Category Archives: Leadership

Defenestration … what a wonderful word

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Tomorrow (May 23) is the anniversary of the Defenestration of Prague, 395 years ago.

In an event that explains what one means when describing an act as “Bohemian”, a group of Bohemian Protestants threw a group of Bohemian Catholics out of a third storey window for attempting to suppress them – de fenestra (out of the window), hence the term “defenestration”.

It wasn’t the first time that this happened, nor was it the last. Apparently, Bohemians favoured this kind of act perpetrated upon enemies. It didn’t particularly solve the problem, however, as the Catholics survived the fall. They and their supporters attributed this to angels bearing them gently to the ground. The Protestants attributed it to the Catholics landing in a large pile of horse manure.

Here’s the spot in Prague where they fell out of the window:

Prague_Castle_defenestration_site

 

That was a long way to fall and survive!

The upshot was that one of the survivors earned the distinguished title of ‘Baron von Hohenfall’ (the Baron of Highfall) after he and his compatriots ran off to the emperor and, more importantly, this event helped precipitate the 30 Years War, in which anywhere from a third to up to two-thirds of provinces of the Holy Roman Empire were wiped out. Estimates of direct casualties range anywhere from 3,000,000 to 11,500,000 people.

Sometimes it can seem like the best solution is to grab the folks responsible and chuck them out of the window. But most violent revolutions only result in more violence. And chucking the boss out the window is not really very responsible succession planning. Not to mention the fact that he might survive and you’d be left to clean up the manure.

Instead, defenestrate the bad attitudes and poor perspectives that prevent you from negotiating better solutions. Toss the poor behaviours out the window and aim your eyes on higher ground!

Peter’s Performance Power-Ups – Video Intro

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Intro to my “Performance Power-Up” Video Series, with some excerpts from a few episodes.

Visit http://www.lamplighter.com.au/viewStory/Video+Seminars to find out more and subscribe.

Old-fashioned service is not so old anymore…

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I was talking with some friends on the weekend about real estate. I told how a real estate agent who worked for us a couple of years ago, Prak Sangthong at Harcourts WA, was brilliant because he sold our place in a couple of weeks, when it had been sitting on the market for about 9 months under other agents.

Here’s what Prak did differently:

  • He sat down with us to determine our needs and why we were selling
  • He committed to getting in touch with us after each and every home open
  • He committed to sitting down with us face to face every other week, with visitor feedback, in order to revise strategy and tactics
  • He came up with different ways of selling the benefits of the home
  • When someone came in the door who looked like a likely buyer, he took that person aside, worked out if the house was right for them and their lifestyle, needs and concerns
  • He then personally visited other homes with that prospect to help them determine which home was right for them.

He contacted us within a week and a half with an offer that, in his judgement, was right for the market. We sold. He apologised that it had taken “so long”, but there had been rain the previous weekend and no visitors. It all took two weeks from the time he sat down with us.

My friends commented that that used to be the way all real estate agents did their work, but that they no longer did – they had become lazy in easy markets.

Prak is offering this ‘new’ level of service and gets great results for his customers and his business. It seems old-fashioned is not so old anymore …

Some Words to Lead By

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Isn’t it interesting how so many leaders will spend copious hours pouring over the precise wording of marketing brochures, spending thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on copy and the process, will spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on ad campaigns that have “just the right wording”, will spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on ensuring that they say the right thing at the AGM, yet will give comparatively little thought to the words they use on a daily basis with their staff, family or colleagues?

Here are some words to lead by …

  • “I need”, rather than “you should.”
  • “You have done well”, rather than “That was fine.”
  • “I’m grateful for your efforts”, instead of “Let’s hope that will be enough.”
  • “I know you can do this”, rather than “How many times do I have to tell you?”
  • “I trust in your ability”, in place of “What do we pay you for?”
  • “Results are down”, not “You’re incompetent.”
  • “We all make mistakes”, rather than “We can’t afford to make mistakes.”
  • “I forgive your behaviour”, instead of “I don’t know whether I can trust you any more.”
  • “I’m excited by what we will accomplish”, instead of “This is going to take a lot out of us.”
  • “There’s been a problem”, not “You are a problem.”
  • “Let me help you do better”, rather than “You are the worst department here.”
  • “Let’s work on this together”, rather than “Sort it out. I don’t have the time to help you.”

Go for the positive. Don’t evaluate with every sentence. Be constructive in your communication.

Bring More to the Table

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How do you stand out as a potential leader?

You have to bring more to the table. Don’t just meet the bare requirements – either of your constituents, your boss or your colleagues.

When you’re discouraged in your work or feel like you’re working for a boss who doesn’t appreciate you (if the client is your “boss”, or if your boss is your “boss”), it’s much tougher to put forth the effort. It’s even more critical at this point that you stand up and say, “I’m going to do my best for you and go above and beyond your expectations”.

In my consulting work, I structure fees and engagements so that I can go beyond expectations for my clients. Sometimes even meeting basic expectations puts one above the crowd – I was thanked today for getting proposals and information to a prospect when promised. The fact that the prospect volunteered their thanks probably means they’re not even getting that basic level of service from other agents.

I volunteered to create some videos for one client, based on work we had done recently. They thought I was suggesting an additional cost: “No, it won’t cost you anything. I can’t promise I’ll provide it next time, but this time I want to offer it as thanks for our first engagement together.”

In my career in education, I always went the extra mile to get to know students and accommodate them. I tried to be creative and was always actively creating extracurricular opportunities for students, even when others around me were telling me not to! That’s okay – they were miserable, I was not. And I was rewarded with work and promotions at other schools who were happy for me to contribute more than was required on paper.

When I employ someone to support my business, I’m thrilled when they bring ideas, creativity and more experience and skills than I would to the party. If all they provide is what I already know and can do, then what are they adding to my business?

As a leader, I sought – and seek – to provide more than expected. A leader has to throw himself or herself wholeheartedly into the job at hand. After all, that’s what you want from others, isn’t it?

Bring more to the table!

Boost Your Leadership, Communication and Performance

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Receive a weekly boost to your leadership, public speaking, communication with ”Peter’s Power-Ups” Weekly Videos.

The videos just started being broadcast – once per week, for up to 50 weeks. The series include:

  • Gifted Leadership Series I – Bring Out Your Talents and Gifts as a Leader, and the gifts and talents of your followers, and
  • Authentic Speaking Series I – Connect, Influence and Persuade people with genuine and powerful public speaking and communication principles.

Each series is around 75 cents per day (less if you can claim for tax). You won’t even have to miss out on a Coke or Coffee each day for that amount. Even one idea that you receive from these videos will be worth much more than the 80% of painful learning and development you tolerate elsewhere. But I’ll provide you with many hundreds of ideas and principles that you can apply to help you grow as a professional, as a communicator, as a leader and as a person.

Visit http://www.lamplighter.com.au/viewStory/Video+Seminars for further information and to subscribe.

Thank you to those of you already subscribing. I welcome your comments and requests any time.

To any North American subscribers: Don’t worry, my accent is perfectly understandable – probably more than Hugh Jackman, and you watch him all the time :)

Cheers!

Peter McLean

Buswell’s Benders

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My daughters came back late from school with their mother and were laughing in disbelief at a radio interview.

The interviewer was speaking with our state treasurer (Mr. Buswell) and asking why utilities prices had gone up by a minimum of 4 percent, when the government had promised that they would be held “at or near the inflation rate”, which has been at most 2.75% by any measure.

“That’s hardly at inflation rate, is it?” asked the interviewer.

“Well, that’s your opinion,” said the treasurer.

Every time the interviewer brought up the facts, the treasurer would just reply with some variation of “that’s your opinion” and state why they had to increase prices, instead of acknowledging that 4, 6 or more percent is indeed far more than 2.75.

My 2 older girls are very smart, but are still only 8 and 10. They were incredulous that the man couldn’t admit the truth and give a straight answer.

If they can see how preposterous his responses were, why cannot he and his advisors? And why would he think any adult of reason would not be able to?

Failure and Innovation

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A colleague has said to me a few times that she believes that “failure” should be removed from the lexicon. People too often fear to act for fear of failure.

For the same reason, people and organisations often suppress innovation – it is too risky and by that they mean that they may fail. But instead of shouting out, “failure is not an option”, these organisations should instead be saying, “failure is part of the innovation and refinement process.”

No one builds resilience or success without some form of failure. It was Thomas Edison who famously said, “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” That’s the light bulb moment, folks. You can’t find the perfect solution until you’ve tried a whole host of others. Because you can be guaranteed that either it won’t work perfectly right the first time, or that people won’t want it.

Our dog, Edison, takes after his namesake in this way – he endlessly tries to get out of his pen when he’s in trouble and doesn’t stop trying to get into the house until either he is admitted or is put in his kennel for being a bother. He doesn’t regard this as failure, but as another opportunity to just try again.

What most don’t know is that Edison (the inventor, not my dog) was also endlessly inventive in business. He was always seeking ways to expand his products and their mass production and appeal. Edison wasn’t a fool, however. He didn’t try to reinvent every wheel – that’s needless failure. He also relied on partners who were able to fund and drive his inventiveness. This is where a body of knowledge, resource, partner, advisor or role model can provide insight and advice to help make endeavours more successful and lessen failure rates.

More than one immensely successful individual has tried, failed and tried again before “making it to the top.” This is entirely necessary to trust their capacity for inventiveness and resilience. It is also entirely necessary when innovating new solutions. If it hasn’t been tried, failed and then refined, then it hasn’t been tried.

To mitigate against this tendency to fear innovation for fear of failure, undertake this one exercise:

  • Determine the potential value of the innovation against the risk.

If you do this objectively, you will be able to make the case for persisting in the face of “failure.”

I’ll write more in future posts about how you can objectively weigh the merits and risks of potential innovations. For now, it’s important to consider: leaders are not perfect, nor is their history perfect. Innovators are people who have learned to be comfortable with failure, because they know that it teaches them how not to achieve something important.

Our Legacies – The ANZAC Story

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Like many war veterans from World War I and II, my grandfather never spoke about his wartime experiences, not even with my father. I guess he would have been considered a “war hero” because he had been awarded medals for bravery, but he hid those medals and in typical Australian style would simply say that he spent wartime “hiding under a truck” or some other self-deprecating remark.

Tomorrow is the celebration of ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand – the commemoration of our wartime defeat on the shores of Gallipoli in 1915. But for the nigh on one hundred years since, it has been a reminder to Aussies and Kiwis of the bravery of those young men – and young women who aided or supported them – in fighting for a cause. Not to glorify war. Not to glorify defeat. To glorify the dedication and idealism of the young.

In the Australian mythos, one often hears public voices, media and politicians speaking of “mateship” and ANZACs being used as a political football, talking about giving people a “fair go”. They speak of this being the spirit of ANZAC and that it should drive us.

I rather think they have it entirely wrong.

The ANZAC spirit was one of self-sacrifice. Of heading into battle and rescuing a friend, storming a beach or a barricade, not because one was “brave”, but because it was the thing to do in order to fight for the cause. You just did it. And you took care of your “mates”, not by hiding the truth or “levelling the playing field”, but by fighting for what you considered right and by giving up your own privileges in order to protect them for others.

Self-sacrifice. It has a ring to it rarely heard today, but when one sees it…

Were they foolish? Perhaps. Wise? Probably not. Admirable? The fact that Turkey honours our fallen dead, their erstwhile enemies, on its shores every year is testament to the admiration that they held for these “diggers”. We remember the “diggers” who since have fought throughout Australia and New Zealand’s histories. The fact that they came home, not bragging about war, but detesting it, is also testament to their spirit.

I think of that sacrificial spirit when I think of my grandfather, Ken McLean. He wasn’t a swaggering hero. He had his fair share of faults. My Dad and Mum put him up in our home for a long while in his last years. He was old and brought with him oxygen tanks to cope with the emphysema contracted through a hard life. But he always had encouraging words for us. “You do what you want to in life. Don’t let anyone stop you.”

He had given something precious in the war – partly his innocence, perhaps even part of his sanity, for it was horrifying. But he and others like him gave something even more valuable, for which history – and we – remember them: his life in service.

“Lest We Forget”

The Ontology of Leadership – On Being a Leader

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Here’s a light and fluffy piece for a Friday:

Leaders have to consider their own self-identity in the formation of their leadership. Too often their self-identity is shaped by being ‘a leader’, rather than their own identity shaping their leadership. Thus, the engineer becomes the ‘CEO’ and now identifies and congregates with CEOs, rather than engineers. The teacher becomes a ‘school administrator’ and identifies himself or herself as such. The lawyer becomes a ‘Managing Partner’ and considerations of self centre on their identification with ‘leadership’ roles, responsibilities and relationships.

A deeper level of consideration is that of the ontological expression of a leader. [Ontology is the study of the nature of being - originating in philosophy, metaphysics and particularly theology (and has been misappropriated by the IT world, which sometimes displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the English language. If you're in IT, feel free to write and I'll clarify where you went wrong.)] What is your being? How is it defined, shaped and externalised? How does this relate to, and how is it expressed – through actions, words and relationship – in and through, your leadership?

The fact that many people define their being in terms of their profession is an indication of how mixed up we are in terms of our own personhood. Are you a lawyer, or are you a human being? (They’re not always mutually exclusive.) Are you a shift worker, or a father? Are you a politician, or someone driven to help others? (Again, not necessarily mutually exclusive.)

In terms of your leadership: Are you the CEO, or are you a person with a family, beliefs, preferences; someone who was brought up as a hard worker devoted to seeing things work well and to service within and without the family, who now works to ensure that people within your company and clients without are provided for and can enjoy the fruits of your collective labours?

Two of the fundamental questions of ontology are: 1) What is the fundamental essence of a thing? and 2) What is that thing’s relationship to other things?

Thus, for leaders, the question is: 1) What is your fundamental essence? and 2) What is your relationship to the world, people, concepts, systems and things around you?

The problem with identifying oneself solely as a leader is that you are a ‘leader’ in only one context, limited by time and space and by definition. Hence: Barack Obama is President – of the federal government of the United States of America, for a few years, in a limited fashion. He’s not my president. He’s not the President for billions of people around the world. If he thinks of himself – of his being – merely as “The President” his own self-identity becomes shallow and is limited to a particular narrow set of circumstances and relationships. However, if he considers himself as a product of his mother and of his father’s predilections, if he considers himself as a person in relation to others, if he considers himself as an agent setting about completing a personal agenda in relation to the rest of the world, as a father himself and so on, then he has a better perspective that will ultimately produce more rounded and more effective leadership.

Under the former situation, when someone ceases to be a ‘leader’, suddenly their world drops around them. They are lost and have a complete lack of fulfilment in their lives, because their very concept of their being so revolved around their position that they no longer understand their own fundamental essence.

This is one of the reasons why when teaching people to communicate, I created ‘Authentic Speaking’. One must be genuinely oneself, expressing towards and with other persons in relation to oneself. I created ‘Gifted Leadership’ with the same underlying principle: leadership is the expression of oneself – one’s gifts, talents, skills, values, history, baggage, everything – in relation to others in order to draw out their gifts and accomplish together a predetermined and determined goal. Business becomes the intersection of people, process and product in relation with one another and an external environment.

One must consider the vital essence, relation and attenuation of a ‘thing’ in order to truly understand it. How does it act in and of itself and how does it act in relation to other things? For the ancient Greeks, the perfection of this lay in their concept of divinity as something totally unchanging that must therefore, by definition, be removed from interaction with corrupt physical reality – it is ‘above’ the ‘physis’, which is that which changes in nature. That is why the study of the divine was ‘metaphysics’ = above nature.

Unfortunately, this is many a person’s view of leadership: leadership is ‘above’ the changing, rather dirty masses. The ‘leader’ is unchanging in his or her resoluteness and directs from afar. It’s an abysmal model, for it denies the reality of those people as human beings acting in their environment, according to their driving internal needs to be in relation to the world around them.

Being a leader should, rather, be about the expression of yourself in and through the actions you take, ideas you communicate, and communities you create, expressed through the individuals, teams and groups through whom and with whom you interact, that seek to achieve a shared and ultimately rewarding and praiseworthy goal.

Untangling your self-identity, deconstructing and then reconstructing your being – that is, conducting an ontological study of you – is necessary to see how and why you react in response to the world around you, why you do what you do, why you feel what you feel. It is vital in order to truly see how you may have been misdirected and may be walking on a path that leads you away from your integrity and personhood to being something that you do not want. It is also vital to acting in a way that more genuinely creates the results, the leadership and the life you desire.

Your leadership is only a part of your being, not the sum total. Don’t be defined by it, define it.

Who, and what, are you?