I first heard of “The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins To Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work” by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer at Bob Sutton’s blog, where he called it “a masterpiece every manager should own.” I got my copy of the book free from the publicist. I don’t think it is a masterpiece, but I do think it is the most important evidence-based management book I’ve read this year; consequently, I do think every manager should strongly consider moving this book to the top of their reading list.

The book focuses on something the authors call the inner work life effect: “people do better work when they are happy, have positive views of the organization and its people, and are motivated primarily by the work itself.” (p, 47). They go so far as to claim their research shows “as inner work life goes, so goes the company.” (p. 3). That’s a bold claim that I’m not sure is supported by the data in their one study; however, I do believe it is supported numerous related studies on employee attitudes, emotions, motivation, and performance published in leading peer-reviewed journals over the last 30 years.

The book also highlights the power of events that are part of every workday. The power of events is great news for us as managers, because we can take planned, systemic action to control events that impact the inner work lives of our employees. Here are the main points that the book explains in detail (pp 8-9):

1. The types of events – what we call the key three – stand out as particularly potent forces supporting inner work life, in this order: progress in meaningful work; catalysts (events that directly help people work); and nourishers (interpersonal events that uplift people doing the work).

2. The primacy of progress among the key three influences on inner work life is that we call the progress principle: of all the positive events that influence inner work life, the single most powerful is progress in meaningful work.

3. The negative forms – or absence of – the key three events powerfully undermine inner work life: setbacks in the work, inhibitors (events that directly hinder project work); and toxins (interpersonal events that undermine the people doing the work).

4. Negative events are more powerful than positive events, all else being equal.

5. Even seemingly mundane events – such as small wins and minor setbacks – can exert potent influence on inner work life.

The authors admit that their research does not establish causality – which is very difficult to accomplish. “Were all of these inner work life changes caused by daily progress and setbacks, or might some of them have caused progress or setbacks in the first place? There is no way of knowing from the numerical data alone.” (p. 79).

I love the concept of catalysts: events that support progress and positive inner work life. The authors identified seven consistently effective catalysts (pp 104-105): 1) Set clear goals; 2) Allow autonomy; 3) Provide resources; 4) Give enough time, but not too much; 5) Help with the work; 6) Learn from problems and successes; and 7) Allow ideas to flow. Please note these ideas are not new - they can be found in one form or another in most contemporary approaches to leadership and are evidence-based.

The book also provides a very helpful daily progress checklist that you can use to review your daily managerial actions and plan for the next day. I think it is brilliant. I concur with the authors when they state:

The aim of the checklist is managing for meaningful progress, because that is your real job inside the organization. This may require a significant mind-shift. Business schools, business books, and managers themselves usually conceptualize management as managing organizations or managing people. But if you focus on daily progress in meaningful work, managing people and the entire organization will become much more feasible. (pp. 174-175).

This book is packed with both sound philosophy and evidence-based advice. Anyone and everyone can benefit by reading this book, because “whatever your level in your organization, even if you lead only by your work as a good colleague, you bear some responsibility for the inner work lives of the people around you…you can become a better contributor to the climate and success of your organization. (p. 181).

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I purchased “Humilitas: A Lost Key to Life, Love, and Leadership,” by John Dickson after hearing him speak at the Global Leadership Summit. Most leaders will never hear about this book, but all who do should consider reading it. It has too much fat for my taste, but the meat is exceptional.

Dickson defines humility as “the noble choice to forgo your status, deploy your resources or use your influence for the good of others before yourself,” such that a “humble person is marked by a willingness to hold power in service of others.” (p. 24). By this definition you can see that humility starts from a position of dignity, strength, and a healthy sense of my own worth and abilities.  Unlike humiliation, which can be thrust upon me by others, humility is a choice I make willingly. And humility is social, more about how I treat others than about how I think of myself. Bob Sutton has written that the best test of a person’s character is how he or she treats those with less power.

Dickson argues that humility is important for leadership because humility is persuasive. Humility unlocks the door to referent power. “We are more attracted to the great who are humble than to the great who know it and want everyone else to know it as well.” (p. 69). He quotes Aristotle’s belief that character is the controlling factor in persuasion: “We believe good-hearted people to a greater extent and more quickly than we do others on all subjects in general and completely so in cases where there is not exact knowledge but room for doubt.” (p. 139). We trust the humble more than the proud to act in our best interest.

Dickson also argues that humility is generative, a powerful key to learning and growth. Pride is the engine of mediocrity because the proud think they have “arrived” and have nothing left to learn, certainly not from you and me.

I agree with Dickson that humility trumps tolerance. Tolerance requires all parties to soften their convictions, whereas humility does not. “Humility applied to convictions does not mean believing things any less; it means treating those who hold contrary beliefs with respect and friendship.” (p. 167). Dickson maintains that as leaders we must:

Learn to respect and care even for those with whom we profoundly disagree. We maintain our convictions but choose never to allow them to become justification for thinking ourselves better than those with contrary convictions. We move beyond mere tolerance to true humility, the key to harmony at the societal level. (p. 170).

I like that a lot. Bob Sutton has written that the “attitude of wisdom” in leaders is having the courage to act on knowledge while doubting what you know. Effective leaders have strong opinions which are weakly held.

In my opinion, every leader would be wise to consider reading “Humilitas”.

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Remarkable Leadership: Mama Maggie Gobran

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The 2011 Global Leadership Summit was the best event I’ve ever attended. I signed up just to see Seth Godin speak, and he was very good, but folks like Henry Cloud, John Dickson,  Corey Booker and Patrick Lencioni were to my surprise even better. Every speaker in the line-up delivered exceptional content.

Then there was Mama Maggie Gobran. She was not a master orator like Booker or Lencioni, and her content was very simple. While I may soon forget even the best of the speakers at this event, I will never forget the image of what Mama Maggie Gobran did during her time with us.

Mama Maggie Gogran was introduced with a short video showing her work among the children of Garbage City, Cairo, Egypt through Stephen’s Children Ministry. She has given her life to serve the poor, desperate, and vulnerable among us. These people and the leaders that serve them are to most of us, including me, practically invisible.

After the moving video about her work, Mama Maggie Gogran appeared on stage and was greeted with a standing ovation from the live audience. What she did next was something I feel privileged to have witnessed.

She wept. Then she dropped to her knees and kissed the stage. She spoke volumes before she uttered a single word.

Unlike the powerful oration of Booker, Lencioni, and the other speakers, we all knew that this act was not part of the theatrics of effective speaking. Mama Maggie Gobran’s behavior was a natural expression of her life, and it was a powerful testimonial that the leadership and service she sacrifices her life to provide those that can never reward her is radically different than the leadership most of us know. All of us admire what she does, but few of us would ever aspire to walk even a day in her shoes.

More than any other speaker at the conference, the simplicity, humility, and authenticity of Mama Maggie Gobran’s presence is challenging me to rethink everything I believe about my own behavior as a follower and a leader.

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Prudence: An Undervalued Virtue Of Leadership

The topic of tonight’s #leadfromwithin chat on Twitter was foresight. The hour long discussion was led by Lolly Daskal and Greg Waddell, and hundreds participated.

I talk about foresight in my MBA classes on Organizational Behavior as part of our class discussion of leadership. I share with my students this quote about foresight from Robert K. Greenleaf’s 1977 book:

This is the central ethic of leadership.  The failure (or refusal) to foresee may be viewed as an ethical failure, because a serious ethical compromise today (when the usual judgment on ethical inadequacy is made) is sometimes the result of a failure to make the effort at an earlier date to foresee today’s events and take the right actions when there was freedom for initiative to act. The action we label unacceptable in the present moment is often really one of no choice. (Greenleaf, 1977, emphasis added)

Foresight is a learned habit, not a mystical gift that only a few oracles possess. Foresight is the discipline of systematically thinking through the unintended consequences of every decision you make. It requires the wisdom to purposefully surround yourself with people that you know won’t always see things the way you do and will have the courage to challenge you when they disagree. It requires the humility to admit publicly when you failed to foresee an unintended consequence of a decision and the grit to continually learn from your mistakes. Foresight demands real accountability and integrity.

Leaders that are more intent on telling than on listening care about themselves more than they care about you. I’ve learned from experience that foresight is not a high priority for leaders lost in the fog of their own hubris.

As the central ethic of leadership, leaders covet the development of foresight for the benefit of those they’ve been given the privilege to lead.  Leaders that fail to assume responsibility for developing the discipline of foresight will eventually forfeit the moral authority to lead.

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

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Leadership Requires The Courage To Fight For Real Changes

Expectations are the framework of interdependent work relationships. They are built on a foundation of REAL responsibility and secured by the glue of REAL accountability.

We naturally expect our leaders to have expectations of their followers. Not all organizations and leaders engage in formal goal setting, but I would not give you a nickel for a leader that does not communicate clear performance and behavioral expectations, help followers achieve those expectations, reward them when they do and take timely and developmental corrective action when they don’t.

That’s status quo leadership. If you want to practice truly remarkable leadership, you have to take your relationships with people to the next level. This means inviting your folks to have higher expectations of you than you have of them, to share those expectations openly with you and everyone else on the team, and to collectively hold you accountable for those expectations.

Get your team together and ask them all to share openly what they need from you in order to excel at their jobs. You need to hear those expectations, and they need to hear each other’s expectations. When the team hears the full spectrum of things people expect from you as a leader, they will probably realize that you are going to need their help if you are going to have any chance of helping them by meeting those expectations. Openly sharing expectations is one way of moving folks on the team toward assuming even more self-responsibility, which is the foundation of interdependence.

You have to work hard to make it safe for your folks to share their expectations of you openly, because you also have to make it unacceptable for them to not hold you accountable for high expectations. Keep in mind that if you go this route, you will be modeling for them a style of leadership that they probably have not seen often if at all. Be patient, be gracious, but be unequivocally resolute.

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

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Do You Work For A Servant Leader?

Much has been said about how important relationships are for effective leadership. It’s true that leadership requires influential relationships with others to get things done. Yet it’s also true, and maybe even more significant, that it’s only through right relationships with others that we are even able to fully see what really needs to be done. Right relationships are interdependent, covenantal partnerships, not dependent contracts.

Interdependent relationships with courageous others help us better see things for what they really are, rather than we want them to be. Right relationships help leaders discover innovative opportunities, avoid strategic myopia, and select purposeful courses of action that others can support with enthusiasm and authenticity.

Can you see right relationship? Interdependent relationships should be REAL – characterized by responsibility, expectations, accountability, and learning:

• Responsibility: unless and until you assume full responsibility for your own behavior and results, you force others to assume responsibility for you. It is your responsibility to perform your job with ethical distinction and to care about what you do, who you do it with, and who you do it for. Personal responsibility is the foundation of interdependence.
• Expectations: healthy, interdependent relationships are characterized by mutual expectations that every party in the relationship recognizes as legitimate. To be a partner, you must care about the expectations others have of you, and you must have the courage to share with others the expectations you have of them. Expectations provide the framework for interdependence.
• Accountability:  interdependent partners first hold themselves accountable for personal responsibility and reciprocal expectations. They then hold themselves accountable for enabling others to assume responsibility and exceed expectations. Finally, they hold others accountable for performing as promised and for caring about their work. Accountability is the glue that secures interdependence.
• Learning: interdependent relationships change and continuously improve over time as partners learn how they can assume more responsibility for themselves and how they can better enable others to assume the fullness of their roles. Learning and growth are the fulfillment of interdependence.

Can you see yourself in REAL relationships? Being REAL in our relationships with others is a skill we have to develop even if others never invite us to be REAL or treat us the same way. We are responsible for our behavior, not how others respond to our behavior. How well are you doing establishing REAL relationships with others at work?

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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In contractual relationships, our primary concern is holding others accountable for high standards of performance. Effective contractual relationships require what we deal with others in good faith and that we assume full responsibility for performing our part of the arrangement. That is absolutely essential, but the normative trust and commitment of contractual relationships will never be enough to establish a high performance work environment.

Research has shown that only affective trust and commitment between leaders and followers produces the psychological safety requisite for people to apply the full potential of their heads, hands, and hearts to work. Building on a solid foundation of fair contractual relationships for everyone, high performance leadership moves to establish covenantal relationships with as many employees as possible.

Covenant promises require a different kind of trust, commitment, and leadership intimacy than do contracts.  Contracts are the currency of bosses and subordinates; covenants the currency of partners. Interdependent partners in covenant relationship commit to enabling each other to keep promises established to achieve the vision, values, goals, and daily behaviors consonant with their shared purpose.

Unless and until you are willing to hold yourself accountable for performing your own job with distinction, walking the talk your employees value, and genuinely caring for those you’ve been given the privilege to lead, you will never master covenant leadership. You are not entitled to partnership; you earn partnership by first providing it to others.

“How can I help?” may be the single most important question you can learn to ask as a leader.

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

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You Will Lead The Same Way You Follow, So Be Careful How You Follow

I would love to spend a few days on an aircraft carrier at sea. The thrill of landing on its deck, observing its crew at work, and then taking off again would be an experience of a lifetime. That’s exactly what Donna Sturgess had the opportunity to do, and I’m envious.

Donna writes about her experiences on the aircraft carrier USS Stennis in her book Eyeballs Out. I received my copy of the book free from her publicist. It’s not a great book, but it does have some unique aspects, so I am going to recommend it.

Donna uses her experience on the USS Stennis to frame the major themes of her suggested strategy to renew business excellence: thrill, sacrifice, pride, and immersion. I can’t recall ever reading about immersion in a business book, so I found this very intriguing:

Part of the value of an immersion is returning to the experience of being a beginner. When we learn something new, our thinking slows down and we absorb information differently. The brain has a relaxation response that allows for insight and the emergence of other options. New connections are made during this time because we are sifting and sorting information differently as a beginner than we do as a professional. Our whole body is involved in the experience – it’s not just a mental exercise like activities at work. The new stimulus bumps and rattles our operating assumptions as we seek to put the learning into context: these new relationships start to rearrange our existing stores of information into novel patterns to produce new thoughts. This is where original idea float free and opportunities are discovered. (p. 98)

That’s cool. The ability to continually learn how to learn is a key aspect of our core performance technology, and I learned from Donna that seeking immersion experiences is one way we can enhance our ability to learn more effectively than our competitors.

For example, I think learning the full power of social business requires an immersion experience if you want to lead rather than lag your competition. You can never really understand what people are doing on blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebeook and why they are doing it unless you jump in and do it yourself. Its only when you understand why we are living through a fundamental paradigm shift in the way people communicate that you can create a unique social business experience for those you’ve been given the privilege to lead.

One thing I really appreciated about Donna’s book was how frequently she referenced the work of other authors, the sources for her own learning. Several times during the book she even referenced peer-reviewed articles published in academic journals, which I found impressive. Although extremely accomplished, Donna does not write as if she thinks she is or even wants to be another leadership guru. Her writing left me the clear impression that she is more interesting in sincerely helping than in selling her services.

Eyeballs Out is a good book, not a great one, and it is a quick and engaging read. I think you might like it, so I am happy to recommend it.

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I received my copy of Jeremie Kubicek’s book “Leadership is dead: How influence is reviving it,” free from his publicist. Let me first say that the book never fully delivers on its catchy title. While I believe that leadership might be unwell, it is certainly not dead. And while I love how Jeremie describes influence, it’s impossible to show that influence is reviving leadership because influence has been and will always be the heart of leadership.

I’m going to recommend this book because I love the message, but I have to tell you honestly that I did not enjoy reading it. I’ve heard this message before, so I found it distracting that the author never credited sources that have previously written similar things. For example, his first two of seven actions to make leadership come alive are 1) give trust to become trustworthy, and 2) be credible. James Kouzes and Barry Posner emphasized the importance of trust and credibility a long time ago.

The core of Jeremie’s message can be summed up in his list of attributes that define a true influence leader (p. 77):

• leads with vision
• leads from the head and the heart
• practices humility and service to others (let’s go of status and self-preservation)
• influences rather than pushes or demands
• invests in the success of others first
• rises above unethical practices, pressure, and petty politics
• attracts a diverse and dedicated team of future leaders
• delivers more than expected
• wields the tools of forgiveness, gratitude, and laughter
• reaches out to make the last first

Jeremie goes on to say:

Leadership is influence. Influence is power. How that power is used comes from the intent of the leader, from the motives of the heart (p.78).

I love that message, even though it’s very familiar to me and many others. If this message is either new to you or you’re not entirely sold on it, then you will be very well served to get your hands on this book and consider it very carefully.  If you’ve seen it before and are already sold, then you should probably save your money.

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C.K. Prahalad: The Responsible Manager

I once again had the privilege to see Ron Clark speak last night, this time at the WIN Nevada Annual Lecture Series dinner. I was glad that the room was packed, because I’ve seen Ron speak before and he is one of the best speakers I’ve ever experienced. Ron’s message of purpose, passion, and the power of changing systems to change behavior really resonates with me.

In this short clip, Ron talks about how important it is to have high expectations of people, to never lower your expectations, and to hold yourself accountable for helping people meet and exceed your expectations. The more specific you can be describing your expectations, the better the results are going to be. If your people struggle to deliver,  first ask yourself if you’ve been specific enough. He’s talking about how to educate people, but everything he says in this clip is directly applicable to managing people and developing leaders in the workplace.

Ron believes success is all about being specific in letting people know your expectations. I strongly concur!

The video quality is not what I hoped it would be, but you should be able to hear Ron’s voice clearly and you can get a good idea why he is such a dynamic speaker. After you watch the video, please share your thoughts in the comments section below!

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