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Archive for July, 2015

Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of July 27th

July 27, 2015 | No Comments »

Why Ethos is the Key to Organizational Excellence

Ethos is a Greek word meaning “the essential character or spirit of a group.” Ethos is the deep perennial knowledge and communal roots that define the spirit of a people. Ethos is what is passed from generation to generation to form a deep sense of common identity, common purpose, and common reference. When alive and thriving, ethos provides to the group answer to these three elementary question: Who are we? What do we do? What do we stand for? Ethos is akin to the underground root system of a tree, in that ethos is the life-blood and wellspring of the organization’s enduring health, vitality, and resilience. When ethos is built and sustained by leaders, ethos protects the organization from living solely in a present-tense culture, allowing the organization to feel its past in the wind while confidently looking forward towards the future. Ethos is a affect image…touching hearts and souls in a deep and powerful way, and as such ethos instructs, informs, galvanizes, and reinforces cultural expectations and aspirations..

Heroic Leaders Embrace Paradox

Leadership is a master craft, and like all master crafts, gaining true excellence in leadership requires embracing paradox. Not everything about leadership is linear or simple. Heroic leaders, in mastering themselves and gaining true inner authority, have to accept and internalize leadership paradoxes such as these:

To get, you must give
To excel, you must release power
To speed up, you must slow down
To lead others, you must master yourself
To win, you must occasionally fail
To detect, you must reflect
To integrate, you must disintegrate
To get hard results, you must master soft skills
The higher you go, the less you need to know (technically)

Heroic Leaders Avoid the Slippery Slope

Like Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, all leaders will occasionally be lured by the siren’s call to the shores of ignoble behavior. It is tempting to follow the siren’s call and step onto the slippery slope towards our lesser ambitions, and when we do, we end up crashing on the shore and shipwrecking our integrity, our honor, and our trustworthiness. When leaders step on the slippery slope, they fall prey to these toxic mindsets and behaviors:

Convenience
Instant Gratification
Victimization
Cynicism
Rights without Responsibility
Entitlement without Sacrifice

Like Odysseus before us, we must lash ourselves to the mast of moral courage, avoid the slippery slope, and chart a wiser course to uphold our integrity and our honor.

Heroic Leaders Understand the Necessity of “No”

Like the mythic Pandora, leaders often mistake success as saying “yes” to everything. And like Pandora, when leaders lift the lid of the box and say “yes” to everything, they unleash a torrent of unfocused tasks and misguided energy that results in chaos and confusion. Why do leaders often fall prey to this Pandora effect and focus on doing more and more and more? Because of the chimera of activity and business! When leaders perceive busyness, they automatically correlate that busyness to production and effectiveness, which is often the opposite of what is actually achieved. Busyness and unfocused energy creates dissipation, not focus! Heroic leaders therefore understand the necessity of saying “no.” Heroic leaders must discipline themselves, and their organization, to focus on their ethos, their core strategy, and their ultimate end states, and say “no” to things that do not align with these core purposes. Great leaders instill in themselves and their organizations a willingness to ask these crucial questions: What should we stop doing? What should we never do? In this way, leaders foster a discipline for “no” and create healthy mechanisms for removal.

Heroic Leaders Know Honor is Worth More than Glory

Heroic Leaders know that when honor is abandoned for personal glory, convenience, instant gratification, or self-gain, that loss of honor becomes a fatal wound, seriously diminishing the leaders trustworthiness. Conversely, Heroic Leaders know that when honor is upheld during trying times, that act is galvanizing and reinforcing of the leader’s trustworthiness. When we abandon honor we descend, when we uphold honor we elevate. Seen this way, honorable behavior relies on moral courage. Moral courage reminds us of this eternal maxim: The more it costs us to defend and uphold, the more it is worth! Honor can be an inconvenient thing, as honor requires leaders to see beyond the moment, to reach beyond personal glory, to refuse the temptation of instant gratification, and avoid the well-worn path of convenience. To remind ourselves of the value of personal honor, and the necessity of moral courage in upholding our honor, we should always remember these facts: (1) You won’t recognize honor if you don’t practice it; and (2) you can’t expect honor from others if you don’t model it yourself. Honor requires the leader to apply judgment, and in doing so, choosing elevating over descending.

The Callan Course is Featured in the California Business Journal

July 24, 2015 | No Comments »

Paul was recently interviewed by the California Business Journal regarding The Callan Course. This article gives some great insight into how Paul started the course, how the Callan Course works, and why others enjoy it and find it so valuable.

You can read the whole article here: http://calbizjournal.com/thecallancourse/

Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of July 20th

July 20, 2015 | No Comments »

Heroic Leaders Surround Themselves with Strong Teammates

When reflecting on the mythic image of King Arthur and his famed Knights, the image of the Round Table comes to mind. As its name implies, the Round Table at which Arthur and his Knights met had no designated head, implying that everyone assembled had equal honor, a valued voice, and an obligation to contribute. This obligation to be present, to think and act, and to value strong teammates, was considered the highest order of chivalry at King Arthur’s Court. As modern leaders, we too should possess the strength of character to seek out, and welcome, strong teammates. Attracting strong teammates requires us to have an abundance mindset where we are not afraid of others’ strengths; where we are willing to share credit and good fortune. Additionally, attracting strong teammates helps us hear contrarian voices and not fall prey to group think. Strong teammates, welcomed to our own Round Tables, help us avoid blind spots in our personal thinking.

Heroic Leaders Embrace Intuition

The acme of battlefield generalship, most often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, is the term coup d’oeil, which means the “power of the glance.” A general with coup d’oeil can arrive at a battle, observe the emerging conditions and situation, and trusting his well-honed instincts, plan his strategy intuitively. It isn’t that facts or intelligence aren’t important, they are. However, the dynamism and fluidity of the battlefield demand agile, integrated, and rapid “deep knowing.” Modern Leaders must learn to hone and trust our intuitions too, because there is no such thing as certainty in leading. The only exact science is retrospect. Our modern world prizes complex analysis, as if complex analysis automatically equates to deep knowing. Too often, complex analysis results only in decision-making paralysis. So what is intuition? It is pattern recognition! Once a leader detects a pattern, he must trust his rapid cognition, and decide intuitively. Heroic Leaders know, and value, the power of the glance.

Heroic Leaders Speak the Language of Leadership

Communicating–deeply connecting to and resonating with others—is the key distinction between great leadership and basic management. Heroic Leaders understand they must first speak to hearts before they try to appeal to minds, and in connecting with hearts, leaders must provide answers to these three elementary questions: Who? What? and Why? Armed with answers to those three questions, followers will naturally activate their inner motivation, unleash their passion, and rally to noble purposes. The language of leadership has a unique style using basic conversational tones, an active voice, and a personal and clear delivery. The language of leadership avoids tech-speak and mind-numbing bureaucratic jargon. Heroic leaders make extensive use of metaphors, parables, and stories to paint mental pictures and to portray galvanizing end states. The language of leadership gets us out of our heads and into our hearts—the source of all championship performance.

Manufacturing Wins and Leveraging Success

Great leaders create positive momentum for their teams. Be they in sports, business, or the local community, great leaders create opportunities for “small wins” and, once achieved, the leader publically celebrates these team achievements to create a centrifugal force of positive energy, optimism, and confidence. In this sense, great leaders serve as catalysts—or maestros—orchestrating wins by expertly applying pace, flow, and tempo. When leaders manufacture wins and leverage success in this way, they create an organizational affect we can think of as “patterns of achievement.” This is what in sports is often referred to as “learning how to win.” Once we master a pattern of success, we come to expect it, and we know how to achieve it. Success, like heroic leadership itself, is both a mindset and a habit. By paying attention to small things and small rules, great leaders create a rising tide of success. Why? Because great leaders understand that the accumulation of small things, done well, has big consequences!

Heroic Leaders Focus on Virtues

I find it compelling (and telling) that Aesop’s Fables, written by an ancient Greek who lived in the 6th century BC, remain so relevant today. I believe Aesop’s Fables endure, even in our modern world, because Aesop wrote principally about virtues, not values. There is nothing wrong with values, per se; however, values tend to be of thinner substance than virtues. Values can be situational, relative, and easily won or abandoned. Think of it: Anyone can have values, even criminals, gangs, and despots. Virtues are sturdier because virtues require personal judgment; often require personal sacrifice and moral courage to uphold; take time to master and turn into habits; and point to timeless wisdom anchored in humanity’s most noble aspirations. By anchoring ourselves on classic virtues such as honor, courage, service, wisdom, altruism, and merit, these virtues help form a sturdy bulwark against what Lincoln called “the silent artillery of time” and thus help us stand most upright when times get tough.

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