I recently reviewed and recommended Guy Kawasaki’s new book “Enchantment: The art of changing hearts, minds, and actions.” I’m also impressed with how accessible and personal Guy has been while promoting his book. Most authors – not even big name authors like Guy -  work through an agency to request book reviews and never take even five minutes to make a personal connection. Not Guy. He followed-up personally to make sure I had my copy of his book, and responded to my request for this interview from 30, 000 feet. I am duly enchanted and glad to offer you Guy’s answers to four very direct questions I asked him.

1. They call you a business guru, Guy. How is “Enchantment” different than other business books?

First of all, I don’t claim that no one has ever wrote about what I cover. People have been doing research on this topic for a long time. Robert Cialdini and Dale Carnegie, for example, are the giants in this field. The first strength of Enchantment is that its focus is on the application of knowledge to change people’s hearts, minds, and actions. I’m not a scientist or researcher. The second strength is that I had the advantage of time on my side–that is, I wrote Enchantment in a post blog, Twitter, and Facebook world. I could incorporate social media into the subject matter.

2. I thought your chapter on enchanting employees was exceptional. Few people I know work for companies that make enchanting their employees a strategic priority. Why do you think enchanting employees is such a hard sell?

It might not be that it’s a hard sell. It could be that managers have simply not thought of their jobs as enchanting employees because management training focuses on “management by objectives,” feedback, and compensation. When have you ever heard of managers receiving training on enchanting their employees? Perhaps Enchantment can show people that there is a better way.

Assuming that you want to improve the situation, what are your alternatives? Bludgeon your boss into liking you? What have you got to lose? If nothing else, trying to enchant your boss will improve your game for future managers and for when you are a manager. Does anyone ever win in a pissing match? I guess you could ignore your boss, but that’s a downward spiral too. Some things need to be believed to be seen, and you’ll have to wait by the side of the river a long time before your boss’s body comes floating by.

By far the hardest chapter to write wasn’t a chapter at all–it was the introduction. I had to accomplish many things while threading a needle: first, to explain how Macintosh enchanted me but not give people who have never read me before the impression that this was a tech book. Second, to give enough mention to Macintosh for the people who have read me before to know that I’m still the same old guy but not so much coverage that they would think this book was a rehash of my previous nine books. Third, to explain what enchantment is in a manner that sets it apart from similar concepts such as influence and persuasion. Fourth, to suck people into buying and reading the book. It was a non-trivial task!

Thanks, Guy!

I’m honored and thrilled that Bob Sutton took time from his crazy schedule to answer a few of my questions about his new book, “Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best… and Learn From the Worst.“  If you follow my blog, you know that Bob Sutton is one of my favorite business book authors. Bob translates high quality research into practical management advice better than anyone I know. Bob’s books and his website are both recommended reading for every MBA class I teach.  Bob shared some great insight in this interview – please take the time to read it and share your comments below!

1.      What kind of folks do you hope read your new book and why?

The book is meant for anyone who is a boss or wants to be a boss.   And there are A LOT of bosses out there.  Department of Labor statistics reveal there are at least 20 million working Americans who have one or more subordinates.  And as my wife, Marina, puts it, is also aimed at anyone who wants to know what a good boss “looks like,” including people who are looking for a new job (which nearly always comes with one or more new bosses) or people who advise bosses.

Why do I hope they read Good Boss, Bad Boss?  Certainly, I hope they find the specific evidence-based tips to be useful. But I have one overarching goal that has become even more clear to me since the book came out, and I suppose is something I have been focused on since my last book, The No Asshole Rule:  We, as individuals and as a society, ought to define good bosses as both those who are able to spur their people to high levels of performance and who treat them with dignity and respect day after day.  Both this book and the last focus on the reasons that it is especially destructive to tolerate or glorify demeaning and disrespectful bosses who drive their people to high levels of performance.  As I have consistently said, if you are the kind of boss who treats people like dirt, but still drives your people to make a lot of money or win a lot of games, you are still a loser as a human-being.  And indeed, if we look at the evidence (especially some nice longitudinal studies done in Europe, such bosses do tremendous damage to their people’s well-being (nearly doubling the rates of heart attacks in one especially careful study).

Also, Good Boss, Bad Boss has a message that, in retrospect, I should have emphasized even more strongly: bosses who are humane and civilized but otherwise incompetent are as bad – and perhaps even worse – than “competent jerks.”  They don’t develop their people’s skills and can make people feel as if their work lives are futile from a self-efficacy point of view.  And they can be very emotionally tough to get rid of – I was recently talking to board member of a start-up who was telling how they kept putting off firing the incompetent CEO because he was such a nice job that they kept putting off the dirty work.  In short, my hope is that in some small way, that the model of a good boss we strive for embraces both performance and humanity more explicity.

2. Is every boss on a continuum somewhere between bad and good, or are there two factors at work, such that everyone has both a degree of good and bad boss in them?

Well, you caught me with this question.  I hope that my “good” and “bad” distinction is useful and helps people think, but it is also a rather gross oversimplification.   As one boss, put it to me, every leader has some mix of angel and devil.  Just like other human beings, bosses have weaknesses, make mistakes, and lose control.   I guess, if I were to step back and think about it, the worst bosses are those who are unable or unwilling to learn, who have what Carol Dweck calls a “fixed” mindset.  And the bosses I have the most hope and respect for – even if they are doing a pretty crummy job right now – are those who constantly try to hone their skills, acknowledge and learn from their mistakes, and who accept responsibility for finding ways to offset their weaknesses. These are the ones that Dweck says have a learning mindset.

To this point, I gave a talk last week at a renowned creative organization (I am not sure I can name them, so I am being a little coy here), and they described the “journey” of one of their senior executives who is now leading the company.  He led one large and very visible project that was financially successful, but he alienated many of his people and drove a few of the best from the company.  But (with help from other executives) he realized that he had “people” or “humanity” problems with his leadership style, and one of the reasons he was promoted to head the organization was that he had changed his style so much… something he apparently acknowledged at closing party for a big project he led.  He told the group that he had learned that it was his job to take the blame when things go wrong and to give others credit when things go right – indeed, this is an evidence-based approach as I show in Chapter 2 of the book.  I like that story because it shows the power of the learning mindset.

3. Of all your suggestions on how to be a good boss, the one I struggled the most with was the first one – take control. Is it really possible to “trick” others that you are in control? What conditions might cause the illusion of control to be ineffective or even backfire?

Bret, I struggled with this too.  In fact, if you look at the table that summarizes these tricks I warn “Learn to be assertive enough. Don’t become an overbearing asshole when you use these strategies.”  I guess there is sometimes a fine line between what is “faking it” versus what means a skilled leader uses to convince others that he or she is in charge.  There is pretty strong evidence that when we BELIEVE our leaders are in charge, we do better work and they have a better chance of keeping their jobs and being admired by others.   That list was meant to show well-meaning leaders the evidence-based moves that help convince others they are in charge so they can get things done.  So, in the case of one leader I worked with a bit who was well-liked but was not instilling enough confidence, it was useful for him to learn things like he should go to the head of the room and stand-up, to battle back when others interrupt him too much, that going through a process of grabbing some power and then giving it away (he did this by taking a large high status for awhile and then, as he saw how crowded people were, he had it turned into a conference room and took a smaller office).  On one level, these are “tricks,” but on another level, by learning about the kinds of things that were seen by his people as evidence that he was “finally stepping-up and taking charge” made him a more effective leader.

When does that backfire?  It backfires especially badly when a boss becomes so confident or pig-headed that he or she feels superior to everyone else – the smartest person in the room, who doesn’t need to do things like listen to people, like allow and encourage them to question his or judgment, and to admit and learn from setbacks and failure.  Note this is delicate balance that I talk about a lot in Chapter 3 on wisdom.  More broadly, the best bosses constantly do a balancing act here – acting confident but not really sure (see this post at HBR).  I think of three bosses I’ve met who are especially adept at his, David Kelley of IDEO, Brad Bird at Pixar, and AG Lafley at Procter & Gamble.  In fact, I seriously considered naming the book “Top Dog On A Tightrope (this was Marc Hershon’s idea, a guy who, among other things, names things for a living – he named the Blackberry and the Swiffer).

4. What’s the most important point you make in the book that you hope your readers will remember their entire career as a boss?

Good question.  My main message is that when you wield power over others, your success, their success, and their well-being depends on being in tune with them, on understanding what it feels like to work for you. BUT, as research on power poisoning shows (see this scary article by psychologist Dacher Keltner),  the very fact that you are a boss places you are greater risk than other human beings of turning selfish, becoming oblivious to the actions and needs of others, and acting like the rules don’t apply to you.  Every boss is at risk of becoming incompetent in these ways.  The best realize it and battle it successfully.  The worst fall victim to power poisoning and refuse to recognize or accept responsibility for their vile ways.

Thanks, Bob!!

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Last Friday I did a phone interview with Kade Dworkin, and Kade has posted the interview as a podcast at his website Meet My Followers.  You can listen to the podcast by clicking here.  I am very honored to be among the first 13 people interviewed by Kade.

Kade and I met through The Student Branding Blog where I was doing blog posts and Kade was doing Student Branding TV. I wrote a blog post that Kade disagreed with and he sent me a LONG e-mail explaining his position. What really impressed me was how professionally Kade handled his disagreement. He did not disparage me either online or in his e-mail, but he made a passionate and well articulated argument for his points. That’s professionalism at its best.

Since that exchange Kade has spoken via Skype to two of my personal branding classes here at UNR. He is a big hit every time with both me and my students because not only is he a good speaker, but his message is right on. Kade “gets it” and I really appreciate that.

So please check out Kade Dworkin’s site or follow him on Twitter.

Locus of control is a personality trait, and it’s one of the most important things I listen for when I begin working closely with people.  In a nutshell, people with an internal locus of control (LOC) accept responsibility for the things that happen to them at work. Internals can see the systemic influences on their behavior (e.g. poor policies, broken equipment, improper training) but they accept responsibility for helping to make things better. People with an external locus of control never accept responsibility for the bad things that happen to them or for overcoming the challenges they face. Any problem is always someone’s fault, and any challenge is not their responsibility.

I got an e-mail from a reader of this website that asked for suggestions on how to assess LOC in a job interview. I have to admit that I am not an HR type, so I am not an expert on the hiring process. But I did some research and found a method I liked in a slick little book by Carol Quinn called “Don’t Hire Anyone Without Me.” In her book she has specific suggestions on how to assess locus of control, and the video above is my summary of her suggestions.

If this is something you are interested in, please take 4 minutes to view my video, or better yet, buy Carol’s book. If you want to learn a little more about my thoughts on LOC, check out the links below. And as always, please leave a comment!

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I Am Responsible For My Success And Failures And For Continuing To Learn From Them

I am a big fan of Christine Livingston. I first met her on Twitter and have been following her blog A Different Kind Of Work for almost a year now.  Christine is a coach and consultant who’s purpose is to “help professionals navigate career change.”  She writes some of the best stuff I’ve ever found on approaching the intersection of work and life in ways that just make better sense.

A few days ago, I got the pleasure of meeting Christine in person when she did me the tremendous favor of speaking to my International Organizational Behavior class in London. She gave us a very generous offering of her time and wisdom. My students loved it and so did I.

She was also kind enough to let me show this video of her “in action” addressing a question from a student. Christine had just given the students a quick introduction to Transactional Analysis, and someone asked a question about how to deal with an overly demanding or even potentially abusive boss in these tough economic times, where too many companies treat employees as if they are lucky to have a job and behave as if they care less about what employees think and feel at work.

I encourage you to watch the video for Christine’s insightful response in her own words. I’ll share with you a brief quote from her response that captures the essence of her perspective:

You are who you are at the end of the day; you deserve to have your own experience and for that to be appreciated and respected.

I concur 100%. Thanks, Christine!

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Jeffrey Benjamin speaks with Dr. Bret Simmons by BreakthroughTraining

I recorded an interview with Jeffrey Benjamin of Breakthrough Training last week and it aired on Fox Radio this Sunday. This audio link contains the second half of our talk. I hope to experiment with podcasting soon, so I really appreciated spending time with Jeffrey and picking his brain about how to get started.

This interview is primarily about social media, but I do discuss this blog and what I do on twitter. I make two points that are very relevant not just for social media but also for leadership:

• If you are willing to make a public commitment to what you stand for, you can build a community of people willing to stand with you.
  
• If you want to help yourself, focus your efforts on what you can do to help others. The more you help others, the more they will reciprocate above and beyond your expectations.
  

I think blogging is one of the best self-improvement activities you can practice. I also think it is an underdeveloped leadership tool. More leaders should use blogs as a way to clarify and commit to what they stand for and to build community around their leadership.

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The Google Background Check

A few weeks ago, Hay Group, a global management consulting firm, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek.com released the Best Companies for Leadership Study and Top 20 list.  I got a chance to ask John B. Larrere of Hay Group some questions about the study.  John is National Practice Leader for the Leadership and Talent practice of Hay Group. He works primarily with Executives and Executive Teams. He has a particular interest in international executive leadership.

1. Can you tell us a little about the design of your study? What kind of people responded to the survey, how were they contacted, and how did you use their responses to determine your results?

This year Hay Group opened the survey to all employees of an organization, to get a real sense of leadership across all levels of the organization. We looked not only at what organizations are doing to develop their leaders, but also the types of cultures they create to grow and sustain leadership over the long term. The study is truly global with a total of 1869 individuals from 1109 organizations and 98 countries completing a survey. As you can see from the below demographics, the study results apply to all organizations with response from all regions and sizes of organizations.

Regional distribution

Revenue distribution

Source: Hay Group/Bloomberg BusinessWeek.com, 2009 Best Companies for Leadership Study

2.     How should we expect that being picked as a top company for leadership translates into sustainable financial performance or superior customer experiences?

When we looked at how the Top 20 organizations compared to the S&P 500 in terms of shareholder returns, we see that the Top 20 outperform in both the short term and long term. Part of this performance is tied to leadership. The Best Companies for Leadership have a consistent focus on leadership development in both good and bad times. Prior to and in the past downturn, the Best Companies for Leadership continued to develop and train leaders, which allowed them to be much more resilient going into the downturn and provided them with a stronger cadre of leaders to help lead their organization out of the economic challenges. We also found that leaders who develop an environment that is not only engaging but also enabling not only inspire people to do their best but also provide what people need to enable them to attain the success that they have been very excited to deliver. For example, giving people “battlefield promotions” but the past hard times when accompanied by leadership development opportunities both inspired and enabled people to succeed. Our best companies continued to help their leaders develop in hard times and this helped the newest leaders more than ever.

3.     I notice that Wal-mart is on your list. Have you ever shopped at Wal-Mart? Based on your experience as a customer, would you have predicted this company would be an example of great leadership?

See my video Vodcast at http://www.haygroup.com/ww/Media/Details.aspx?ID=24306. Wal-Mart prospered because their strategic story, their brand story and their behaviors, in good times and bad, have been consistent. Their strategy has been one step ahead of their competitors in their sector and also made them a good alternative to consumers who would have been more likely to shop in a higher end store. Strategy is important but unless it is encapsulated in a memorable story it remains an untried solution. Wal-Mart has its own effective leadership culture that guides leadership behavior consistently but also turns strategy into action. Their leaders have made key marketing decisions because their key strategy is to provide “the good life” to all their customers regardless of income. So they have made forays into electronics, in light of the demise of big box electronics stores that have provided lower cost access to these products. It flows from the consistent story they tell one another and the marketplace.

4.   All of the companies on your list are large companies. What if anything can the small to medium sized business owner learn from your study?

While the companies on the top 20 list are large, organizations of any size can learn from this study. As you can see from the demographics of the study, input came from companies of all sizes. Small and medium sized businesses can focus on the following:

• Bottom up and top down, get your leadership involved in addressing strategic, company-wide issues. Simplify it all into a short number of Must Win Battles that tell the “story” of how your organization will win, how it will turn opportunity into reality and how it can parry-off threats and challenges.  Cf. Thomas Malnight, “Must Win Battles” (2006 Wharton School Publishing) that chronicles how Tom and I approached simplifying strategy into core factors around which leadership teams coalesce and bond.
• You may have had to put Talent Management on a back burner during the recession in a way some of the larger companies were able to avoid. Put it back in its rightful place ahead of the recovery, so you can position yourself for the opportunities that will come in the turn-around.  If you don’t have resources now for training, make use of strategic movement of people into roles that will develop them. Make sure you tell them what this opportunity can teach them, what they will learn, and what you expect them to be able to demonstrate as a result of this movement. The top leadership can spend more time in mentoring people whose jobs have changed markedly whether they have moved to a new position or stayed in their old position with much wider responsibilities.
• Use your culture as an asset. Your culture has the power to clarify the behavior necessary to successfully apply your strategy. Your story can show how the strategic behaviors you require flow from a set of common values. Wal-Mart did it; you can also, if your story is consistent, engaging and inclusive.
• Strategy, the study reveals, is more important than ever as we enter the recovery period. Top leadership needs to take time, individually, to reflect on opportunities and challenges, so that they each can enter into more productive discussions and agreements on strategy. Schedule your strategic time as if it were a recurring client meeting. Prework and pre-thought are necessary to make good contributions to this process. Do you have a process? Determine how you want the strategy process to work.  Who has primary responsibility for developing it? Who should contribute to it, even if they are not primary?  How? Where do you get strategic data, intelligence, market insights?  Do you have complementary skills involved developing strategy?   Strategy requires good conceptual thinking and good analytical thinking. These two skills rarely get exhibited by the same person. Make sure your team has these complementary assets.
• Create a culture of leadership that rivals a marketing culture, a sales culture, a manufacturing culture. Leaders who “do” too much rarely lead effectively. “Getting your hands dirty” is only effective on the margins.  If leaders are doing their associate’s jobs for them or are over-hyped sales people, R&D people, marketing people, your organization is running rudderless without leadership. A culture of leadership creates an environment which engages and excites AND also enables and empowers associates to succeed.

Thanks, John!

I recently met David Burkus over on Twitter. He featured an interview with me at his new project, Leader Lab, and he granted me this interview so I could tell you more about him and what he is doing at Leader Lab.

David Burkus is an executive coach and a leadership consultant who has worked with clients ranging from entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 executives. In addition, David serves as an adjunct professor at Oral Roberts University’s School of Business. David focuses on the areas of leadership development, leadership and organizational theory, and a strengths-based approach to leadership and professional development.

David is a graduate of Oral Roberts University and holds a Master of Arts in Organizational Dynamics from the University of Oklahoma. David is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Strategic Leadership from Regent University. David lives with his wife Janna in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

What is your background and why are you interested in leadership?

I began my career in sales and marketing, first in financial products and then in the pharmaceutical industry. In any sales organization, hierarchies are ever-present and likewise the emphasis on leadership. However, most in the level of management aren’t really aware of what can be learned from leadership theories. After a few years getting to know this hierarchy, I entered graduate school part-time.

It seems like the goal of any solid graduate program in business or organizational studies is to provide employees with the theoretical basis for their malcontent. That’s pretty much what happened with me. As I began to study leadership theory, I found what corporate world told me to learn in order to become a leader completely ignored what the academic world had discovered about what made leaders effective.

This trend worried me, and continues to worry me. I saw a real need to bring leadership theory out of the classroom and into the boardroom.

What is LeaderLab and why were you motivated to start it?

LeaderLab is a community of resources dedicated to the practice of leadership theory. There’s a plethora of leadership resources out there, and the bulk of them are garbage. I blame airport bookstores. Consider this example: You’re a busy middle manager killing time during a layover and so you’re browsing through the bookstore. You’ve got $20 and a 2-hour flight ahead of you. So naturally, you’re looking for something cheap and easy to digest. Obviously, textbooks are out. Short, little business fables are in. These short books are easy to digest, but lack any real nutrients. The nutrients are in the textbooks, which are expensive and intimidating. But they don’t need to be. Leadership theory isn’t exactly rocket surgery. So to help create a more palatable but nutritious way to learn leadership, we started LeaderLab.

Originally, LeaderLab was an idea for a podcast, interviewing those who are doing research on leadership and related topics and providing another platform for them to get their findings out to the people who need to apply them. However, in the short period of time it’s been around, it’s grown into a blog with several contributors and a quarterly online journal. The idea is really to give people a variety of mediums so they can choose the one they prefer.

How does LeaderLab differ from other offerings on leadership and why should people pay attention to what you are doing?

As I said before, there’s a plethora of leadership resources out there. And the majority of them are garbage. So the goal at LeaderLab isn’t just to join the crowd. LeaderLab really is a different type of offering on leadership. LeaderLab is theory with a focus on practice. LeaderLab is intellectual without putting our nose in the air. Really, LeaderLab is the protein shake of leadership resources: easy to digest, but highly nutritious.

Above all, we hope LeaderLab is looked AT a year from now. We have a pretty lofty vision of transforming the way leaders look at theory and in order to achieve that vision, we need leaders to be looking at what we’re doing.

As far as what we look like, we envision a community of 5-10 bloggers, a biweekly or weekly podcast (currently it’s on a monthly production schedule), the quarterly journal and several eBook offerings. We’ve got our first one under way (tentatively titled “A Brief Guide to Leadership”), which is being written alongside the “Intro to Theory” blog post series.

I had the pleasure of doing an interview with David Burkus a few days ago, which he recorded and posted as a podcast. I’ve been doing my own videos for a while, but this is my first podcast and it was also the first podcast for David’s new project, Leader Lab. I was honored to be his first interview!

David asked me about how theory informs what I tell others about leadership. I’ve written about theory before in my article entitled “Theory of the business“.  As Peter Drucker so correctly pointed out, whether you realize it or not, YOU have a number of theories about your business that are guiding your daily behavior. To fully harness the power of your theories, you should be explicit about what they are and continually work to test and improve those theories. 

You can only reach the pinacle of learning when you understand why things work the way they do.  How is the WRONG question. Guided by theory, you can create a unique future for yourself and your employees, instead of trying to copy what someone else has already done. There is nothing remarkable about competitive parity.  

Click this link to hear the podcast. Thanks, David!

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Cesar Garibaldo is an undergraduate student in the College of Business Administration at the University of Nevada, Reno.  He was recently selected as one of the top thirty-five business students in the United States by the Hispanic College Fund.  Thirty-eight thousand students applied for the award, six hundred received scholarships, and thirty-five were selected to receive the award.  That is quite an achievement!

Cesar was gracious enough to let me interview him about his accomplishments.  He is definately an example of leadership, courage, and grit.  Cesar is a very impressive young man with a very encouraging story. 

Please watch the video and listen to his story!

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