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Archive for March, 2014

Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of March 31st

March 31, 2014 | No Comments »

Falling and Rising

I often use boxing metaphors in teaching leadership, not the least of which is the image of a fighter having been knocked to the mat, confronted with the decision to either stay down or get back up. The tendency in this image is to focus only on the getting up, which is admittedly very important if one wishes to become a champion. However, what we often forget is the fall; there are lessons learned in falling down. Therefore, In this metaphor there are two equally important elements: The fall and the rise. One teaches us about descent, the other, ascent. Leaders need to perform both with courage and dignity. When we fall, we often do so because we are unprepared. Experience is like that; it provides the lesson before we are ready.  However, in the fall are often found our most important lessons. The descent is necessary to teach us how to endure the pain of the fall to open ourselves to conversion and to cultivate resilience. If we endure the pain of the fall and let it transform us, we then can rise anew as a better fighter. Both the descent and ascent are necessary to heroic leadership.

Crossing Thresholds & Rites of Passage

In the past, traditional societies knew youth would not willingly leave the nest of adolescence without being positively guided to leave their comfort zones and enter the new world of responsible adulthood. The principle way societies accomplished these threshold crossings was via rites of passage–usually involving a physical removal of the person from the old group and setting the individual on a kind of quest that would physically and emotionally signal this message: “You are leaving your old world and crossing over into a new one.” Today, we have largely forgotten the need for threshold crossings and the vital role rites of passage play in guiding young people to become mature, responsible, and accountable. In my life, Marine Boot Camp was such a rite of passage…a healthy and vibrant ritual that positively converted me and others from self-centered people into transformed leaders attuned to greater patterns of excellence and responsibility. So we must ask this question: What rites of passage can we incorporate today, in our groups, to help emerging leaders cross necessary thresholds and grow as individuals?

Right Action

Another core element of our Heroic Leadership philosophy is right action. I usually align aspiration with right action, as I think the former is the necessary first step—we must first aspire to noble purposes. But too often in leadership, people don’t follow through with the necessary next step—right action. Aspiring to great deeds without right action is folly, and ultimately, creates a hollow promise. Right action requires judgment and courage; judgment to see right from wrong, and the courage to act, even when that action is not popular or in the majority opinion. Right action is therefore a leadership habit—a personal conviction to move from thought into intentional action to affect a necessary end state. The operative word here is intentional—a conscious and deliberate action. See something that is true? Uphold it. See something wrong? Correct it. See someone who needs help? Assist them. See a mission needing to be done? Lead it. Right action is the muscle activating our purpose, vision, and convictions.

Commitment to Something Greater than Self

The fourth and final element of Heroic Leadership is commitment to something greater than self. This is the most important element because it calls on us to be utterly selfless and willing to sacrifice self gain for the greater and enduring good. This element reminds me of this fundamental truth in my life and in my leadership experiences: All great satisfaction, reward, and joy comes from group achievement, not individual achievement. For example, imagine climbing a high mountain and doing it alone. You train for weeks, make numerous attempts, and then, after many arduous trials, you finally reach the summit. You feel great, right?  Now, consider the exact same challenge only this time you are doing it with many people. Imagine reaching the summit as a group and sense how significantly different is that feeling of satisfaction, bonding, and camaraderie. Our souls are called to deep meaning. And it is leaders committed to greater goals—purposes greater than oneself– that pulls us out of our heads and into our hearts and draws us out of our private worlds and into the more heroic ambition of group achievement.

Self-Mastery – Part I

The most important component to becoming a Heroic Leader is self mastery—the constant cultivation of character, wisdom, self regulation, vitality, and effectiveness. Self mastery is the essential grounding allowing us to develop inner authority. With inner authority, we can then, and only then, truly resonate with others and exert outer influence. To remind myself of the need for self mastery, I created a model I call The Archer’s Stance. This image of a master archer, upright, centered on the target, with bow and arrow drawn and at the ready, reminds me of this truth in leadership: Great leaders, like this expert marksman, must first attend to centering themselves in order to put the arrows of affect center mass on the target. Are the quality of the bow and arrow important? Sure. But nothing will more truly dictate the quality and consistency of marksmanship than the self-mastery of the shooter. The same is true in leadership; nothing will make us more effective leaders of others, than the ability to effectively lead ourselves.

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 March 24th

March 24, 2014 | No Comments »

Ethos – Part II

Ethos provides the group what Adolf Bastian called “elementary ideas,” such as:  Who are we? Why do we exist? What do we do? And what do we stand for? The answers to these elementary ideas must be provided by the leader to the group, and must be introduced early and sustained often to create an ethos affect within the group. When leaders cultivate a vibrant ethos they create a positive binding function—an almost cellular-level knowing of the groups identity, core purpose, and guiding principles. In this way, ethos is like great poetry; it evokes deep feelings, invites movement, and galvanizes shared intent. I have found in my experience as a US Marine, an organization anchored deeply in ethos, that the stories, legends, and morals linked to ethos are heard clearly, easily, and seamlessly by every new generation that enters–because good ethos transcends time and place and represents a larger pattern of wisdom. When a group’s ethos works, which it does so well in the Corps, no one has to be told what the stories mean, what the symbols stand for, or why the traditions matter. They know, deeply and intuitively.

Heroic Performance

I believe there are two true ways to create heroic performance: (1) Great companionship or (2) great mutual sacrifice. To move out of our limited, self-centered worlds we must be forced to cross thresholds and we need crucibles to move us across those thresholds. When involved in pursuits creating genuine companionship–deep mutual affection and soulful bonds–the quality of this companionship transforms us from self-interest to group-interest. Similarly, great mutual suffering does the same thing. When groups strive together and toil together for a grand end state, and if first they fail, the suffering felt by that failure, if used positively, can also convert the group. At the heart of companionship and suffering is this common thread: Sacrifice! And it is through sacrifice that we make the experience sacred. Once rendered sacred, we are now operating on a much higher plane of performance. Does this sound like boot camp, a crucible event, or other rigorous rite of passage? It should, because it is these feelings of companionship and sacrifice that transform individuals and elevate teams from good to legendary.

Noble Purpose

One of the elements of Heroic Leadership is Noble Purpose. Purpose answers the critical “why” of our mission and objectives. Armed with purpose we can understand the end state of our aspirations and actions, which provides a compelling mental image of our group in a future context. A noble purpose is necessary to ignite passion, invite excellence, and inspire motivation because all truly noble pursuits are inherently elevating and catalytic. Humans instinctively desire to excel, strive, and be part of peak experiences; they just need to find a compelling purpose. When leaders provide their groups with a noble purpose, we move them out of their heads and into their hearts–from the circumference to the center of meaning–and call forth their highest ambitions. John Wooden, legendary coach at UCLA, was such a leader. Coach Wooden’s devotion to noble purpose, as exemplified by his life and leadership philosophy, transcended simple X’s and O’s and crossed into the realm of truly heroic leadership.

Honorable Aspiration

The second element of Heroic Leadership is Honorable Aspiration. Aspiring is about seeing; where do we need to go? What can we become? Aspiring to great deeds pulls us out of our private, selfish, and limited worlds and into heroic pursuits. High aspiration is the wellspring of peak achievement. We need honorable aspirations that stretch us, challenge us, and drive us towards excellence, mastery, and elevated performance. Noble aspirations provide this catalytic force and leaders should first instill, and then constantly reinforce, noble aspirations defining the arc of the group’s climb. But we must be forewarned of this sobering truth: this act of pursuing high aspiration requires enormous fortitude and moral courage on the part of leaders and followers alike. The silent artillery of time, as Lincoln famously said, wilts our lofty goals and tempts us to mediocrity if we are not resolute. We owe it to ourselves and those we lead to remain always honorable and aspiring, and thus, inspiring, in our leadership.

The Apprentice’s Mind

I am constantly reminded the most important component to great leadership is one’s paradigm. Yes, seeing correctly. We must therefore develop a clear lens through which to view ourselves, our leadership, and the role we play in the groups we lead. In our modern world, so consumed by present-tense living and sensory overload, we desperately need to develop disciplines within ourselves, and within our groups, to help us to know how to see, how to listen, and, most importantly—what is worth seeing. To create and sustain this heroic leadership paradigm, I believe we must have what I call the apprentice’s mind—the capacity to be devoted to acquiring mastery while also acknowledging we are constantly in beta: always developing and growing. We must keep an open mind and to retain a bias for learning. Heroic leadership is a master craft, and we—master craftsmen. To excel, we must be at once both master and apprentice, and constantly clean the lens of our leadership paradigm to see in noble, honorable, intentional, and elevating ways.

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 March 17th

March 17, 2014 | No Comments »

The Leader as Learner – Part I

I often refer to leadership as a master craft, and heroic leaders as a master craftsman. I do this to remind myself that, like all other pursuits of mastery, leadership is a life-long  journey in which we never stop honing our craft. Therefore, leaders should never think of themselves as a finished product; we must remain students of leadership, stay fully open to new knowledge, and seek wisdom  by availing ourselves to a broad spectrum of experiences. When I reflect on heroic leaders of the past such as Lincoln, Jefferson, T.E. Lawrence, Churchill, and Gandhi to name a few, they all shared these two attributes in common: (1) An unquenchable curiosity, and (2) a bias for learning and understanding. Moreover, their curiosity and passion for learning never waned during their lives. They constantly renewed themselves, renovated their vision, and courageously converted themselves into more wise and effective leaders. When leaders personally model a passion for learning, they in turn create organizations with a similar passion to learn and grow—the true wellspring of enduring excellence.

The Leader as Learner – Part II

To effectively become students of leadership, and to grow as heroic leaders, we must embrace the crucial need to create quiet time and solitude to read, reflect, and discern. Our society often down plays the need for solitude because we erroneously equate busyness with productivity and effectiveness. We think: The busier we are, the more we must be getting done. Wrong! Busyness is a chimera, and being trapped in the chaos of busyness is the antithesis of great leadership. Great leaders, therefore, must discipline themselves to balance “to do” with “to learn.” In doing so, great leaders apportion time and energy to reading, learning, and thinking; they find a place of solitude to disengage from the work-a-day world; and they consider quiet time not only sacred but essential to remaining vital in their lives and in their leadership. Heroic leadership is a marathon, not a sprint; our objective is to be effective across time and to retain a consistent and dependable positive vitality across a broad arc of engagement.

The Leader as Cultivator – Part I

We’ve come to model organizational dynamics off an industrial model: Linear, production based,  predictable. This is a faulty paradigm. Most organizations are more like ecosystems than industrial plants. Like ecosystems, most organizations are highly dynamic, multi-layered and multi-dimensional, have key thresholds and tipping points at the boundaries and core of the group, and are highly sensitive to internal and external changes. Seen as ecosystems, we then correctly understand one of our key leadership roles is that of cultivator. And there are two cultivation zones we must address.  At the sub-surface zone lies ethos and cornerstone…the deep perennial knowledge, communal bonds, and non-negotiable principles linking generation to generation. The above-surface zone contains things like culture, climate, and atmosphere. Each of these zones must be intentionally cultivated, groomed, and tended by leaders with equal care and commitment. So goes the maxim that ancient cultivators knew so well that today it has become axiomatic: You reap what you sow.

The Leader as Cultivator – Part II

In the last post we discussed the reason why leaders must embrace the role of cultivator. Today, we’ll reflect on some of the characteristics of a well-cultivated group, be that a family, sports team, company, city, or society.  Here are some characteristics I believe reflect a well, and perpetually cultivated, group:

• Vibrant ethos
• Unity of purpose and shared intent
• Self-policed behavior
• Shared and vigorously upheld standards
• Attention to small details
• Regularly celebrated customs, courtesies, and traditions
• Esprit, elan, and companionship
• Mutual affection and trust
• Dependability and repeatability

Ethos – Part I

Ethos—a Greek word meaning “the character or essential spirit of a people”– remains for me the most important determinant of enduring organizational excellence.  With a thriving ethos, organizations thrive, remain vibrant, and effectively pass knowledge from generation to generation. Without a thriving ethos, organizations atrophy, recede, and die. Therefore, a cardinal obligation of all leaders is to understand the ethos of their group, cultivate it within their sphere of influence, and create mechanisms to sustain it. When present, ethos puts us in accord with the world we live—it provides the necessary defining answers that tell us of who we are, why we exist, and what we do. Ethos provides continuity between past, present, and future–a guiding path for both the individual and the group. Like the root system of a healthy tree, a thriving ethos provides positive energy, elementary information, and coherence. And like water tiding to the moon, ethos pulls us out of our selfish, private worlds into the far more rewarding realm of group affiliation, obligation, and the greater patterns of excellence.

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 March 10th

March 10, 2014 | No Comments »

The Leader as Communicator – Part II

There is such as thing as the language of leadership—a vocabulary peculiar to great leaders and necessary to unleash championship performance. One good way to understand the language of leadership is to understand what it is not: it is the opposite of technical or bureaucratic language.   Technical or bureaucratic language (think here of those long mission statements or multi-page policy letters) are overly passive, impersonal, and burdened with complex terminology and techno-babble that neither inspire heroic action nor create a sense of ownership (beyond the person who drafted them). Conversely, the language of leadership uses basic conversational tones; speaks in the active voice; and is highly personal and contextual. The language of leadership uses stories, parables, metaphors, and analogies to create vivid mental images listeners can relate to deeply and feel intuitively. The language of leadership connects the listener to outcomes worth the effort of pursuing.

The Leader as a Beacon – Part I

Because heroic leaders focus on significance as the end state of their leadership, they become beacons to those they lead—true examples of expert leadership. Like a lighthouse on a high cliff, these leader’s example shines through the chaos of the daily grind, pierces the fog of an uncertain future, and elevates above the banal politics of petty cultures. As beacons, heroic leaders stand steadfast as examples of excellence regardless of time, circumstance, convenience, or political correctness. Leaders become trustworthy beacons of excellence by transforming their leadership fulcrum from technical expertise (TE) to emotional intelligence (EQ). Yes, early in our careers we need a firm grounding in cognitive intelligence and TE; however, as we expand our leadership frontage we must move beyond purely threshold technical capabilities and learn to master ourselves. If we are able to successfully navigate this movement from TE to EQ, then we’ll become that resolute beacon, that vital example, because we’ll be firmly grounded in self control, self regulation, and resonant social skills.

The Leader as a Beacon – Part II

One might ask: What if I don’t seek to master myself and move from technical expertise towards the higher ground of emotional intelligence? What’s the harm if I don’t become that beacon of excellence? The answer is simple and stark: You will fail yourself, and you will fail those you lead. As documented by Daniel Goleman’s research on this topic, leaders who failed to navigate the transition to emotional intelligence failed because of self inflicted “fatal flaws.”  Like the blind spots on a vehicle moving down a busy highway, fatal flaws prevent leaders from successfully projecting resonant leadership because they destroy the trust and deep bonds necessary for championship performance. Leaders with emotional intelligence nurture things like camaraderie, companionship, mutual affection, and esprit; leaders without emotional intelligence destroy them. And as Goleman also documented, the two primary fatal flaws that ruin such leaders are rigidity (inability to adapt) and poor relations (alienated their teams).

The Leader as an Architect – Part I

It’s essential that leaders first focus on mastering themselves and developing their vision; however, we must then shift focus to execution: How do we realize our plan? How do we make it stick? It’s a mistake to focus only on vision and forget the concrete actions needed to materialize end states. When we move to creating execution plans, we are now moving into the realm of management. Here a leader operates somewhat like an architect, creating the blue print and mechanism to build an organization to last. We begin by properly seeing the organization as a “system of systems,” an ecosystem, comprised of three core elements: (1) an ethos (culture, climate, atmosphere), (2) authority (allocation of responsibility), and (3) technical elements (policy and procedures). As an ecosystem, each of these three elements has its own nature but the entire ecosystem must be understood and managed as a whole. The key architectural action is this: Create mechanisms to measure the entire organization, and create mechanisms that endure. People will leave, mechanisms endure.

The Leader as an Architect – Part II

Previously, we talked about leaders creating mechanisms to measure the entire organization’s health, vitality, and readiness. Why is that vital? Because teams don’t last; people will move on. Moreover, we never want to build an organization reliant solely on one individual leader. Yes, great leaders make a difference, often profound differences; however, organizations dependent upon a single great leader will likely atrophy and collapse once that leader departs if mechanisms are not built to effectively enable succession, knowledge transfer, organizational resiliency, and the creation of internal talent pools of younger leaders ready to assume the mantle of leadership. Enduring excellence cannot rest solely on the back of a single charismatic leader. To ensure a single leader doesn’t ultimately become a single point of failure, we must create, and then align, mechanisms to sustain our ethos, constantly renew the allocation of authority, and adapt technical policies and procedures to agilely respond to change.

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 March 3rd

March 3, 2014 | No Comments »

The Leader as a Visionary – Part III

Once leaders develop their vision they must then turn to implementation. The first consideration is this:  Effective visions, in action, are more dreams to “be something” than to “do something,” and in activating these dreams, leaders should first target a critical mass of followers that can exert positive influence on the larger group. All groups contain key influencers; those people to whom others naturally turn for advice, counsel, and direction. If leaders can engage with and harness this critical mass of people, these champions of change, then the likely result is high peer-level coordination —what I call peer production—creating a contagion effect and positive momentum within the larger group. Once positive momentum is established, then the leader must focus on four actions to fully operationalize the vision: (1) Galvanize the vision (make it stick); (2) Manage resistance to change; (3) institutionalize the change via mechanisms; and (4) lead the way by personally modeling the vision.

The Leader as a Mentor

All great societies throughout history have had at their core a cadre of wise elders intentionally serving as mentors to the younger generation. Classic mentoring was seen as a way of life, not simply an act; a deep personal conviction—a sacred obligation—to obtain mastery and then give it away freely for the benefit of others and for the enduring elevation of the group. Mentoring is thus the essential means through which deep perennial knowledge is passed from generation-to-generation and the mechanism through which communal roots are established. In this sense, the mentor and the protégé become a braided cord, where the development, growth, and excellence of the protégé is seen to be a direct refection on the quality of the Mentor. A classic mentor serves as advisor, champion, guide, and teacher. Great leaders must fully embrace their role as mentor and create for their people opportunities to practice leadership, prepare for increased responsibility, and grow as responsible citizens.

The Leaders as an Adapter – Part I

A mistake leaders often make is thinking of change as an event, or thinking of change as simply a future planning component that can somehow be isolated from the present. A better metaphor for change is to picture a boat riding on a swift-running river, with a helmsman at the rudder of the boat. The river represents change: It is ever-present, constantly rolling, and always moving forward. The boat represents the organization, and the helmsman the leader. We cannot do anything to alter the nature of the river; however, can learn to build better helmsmen and better boats. We do this is by developing leaders and organizations who are comfortable with uncertainty and learn to master adaptation. Adaptation is a mindset in which one correctly understands and accepts the ever-present and uncertain nature of change. Adaptation is also a habit where leaders purposely develop hardiness and resilience in themselves and their groups which, like an immune system, enable us  to “bounce back” when change occurs–yet still retain our cohesion, integrity, and core purpose.

The Leader as an Adapter – Part II

Leadership author Steven Covey used the image of a group assigned the mission of cutting through a dense jungle, and the need for the leader of that group to remain above the tree line to properly maintain a leader’s perspective. Covey’s metaphor illustrates a leader’s need to adapt; to keep our attention “above the tree line” in order to sense and detect change, and more importantly, to make necessary course corrections. Sensing and detecting are attributes allowing the leader to assess current conditions while also making the necessary corrections to our course, such as speed, azimuth, and tempo. For leaders to effectively adapt we must learn to scan our environment and pay attention to context. Leaders must avoid the temptation to stare at data and fixate on mind-numbing metrics, for in doing so, they risk becoming change blind. If  leaders condition themselves to constantly scan and pay attention to changes in context, they will create an agile, flexible, and resilient organization capable of aligning inputs to end states, and outputs to course corrections.

The Leader as a Communicator – Part I

Communicating is one of the key distinguishing qualities of great leaders. It is through communicating our vision, our purpose, and our aspirations that leaders create deep resonance with their people and galvanize unity within the group. Like a great melody, communicating with others should touch people deep in their hearts and souls and result in genuine commitment. And in constructing that melody, leaders should always seek to strike these three chords: who, what, and why. When leaders communicate answers to who, what, and why, they help move people from purely transactional, tit-for-tat thinking into a more expansive communal feeling characterized by esprit, camaraderie,  and mutual affection. When communicating, I believe we must always start with hearts before minds by creating mental imagery depicting a mission that is elevating and an atmosphere producing peak experiences.These are the qualities creating champions. And when we communicate, we must do so live, on stage, and in person, enabling our people to see our authenticity, our trustworthiness, and our vitality.

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!