Leadership Turn

As you may know, I coach with a focus on MAP—it’s effects, uses and how to enhance/change it—so I tend to collect articles and information that will help illustrate and/or drive home a critical point.
MAP is both timely and timeless with the same topics arising in successive generations of managers, so the past articles are often of just as much use now as when they were written.
Obvious as it may seem, fair treatment of employees is one of those things to which managers constantly make exceptions citing all sorts of ‘reasons’.
Years ago I read an article about a study by …read more

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You’ve heard of Cesar Millan, the “Dog Whisperer,” but the item in the article that grabbed me was a quote from another article by Malcom Gladwell in the New Yorker article that “quoted scientists and dance experts analyzing how Mr. Millan’s bearing instills confidence. The conclusion: his fluid movement communicates authenticity better than words could.”
Sadly, the authenticity conveyed by the fluid movements of Jeff Skilling, Bernie Madoff and a host of recent “leaders” proves that authenticity isn’t always the best yardstick.
People are much like dogs, although the words used to describe their reactions are different.
We talk about dogs and other …read more

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Yesterday I shared emails from a reader who, at the end of the day, realized that he was over-reacting, his boss was insanely busy and nothing was wrong.
Today I want to share another story with you, only this one happened shortly after I entered the workforce.
There were seven of us in the office, everyone pulled their weight and we were a very congenial group often going out together for lunch or a drink after work.
One day “Jenny” didn’t come in and the next day she was late. Over the next few months she became cranky and very touchy. Her work …read more

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There is much talk about building winning teams and how to lead them and much of that centers on “influence” and “visions.”
The ledgendary Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, an expert on winning teams, provided a far simpler approach that you can be implement in a matter of seconds.
The only caveat is that once started it must be followed exactly and whole-heartedly.
“If anything goes bad, I did it.
If anything goes semi-good, we did it.
If anything goes really good, then you did it.
That’s all it takes to get people to win football games for you.”

If more “leaders” followed this path we wouldn’t …read more

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Leadership, people either covet it, are tired of hearing about it, ignore it or some, like me, see it as an abdication of personal responsibility (let the leader decide).
By definition, if you are a leader you must have followers, and Dan McCarthy over at Great Leadership wrote a terrific post listing 10 actions required to be a great follower.
I hate to disagree with Dan, but he’s wrong saying they are for followers when, in fact, the 10 actions he listed are just as important for the designated leaders—or for any human interfacing with others.
But nobody would be interested in 10 …read more

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I read a fascinating article today about Americans, their stuff and their penchant for storing it instead of getting rid of it.
“The US has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space. (The Self Storage Association notes that, with more than seven square feet for every man, woman and child, it’s now “physically possible that every American could stand — all at the same time — under the total canopy of self-storage roofing. …one out of every 10 households in the country rents a unit…”
According to Derek Naylor, president of the consultant group Storage Marketing Solutions, “Human laziness has always been …read more

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Is your company fair? Are you fair to your people? Is fairness part of your MAP?
How often have you heard (or said), “That’s not fair!”
People more or less accept that life isn’t fair, but are more than likely to walk from a company or manager they perceive as being unfair.
What do people expect within the business world in terms of fairness?
The obvious is that they don’t want to be shafted a la Enron. But fairness refers to more than the obvious, most often to the company/manager doing what they said they would do, i.e., walking their talk.
Fairness is what people …read more

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You may be a tweeting guru, but can you sum up your life, career or tell a story in just six (real) words?
When challenged to tell a story in six words, Ernest Hemingway came up with “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”
Starting in 2006, Smith Magazine challenged readers to write their memoirs in six words and the effort is still going strong. Here are three examples from the Smith site,
Ecstatic, elastic, eccentric, electric, ever-changing existence!
Dreams diverted; life proceeds. Embracing detours.
Lesser people would’ve given up already.
I wrote Birth, death, fun and happiness in-between because that’s always what I wanted and …read more

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Innovation is crucial to success, especially in today’s economy, and diversity is crucial to innovation.
But diversity refers to much more than race, creed, or gender.
Juicing creativity and innovation requires a strong diversity of both thought and skills within your organization—homogenizing your workforce dilutes the juice.
Thought Diversity
True mental diversity is about MAP and mental function, not just a race and gender. I’ve known managers whose organizations were mini-UNs with equal numbers of males and females, but they might as well have been cloned from the boss, their thinking was so identical.
There are three main ways to homogenize thought

Hire all the same …read more

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In 2006, before I took over Leadership Turn, Mary Jo Manzanares wrote a post called Team Building & Interpersonal Communication; Saturday, Steven J Barker brought up an interesting point and suggested that we explore it.
“I would be interested to hear your thoughts on differences between personal ownership and group ownership. From first glance those differences seem subtle, but I have a feeling that they are far reaching.”
I thought about that, not just in the context that Mary Jo wrote it, but in the larger one of companies and individuals with whom I’ve worked over the years and here is what …read more

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