If you ask someone to make an exception for you, make sure it’s because you are delivering exceptional performance. If a policy, procedure, or rule is impeding your ability to perform, help team members succeed, or impress customers, then it’s your responsibility to suggest viable solutions and expect an exception.

photo credit: Fields of View

Never ask for or accept an exception for any reason other than exceptional performance. Reversion to the mean is the reward for those that believe they are entitled to exceptions.

The only reason people so routinely ask for exceptions is that they’ve learned either directly or vicariously that almost any personal inconvenience can be justified as an exceptional circumstance. A culture of exceptions is bad for the reputation and performance of your organization, and that’s bad for your career. It’s deceptively easy to become part of the mediocre mass of folks that put daily pressure on leaders to lower standards to their own lackluster levels of comfort.

I have tremendous respect for people that can say in a matter-of-fact way “I dropped the ball on that one, but it’s my bad, I know what I did wrong, and I’ll try very hard to keep it from happening again.” Falling short does not make the sincere quest for excellence any less virtuous. Setting high standards for yourself and refusing to make excuses when you struggle to meet those standards guarantees you will be exceptional, because the majority of your peers have compared themselves among themselves and would rather ask for exceptions than assume full personal responsibility when things don’t go exactly the way they want.

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

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The fall semester starts today. I am teaching my regular organizational behavior class to MBA students, and for the first time ever I’m teaching a version of that same course entirely online in our new Executive MBA program.  I’m also teaching my first semester long course in personal branding to undergraduate students (I’ve been teaching this in the summer only for several years). I taught a version of that class for the first time in the spring to MBA students.

I’ve offered advice to students in two previous posts that you can find by clicking here and here. My new piece of advice is this: set high standards for yourself.

Don’t compare yourself to others. That is a recipe for complacency and mediocrity. Don’t set your standards based on explicit requirements, with a goal of doing just enough work to “pass”. When you get feedback that your effort was not good enough, you will be very unhappy. Instead of seeing yourself as the source of your own discomfort and displeasure, you will probably find someone else to blame (e.g. me).

Expect more than the norm from yourself and you simply won’t have anything to worry about – ever. External standards and expectations become irrelevant when you operate above them.

I framed this post as advice for student success, but setting high personal standards is a recipe for success in all aspects of work and life. What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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I’ve never lived in a world, or worked in an organization, that was void of rules. Rules can be a drag, but they can also serve as a very functional guide to productive behavior. Rules should always be purposeful, behavioral, very specific, and kept to an absolute minimum.

Rules should always represent minimum, reasonable standards of expected behavior, not stretch effort. For people with an internal locus of control that focus on group goals and hold themselves accountable to high standards of performance and conduct, rules are irrelevant. Good rules are only an issue for those that make bad choices.

Always stand behind, but never hide behind, your rules. Rules should be continually evaluated for their value and ability to serve the purpose. Eliminate or change a rule the moment it ceases to enable your people to work together more effectively. Rules are only as stupid as the people that use them as excuses to avoid improving systems.

Whatever you do, never bend the rules. If you make an exception to the rules for one person, you will send a discouraging message to the rest of your folks. If you bend a rule for one person, your standards and expectations will become ambiguous to everyone else. Bending a rule will teach people that you are willing to play favorites, unwilling to take the heat when the pressure is on, and unable to see the ethical gaps of your own behavior. If a rule no longer works for the group, change it.

Your behavior as a leader should teach people that “rule” is an innocuous four letter word. What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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My favorite word in the world is DAD. I love when my children call on me because I love being a father. Being their father is both the greatest responsibility and the greatest joy of my life.

Leadership is a journey. Almost a year ago I wrote this:

I do my best to assume full responsibility for myself and to help others along the way so that I can be better prepared to teach my children and grandchildren how to do the same. If I ever do something for you, know that I am doing it for me, so that ultimately I can do it for them.

My own personal journey is to live long enough for my grandchildren to know me well enough to remember my face, my voice, my hug, my smile, and my words for the rest of their lives. My final act of service to my children will be to help them lay a solid foundation in the lives of their children. God willing, I hope I get that chance. The dream of seeing the children of my children invigorates my life.

My own father died of a heart attack when I was 24, but he left when I was about 12 so he had very little influence on me, with the exception that I knew I wanted to grow up to be nothing like him. I’m not bitter at all about that, but it is what it is. My mother died of lung cancer 6 months before my father. My only regret in life is that my children never knew my mother, and that she never knew them. They would have loved her, and she would have loved them.

I turn 50 this week, and since both my parents died in their early 50s of poor health, my genetic clock is ticking. I work hard to stay healthy because my personal journey depends on it.

I’m going for a run this father’s day. My kids won’t notice or think anything of it, but I’m doing it for them. Sometime today, I’ll also take a nap.

What are the most important things you do daily to serve your children? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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Here is another short clip from Ron Clark’s dynamic presentation in Reno, Nevada on May 20, 2011. Once again the video quality is not what I hoped it would be, but you can hear his voice very clearly and you can really see what an amazing speaker Ron is.

In this clip, Ron talks about the power of encouraging your people to encourage each other. According to Ron, here is what he tells his staff at the Ron Clark Academy:

Do you know what I value more than anything? When I see you congratulate each other. When I see you go out of your way to recognize a great job that one of our team members did. Man, that blows me away. I value that above anything else.

Encourage your people to encourage each other, and then praise them for that behavior. Transform your organization to a place where people are expected to lift each other up. Help your people learn that when they clap for others, then when they do a good job, others will clap for them.

If you make yourself the only source of praise in your organization, you will wear yourself out and thereby limit the amount of praise the folks in your organization deserve. Hold yourself accountable for making it everyone’s responsibility to recognize the good work done by others.

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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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I taught three different classes last semester, one at the undergraduate level and two at the MBA level, including one I delivered for the first time. It’s a lot of work teaching three different subjects to three different audiences. I got my evaluations back today from all three classes and many students thought I did a very good job, most thought I did an acceptable job, and a few thought I should have been fired yesterday.

If you are going to have high expectations of yourself and others, there is no way you can make everyone happy. High expectations by definition means you have to take risks and try some things you’ve never done before, or make changes to established methods in search of continual improvement. When you take risks, some things are not going to work as well as you thought they might, and from time to time, they might even suck.

When you challenge adults to accept full responsibility for their own learning, you accept the risk that many will not embrace that challenge. Some will lead their entire lives never even understanding the importance of that challenge. Even though I know their self-imposed mediocrity won’t be my fault, it still means I have to continuously improve how I deliver that challenge and how I live up to it myself.

A student said to me this semester “I’m waiting for you to teach me something.” I just about came out of my skin. The prison of that paradigm awaits everyone that surrenders to it’s normative expedience.

Freedom of thought and expression is a wage of accountability, never a privilege of mere participation. Self-doubt, dissonance, and rejection come with the territory of high expectations.  If you are not willing to embrace the messy parts of who you are, how you do your job, and what others might think of you, then you can never invite and encourage others to do the same.

If you are willing to seek the edge of chaos, you will soon learn that some of the most amazing people you will ever have the honor to meet were there long before you arrived.

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How do you work with or around hateful people?

A reader I admire a lot asked me this question in a private e-mail. I’ve never blogged on this topic, so I didn’t have an answer ready.

Because of my communication style, not too many folks engage me in open confrontation over time. When people hate me, they hate me behind my back and seldom to my face. I think personality has a lot to do with how people both express disdain and react to the venom of others.

I confront ugly behavior when it happens openly to me. I don’t hold grudges, so I prefer to have issue focused conflict, then move on. I know others that do the exact opposite – they avoid issue focused conflict and hold personal grudges for years. Covert hatefulness is for me the worst kind.

I don’t hate people, but there are few behaviors that I loathe and my personality makes it impossible for me to hide my true feelings. I hate being lied to, and I hate selfishness, which is ironic, because to varying degrees we all lie to ourselves and others to try to hide the deepest roots of our own pride and greed.

So how do you deal with hateful people at work? Please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section below!

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The Merriam-Webster online dictionary offers two main ways to think about compromise:

1. settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions

2. a concession to something derogatory or prejudicial <a compromise of principles>

Reasonable people often disagree about “the right thing to do.” If you are never willing to compromise with people that don’t see things exactly as you do, you probably won’t accomplish much as a leader.

I’ve found there is a big difference between someone that asks me to compromise, and someone that tells me I have to compromise. The person that asks me to meet somewhere in the middle usually cares about me even if they disagree with my position; the person that tells me all the compromise has to come from me usually cares more about himself than anyone else, and he is either unable or unwilling to see this perilous vice.

I’m totally willing to compromise, but I absolutely refuse to be compromised by compromise. I can work with anyone that I believe has the greater good of the group in mind, even if we slightly disagree on group goals or how to achieve them.

But I will always unapologetically oppose the folks I believe are blinded by hubris and selfish ambition. I’m thankful that for me, it’s personal.

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I’d like to share with you one of my favorite descriptions of meaningful work. Don’t miss the fact that the leader in this example learned the power of purpose from her employee. This passage can be found in Richard Daft’s textbook “The Leadership Experience”:

Servant leadership can mean something as simple as encouraging others in their personal development and helping them understand the larger purpose in their work. When Linda Burzynski became president of Molly Maid International, she learned about servant leadership from one of her cleaners. Posing as a new member of the cleaning crew, Burzynski entered a home with her partner, Dawn, to find dishes piled high, food spilled on countertops, clothes and magazines strewn about, and pet hair everywhere. Surveying the mess, Burzynski was ready to walk out, but Dawn explained that the woman who owned the house was going through a divorce and dealing with three rebellious teenage sons. “She’s barely hanging on.” said Dawn, and having a clean house gave her a sense of order and control. Burzynski noticed that Dawn seemed to take extra care because she knew she was helping the woman with more than just her household chores. Burzynski says she learned that day about the power of being a servant to her employees and helping them find larger meaning in their difficult jobs. (pp. 232-233, 3rd edition).

People like Dawn both inspire and challenge me. As much as I know and write about leadership, I wonder if I have the character and presence to behave as Dawn did when similar situations present me with the opportunity to give myself permission to be excellent.

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

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