenges, stretch toward higher levels of performance, and move outside their safe comfort zone in pursuit of improvement. Where fearful workers are safety-seekers, courageous workers are opportunity-seekers, and your success as a leader will be directly related to your ability to counteract the negative impacts of fear by activating people’s courage.

Nurture Talent in Others

Today’s workplace is littered with jaded leaders who have gotten so subsumed by work that they’ve lost sight of one of the greatest responsibilities and joys that a leader has: nurturing talent. A leader is successful to the extent that they help those they are leading to be successful. Your job is to draw out and develop people’s capabilities so they can have a fulfilling
career. After working with you, each of your direct reports should be somehow enhanced, better off for having been positively impacted by your leadership. Otherwise, you have failed.

One of the best ways to nurture talent is to give people work opportunities that use every bit of their current skills while activating latent skills you saw could be developed. It needs to be an opportunity that they view as an opportunity. Meaning, an assignment that is aligned with their passion, interest, and natural strengths, which you learned about as you got to know them better. The reason for this is they’ll be more into it, fully engaged with the opportunity because they view it as benefitting them and their career. They’ll have more ownership, investment, and energy to take advantage of the opportunity.

Your responsibility is to develop those who trust you and put them in a position to thrive. Leaving others better than you found them gives you the opportunity to leave your mark on others the way leaders have done to you before. The people you lead look to you for guidance and direction.

How do you lead others? Do you build trust and safety, and nurture talent? If not, these elements of leadership will help you become the leader that others want. More importantly, the leader they need.

This post is based on an excerpt from Leadership Two Words at a Time: Simple Truths for Leading Complicated People.

The post Leading People appeared first on Giant Leap Consulting.

7 Ways To Improve Your Professionalism

Professionalism is not just a trait; it’s an art form that can dramatically elevate both individual and organizational success. At Giant Leap Consulting, we offer an entire professionalism workshop that highlights the following 7 characteristics. These key areas are not just concepts; they are practical tools designed to elevate your and your company’s professionalism to new heights.

7 C’s to Develop Your Professionalism1. Character

It begins with our identity and how we carry ourselves. Professionalism is fundamentally defined by one’s character.

Integrity stands out as a pivotal component of professional character applicable to individuals in various roles—be it leaders, employees, or clients. Much like well-constructed bridges, individuals with high integrity possess a complete set of commendable character traits. They consistently exhibit honesty and ethical behavior in all their interactions, not only when it’s convenient or under scrutiny. True integrity is evident when there is a strong alignment between the values one professes and their actual conduct.

Always bear in mind: that the true measure of your integrity is revealed in your actions when no one is observing.

2. Caring

Do you demonstrate a genuine commitment to your work? Go-getters, the top-performing and typically most professional employees, actively engage in understanding the strategy and direction of their work. They willingly tackle challenging tasks, take ownership of their career paths, and proactively seek opportunities for growth. These individuals continuously strive to acquire new skills and capabilities, aiming to provide enhanced value. Their aspirations include success not only for themselves but also for their teammates. In essence, go-getters genuinely care—they are deeply invested!

3. Clothing

Be mindful of your professional demeanor. How you present yourself physically, including your attire, hairstyle, and overall tidiness, undoubtedly leaves an impression on both the individuals you encounter and those you collaborate with. A professional appearance not only reflects your own standards but also conveys consideration for others, demonstrating a genuine desire to prevent any potential discomfort.

4. Customer Service

An indicator of professionalism lies in how individuals handle their customers. Surpassing customer expectations ought to be an integral aspect of any company’s mission statement. Exceptional customer service is rooted in the establishment of strong relationships. Here are some pointers for cultivating these connections:

Make friends with clients. There’s an old saying, “Get a customer, make some money. Make a friend, make a fortune.”When entertaining, know what you can and can’t do from an ethical standpoint.Learn and acknowledge birthdays. Send people birthday cards.Send handwritten thank-you notes. Mailed, not emailed.5. Communication

The manner and content of your communication play a significant role in determining whether you are perceived as a genuine professional.

Before your initial meeting with a client, lay the groundwork for effective and amicable communication. Conduct thorough research on the individual—utilize Google and LinkedIn to gather as much information as possible. Establish a positive first impression by maintaining direct eye contact, offering a firm handshake, and repeating their name enough to commit it to memory. Avoid immediately delving into business discussions; instead, inquire about their hobbies, passions, or interests to initiate the conversation.

6. Composure

Composure is the mature handling of stress, demonstrating a level-headed approach to pressure. In times of conflict, it’s crucial to recognize that there are three perspectives: my side, the other person’s side, and a middle ground that incorporates elements from both sides. More often than not, this middle ground represents the truth.

The capacity to courageously maintain composure amid conflict stands as a significant indicator of professionalism.

7. Commitment

Commitment is an essential aspect of professionalism. It entails upholding professional standards even when it’s tempting or more convenient not to do so. In client interactions, express your commitment by promptly following up after meetings to summarize the outcomes and reaffirm your dedication to the agreed-upon action items. This demonstrates conscientiousness and active engagement.

Whether you are an employee or a leader, the onus is on YOU to make a commitment to elevate your performance!

How will you decide to devote yourself to the 7 Cs? Shift your focus to professionalism and you’ll notice how others perceive you and, more significantly, how you perceive your own professionalism.

Photos by Christina Morillo and fauxels on Pexels.

The post 7 Ways To Improve Your Professionalism appeared first on Giant Leap Consulting.

Is Perfectionism Attainable?

Nobody’s perfect, but that doesn’t seem to stop people from trying. And why not? There are lots of good reasons for wanting to be perfect. Some professions, for example, greatly benefit from their inherent perfectionism. This is especially true of professions where the consequences of mistakes would be catastrophic, where the human or the financial costs of errors are simply too great to bear. Indeed, the higher the potential for catastrophe, the more necessary and warranted the perfectionistic behavior. Consequently, among the most perfectionistic people you’ll ever meet are bridge-building engineers, skyscraper architects, nuclear physicists, software engineers, and brain surgeons. I, for one, thank God for that. If you ever had the misfortune of requiring brain surgery and had to choose between a pursed-lipped, anal-retentive surgical tactician or a giddy, free-wheeling improvisationalist, who would you choose?

Perfectionism and Risks

The trouble with perfectionism is that it impedes our ability to take risks. Perfectionists are better suited for mitigating risks than for taking them. This mostly stems from their almost obsessive preoccupation with anticipating what can go wrong. Perfectionists are prone to “catastrophizing,” focusing on worst-case scenarios to account for, and control, every possible negative outcome. This, in turn, lends itself toward a doom-n-gloom outlook when facing a risk. Thus, risks themselves are seen through a prism of negativity that not only makes the risk-taking experience unenjoyable but through the power of expectancy often sets it up for failure as well.

Perfectionists are better suited for mitigating risks than for taking them.

The Value of Mistakes

Whether you have decided to pursue your risk, or if you have just jumped off your risk platform, you will have a more difficult time of it if you are a perfectionist. Risk-taking is inherently a mistake-driven process, characterized by a whole lot of trial and a whole lot of error. What perfectionists hate most are mistakes. To perfectionists, a mistake is more than an error; it is a failure that reflects on them. You can even hear it in their language. After making a mistake an average person will say something like “My idea didn’t work so I tried something else,” but a perfectionist will scornfully lament, “I tried my idea and it was an utter failure. I should have known it was a dumb idea. I won’t make that mistake again!”

To perfectionists, a mistake is more than an error; it is a failure that reflects on them.

When mistakes equate with failure, risk-taking is viewed as the surest path to dejection and humiliation. Thus the dispositions of perfectionists and risk-takers are often diametrically opposite. These differences are well captured by Dr. Monica Ramirez Basco in her insightful book on perfectionism, Never Good Enough. She explains that risk-takers are unlike perfectionists in that they “do not expect themselves to always be right or always have great ideas. But they know that if they keep trying, they will hit upon a winner. If their ideas are rejected, they might get their feelings hurt but they will recover quickly. The consequences of failure for these people do not feel as great as they would to the perfectionist.”

The Value of Taking Risks

Risk-takers view mistakes as an inevitable part of the risk-taking experience. Unlike perfectionists, who categorically assume that perfection is both necessary and attainable, the risk-taker knows better. It is not that risk-takers want to make mistakes. Rather they see mistakes as valuable sources of data that will ultimately help them attain their goals. When someone pointed out to Thomas Edison that in inventing the incandescent light bulb he had performed 10,000 failed experiments, he is purported to have replied, “I have not failed. I just found 10,000 ways that didn’t work.”

Risk-takers view mistakes as an inevitable part of the risk-taking experience.

Risk-takers hold the view that, though painful, mistakes are to be expected. In springboard diving, for example, a diver knows that to progress in the sport he or she must take on dives with greater difficulty, literally translated in the sport through a mathematical calculation that signifies each dive’s degree of difficulty, or what divers refer to as DD. The dives with the highest DD are those with the highest risk. Divers know that in exchange for a repertoire of dives with a higher average DD, they will likely have to endure a bunch of belly flops; welts come with the territory. But they also know that dives with a high DD are those with the biggest potential payoff. At some point in his or her career, a diver will either commit to pursuing high DD, or not. And at the elite levels, there are no low DD divers.

If you want to be a risk-taker, eventually, you will have to fully commit yourself to the risk, and all the hardships and imperfections that come with it.

What would it look like to step away from the pursuit of perfection and embrace the imperfections and potential hardships of risk-taking?

Images by Pexels and Nicoleta Nastace from Pixabay

The post Is Perfectionism Attainable? appeared first on Giant Leap Consulting.

Keeping An Opportunity Mindset

Opportunities are the venues where people can try themselves, test themselves, better themselves, and even find themselves. The leader’s job is to match the opportunity to the person and to help the person, and the organization, exploit the opportunity for all it’s worth.

Being an open-door leader requires having an opportunity mindset, a significant shift from the more common threat-focused way of leading.

Fear and excitement prompt the same neurological responses. Think for a moment about what happens to you, physiologically, when you are really, really afraid. Your heart races, your palms sweat, your breath gets faster and shorter, and your stomach teems with butterflies.

If fear and excitement are both high-arousal states, why is fear so detrimental to creating opportunity while excitement is so effective?

Though there are almost no neurological and physiological differences, there is one critical distinction between the conditions of fear and excitement. You experience fear as displeasure, and you experience excitement as pleasure. It follows that you move toward situations that provide pleasure and you avoid situations that provoke displeasure.

Here are some specific impacts of keeping an opportunity mindset: Opportunity Pulls: Leading by stoking people’s fears provokes anxiety and negative thoughts of impending painful consequences. But opportunities are hopeful situations that evoke positive thoughts of pleasurable rewards. Leadership is most effective when it moves people toward a desired outcome rather than getting them to run away from a bad outcome. Opportunity attracts; fear repels.Opportunity Points in the Right Direction: When you are talking about opportunities, you are talking about the conditions you want instead of the conditions you want to prevent from happening. Because outcomes often follow the direction of our thoughts, it’s best to focus on what you want vs. what you don’t. “Our opportunity is to keep the ball in the air” is better than “Whatever you do, don’t drop that ball!”Opportunity Activates Imagination: We “take advantage of” or “capitalize on” opportunities. They are conditions that don’t yet exist and require people’s hard work and imagination to be fully exploited.Opportunity Inspires Courage: Opportunities are not sure things. The positive outcome you hope to create is not guaranteed. Thus opportunities come with potential risks. The risk is what infuses the pursuit of opportunities with pleasurable excitement.Opportunity Begets Opportunity: Would you rather have your employees coming to you with new ideas and opportunities they want you to support — or problems they want you to resolve? When you model opportunistic thinking, you increase the likelihood of building a self-sufficient, can-do spirit among employees.

Focusing on opportunity instead of problems is not just a matter of semantics. By viewing and explaining situations as opportunities, you create a field of excitement where employees are more apt to face challenges than shirk them.

Leaders create leaders by opening doors of opportunity that have a positive and lasting impact on the behavior of those they lead.

How will you choose to embrace an opportunity mindset?Want to learn about giving the gift of opportunity this holiday season? Read more here.

 

Images by Gerd Altmann and Shepherd Chabata from Pixabay.

The post Keeping An Opportunity Mindset appeared first on Giant Leap Consulting.

What is a Scary Leader?

Leadership is as ancient as humanity. Since the first tribes of barefooted humans hunted on the plains, there have been leaders. In fact, leadership is probably older than humanity, in that animals and other organisms display leadership. Pecking orders are part of many species that have been around much longer than we have, and the “scary leader” has been around just as long.

What usually sets a leader apart from those being led, whether in the animal kingdom or in groups of human beings, is an endowment of power. The physically, socially, intellectually, and sometimes spiritually dominant individual usually stands at the top of the heap. The earliest leaders were likely those who could climb the highest tree, hunt the biggest game, or mix the most powerful healing elixirs. More often, they were just the badass mesomorphs who could kick the asses of punier tribesmen.

Scary Leaders Personified

Most people agree that the world would benefit by having more good leaders. We pin our hopes on good leaders because we view them as demonstrators of high ideals, people who are in some way exceptional, and who live and act with the highest integrity. But as long as there have been good leaders, there have also been leaders who compromised their integrity and turned bad. 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 can, that’s why.

Scary Leaders Illustrated

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-leaders can’t, doesn’t mean you should. But it is also the “because I can” freedom that causes 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 sets the rules, judges others’ performance, and doles out the rewards, you have more unimpeded 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.

Leadership Privileges

Leadership is immensely important, particularly during times of intense challenge and change. But leadership is also massively seductive. Leaders are constantly being told how special and better they are. Think, for example, of the privileges that leaders are afforded that non-leaders don’t get. Leaders get bigger office spaces (with more windows), better parking spaces, more agenda airtime, 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 cut from a different cloth,
levitating above the rest of us mere mortals.

Leadership Should Be Earned

Consider too that a huge number of organizations in the world are family-owned, including Ford Motor Company, S.C. Johnson, and Walmart, to name a few. The specialness of leadership is even more prominent when family members are appointed into leadership roles for reasons that have more to do with bloodline than competency. This is an ancient leadership game. Monarchy is leadership’s original sin. It is very possible that the first ethical breach of leadership was some distant king deciding that his progeny should be the next ruler just for no other reason than being sired by the king’s sperm. “I am special,” the king declared, “and so are my offspring forevermore!” The king gets to reign as long as his namesake’s rule. It’s as close to immortality as a leader can
get.

Aside from illustrating how not to act when you’re in a leadership role, there’s something instructive about stories like these. They show that no matter how powerful a leader may get. No matter how enamored with his specialness he is, or how brown the noses of those following him, no leader gets to act abhorrently forever. No leader gets to be a god on Earth. As close as a leader may fly to the sun, his wings will melt eventually. As a result, he will freefall back down to the hard dirt floor. Call it leader karma.

Groucho Marx was right, “Time wounds all heels.”

It’s important to understand what makes a scary leader. By recognizing these signs, we can avoid adopting these traits and becoming the leader so many fear. How will you separate yourself from the scary leader?

This post is based on an excerpt from The Leadership Killer: Reclaiming Humility in an Age of Arrogance.

Images by: Mircea – All in collections, svklimkin, and PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

The post What is a Scary Leader? appeared first on Giant Leap Consulting.

The Three Buckets of Courage

Understanding and influencing courageous behavior is an important part of effective leadership and organizational development. When it comes to influencing courage in the workplace, it’s essential to recognize and appreciate the different dimensions that individuals navigate when their courage is activated. This understanding lays the foundation for a concept articulated as the “Three Buckets of Courage.” Each bucket represents a distinct facet of courage – TRY Courage, TRUST Courage, and TELL Courage.

Try

The most recognizable form of courage, TRY Courage is the courage of first attempts—trying something for the very first time Think back, for example, to your first day of school, or your first kiss, or the first time you drove a car. At the time, these firsts were, for you, pioneering events, thresholds that you had to cross over to ensure your advancement as a member of the human community. While such firsts look ordinary now, when you were actually contending with them, you were probably desperately nervous. Managers contend with “trying firsts” all the time.

Remember, for example, when you first moved into a management role? Or when you first became responsible for the performance of an employee? Or when your boss asked you to lead a pioneering initiative for your division? All of those things required TRY Courage on your part. Similarly, your direct reports contend with trying situations when they struggle to learn a new and more sophisticated software system, uproot their families and relocate to a different geographic area, or become responsible for a project of their own for the first time. Such situations are ripe for the development of TRY Courage.

Trust

The act of trusting often requires letting go of our need to control. This includes outcomes or people, our defense mechanisms, and our preconceptions about what is “right.” For hard-driving controlling types, such as the coffee-clutching professionals who make up much of today’s workforce, this goes against the grain of everything they stand for. Trust runs counter to the take-charge ethos that typifies today’s business world.

In many companies, the most valued employees are those who, when encountering challenging situations, control chaos, force order, and take decisive action. As the Roman poet Virgil said, “Fortune favors the bold.” TRUST Courage, for managers, is a tricky thing. On the one hand, you need your employees to trust you so that they follow your direction enthusiastically. On the other hand, you have to monitor their performance, which, if done too closely, often feels distrustful. Plus many managers work in companies layered with systems that are inherently distrustful. It is more difficult to fill workers’ TRUST buckets if you’re an extension of a system that doesn’t trust them.

Tell

The average employee does not get to vote on which senior management decisions he or she will endorse. As one-party systems, most organizations more closely resemble authoritarian regimes than they do free and open societies. Employees aren’t “citizens,” and the ability to influence companywide decisions is restricted to those in the upper echelons. So regardless of how open a company considers itself to be, the risks of voicing an opinion that runs counter to the directives of the senior team are so high that
most employees keep quiet.

In TELL Courage, the risk is voicing your true opinion. It may result in being set aside as an outcast from the established social order. The risk that comes with TELL Courage is the risk of social banishment. Having worked with thousands of employees over the years, I have come to believe that the TELL Courage bucket is the one most in need of filling. Employees are quite skilled at biting their tongues. Rather than outwardly disagree with company changes—and risk being viewed as mavericks or outsiders—they “go along to get along.” But just because employees actively nod their heads “yes” doesn’t mean they aren’t passively behaving according to “no.”

You have the responsibility to equip each team member with courage, resilience, and a shared purpose.

Many company initiatives are dead on arrival because the senior executives misjudged the lack of true commitment to the initiative that lower-level employees had in the first place. They had surface-level yes, but no commitment level. The lack of TELL Courage demonstrated by employees is directly related to the behavior of managers. Specifically, when managers use intimidation to get things done. This leads to employees learning that speaking up is the best way to get thrown out.

Filling Your Three Buckets of Courage

Understanding the profound impact of TRY, TRUST, and TELL Courage is pivotal. As leaders, you are the architects of an environment where these courage buckets are either replenished or drained. Your role extends beyond steering the ship. It encompasses shaping a culture where your team can confidently face challenges rather than succumb to fear.

Leadership is a continuous act of nurturing and replenishing these courage buckets. Recognize that the mindset of your team is shaped by the contents of TRY, TRUST, and TELL Courage. Your intentional actions, communication strategies, and commitment to growth are the keys to creating an environment where confidence prevails over fear.

You have the responsibility to equip each team member with courage, resilience, and a shared purpose. Lead with the understanding that filled courage buckets not only empower individuals but also cultivate a collective strength that propels your team towards success.

How will you actively nurture and replenish the TRY, TRUST, and TELL Courage buckets within your team to create an environment where confidence prevails over fear?

This post is based on an excerpt from Courage Goes to Work: How to Build Backbones, Boost Performance, and Get Results.

The post The Three Buckets of Courage appeared first on Giant Leap Consulting.

Courageous Living

In 2008, a movie called The Bucket List was released, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. The two play terminally ill cancer patients who escape from a hospital, setting out to accomplish a list of adventurous things before they kick the bucket. The movie’s premise connects directly to courage. When you become keenly aware of life’s brevity, you become more willing to live it courageously. So what does take to reflect courageous living in your everyday life?

When There’s Nothing Left, There’s Courage

This idea, that the knowledge of your mortality can inspire courageous behavior, was also captured in Tim McGraw’s chart-topping country song “Live Like You Were Dying.” The song tells the story of a man who, after learning he has cancer, starts living in a courageous way. He goes skydiving, mountain climbing, and even bull riding. But he also loves with more depth and forgives with more generosity. What makes the song so powerful is that it is based on McGraw’s own life experiences. The country singer is the son of New York Mets baseball legend Tug McGraw. The song was written just after the elder McGraw died of brain cancer. The singer had taken care of his father during his illness.

So what does all this talk about death and cancer have to do with living courageously? Everything. You and I know that if you knew you had only one more year to live, you would respond to the world very differently than you do today. And that response would be entirely courageous. I’m sure you’d try more things, like traveling to exotic places or learning how to ride a motorcycle. You’d probably make amends to people and open yourself up to trusting them more fully. I’m sure you’d express yourself with less care as to what people think of your opinions. In short, you would behave with more TRY, TRUST, and TELL courage.

The Courage for Life and Career

Now let’s think about how this lesson can extend to the workplace. And yes, if you really did have only a year to live, you’d probably quit your job and move to Tahiti. But, the point I’m trying to make is that personally and professionally it is important to live a life and craft a career, that you can be proud to call your own because someday both will be gone forever.

The life-orienting and potentially courage-inducing fact that you’re going to die someday has to do with accountability. Doing things you can be proud of, saying things you can be proud of, and touching the hearts of others in a way you can be proud of are ultimately ways of demonstrating personal and career accountability. At work and at home, doing courageous things is the best way to honor the life you’ve been blessed with.

All of this relates to how you manage people, too. Your employees are entitled to have a fulfilling career. That’s right, entitled! They bear much of the responsibility for crafting a fulfilling career. But you, as a manager, also bear some responsibility. Helping them to be courageous in the service of the company’s goals is not enough. You have to help them to be courageous in the service of their career goals, too. As a manager, you can do both by holding them accountable to their own potential and providing them with meaningful and courage-inducing challenges. You have to fill them with courage.

What steps can you take today to infuse more courage into your everyday life, both personally and professionally, and leave a lasting positive impact on the people around you?

 

Images by Alexa and Simon from Pixabay.

 

The post Courageous Living appeared first on Giant Leap Consulting.