I’ve just completed a two-day retreat with a fast-growing leadership team. They scored themselves at the lowest levels we’ve seen on our Team Dynamics Survey. Rarely do we see a leadership team as dysfunctional as this one. Their unique products and growing revenues were papering over many huge cracks and barely holding them together. The CEO and second generation owner of this family business was completely frustrated, very unhappy, and hated coming into work every day. 18th century American explorer, Daniel Boone, once said, “I can’t say I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for ..read more

  A scout leader was trying to lift a fallen tree from the path. His pack gathered around to watch him struggle. “Are you using all your strength?” one of the scouts asked. “Yes!” was the exhausted and exasperated response. “No. You are not using all your strength,” the scout replied. “You haven’t asked us to help you.” Weak managers don’t leverage the strengths of their teams. In Working with Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, reports, “a study by the Center for Creative Leadership of top American and European executives whose careers derailed, the inability to build and lead a tea ..read more

  How would you score yourself on these questions: I am happy at work most of the time. My work has a clear sense of purpose. Overall, I am completely satisfied with my job. I feel stressed at work most of the time. How would people on your team or organization answer these questions? These questions are from the Work Wellbeing Score from “Indeed, a major jobs website, to assess the relationship between workplace wellbeing and firm performance.” Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, led a team of researchers to correlate ..read more

  Decades of psychology experiments show strong links between our sense of control, well-being, and satisfaction. In a classic study by David Glass and Jerome Singer, people were subjected to loud bursts of random noise while they were given difficult puzzles to solve. One group was told they could press a button to shut off the noise but were asked not to unless they couldn’t stand the racket anymore. No one pressed the button. The other group was exposed to the same noise while they worked on the puzzles but didn’t have a button to shut it off. The group with the option to shut off the ..read more

  One of the root causes of our accountability mess is looking for who, not what went wrong. This leads to a search for the guilty as the cause of breakdowns in customer service, quality, communication, teamwork, and the like. It becomes a hunt to fix the blame more than fixing the problem. But those problems are often symptoms of deeper systemic issues. The fundamental leadership question is — for whose convenience are your systems designed? Way too many systems subvert rather than serve. Shape Shifters: Systems Mold Performance Results Managers who aren’t happy with the performance of ..read more

As I wrote about the accountability mess, a good person in a bad system or process sets that them up for failure — and blame. “The 85/15 Rule” emerged from decades of root cause analysis of service/quality breakdowns. About 85% of the time the fault is caused by the system, processes, structure, or practices of the organization. Only about 15% of the breakdowns can be traced back to someone who didn’t care or wasn’t conscientious enough. Harvard Business School Professor Ted Levitt, a leading research and author in management, marketing, and former editor of Harvard Business Review, said “Ear ..read more

  Accountability is highly subjective. Its meaning depends on whether we’re at the giving or receiving end. Many of us have been lashed with the accountability whip wielded by a blundering manager playing “gotcha games.” Often, accountability is a search for who to punish. The Blame Game and finger-pointing turns problem-solving and performance issues into fault-finding. Feedback Fear and Measurement Whacking Sticks In way too many organizations, measurement is a big stick used in The Blame Game. Measurement by whacking around thumps organization morale, smacks team effectiveness, and sm ..read more

  I was interviewing a leadership team member to prepare for an offsite planning retreat. I asked about the biggest challenges facing their team. She wearily said it was their unfocused frantic pace of activity.  “We have lots of projects, goals, and priorities. We’re constantly making lists and setting action plans. But we seldom see anything through to completion before some urgent new priority is pushed at us. Our leader’s thinking seems to be ‘random brain impulse.’ He’s like a nervous water bug that flits from one half-baked strategy to another.” Sound familiar? When you and yo ..read more

  An Ass found a Lion’s skin left in the forest by a hunter. He dressed himself in it, and amused himself by hiding in a thicket and rushing out suddenly at the animals who passed that way. All took to their heels the moment they saw him.  The Ass was so pleased to see the animals running away from him, just as if he were King Lion himself, that he could not keep from expressing his delight by a loud, harsh bray. A Fox, who ran with the rest, stopped short as soon as he heard the voice. Approaching the Ass, he said with a laugh:  “If you had kept your mouth shut you might have ..read more

Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to reflect on the power of love and purpose. As mentioned in my top ten life lessons, I’ve written book chapters and about 200 blogs and articles about love. One of those, posted exactly 12 years ago on Valentine’s Day, was Love is at the Heart of Strong Leadership. Highly effective leaders are in love with the organization, community, or team that they work or live in. Their love is expressed in a deep desire to see that organization, community, or team grow to its full potential. Leaders love the people they work with enough to contribute to their gr ..read more