In this relaunch of the ChoinqueCast, host Jim Emerick sits down with Juliane Gallina, currently a partner at Lavrock Ventures and a veteran leader with over two decades of government service. They explore her unique career trajectory - from the US Navy to the CIA and IBM - while discussing the core principles of leadership, the power of data, and the personal motivations behind major professional pivots.

Key Takeaways

1. Human-Centric Leadership: True leadership is defined by the ability to navigate complex situations that are not captured in a manual or checklist.
2. Mission over Mechanics: Success in any environment comes from a leader's ability to connect their team to a purpose larger than themselves.
3. Family-Driven Pivots: Every major career shift in Juliane's life was influenced by family needs, emphasizing the importance of balancing personal and professional worlds.
4. Decisive Data Analytics: At a 30-person startup, Juliane used quantitative analysis to prove the value of UAV data, which directly influenced multi-billion dollar Pentagon budgets.
5. AI for Intelligence: Leading the deployment of IBM Watson at the CIA provided advanced "question and answer" capabilities to help manage the agency's massive data holdings.
6. Bridging the Sector Gap: Despite structural communication barriers ("caste systems"), leadership challenges remain fundamentally similar across the military, government, and commercial sectors.

Episode Timestamps

[00:00] – Intro: Why the human brain is irreplaceable by machines and checklists.

[02:47] – Military Roots: Specializing in cryptology and secure communications in the US Navy.

[04:15] – NRO & CIA: Transitioning from the National Reconnaissance Office to the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology.

[06:12] – The Personal Pivot: Leaving government service after 20 years to prioritize family needs.

[07:56] – Big Data Impact: Demonstrating the quantitative value of UAV sensor data in war zones.

[11:56] – Corporate Scaling: The experience of moving from a 30-person firm to IBM's global workforce.

[16:05] – The Industry-Gov Barrier: Navigating communication gaps when returning to work with old colleagues.

[18:04] – Return to Service: Being appointed as the CIA's Chief Information Officer in 2019.

[21:08] – Leadership Mechanics: Comparing the discipline of a spacecraft launch to everyday team management.

[35:28] – Closing Thoughts: Reconnecting for national security and looking ahead to the future.

🔗 Connect with the Guest Juliane Gallina:

👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliane-gallina-b736244/

🔗 Follow Lavrock Ventures:

👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lavrock-ventures/

👉 Website: https://lavrockvc.com/

👉 X: https://x.com/lavrockvc

🔗 Connect with the Host Jim Emerick:

👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimemerick/

🔗 More from Choinque:

👉 Website: https://www.choinque.com/blog

👉 Facebook: https://facebook.com/918903204639744

👉 Instagram: https://instagram.com/choinquecast

👉 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@choinque

👉 X: https://x.com/choinque

👉 Email: iamgood@choinque.com

🔗 More about Leadership Courses:

👉 Schedule: https://www.academyleadership.com/Emerick/

🔗 Follow the Podcast:

👉 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/choinquecast/id1290927745

👉 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/56oY3glVaoTXmmcWWGQGry?si=69f1cd525a5d4be5

👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAA4czS4aI7V5g3i2Sd4bUQ

With 17 years at Minnesota Power, where he built and led a Project Management Office, Chris shares how those experiences shaped his leadership approach. He reflects on leading complex capital programs at ATC, maintaining execution discipline, team alignment, and a strong organizational culture during a period of rapid industry growth.

Together, they explore how organizations scale infrastructure delivery, drive transparency, and preserve culture when capital investment grows faster than headcount, and the leadership mindset required to navigate this accelerated growth without sacrificing performance or long-term stability.

Expect to Learn

1. How to scale a capital program by over 50 percent year over year without multiplying headcount
2. Why culture and transparency matter more during rapid growth
3. The impact of data centres and regional transmission projects on utility planning
4. How to lead cross functional teams through major change
5. Practical advice for building or restarting a PMO in a complex organisation

Episode Breakdown with Timestamps

1. [00:00] – Teaser
2. [01:09] – Welcome & Introduction to the ChoinqueCast with Chris Mattila
3. [06:32] – The Unexpected Call from ATC: An Offer He Couldn't Refuse
4. [11:43] – The Fear: Can Culture Survive Explosive Growth?
5. [17:30] – Strategy for Project Managers: A Unique Approach to Leadership
6. [23:28] – Engagement Scores: Why Empowerment and Transparency Won the Day
7. [29:48] – What Makes ATC Special? Family, Transparency, and 360-Degree Reviews
8. [35:09] – Closing Remarks and Looking Ahead

🔗 Connect with the Guest Christopher Mattila:

👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-mattila-mba-mspm-pmp-2822433/

👉 Company’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/atc/

👉 Company’s Website: https://www.atcllc.com/

🔗 Connect with the Host Jim Emerick:

👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimemerick/

🔗 More from Choinque:

👉 Website: https://www.choinque.com/blog

👉 Facebook: https://facebook.com/918903204639744

👉 Instagram: https://instagram.com/choinquecast

👉 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@choinque

👉 X: https://x.com/choinque

👉 Email: iamgood@choinque.com

🔗 More about Leadership Courses:

👉 Schedule: https://www.academyleadership.com/Emerick/

🔗 Follow the Podcast:

👉 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/choinquecast/id1290927745

👉 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/56oY3glVaoTXmmcWWGQGry?si=69f1cd525a5d4be5

👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAA4czS4aI7V5g3i2Sd4bUQ

JL Bielon has spent her entire career in nonprofit leadership, specialising in fundraising and philanthropy. She now leads Champions for Children, a Tampa-based organisation focused on preventing child abuse and strengthening families through research-based programmes. Her work blends strategic clarity, community collaboration, and a deep commitment to long-term impact for children and families.

Expect to Learn:

1. What surprised JL most during her first year as a CEO.
2. How losing and gaining federal grants reshaped the organisation’s strategy.
3. Why mission, vision, and values clarity is critical for nonprofit growth.
4. The importance of peer networks and coaching for new CEOs.
5. How philanthropy and fundraising skills are shaping the next generation of nonprofit leaders.

Episode Breakdown with Timestamps:

1. [00:00] – Teaser
2. [01:32] – Welcome & Introduction to the ChoinqueCast with JL Bielon
3. [05:14] – First Year as CEO: Surprises, Team Building, and Federal Grant Challenges
4. [11:08] – Leaning on the Network: The Weight of CEO Decisions
5. [17:34] – Redefining Mission, Vision, and Values: The Foundation for the Next 50 Years
6. [22:49] – The Leadership Toolbox: From Manager to Coach
7. [30:55] – Advice for Aspiring CEOs: Embrace the Zigzag and Say Yes to Conversations
8. [33:36] – Closing Remarks and How to Connect

🔗 Connect with the Guest JL Bielon:

👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jl-bielon/

👉 Company’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/champions-for-children/

👉 Company’s Website: https://cfctb.org/

🔗 Connect with the Host Jim Emerick:

👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimemerick/

🔗 More from Choinque:

👉 Website: https://www.choinque.com/blog

👉 Facebook: https://facebook.com/918903204639744

👉 Instagram: https://instagram.com/choinquecast

👉 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@choinque

👉 X: https://x.com/choinque

👉 Email: iamgood@choinque.com

🔗 Follow the Podcast:

👉 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/choinquecast/id1290927745

👉 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/56oY3glVaoTXmmcWWGQGry?si=69f1cd525a5d4be5

👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAA4czS4aI7V5g3i2Sd4bUQ

Expect to Learn:

1. Kevin’s journey from an IT intern to CIO, and his role in transitioning from research to government service.
2. Insights on the importance of leadership development, especially in managing large IT teams and navigating crisis situations.
3. How Fulton County leveraged technology to recover from a significant cyberattack, accelerating their tech progression in the process.
4. The growing importance of soft skills in leadership and technology management, particularly as AI and automation continue to shape the future.

Episode Breakdown with Timestamps:

1. [00:00] – Teaser
2. [01:28] – Welcome & Introduction to the ChoinqueCast with Kevin Kerrigan
3. [04:27] – Building the Water Atlas: Environmental Data and GIS
4. [09:45] – Transitioning from Research to Hillsborough County
5. [16:27] – The Leadership Epiphany: Seeking Coaching and Development
6. [25:18] – The Six-Month Vetting Process for Fulton County CIO
7. [32:04] – Managing 46 Departments and Elected Officials During Recovery
8. [40:57] – Estimating the Acceleration: Five to Seven Years of Progress
9. [48:59] – The Value of Offsites: Building Trust and Vulnerability
10. [53:39] – Final Thoughts: Soft Skills Are the New Hard Skills
11. [54:56] – Closing Remarks

🔗 Connect with the Guest Kevin Kerrigan:

👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinmkerrigan/

👉 Company’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fultoncountygovernment/

👉 Company’s Website: https://www.fultoncountyga.gov/

🔗 Connect with the Host Jim Emerick:

👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimemerick/

🔗 More from Choinque:

👉 Website: https://www.choinque.com/blog

👉 Facebook: https://facebook.com/918903204639744

👉 Instagram: https://instagram.com/choinquecast

👉 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@choinque

👉 X: https://x.com/choinque

👉 Email: iamgood@choinque.com

🔗 Follow the Podcast:

👉 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/choinquecast/id1290927745

👉 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/56oY3glVaoTXmmcWWGQGry?si=69f1cd525a5d4be5

👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAA4czS4aI7V5g3i2Sd4bUQ

Good question. Let’s consider the scope of our follow on engagement, an Energize2Lead Workshop. Energy has a great deal to do with leadership. How many of us would ever say we we were energized by a demotivating leader, or more simply, a sourpuss? Not likely.

Tony Schwartz comes to mind, especially during the U.S. Open tennis tournament, since he has coached many tennis pros. Tony focuses on managing our energy levels, and that we can apply that to our own effectiveness as leaders.

According to Tony, we have four personal energy dimensions: Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual. We’re probably pretty comfortable talking about our physical energy levels, with diet and exercise such everyday topics. How many of the other three dimensions do we think about, in the workplace, particularly when we think about what we share of ourselves and what we learn about those in our charge? 

Back to the client. This client, during our Energize2Lead Workshop, not surprisingly was quite different. We started off with a moment of prayer, beginning with the energy dimension we likely neglect the most, the spiritual.

Let’s stop for a moment. How often do we think of our jobs, or work, as something that contributes to our spiritual selves? Big question.

Just as there are multiple dimensions to our energy levels, there are multiple dimensions to ourselves as leaders, which may be shared with others in order to ignite the passions we truly want if we seek engagement, or to be effective leaders that matter. These are interesting things, the unique things that comprise our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual selves. What things form your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual self? Courage moment: What would it take for you to share these things, in your Personal Leadership Philosophy, in a coaching session, or when just getting to know your team.

How might your subordinates follow you differently if they knew such things?

Consider all four of these dimensions.

Great leaders understand energy.

Keep in mind this attendee had been successfully working 2.5 years on a really cool project. Attending the course providing time to think, share his story, and after the course share his findings as documented on his Action Plan, which was shared with his supervisor. That’s the best part of the story - finding the courage to share who one really is and what genuinely motivates us.

Guess what happened? Hint: His new supervisor is a good leader. 

After reassignment to a new project, and to a new sponsor, which his company generously accommodated, he was introduced as a new member of the leadership team on the first day. A direct quote from the attendee’s email: 

“This is unique in that project managers are usually not included that way with senior leaders' direct reporting groups.  In our first leadership team meeting, he must have asked me 10 times what my opinion was and what strategies I thought the team should consider. OK... I am SO happy.  You already know how E2L [this type of sharing works], but I thought you would appreciate the recent, specific example.”

What’s may we take away from this story? When we take the time to honestly assess ourselves, and create an environment where others may do the same, we can create a very motivational environment.

Not surprisingly, here’s the closing part of his email:

“Next steps for me... 

I go to corporate headquarters next week. I will be doing planning sessions and team building exercises with my new leadership team. And, I will get to meet my future project team members.

My plan is to share my leadership philosophy with the leadership team. In addition, I will meet with each of my new management peers and fill out the Motivation Assessment form.  The idea is that I want to improve my relationships with peers better than in the past. I do well with my reports and further up the org chart - but my detractors are typically peer managers at my level.  We will be doing a major organization change effort over the next year, so I want to develop really strong and positive relationships with the other managers this time around.”

Think about that. This isn’t about pay raises or foosball tables in the break room. It’s about learning what makes other’s tick. How well do you really know yourself? Can you recall the last time you finished a work day more energized than when you started? What happened that particular day? More importantly, do you know your team members that well?

Can’t wait for the next coaching session to learn what happens next.

Great leaders create an energizing environment.

Team,

I was going to share the following with you tomorrow at our all hands.  Unfortunately, that schedule did not hold up.  Given that all of us have so many things going on right now, I could not find a time when I thought we could get together as a team before most of you deploy out to Montana, or South Dakota.  While communicating with you in this regard is not ideal, and definitely is not what I had hoped to do, I felt it was necessary to at least get this too you with some brief explanation.

Recently, I had the privilege of participating in a truly extraordinary learning experience.  During this time, I was provided an opportunity, and the tools to evaluate what my personal leadership philosophy was.  It was a very tough, introspective journey that directed me in a very transformative way.  This experience forced me to deal with quite a number of things, some of what I am not particularly proud of, and others for which I am. 

This experience forced me to consider, and reconsider what my relationship is with each of you.  It also gave me an opportunity to realize how much I appreciate each of you.

I have attached this leadership philosophy for your review.  Please know that I mean every word of it, and will purpose to live up to it as best that I am able.  This is in essence my contract with you.

If you have If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, please do not hesitate to stop by. 

Always your advocate

Roger

Let’s listen to the first paragraph of Roger’s Personal Leadership Philosophy:

Being a leader is a privilege. Being a leader is an act of service. Leadership carries with it a responsibility to share a vision, to direct a course of action, and to inspire a desire to succeed. Leadership is passionate. Leadership is about creating a future that is inviting, that seeks to tease out the best in all members of the team and provides security in the knowledge of a job well done. Leadership is a partnership between the leader, and the led. If the partnership does not exist, then all you really have is second rate management. 

What do you think about the last two sentences? Roger is essentially sharing that if a partnership doesn’t exist, all we have is management. It’s one of the best descriptions distinguishing between management and leadership, and Roger composed and shared this despite the fact he plans to retire within six months. After the course, I requested a meeting between myself, Roger and his supervisor. Something tells me inside that although Roger may formally retire from a full-time job, his desire to positively influence and serve others seems intact.

Let’ think about that.

Great leaders continuously grow.

https://www.hbo.com/chernobyl

my thoughts turned to our country and the ongoing issue with Boeing’s 737 MAX. What’s common to both events? A single word: Transparency. Or, the lack of it. The first episode of Chernobyl highlights — at the individual and at the organizational level — consequences of not sharing information, or the truth, especially at the beginning of an accident. Any viewer of the series will be struck by the breathtaking denial of the reactor core explosion, and how many lives, such as those of the firefighters in the first episode, will later horribly end in an isolated Moscow hospital due to massive radiation poisoning.

Let’s turn to the 737 MAX events. After two overseas fatal accidents, both during takeoff, many questions arose about similarities leading to the crashes. Following a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal, it quickly becomes apparent that not everyone at Boeing was sharing vital design details, such as the Angle of Attack sensors and related flight control systems. Alarmingly, it appears not even Boeing test pilots knew these critical design details:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeings-own-test-pilots-lacked-key-details-of-737-max-flight-control-system-11556877600

While the magnitude of these two events are quite different, there are disturbing commonalities. First, critical design details were not known by those who operate the systems. Second, and perhaps even worse, the basis for design decisions appeared to be short-sighted considerations such as cost, which, in the end, were given higher priority than basic safety. With Boeing we are still in the consequences stage as the design and software issues are being addressed in real time. One can only wonder what it will take for Boeing to recover the loss to their integrity and brand after this event. What changes will be required so this does not happen again?

Once again we can turn to  Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton’s Knowing-Doing Gap:

https://www.choinque.com/the-knowing-doing-gap

We’ve all encountered a bureaucratic organization or call center from hell where we endlessly repeated requests and it appears nothing we say is listened to, captured, stored, or responded to. Organizations that ignore knowledge, or treat it as something to be acquired, stored, and often protected or hidden will never cross the Knowing-Doing Gap. As a result, individuals in such organizations will be unlikely to Do The Right Thing, even when they know what the right thing to do is. Often they won’t even know.

Just like Chernobyl and just like Boeing.

We learn from Pfeffer and Sutton that the rare organizations that cross the Knowing-Doing Gap treat knowledge differently, we could say with radical transparency. What is required to do that? Brave and secure leaders who willingly accept feedback and that pursue continuous improvement. If you have a chance to see the Chernobyl series, it’s a haunting experience. Let’s keep an eye on Boeing as well, watching how their leaders respond.

Great Leaders Are Transparent.

First, the corporate mission may be included or referenced in their Personal Leadership Philosophy, for both possible introduction and reinforcement.

Second, during the Aligning and Accomplishing Goals workshop, multiple attendees observed that a lack of knowledge of broader corporate goals could lead to misalignment when establishing SMART (specific, measurable,  agreed-upon, realistic, trackable) goals with subordinates. We discussed this common situation within organizations is how silos form, or independent groups working either unaware and/or disconnected from the direction of the overall enterprise.

The third example was during our last workshop, Coaching to Develop People. After distinguishing coaching from appreciation and evaluation, the other two forms of feedback, we narrowed our workshop focus specifically on performance coaching, and noticed how this type of coaching is similar to what competitive athletes do.

Coaching without a prior, agreed upon set of goals is rarely effective. It stands to reason that if our prior developed goals, as well as our subordinate’s goals are not aligned with the overall organization, than our coaching may lead our team in the wrong direction.

Jim Collins emphasizes the same, and it’s worth visiting his web site and the emphasis on alignment. In our Core Values Alignment workshop, one of our more advanced workshops, we bring to attention that most businesses treat development of central tenets such as core values administratively, or focused on grammar and creating visually appealing posters, rather than the more demanding leadership challenge of aligning derivative activities, such as the mission and goals throughout the organization.

Without peeking at any documents, or going on-line, how well can you describe the mission and goals of your organization, or declared corporate values? More importantly, how well can your subordinates, and can they share with anyone the connection between what they do every day, and how that helps the organization move toward unified goals?

Great Leaders Create Alignment.

I wanted to share a very personal story about the power of our Personal Leadership Philosophy.  I hope you get a quick chance to read this and appreciate your busy schedules.

In January, Pam’s division of Humana was eliminated unexpectedly.  As always, things happen for reasons whether we plan for it or not.  As she began her search, it created a time of reflection and redefining purpose (as it has for many of us who are veterans of corporate America) while navigating the unknown.  She worked with Humana for over 10 years as a Case and Team Manager in their Home Health business. 

We recently started her quilting business (which she is very gifted at and award winning) but just being christened, it’s not quite ready for sea yet so she began to fish the leadership opportunities in Nursing in the Louisville area.  Her sights set on a similar position, she started casting.  She received several calls of interest (and not) but recently spoke with a national home care company with 2 opportunities as a Case Manager and a Director of Operations.  The recruiter told her that she was overqualified for the Manager role but referred her to the Executive recruiter as she felt Pam had the experience for that role.  Pam was shocked, a bit nervous and doubted whether she was able to fill the expectations of that leadership role.

Her first interview went well and made her realize that she did have the experience and ability to “move up”.  We spent the next week working on her Personal Leadership Philosophy which she felt would be important for her not just during the interview process but to solidify her own confidence and be prepared to be effective in the role should she get it.

During the next set of executive interviews, she proactively asked if she could share her Leadership Philosophy in response to a leading interview question which took the team by surprise as they had never heard of it.  They loved it and were impressed that she even had one.  The proportion of the discussion quickly shifted to leadership, values and examples of living those values.

Pam received an invite to a final round of interviews, in person, with the team that she would be leading and her prospective supervisor (whom she had already met). During this session, Pam again shared her philosophy informally with the team. Not only were they appreciative but were taken back by its candor and heartfelt message. 

She was offered the position with Amedisys (not surprising to me), a promotion from her previous role, and has reenergized her sense of self, her capability and how important her Nursing profession is to her.  She is excited for the position to start in May and looking forward to leading a team again.  Two points.

Had it not been for life throwing a curveball, she would not have proactively searched for a position of greater responsibility outside Humana.

Pam attributes sharing her Leadership Philosophy as key lever in not only putting her own thoughts and values into perspective but the power of having one and sharing it during the interview process was invaluable not only for its authenticity but that she had placed so much emphasis on leadership and its importance in the role already. 

In retrospect, having a Personal Leadership Philosophy doesn’t necessarily guarantee admission but it’s clear that few have heard of one, have one or even think about articulating one.  In the case of interviewing (that we get asked frequently about), it creates a conversation that turns focus toward an open discussion that most likely would not have occurred.  More importantly, a conversation that the one being interviewed controls and becomes the driver. Better yet the leader.

Side note – the quilting continues…and perhaps an opportunity at Amedisys for an E2L/PLP workshop and...!

Respectfully,  Kevin

Kevin didn’t need to share this with our Academy Leadership team. It could demonstrate vulnerability, or perceived weakness. On the other hand, what types of people do we wish to follow? What is your leadership philosophy? Leaders Share Their Stories

Dan previously served as Chief Envisioner and Chief Learning Officer at TELUS—a Canadian telecommunications company with revenues of $14 billion and 50,000 global employees—where he launched the Transformation Office, the TELUS MBA, and the TELUS Leadership Philosophy, all award-winning initiatives that dramatically helped to increase the company’s employee engagement to record levels of nearly 90%. 

Where did this focus on Emotional Intelligence come from? It’s likely this started with Daniel Goleman’s groundbreaking work Emotional Intelligence. We can think of Susan Packard’s work, as well as Dan Pink’s breakthrough book Drive and Mark Crowley’s wonderful Lead From the Heart, as how-to guides. Goleman’s research introduced us to Emotional Intelligence, and there are many worthy books that inform us how to put Emotional Intelligence, or E.Q, into action, and showcase the benefits of doing so. This also helps us cross barriers between generations, as Kelly and Bobby Riggs shared with us in Counter Mentor Leadership.

Do you still think primarily about performance and potential solely based on I.Q? If you do, you’re not alone. Consider a deeper dive into E.Q. Add some new leadership tools to your toolbox. Leaders Promote Emotional Intelligence.

What did we learn from the past? What leadership lessons did we discuss? Actually, quite a few. Barry Strauss, Professor of History and Classics, Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies, presented questions for me, that we could share with his students for group discussion.

Why is Leonidas an admired figure in modern culture? And why are we fascinated with Sparta, yet no so much democratic Athens? It seems today, as much as in 480 B.C. we are drawn to leaders who have a strong sense of purpose, who serve a cause greater than themselves. Think about our cherished stories of the proverbial entrepreneurs launching a new venture in a garage with nothing then creating something amazing that changes our lives.

We spoke about the differences between leadership and authority, and what makes a good leader. Repeatedly, the concept of leading by example, or leading from the front surfaced. All of these reasons attract us to Leonidas, as well as contemporary leaders and heroes.

When Strauss asked what kind of leader Leonidas was, Professor Sidney Finkelstein’s book Superbosses came to mind, and his three archetypes:

• Iconoclasts, or artistic types such as Miles Davis, who want to be the best in their field
• Glorious Bastards, who just care about winning, such as Larry Ellison of Oracle, or
• Nurturers, who guide and teach their protégées, such as Bill Walsh, legendary coach of the San Francisco 49ers.

Many of us found Leonidas a combination of a nurturer, who cared for his solders, who easily was a glorious bastard in battle.

In short, there was a lot to learn thinking about and discussing Leonidas. Both about leadership and about history. We even discussed whether or not Leonidas  had a Personal Leadership Philosophy. Look for a future choinquecast of the entire session.

What lessons do you learn? Do you request feedback? How does that affect your leadership philosophy? Leaders Learn From the Past.

So, what’s going on here? Good question. A thought that comes to mind is emotional intelligence. It’s an everyday phrase today, but wasn’t in 1995 when Daniel Goleman published the classic work with the same name. Emotional Intelligence, the book, is not just a groundbreaking work, it redefines how we understand intelligence, and perhaps more importantly, for a leader, how we connect with each other. Similar to Christine Comaford’s Smart Tribes, Goleman examines fundamental human behavior, at the physiological, and often instinctive, level.

Just like our E2L profiles. Understanding our instinctive needs, and the instinctive needs of others, is vital for any effective leader. Goleman revealed this to us. Our E2L profile and E2L Workshops explore this. Perhaps this is why the skeptical client changed his mind. He connected instinctively.

How well do you know yourself and your team? Are your connections more than superficial? Leaders Connect Instinctively.

In short, we started discussing what it takes to become a 21st century leader, and are considering a series of ChoinqueCast dialogues. Like many, my colleague has been put into a “leadership position” twice in his career. My impression is that he didn’t really buy into the idea of leadership having anything to do with a position. His thoughts turned to Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, especially the part where Chaplin physically gets stuck in an assembly line machine — highlighting how organizations have treated people mechanically rather than humanely not so long ago. Much of his exposure to leadership so far has focused on processes, not so much people. Maybe times haven’t really changed that much.

Like Jim Collins, my colleague is very curious and wants to study business transformation in the United States, observing organizations and how they work. He wants this course of study to form his Ph.D. thesis. Following and possible contributing to this journey may be the basis for our dialogues. We shared a couple significant topics such as vulnerability, the hazards of a scarcity rather than abundance mindset, and use of a Personal Leadership Philosophy. Great 21st century leader traits.

Curiosity is both the hallmark of a coach, as well as a leader. Stay tuned for a series of dialogues on the ChoinqueCast. Leaders Connect Worldwide.

This brings to mind   Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton’s The Knowing-Doing Gap, in that we frequently seem to focus much more on knowledge than doing, exemplified by a passage on page 16:

“But the view of knowledge taken by many consultants, organizations,
and management writers is of something to be acquired, measured,
and distributed — something reasonably tangible, such as patents.”

Administrative knowledge seems an accurate term for this, and we may often presume, that once possessed, this know-how will be used effectively, which in practice often does not happen. Think of most common initiatives undertaken focusing on cloud computing and data warehousing and support software installation, and the rise of corresponding organizational structures. The usual result: Adding technology without changing behaviors which only extends the Knowing-Doing Gap.

Pfeffer and Sutton emphasize the use of the word knowledge as a process rather than a thing as a helpful habit well worth developing. Or put another way, most companies:

“Overestimate the importance of the tangible, specific, programmatic aspects
of what competitors, for instance, do, and underestimate the importance
of the underlying philosophy that guides what they do and why they do it.”

What they do and why they do it. So, what energized our Academy Leadership team this past week? We shared stories about things that we did, ways we engaged with our clients, and most significantly, we captured the stories from our Leadership Excellence Partner award winners. These were the amazing testimonials, shared from the heart, by leaders who are transforming their organizations while working with an Academy Leadership facilitator, or partner. 

There’s an analog here worth reflecting on. We can likewise envision leadership, both term and practice of, as a verb, or as an action or process, rather than a noun or title. At the end of the week, the first cohort of our new Academy Leadership Advanced Leadership Course regrouped for our fourth day. We were processing day three at a coffee shop, and as with the conference just finished, the team was sharing stories, asking themselves how to focus on what really mattered in order to realize their developing future vision. It was a great opportunity to share knowledge from the conference completed two days before. 

During the conference, we held a panel sharing best practices when facilitating development of a Personal Leadership Philosophy. One of the elements of a leadership philosophy, and often overlooked is our leadership priorities. In short, what’s important, and in what order. A member from the panel shared how they ask a group, especially one typically juggling everyday distractions and interruptions (think about a culture of doing more with less): “What are the two or three balls in the air which cannot be dropped?” Fantastic answer and a fantastic story. The cohort immediately connected with the analogy, and we went further. The group then challenged each other whether or not these two or three priorities were mentioned in their respective leadership philosophies, and then whether or not the priorities were aligned.

That’s communication. That’s breakthrough. That’s leadership. Leaders cross the Knowing-Doing Gap.

We had a long phone call a couple months ago. She spoke about the senior leadership team, and how one of them, in a chief marketing role, was seeking a “coaching activity” of some sort. She went further and described the organizational landscape, most notably that the senior leaders often “said the right things,” and even discussed during an executive off-site the need for leadership development training. Sounds like a classical case, where the CEO and CTO are founders of the company, and not surprisingly, struggle with growth and have a hard time letting go of anything.

A couple threads come to mind. 

Tony Hseih of Zappos speaks about living core values, and one of the ways he expresses how this is done is whether we hire or fire based on alignment with our company core values regardless of the ability of the person in question.

We can also go deeper, to Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life? Christensen shares a story about building a playhouse for his kids and he realizes that the journey, or the act of building the playhouse was his motivator, rather than the destination, or actual completion of the playhouse. For him, this was a revelation. Let’s pause and think about this for a minute.

There’s a very good chance that my client just had a similar revelation - just like Christensen. In discussions with my client over the years, it’s apparent that she wishes to be part of an organization that lives its values, rather than part of a cult, even a successful one. My guess is that her organization is a completely satisfactory, perhaps even fun place to work. But there are fissures, or stress fractures she and others are beginning to detect. And they are in conflict with both her values and how she wants to measure her life. 

She is courageous, and this ChoinqueCast is my way of telling her so. Indeed she is living her values.

Have you ever been in an organization like this? Or made a decision like my client did this month? Please reach out if you have or if you are thinking about it. Core values drive leaders.

Work Without Walls
Working With Difficult People
Disrupt Yourself
Counter Mentor Leadership
The Genius of Opposites
Pacing for Growth
Out of Our Minds
Violent Leadership
Thinking in Bets
The Introverted Leader
Career Leap
Crash
Radical Candor
Five Stars
Brave Leadership
the culture engine
Let There Be Water
Build An A Team
Creating Things That Matter
Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes For An Answer
open to think
Work together Anywhere
QBQ!
decide

bringing the total number of reviewed books on the Choinque Bookshelf too well over one hundred. Most of the books were generously donated by the author or their publisher and in several cases terrific books arrived unsolicited. It’s always fun returning from a business trip and finding new books ready for reading, and a new author to meet and interview for a ChoinqueCast. 

Recurring themes during leadership excellence courses throughout the year included how to free up time to become a better leader, which really starts by getting to know people better. Grouping Leadership Course attendees into Baby Boomer, Generation X and Generation Y teams proved both valuable and entertaining as we discussed common perceptions and misperceptions between the three, only to realize all three generations want very similar things from their leaders. A continued emphasis on the importance of coaching, especially distinguishing coaching from evaluation, was evident in leadership course feedback and attendee action plans.

Thank you to new partner Golden Media and Entertainment, a highly energized and youthful group working to bring leadership programs to Nigeria. Also, a hat tip to Bill Murphy of Piton Science and Technology, who kindly invited Choinque to join his Human Capital and Training Solutions, or HCaTS team earlier this year.

Looking ahead to 2019, we hope to bring leadership programs to Mauritius in addition to Nigeria, launch our first programs in Puerto Rico, and may return in the fall to Canberra, Australia. Stateside, Choinque looks forward to working closely with TK Lamb of JDI LLC allowing JDI to offer leadership initiatives to the US Government. A talk to students at Cornell is tentatively scheduled in February and a possible Keynote in the UK may occur later in the fall.

The ChoinqueCasts are a labor of love, curiosity, and passion to share knowledge. Let me know if you would like to connect with anyone in the Choinque network. Also, please provide feedback, especially positive reviews on iTunes so others may share our journey of goodness. Happy New Year!

The episode made me think of a story our Board Chairman shared years ago when in my start up CEO role. Durrell’s story was about an important engineering job he was responsible for when working at Motorola. The job was to design the first integrated circuits for Motorola’s first four-function calculator. Yeah, that was a while ago. Durrell could have done the work himself, or he could have delegated the work to highly experienced design engineers.

Guess what Durrell Hillis did? He assigned the job to a couple “fresh-outs,” or recent college graduates. Durrell cared as much about the development of the new engineers as he did about getting the job done. That what an engineering leader does. It’s also what my client is doing while restructuring her organization. For her, it’s not just about improved processes. It’s about changing the way work gets done by making good hiring decisions and letting people know they are accountable for results. As I listened during the coaching session, communicating this hiring and delegation story to the executive team at the 90 day checkpoint was the most important item. Especially giving credit to the new program manager.

How do you facilitate organizational change?  How much does development fit into your hiring decisions? Leaders delegate and instill accountability.

Not this time. We shared stories right away, confirming that constant change is the single most dominant characteristic of the world we live in — and for leaders, the choice is to lead change or be overtaken by it. Sometimes easier said than done though. Turns out the client is in the middle of multiple leading change initiatives, and that the associated challenges consume enormous amounts of energy by the entire team. We discussed Kotter’s Eight Step Change Process:

1. Establishing a sense of urgency
2. Forming a powerful guiding coalition
3. Creating a vision
4. Communicating the vision
5. Empowering others to act on the vision
6. Planning for and creating short-term wins
7. Consolidating improvements and producing still more change
8. Institutionalizing new approaches

learning that the client is still in the early stages. We also noticed that some of the intermediate steps such as communicating the vision and planning for and creating short-term wins can support earlier stages such as creating a sense of urgency. Change is tough. We were not surprised that 60-70% of transformation efforts do not achieve their goals. I asked the group if their Personal Leadership Philosophy includes provisions describing the need for change. Got a bit quiet then…

During our end of day self-evaluation, we found that we had not processed the Leading Change workshop as much as we had wished to. That was a first, and it was actually energizing to hear! The first action item was to email a link to Kotter’s Harvard Business Review article, titled Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail. We also agreed to spend more time on this in session four next month. 

How do you address change? Are parts of your organization resistant?  Leaders Create Change.

Let’s pause and think about that. Chances are we’ve witnessed firing based on something bad such as lying or stealing, or based on company policy. Consider why most people are promoted. Usually it is almost exclusively based on job performance, rather than company values, or the opposite of what Tony Hseih describes. Toward the end of the video Collins states that the “right people” don’t have to be tightly managed, and that if they do, we’ve likely made a hiring mistake. Rather, we should hire based on the values of our organization and then adopt a leadership, or development based mindset which will allow our aligned teams to thrive.

Our group was challenged to actually list the values of their organization. It wasn’t meant to be an exercise where everyone peeked at an organizational website broadcasting a list of 5-8 core values. We split into two groups and each group attempted to describe what the organizational core values were. Interestingly both teams identified a list of perceived core values, and commented that the majority of these values were not known to everyone in the organization and certainly not modeled by everyone. That’s a bold and brave step, the beginning of defining core values. It’s going to take some time for this leadership cohort to understand and agree upon what the core values are, and more importantly, to align and commit to them. But we’re moving in the right direction.

What are your organization’s core values? Do you have to look them up? Do you and your team agree what they are and make daily decisions based on them? Does your Personal Leadership Philosophy connect to any of them? Leaders Align Core Values.

• a telecommuter as someone who works remotely (usually from home), either full or part time, on a fixed team for one company.
• a self-employed freelancer who runs mainly service-based businesses and usually works with more than one remote client, whether simultaneously or consecutively.
• some self-employed freelancers who are also small business owners, whether solopreneurs or entrepreneurs (with a few remote employees or contractors).

Any of these types may be digital nomads, that is, they use portable technology to maintain a nomadic lifestyle. Now let’s consider a demographic trend. According to the 2017 State of Telecommuting in the U.S. Employee Workforce report, half of all telecommuters are forty-five or older. Let’s also recall Dan Pink’s findings that autonomy, mastery and purpose are primary motivators in a knowledge-based economy. 

Sutherland’s findings suggest that companies that don’t offer the remote option endanger their long-term viability, or more simply their ability to stay competitive, to retain and attract talent, to grow and shrink the organization as needed, and to reduce costs and increase profits. Consider the options the most talented have today.

What is your mindset? Or that of your organization? Do you have a managerial, or hours-oriented work mindset; or do you have a results-oriented work mindset? Leaders Seek the Best Talent.

So, what is Ruinous Empathy? Let’s start with Radical Candor. Radical Candor occurs when we care personally and challenge directly. When we care personally but don’t challenge directly according to Scott our lack of feedback constitutes ruinous empathy. Here’s Scott’s two other terms: When we challenge directly and don’t care personally we’re offering Obnoxious Aggression and when we neither care personally nor challenge directly our lack of  feedback is Manipulative Insincerity. We can think of ruinous empathy as the combined outcome of conflict avoidance and the knowing-doing gap. We care deeply, know we should say something, yet avoid doing it. We do this at work and we do this at home.

When reviewing attendee Action Plans after our in-house course, it was apparent the importance of feedback influenced the group. One attendee listed as their first lesson learned: “I learned about ‘ruinous empathy’ which helped frame, or title, a behavior I aim to avoid. I will strive for ‘radical candor.’”

What feedback have you been conflicted about sharing? Are you helping or ruining people you care personally about? Leaders Give Candid Feedback.

Try this, either now, or sometime in the future. You’ll need something to record time, like a stopwatch timer on your smartphone. Start with two blank pieces of paper. On each page draw two vertical lines creating three empty columns. Here’s what to do. In the first column, you’ll list the letters a-j, the first ten letters of the alphabet. In the second column, you’ll list the numbers 1-10. In the the third column, you’ll list roman numerals i-x, the first ten roman numerals.

Here’s the catch: The first time you perform this timed exercise, you’ll fill the page moving across the page, starting with a, then 1, then i, switching columns each time. Go ahead and do that and have your timer record how many seconds it takes. You’ll notice a lot of starting and stopping. The second time fill out an entire column one at a time, starting with a-j, then 1-10, and lastly i-x. A lot less switching. Notice the difference in your times. Chances are it took you 40-50% longer the first time.

Why is that?

Context switching is why. When we switch between tasks, we’re spending time, and precious energy, simply moving between the different activities. And with each additional task added, the working time available for each task decreases. Typically the context switching loss between three exercises, as in the exercise we just tried, is about 40%. It gets worse. By the time we are performing five simultaneous tasks, context switching loss is nearly 80%. Might as well not even work anymore at that point.

It pays to identify your genuine High Payoff Activities, and then work on them one at a time. What are your High Payoff Activities? Do you prioritize them and focus on them every day? How do you avoid distractions? Leaders Avoid Multitasking.

Do First!
Manage Second!
Communicate Third!
And if they have time, they
Plan and Set Goals

Dan Pontefract, author of the fantastic book open to think, offers Open Thinking, as an antidote. Dan describes how today’s habits inhibit both the clarity and quality of their thinking, and the major block to open thinking is influenced by reflection and action. Imagine action on the x-axis of a graph, and reflection on the y-axis of the graph. If we reflect, but do not take action, we’re indecisive. If we take action without reflection, we’re inflexible, and if we are not reflective and do not take action, we’re indifferent. Open thinking occurs when we are both reflective and take action.

I’m going to recommend open to think to my client, because our coaching sessions suggest what she really wants is more open thinking. Her action plan and our first coaching session described it, and open thinking captures what she want to do more of.

How often do you reflect, or write in your journal about your growth as a leader? Do you take action without reflection? Leaders are open thinkers.

We went much further than the 360 review findings. The CIO described a future vision drawing upon multiple, disparate databases and sources of organizational data, which could be combined holistically as a valuable new service offering for numerous stakeholders. Thoughts turned to Jill Dyché’s The New IT, and her description of six organizational IT archetypes:

Tactical, or “Keeping the lights on”

Order Taking, or “Mastering the art of release management”

Aligning, whereby “Business Relationship Liaisons” are co-located with their business constituents.

Data Provisioning when organizations are “Increasingly compelled by the possibility of monetizing their corporate data.”

Brokering, when “Businesses grow to depend on IT for building and maintaining a web of relationships,”

and lastly, IT Everywhere, “Where IT becomes a thin layer of program oversight that monitors progress, reports on delivery, and projects future demand. It might not even be called IT anymore.”

Listening, I wondered which stage the organization was at, while the vision described embodied both aligning and brokering archetypes. It was also evident the CIO wants the entire team aligned with this future vision. It was energizing to hear. Between the 360 results and listening to the CIO’s future vision, the coaching plan gained valuable clarity.

How do you share your vision? What types of assessments and alignment tools do you use? Great leaders align toward a future vision.

This brought to mind Alan Berson and Richard Stieglitz’s terrific Leadership Conversations, which challenges readers in Chapter 1 with the question “Do I want to be a Leader” and systematically outlines comparative management and leadership styles within four conversation types. Their book seems perfectly suited for Project Management Professionals (PMPs), those thrust into relatively new leadership positions, and those ready to advance their leadership level.

Upon landing in Tampa, the next stop was the Project Management Institute, or PMI Tampa Chapter annual symposium, for an energizing three and a half hour workshop for over a hundred local professionals. By facilitating six exercises, the idea was to offer a set of leadership tools, so that everyone could leave the symposium ready to build something new and lasting, including their personal influence as leaders. The first five workshops were:

Multitasking exercise
Johari Window exercise
Clarity of Intentions and Energy exercise
Brief-back exercise
Conflict Scenarios role-play

The last workshop was more advanced, a set of case studies which introduced effective decision-making, including a comparison of time and development-based decision making styles. Working as teams, everyone really poured their hearts into the workshop, and learned that leaders can make decisions based on developing others, not just based on cost and schedule. It was illuminating listening to the revelations from everyone in the symposium.

What conversations do you have as a leader? Does your decision-making process focus on development of others? Great leaders focus conversations and decisions in order to develop others.

Here’s a couple ideas to consider.

Try the 2 + 2 Rule, mentioned by Dr. Mindy Hall in Leading with Intention. Dr. Hall learned of the 2 + 2 rule from a trusted senior executive. Here’s how it works. First, before any meeting, think of two questions to bring up during the meeting. Maybe on the walk to the meeting. At a minimum, it will demonstrate curiosity, willingness to learn, engagement, and that you are actually listening. Second, think of two things to contribute during the meeting. Perhaps an observation, something you picked up reading a book, or an interesting article about your industry. Maybe it’s a valuable insight you are able to share with a colleague or recognition of something special someone in the organization did. It takes very little time, but forces you to reorient the way you approach the meeting, and your attitude, which will be readily visible to others.

Do you have weekly team meetings? What is the format of these meetings and who chairs them? In my last “corporate” executive role, we called our team the six-pack, which also corresponded to the maximum number of direct reports I was effective at actually coaching. After an off-site meeting, we set up several ground rules for weekly meetings. The first rule was that we would rotate who actually chaired, or facilitated the meeting each week. This included our entire team, including our administrator, and directors in Florida, Indiana, Arizona, and Kanata, Ontario. Everyone had a different style, highlighted different people and activities, and we quickly learned a lot more about each other. The next ground rule was that the first meeting item was recognition of something a team member did in the last week that was admirable, or just really cool and likely unknown to the rest of the group. After a couple weeks, it was amazing to find out all of the things going on in our group, and humbling to anyone who really thought they knew “what was going on” all the time. Oh, and a wonderful side benefit - our average meeting time dropped from just under 30 minutes to not more than 15 - since we were better connected throughout the week. The last rule, a hard commitment - one 30 minute session, one-one-one between me and each direct report. Since we were geographically diverse, this was usually a phone call. Needless to say, this was a very high performing team.

What does executive presence mean to you? How do you demonstrate it daily, weekly, and over time? Great leaders lead meetings.

First, use of our personal leadership philosophy. Setting expectations, which may include how we should communicate with each other, is a vital part of anyone leader’s compass. We may even call out the need to keep key stakeholders in mind when making critical decisions, especially when leading teams in a support role to a larger enterprise.

Second we discussed how a safe environment may be created. We discussed our recent Academy Leadership Advanced Communications Workshop, which showcases Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan & Al Switzler’s pathfinder Crucial Conversations. The authors share that people who are gifted at dialogue keep a constant vigil on safety; or paying attention to the content of the conversation — that’s the easier part — and further, watch for signs that people are becoming fearful. Think about all the wasted time spent in meetings where real issues are avoided, or the conversation is entirely one-way information sharing. Listening to my client, it sounded as though historical conflict avoidance still exists, and needs to be addressed.

Which leads to our third topic, from Jeff Sutherland’s SCRUM, where he shares how poorly we are at estimating factors such as program cost and schedule. However, Sutherland notes, we are pretty good at making comparative assessments.

So we put it all together. The client, in a coaching role, can ask the team, on a scale of 1 to 10, with one unsafe, ten extremely safe, how safe they feel bringing up difficult topics and working through them. Let’s say the consensus today is a three for the group. My client can now request that the team work on improving their environment, and perhaps increasing the number from three to five or six in the next several months. It’s also a good idea to see if this new expectation is supported by his leadership philosophy, which he is actively sharing with the group.

How well does your team communicate? Does your team tackle substantive conflict, or tend to avoid uncomfortable topics? Great leaders create a safe environment.

Curious, I asked her how in her HR role she could make the biggest difference from a leadership development perspective. Soon the discussion turned to culture. It sounded very familiar, and brought back my own startup-up CEO memories. The new company is tightly run by a CEO and CTO, or Chief Technology Officer, with an aggressive goal of tripling revenue in three years and has recently added 30 new employees. There is concern at the company about retaining the culture during this period of rapid growth, which appears to be guided today by an unwritten set of core values that everyone more or less “just knows.”

Recall that during an Academy Leadership Excellence Course, all attendees draft a written Personal Leadership Philosophy, as part of their Leader’s Compass, or True North. It’s a pretty unusual kind of thing to write, and also a powerful way to share who we are and what we believe in. Perhaps more importantly, a good leadership philosophy has humility, and makes a commitment to receiving feedback, or accountability, so that we may continue growing as leaders. In an Academy Leadership Advanced Leadership Course, all attendees go further, and develop succinct definitions of their organization’s core values along with normative behavioral statements, or clearly written descriptions of what each of the values looks like in action. We can take another step and develop an Organizational Constitution, as S. Chris Edmonds advises in the culture engine. These exercises are meant to discover, or reveal culture, not “impose” it. Think about that.

The timing sounds perfect and my impression is that my colleague is just where she wants to be, at just the right time. Well-known business leaders such as Tony Hseih of Zappos learned the time to codify core values and make critical decisions such as hiring or firing based on them, is before rapid growth, not after.

What are your core values? What is your leadership philosophy? What informs your decisions as a leader? Great leaders focus on culture.

Recall one of the key takeaways from a Leadership Excellence Course is creating a written Personal Leadership Philosophy, which includes listing our deeply held core values, and often formative personal stories describing their origins. Within this particular group, the sharing we solicited from each other was captured as introductory phrases in several of the leadership philosophies. They were magnificent. For example, when one of the attendees shared that a cancer scare taught her the value of empathy, and that everyone has value, we could all feel the power and authenticity of that leadership philosophy.

In Faisal Hoque’s Everything Connects, he cautions us that static processes and thinking often prevent agility while connectivity and clusters of diverse talent predict success. He includes a great coaching question:

“And, also, can I give you a growth path into something you would like to be in two or three years?”

How well do you know yourself? And how well do you know those in your charge? Do you know their hopes and dreams? Great leaders connect.

In a time-driven decision making model, we use decision quality, implementation, and cost as our criteria, with a short-term focus. Think of the typical quarterly financial reports to Wall Street for a publicly-traded company. This model uses the least amount of time to obtain a high quality decision that is effectively implemented. Notice anything that is missing? The time-driven model attaches no value to the development of people. This probably explains why training and development budgets are frequently the first budgets cut when belt-tightening. 

In a development-driven decision making model, we use decision quality, implementation, and development as our criteria, with a long-term focus. Think of the best professional sports team, which often have successful farm teams. Think of the companies mentioned by authors such as Jim Collins in Built to Last. The development-driven model uses the most developmental alternative consistent with a high quality decision that is effectively implemented. This model also attaches no value to time. 

We revisited Coaching Tips for The Average Performer from our prior Coaching to Develop People workshop, such as finding out what motivates them, teaching them to set goals and rewarding them whenever possible. You see, how we coach, or develop the average performer, over time, will be our long-term report card for leadership effectiveness. If all we care about is cost and schedule, and never people, our report card probably won’t look very good. However, if we adopt a development-driven leadership style, on average the people who work for us will continue to grow and become more successful. Imagine what that report card will look like.

What style do you use? Have you ever tried development-driven decision making? Leaders Use Development-Driven Decision Models.

The second indicator was my favorite part - we discussed books, what we learned from them, and most importantly, what we are doing differently afterward. Many of us become so busy, we seem to lose our curiosity, which in turn leads to further losses we probably are not even aware of. My client emailed a list of books, all worthy of reading and reviewing, and I asked my client to look on the choinque bookshelf page online to view my recent review of Whitney Johnson’s S-Curve diagram from Build an A Team. You see, one of the issues my client faces is reluctance to learn, reluctance to change, among several more experienced team members, legacy employees, who have become rather set in their ways. In his industry, travel, innovate or die is existential reality. He thought Whitney’s S-Curve perfectly captured his situation. We both learned a lot in that session.

Who coaches you? Who do you coach? How do you constructively cultivate conflict? Are you and your team curious? Leaders Embrace Conflict and Disruption.

Daniel Kahneman would have smiled at this scene. In his landmark book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, he introduces two modes of thinking: Fast Thinking, often impulsive or instinctive, and Slow Thinking, deliberate, often rational, and frequently in conflict with Fast Thinking. Guess who was thinking fast, and who was thinking slow? Kahneman closes his work with chapters on Experienced Well-Being and Thinking About Life. Some of that seemed to be happening, especially when slowing down attempting to observe through my daughter’s eyes. 

After multiple admonishments to slow down, and missing a frog, three more millipedes and the occasional slug, I relaxed and followed. Immediately, it was noticeable that virtually all the other visitors to the park — save a lone photographer carefully awaiting the perfect combination of light, water and background —hurriedly rushed past us while mostly looking down at their smartphones.

It was clear who was the leader that morning. We experienced well-being and shared thoughts about life throughout the day. Great Leaders Pace Themselves.

When it comes to improving workplace cultures, Chris cut his teeth in the trenches, through 15 years of leading and managing teams. Realizing he had a knack and a passion for getting people on the same page and working well together, Chris launched his consultancy in 1990. A few years later, he also became a highly regarded senior consultant for The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Today, Chris is a sought-after speaker, author, and executive consultant. He’s the author or co-author of seven books, including two Amazon best-sellers: The Culture Engine and Leading at a Higher Level with Ken Blanchard. Chris is an avid blogger and video-caster and is regularly featured by global news outlets such as Forbes and The Economist.

Perhaps we should revisit Charles Duhigg, who, in the The Power of Habit, introduced Keystone Habits - which don’t create direct cause-and-effect relationships but can spark “chain reactions.” A keystone habit, or set of them, can be life changing. The best coaches realize this, and perhaps by modeling this behavior, we can inspire others to do the same.

Also recall in Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s The Power of Full Engagement, the focus on energy management. The old paradigm: Manage time while the new paradigm calls for us to manage energy. Likewise, we should seek stress in the sense that life is a series of sprints punctuated by productive downtime, or rest.

Energy. Health. Keystone habits. We should all aspire to these routines. Great Leaders Focus on Energy.

At the end of the workshop, the head of school asked me a question: “Jim, do you have any advice for us now that we have finished this workshop?” That’s a pretty good question, and the development of the answer is worth sharing.

Let’s quickly review what the three dimensions of an Energize2Lead, or E2L Profile inform us: It lets us know what things we like to do; what we believe people ought to do, or how we wish to be approached, and perhaps most importantly, the E2L isolates what we need, deep inside to develop trust, or the things we listen for… 

Toward the end of the E2L workshop, everyone received a “team sheet,” a one-page summary of everyone’s E2L colors, a composite E2L profile for the group, and on the back key passages from each attendee’s summary profile. All on one page, so that the group may refer to the team sheet as a reminder how to better connect with each other.

Still processing the head of school’s question, my thoughts turned to a single activity which research tells us is what separates good leaders from the even better ones:

“Nothing affects the learning culture of an organization more than the skill with which its executive team receives feedback.”

That’s the takeaway quote from my 2014 review of Thanks for the Feedback, Doug Stone and Shiela Heen’s wonderful book. And it was the answer to the head of school’s question:

“Now that you have a new tool in your toolbox, use it, take advantage of it. Give each other feedback, be brave, and help each other become better leaders.”

Great Leaders Seek Feedback.

Baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964
Generation X born between 1965 and 1977
Generation Y born between 1977 and 2000

Baby boomer group perceptions of Gen Y included:

Sense of entitlement, digitally connected all the time, did not pay their dues, sought equality and lacked loyalty. Interestingly, impressions also included:

They are full of energy and innovation, have new perspectives and like change - all the time.

Gen Y perceptions of boomers included:

Stern, rigid, unwelcoming, direct, challenged by adaptability, and tech averse. Additional Gen Y observations:

Boomers are natural mentors, experienced, and loyal.

One of the key takeaways from the workshop is that we often get caught up with negative perceptions of others and forget that all generations wish to be treated well as any good leader should.

At the end of the course, one of the Gen Y attendees described it:

“This program is great for understanding and developing what leadership really looks like. As someone who was younger in the class, it provided me with great real world experience that was discussed in a group and collaborative setting. I found the structure and pace of the class was easy to follow but never became overwhelming…”

Indeed, this Gen Y attendee demonstrated what was just captured in the motivation workshop: Energetic, thirsty to learn and collaborate, and ready to make positive changes in a rapidly changing business environment. Very energizing comments. We should keep this in mind when indulging our perceptions.

Good leaders see the best in others. Leaders Cross Generations.

This past week such thoughts are on mind. A colleague who I’ve had the privilege to coach, on and off over the years, shared with me that he has been placed on a Performance Improvement Plan, yes a dreaded P-I-P. What happened? What’s really been going on? Has there really been good communication, especially feedback, occurring?

Recall the three types of feedback are: Appreciation, evaluation and coaching - from Douglas Stone and Sheila Sheen’s wonderful book Thanks for the Feedback. In our Academy Leadership Excellence Courses, we repeatedly observe that evaluation and coaching are often mixed up, and that, sadly, real coaching rarely occurs in the workplace.

We discussed the Performance Improvement Plan. It stated that necessary coaching and feedback - notice they are listed separately - will be offered. The plan also stated that my colleague is ultimately responsible for improving and meeting the objectives of the plan. How interesting. Lots of process. Lots of procedures. Lots of evaluation. I asked my colleague if he is coached by his supervisor with any regularity. What do you think the answer was? 

You’re probably not surprised the answer was “no.” Perhaps coaching is only done within this organization when something is not working correctly. Imagine a sports team operating that way. The players compete with no coach. Only after it’s obvious the team is not winning, does the organization introduce what may even loosely be called coaching. Further discussions also indicate a good bit of turnover within this group, including people who quit rather than submit to a Performance Improvement Plan. Again, how interesting. Additional  review seemed to indicate the supervisor really wants someone who will devote the majority of their time managing people and projects. Plenty of evaluation. Not so much leading. It’s unfortunate that my colleague appears to work for a manager/supervisor, and maybe not so much a leader. Unfortunate, but typical.

Leaders take responsibility for their individual team members. Leaders coach. Coaching is the Heart of Leadership.

These ideas came up twice in the past week. A client in a coaching session shared that their their organization has an amazing culture, and the client is nervous their amazing culture may be diminished, or worse, lost, as the result of rapid growth this calendar year. At about the same time, S. Chris Edmonds, a fellow “leadership traveler,” shared a copy of his book “the culture engine.” Great timing.

You see, Edmonds’ combines the idea of a leadership philosophy with organizational core values. He calls it an Organizational Constitution. It’s a very attractive and powerful construct. Just as actually creating alignment by demonstrating our values through actions, Edmonds’ process requires that an Organizational Constitution must be lived, should anticipate resistance, and requires gathering formal feedback on valued behaviors. This includes hiring based on values, just as Tony Hseih of Zappos learned.

Leaders share their leadership philosophy. Leaders live their leadership philosophy. Then they go further. Leaders Align Actions and Values.

Over the past month an informal coaching session formed with a LinkedIn connection in London. Let’s call the connection Alex. Alex is interviewing with a hiring Senior Vice President in Naples, Florida for a new position, and is nervous. Why the apprehension? Because Alex left a job - left a place, with a very  toxic culture - before securing a new engagement. And the hole in the resumé is now visible to everyone, including the Senior Vice President.

Rather than try to hide this unplanned departure, rather than reacting defensively to questions about the resignation, we established Alex should share, and further should volunteer that this decision was based on Alex’s leadership philosophy.  In this case: A toxic work culture was a non-negotiable - a deal-breaker. Alex could not stay because the environment was incompatible with personal core values.

And that’s exactly what Alex did. Alex shared the decision-making process with the Senior Vice President. What do you think happened? Let’s pause:

What would you do as the hiring manager?
Would you have stayed longer than Alex in the toxic environment?

Turns out the Senior Vice President understood the decision and appreciated Alex putting it front and center rather than hide from it. Looks like a good outcome so far.

Part of the reason we write a personal leadership philosophy is to guide our decision-making process, especially when under stress. Recall one part of a leadership philosophy is declaring our non-negotiables. It’s also a way to hold ourselves accountable rather that avoid inevitable conflicts. Leaders make decisions based on their leadership philosophy. Leaders live it. Leaders Walk the Talk.

In Carmine Gallo’s new book, Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get from Good to Great, he describes President Kennedy’s ability to persuade audiences that a person could set foot on the moon by the end of the ’60s decade. Kennedy didn’t convince us with facts alone, he made us feel. He combined what Aristotle called pathos and logos: emotion and logic. When we read Kim Scott’s current bestseller Radical Candor, she likewise shares with us that a good leader explains why, rather than rely on pure authority. Scott also cites the three classic steps of persuasion: pathos, logos, and ethos representing emotion, logic and credibility. A timeless lesson from Aristotle, and more important today than ever before.

The best leaders are lifetime learners. They look ahead and they learn from the past. The best leaders communicate. Leaders Persuade.

Scott has been successful at top companies such as Google and Apple — very competitive and very successful organizations. So it’s not a big surprise that for the first twenty years of her career, it NEVER occurred to her that some people didn’t want the next, bigger job. She talked with Scott Forstall, who built the iOS team working directly for Steve Jobs, and he proposed using the word “growth” instead of “potential.” It’s brilliant. 

Recall in our Energize2Lead (E2L) workshops we learn than 75% of people are wired completely differently that ourselves. We also learn that there may be deep, instinctive parts of our personalities that are largely hidden. Scott realized the same thing. She tells us:

“The most important thing you can do for your team collectively is to understand what growth trajectory each person wants to be on at a given time and whether that matches the needs and opportunities of the team. To do that, you are going to have to get to know each of your direct reports at a personal level. It’s also going to require you to have some of the hardest conversations you’ll ever have. Sometimes, you’ll even have to fire people.”

That’s Radical Candor. Leadership is hard. Building a team is hard. Leaders Understand Team Members Personally.

Powerful and lasting growth usually requires objective evaluation and structured coaching. Notice that evaluation and coaching are different forms of feedback. A common example of objective evaluation is a 360 review with inputs from different groups such as peers, direct reports, supervisors, in addition to ourselves.

Triggers was written in part, because we all have many internal triggers that hold us back, especially when receiving feedback. So, how can we think, in a general sense, about how to overcome all of these internal switches we usually aren’t aware of?

Chapters Nine and Ten, The Power of Active Questions & The Engaging Questions, form the heart of Triggers, with numerous engaging coaching stories.  Goldsmith reflects when people are asked passive questions; they almost invariably provide “environmental” answers, often allowing a diversion from needed accountability. As a remedy, four magic moves are mentioned, which trigger decent behavior in others: Apologizing, Asking for help, Optimism, and asking active questions. Active questions can’t be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and the better we know someone, the better questions we may ask. Here’s an example: 

“Tell me something important to you that would allow me
to help you become more successful and happier?”

Now let’s introduce Goldsmith’s six engaging questions:

Did I do my best to set clear goals today?
Did I do my best to make progress toward my goals today?
Did I do my best to find meaning today?
Did I do my best to be happy today?
Did I do my best to build positive relationships today?
Did I do my best to be fully engaged today?

Notice that each of these questions challenge us, daily, to do good, or to be choinque. They trigger good behavior. We can call this self coaching. 

Good leaders coach others, and themselves. Leaders ask active and engaging questions.

In Dr. Sydney Finkelstein’s meticulously researched masterwork, Superbosses, subtitled How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, he explains that superbosses fall into three distinct patterns: Iconoclasts, who care about their work and their passion, such as Miles Davis, and are often artistic. Next are the Glorious Bastards, who care solely about winning, and know they need the best people to win, such as Larry Ellison, who has spawned a breadth of talent in Silicon Valley. Last, are the Nurturers, or activist bosses, who consistently guide and teach their protégés, such as Bill Walsh, legendary coach of the San Francisco 49ers.

It seems each of these three recent events may be describing a need for a more nurturing environment. Finkelstein recognized that all superbosses deeply know their team members, in stark contract to clueless, distanced bosses - think Undercover Boss. We may have been conditioned, especially if we are baby boomers, to simply trust our position of authority, or rank as adequate for performance — leaving development and growth to perhaps a different department. Quite the opposite, superbosses disdain anything that may create physical or emotional distance from those in their charge. What superbosses give protégés, then, is something quite rare in professional life, an opportunity to rebrand themselves, or the ultimate alignment of one’s traits and abilities with not just a job, but also a lifetime path. 

Leaders are ultimately coaches. Leaders nurture. Super Leaders Deeply Know Their Team.

In Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool’s masterwork Peak, they describe a significant term —  deliberate practice — as a combination of purposeful practice and developing mental representations. 

Let’s summarize. Purposeful practice:

• Has well-defined, specific goal
• is focused
• involves feedback
• requires getting out of one’s comfort zone

Now that’s just a start. Deliberate practice also requires development of mental representations, or pre-existing patterns of information - facts, images, rules, relationships and so on - that are held in long-term memory, and are easy to access. The key to deliberate practice is to go beyond our potential, or to make possible things that were not possible before. The way to do this is to learn a new skill which will then trigger a structural change in the brain rather than simply continuing to practice a skill already learned.

Let’s summarize again. Deliberate practice:

• Develops skills that other people have already figured out how to do and for which effective training techniques have been established
• Takes place outside one's comfort zone and requires a student to constantly try things that are just beyond his or her abilities
• Involves well-defined, specific goals and often involves improving some aspect of the target performance
• Requires a person's full attention and conscious action
• Involves feedback and modifications of efforts in response to that feedback
• Both produces and depends on effective mental representations
• Nearly always involves building or modifying previously acquired skills by focusing on particular aspects of those skills and working to improve them specifically

An effective leader understands both purposeful practice and that the quality and quantity of mental representations are vitally important. Imagine a leader that not only practices deliberately themself, but one that prioritizes developing others through deliberate practice. Good leaders practice purposefully. Great leaders practice deliberately.

Many of us struggle with daily distractions, and the pressure of making decisions with imperfect or incomplete information. In Annie Duke’s amazing new book, Thinking in Bets, Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All The Facts, she informs us that is the normal state in poker, where over the course of a single hand of poker, one could be involved in up to twenty decisions. And each hand ends with a concrete result: Win money or lose money. 

Do you ever examine your decision-making process after a favorable outcome, or a business win? Many of us examine our decisions when the outcome isn’t favorable, or after a business proposal loss. Duke shares a poker player term for our tendency to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome: “resulting.” It’s one of the worst habits for a poker player, and it’s one of the worst habits for a responsible leader. Life is a lot like poker.

When we don't review or assess our decisions, our minds are likely to create blind spots, such as hindsight bias, or the tendency, after an outcome is known, to see the outcome as having been inevitable.

It’s always a good idea to examine our decision-making process, especially when there’s been a good outcome. That’s why the military uses After Action Reviews. The best leaders do this. The best leaders accept uncertainty. Leaders make smart bets.

In Kelly and Robby Riggs’ eye-opening book, Counter Mentor Leadership, they cite:

89 percent of managers believe employees leave their jobs for more money; and
88 percent of employees reported they left for reasons other than money.

Many old-school manager types believe focusing on results only is all that matters - the proverbial bottom line. Matthew Lieberman has some pretty interesting findings in his article “Should Leaders Focus on Results, or on People?” Great question. His findings:

If a leader was considered strong in social skills, the person was seen as a great leader 12 percent of the time. Okay. What about that bottom line?
If a leader was perceived to be strong in focusing on results, the number increased to… 14 percent of the time. That’s all. Just two percent more.
For leaders who were strong in both results and social skills, the likelihood of being seen as a strong leader skyrocketed to 72%.

Pop quiz time: What percentage of leaders rate high on results focus and social skills? Take a guess.

Less than one percent. That’s why Kelly and Robby Riggs conclude Leadership is Freaking Hard. And they are right. Great leaders are unicorns. They focus on results. They focus on people. Great leaders are rare.

Middleton is also the host of the Violent Leadership podcast, a member of the Royalwood Church band and a team leader of the church’s Men’s Group.

Most of us probably don’t know who psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik was, but we ought to. By the way, she was one of the first Russian women to attend a university. She studied memory in relation to complete and incomplete tasks, and found that incomplete tasks are easier to remember than successful ones. This is now known as the Zeigarnik effect. What does that mean for us as leaders?

First, it means that the best way to finish a task is to start it, since the now incomplete task will occupy our minds with little energy required. Until it is done. Maybe that is why we sometimes say “sleep on it,” intuitively knowing the Zeigarnik effect will assist during our slumber.

Second, the best leaders, like the best athletes, are masters of energy management; aligning tasks, their assignment and their completion, minding these effects. The best leaders are Zeigarnik masters. Leaders manage energy.

Kelly hails from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is passionate about supporting children, believing that the good we do for the young yields the greatest payoffs.

Recall from our Academy Leadership Excellence Courses that 83% of organizations have accountability issues. Kelly and Robby Riggs concur in Counter Mentor Leadership. They describe accountability struggles as a twofold problem: The BOSS doesn’t know how to create a culture of accountability; then there is an issue, the BOSS doesn’t truly address the issue.

The Riggs’ visualize a useful construct, the Freedom Box. Imagine a rectangular box with four primary boundaries:

• Company values and/or guiding principles.
• Expectations.
• Level of Authority.
• Performance standards and metrics.

Our values, expectations and performance standards can be expressed within our Personal Leadership Philosophy. Our level of authority provides delegation and coaching guidance. Putting this all together, the Freedom Box creates an agreed-upon area of autonomy. Just what we need for a rapidly growing organization, rather than having the wheels fall off. Leaders create accountability.

In addition to her work as a speaker and advisor, Whitney is one of Marshall Goldsmith’s original cohort of 25 for the #100 Coaches Project, is a coach for Harvard Business School’s Executive Education program, frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, is a Linkedin influencer, and hosts the twice-monthly Disrupt Yourself Podcast.

from Douglas Stone & Sheila Heen’s eye-opening Thanks for the Feedback candidly and systematically breaks down why receiving feedback is so difficult and what we as leaders and our organizations can do about it. Notice the emphasis on receiving feedback rather than offering it. How many times has someone in a senior leadership position asked you for candid feedback about themselves or the organization rather than offering you feedback or telling you something that you “ought to do?”

Does your organization even have a learning culture? Or is it the type organization where a “this is the way we’ve always done it” mindset prevails.

The authors remind us there are three forms of feedback: Appreciation, evaluation, and coaching. Most of us understand appreciation, but often mix up evaluation with coaching. Years of facilitating leadership courses and executive coaching suggests many people and organizations will claim coaching occurs, but more often than not evaluation is occurring rather than coaching. As a result, performance coaching gets a bad rap. An easy indicator: Who is doing the talking in the coaching session? If you are talking more than 25% of the time, it’s not coaching. It’s not even listening.

Indicating your commitment to receiving feedback in your Personal Leadership Philosophy is a great first step. Welcoming it comes next. Leaders embrace feedback.

To some degree, we all seem to be conditioned by this both destructive, and limiting, mindset. For example, in our Academy leadership Leveraging the Power of Conflict workshops, we learn that a win-lose mindset is not an effective leader mindset, rather a gain-gain (think compromise) mindset is better or a win-win (think collaborative) mindset is the best conflict leadership strategy. It seems there is an inverse relationship between the degree of scarcity mindset and the degree of coaching or leadership effectiveness.

That’s worth thinking about.

J.K. Rowling comes to mind. One person imagined and shared with us the world of Harry Potter, influencing tens or hundreds of millions of people, yet without just her it would not exist. Imagining Harry Potter did not come at the expense of anyone or anything. The abundance mindset allows for this, the possibility of unlimited potential and outcomes for all.

Dr. Brené Brown likewise believes the scarcity mindset disables progress — in ourselves — in addition to others. In her extraordinary book Daring Greatly, she describes ten guideposts, or ways of engaging the world from a place of worthiness. One guidepost is letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark in order to cultivate gratitude and joy. 

The next time the scarcity mindset begins influencing you or those around you, consider disrupting yourself or daring greatly. Leaders seek abundance.

Both on the drive to the Gigafactory site with a client and as a passenger on numerous Uber trips in Reno, discussion about the local area centered on the tectonic transformation occurring in the Reno/Sparks area. Viewing the corporate infrastructure footprint of not just Tesla, but other companies such as Amazon, Apple and Switch makes one think of the vision leading to this transformation.

On the other hand, my discussion with the health care director focused almost exclusively on the process of implementing a single Project Portfolio Management software tool. Interestingly, the director mentioned concerns about internal survey scores and how to compete for talent in the Silicon Valley area. Not a word about improved lives through healthcare or any mention of people.

Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao’s book Scaling Up Excellence came to mind, especially chapter three which focuses on finding the “hot cause,” or overarching purpose that must be driven through an organization. Not just words on a poster in the lobby, but relentlessly demonstrated as the core mission and even better aligned with one’s Personal Leadership Philosophy.

Think about that. How well and how frequently do you communicate the big picture rather than the immediate project at hand to your team? Leaders share vision and purpose.

Dr. Hakim has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NBC, Fast Company, CNBC Make It, Vogue, Inc., The List, and Star-Telegram. She has also been a guest on the KRTH Morning Show, Think KERA Radio, the WBEZ Morning Shift, the Boca Voice, and Business Radio on Sirius XM. 

According to Kelly & Bobby Riggs -- in their pathfinder book, Counter Mentor Leadership -- the answer is:

"I don’t have time."

Let’s do a quick self-evaluation: When is the last time you said that to yourself, or, even worse, when was the last time you told that to someone you are responsible for? What are we really telling someone when we communicate that, directly or indirectly?

I don’t have time to listen to you, to coach you, or to take an interest in your life. Gee, why do we have a turnover problem in the company?

I don’t have time to slow down, breath, and express daily gratitude. Gee, maybe that’s why I’m taking all these over the counter pills and ignoring annual medical checkups.

I don’t have time for training and development of anyone on my team, nor myself. Gee, nobody seems engaged around here and we don’t really know or care about each other.

Priorities lead to clarity. Share your priorities. And learn to say no to the many distractions we encounter daily. Leaders make time.

Maura has trained thousands using her Empowered Productivity™ System, a process for achieving significant results and living a life of choice. She is a TEDx speaker, successful entrepreneur, and author of Personal Productivity Secrets and Work Without Walls. She is featured in The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, US News and World Report, and the Huffington Post.

She appears weekly in business outlets such as FastCompany, Inc., Forbes, and the Harvard Business Review. Maura is active in her local community of Austin, Texas, where she has held volunteer leadership positions in a variety of different community organizations and charities. Maura offers quarterly pro-bono presentations to nonprofits and donates a percentage of all her revenues to charity.

In Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s marvelous book, The Power of Full Engagement, two paradigms are compared. In the

Old Paradigm

Manage time
Avoid stress
Life is a marathon
Downtime is wasted time
Rewards fuel performance
Self-discipline rules
The power of positive thinking

Were you brought up that way? Many of us were. By studying top athletes, the authors found a

New Paradigm

Manage energy
Seek stress
Life is a series of sprints
Downtime is productive time
Purpose fuels performance
Rituals rule
The power of full engagement

Think of lions in the wild. They spend most of their time resting, until it is time to hunt. Then it’s all out until a successful kill. As leaders we should always focus our energy in a positive way, between relaxed or tranquil states and invigorated or challenged states. We should avoid negative energy, since it is wasted. Think about it. Leaders manage energy.

Christine Comaford, author of Smart Tribes, mentions five types of communication in her Clarity of Intentions and Energy section — Information sharing, requests, promises, sharing of oneself and debating, decision-making or point proving.

Pop quiz time. Only two of these five types of communication actually drive results. Which two do you think they are? Just two. Hint: It’s not point proving.

According to Comaford, only requests and promises actually drive results. It sounds very simple, but it’s powerfully clarifying.

Ever been in a meeting where only information sharing occurred, a one-way broadcast that never led to anything? We all have. Without specific requests and subsequent promises or commitments, what is there to be accountable for? 

Keep in mind requests and promises the next time you compose an email, talk on the phone, attend a meeting, or especially, delegate to a team member. 

Make it a new habit. Leaders effectively communicate.

Here’s the interesting part - the giraffes preferred choosing to successfully perform the enrichment task for the food rather than just have the food available to them.

My thoughts turned to Dan Pink’s insightful book, Drive, and some of his key findings. He found that once people are compensated enough to begin thinking about the work they are performing rather than the money, three fundamental motivators emerge: Autonomy, mastery and purpose. 

Think about that, especially if you don’t regularly coach those who you are responsible for.

Do you regularly remind your team of their purpose, and your organization’s purpose? Do you also encourage an environment where people can make choices and regularly improve themselves?  Motivation comes from autonomy, mastery & purpose.

Our choinquecast focuses on the story of the IRIDIUM® global satellite telecommunications system, as told in Durrell’s book Creating Iridium.

Durrell is or has served as a member of Greater Phoenix Leadership, Valley of the Sun United Way Campaign Cabinet, the Board of Governors of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Scottsdale, Arizona State University Engineering Dean's Advisory Council, and numerous other roles. He is also a very dear personal friend and colleague.

While sharing the history leading to this event, the client revealed that performance issues were allowed to fester. Because substandard performance was tolerated, others team members were eventually asked to backfill work not being completed. Toward the end, the client attempted to highlight the mission critical nature of the work, but in the end it was too little too late. 

This is one of many typical situations a Personal Leadership Philosophy is meant to preemptively address. Recall, an effective Personal Leadership Philosophy includes:

What leadership means to each of us
Our personal values
Operating principles
Expectations
Non-negotiables
Priorities
Personal idiosyncrasies
Commitment to receive feedback for our own growth as a leader

This was a powerful coaching session. The client realized expectations were not properly set and agreed-upon at the time of hiring, and ultimately the entire team was affected. While priorities were eventually communicated, recovery was no longer practical. Rather than point fingers or make excuses, the client realized a leadership responsibility had been missed. He is now actively sharing his leadership philosophy, and has already received positive feedback afterward.

Does this story sound familiar? It probably does. Remember, our leadership philosophy allows for continuously improving individual, team and organizational performance. Leaders set expectations.

Susan now writes, speaks, and works with women in all stages of life, at for-profit and not-for-profit companies.

The client then described a particular “sit down session” with a staff member who had been working in the office as a Project Engineer. The Project Engineer had not been very effective in this role working in an administrative setting. So the engineer was moved into a superintendent role working in the field.

The client immediately noticed several things: One, that his new superintendent is a really good speaker. And very intelligent. The client could readily foresee a senior superintendent development path including greatly improving project interviews among other responsibilities. The superintendent told the client “This was the first time anyone ever sat down with me and asked what I wanted to do.”

Ponder that. The now highly effective and motivated superintendent has been in the general contractor business for about 15 years, and perhaps 20-25 years when including prior carpenter work. Imagine what can be done with periodic 90 minute “sit down,” or performance coaching sessions with everyone on your team. Leadership means connecting.

What energizes Carson most is the unique privilege and opportunity to coach clients in the art of reclaiming their lives and finding the time, space and freedom to create a life that allows them to work simply AND live fully.

As leaders, rather than just managers, we should strive to create alignment & common purpose. About the same time, I was reading a blog by Victor Davis Hanson, referencing his new book The Second World Wars. The productivity surge in the U.S. from 1941 to 1945 was mind-boggling. In Dr. Hanson's words:

The generation that came of age in the 1940s had survived the poverty of the Great Depression to win a global war that cost 60 million lives, while participating in the most profound economic and technological transformation in human history as a once rural America metamorphosed into a largely urban and suburban culture of vast wealth and leisure.

Their achievement from 1941 to 1945 remains unprecedented. The United States on the eve of World War II had an army smaller than Portugal’s. It finished the conflict with a global navy larger than all of the fleets of the world put together. By 1945, America had a GDP equal to those of Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union, and the British Empire combined. With a population 50 million people smaller than that of the USSR, the United States fielded a military of roughly the same size.

America almost uniquely fought at once in the Pacific, Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe, on and beneath the seas, in the skies, and on land. On the eve of the war, America’s military and political leaders, still traumatized by the Great Depression, fought bitterly over modest military appropriations, unsure of whether the country could afford even a single additional aircraft carrier or another small squadron of B-17s. Yet four years later, civilians had built 120 carriers of various types and were producing a B-24 bomber at the rate of one an hour at the Willow Run factory in Michigan. Such vast changes are still difficult to appreciate.

So, are our jobs today really so difficult? Perhaps we have relaxed about what is possible on a national, organizational, and especially, individual leadership level. Pause and think about the environment we are genuinely capable of creating and aligning our teams with our boldest visions and goals. Great leadership produces great results.

In a recent coaching session with a highly educated scientist near the end of his career, he mentioned that he wants the freedom to explore stuff on his own time & further if he had to live life over again he would go into the State Department and help our country overseas.

Keep in mind my scientist colleague is a deep thinker. He thought deeply when composing his leadership philosophy during our Academy Leadership workshops. Shortly after the course his new company president spoke about her values, and he told me how it reminded him of our recent sessions.

So I had to ask him: Why not apply your leadership philosophy to your retirement? Or, go further and approach the State Department and let them know part of living your leadership philosophy is helping others. Not as a full-time job, but as a way of both exploring new things and helping others.

Think about it. It’s always a good time to lead.