Quickthink

Rafael Nadal had a few tense moments at the US Open Tennis match last night though he managed to advance in straight sets. I liked this comment from him about the match

I was playing with big calm and big concentration.

That is a nice combo, I would say (like mozzarella and tomato?). I wonder how we can work on building those attributes into our daily lives. Here is a link to the story of Nadal’s match with Denis Istomin.

FOLLOW -  Perhaps one way is to ask yourself “Am I in the arena?” Read Michael Arrington talking about Yossi Vardi to see what I mean. It is short and sweet. Here is the link. And you also might remember - Michael Jordon never worried about missing the last shot to win the game in overtime. But he did crave the thrill of taking that shot. Interesting. He was definitely in the arena.

 2d FOLLOW - And if you into thinking about mentoring or facilitating roles, consider Jay Rosen’s comment about assessing the value of a communication

(it) should describe the world in a way that helps us participate in (it).

I love that idea - helping people to participate (to get into the arena). Here is the link. I know. I changed the quote a bit to make it fit here. But have I changed the meaning? I don’t think so. Jay thinks we should be able to find help to get into the arena. That’s right. All of us. It’s a great leadership topic - level 5 in Dave Logan’s view of the world.

3rd FOLLOW - I bumped into another “in the arena” quote today. This one is from Anton Geesink,  who stunned the Japanese by winning the 1961 world judo championship and winning a gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Games in the unlimited weight class. When asked what if he could not get an ideal grip on an opponent, he said

You only become champion, … if you tell yourself: This man is nothing for me. I grip you the way I want.

How is that for being “in the arena”? Anton just passed away at age 76. Here is a link to his obit.

4th FOLLOW -  This thought from Zenhabits - “Passion breeds simplicity”. Once you are in the arena, it is clear what to do. But you need to let go of distractions in order to get there. Here is the link.

Loyalty is an interesting concept. It sounds positive, but it trumps liberty only in the face of a threat.   So, if you are looking to gain power the easy way, you need only follow a two step process: (1) identify a threat, and (2) demand loyalty in order to fight it. Once this dynamic gets started it can be hard to stop. Demonstrations of loyalty become more than just symbols. They are tools to freeze power structures and even force out people who are not loyal, as needed or as convenient. Aslo,  as we saw in the Bush Administration it has a powerful dumbing down effect.

Perhaps this dynamic partly explains the bizarre reaction of CNN to a tweat by one of its reporters Octavia Nasr where she expressed regret at the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. As Tom Friedman writes, there are in fact good reasons to regret Fadlallah’s passing and to think about his legacy. Here is a link to Tom’s piece. But expressing any regard for a person who was connected to Hezzbollah signals mixed loyalties. Nasr had to thrown to the wolves in order to reassure CNN viewers that CNN was loyal to the Israeli cause.  As Tom points out, too bad for CNN viewers who now will be less well informed about the middle east.

This is just one example of many where demands for loyalty pretend to be demonstrations of leadership. But leadership is a learning process, not just pounding the drum to get everyone riled up.

What can one say about Mel Gibson other than “Thank the Lord it was not me”. But Dave Brooks argues that Mel represents a trend, and a disturbing trend — the rise of narcissism. Here is the link.

I hate to admit it, but I think Dave has a point.  To understand it, one has to go back to the enlightenment and its bastard child, the romantic rebellion. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are the heirs to the dialectic that started back then. We believe in reason more than faith (from the enlightenment) and we trust our emotions more than loyalty to institutions (from the romantics). The narcissism from the 1960’s presents the most recent incarnation of the empowered self asserting itself beyond what most would think is useful or even normal.

What to do? Reassert faith over reason? Some would argue for it. Reassert loyalty over liberty? Again, there are proponents. But following these suggestions would take us back instead of forward. I think that we should take the gifts of reason and self-empowerment and use them to build a new model of leadership. After all,  if we believe in empowerment through reason and self-love, we should hold ourselves to higher standards for what we do. Right?

It has been said so many times by now that we almost can believe it. President Obama has lost some of his leadership pizazz. Charles Blow writes today that part of the problem is that Obama has failed to adjust his personality. He says

On the other side stands Obama — solid and sober, rooted in the belief that his way is the right way and in no need of alteration. He’s the emotionally maimed type who lights up when he’s stroked and adored but shuts down in the face of acrimony. Other people’s anxieties are dismissed as irrational and unworthy of engagement or empathy.

Emotionally maimed? Lights up when he is stroked?  Believing that other people are unworthy of empathy? Those are highly personal and I think unwarranted attacks. The problem is much more simple. US presidents are obliged to present a vision of the future to the country. Instead of doing this, we hear a constant refrain from the Obamatrons that they are fixing the mess left over from the previous administration. True or not, this message is about the past, not the future. And that is the problem. Sooner of later, Obama must say something like this

.. we do after all have a genuine opportunity. One honest chance to shed our sometimes imperfect past. To start again and step unshackled (into this new century)  and look our future squarely and proudly in the face.

(From Sir Robert Chiltern’s address to Parliament in Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband” - partly available from this link). And how do we describe that opportunity now? I think that this is also rather simple. It is to get beyond the simplistic faith in “money for money’s sake” (another Chiltern phrase). Or as Sir Kenneth Clark put it, to see the limitations of “heroic materialism”. To find a higher value in — (fill in the blank — but it should have something to do with re-building trust and/or building community). Until Obama distances himself from Reagaanomics, he will remain a second rate figure.  On the other hand, if he finds the courage to take this step, his personality will seem a rather trivial matter.

Here is a link to Mr. Blow’s interesting but grumpy article.

Dan Coyle offers some interesting ideas on how positioning oneself with respect to information flow is an effective leadership training method. Here is the link to his post where he asks why so many people who worked in the mail room became top executives. But this quote from the post really caught my eye

… Hindustan Unilever, a hugely successful Indian company, is widely regarded as a talent hotbed –largely because its senior managers spend 30 to 40 percent of their time mentoring young leaders.

Nearly half! I was reminded of comments by Peter Drucker about Al Sloan at GM in the old days. Sloan thought the most important thing he did as CEO of GM was to pick and groom top management. Not enough time for that? Consider “Lord Root of the Matter” — the name that Winston Churchill gave to Harry Hopkins. Hopkins was a top adviser to FDR and spent some time in London working with Churchill on war policy — among other things. But Hopkins was not well, and could only work for a few hours a day. So just how did he get more done in that time than most people accomplish in a week? Good question. Must have had something to do with his ability to focus on the right agenda. To eliminate distraction.  What do you think?

Obama as leader

Someone should get Barrack Obama to watch Simon Sinek’s video on the importance of starting from “why”.  You can watch it from this link (via Presentation Zen).

Simon makes several points that are worth remembering for anyone who aspires to leadership. First point — it is vitally important where your thinking starts from. By the way, Bill Warner says the same thing.  The starting point is your anchor — all other thoughts flow from that point. If you start your thinking with “what am I going to do” (answering the “what” question), you will put people to sleep and get lost in details yourself. Or as Bill Warner puts it, you will drain the energy out of the process when you should be injecting energy into it.

Here is a great line from Simon’s video —- Martin Luther King famously said he had a dream — NOT that he had a plan.

Simon’s second great point is that we should start from the vision — the great “why” question. Bill Warner calls it starting from your “intention”. Why? Because why starts up a process. It energizes people. It turns on the motor. Floats the boat.

So, Mr. President, did you just give an important speech emphasizing that you have a plan to deal with the mess in the Gulf of Mexico?

Obama as Politician

Gail Collins argues that the criticism of President Obama misses one critical point. Obama is not really speaking to the American people — yet. He is setting up the political environment in Washington so that Congress has to act. As he did with health care. At the moment when it appears Congress will refuse, he will go to the American people to demand their action. And he is likely to get the legislation that is needed. Here is the link to Gail’s editorial. Bottom line — it is easy to underestimate Obama’s skills as a political operator.

Can Obama be both Politician and Leader?

At the end of the day, we see Obama believes in a “soft spoken” style of leadership. Lincoln is his model. More recently,  John Wooden practiced and preached this too. The goal is to bring out leadership in others — not to grandstand (as Bush 2 did for much of his 8 year tenure). That is ok as a matter of style (Both Lincoln and Wooden were very effective). But both Lincoln and Wooden emphasized “why” in a soft spoken way. In my humble opinion, Obama is soft spoken and a little too fixated on the “what” side of the issues.

FOLLOW -  Lincoln’s speeches offer us brilliant models for phrasing answers to “why” questions. The first sentence of his Gettysburg address is a good example

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

After that, is there any doubt why it was needed to continue the war to stop secession  — no matter how dreadful that war was? Notice how Lincoln cleverly sidesteps the questions “how” this dedication was manifested, or exactly “what” plans are needed to realize the dream of “our fathers”. These “how” and “what” questions were not essential to his leadership purpose at that critical moment. And we still argue about how and what more than 150 years later. That fact alone evidences the power of the agenda that Lincoln’s great “why” argument established. And I, for one, am profoundly grateful to him for taking that brilliant step. It, and nothing more, was urgently needed at that moment, during that crisis of faith.

So how did it go last night at Domus? It was my “last Hoorah”, so to speak, and it was very interesting … at least for me.

My goal was to give a glimpse at those things that inspire us to achieve a “good life” (in the Socratic sense). I presented a learning model — but not one that sees learning as a goal in itself. It is instead, a model puts into broad perspective both the sense of being over burdened, lost and exhausted as well as the feeling of being engaged, creative and full of vitality. Both, of course, are parts of a larger story. BTW, this was one of the great themes of Kenneth Clark’s series “Civilisation”. In the end, Clark used the word “confidence” to identify what pushes us forward. But where does confidence come from?

We know what can take confidence away. Anticipation of inevitable defeat or failure. Some might use the word “fear”. Though according to Coots Mathews, some fear of failure can be useful for one to nurture respect for adversity. It is the left side of the brain that goes further and adopts the conclusion that failure is about to kick in the door. But what gives us the opposite feeling? What frees us? Pink’s pursuit of “purpose”, “mastery”, and “autonomy” are  aspects of our deeper drive to succeed. And I think Pink is spot on when he argues that they work by stimulating the right side of the brain to engage so that we do not get “stuck” in mechanical and ultimately meaningless ritual.

But back to Clark. One of his messages resonates deeply with me. Clark argues that the same factors that gave and took away confidence to man over the ages work on us now. We have not mastered them, and therefore our historical saga to build vibrant civilisation continues. Hopefully we will learn to see these factors more clearly in our lives and use them to build ingenious solutions to life’s aggravating problems. A 21st Century renaissance? We might start creating it by recognizing its potential importance. As Steve Bezos says, “to see the kluge”. Once we embark on the adventure to bring it about, we can use models to test our progress, and I presented one such model last night. It is a template that we can use to fill in the blanks with our unfolding personal life history. Where we are the heroes. Where we seize and keep the initiative. As I said, interesting stuff.

Here are two more leadership stories that might get you thinking

Henri IV - The only French king who would have made a great president and who inspires still. The Guardian offers a brief glimpse.

John Lindsey, the young mayor of New York who started with great confidence to rejuvenate the city and left office exhausted. NYT shows images from a retrospective about Lindsay and his times.

FOLLOW - And here is a sports story that contrasts the “exhaustion” and the “confidence” of two US professional basketball teams.

Poor Ms Merkel. She had everything going for her, but now it appears she has lost the initiative in German politics.  What happened? One might blame Europe and Greece. Anti-EU sentiment among German voters is rising and Ms Merkel is stuck defending a pro-EU standard as well as a Greek bailout. But I think there is another problem. I would argue that Ms Merkel became overly focused on political strategy and meanwhile forgot what she stood for. Voters lost their sense of why her party should govern.

Ah well. It is not the first time (remember Hilary Clinton’s disastrous early missteps in running for the Democratic Party nomination for president?). For those interested in Germany, politics and/or leadership, here is a link to an article about Ms Merkel’s predicament.

Last week, I had the opportunity to talk about our Tartu leadership model. It is a normative model (as opposed to a scientific model) that proposes standards for measuring leadership capacity via its effects. It de-emphasizes the personal qualities of the leader (courage, etc.). Instead, it looks at leadership as a process that people can master via development of skills and that can be measured via their beahvior in  institutions. The model has five components, and these relate to (1) prioritizing issues, (2) raising standards or metrics for success, (3) engaging the group to act, (4) starting a new story line, and (5) achieving results.

In light of this, you might take a quick look at this description of President Obama’s recent nominee for the Supreme Cour, Elena Kagan

In some respects, Ms. Kagan’s traits — her desire to build consensus through persuasion, her people skills, her ability to listen to others — mirror those Mr. Obama sees in himself.

Here is the link.

I like the emphasis on skills and especially on “people skills” (as leadership is a social process rather than just an ego trip).  Tom Peters would applaud the emphasis on listening. But I found the phrase “… her desire to build consensus through persuasion …” to be the most interesting part of the sentence.

Persuasion is the word we use to describe the effects of story telling and so this fits nicely into the leadership model. So far so good. But is “building consensus”  the same as “engaging” people to achieve higher standards on a key issue?  They surely overlap, but the potential difference goes to the role that compromise plays in leadership. To get consensus we tend to compromise and compromise is rarely engaging.  Moreover, we know that achieving consensus via compromise is exceedingly difficult if not impossible when other parties playing the game are wedded to domination strategies. So these are not the same thing.

Which is more important in terms of leadership? Achieving consensus or achieving engagement? In politics and in real life situations in general, the answer may be a matter of tactics (i.e. it depends on the circumstances). But as a set of values? Could we say that one idea has a higher level of importance?

Good question.

FOLLOW -  Emphasizing “people skills” is an old, old idea. In this video clip (starting at 3:15) from the Civilisation series, Sir Kenneth Clark talks about that great people skills book from the renaissance, The Courtier

2d FOLLOW -  Prof. Lawrence Lessig would take issue with the claim that Kagan is a “compromiser”. He offers some interesting thoughts on why Elena Kagan is the best possible choice for the court in this era of divisive disagreement on standards of interpretation and policy. On the leadership issue, he says this

Her most important work over the past two decades has been in contexts where she has had to move people to see things as she did. And through that experience, she has developed a sixth sense for the strategy of an argument. She matches that insight with a toughness that can get what she wants done. That doesn’t mean triangulating. It doesn’t mean “compromise.” It means finding a way to move others to the answer you believe is right.

Very interesting. I like the phrase “the strategy of an argument”. Even better that one can develop a “sixth sense” about it (implying a role for skills building). And it is a pity that one does not hear people speak this way very often. Here is the link to Prof. Lessig’s passionate defense of Elena Kagan (addressed, of course, to potentially skeptical progressives).

Translated into our leadership model terms, Prof. Lessig argues that Elena Kagan understands that standards of argumentation as well as legal conclusions are engagement issues. Lessig argues that progressive lawyers and judges have underestimated this leadership — or as he might call it “strategic” — challenge.

Fredzimmy linked to an interesting Harvard Business Review article on leadership the other day. The main point of the article is that (drum roll please) leadership is not something that is reserved for those in the top position in an organization. Sure, those people are “leaders” by job description. But the idea of leadership is much broader.

So what is it? According tot he article, it is a mindset. Something we can all plug into and use. Great. But that doesn’t answer the question. I think leadership is best defined by its function, to get results. If we need to achieve a result, we need a mindset that will identify, address and overcome all of the barriers to achieving it. That is what we call leadership.

Usually we think about leadership when we are already in crisis. But what about leadership in our day to day life? Dan Pink teaches that to live well (a result) we need to be motivated. Dan Coyle adds that we need to be motivated to get started doing the repetitive work to learn the skills needed to excel. So, is leadership then something that builds this kind of motivation? Using Dan Pink’s model, those things that show us paths to purpose, mastery and autonomy?

That may sound a bit abstract. But think about it. If the two Dan’s are right, finding these foundations will start us off on life long learning paths. Our individual paths. Our empowered and connected paths. That sounds pretty cool.  Best of all it sounds gentle, non-threatening, and best of all, doable.