Wise leaders initiate their listening process by asking a lot of questions. The most important question they teach others to ask is “why”? Why do we do things this way? Why does this process matter in the first place? Why did it take so long for someone to ask why?

At its best, leadership becomes a dialogue between about how to continually improve processes and policies to better accomplish a shared purpose. Effective leaders ensure that learning to ask the right questions is a responsibility widely distributed throughout the organization.

Effective leaders expect to be questioned by their people. They teach their people the value of questioning leaders because they learned it themselves as followers. Only interdependent followers can become interdependent leaders that encourage partnership.

If you want leaders skilled in the ability to be questioned, you have to recruit, equip, and encourage questionable followers.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Related Posts:

Enabling Covenental Relationships

The Process Of Managerial Leadership

Today’s Problems Come From Yesterday’s Solutions

The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice (Proverbs 12:15).

Leadership is about influence, relationships, real change, shared purpose, and doing the right thing. I agree with Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus that an important part of leadership is a set of skills “that can be learned by anyone, taught to everyone, and denied to no one.” (p. 25)

Learning to develop leadership skills is your responsibility. The ability to self-reflect on your behavior and then to marshal the courage to self-authorize continual change and improvement is the foundation of assuming full responsibility for yourself. As Chris Argyris correctly asserts, there are a lot of “smart” people that are unaware of their unwillingness and inability to learn.

Henry Cloud wisely states that “the fool tries to adjust the truth so he does not have to adjust to it.” (p. 133). Fools often surround themselves with other fools, which renders them unable to recognize and close their integrity gaps. Many leaders deceive themselves into thinking they are wise because they seek the trusted advice of carefully vetted advisers. Unfortunately, advisers that formulate and confirm their advice only with each other can never offer wise counsel.

Fools are reactive listeners. They have “open door” policies and claim to be ever available to answer our questions and concerns. Their feel-good approach to listening rarely leads to substantive learning. We learn very quickly that the orifice of the oracle leader is actually a black hole instead of a source of light.

The wise are proactive listeners that initiate the process of listening with their own questions about what needs to change and how to make things better. The wise are proficient meta-learners, continually improving their ability to know what they know and their capacity to understand how to use knowledge to change their behavior.

Does your leadership development reflect foolishness or wisdom? How do you know? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Related Posts:

Leadership Foresight

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Faster Is Slower

I love Campo restaurant in Reno. I’ve tried both their lunch and dinner menus; the food is excellent and the service is very good and at times brilliant. Campo’s owner, Mark Estee, is more than a chef in the restaurant – he is also an active and visible leader in his business.

I have not always loved Campo. My very first visit to Campo did not go well, and I blogged about the experience in my post entitled “The Cycle of Service Starts at Your Website.”

Since finding my blog about his restaurant through a mutual friend on Facebook, Mark has left three separate comments in response to both my original observations and the thoughts shared by some of my readers. In all honesty, I was very indifferent about returning to Campo; however, Mark’s comments on my blog motivated me to give his restaurant another chance, and I’m glad I did. Mark’s responses on my blog were exactly what they should have been.

Mark gets his social media and inbound marketing advice from Abbi Whitaker of Abbi PR. Mark is fortunate to get solid advice from someone that practices what she preaches – something all too rare in social media marketing and PR. And frankly, Abbi is fortunate to have a client like Mark because he is willing to blog at his website, post simple but effective videos to Youtube, and personally participate on Facebook. Together, I think Abbi and Mark are creating the foundation for what could become one of the most effective social businesses in Reno.

I would much rather spend my money with business people that I recognize and trust, and I like what Mark is doing through his employees with his business in Reno. The next time you are in Reno, I highly recommend you give Mark and his folks an opportunity to impress you with their continuously improving operation.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Related Posts:

Harrah’s Lake Tahoe Makes Good

Making McGood On A Service Failure

The Most Important Social Business Metrics

According to Ira Chalef, courage is the ability to step forward through fear. One of the manifestations of courage is pushing beyond your comfort zone.

I require every student in my social business and personal branding courses at The University of Nevada to make a brief “about me” video to post on their blog at the end of the semester. Considering how little guidance I give them, some of my students have produced impressive videos. Kendra Wilson’s video busting the myths about snowskating is the best one I’ve seen so far.

But my favorite video was made by Caitlin Durkin. Before I even hit the “play” button, I knew it must have taken tremendous courage for Caitlin to make this video. She pushed WAY outside of her comfort zone to do this, and I admire and respect that kind of courage.

Sure, it’s just a video, and not a perfect one at that. But I think it demonstrates that Caitlin understands that if she wants to have courage in the “big” things in her life and career, she has to find courage in the small, seemingly insignificant details of routine assignments. Caitlin could have sat at her kitchen table in front of a laptop and recorded a video that was “good enough.” Instead, she took a one hour drive to the shores of Lake Tahoe and spent considerable time recording this video while strangers wandered by and stopped to watch what she was doing.

Caitlin flexed her courage muscle and gave herself permission to shoot for excellence. I am very, very proud of her. As you watch the video, please feel free to shout out loud “hell yes!”

Related Posts:

The Student Becomes The Teacher

I Don’t Recommend Quitters

An Admirable MBA Student

I caught this interview with Kaki King on CNN today. I’ve never heard of Kaki King, so I was barely paying attention when she said something that just blew me away:

I play guitar for a living, and this guitar is way smarter than me. I know that, and I say this a lot, but I really mean it from the bottom of my heart. I am a guitar student, and I will be for the rest of my life. There is just too much to learn in a lifetime. There is something beautiful and challenging and humbling about that that I don’t want to let go of.

This is a woman that Rolling Stone magazine named a “Guitar God” in 2006, yet instead of considering herself a master, she embraces the role of life-long learner. Although the art of the music is interdependent on both her and her guitar, she exalts the potential of the instrument over her own strengths and accomplishments.

Gosh, I wish more leaders would view the people they’ve been given the privilege to lead that way. Our attitudes as leaders should be “these employees of mine are way smarter than me. I am a student of the potential of their behavior, and I could spend a lifetime learning how to better partner with them to create an organization where we, our customers, and our community can all thrive. I am humbled by the challenge of what our interdependence can achieve.”

Kaki’s comments about her music remind me that the art of leadership is in mastering the discipline and joy of continual learning. Kaki might disagree, but I think people are more fascinatingly complex than any musical instrument. There is just too much to learn in a lifetime about how to work well with others.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Related Posts:

Real Learning

Interdependent Excellence

The Key To Growing Your Business

When I was around 18, I worked as a shift manager at McDonald’s Corporation in Tulsa, Oklahoma. One of the assistant managers that helped me get promoted and then trained me was a man named Don Griffin. I admired Don because he cared about the work that he did and he cared about me and the rest of his employees. He was also very focused on producing results for the company. Don had a huge influence on my work ethic and basic management philosophy.

Over the years, I’ve never forgotten Don telling me “Performance talks, bullshit walks.” I could count on hearing it every time I tried to give Don an excuse for poor performance. That simple concept still influences how I interpret almost every interaction I have with people in my various work related roles.

I’m OK with folks dropping the ball and making occasional mistakes, and I’m OK with people not delivering as promised from time to time. We all do it – including me. But I have a very low tolerance for folks that won’t accept responsibility for their mistakes. I’ve never known anyone commit to fixing a problem without first admitting “I screwed up.”

Don still lives in the Tulsa area, and he and his wife have a son named Bret.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

I’d really appreciate your help with a survey I am conducting! Click here to learn more about participating.

Related Posts:

Making McGood On A Service Failure

Customer Complaints Don’t Deserve Excuses

Don’t Be Compromised By Compromise

The ability to say “thank you” to people that perform well or otherwise advance the shared purpose of the organization is a character strength that I believe we should require from those that we grant the privilege to lead. Expressing gratitude for the contribution of others is a type of reward power that can make us more influential with others.

The evidence on the power of gratitude in the workplace is meager; however, a very well done study published in 2010 helps us better understand why a little thanks goes a long way. Adam Grant and Francesca Gino proposed that when we express gratitude, people are more motivated to be helpful because it increases their feelings of self-efficacy (capability and competence) and social worth (appreciated for making a difference).

Through a series of four separate experiments (see below for full citation) they found that when people received expressions of gratitude for their work, it increased both the frequency and duration of behaviors intended to help the organization. When people were thanked for their efforts, it enhanced both their feelings of self-efficacy and feelings of social worth, but only social worth was a significant predictor of helping behavior. According to the authors “when helpers are thanked for their efforts, the resulting sense of being socially valued, more than the feelings of competence they experience, are critical in encouraging them to provide more help in the future” (p. 953).

If all your people ever do is only what is in their formal job descriptions, your organization will be mediocre at best. For your organization to excel, your folks need to be good citizens and do more than what’s simply required to help the organization and their co-workers. Leaders that express gratitude to their employees make them feel valued, and this evidence shows that when employees feel valued they behave in ways that the organization values.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

I’d really appreciate your help with a survey I am conducting! Click here to learn more about participating.

Full citation: Grant, A.G. & Gino, F. (2010). A little thanks goes a long way: Explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98 (6): 946-955.

Image credit

Related Posts:

The Character Strength Of Gratitude

Book Review: Humilitas

Prudence: An Undervalued Virtue Of Leadership

Big thanks once again to Dan McCarthy at Great Leadership for organizing another great Leadership Development Carnival. The heavy lifting for this one was done by Kevin Eikenberry at Leadership and Learning. My contribution this month is entitled “The Vice of Ingratitude.” I also really enjoyed “The Accountability Contagion,” by Jason Lauritsen, and “Suspend Your Seeing,” by Lolly Daskal.

Hope you take a few minutes to check out the carnival!

I’m very pleased to feature this guest post by Joel Garfinkle. Joel is recognized as one of the top 50 coaches in the U.S., having worked with many of the world’s leading companies, including Oracle, Google, Amazon, Deloitte, Ritz-Carlton, Gap, and Starbucks. He is the author of 7 books, including Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level. View his books and FREE articles at Garfinkle Executive Coaching. Subscribe to his Executive Coaching Newsletter and receive the FREE e-book, 40 Proven Strategies to Get Promoted Now!

Have you ever watched a figure skater glide across the ice and marveled at how easy it looks? So graceful, so beautiful, so effortless. It takes a lot of work to get to that point, though. Go down to the rink on a Saturday morning and watch the kids taking their first lessons as they stumble and fall and then get up to try again. It takes a lot of falls before you get good enough to make it look easy.

The same is true of many jobs. You get so good at what you do that no one realizes how hard you work. It’s great to be an expert at what you do, but it can sometimes backfire. If your boss thinks you’re hardly working—rather than working hard—he’s not going to want to give you any raises or promotions. It’s up to you, then, to make sure your boss knows what it takes for you to do your job so well.

For example, a local TV host in San Francisco named Ross McGowan was so skilled at interviewing his guests that his boss didn’t realize how much work went into the preparation for each show. He made it look easy, and as a result, when it was time to negotiate a new contract with his boss, the offer was much lower than he had anticipated. If he had taken care to ensure that his boss was aware of how much work, skill, and training went into making his interviews look so effortless, he may have received a better offer.

A passive approach doesn’t work when it comes to getting credit for the work you are doing. One of my clients, who worked at Amazon.com, thought his superiors would know what he was doing and value his efforts without any special effort on his part. This belief fell apart when he heard his co-workers getting praise at a meeting for work that he himself had performed. That was when he realized he needed to do something differently if he wanted to move up in his career, but he wasn’t sure exactly what he should do.

As we worked together, he learned how to be proactive about making sure he got credit for what he accomplished on the job. Every day, he would do something to sell himself to management and show them how valuable he was to the company. You can do the same thing, starting with three simple steps.

1. Keep track of your successes.

Most employees wait until their annual performance review is approaching, then try to remember what they’ve accomplished over the past year. If you’ve done this, you know how hard it is to remember everything. Make tracking your successes part of your daily routine. Every day, either at the end of the day or first thing the next morning, review what you have done for the day and record any significant progress you have made, projects you’ve completed, and goals you have accomplished. You won’t be able to tell anyone about your accomplishments if you don’t know what they are. If you keep track of what you accomplish on a daily or weekly basis, next time you’re updating your resume to ask for a promotion it will be a cinch.

2. Communicate your successes with your boss.

E-mail your boss at least once per week with an update. Let him know whenever you complete a project, and if possible, attach a dollar figure to it to validate your worth to the company. For example, if you saved the company $60,000 this week and you make $50,000 per year, you’ve already paid for yourself.

3. Tell others about what you have accomplished.

Your boss is not the only one who needs to know how valuable you are. Think of other people you can copy on e-mails, such as other department leaders to whom the results of your project are relevant. Engage in small talk with company leaders whenever you get a chance and look for opportunities to tell them about what you’ve been working on without sounding boastful.

As the leaders in your organization realize how much you contribute to the success of the department and the organization, you’ll be given opportunities to work on bigger and more important projects. Your visibility within the company will grow, and your chances of receiving a promotion will increase. Increasing your visibility at work helps you ensure that you’ll be paid what you’re worth and continue to move up in the company.

Thanks, Joel!

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below. Please also help me with my new research by completing my employee survey!

Related Links:

Five Beliefs Employees Hold About Leaders That Cause Silence

Assertive Communication

Jerk Proof You Next Job

For some strange reason, the Thanksgiving holiday this year has got me thinking more than ever about gratitude. I’ve been chewing on what it means to be thankful, why we have a need to “give” thanks, and how we respond to others in both the presence and absence of gratitude. I’ve found a very interesting recent study that tries to explain why gratitude expressions motivate us to help others. I will share with you the findings of that study in another blog soon.

There is an entire chapter on gratitude written by Robert Emmons and Charles Shelton in my Handbook of Positive Psychology. They describe gratitude as a psychological state, which means it’s essentially an attitude. Like any attitude, it is subject to both change and development, which means you can chose to learn to be more grateful. “A grateful outlook does not require a life full of material comforts but rather an interior attitude of thankfulness regardless of life circumstances” (p. 465).

What Emmons and Shelton say about ingratitude really grabbed my attention. They define ingratitude as “the failure to acknowledge the benevolence of others” (p. 463) and conclude that being chronically ungrateful toward others is a character defect. They specifically identify narcissism as a personality trait at work in those that rarely give thanks to others:

People with narcissistic tendencies erroneously believe they are deserving of special rights and privileges. Along with being demanding and selfish, they exhibit an exaggerated sense of self-importance, which leads them to expect special favors without assuming reciprocal responsibilities…The sense of entitlement, combined with insensitivity to the needs of others engenders, whether consciously or unconsciously intended, interpersonal exploitation. In short, if one is entitled to everything, then one is thankful for nothing. (p. 463).

I think the proven ability to recognize when others have earned our sincere expression of gratitude needs to be a litmus test for promotion to positions of leadership. Promote people with a track record of ingratitude toward their co-workers and team members and you will legitimize interpersonal exploitation as an acceptable leadership tactic.

We might not be able to change the narcissists in our organizations, but we can certainly take action to keep them from assuming formal positions of power and authority over others. Gratitude is a character strength that we should learn to develop in ourselves and value more in our leaders.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

I’d really appreciate your help with a survey I am conducting! Click here to learn more about participating.

Related Posts:

Social Support

Savoring The Positive

Real Accountability