I have written previously about those harsh decisions that we have all made about ourselves at a very early age, (see this post), and have fiercely defended ever since, usually without realizing what was driving us. There is rapidly increasing understanding among business leaders that lack of self-awareness or failure to take responsibility for the dysfunctional behavior that arises from having that core personal decision “triggered” in the present is at best non-productive and more likely can be a fatal leadership flaw.

A number of disciplines are saying that when you were at a very formative, early awareness state something happened that caused you to make a very negative declaration that forms your “shame” or “original wound.” Unfortunately, you were the judge, jury, and jailer at that trial and you issued a life sentence. With that decision in place, you had no choice but to develop a strategy to survive childhood and to make sure nobody ever found out about that deep seated negative belief.

Your strategy worked in certain ways because after all, you are still here. Unfortunately, a strategy that was put together by a 3 or so year old frequently plays out poorly when a 30, 40, 50 or 60 year old invokes it, often at very inappropriate moments, and in response to a perceived threat. The “survival” part of the brain can’t tell the difference between a physical threat and a threat in language so “fight, flight, or freeze” behavior is all that is going to be available after the threat response is triggered.

It’s time to get yourself a new trial and a new, less biased defense attorney that will present a whole lot of evidence from your recent decades as a successful human being.  This more current, adult perspective will make it clear to the new jury, (your adult self), that you are a valuable contributor to society, an excellent leader, and a caring, committed person and family member. The new evidence will be overwhelming and, after intense study and review, the jury will have no choice but to acquit you of being stupid, unlovable, unworthy or whatever the exact and very specific nature of your very personal conviction was.

In your jailer capacity, set yourself free. If you must, you can be your own parole officer to report incidences when “reversion” takes place. Those will become less frequent and less harsh as you own your conviction, forgive the first judge, jury, and jailer, and take on the persona that is you as a fully functioning adult.

It may take awhile for others to trust your new mode since you trained them to expect and respond to your periodic 3 year old behavior. Let them know you are practicing being a new you. They will appreciate and respect your practice and your leadership effectiveness will skyrocket.

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“People does like it here, we move nice wid dem as we does wid each other ~ no corruptions or hatreds, all is like one.”

- Quote by a local Carriacou Island, Granada resident from”Cruising Guide to the Windward Islands” by Chris Doyle

While this unnamed resident is speaking about his island and his community, he could be talking about the culture and customer service of his country’s business, in this case, tourism. Such things are said about Carriacou often and by many. It is said to be the friendliest island in the Caribbean. Wouldn’t you want to spend your vacation and your money in a place with people like that?

It would be easy to read this man’s comments as innocence from a remote islander until you consider that these people compete fiercely for business on a beachfront, inter-island, and even global basis. Like all other customers, “yachters” and “resorters” have a myriad of choices of places to go and they communicate their experiences widely within their various communities. In these days of Facebook, Twitter, and all the rampant social networking, a small island can be knocked out of the competition, or popularized quickly.

Can you make such a bold statement about your organization or community? How many of the dimensions covered in his simple comment can you honestly claim?

Is your group’s internal culture one where mutual trust, respect, and safety are the foundation? Does everyone freely collaborate and encourage creativity and innovation on a regular basis?

If we check with your customers or clients, will we get the report that you “move nice wid dem?”

How about if we survey your vendors and suppliers? I have run into more than one company that filled their walls with inspiring quotes regarding customer importance, wonderfully worded vision, mission and values statements, and lots of great posters about team and goals and yet treated their vendors quite shabbily. If your people are engaged in that type of behavior, what do they know in their hearts to be the real truth about your company vs. what is posted on the walls? What are your suppliers and vendors saying about you to all the people in their lives?

If you wrote a statement like the islander’s above about your group, in your own way of saying it, how well would it match with current reality? How much would it be worth to you in increased sales, staff productivity, quality, performance and schedule issues to have your statement become absolutely true?

What’s currently missing in your company’s culture? How much and how long are you willing to invest to make the “highest and best” the truth of your team and organization? And here’s the really tough question – are you willing to start by investigating and exposing your own complicity in those aspects you are not happy with currently?

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“Do or don’t do, there is no trying” — Yoda

We had a great discussion in one of our mastermind groups about “trying” – the hopelessness of it, the fear of failure in it, and the access it provides to dealing with “real issues” and producing real increases in effectiveness.

There have been a number of people who have examined the notion of “try or trying” and confronted the hopelessness in it. Saying “I’ll try” seems to be a socially acceptable statement that allows both parties in an accountability conversation to drift off into the delusion that something is going to happen.

The biggest issue with these types of “try” statements is that you are almost guaranteed to get away with it, others will buy it, and there will seldom be any of the promised results. To some degree, there’s an element of “I won’t call you on yours if you don’t call me on mine…”

The second big loss is that when you get away with deluding others and yourself, you never really look “under the hood” to see what the unsaid block is to actually accomplishing what you were “trying” to do. What stops you, probably over and over, robbing you of both results and satisfaction?

In our work, we talk about any statement with “try” in it as an “impotent conversation” that embodies a “said” and an “unsaid” portion. The “said” portion will always be something like “I’m going to try to be more consistent in my performance in that area.” The unsaid portion is “…but I can’t…or he won’t let me…or we don’t have any budget for it or I don’t know how…or…” Fill in your own version by catching yourself in the act of using “try.”

The next time you hear yourself say “I’ll try…” stop and ask yourself what limiting belief is hidden in the unsaid part of the statement? Generally it is an old story about yourself, others or your circumstances. It is facilitated by some fear or concern and is one of your excuses to get off the hook in some way.

Examining that belief newly, you may discover that it is no longer true, if it ever was. Unexamined, it keeps you from experiencing your own power, discovering the resources you will need, or garnering the support from people you may have believed wouldn’t support you.

After some practice at catching yourself and documenting your “unsaids,” you may find a whole new level of energy, enthusiasm, and performance. You may identify the conversational patterns or relationships where you will say “no” instead of the usual “I’ll try.” You may learn to hear requests more clearly and accurately and to make counter offers when you really can’t meet the request. You will be much more effective and reliable when you do say “yes” and others will see your productivity as having taken a dramatic jump.

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“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of an opportunity without regard to the resources currently controlled.”

–Prof. Howard Stevenson, Harvard Business School, 1983

In my last post, I shared about our work with The Hunger Project Mexico leaders, especially around the opportunity in being bold and taking on big challenges.  Since that time a client offered me the above quote on entrepreneurship.

I am going to propose that Professor Stevenson’s wonderful definition be expanded to include Cultural Creatives and everyone else who considers themselves change agents or aspires to bringing forth meaningful change of any kind.

Committing to an opportunity “without regard to the resources currently controlled” requires courage. There is “good news and bad news” associated with such a bold action. The moment you commit, several discouraging thoughts, which will seem very, very real, will flash before your eyes:

1)  I don’t know how

2)  I’m scared to death

3)  I’m insufficient

4)  I’ll never be good enough fast enough to pull it off

At that moment you have two choices:

1)  Slip to the periphery and gesture

2)  Surrender to team and strategy

Behind door number one, “slip to the periphery” is “looking good,” avoiding embarrassment, finding good excuses etc., while behind door number two, “surrender to team and strategy” is the willingness to stand in the gap between the known and the unknown, continually exploring for “what’s missing, that if put in place will move us toward our goal,” and also probably more than a few sleepless nights.

So where is the good news in boldly committing you ask? It will eventually produce extraordinary results. It will provide you with great satisfaction and a much richer sense of yourself.  It lies in discovering or reconnecting to your own resourcefulness – that’s the best news of all!

An excellent example of “door number two” leadership is Bill Ayer, CEO of Alaska Airlines. During a time when all the major airlines have lost tens of billions and eventually gone bankrupt, Alaska has become a leading innovator and a profitable business whose stock price has increased 300% since 2008. As a regular passenger, I have only great reviews for every aspect of my interactions with them. (For a more complete review of Alaska’s current success click here.)

In 2003 Alaska chose “cost per available seat mile” as a key measure of its success.  Their cost at the time was 8.73 cents. They committed to 7.25 cents, which would save $ 300 MM. To quote Mr. Ayer, “That was one of those things where we didn’t know how we were going to do it, but we said to ourselves, ‘that’s what we need to do. A good company would look at that.”

Given all of the cost issues faced by the airlines, including fuel costs rising 35% last year alone, Alaska has “only” hit 7.6 cents in 2011. Meanwhile they’ve gone from being one of the worst on time airlines to the best in the country last year.

Are you ready and willing to “go for it” and to discover your own resourcefulness?  If not, what are you waiting for?

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“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” -Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles,” From Chapter 7, Section 3)

As Marianne Williamson points out in the opening quote it is not our inadequacy that keeps us from “going for it,” but often, the opposite – our sense that we are very powerful.

My wife and business partner, Suzanne, and I did a two day leadership development workshop with the national Board of Directors and leadership team for The Hunger Project Mexico in Mexico City and I was reminded of what being bold is all about. From the beginning in 1977 leadership and participants in The Hunger Project have been told that ending hunger on the planet is impossible. The commitment to end hunger on has meant that to participate is to be willing to take on the impossible, week-in and week-out. This is a situation that sends many people in search of some other game to play!

In the leadership workshop we focused on what each of us must bring up in ourselves to work on such a project. The time, talent and treasure required of each long-term participant is unmatched in most environments and yet many people keep participating and increasing their involvement over time. Why?

As we pushed workshop participants deeper into the inquiry of what it will require of them to be leaders in the various roles they have spoken for, two quotes came to the fore - Marianne Williamson’s, and funnily enough, a theme for the fast food chain Del Taco, “Go Bold or Go Home.” It made no sense for someone to stay in the workshop who was not willing to commit themselves to full-on participation in the work of ending hunger and poverty in Mexico and the world. It was either stay and “Go Bold” or Go Home.

As we dug deeper, the contrast between our fears, concerns for looking good, and our circumstances just did not measure up to our commitment to ending hunger and poverty. While we worked mainly on methodologies for how to be more effective in our work, it further became clear that for each participant, it really boiled down to courage – the courage to step beyond worries and concerns and unleash their power.

We confronted the issue of fear versus power by addressing the topic of fundraising and money. This subject will bring up fear more quickly than anything I know. On the other side of that coin, I also know that it offers the opportunity for fundraisers and investors to both experience their power!

So the question for leaders becomes – do you ever confront your deepest fears in order to be able to be your boldest? Do you ever help your teams do that? How can you bring yourself and your team face to face with the contrast between everyday fears and the deep seated sense of enormous power that each of us has? Are you ready to take the path of “Go Bold or Go Home?”

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“Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people cannot tell the difference.” –David Oxberg

Have you ever done a “listening course?” Probably not. It’s far more likely you have done presentation, speaking, and/or negotiation courses. Most programs for professional development that relate to communication have to do with how we present ourselves and how we speak versus how we listen.

Collaborative leadership requires active listening, willingness to consider, validate and explore others’ ideas, and being open to ideas that are not already in your “mental File Cabinet.” Given the cultural emphasis on our personal presentation and communication style you may not have considered how much impact how you listen has on your conversations, their effectiveness and their outcome. So what prevents you from listening? At first it may be a response to personal beliefs about leadership. Many believe that leaders should be steering, requesting or perhaps even demanding things from their team instead of listening.

But there’s more to it. I find that underneath many leaders avoid certain conversations and/or people out of their fear that if they listen, they will have to agree. In these cases they have presumed that the conversation or person will be bringing up ideas that are not part of their historic mental File Cabinet of ideas and beliefs. They are unwilling to even entertain unfamiliar ideas, let alone change any of theirs.

There is an important piece here–the option to say “no.” It is key and its use is closely correlated with courage, or the lack thereof. (By courage, I’m referring to the poet David Whyte’s view, which he defines as “developing a friendship with the unknown.”)

Here’s the deal. You can listen generously and openly, consider the other’s ideas and proposals and then say “no,” if you still aren’t enrolled. The majority of people will be more thrilled by your willingness to consider their views than put off by your “no.”  After all, you have already been saying no by not listening. Now, you are being authentic, after genuinely considering the views of others.

So the next time you see that person coming towards your office, pause and listen to the story you are telling yourself about what’s next. “I’ve got too much to do to listen to them.” “If I stop and pay attention they will never leave…” What if that’s all mental defense, protecting your cherished beliefs and avoiding your own discomfort at possibly having to say “no?”

What if you get courageous? What if this time, you listen openly and with genuine interest? I refer you back to the quote that started this post “Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people cannot tell the difference.” –David Oxberg

What kind of positive impact could listening have on your relationships and your team?

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On Wednesday, April 24th Suzanne appeared on The Michael Dresser Show to talk about leadership and her book, “Accelerate: High Leverage Leadership for Today’s World.”

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Indivisible: “Not divisible; unable to be divided or separated.”

In a time where public conversations seem to be attempting to capitalize on dividing us; by political party, 99%/1% (economic bracket), religious belief, nation of origin, you name it, what has happened to the inspirational idea of “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all?”

One company has stepped up with a strategy to break the divisiveness mindset gripping our country and is taking a leadership role in directly impacting one of the core issues in our society – creating economic opportunity.

Starbucks has been running a fundraising drive for some months now, in partnership with Opportunity Finance Network to create jobs by providing financing to community businesses. It has invested $5 million through its Starbucks Foundation to get the campaign going and invites patrons at all Starbuck’s retail stores to fund from $5 to $249 at the register. Larger amounts will be accepted at http://www.createjobsforusa.org.

Participants receive a very brief, informative note and a wristband with the theme “Indivisible” on it. Much more information and wonderful success stories are available on the website along with details on how a contribution actually generates seven times the initial amount when the micro-finance loans are made in the community.

So why would a company like Starbucks choose the word “indivisible?” I didn’t find any discussion of that on my initial reviews of the materials, perhaps because it is so obvious. Conditions will probably not change much for a long time, particularly for the folks on the low end of the economic ladder unless we pull together as a nation and focus on creating opportunity.

It is a well established fact that entrepreneurs and small business create the vast majority of jobs in our country. Even more than jobs, in my mind, is the business of creating opportunity. Meaning that people have openings to express their creativity, to innovate, to bring new ideas and ways of doing things into the marketplace, not just offer the “sweat of their brows.” This is how new things grow in our economy.

I would ask you to take a moment and consider – are you a “divider” in your thoughts and speaking?  Are you gripped by the current self-defeating public conversations? Are you spreading the negativity among your teammates, company, family and community? Are you just busy trying to get more for yourself or can you experience the longer term benefits to all of us from activities that benefit all?

With the “create jobs” campaign a renewed paradigm called “Indivisible” has been proposed. Will you join in the conversation and the funding?

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“When every resource in your organization is efficiently and collaboratively working toward a desired end state, without leader involvement in daily activity, you have an execution culture.” - Stuart Orr

In his presentation “Executing Strategy: Unlocking Your Organization’s Market Potential,” Stuart Orr of vision2execution, addressed one of the greatest opportunities for productivity gains in our economy today. He calls it the “vision gap” and cites two powerful quotes to drive his point home.

“The average firm achieves about 63% of its strategic plan.” - McKinsey & Harvard Business School study

“Only 5% of large-scale changes actually work.” - John Kotter: HBS author of “A Sense of Urgency”

Stuart digs deeply and delivers practical ways to organize your thoughts and actions so that the team delivers at high levels and has a meaningful experience in the process. What was most exciting to me was how his ideas speak to the question we have asked leaders for years, “what time could you go home if everyone in your organization simply came to work, did their job, and went home.” What’s your answer?

The piece I want to add to Stuart’s approach is that it all starts with you as a leader and your willingness to challenge your own ways of thinking and being in very fundamental ways. If you are not willing to allow deep intervention into your historic assumptions and beliefs, all of which reside in your own mind, his very sound and practical approach will not be heard or processed in a way that leads to new outcomes.

The challenge is neither easy nor a one-time occurrence. Like going to gym, it’s all about repetition and consistency. It is also unlikely you can do it completely by yourself. You already know what your own self-referential thought processes produce – the way that it is and is not for you and your interactions right now.

This is why peer groups like Vistage are so important and perhaps is the explanation why members stay inVistage groups for 20, 30, and even 40+ years. Having a group of competent people around you who you don’t control and yet who are deeply committed to your success and well being keeps you exploring possibilities versus holding on to past ways of thinking and speaking that are no longer serving you and those around you. If you are not a “group person,” it’s important to do one-to-one work with a coach or some other type of outside support professional.

If you don’t yet have access to a Vistage group, and aren’t ready to hire a coach, download a set of our Operating Principles by clicking here. (These Principles have been developed and road tested with hundreds of people for success during the last 20 years.) Ask yourself, “what might be possible in my interactions and the outcomes I am working on with my team if we were living these principles?”

So as a leader, how much do you want a culture that delivers – an “execution culture?” Are you willing to really challenge your existing mindset? Please be slow to answer…it is not necessarily comfortable. It will take real courage. If you want a culture that delivers it starts with you.

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“Displacement” is an unconscious defense mechanism whereby the mind redirects affects from an object felt to be dangerous or unacceptable to an object felt to be safe or acceptable. ~Sigmund Freud

“Displacement” actually has a variety of definitions. Our use of the term is similar to this one “the displacing in space of one mass byanother” only we mean it metaphorically. It came from our work and observation of how non-productive thoughts and related behaviors recede into the background in the presence of Vision-Focused Leadership and how quickly they return when the vision collapses. The phenomenon we witness is much like when water has been displaced by a boat. The water doesn’t go away, but the boat takes up the space where water used to be. While it is coincidental that we arrived at a term used in a different field, it is interesting to discover that Freud’s views of brain function actually seem to validate our observations. The difference is he was seeing subconscious avoidance behaviors and we are observing a conscious shift to displace non-productive thoughts and behaviors.

A powerful shared vision will “displace” much of what people gossip and complain about in an organization. Statements like “we have a really dysfunctional company” are seldom heard and motivating people isn’t a major issue, as the shared vision unleashes passion, commitment, and focused action.  The focus on vision displaces much of the friction and waste that go on when people’s day-to-day experience at work looks much more like a soap opera.

It’s important to note that the soap opera components have not gone away. People have not magically “gotten better” or “fixed themselves.” (This is why we say “displacement” instead of “replacement.”)  Friction and waste have been displaced, for the time being, much as water has been displaced by a boat. The water didn’t go away either. The boat hull, like a shared vision, allows air, boat components, fuel, and passengers to fill the space of the displaced water.

The same experience applies in our own individual lives and work. I often hear clients trying to fix themselves and making relatively useless statements like “I’ve got to stop doing that,” or “I’m going to stop thinking that way.” I have observed very few instances where anyone, including me, ever delivered on such a statement. I have observed many times where I and others have displaced the noise in our heads with powerful, productive thoughts and actions after we have declared and owned a new vision.

I stumbled into Freud’s notion about displacement in Wikipedia when I was getting ready to write this post. It’s interesting to note that it got very little attention in the psychology world and certainly hasn’t crept into any of our business lexicon. I suspect that part of the issue, in addition to the academic nature of the discussion at the time, has been his focus on understanding “broken people” and how they avoid “reality.” (Leading from a belief that “my people are broken and they need to be fixed” doesn’t work either.)

Do you have a clear purpose or vision for yourself and/or your organization that you can articulate simply?Does your team or family have a powerful, shared vision? What thoughts and behaviors might be displaced if you get busy consciously leading from a place of vision?

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