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Archive for August, 2014
Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of August 25th
August 25, 2014 | No Comments »
Camaraderie
I am often asked, “What is the single most important measure of excellence in a company or group?” For me the answer is camaraderie. Camaraderie reflects the depth of genuine companionship within the group; the almost DNA-level bonding of brothers and sisters locked shoulder-to-shoulder in common purpose. Camaraderie, and its close relative esprit de corps, are extremely hard to produce in groups and even harder to sustain, which further attests to their supreme importance for excellence. Among our most important leadership obligations, therefore, is to create the ethos, culture, and climate producing camaraderie. This work is deeply soulful, not intellectual. This is the realm of a threshold crossing, which begins with shallow work-place familiarity and then converts, through shared sacrifice, elevated standards, and masterful leadership, into a deep wellspring of fraternal love and unyielding trust. The measure of camaraderie in a group is the pinnacle metric, and it reminds us, interestingly, that the words “company” and “companion” share the same root, which we should never forget.
Small Things
One of the psychological hurdles young leaders must overcome is their belief they are not truly leading until they have achieved high rank or position. They believe they are not really able to create influence until they can do something great on a grand stage. I call this “someday” leadership: Someday, when I have higher authority, then I will do something grand! We need to deconstruct this limiting paradigm and teach young leaders a more fundamental and elevating truth, which is this: We are always leading, because we always exert influence when we walk into a room and interact with people. Once we accept this cardinal truth, “someday” leadership transforms into “this day” leadership. To remind myself of this truth I keep on my desk this powerful quote attributed to Native American warriors: “Today is a good day to do great things.” The reality is, yes; most of us will not be called to the global stage and be asked to lead in the national spotlight. Most of us will not be famous leaders. However, we can all do small things, each day, with great commitment, passion, and fidelity. In the end, this makes all the difference.
Negative Energy
A key element of self-mastery is the ability for leaders to be confronted with negative energy but not be lured into it. And let’s face it—that’s not easy. All energy, particularly negative energy, is highly imperialistic. If we are not self aware, negative energy will seize us and pull us in destructive pathways. For example, reflect on how easy it is to be initially exposed to forms of negative energy like grievance, entitlement, bickering, cynicism, spite, and pettiness, and if not initially contained, to be pulled fully into the widening gyre of that toxic energy. What this seems to tell us is, when we attack negative energy frontally, we become that energy ourselves. It co-opts us. We become the very thing we dislike. What is the better way for leaders? Through self discipline and self-control, learn to recognize when we are getting lured by the siren’s call of negative energy, be conscious of it, and then, choose not to fight it frontally. Instead, be the better example and let your example radiate as an alternative choice. The best correction of the bad? The modeling of the better!
Great Stories
When I was young I was drawn to hero tales and epic stories. Even today, these legends still call to me and I am compelled by their deeper meaning. I believe there is a vital lesson in the study of legend, lore, history, myth, and hero tales because they remind us of the greater patterns, the larger truths, animating the human condition. We need great stories to remind us of the broad arc of which we are still a part; that grand parade of history that informs us, coheres our experiences, and reminds us of timeless truths. Today, with the dominance of technology and its pull to only a present-tense reality, leaders must teach great stories to the younger generation. Without this broad perspective, young people run the risk of remaining prisoner to their own private, limited worlds. Moreover, a present-tense reality can be awfully brittle, fragile, and shallow. Without the great stories, youth will think present happiness, instead of deep meaning, is the end state of living. It is a leader’s obligation to pull people out of their heads and into their hearts, and we do this by teaching the greater patterns of excellence and heroic ambition.
Caught, Not Taught
As I reflect on how I’ve learned as a leader, the many twists and turns, successes and failures, I realize most of what I can honestly say I have internalized, I did so from experience, not book learning. Most of the deeper lessons, the things I have made part of my interior life, were more caught than taught. It may sound too simple to say it this way, but it is true, at least in my experience. Great truths that we internalize actually “rub off” from others we are exposed to; great teachers, dedicated mentors, significant role models. I can honestly say that I have not internalized any great breakthroughs in leading by studying lists or memorizing menus. It was only experiences, and deep exposure to principles in action, that ultimately converted me. So yes, masterful leadership is more caught than taught. But what’s the lesson in this for us all? To get on the path and move forward. It is only through the crucible of experience, and the good fortune to be exposed to wise teachers and mentors, that the necessary lessons will “rub off” and become authentic to who we are as leaders.
Check back next Monday for a round up of this week’s social media shares. Or check us out on Facebook,Twitter, Google+, or Pinterest to see our posts every day!
Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of August 18th
August 18, 2014 | No Comments »
The Great Chain
One of the most vital things leaders do for their groups is provide coherence; a sense of meaning, purpose, and shared intentionality connecting past, present, and future. I like to think of coherence as “the great chain”—the perennial knowledge that links and binds individuals into groups across time. There are several ways leaders can build the great chain. First, define and celebrate the group’s ethos. Ethos answers elementary questions such as who are we? What do we stand for? What do we do? Second, create a deep sense of meaning around which all tactics, techniques, procedures, and policies align. Third, clearly articulate those things which are non-negotiable. When people know and trust the enduring cornerstones of our groups, the non-negotiables, the links in the great chain become stronger, and interestingly, people don’t need to be told to keep them strong; they do so on their own accord. Leaders should focus great effort on building and maintaining the great chain—those primary and unbreakable links that create coherence, congruence, and peak experiences.
How You Knew
One thing I recall from my Philosophy 101 course in college was the term epistemology, which essentially means “how we come to see what we see.” I remember my professor saying we first had to understand how we knew, before we could ever start to understand what we knew. Why? Because we need to understand our lens—our inherent biases and preferences—which like a lens of glass will refract, magnify, or even distort what we saw. For example, this is why two politicians, one from the left and the other from the right, can look at exactly the same situation and see it two completely opposing ways. What they are seeing is objective and a matter of fact; how they are seeing it is highly subjective and not necessarily rooted in fact. As leaders, this lesson from my Philosophy professor is highly applicable. We too need to understand how we knew, and how we saw, before we can understand what we knew and what we saw. Through self awareness, reflection, and a willingness to hear truth from those around us, we can develop a truer lens, a better paradigm, to make us more effective leaders.
What Kind of Leader Do You Want To Be?
That leadership is hard, especially if pursued purposely as a master craft, is a fact. And in pursuit of masterful leadership, we often make the ends and means far too complex and technical. To gain a simpler approach to one’s paradigm, I believe answering this direct question to yourself will serve quite well for a trusty azimuth in one’s leadership journey: “What kind of leader do you want to be?” In all of us, there are two internal impulses that call to be fed; one is our higher impulses and the other is our lower impulses. Both impulses exist within each of us at all times. What differentiates great leaders from bad ones is their inner discipline to gradually honor the positive impulses and tame the lesser ones. I like this Native American Chief’s reflection on this very point, where he says “There are two dogs inside of me. One is mean spirited, angry, and petty. The other dog is positive, uplifting, and noble.” Someone then asks the Chief which dog usually wins, to which the Chief replied, “The one I feed the most.”
Holon
Holon is a Greek word meaning something that is simultaneously whole but also part of something larger. I like this holon image because I think it represents a leader with great integrity. Integrity fundamentally means wholeness of oneself; an undivided person whose interior life is fully in accord within itself and the outer world. When we say a leader has great integrity, what we mean is he or she is unbroken—there is no major schism in their personality and soul. I believe if one walked around a workplace and asked this question, “How do you describe a really great leader?”, the answers would all essentially reduce to integrity. What makes us willingly follow another is the leader’s wholeness; who they say they are, they in fact, are. And they are that same person every day. They are trustworthy, consistent, dependable, self-regulated, and accountable. So I like to remind myself of the holon–of the criticality of integrity–by reflecting on this simple question each day: “Is the person I see in the mirror each day the same person others see when they look at me each day?” It should be.
Wrestling
Every leader will face moral and ethical dilemmas in the course of their lives. We will constantly be in a wrestling match between our higher and lower impulses. Once we decide to be leaders, and live a life of leadership, inherent in our vocation is the constant reality of hard choices and vexing dilemmas. As leaders, we can’t limit or reduce these dilemmas; they are part of the geography and tapestry of leading. The best we can do, as we seek self mastery and a trusted inner compass, is to constantly remember this guiding principle: When confronted with a dilemma, choose the alternative that is the most morally demanding. Don’t settle for convenience or efficiency; chose the higher road and the harder path to ensure alignment with one’s integrity and virtue. As leaders, especially senior leaders entrusted with great responsibility, authority, and influence, we must always remember and strive to honor this maxim of leadership as expressed by others throughout history: “There is no right way to do the wrong thing.”
Check back next Monday for a round up of this week’s social media shares. Or check us out on Facebook,Twitter, Google+, or Pinterest to see our posts every day!
Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of August 11th
August 11, 2014 | No Comments »
A Still Point
A condition today’s leaders will have to confront is the widening band of white noise—distractions of all sorts—generated by technology and information systems. I like to imagine this increasing overload of information as a rapidly spinning wheel, expanding its centripetal force, creating within people feelings of disjointedness, mania, and incoherence. I believe it’s a leader’s obligation to find, in the words of T.S. Eliot, “a still point of the turning world.” The way leaders can find this still point, a trusted fulcrum, is by identifying for their groups edifying principles, unifying aspirations, givens, and yes…some timeless absolutes. Today, more than ever, we need to remind people that there are transcendent principles in leadership to which they can cohere and in which they can trust. Things like honor, courage, service, sacrifice, willing obedience, and fidelity. These absolutes help us find that still point, a place of clarity and confidence, and once found, that still point helps us maturely manage the ever-turning world.
Elders
My mother is fond of saying a person’s face and body language, later in life, start to reflect their true inner world and character. Those whom are integrated are mellow, positive, and smiling; those who are not are rigid, toxic, and frowning. At the very time in life we need them to be generative, many have actually regressed to become bitter. Yes, we do see some vibrant wise elders around, but we just don’t seem to value them. We do a lousy job of incorporating wise elders into our groups because our society values youth, good looks, and instant gratification more than it values wisdom, discernment, and the balanced mellowness of a well-lived life. So, what to do? We need to find ways to not only generate more wise elders in our society, but also seek to actively incorporate wise elders into our groups. And why is this important? Because history reminds us that no society has long endured unless elders were expected (and allowed) to pass wisdom to the young.
The Sage
I believe the definition of truly masterful leadership is when the leader becomes the lesson. In this definition, the “leader as lesson” is akin to the classic concept of the sage or wise man. Here I am not referring to a shaman or soothsayer; rather, to someone who has mastered oneself and integrated the inner and outer dimensions of life and leading. Sadly, this classic concept of the sage is diminishing in its importance and its expectation in our society. Most people today are taught that the end state of their development as a person and leader is personal success; to gain acclaim, notoriety, position, and status. That’s it—end of the road. The problem with this paradigm is it creates a population of leaders trapped in a diminished vision of thinking locally and living locally, with no elevating ambition beyond their private worlds. We need to rekindle a vision calling for leaders to break free from a self-focused paradigm of personal success and move outwards…to become seekers—and discover ways to expand their knowledge and wisdom. Sage leaders, true wise men, think globally and act locally.
The Voice of Conscience – Part 1
When we’re young and beginning as leaders we are in many ways testing ourselves–our limits, thresholds, and beliefs. In a basic sense, we mostly know right from wrong, strength from weakness, good from bad, but as a natural condition of youth, we test those boundaries. One such test is of our conscience. What is at play in these formative years, when our conscience is tested, is the making of either good or bad habits. And like any habit, habits of conscience, with practice, can be made either stronger or weaker. It’s as simple as this: We can either learn to hear the voice of conscience, or learn to ignore it. If we hear it, our conscience becomes a strong guide to elevated character, trustworthiness, and integrity. If we ignore it, we fall to the siren’s call of our lesser angels. The Jewish tradition warns of this pitfall through this wise aphorism: Bad habits enter our lives first as invited guests, before long they become family members, and ultimately—they take over the house.
The Voice of Conscience – Part II
When we wrestle with our conscience we are waging a fight to determine what kind of person we will be. In this fight, our conscience calls us to our higher self, but our ego sometimes calls us to our lesser self. This wrestling match determines which call we will honor. But in this fight we can actually lose by winning. If we determine winning to be getting what our ego wants—greed, self aggrandizement, revenge, power—then what initially feels like winning is, in the long term, losing. To really mature as individuals and leaders we actually have to lose this fight with the conscience—to not get what our ego wants and to be forced to sacrifice, and suffer, the loss of ego gratification. And in doing so, reach constantly towards our higher self. It often hurts our egos to take the high road because we don’t get what we want. But in truth, it hurts far more to take the low road. When we take the low road, we often get a prize that wasn’t truly worth gaining, or far worse, we get neither the prize nor our honor.
Check back next Monday for a round up of this week’s social media shares. Or check us out on Facebook,Twitter, Google+, or Pinterest to see our posts every day!
Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of August 4th
August 4, 2014 | No Comments »
The Power of Personal Example
Today’s reflection is short, but very important. Let’s reflect on personal example and being a model of excellence in our behavior, actions, and character. Contemplate this quote:
“Speak the language of leadership wherever you go, even use words, if absolutely necessary.”
A Confronted Life
An unfortunate but predictable problem for leaders is this: As one climbs higher-and-higher up the career ladder, one will become increasingly removed from ground truth and become more distant from close associates willing (and able) to tell the emperor he is not wearing any clothes. Senior leaders (“the boss”) can get to a point where they live a totally un-confronted life. They reach a point of seniority in which they no longer have a group of trusted, courageous companions willing to confront them, especially in areas of behavior where the boss most needs to be challenged. Sometimes this vacuum of confrontation happens insidiously; sometimes, and more worrisome, this vacuum is purposely created by bosses who themselves lack the wisdom, self regulation, and courage to receive honest feedback. The more senior the leader (General, CEO, President, etc.), the more that person needs people who can challenge and confront them. If we live an un-confronted life, like the mythic emperor with no clothing, we end up in a private fantasy, destroying ourselves and those around us.
Emerging and Merging
One of the transitions all leaders need to seek in themselves, and facilitate in their teams, is the movement from emerging to merging. Think about this fact of leadership development. In the first half of life our focus is on accumulating things: successes, victories, medals, rank, titles, certifications, badges, etc. While we are in this first stage we are trying to separate and distinguish ourselves—to stand out from the pack. We are emerging. However, as we get to mid-life, we need to navigate a vital conversion if we want to mature as leaders. We must shift from emerging to merging. Internally, we merge by becoming integrated, authentic leaders who resonate self mastery, self-awareness, and self-regulation. In terms of the groups we lead, we merge by creating a sense of community in our workplaces and by fostering deep companionship and camaraderie amongst our people. Those who navigate this change from emerging to merging become champions. Those who don’t, become bitter, toxic, and totally forgettable leaders.
Unfinished Symphonies
A fundamental truth about leadership is, we never truly gain full and complete mastery. Like Odysseus’ constant movement towards Ithaca, leaders too are essentially always on the path towards home, which is self mastery. But even as we get closer and closer to our goal, there will be times when we have to move back outwards, and inwards, to grow and climb again. Essentially, our goal may be self mastery, but we never fully get there. Yet in this endless pursuit is nobility and virtue; the journey towards heroic leadership is both necessary and our destiny. Seen this way, we must accept that in leadership, “all symphonies remain unfinished” (Karl Rahner). Why is this important for all leaders to accept? Because we need to learn to live with the tension of unfinished work and unanswered questions. Great leaders learn to hold tension; to live betwixt searching and not yet knowing, and regulate their behavior, postpone instant gratification, and allow the crucible of experience to teach them. Great leaders learn to carry tension, and thrive in spite of unfinished work.
Boundaries Are Good Mentors
One of the most essential things we can do to help mold and guide youth is to provide healthy boundaries. Today, possibly more than any other point in modern history, youth are bombarded with messages of narcissism, entitlement, celebrity, and a hedonistic worship of the self. In traditional societies throughout history, is was the role of wise elders to provide healthy boundaries for youth; to provide necessary limits, conditions, expectations, and guideposts that, over time, would move young people from their private worlds into the realm of mature, responsible adulthood. What these wise elders knew then, and what we must rediscover now, is that boundaries are good mentors. Entitlement, on the other hand, is a bad mentor; it makes us weak, brittle, and highly offended people. Boundaries teach us there are necessary limits and that these limits point us towards the center of the circle (wisdom and maturity), rather than the circumference (narcissism and selfishness). We need wise elders—heroic leaders—to set healthy boundaries to help guide the ascent of the emerging generation.
Check back next Monday for a round up of this week’s social media shares. Or check us out on Facebook,Twitter, Google+, or Pinterest to see our posts every day!