One of the biggest mistakes we make in schools is instilling a fear of failure in children. Failure is inevitable. No one is perfect. We are not born with all the knowledge, skills, and abilities we will have as a mature adult. Learning is a process of turning failure into feedback that will provide information for our next attempt. The only way a failure becomes a bad thing is if we don’t use it as a tool to help us get better at what we do.
Legacy Leaders get this idea and use it to drive continuous improvement in their personal performance and the performance of everyone in the organization. Legacy Leaders encourage their team to try things that have the opportunity for failure because they know that if everyone stays in their comfort zone, no growth or learning will take place! Failure is only fatal if you allow it to be. Even in the most dire situations, failure can, and should be, used to inform us of what doesn’t work and that another direction, tactic, and/or process should be used. Defeat only comes if we quit or if we keep trying to make unsuccessful methods work in inappropriate situations.
Inc. Magazine suggests 7 ideas for turning your failures into successes. I think these are very worth using for every Legacy Leader. (7 Powerful Ways to Turn Every Failure Into Success:How much you learn when you fail determines how far you go in creating success. By Lolly DaskalPresident and CEO, Lead From Within)
1. Mistakes are not a problem, but not taking the opportunity to learn from them is.
2. Be careful how you talk to yourself, because you are listening.
3.It’s far better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly.
4. We are products of our past, but we don’t have to let our mistakes define us.
5.The enemy of success is fear of failure.
6. Consistent action creates consistent results.
7. You can’t do it alone–and you don’t have to.
These are ideas that apply to you as a Legacy Leader and to every member of your team. Don’t hamstring yourself or your team by getting upset with any single failure. Use these ideas to help you and your team grow, learn, and improve. The ultimate success of your organization depends on it!
The great thing about being a leader today is that, no matter what has happened in the past, you get do overs! I know that some very well intentioned people have said there are no do overs in life; well I think they are all wrong. If there are no do overs, then we would all be failures and no progress would ever be made! There are thousands of great stories of failure leading to success and I’d love to hear them all.
Our company, Culture By Choice, has seen amazing transformations of company cultures and we want to tell those stories. We are certain that there are hundreds of other stories that also need to be told. We want to provide a platform for telling those stories. If you’d like to participate in this project, let me know and we will schedule an interview. We’re calling these stories CABS Stories; Culture and Business Success Stories.
I want to start this project by telling a non-business story that I personally participated in. It began in 1990 when I was offered a job as assistant principal in what was considered to be a very good high school. Like every school, it was not without its problems. My job was to help improve the culture of that school. How to accomplish that was not agreed upon by the teachers and getting everyone to buy into a common purpose was not going to be easy. By the time we truly started making the type of progress we were hoping to see, a lot of changes had taken place.
One of the most important changes we made was not a physical change but a mental one. How we thought about our role as educators needed to change. Instead of thinking about ourselves as teachers and administrators, we needed to think of ourselves as guides, facilitators, coaches, and mentors. These weren’t separate roles for separate people, these were roles that each of us had to carry out. It wasn’t easy making the transition. In fact, some people who began the journey with us decided it wasn’t for them and they made the choice of finding a school with a more traditional view of what a teacher’s role was. These people were not always the people we might have hoped would move on, but as it turned out, their decision was for the best.
The traditional teacher role was that of purveyor of knowledge and scorekeeper of comprehension. We were asking teachers and administrators to become learning guides, facilitators of understanding, implementation coaches, and positive behavior mentors. This new role was hard work on four levels. Not many educators were willing to work so hard for the money they were paid and the flack they were sure to take. The ones that stayed with us and implemented this new style were rewarded, however, not with money and accolades but with the love of kids and achievements that were truly beyond our expectations. Before we started this journey we were dealing with a dropout rate of just below 7%, not terrible for 1990 but definitely not acceptable for what everyone considered to be an excellent school. In 1996 our dropout rate was below 3% which is one of the best in the country. Before we started our journey we were receiving 18 serious discipline referrals every day. In 1996 our discipline referral rate had dropped to fewer than .5 per day. And it wasn’t just the behavior that improved, academic performance dramatically improved. Teachers were amazed with how much better their students were doing. State test scores were the highest they had ever been. What we had learned was a simple lesson. Our kids didn’t care how much we knew until they knew how much we cared.
Culture in schools is totally about how we treat one another. It’s not about control, it’s about caring. When we try to make kids into what we think they should be, instead of what they are meant to be, nobody wins. Everyone loses! The lessons of my years as a building administrator have helped form my next 30 years! We can apply those lessons to every aspect of our lives. Let’s all stop controlling and start living better lives. Together, we can make the world a better place for everyone.
Creating cultures that promote growth and development is hard work. But any organization can do it. Making the effort is hard but not impossible. It always involves thinking beyond oneself. What gets in our way is our bias about how things ought to be. When we can remove our egos from the formula, we open the realm of possibilities to our world. My opportunity to become a piece of this transformation made such a profound difference in my life and I have to believe it made a difference in the lives of many, many others as well.
I think the world’s gone stark raving nuts. Have you paid attention to anything lately. Sane people don’t act like this. What is going on?
Look at these headlines! This is what’s happening in our world today! “India protests: 14 killed and more than 4,000 arrested in clashes against new citizenship law.” “Iowa woman said she ran over a 14-year-old girl because she ‘was a Mexican,’ police say.” “Study suggests obesity associated with greater greenhouse gas emissions.”“They Beat Her, Cut Off Her Hair, And Covered Her With Paint.” “NC children, seniors face high rate of food insecurity.” “Indiana woman sentenced after killing 3 kids trying to board school bus.” These are headlines I gathered in just a few minutes from around our world today. I tell you, the world is going off the deep end!
We need some calm, peaceful, love your neighbors attitudes. We’ve had enough of the in your face, I’m better than you, we don’t want you in our backyard, go back to where you came from attitude. Who will lead us in the right direction? There have been people, over the centuries that man has walked the earth, that have advocated for behaving differently. Somehow, each one of these gets their message twisted by some people to make it sound like those leaders actually meant the opposite of what they taught. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these was Jesus of Nazareth. How anyone could twist his words so that it becomes alright to be mean, rotten, deceitful, and harmful to others, I will never know. When asked what the greatest commandments were, Jesus said, first love The Creator with all your heart, mind, and spirit and then he said, second is to love others as much as The Creator loves you. How you contort those commandments into a license for treating any person or group of people in the manner that some people have been treated is a complete mystery to me.
It is December of 2019 not 3,000 BC! We humans should be more advanced but it seems like the only things we’re better at doing is killing, maiming, cheating, and doing harm to one another. In the USA we have the right to bear arms. What we forget is that with every right we grant ourselves (I say this because our Nation is a Nation of laws created by the consent of the people), I repeat, with every right we grant ourselves, comes the solemn responsibility to use that right in a manner that does not infringe upon the rights of others or do intentional, unjust harm to others. When we abuse our rights, they should be revoked. There are so many rights that have been abused by so many people but only a few ever lose their access to the right. If you’ve been dealt the right deck of cards and if you know how to play them, you can abuse your rights and never have to pay the price.
But here’s a secret you may not be aware of. In the end, your rewards will not depend on how much you’ve accumulated. Quite to the contrary, your rewards will be based on how you’ve used the resources entrusted to you to help make the world a better place for others. By doing this you demonstrate that you really got it. Those commandments, love the creator and love your neighbor; can we believe that anyone really believes in the messenger if they don’t believe he really was serious about his message? It’s not about who has the best and most, it’s about who shared the best and most. In this 2,019th Christmas Season, perhaps we could set aside the rhetoric and begin to share the unconditional love the creator shared with all of us. The question is never asked. It’s not about whether we are worthy or not. We are loved because we are. Maybe, just maybe, we should start sharing what was so freely given to us. Let’s stop the insanity. Let’s tone down the rhetoric and let’s start sharing the blessings we have received so abundantly. Merry Christmas All!
What can I possibly write about this leader. So much has been written about him that anything I say will certainly seem redundant. Well, at least that’s what I thought until I actually talked to him and got his answers to my Legacy Leader questions. Wow was I ever wrong. Here‘s what St. Nicholas has to say.
Jay: Good morning Nicholas. Do you mind if I call you Nick?
St. Nicholas: No young man, that would be just fine. I actually prefer that; it’s much less formal and I’d prefer people to be relaxed around me.
Jay: that’s great, thanks. So, Nick, what is it that you do? We’ve heard so much about you but the story we hear is about one night and so much work, that can’t be the whole story. What do you do the other 364 days of the year?
Nick: You’re totally correct. What happens one day a year is certainly not a true reflection of all my activities. You see, the story really starts many, many years ago, when I was just a young man trying to make a difference in my world. I decided, early in my life, that I would serve a purpose much bigger than myself. I saw so much pain and suffering and such horrible poverty all around me and I had resources that so many did not have, so I decided that I would do my best to help every person I could. I really had a passion for the children because they were suffering and it was no fault of theirs that they were in that situation. So I used the resources I had to make their life a little brighter. I didn’t want anyone to feel obligated to me for helping out so I would just sneak into their home and leave something that I thought would help. At first it was just a few coins to help families pay their obligations but when I saw them so happy about being so fortunate, I knew I was on to something big and I thought, I could do so much more!
Jay: Ok, Nick; I think I seeing the picture here. All you wanted to do was help people in need. So how did we get to this around the world flight and presents for every girl and boy?
Nick: That’s a great story in its own right. It’s going to take a while to tell it. Are you sure you have time?
Jay: I’m all ears and I’ve got the next hour carved out just for you. Let’s hear what happened.
Nick: During those early years I became a leader in an important organization in my community. It was a fairly new organization at the time but many local people liked what it did and they became members. I would tell them at our meetings that the needs of the people were holding all of us back. I told them that our founder wants us all to remember that the way we treat those around us is a reflection upon how we might treat him if he were standing right there among them. I told them often that it was our job to end the suffering, pain, and sadness in our world and they agreed to make that our vision!
Jay; so your vision statement could have been “We will end pain, suffering, and sadness in our world!”
Nick: Yes, that’s what got us started but the more we worked the more need we saw. It didn’t take long for us to realize that we might have bitten of more than we could chew so we had to modify our vision, mission, and goals.
Jay: Ah, the course correction we hear about. Organizations get into doing what they think they need to do and start evaluating their effectiveness and efficiency and then they decide maybe we need to change a few things.
Nick: That’s exactly what happened to us. We knew that with the few people we had in our organization we would soon be overwhelmed with the needs of the world. So we figured we needed to do 2 things. First was to narrow our focus and second was we needed a bigger team. So our vision, didn’t really change other than to now just focus on the children and this led to a major modification in our mission and goals. Our mission became find out what the children of our world needed and provide it to them. Our goals became very focused and those were: 1) find every child in need, 2) figure out what they need, and 3) get what they need to them. Over the years, the world started doing a better job of meeting many of the children’s needs in some parts of the world but other parts still hadn’t quite taken care of their children. We realized that we needed point people in each area of the world to help us achieve our goals. We couldn’t apply the formula from Eastern Europe to Central Africa nor could we try to make what works in the United States fit the conditions in India. We needed people who understood each segment of our world’s population to head up a world-wide team of experts that would meet the various needs in every part of the world.
Jay: This is a huge undertaking. And it sounds like the values you are working from are very clear in your mind. Would you mind sharing what those values are?
Nick: Not at all! It’s all very simple. Our number one value, quite simply put, is “Every Child is a Christmas Child!” And our second value is very similar. “Every Family is a Christmas Family!” We have a third value that is also important to us. “Every person is worthy of our love!”
Jay: Wow! Just wow! That’s what drives you? Love?
Nick: Oh, for certain! That is what we are all about. Initially this wasn’t a Christmas thing at all. It was something we did every day of the year. But as our reach began to exceed our capacity to touch, we decided what better day to outwardly apply those values but on Christmas Day. To make this happen requires thousands of dedicated men and women who all want to make the world a little brighter for the children of the world. We still apply these values every day of the year but the present thing, that is now reserved for Christmas Day.
Jay: Nick, I ask everyone I interview this question, so I’ll ask you too, but I can’t imagine you can actually see this. The question is, do you see your organization’s values alive in the people of the organization?
Nick: I most certainly do. I now have the chance to peek into smaller gatherings of my organization in every country, on every continent on the earth. When these people gather, the vast majority of them are totally in tune with what we believe and value. There are those that come to organization meetings for totally the wrong reason but you know what, as long as we get them there, there is a chance they might become true believers in our cause. I am worried about the younger generation, however. Too many of them are looking in too many different places for meaning and not enough of them are looking inside themselves to see how they can connect to the world in a meaningful way. They want to, but we haven’t done a good job of showing them how. We have to start teaching them that connecting is a personal thing. Someone else cannot give you validation and connection. The meaning doesn’t come from the work, the meaning comes from what you bring to the work. Significance is not something someone can create for you, it something you create for others. The St. Nicholas vision will live for ever as long as we remember how it was created and connect with it on that level. The very first children I helped were three children in one family that did not have the money to provide for their needs. So, late at night, I went into their home and left a small sack of coins on their hearth. The next day, the father woke up and found the coins and he took care of the needs of his oldest daughter. That night I did the same thing and in the morning the father could take of what his second daughter needed. That night I left the third sack of coins and the next day he could take care of his youngest daughter’s needs. That’s the true spirit of the entire project. For when I did for the smallest and least of these children, I made a difference and that difference multiplied to a massive mission that touches every part of the world. Today’s young people need to learn that lesson. You don’t only change the world in huge projects of international significance. You start amazing movements with small acts of kindness done with a pure heart.
Jay: Nick, your story is amazing. I am so glad I go this time to sit and chat with you. Is there anything else you would like to add?
Nick: The only thing I’d like to add is that I am always in need of people who will be true believers in the St. Nicholas Project. We will take any person onto our team. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done. As long as you are willing to adopt our values and live them out through your work, you can be part of our team. We love you unconditionally and accept you as you have been. The only rules we have is that you do all your work with love and that you never allow hatred to become part of the work. Peace and Merry Christmas to all!
Jay: Thank you so much Nick. This has been quite enlightening. I hope all my readers will enjoy this as much as I have. Have a very Merry Christmas and please, keep up the good work.
In our world today, it seems as though respect is seen as a sign of weakness. I observe the “in your face” attitude of so many people, and I don’t know about you, but I find this very disturbing. The idea of showing unconditional respect to others until they demonstrate that they are not worthy of our respect seems to be a foreign idea. And, traditional concepts of respect have been discarded. There was a time, not all that long ago, when whether you agreed with the person or not, if you referred to our President, you would talk about the person respecting the office they held. For the last several American Presidents it has become normal to just call them by their last name. I’ve heard children talk about Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump. This lack of deference to the office of the President finds us showing less and less respect for one another. But, the wonderful thing about Legacy Leaders is that respect is one of the key attributes they see as part of leading with integrity. That respect is on display at all times and if there’s ever a lapse in that, they are quick to apologize.
Respect is a remarkable quality. It is amazing how it can change a culture. When leaders of organizations let everyone know that they will respect everyone until someone gives them a reason to hold back that respect from that one individual, the change in the atmosphere is almost immediately noticed. Respect is such a simple thing but it has such a major impact. So, how do Legacy Leaders show people that they respect them? Here’s a few of the things I have been told.
Respect is shown when we truly listen to people and we don’t hog the conversation. When someone has something to tell us as leaders, we should show them the respect of listening. Now speakers, listen up, it is important to realize that droning on and on with a long monologue is not being respectful of the listener. As a speaker it is important to provide information in statements brief enough for the listener to process what you are saying. As a Legacy Leader however, it will be your responsibility to help your people understand how to best communicate with you and it’s your responsibility to figure out how to best communicate with your people. If listening conveys respect, rules for communication should be clear for everyone. Many leaders and followers make the mistake of expecting listeners to just listen until they are done speaking but this shows a lack of respect for the listener. On the other hand, failing to let speakers know that as they convey their message we will interject ideas and seek clarification shows a lack of respect for speakers and their message. Making sure everyone is on the same page with the ground rules is critical if we want people to know we respect them.
Another way to show respect for our people is to never talk behind their back unless the conversation is seeking help in how to best work with and/or relate to another person. The bottom line is gossip and criticism of others without them present to respond to what’s being said is highly disrespectful and cannot be tolerated in a Legacy Culture. When conversations occur that seek help in how we communicate or relate to another member of the organization, it should always be done with the full knowledge that the person giving the advice will inform the person being discussed about the nature and content of that discussion. If the person seeking the advice is not comfortable with that rule, the conversation should not take place.
Respect can also be demonstrated through sharing information. Understanding that knowledge is power, when leaders share critical information with their organization members, they send the very clear message that they trust, respect, and care about their people. Some leaders will withhold information in order to keep their people needing them to get things done. This is not only disrespectful, it is also very inefficient. When an organization is transparent with everything, personnel information excluded, everyone feels more valued. This can result in a greater level of buy in, engagement, and contribution of ideas that can increase productivity, improve the culture, and generally benefit the organization.
The last way to show respect, that I will mention, is to create a training program that allows organization members to improve skills that are needed to be more efficient and effective in their jobs. It’s important to remember that your people will learn different ways, so having a variety of learning experiences will be the most effective way to go. Most leaders will discover that their people really do want to be better at what they do. You show them great respect when you provide opportunities for them to make those improvements. You show them how much you care and respect them when you allow them to have a say in what and how they will learn the new skills. Having people who want to learn and improve is great for the organization. Being a leader who values those efforts shows respect for their people and the organization.
Building a respectful organization is really not hard. But, it does take a 100% commitment from everyone involved. Setting the standard and adhering to it is an absolute. If someone cannot make that commitment, they cannot be part of that culture. It’s a very simple process but it is very demanding. If an individual or group of individuals behave in disrespectful ways, they must be called on it. Letting those behaviors slide will undermine the culture. Knowing that we’re all human and that we all make mistakes, holding each other accountable for always being respectful is a must. This is a humane accountability system that handles such breaches with dignity and respect. Try this idea out! Create a respectful Legacy Culture. I’m positive you will never regret it!
Each of us has an emotional bias. There is one emotion that predominates our behavior style. To be sure, we can all display each of the four fundamental emotions but, one shows up more than the others. I personally know people who seem to be in a constant state of fear. There are others who seem to be happy and upbeat all the time. Still some are just sad and I know people who are angry about everything.
Because of our experiences, and perhaps some as a result of genetics and biology, we have developed an emotional bias. We all know people who are prone to respond to what happens around them in a certain way. The exact same experience can produce quite different responses. How we view what happens in our world depends on our emotional bias. We all know people who can observe a situation and get angry when we just can’t see what the big deal is! We also know people who will look at the same situation and come through it all with a smile on their face while we’re thinking it may not have been worth getting angry about that but how can you be happy now? People who get angry so easy or seem to be happy when the situation is dire, have not learned to be very emotionally intelligent. There are also people who are sad too often and people who are afraid of their own shadows. Learning how to connect with people through their emotions can be very helpful not just to us, but to them as well.
The danger with learning to interact through the emotions felt by others is that we can be become manipulative. We must guard against the possibility of connecting for the wrong reason. Others will eventually catch on and you will lose the trust of people you need. Therefore, it’s important that everyone be on the same page with respect to what we are trying to accomplish. So, how do you do this? How do you interact with others through their emotions? The first step is to get everyone to agree on using just 4 emotions as the basis for this work; fear, happy, sad, and mad. Next is to simply accept that the emotion someone is experiencing at any given time is the emotion they are experiencing. Don’t reject the emotion as being inappropriate or wrong in the context of the experience. Do seek to understand why the person feels the way they feel. Now we can all work together to deal with the situation from the context of any strong emotions being felt by various people on the team. Another important step is to start talking about the emotions we experience and observe. For example, if I’m feeling angry, I need to share with others that I am angry and what happened that has resulted in my anger. Another example is when I sense that someone else is experiencing a strong emotion, I should tell that person that I’m sensing that they are very sad, or scared, or happy or angry, and I’m just wondering what happened to cause this emotional response from you. By engaging in these conversations, we will all grow in our emotional intelligence. This is a good area for growth for any team.
By recognizing that we all have biases, we begin to understand that the way we see things is colored by those biases. When we realize that we have a bias towards one of the four basic emotions, we begin to understand that when we see a situation as being maddening, frightening, exhilarating, or depressing, that is our interpretation but not necessarily the interpretation of others. Once we begin to see that other emotional perspectives not only exist but are also entirely valid from the experiential reference frame of those who have lived those diverse lives, we open ourselves up to a new way of understanding the people we relate to on any given day. Rather than wondering why a person gets so mad about things that don’t particularly anger us, we can begin to examine the possible ways that we might be able to use that anger to help us solve what another person sees as an angering problem. It also gives us a chance to confront that anger and help someone try to find other emotional responses to the same conditions and circumstances. We can do this for any powerful emotion that interferes with our attainment of important outcomes.
Our emotional bias may not ever cause difficulties for our organization. But sometimes they do. Knowing how to deal with these emotions is a key to organizational success. Taking the time to directly deal with emotions is important for every organization. Thinking we can eliminate emotion from our processes is not only unrealistic, it is for all intents and purposes, darned near impossible. So instead of asking to leave their emotions out of the workplace, why not learn how to use those emotions to help us achieve our goals. Every decision we make has some emotion associated with it. Being aware of the emotions associated with each decision helps us understand where people are as we move from decisions to implementation. Practicing emotion checking during more routine decision making and every day activities, prepares us for those more highly charged activities and decisions. Like so much of what makes the best organizations more successful than most mediocre organizations, preparation and practice helps people anticipate what might happen during a crisis. Rather than leave those difficult moments to chance, the Legacy Culture driven organization wants to have outcomes they’ve chosen.
There is an old saying; beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We can say the same for success. Here are some of the statements I have found about success. “Success is understanding you control your own destiny.” Knowing that no one is perfect, we all have our limitations, this next statement is particularly fitting. “Success is never letting a disability hold you back.” Too often, we don’t think of ourselves as successful because we have no major victories. So, this statement is very important. “Success is celebrating small victories.” Sophocles said that success was dependent on effort so it can be said that “Success is not giving up.” It has also been said that success requires a steadfast commitment. “Success is standing your ground when you wholeheartedly believe in something.” And some people give up after their first defeat but “Success is learning that losing a few battles can help you win a war.” After completing one of masterpieces, Michelangelo was reported to have said: “I am still learning!” “Success is learning something new each day.”
I have given 7 different definitions of success but I am sure there are many more possibilities. Notice, not one of them is about money nor are they materialistic in any way. If you have a definition of success, please add it to this list by making a comment. I’d love to see this list grow. I will continue to edit this post for as long as people keep adding ideas. I’ll start things off by giving you my definition of success: “Success is not a long term outcome, it is an ongoing pursuit of goals, one at a time, that are important to you.” None of these are the right definition and none of these are the wrong definition. Each is an individual perspective. Please add your perspective and help us all grow our knowledge.
Difficult Conversations: We all have them. They are unavoidable. But how we have them can make all the difference in the world. Legacy Leaders have learned the secret to having these difficult conversations. The secret, transform the conversation from what’s wrong with the other person into a quest for understanding. The first step in doing this is to use I messages vs the more commonly used You message. Let’s look at the difference between an I message and a You message.
You Message: You never get your reports into me on time. Every week I have to come to you to ask you for your report. You are irresponsible and lazy and you’re holding up the entire department. You better get with the program or else!
I Message: I’m feeling really frustrated. Each week I have to turn in all the departmental reports to my supervisor and it looks really bad of me to turn in an incomplete set of reports. I’m afraid of how this reflects on me as a leader. How can I help make sure everything gets in on time.
I messages are not difficult to use. They have 3 key parts. First is the emotion felt. In this example it’s frustration. Second is the observation of what has happened. In this example it’s not turning in a report on time. And finally, it’s the search for a solution. It’s as simple as that, but applying them during the heat of difficult time schedules and breaking old habits is not so easy. That’s why there must be more than just using I messages.
In order to be effective when you must have a difficult conversation, the Legacy Leader must learn to Reflect. So many leaders are quick thinkers and fast reactors. This is great when everything is humming along but when difficulties arise, taking a moment to refelct before you react can prevent a great deal of emotional chaos. If you just learn to count to 3 before you react, you can make a big difference. While you count to 3, do this: 1–How am I feeling about what’s going on? 2–What do I need to tell people about what’s going on? 3–Can I ask those who are involved to help me solve the problem? If, as a leader, I just start blasting away, this is what happens. The responsibility for everything is mine. The creativity and incentive to take initiative is squashed. My team is put on the defensive. Emotions run high. Productivity plummets. By simply taking the short time to count to 3, you can get the majority of your people all pulling in the same direction.
There’s another difficulty in this process. That is the need for vulnerability. In order to use this approach to difficult conversations, leaders must be willing to reveal their emotions and they must be willing to say I don’t have all the answers. This requires a huge leap of faith for many people because, revealing these vulnerabilities is taking a risk that many do not like to take. That risk is that of a deaper trust. Trusting others not to take advantage of a vulnerability exposed is the biggest risk any person can take. Legacy Leaders do this on a regular basis. They know that we all have our weaknesses and soft spots. If our team is full of integrity, they will never take advantage of these vulnerabilities. This is, perhaps, the most important value that every organization should have. That value is, that we support and we do not take advantage of anyone during a period of vulnerability.
The final idea for dealing with difficult conversations is that it is better to have them now rather than later. Putting off a difficult conversation is never a good idea. Leaving bad situations to stew and fester is never in the best interest of any organization. The sooner the conversation takes place the better it will be for everyone involved. So when the difficult arises, think of the long term impact of the situation. As a Legacy Leader, waiting for things to settle down is a gamble. Everything might go back to normal but is that what your eally want? Legacy Leaders want everybody to learn from every experience. Difficult situations are excellent for teaching us how to do things better. If we wait for the right time, we postpone our learning. Moving forward in a structured and organizaed fashion, using I messages, time for reflection, and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable provides a great learning opportunity. Don’t delay the chance to learn. Tackle your difficult conversations as soon as possible.
Busyness does not equal productivity! Running around like my hair’s on fire does not mean that I’m getting anything worthwhile done. Just doing stuff doesn’t result in my actions being targeted on our WISE Goal. For me to know if I’m doing what I need to do, I must have a daily reckoning of what I have done as measured against what I really needed to do. In our company, Culture By Choice, each of us has a primary, secondary, and tertiary role. We each also must continue to learn and grow. And then, we each need to take care of ourselves, our families, and each other. To be as productive as possible, we all need to maximize our productive behaviors, reduce our unproductive behaviors, and eliminate our counterproductive and destructive behaviors.
This sounds pretty simple but it takes a great deal of self-analysis and planning to make the idea a reality. I have to start by clarifying my role in our company. My primary role is as an idea person and creator. I am constantly thinking about what we do for our clients and I continuously examine our methods and processes to see if there is a way to bring more value to our clients. My second role is as a coach. All those ideas I come up with, I apply them in my coaching relationship with clients. My third role is as a salesperson. I’ve never been a great salesperson but that doesn’t mean I can’t get better at it. And, all these ideas I keep having, they often become what clients want to buy. Looking at these roles, I must consider what behaviors support these roles, what behaviors take care of my health and well-being, what behaviors help me to continue to learn and grow, and what behaviors help support my colleagues. When I know what these behaviors are I can start reviewing what I do, on any given day, that is consistent with my identified productive behaviors, what misses the mark, and what was counterproductive or even destructive.
Things I do on a daily basis that support our mission are reading, creating, writing, conversing, coaching, sending emails, making follow-up phone calls, co-creating with colleagues and clients, collecting and analyzing data, prospecting for new clients, networking with professionals, and keeping a log of communications with existing and potential clients. Things I have done that have, for one reason or another, missed the mark? Often, it can be the same list. But, it’s not so much what I did but how I did it. When I miss the mark, I often have not fully considered the person I’m trying to work with. We teach our clients to always consider the behavior style, motivations, values, and experiences of the person you are trying to communicate with but we do, from time to time, forget to heed our own advice. Using the wrong communication style can be as unproductive as speaking the wrong language. Know your communication target before you communicate. It will save you a lot of time and energy. Things I do that are counterproductive are more numerous than I’d like to admit but one stands out bigger than all the rest. I’m a procrastinator. I can too often put important things off till later. I’ve been working on this bad behavior for years. I’m much better than I was 30 years ago but I’m not good enough yet. What I’ve learned is that my procrastination stems from poor prioritization. Taking care of what matters most should always take priority over doing what feels best or is most comfortable at the time.
The last area that we all must face is our destructive behavior. Destructive behaviors come in several varieties. Some are self-destructive. Some are destructive to others. Some are organizationally destructive. And still others are destructive to our future. Some of these behaviors fall into two or more categories. Poor health habits is one of those that crosses several lines. They don’t only impact how healthy we are, they can hurt our colleagues and loved ones and they can limit our capacity in the future. Another destructive behavior is something I refer to as shiny object chasing. We can all be distracted by something that looks really wonderful only to find out that it’s all shine and not at all refined. It’s fool’s gold rather than gold ore. We think some project will yield great rewards but it results in lost resources and no ROI! Our experience tells us this happens when we forget who we are and what we are about. When our values and principles get pushed aside by other ideas, we’re in trouble.
Having a daily evaluation of our actions is a great way to keep ourselves on track. But, we have to know what that track is. Here’s what I recommend for an entire process.
Step 1: know what you, your family and loved ones, and your organization expect of you. Let a colleague or supervisor know what you’re doing and ask them to help you improve your productivity.
Step 2: before you start your day, create your daily do list that has 3 categories; highest priority, high priority, and moderate priority. Leave everything else off the list. This step requires that you know how to prioritize. I’ve met people who were terrible at setting priorities. Step one should be a great deal of help in figuring out what goes in which category. Now, work on things in their order of importance not the easiest to do first. On your daily do list you should state the amount of time you will devote to the task. When you have multiple high priority tasks to work on, it is important to know how much time you have to complete each and then break them into manageable chunks and leave them alone every once in awhile. If it’s a rush job, you’ll have to dedicate more time but if you can, allowing your subconscious brain to work on it while you’re doing something else can be very helpful.
Step 3: allow yourself to take breaks. Our efforts can suffer from the “law of diminishing returns.” When our brain gets tired it needs a rest. Get up and get another cup of coffee or some water. Take a moment to make a quick phone call. Then return to the task. If your mind starts to wander, it may need a break. Just make sure you are not engaging in procrastination.
Step 4: at the end of the day review your do list. Evaluate your progress and start your do list for the next day. Don’t beat yourself up for failure to achieve everything on your list. Do, however, make notes about why you got things done as well as what you got done. Whether good or bad, analysis of our strategies, tactics, and efforts can help us do better.
Step 5: share your progress with that colleague or supervisor that you identified in step one. Ask them for feedback and be prepared for what they say. Critical comments can hurt but they are necessary for growth. Help your colleague or supervisor out by not taking any of what they say personally. Let them know that you want to learn and grow.
If you do this you will improve. If companies really want to help their people grow they would make this mandatory for every employee. These companies must simultaneously assure each employee that they will never hold their progress or lack of it against them as long as an earnest effort is made and the highest integrity is maintained. If the process is applied with fidelity, an investment of 20 minutes every day could create a productivity pay out that might be worth several times the investment.
Whenever I say Legacy Life, most people think about old age or a religious experience. That’s not what I mean. Even though those circumstances aren’t excluded, that’s still not what I mean. When I talk about a Legacy Life, I’m talking about a principles based life. I’m talking about intentionally conducting oneself in a way that is thoughtful and considers the consequences of actions. People who live a Legacy Life understand that every action taken can either be productive or unproductive and that some of the unproductive actions might also be destructive. Living a Legacy Life requires that we maximize our productive behavior, greatly reduce our unproductive behaviors, and eliminate our destructive behaviors. How we do this is the key!
Do we have to think about absolutely every action before we execute that action? The answer to that question is, it depends. Acting without thinking requires relying on habits. If you have habits that support productive outcomes, actions without conscious review of consequences might work out. If your habitual behaviors are unproductive or even destructive, eliminating actions without conscious review of outcomes must be eliminated. Converting your behaviors from non-productive and destructive habits to deliberate, thoughtful, constructive behaviors and habits is hard work and requires intentionality. Left on our own, most of us will have difficulty making the necessary behavioral modifications. Most of us will falter and fail without help.
The American way is supposed to be that of rugged individualism. So why can’t we do it by ourselves. The answer is quite simple. Rugged individualism worked okay when our world was not full of convenient distractions. Notice, I didn’t say it worked well, I said it worked okay! So for something that was just an okay strategy, when you use that strategy in the face of fast food and today’s technological distractions, it’s a miracle that anyone develops positive, productive, affirming behaviors by themselves. If you really want to become a Legacy Leader you can increase your chances immensely by enlisting the help of others. If you must live a Legacy Life, enlist the help of someone who can really help. You need someone who will help you figure out what principles and values all your actions should be measured against. You need someone who will hold you accountable for what you say you are going to do. You need someone who will help you think through new strategies and tactics in relationship to the expectation that they can help you grow in ways that move you closer to that Legacy Life.
Where do you find someone who can help? Will it cost you an arm and a leg? What are your options? Fortunately, there are some very inexpensive options that have proven to be very effective. One of the best is to be part of a Facilitated Professional Learning Community. This is a group of like minded people who are all working towards living a Legacy Life and becoming a Legacy Leader and is facilitated by an individual who is willing to keep the group on task. These groups are generally 10 to 15 people, who meet virtually, with a professional facilitator. The cost is usually $100 per person per session and the groups usually meet once a month. Many participants continue to meet with their group for 2 or more years as they find the advice and accountability aspects of the group are worth way more than they pay. If you’d like to try one of these groups but aren’t sure how to do it, contact me and I’ll help find one or start one. Send an inquiry email to jaynewman@culturebychouce.com and I’ll help.
No matter what you decide to do, one thing is certain; you must be a leader in your own life before you can effectively lead others. Living your life based on values and principles is a precursor to leading an organization based on values and principles. If you’d like to be part of a Facilitated Professional Learning Community, let me know. I’d be happy to get you connected to one or help you start one.
Cheryl Lohner
drjbnewman
Newman’s Legacy Leadership Blog 