“Recruiting Is Back”

It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the gains realized from the additional productivity of the post-meltdown workforce have been maxed-out. In addition, the culture as a whole has begun to adapt to a smaller and less acquisitive lifestyle and, consequently, the consumer is coming out of the closet, albeit somewhat battered and traumatized, but ready to risk spending again. The combination of these forces is creating a demand for more workers, and for better run, more efficient, more focused, and more competitive businesses. As you look to add more people to your organization, keep the following in mind:

> You will need to recruit people who are capable of doing more than working hard, following orders, and being loyal, in the traditional sense.

> You will need to identify people who like to learn; who are attracted to growth; and who are willing to be developed, personally and professionally.

> Your assessment process will need to be radically transformed and re-done. It will need to focus on who the candidates are; not simply what they’ve done.

> The fulcrum of this new process is the “Deep Dive” interview that zeros in on feeling data, not task data.

> The “Deep Dive” interview is designed to be highly interactive, rich with real-time feedback, challenging, and uncomfortable.

> There will be plenty of people to interview. Most of them will not interest you, primarily because they ceased to interest their former employers.

> We are now living in an “American Idolized” culture. Everyone is a performer and has developed the ability to look good and have the “right” answers. If you don’t drill down, you’ll get snookered (no pun intended).

> You are now interviewing for values match and for specific personal characteristics.

> The traditional behavioral interview, as well as standardized testing, is of very limited value. They lack the challenge, the feedback, and the evocation of bottom-line feelings that give you the data you need to make a decision.

> Don’t tolerate being stonewalled. If most of the answers to your questions are “conversation killers” (monosyllabic, short, clipped responses), confront it right away. Either it changes, or the interview is over.

> Don’t ask open-ended questions. It rewards wandering and undermines your credibility.

> No note-taking during an interview. Neither you nor the candidate. Write down your strongest impressions after the candidate leaves. If you don’t remember anything significant, you either have your answer, or you’re struggling with early dementia.

> Don’t ever let “throw-away” remarks go (i.e. “You know how bosses are …”). They always represent a statement about one’s core values.

> Don’t sell the opportunity. Your style of interviewing should either compel or repel the candidate. Either way, you both win.

> Pay a lot of attention to whether or not the candidate answers the questions you asked. If not, deal with it right there.

> Conducting an interview is like riding an emotional roller coaster. Pay attention to your tummy. Were there more ups or more downs?

> Know your own triggers. What kind of response is likely to cause you to overreact and reach a conclusion that has more to do with you than with the candidate?

> Risk early. Nothing creates trust quicker than honest feelings and feedback from the interviewer, right from the start.

Posted in Articles, Uncategorized Tagged with: , ,

January 2011

The New Year starts out, for me, with a number of new ventures and adventures. As many of you are already aware, I recently completed a unique learning project with two friends and colleagues – Frank Sarr and John Stout. Frank and John are the two principals of Training Implementation Services, in Granby, CT. Frank has developed a training delivery system which, I believe, will become, in fairly short order, the dominant learning technology in information driven cultures. It employs the internet, without a mind numbing webinar. It employs interactive, personal coaching, without the expense and interruptions of the traditional model. And most significantly, from my perspective, it is built on the overriding premise that training and learning is only of value if it is usable and actually used by the learner. TIS insures this through the use of their certification session – a one-on-one telephonic interaction that requires the learner to organize and prioritize the salient material and demonstrate its utility in their real-life professional roles.

My first partnership with TIS has revolved around the material I’ve developed on recruiting and selection. In particular, it focuses on identifying people who have the greatest chance of bringing value to 21st century enterprises, and on an interviewing methodology that zeros in on who the candidate is, and not simply what they’ve done. This “deep dive” interview eliminates ambivalence and leaves both interviewer and candidate with a certainty about their decisions.

The program is called “Picking Winners and Keepers” and is six weeks in length. The only things that are scheduled are the four coaching calls and the certification session. No one has to travel anywhere, and all that the participants need is a computer and a phone. Frank, John, and myself (along with TIS’s amazing instructional designers) worked on the program for the greater part of last year, and I’m very proud of the finished product. The following links will take you to a brief video summary of the program and give you details on how to sign up for it:

http://performancecounts.com/pickingwinners/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m73udgWThaM

The other venture has an element of déjà vu about it. I’ve established a relationship with the MBA program at the University of Montana and have become a member of the adjunct faculty. (My first real “job”, forty-four years ago, was as a college teacher at Drake University.) I’ve already taught one course and enjoyed it thoroughly. In addition, I’m working with the Business School to expand its offerings in executive education. We’ve designed a unique experience for the summer of 2011 (mid-June) that will involve a heavy-duty, interactive learning component (facilitated by yours truly) and an immersion in Montana’s fantastic recreational opportunities (riding, rafting, fly-fishing, hiking, and exploring the area.) We’ll be using the facilities of the University, as well as those of a nearby ranch.

The program is designed for people with real-life work experience (3-5 years, minimum), preferably in a managerial or executive role, who want to significantly raise the bar and take their career to the next level. This will not be your typical continuing education course. You will learn how to become an exceptional leader, in your own life, and in the lives of those around you. As soon as all the details are nailed down, I’ll get them to you.

The third initiative for the year is a new book. I’m very pleased to be collaborating with a great friend and colleague – Scott Martineau – on a provocative, no BS, work that will clear out the clutter and nonsense surrounding the prevailing “wisdom” of how people achieve success. Scott is an experienced business person, a coach and mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, a bestselling author (of “The Power of You”), and the founder and CEO of ConsciousOne.com, one of the best and largest personal growth and development websites in the world.

The premise of the book is simple and straightforward: The only thing that is going to cure the economic malaise we find ourselves in is an infusion and proliferation of entrepreneurial, highly successful business people. Government, at all levels, is clueless. Intellectuals have no experience at running any real world enterprise. And traditional corporate types are freaked out by the unpredictability and ubiquitous instability of the new global economy. The problem, however, is that the information about how to become successful is riddled with nonsense, mythology, and 30,000 foot slogans that no one knows how to implement.

The book is tentatively titled, “The Ten Great Lies of Success”, and is focused on those myths that derail people the most and do the greatest damage. I’ll keep you in the loop as the book takes shape and reaches fruition.

“Resist The Urge To Be Ordinary”
Anonymous

As I indicated in last November’s newsletter, all the sections of this year’s newsletter will be shorter. A whole myriad of reasons dictates this: Feedback from readers; my involvement in a number of new ventures (detailed above); and my frustration at giving away long and exhaustive chunks of intellectual property for nothing. When I figure out how to monetize the latter (and get more comfortable with the new ventures), I may return to the old format.
________________________________________

Business Tips

“Recruiting Is Back”

It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the gains realized from the additional productivity of the post-meltdown workforce have been maxed-out. In addition, the culture as a whole has begun to adapt to a smaller and less acquisitive lifestyle and, consequently, the consumer is coming out of the closet, albeit somewhat battered and traumatized, but ready to risk spending again. The combination of these forces is creating a demand for more workers, and for better run, more efficient, more focused, and more competitive businesses. As you look to add more people to your organization, keep the following in mind:

> You will need to recruit people who are capable of doing more than working hard, following orders, and being loyal, in the traditional sense.
> You will need to identify people who like to learn; who are attracted to growth; and who are willing to be developed, personally and professionally.
> Your assessment process will need to be radically transformed and re-done. It will need to focus on who the candidates are; not simply what they’ve done.
> The fulcrum of this new process is the “Deep Dive” interview that zeros in on feeling data, not task data.
> The “Deep Dive” interview is designed to be highly interactive, rich with real-time feedback, challenging, and uncomfortable.
> There will be plenty of people to interview. Most of them will not interest you, primarily because they ceased to interest their former employers.
> We are now living in an “American Idolized” culture. Everyone is a performer and has developed the ability to look good and have the “right” answers. If you don’t drill down, you’ll get snookered (no pun intended).
> You are now interviewing for values match and for specific personal characteristics.
> The traditional behavioral interview, as well as standardized testing, is of very limited value. They lack the challenge, the feedback, and the evocation of bottom-line feelings that give you the data you need to make a decision.
> Don’t tolerate being stonewalled. If most of the answers to your questions are “conversation killers” (monosyllabic, short, clipped responses), confront it right away. Either it changes, or the interview is over.
> Don’t ask open-ended questions. It rewards wandering and undermines your credibility.
> No note-taking during an interview. Neither you nor the candidate. Write down your strongest impressions after the candidate leaves. If you don’t remember anything significant, you either have your answer, or you’re struggling with early dementia.
> Don’t ever let “throw-away” remarks go (i.e. “You know how bosses are …”). They always represent a statement about one’s core values.
> Don’t sell the opportunity. Your style of interviewing should either compel or repel the candidate. Either way, you both win.
> Pay a lot of attention to whether or not the candidate answers the questions you asked. If not, deal with it right there.
> Conducting an interview is like riding an emotional roller coaster. Pay attention to your tummy. Were there more ups or more downs?
> Know your own triggers. What kind of response is likely to cause you to overreact and reach a conclusion that has more to do with you than with the candidate?
> Risk early. Nothing creates trust quicker than honest feelings and feedback from the interviewer, right from the start.
________________________________________

Political and Cultural Observations

“The Tragedy In Tucson”

The horrendous shooting in Arizona brought out the usual cries for pre-emptive detention and gun control. What was interesting to me, was the muted tone of the ideological and political debate, and the quite heated (and, at times, hysterical) quality of the blame-game around who incited a demented lunatic to murder innocent people who were in the wrong place at the worst possible time.

I think, in fact, the blame-game surrounding the killer’s motivation was a convenient distraction from a very troubling issue which has been crystallized by the debate over Obamacare. The debate is making it clearer and clearer that Federal intervention and centralized “solutions” to societal problems come at a very high price – the least of which is financial. What is dawning on people is the realization that the overriding question is not, can we provide healthcare (or other “solutions” to human needs and problems) to everyone; but, what’s the cost, non-monetarily, of doing so? It is sobering and stunning to realize that we have reached the point, in our political evolution, wherein the Federal government has subsumed the right and the power to force individuals to buy something they may or may not want or need. This is the quintessential example of the expansion of rights to one group, coming at the expense of other groups. This is the slipperiest of slopes, and has rarely, if ever, led to a salutary outcome.

Pain and madness come with freedom. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, this is still news to many folks. There was, and there is, absolutely no way of preventing the Loughner’s of the world from wantonly killing and maiming perfectly innocent people – without destroying the very freedoms that underpin and distinguish our culture. One of the hallmarks of our society is the privilege and ability to think, speak, and act as bizarrely and crazily as you like, as long as you fail to breach the criminal code. Most Americans are unaware of how unique this is to our country, and are often surprised to hear that one of our fellow Western democracies (like the UK) has banned someone from entering the country, or detained someone within the country, for fear of what they’ve said, or could say.

Early in my clinical career, I (along with a number of other therapists) fought to re-write the involuntary commitment laws. Up until that point, the mental health bureaucracy and the “mental hospitals” were nothing more than extensions of the criminal justice system, without the benefit of constitutional protections against false imprisonment. You could be committed with the flimsiest of “evidence” and you could be kept there for a very long time. All it took was for you to act sufficiently disturbing and upset the people around you. So when people ask why Loughner was not detained and “treated”, they have no idea of the implications of what they’re suggesting, and what a nightmarish Pandora’s box they’d be opening, again.

One more point about pain and freedom. If you’ve encountered and dealt with madness, as I have in my clinical career and my extensive travels, you learn something early on. It is irrelevant, to a madman, what instruments of violence are available. If we’ve learned anything from Islamo-Facist Terrorists, we’ve seen that as soon as we cut off access to one instrument of terrorism and violence, they create another one. If Loughner had no access to a handgun, he would have stabbed people. If he couldn’t get a knife (or it wouldn’t allow him to do as much damage as he planned), he’d strap dynamite to his body, and on and on and on.

What we are left grappling with is the elemental and primal question of our time. Is freedom the most important value of our culture; and is it worth the pain and madness that can accompany it? This is the question we all need to answer.
________________________________________

Personal Notes

“What Happened To Deep Introspection?”

As I get older, I’m aware of experiencing nostalgia; but not for the typical things that I hear my peers talk about. I have no desire to live in the way I did growing up. Living with 50 relatives around all the time was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I don’t miss Chicago, Ann Arbor, Los Angeles, or England. I learned a lot in those places, but no place felt like home, until we got to Montana. And as much as I bitch and complain about technology, I love how it’s enhanced my life. Every time I get in my car, I am blown away by what a kick it is to drive and work everything it does. I am additionally, acutely aware, that without the airline industry (with whom I have a classical love-hate relationship), I would not have had the career I have loved and valued for the past three decades.

What I do miss is how people work on themselves, these days. When Arleah and I were getting our psychotherapy training and beginning our practices, most of the people we knew, personally and professionally, were in some form of therapy. And of those people, it was rare for anyone to be seeing their therapist less than once a week. Many people had twice weekly sessions, and a number of colleagues and friends were in four days a week psychoanalysis. When I decided that I had gained everything I was going to get from my psychoanalytic therapy and moved on to Primal Therapy, I would go to two or three groups a week, when I was not traveling. (Primal utilized an atypical model, involving scheduled groups that allow you to work on issues in a self-regulating manner.)

Frequency, though, is not the fundamental difference that I miss. What has most significantly changed is the role that personal work, growth, and development plays in people’s lives, and the depth to which it is pursued. The culture we grew up in, at work and at home, was certainly concerned with results and goals; but clearly in a secondary role. What people talked about and shared a lot, was their journey – what they were learning about themselves, their interpersonal history, and how their past was shaping and influencing their present and their future. We had the time and the opportunity to do this – we lived in a much less competitive culture, and we had profoundly less information to manage and impact us. We wanted to accomplish things and get somewhere in our lives, but the assumption we operated on, was quite different than now. Our goals didn’t have to be met tomorrow, and they would be met best, if we thoroughly understood how and why we were getting there.

The internet, specifically, and the explosion of information, generally, changed everything. They have created superheated competition, a busier and more demanding personal life (often more frenetic), and a bottom-line orientation to all facets of our lives. I don’t particularly bemoan or resent this. I like aspects of it, and I find other parts of it emotionally empty and without meaning. But be that as it may, it has changed our personal and professional lives.

By and large, the people that Arleah and I work with want to know what to do differently. They are not terribly interested in why they currently do what they do, and what internal obstacles they face in making needed changes. It is a fair and reasonable question, and we can certainly answer it. For most of them, the answer will help them, and will make some changes in their work and personal lives. Will it make all the changes it could, and at a very deep level? Probably not. But that’s our issue, not theirs.

Both Arleah and I have made some significant adaptations to our “bottom-line” culture. As Arleah puts it, we have shifted from a society of human beings, to a society of human doings. At times, we have struggled with the shift, and at other times, it’s been perfectly fine. For me, I have no problem telling people what to do. I grew up with it, and I think it’s a part of my DNA. I’ve also learned a lot about being more structured, which, I have no doubt, has been of benefit to many of my clients. (My son, David, has been instrumental in helping me along this path.)

Finally, I think that what I’ve been through, in managing these profound changes in my life, have given me an appreciation for the humongous changes that people all around me have been going through. It keeps me current and prepared for what’s yet to come.

Morrie

Posted in Newsletters, Uncategorized

Fear and Loathing at the Water Cooler

Fear and Loathing at the Water Cooler: 5 Ways to Counter the Recession Related Employee Underground of Anxiety, Aggression, and Shame

If you’ve noticed employees behaving oddly these days, it’s probably not your imagination. Two things are happening with the workforce that are undeniable and that demand different strategies and reactions from business leaders at all levels.

Employees are scared. They’re afraid of their companies failing, of losing their jobs, their homes, and everything they’ve worked long and hard for.

In addition to feeling scared, huge numbers are feeling like failures. With few exceptions, nobody’s hitting their targets (even after multiple re-settings in a downward direction) and they’re constantly reminded of it in meeting after meeting where they’re confronted with embarrassing numbers or given patronizing and hollow pep talks.

How do we know they’re scared? One of two types of behaviors is sweeping through the workplace. Workers are quietly withdrawing to wherever they can hide out – their offices, break rooms, behind computers – seeking safety from any kind of interaction or inquiry. They’re placating, obsequious, almost painfully polite.

On the other hand, the amount of childish squabbling and pointless conflict has escalated to baffling proportions. In many companies, the culture has all the feel of a middle-school lunchroom instead of a dynamic place of business. Pettiness predominates, rumor-mongering is epidemic, and triangulation is the rule of the day.

You don’t need to be a psychotherapist to figure out what’s going on. Our earliest responses to fear are two-fold. First, we go quiet and hope no one notices us. Second, we lash out and try to hurt others. Both are in the service of trying to stay safe.

So what can we do to counter this unacknowledged underground movement? The following strategies have worked for us and many of our colleagues:

  1. Stop using thinking and brain-storming to talk people out of their feelings. Nobody’s going to think their way through this floundering economy and workers are not going to be logically disabused of their fears or their feelings of failure.
  2. Start openly talking about reality, from the top of the organization, down to the bottom. The economy stinks; it isn’t going to get better soon; it will exact a price from everybody; and it compromises many aspects of our lives. This reduces anxiety and allows people to refocus on productive work.
  3. Start talking (especially with your key people) about what it means to them to be a failure. Does it mean they’re worthless and of no value? Does it wipe out everything one does well? Or does it signify a missed opportunity and a lesson (albeit painful) learned? It is crucial, in this discussion, to get on the table the feelings of having disappointed others and of being disappointed in others. This clears a lot of air.
  4. Encourage and reward people acting in counter-intuitive ways. For example, what we’re seeing, in numerous sales forces, is a plethora of low-risk sales behaviors. Salespeople are doing everything short of pleading and begging and end up completely emotionally disengaged. Their fears of rejection have reached their zenith and they’re desperate and frozen. The only way out of this is to challenge the prospect like never before. Tight money doesn’t move without emotion.
  5. Lastly, focus on the skills of your key leaders and ask them (and yourself) the following question: “Of the skills that have made you successful thus far, which fit the current economic climate, and which do not?” Example: An extremely successful sales manager we have worked with has hit the wall in the last six months (along with the salespeople who work for him). His results have been mediocre and getting worse. A portion of this is clearly the economy; but he is well aware that a big chunk is him. He is very smart, very articulate, very “professional” and an astute tactician and problem solver. All of this has produced great results until now. He is also emotionally distant, hard to read, and deflects any attempt to really engage him, with humor.

    What he has had to develop is a new skill base involving self-disclosure, transparency, and vulnerability. There’s nothing inherently wrong with his historical skill base – it’s simply not enough anymore.

Having been through a number of recessions, what we’ve learned is that good times and high profits not only hide many sins, but also disguise a profound and damaging lack of personal and professional growth. It sometimes takes a challenging economy to show us that 80-90 percent of what has made us successful is also the cap on our future growth.

Posted in Articles, Uncategorized

October/November 2010

I consider the introduction to the newsletter my opportunity to share interesting, miscellaneous tidbits.  So here are three.
1.     Last week, during my travels around the country, I went through security at a small airport in North Carolina and saw something I rarely see.  As I was waiting for my shoes and briefcase to clear the bomb detection machine, a very tall and large fellow was standing next to me waiting for his shoes to be returned to him, since they had been singled out for special treatment.  The TSA officer approached him, holding his huge shoes in his hands, and with an absolutely straight and serious face, said the following.  “These shoes are too big to fly with, and your feet are too big for this flight.”  I’ve never seen someone lose all the color in his face so quickly.  There was an uncomfortable and excruciating silence, and then the TSA fellow broke into a smile and said; “Just joking.”  We all had one of those discombobulated laughs and went on our way.  Walking toward the gate I had two rather contradictory thoughts.  It’s certainly nice to see the normally stone-faced TSA folks with a sense of humor; but, why are they the only ones permitted to joke around in the screening area?  One other note – I also went through security in Chicago, at O’Hare, and the difference in the TSA folks was remarkable.  Not simply stone-faced, but indifferent to the passengers existence.  If you could be non-verbally rude and insulting, they’ve achieved it.  What happens to people in urban areas?
2.    I’ve had my first experience with destructiveness on the internet.  If you use Google to search for our website (FifthWaveLeadership.com), you will get the following message:  “Visiting this website may harm your computer.”  To say the least, I was quite alarmed (i.e. freaked out) to see this.  Knowing less about the internet and computers than I do even about my car, I thought it was curtains for our website.  I have found out subsequently, by talking with very knowledgeable people, that these kinds of things are not uncommon.  As it turns out, our site needed a goodly amount of work (since it was ancient by internet standards), so we’re essentially having it rebuilt.  What I found really interesting, as a side note to our problem, is that there are a number of wacky people out there in internet land whose lives revolve around screwing with other people’s websites, just for the fun of it.  These are not the same people, I’m told, who have monetary motives, perverse sexual agendas, or security breach interests.  They just like to make other people suffer.  I guess these are the new psychopaths, proving that everything new brings gifts and curses.
3.    Just today I received an email from a friend that made me aware of an amazing video addressing the issue of how children actually learn, and even more fascinating, how little it has to do with our traditional notions of “teaching.”  It couldn’t be more supportive of what I wrote last month about education and learning than if I had produced it myself.  The video is titled “Child-Driven Education”, and it describes the work and research of Sugata Mitra, an Indian “educator”. 
Mitra has done demonstration projects all over the world, primarily with children mired in poverty and substandard schools (if having any access to schools at all).  The core of his work involves giving groups of children a computer and an assignment (to solve a particular problem), and, most amazing, no instructions, no help, and no direction about what to do in order to solve the problem.  He just tells them what he wants as a result and he leaves them to figure it out.  In a number of instances, the children are illiterate, or speak only a local dialect, or speak an entirely different language than the assignment requires.  To say the least, they have no familiarity with, or knowledge of, computers.  And guess what?  They solve the problems and, most importantly, they retain and integrate the new knowledge.  If you have any interest in how people learn and how we can fix our terribly broken system, this video will enlighten, enthuse, and touch you.
Click here to view the video.
“Success Is Going From Failure to Failure, Without A Loss of Enthusiasm”…………………….Winston Churchill
Business Tips
“Heated Emotions in Business:  How Losing Your Cool Can Bring People Together”
What I like most about what I do is the opportunity to be a part of a living laboratory.  I regularly get to be right in the middle of interactions that prove the validity of the concepts I work on with clients; concepts that not only make their businesses better, but bring them closer together personally.
This was particularly true a few weeks ago when I was facilitating a senior management accountability group with a corporate client.  Near the end of the group one of the managers said that he had an issue to bring up that involved another one of the managers in the group.  These managers had worked together in the past and had a long standing relationship.  They both ran similar types of operations within the company.
The issue that the first manager had with his colleague involved the latter’s hiring of an individual that the first manager had terminated about a year ago.  All terminations are difficult, but this one was especially hard, for a variety of reasons.  The second manager hired the previously terminated person without any conversation with the first manager, or, for that matter, without running it by anyone on the senior management team.  The first manager was furious, and he made his displeasure clear.  He told his colleague how upset he was with the decision; how he felt discounted and betrayed; and how he felt that their relationship had been irreparably damaged.  The strength and intensity of his anger was apparent to all.  He was direct, confrontive, and clear.  What his colleague had done – more precisely, how he had handled the re-hiring – was totally unacceptable.  From his perspective, the values of the organization had been breached, and that could not be overlooked.
The second manager was, initially, very defensive.  He didn’t feel like it was that big a deal, nor did he feel like he had to run it by his colleague prior to the hiring.  The rest of the group gave him some tough feedback to the effect that they simply didn’t believe him and were puzzled by his decision and disappointed in him.  After the initial stonewalling, the second manager told his colleague that he didn’t tell him about the proposed hiring because he thought that the first manager would be upset with him and try and talk him out of it.  This led to a good discussion of a pattern of behavior that the second manager falls into, that always backfires on him.  He avoids upsetting people initially, which inevitably creates a far worse upset later on, and, even worse, undermines his credibility and integrity (by being dishonest, initially).  The upshot of his interaction was an apology by the second manager, to both the first manager, and to the rest of the group, for violating a core value, and for not trusting his colleagues’ ability to deal with a difficult situation, upfront.
It would be an understatement to say that there was some discomfort in the group, particularly at the beginning of this interaction.  You could have cut the tension in the room with a snow plow.  It was palpable and thick.  There were a few minor attempts to rescue the combatants and get people back into their heads.  I did nothing to try and defuse the intensity of the emotions.  I had total faith in the groups’ ability to work things through and believed that the only way through this seeming impasse, was a thorough airing of everyone’s feelings.  The very heat and intensity of the feelings shared was the catalyst for an ultimately honest and intimate connection between the two “adversaries” and the group as a whole.
Interestingly, a number of very heartfelt emails followed the meeting, all of them emphasizing the importance of clearing the air, getting the feelings out on the table, and creating a closeness by taking ownership of what one does and says.  As one of my friends and clients often says:  “This stuff really works.”
Political and Cultural Observations
“The Myth of ‘Special Interests’”  
In the midst of this political season there is much discussion of so-called “Special Interests” and their impact on the political process.  Almost without exception, the term has become synonymous with private sector organizations; in particular, with “big business.”  What I find curious is the total absence (even amongst far right groups), of any discussion about the single largest and most influential special interest – the Federal Government.
I would describe a “special interest” as an organized body of individuals or groups, underpinned by a set of values, principles, or core beliefs (articulated or assumed), whose purpose is to gain the widest possible dissemination and acceptance of those beliefs, as well as the greatest allocation of resources to their advancement.  At this point in our political and cultural evolution, no institution does this as aggressively and effectively, as the Federal Government and its attendant bureaucracy.  I am not, here, talking about the political point of view of the Obama administration or the legislature.  I am referring to the massive Federal bureaucracy and the set of assumptions about dealing with people that drives its daily work as it interacts with the American people.
Let’s look at the core beliefs and values of this enormous player that touches our lives on an almost daily basis.  From my experience and vantage point, the Federal bureaucracy believes the following:
1.     Individuals are not responsible for the choices they make in their lives.  Ultimately, their destinies and their futures are driven by forces outside their control.
2.     The goal of life is to seek comfort, at all costs.  Growth is fine, if it is not disruptive or uncomfortable.  If it involves any pain, it is to be rejected out of hand.
3.    “Education” is seen as a terminal process.  You learn everything you need to know, as soon as possible, and resist any attempt to get you to think or act outside the prescribed “nine dots”.
4.    Accountability to others is seen as unfair and unjust.  Blaming and excuse-making is institutionalized and legitimized by referencing the past.
5.    There is a clear differentiation between those who have the capacity to manage change and those who do not.  Those who do not must be treated differently and accommodated accordingly.
6.    Low levels of expectations must be applied to certain groups of people.  They are seen as quite fragile, and as a result, must be accepted as intrinsically limited and compromised.
To say the least, I categorically reject the beliefs articulated above.  I don’t argue the right of people to believe these things; but I very much resent my taxes being used to promulgate them.  This, for me, is the real outrage of “special interests”.  So, when I hear folks whining about all the “special interests” descending on Washington, I simply answer that they’re going there to counteract all the “special interests” already there.
Let me give you a practical example of how the Federal bureaucracy’s belief system gets played out.  Several years ago, on one of my trips to D.C., I decided to take a tour of the FBI headquarters.  I had had some contact with the Bureau earlier in my career, as an intern and as a consultant to law enforcement agencies, and I was interested in their history and evolution.  It was, to say the least, a disappointing experience.
The tour guide for our group was a morbidly obese young woman, shabbily dressed, speaking a dialect tangentially related to standard English, and with absolutely no interest, whatsoever, in the exhibits we were seeing, or the rich and varied history of the agency.  She could have made the arrival of the first group of inter-galactic visitors a boring and pedestrian event.
I was outraged by her behavior.  Given a different set of core beliefs and values, she would have been confronted with her abominable behavior and either made significant changes, or she would have been terminated.  I asked, at the end of the tour, to speak to a supervisor.  I expressed my dissatisfaction to him and asked him if he had any intentions of doing anything about this situation.  He didn’t even hesitate in his response:  “There’s nothing I can do; she’s civil service; she’s a woman; and she’s black.  My hands are tied.”  Do I need to say much more?
It’s not much of a logical stretch to translate the Federal Bureaucracy’s belief system into public policy, compensatory programs, and social engineering.  That’s how we got affirmative action, “set-aside” projects, “impacted zones”, suffocating regulations of the private sector and an intrusion into people’s personal lives that has had a chilling effect on innovation, creativity, and risk-taking.  And though the Federal Bureaucracy is the most visible and far-reaching purveyor of a caretaker philosophy, our public (and private) educational system is not far behind.  Its core beliefs and values mirror those folks in D.C., from the kindergarten classroom to the seminars in grad school.
My point here is that we need to disabuse ourselves (and others, especially in the mass media) of two key concepts.  First, that there is anything objective about government or the public sector.  They are as much a “special interest” as the lobbyists for Exxon, Target, or the insurance industry.  Second, the scapegoating and demonizing “special interests” is one of the trickiest distractions and subterfuges for deflecting attention away from the clear political stranglehold that the caretaking lobby has on government, at all levels.  As long as we spend our time and energy defending “special interests”, the disabling interventions and “help” of government bureaucracies goes unnoticed and unexamined.
So, the next time someone goes on a rant about the “special interests” in Washington, put up your hand, call time out, and insist that the discussion include government and education.
Personal Notes
“My Favorite and Most Impactful Movies”  
I have always felt that “favorite” lists were an exercise in trivialities – kind of chewing gum for the brain.  But a few months ago, in a conversation with a good friend and client – Ed West – I had to re-examine this belief, when Ed and I started to discuss the movies that had had the greatest impact on us.  This included movies that not only evoked strong emotions of a “serious” nature, but those that brought humor and joy to our lives.  So here they are, in no particular order of importance, but some types of categories:
“Young Frankenstein” – Possibly the funniest movie ever made.  Everyone in it gave virtuoso comedic performances; Mel Brooks, Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman, Peter Boyle, and many others.  It is that rare combination of physical humor, clever writing, and uninhibited acting that doesn’t come along very often.
“A Fish Called Wanda” – The second funniest movie ever made, and undoubtedly the best example of politically incorrect humor ever produced.  The stuttering scene (done by one of the Monty Python fellows) is beyond a doubt the single funniest scene in movie history.  We’ve become so politically correct, that I’m afraid we’ll never see anything again to rival it.
“Annie Hall” – The quintessential portrayal of the quintessential Jewish neurotic.  This could easily be subtitled:  “When Concern Slides Into Paranoia”.  This movie has special meaning for me, since it was the first one that Arleah and I saw together.  She had had, in her life, no exposure to the culture I grew up in, and was so much a WASP, that someone had to tell her that she was involved with a Jew.  What better introduction to my history than a classical dose of Woody Allen.
“Good Fellas” – The most accurate portrayal of people in organized crime.  I grew up, in Chicago, with the Mafia all around me.  I had relatives tangentially involved with them; a few of my father’s patients were Mafioso; and in my psychotherapy training and consulting practice, I interviewed hit men and worked with the FBI Strike Force.  The “Godfather” had more glitz and drama, but, for me, lacked the visceral impact of “Good Fellas”.
“Scanners” – A strange, mostly misunderstood movie from the early 1980’s.  It was marketed as a blood and guts drive-in diversion for teen-agers who lived out their sex lives in their parents’ cars.  In reality, it was a very subtle metaphor for emotional overload.  It portrayed people who had no filter or discriminating mechanism for all the emotional information coming from other people.  They were constantly “scanning” the environment and were incapable of shutting off or sorting input and stimuli; so, in the inimitable style of Hollywood, their heads exploded.
“Altered States” – Another misunderstood gem from the early 1980’s.  This was a fictionalized portrayal of the early experiments with sensory deprivation (connected with our space program).  It showed people suspended in tanks of water, with nothing touching them, and in total silence.  Understandably, the results were not good.  Generally, people went nuts (i.e. clinically psychotic).  The metaphor passed by 99% of the audience, but was nonetheless powerful.  Remove boundaries and limits, and people will be destroyed.  A good lesson for our time.
“District 9” – A recent sleeper.  This is one of those meticulously crafted productions that absolutely sneaks up on you, and before you know it, you’ve undergone a shift in perspective that you had no conscious awareness of.  On the politically correct level, it is a fairly transparent metaphor for the perils of bigotry and prejudice (in this case, apartheid, as practiced in South Africa).  On a deeper level, it is about profound personal transformation, and the price it can exact on close relationships.
“Sophie’s Choice” – A gut wrenching portrayal of the human capacity for inhumanity.  One of those pictures that is an uncomfortable cultural necessity to remind us of what we’re capable of, and disabuse us of the arrogance of believing that it could never happen here or in our time.  A number of years ago, Arleah and I visited Auschwitz.  It was the end of the day, and for most of our time there, we were the only people in the camp.  I could not put in words the feelings we had walking through rooms full of glasses, shoes, and human hair.  After a while, the unspoken suffering of the place drove us out.
“What Dreams May Come” – The most profound depiction of grieving I’ve ever seen portrayed in a work of art.  The people who made this movie had to have suffered a crushing loss.  They had an understanding of grief and loss that few people have, and even less can articulate.  It is a work of pure emotion and demands a complete engagement on the part of the viewer.  And it is one of those movies that speaks to the aggrieved in an absolutely unique and powerful way – like a poem and a painting.  (I don’t know if it’s coincidence or karma, but the scenes depicting heaven were shot 30 miles from our house, in Glacier National Park.)
“Young at Heart” – A documentary about a singing group of 80 (and some 90) year old men and women from a town in Massachusetts.  It follows their lives (and some deaths), as they rehearse for their performances and challenge themselves to get out of their comfort zones.  Interestingly, they do not perform nostalgic “old folks” songs.  They sing down and dirty rock and roll, with all their heart and soul.  This is, without a doubt, the most inspiring movie about staying engaged with life that has ever been made.  You will never laugh so hard, nor cry so much, during any movie.
“The Notebook” – My all-time favorite movie.  On its surface, it’s a history of a compelling romance.  A love story for the ages.  One of those movies where you find yourself cheering for people to make it – to stay together forever and ever.  On that level it works well.  On a deeper level, it is the most evocative and soul-searching movie ever made about the emotion of true love; about unquestioning devotion; and the most noble response to the ravages of illness and aging.  When I want to get in touch with what Arleah and I share, and want to really access the full range of my feelings about life, I put on this movie.  If you ever have any trouble reaching deep inside, you need to own this movie.
Let me know how this selection has struck you.  I’d be interested in your comments on any of these movies that you’ve also seen.
Morrie

Tell us what you think – click here to send us an e-mail with your feedback.
morrie@fifthwaveleadership.com

Posted in Newsletters, Uncategorized

Six Ways You Sabotage Your Leadership Ability

With all your credentials your leadership skills should be impeccable. You have an MBA from Harvard or some other prestigious business school. You’ve taken every executive certification program that’s come down the pike. You’ve been trained, coached, counseled and seminar-ed to the point of overload. But somehow, you keep failing as a leader in ways both overt and subtle. The same problems keep cropping up over and over again. And frankly, you have no idea where to turn next.

Instead of looking outside yourself for help, trying looking inward, says change-management consultant Morris Shechtman, author of the new book Fifth Wave Leadership: The Internal Frontier (Facts on Demand Press, January 2003, ISBN: 1-889150-38-X, $19.95). The truth is, your success as a leader has much more to do with your level of self-awareness than with how many degrees you’ve accumulated and how many programs you’ve completed.

“We all tend to repeat the same patterns over and over,” says Shechtman. “That’s because we are all subject to our familiars, which are strong and persistent collections of attitudes rooted in childhood that cause us to act in certain predictable ways. It’s very difficult to change your leadership patterns if you don’t understand this basic truth. Furthermore, the familiars that commonly manifest in the workplace can make it seem as though unproductive leadership behaviors are ‘normal’—an illusion that helps keep you mired in the same problems throughout your career.”

“To make matters worse, the information- and technology-rich era we live in makes it harder than ever to be a leader,” he adds. “You have to be able to navigate a tremendously sophisticated maze of business possibilities and inspire and motivate people on a deeply personal level. The two most critical skills in today’s world are making good decisions and building strong relationships. And that’s why it’s more important than ever to understand the behavior patterns that keep you from doing so.”

Certainly, the emotional baggage that’s weighing you down and keeping you from reaching your full leadership potential is varied and complex, and requires stringent internal exploration to identify. But Shechtman says he sees many of his clients and colleagues struggling with the same basic leadership problems, and examining them may yield insights you can apply to your own life and career. Here are some of the most common reasons you may be failing as a leader:

• You live by the theory of scarcity rather than the theory of plenty. The theory of scarcity holds that there are very limited resources out there to meet your needs and you must therefore accept any opportunity that comes your way. The theory of plenty says that there are infinite resources available to you, and you can pick and choose opportunities that mesh with your values and that ultimately benefit you. Believe it or not, you learned one of these mindsets before you were five years old—and it is still driving the decisions you make in your life and career!
If you subscribe to the theory of scarcity, you have a sense of desperation about every business decision you make. You may take on clients that undermine your company. You may hire and keep toxic employees. You may become trapped in fragmentation (because there’s no discernable focus to your business) and isolation (because you are too afraid to collaborate with people who might “steal” your business).
On the other hand, if you live by the theory of plenty, you turn down business that isn’t right for you. You hire the right kinds of people and fire those that are harming your company. You make focused, discriminating business choices based on your values and vision. You collaborate freely, thus expanding your network and leading more people to see you as a resource. If you lose a client, so what? You know a better one will come along. It’s easy to see how this mindset makes you a better leader.

• You avoid and discourage conflict. Do you think that conflict is somehow “bad” for yourself and your company? It’s not. Indeed, managing conflict is the very foundation of leadership. That’s because there is no growth without challenge, and there’s no challenge without conflict. A good leader must confront his employees on their negative behaviors and attitudes. Sure, it’s painful (for you and for them), but if you just tell people what they want to hear, you perpetuate relationships that are comfortable but ultimately superficial and pointless. And you give them the false impression that they are competent at doing what they’re actually incompetent at doing. And in the process you lose all credibility as a leader.
Many people believe that teamwork means everyone agrees, supports each other and gets along. Nothing could be further from the truth! Effective teams are made up of people who care enough about each other to generate conflict and confront the tough issues. If everyone agrees with their teammates without question, what usually happens is the whole team marches down the rosy path to self-destruction. It’s business suicide! So if you discourage conflict between your employees, not only are you an ineffective leader but soon there may not be a company left for you to lead.

• You refuse to get involved in employees’ personal lives. Consider this truth: all business is personal. In our integrated, information-intensive culture, it’s difficult to live compartmentalized lives. There is no longer a firewall between personal and professional; we now live “blended” lives marked by a sense of fluidity. You as a leader already take work home and chances are so do your employees. So why is it so difficult to accept the converse, that employees’ personal lives come to work with them? The reality is that the personal issues your employees deal with (or don’t) do affect their work — and therefore it is appropriate for leaders to address these issues.
Here is an example. Suppose that you have a valuable employee who is involved in an abusive, dysfunctional relationship. You know about this, but figure that it’s a personal issue and none of your business, so you don’t broach the subject with her. Then one weekend she finally decides she’s had enough, so she flees the scene—just packs her bags and leaves town. Because no one was there to help her, she ends up leaving the company in a terrible bind. Good leaders realize that people’s un-dealt-with issues, whether they manifest at home or at the office, are the company’s greatest risk . . . and they work to eliminate that risk.

• You intervene too early in people’s struggles. One of the worst things you can do in business—as well as in society in general—is to intervene too early in the struggles people face. As soon as you do so you take responsibility for their lives, and they never discover how rich a resource base they possess. Your employees must find the path that works for them. If you take over they will know what works for you, but not necessarily what works for them. Struggle is empowering and there is dignity in it.
As a leader you need to understand that struggling with their issues is how people get clear on what they believe. Their knowledge comes from their feelings and you can’t teach feelings, people simply have to experience them. So if you just give employees the “right answer,” you circumvent this feeling process. And if you intervene too early it’s probably because of your own pain—it’s painful for you to watch them struggle. It’s similar to “tough love.” And it’s the only way they will ever grow and develop.

• You’re charismatic. If you’re the kind of leader that other people tend to put up on a pedestal and turn to for all the answers, you may be crippling your company. That’s because charismatic people remove responsibility from everybody else and convince them that they can’t do anything on their own behalf. And what happens is that your employees are so mesmerized by you that they come to see themselves as followers—not as future leaders. Your company fails to grow and develop people to take over after you leave. And succession management is one of a leader’s prime responsibilities.
In a sustainable organization, the leader is not charismatic but the culture is.
A charismatic culture has a clear value system that constantly lets people know where they stand. It’s full of opportunities for professional and personal growth. The fact is, people want to make an impact on the culture that they live and work in. If everything they do is for someone else, they will always have a sense of dissatisfaction about their own roles. Charismatic cultures give people a sense of meaning in their lives. When they act on their own behalf they make a greater contribution and have a greater investment
in the organization.

• You’re moody. There are few guarantees in a global, information driven economy. The world we live and work in is unpredictable and has become even more so since September 11. Therefore, the last thing employees want is an emotionally unpredictable (i.e., “moody”) leader. They will gravitate toward a leader who possesses an emotional core that doesn’t vary. This does not mean they want an emotionally neutral “robot.” Rather, they want is a leader whose reaction is consistent with certain events. Specifically, that means someone who reacts negatively to anything that goes against company values and positively to anything that is in line with company values. (See why it’s so important to clearly define those values?)

If you’re wondering why emotion needs to enter into the equation at all, the answer is simple: people respond to feelings, not thoughts. If you mobilize people’s feelings they will contribute to a very strong culture. If you merely mobilize their thoughts, they will hold back their “gut reaction” and fail to give you full investment. People vote with their feelings. If it doesn’t feel right, they won’t do it. And if they don’t believe that you are driven by your feelings, they won’t follow you.

Did you recognize yourself in any of these examples? If so, don’t be discouraged. Knowing the enemy is the first step toward defeating it.

“Once you’re aware of what’s holding you back, you can change your self-destructive patterns,” Shechtman concludes. “You can drill down and examine the long-buried demons that are keeping you from optimal performance in your leadership role. Eventually, you’ll be able to diminish the power of your old familiars and create healthy new ones. And once your self-imposed road blocks have been demolished, you’ll be on your way to leadership excellence and, ultimately, a more meaningful and fulfilling life.”
Posted in Articles, Uncategorized

September 2010

It’s not your imagination – there was no August newsletter. I’m right in the middle of one of those “good news/bad news” scenarios. I haven’t been this busy in a long time (I’ve been “rediscovered” – alas, in my late 60’s), and I’ve never had so many simultaneous deadlines (I’m amazed at how much old time writing it takes to feed the new technology). I hope this newsletter still makes it to you in September.
First, a few announcements:
On September 30th, at 8:00 PM (CST), Arleah and I will be featured in an internet “Live Event”, sponsored by ConsciousOne.com, the pre-eminent personal development website. We’ll be interviewed by Scott Martineau, the site’s founder and CEO. The topic for the evening will be “The Secrets of Personal and Professional Success.” You can find out how to access the event through your computer or your phone (or through your intergalactic communication device) through this link: http://www.ConsciousOneLive.com/75Truths/Shechtman.cfm. There is no charge for participating in the event.
I am working with Frank Sarr and John Stout of Training Implementation Services (TIS) in Connecticut, on an interactive online seminar that incorporates the best of computer driven distance learning with live, telephonic coaching. We have taken my material and experience with recruiting and selection and have translated it into a unique, provocative, and highly effective program on “Picking Winners and Keepers.” It will allow anyone who is responsible for, or who touches recruiting, to learn a new and compelling methodology for assessing job applicants. And all of this can take place without the learner ever having to leave their office and travel anywhere. Lastly, this will allow an organization to scale this knowledge across a broad and large range of people, at an extraordinarily reasonable price point. We hope to have the finished product ready by the end of the year. Look for updates in future newsletters.
The newsletter will be changing after the first of the year. It will be shorter. I have gotten feedback that some folks would prefer that, and my internet guru friends tell me that it needs to be so if I want to compete with popular blogs. Also, the capitalist in me is getting tired of busting my ass every month (or so) and giving it away. I’m beginning to feel like a charity hooker of ideas. What I’m thinking of doing is offering longer versions (like White Papers) of the ideas put forth in the newsletter and charging a fee for each paper. Let me know what you think and how you feel about that idea. The fee would be fairly nominal, but somehow, I think it would make me feel better. Now, for the newsletter
Business Tips
“Meaningful Work and Meaningful Lives”
“Live a life of meaning and you won’t need to search for the meaning of life.”
Bill Valentine
I always like to make you aware of studies that affirm my ideas and opinions. It makes me feel good, it validates my intuition, and it fires up my Jewish chromosomes.
For years, Arleah and I have been preaching and teaching the importance of meaningful work, as the prime incentive for increasing productivity and performance, and for laying the foundation for building cultures of excellence. Well, lo and behold, a recently published study flashing around the internet, not only confirms this, but does so in a cross-cultural context. The study was conducted in the U.S. (Massachusetts) and in East India (in the northeast part of the country). It showed the following: When people were engaged in routine, repetitive work (most of which is being replaced by technology), more money proved to be an incentive for enhancing performance. However, when people were engaged in work that involved complex tasks and complicated interactions (i.e. involving lots of information and relationships), money not only failed to be an incentive, it proved to be a disincentive. This surprised everyone involved with the study. As more and more money was offered to people doing these complex tasks (which 90% of us do daily), performance steadily decreased.
So what increased performance? To put it in a nutshell – emotional involvement in the processes and the relationships at work. Communication, genuine participation, responsibility; in essence, a feeling connection with the human environment. What is most fascinating, for me, is the cross-cultural nature of the study. The results were the same in a first world, high tech culture, and a third world, developing society (the Indian part of the study was conducted in rural, agrarian villages, not metropolitan areas).
Making work meaningful, then, makes you money. And you do it by building relationships and emotionally connecting with people. If you choose not to do so (or have people working for you who choose not to do so) you will continually lose money. I’m often asked if people who struggle to build relationships and connect with people can be taught these skills. Absolutely – if they get constant, clear, and direct feedback in two key areas: How they impact other people (starting with you); and how they impact the desire or lack of such, to build a relationship with them. With these two critical bits of information, enormous change can occur. Without them, nothing will change. No amount of “training,” supervision, mentoring, coaching, or simply harassment will have any effect. Creating feedback rich cultures is the only way to consistently and permanently increase productivity and performance.
One additional, and very connected phenomenon, is worth noting. Over the last year (especially the last six months), I’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of people in the workplace, experiencing a personal meltdown (as well as people applying for jobs). The economic meltdown and severe financial contraction is putting unsustainable pressure on everyone’s lives; but in particular, on the lives of people who were on the margins to begin with. This pressure has threatened to obliterate any meaningfulness in the lives of lots of people, and they are simply grinding to a halt, paralyzed with indecision, trying their hardest to sustain unsustainable personal lives.
A few months ago I had a conversation with a senior manager who was telling me about an experienced salesperson who was doing worse and worse in his job. He was on the verge of losing his home, expecting another child, and having conflict with his wife. The manager was trying to re-arrange his schedule to relieve some stress, and was strategizing with him to try and save his house. None of this was having any positive impact. What I talked about with the manager revolved around helping the salesperson identify what brought some meaning to his life, and how to go about salvaging and preserving that. We developed a plan of action that involved helping the salesperson give up the house, cut back on all non-essential expenses, and focus on the relationship with his wife and the upcoming birth of their child. A lot of this interaction involved conversations about feeling like a failure, what that meant in the salesperson’s view of himself, and, most importantly, what brought the most meaning to his life. The turn-around has been dramatic. The business results are significantly better and home life has done a 180.
People can’t have meaningful lives at work, if they don’t have them at home. It is the responsibility of leaders to spot deterioration as soon as it surfaces; and even more importantly, to help people face it and make the tough, often gut-wrenching decisions. Ignoring it, or simply listening to people recite a tale of woe, and be sympathetic, is unhelpful, dismissive, and ultimately, cowardly. If we profess to care about the people who work with us, or for us, then we must do something that compels them to face what they need to do.
Political and Cultural Observations
“It’s Time To Retire Public Education”  
Our public education system is analogous to the American union movement. Both have served valuable purposes and have played important roles in the evolution of our culture. The problem, however, is that the culture that spawned them is dead and gone – long gone. And because of that, we have an educational system that is a relic of bygone times. As cultural institutions go, nothing is quite as irrelevant to the way we live, work, and most vitally, learn, as our public educational institutions (including private, parochial and “charter” schools).
The public school was a key institution in a new, then rapidly growing country. It played an essential role in the socialization, acculturation, and democratization of the diverse, unorganized, and often chaotic citizenry looking for a modicum of structure and direction for their lives. It grew up in a low information culture, with few vehicles of communication and a relatively modest rate of change. And it established a linkage between education and learning that stood for a few hundred years. The culture has changed – dramatically. The linkage is gone. And public education needs to go.
Learning and education no longer have a necessary connection. Learning involves the continual expansion of self-information and the integration of life experience with this self-information, in the service of fueling ongoing growth and development. It is about using what you’ve been through, to catalyze the next stage of your maturation and personal development. Above and beyond everything else, learning is fundamentally experiential, challenging, and disruptive.
Learning is not about content. It is all about context. In this post-Google culture, it is not only unnecessary, but is essentially fruitless and frustrating to try and fill your brain with a lot of data, facts, and information. This is not to say that there are not essential bits of knowledge required to live a good, productive, and self-sustaining life. It is simply to state what the new learning technologies have made obvious – children and adults learn rapidly and thoroughly when their life experience demands it. (In the 1940’s, A.S. Neill, in England, demonstrated this in his groundbreaking school – Summerhill – where people of all ages became literate, when illiteracy no longer served their needs.) The explosion of online learning, virtual conferences, and the “unschooling” movement (worldwide) is a testament to this seismic shift.
Education, as translated through our schools, is about compliance, coercion, and mind-numbing boredom. It was boring and unchallenging 50-60 years ago, when I was a student, and it hasn’t substantively changed. There are a few more gimmicky things, some “new” pedagogical theories, and a few computers – a token offering to the gods of technology. At its core, it is the same conflict-free, unprovocative, and emotionally sterile ballet, devoid of engagement and deep involvement. Earlier this year, there was an article in the New York Times Magazine, which reported the results of an exhaustive and comprehensive study of numerous programs attempting to improve the effectiveness of teaching. Its conclusions were fascinating and depressing. Effectiveness, using numerous criteria (not simply student test scores) was miserable and appalling. (The study was done by educators, not “critics” and was remarkably and brutally honest.) What was most telling, was that more money, smaller classes, different physical configurations, non-traditional teachers, mentoring and coaching programs – none of these had any significant impact on effectiveness. But, fascinatingly, and almost as an afterthought, there was a brief discussion of one variable that kept popping up. Every once in a while, a teacher emerged who was head and shoulders above their peers, in all measures of effectiveness. Guess what they did differently? They were emotionally engaging and challenging. Duh!
So, what needs to be done for us to become a truly life-long learning culture? I would suggest the following (in a multi-staged order):
1. Eliminate tenure at all educational institutions; from kindergarten through graduate school. It has always amazed me that there is little or no citizen outrage over the blatant contradiction of living in an increasingly high risk society, while supporting a cultural institution, touching almost all our children, that guarantees people life-long jobs after two or three years of work. Arleah and I never worried about the safety of our children, when we sent them off to school. What troubled us was their daily exposure to some of the lowest risk people in the culture, who had no appreciation for or any interest in the unpredictable, uncertain, and energizing world we lived and worked in (along with a few hundred million of our fellow citizens).
2. Put every teacher in America on a one-year renewable contract that paid them on the basis of their performance. The criteria for performance would be student achievement, student and parent feedback, peer review, administrative assessment, classroom observation (by independent third parties), committee work, and mentoring and coaching of colleagues. I know many excellent, engaging teachers all over the country. To a person, they feel suffocated and dispirited by the current system, and very resentful of the well-paid mediocrity surrounding them. I would have no problem paying excellent, engaging teachers six figure salaries, as long as it was possible to readily terminate incompetent, boring, and cynical teachers.
3. Eliminate the connection between property taxes and the funding of our schools. That money belongs in the hands of families, to use, at their discretion, to buy or not to buy, learning experiences for themselves and their children. If that’s a “school,” an online provider, a neighborhood co-op, a religious institution, or a private tutor; that’s their choice, and is none of my business or anyone else’s.
4. Eliminate compulsory education. All that requiring kids to go to school accomplishes, is to escalate the level of passive-aggressive behavior and malicious compliance. It also relieves families and individuals from taking responsibility for their own lives. Lastly, it penalizes excellent teachers and distracts and diverts them from working with willing learners.
5. Shutdown and shutter all the school buildings in America. (They could be used as museums, restaurants, or other businesses.) Keeping kids closed up in these anachronistic bricks and mortar structures, is one of the more bizarre things we do in our culture. The media, technology, and travel opens the whole world to them, and we expect them to grow, learn, and flourish, cooped up in a building, day after day, while the dynamic real world passes them by. Learning takes place by interacting with people doing real things in the real world. The community – local, regional, national, and international, should be our “school.” There are already a number of innovative programs in the “unschooling” movement, that involve students and teachers traveling the country, interacting with business people, government centers, healthcare facilities, and other cultural institutions. Their “schoolwork,” at the end of the day, is writing about and discussing what they just experienced.
I have always been a learner, and I love learning. I would love to see everyone in our society have the opportunity to take advantage of the almost infinite resources for learning increasingly available to us. It is almost within our reach.
Personal Notes
“Getting Tired of the Tolerence of Intolerance”  
As I age, I’m very much aware of two almost polar opposite changes occurring within me. The first is a softness, gentleness, and access to feelings that I have rarely experienced before. In particular, feelings of sadness and grief for my own losses, and for the losses and suffering of others. This past Memorial Day and the recent anniversary of 9-11, had an enormous impact on me. My good friend, Bill Valentine, sent me an email on Memorial Day, sharing his grief over the death of his son, in combat in the Middle East; and I could barely get through it without sobbing. I reproduce it here in hopes that it may help some of you tap into the grief over your losses, and experience some cleansing and release:
“Early this morning I went out to raise our flag as I do nearly every day.
But today is different. I followed the protocol for displaying the flag on Memorial Day. I raised it slowly to the top of the pole and then slowly lowered it to half-mast. It remains there now, hanging limply, sadly in the gentle rain that has been falling all night. And if God is nature, as some believe, God is crying today in memory of my son and the millions of others who have given their perfect selves for this imperfect country of ours.
The flag will remain at half-mast until noon, at which time it is again, this time briskly, returned to its proud position at the top of the flag pole. For within the pain and sadness of this day’s remembrance is also the feeling of awe, and pride and gratitude for those fallen. How do you thank an angel?”
These days I can barely watch a Humane Society commercial, without losing it. If the pictures of abused animals get too graphic, I have to switch channels.
On the other hand, I have developed a visceral disdain and disgust for politically correct idiots who establish moral equivalencies between political and business decisions made in our country, and the outright barbarism that passes for daily life in innumerable countries across the globe. This idiocy reached its zenith a few weeks ago, when some moral morons in our State Department actually worked with the U.N. Human Rights Commission (how’s that for a non sequitur?) to present Arizona’s Immigration Law as a possible human rights violation in the United States. What level of stupidity and denial do you have to sink to, to equate a piece of controversial legislation with stoning adulteresses to death, starving hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children into submission because of their tribal affiliation, and selling girls, as young as ten years old, into sexual slavery? Are you kidding me?
Let’s review some undisputed facts:
1. Every independent inquiry commission that has reviewed the outcome of U.N. Peace Keeping Troops’ interventions in Africa, has arrived at the same conclusion: Random murder and property destruction shoots up, and, even more outrageous, mass rape of not only adult women, but very little girls, skyrockets. Along with this, goes unspeakable mutilation of both sexes. This is not, by the way, only a recent phenomena. The history of central and northern Africa is one of a moving bloodbath. The History Channel, recently, aired a show about the slaughter of 350,000 human beings in Sierra Leone, by their fellow citizens. It took place in the 1970’s, and almost all the victims were either shot at close range, or macheted to death.
2. Women in Middle Eastern Muslim countries have a status somewhere around that of livestock. The rape “laws” are infamous for their absurdity and cruelty, and even when women are “allowed” to go see a doctor, they can’t, literally, see him, or be seen by him. In addition, a male relative must communicate the woman’s problem or complaint, to the doctor. Remember, also, that converting from Islam to Christianity is a capital offense. (I wonder what would happen if you convert to Judaism? Can you be killed more than once?)
3. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the stoning of adulteresses (where have we heard of that before?), the burning of witches; none of those horror shows were constructed or committed by Hindus or Buddhists. They were a Christian contribution. In a related issue, it took a bit over a few hundred years for the Catholic Church to absolve the Jews from responsibility for killing Christ. This gives a whole new meaning to “just in time.”
4. The Orthodox Jewish community in Israel is one of the greatest obstacles to peace in the region. Their rigidity and opposition to compromise is notorious, and although a very small segment of the total population, they have an undue impact (some would say, a stranglehold) on political and cultural life in the country. When I was growing up, my grandparents’ generation had “funerals” for their compatriots who married gentiles. And they treated them as if they were dead.
So, what’s my point? Is this a Bill Maher-type rant against organized religion? Nope? I’m simply fed up with hypocrisy and lying; particularly the latter. I’m real tired of hearing about “moderate Muslims,” as if that should make us feel better about lunatic Muslims. And I’m really, really tired of hearing that Islam is a gentle, peace-loving, and inclusive religion. It is not. And you don’t have to be a scholar of the Koran to figure it out. Like all unreformed belief systems, it is narrow, intolerant, and brutal in its view of “non-believers.” We’ve been here before, with Judaism and Christianity. It’s Islam’s turn.
What I’d like to see is politicians, opinion makers, business leaders, and other “spokespersons,” have the courage to speak the truth. Specifically –
I’d like to see a senior spokesperson at the State Department announce that the only reason we have any kind of relationship with most of the regimes in the Middle East, is that they have oil. And that if they didn’t have oil, we’d cut off communication as fast as Lindsay Lohan in a rehab program.
I’d like to see the Obama Administration come clean and just tell us directly that their number one objective is to even the score with free-marketers, and that if you’ve been a successful risk-taker, you’ve got a target on your back.
I’d like to see the leadership of the Republican party tell the religious right that their obsession with abortion and gay rights does not make it a legitimate public policy issue. And that their unending crusade to jam their fundamentalism down the party’s throat, only alienates and dispirits genuinely concerned people.
I’d like to see the leadership of the Democrat Party tell the Congressional Black Caucus to cut it out. Nobody plays the race card more than those folks, and nobody throws around the “racism” label more gratuitously and self-destructively. Unfortunately, they’ve become every bigot’s dream.
This isn’t too much to ask, is it?
Morrie

Tell us what you think – click here to send us an e-mail with your feedback.
morrie@fifthwaveleadership.com

Posted in Newsletters, Uncategorized

75 Surprising Truths On Thriving In Today’s Workplace

In an era where information travels and technology spreads almost instantaneously, success requires that we look inside ourselves for solutions to our work-related problems. Morris Shechtman, author of Fifth Wave Leadership: The Internal Frontier offers the following pithy insights on change, growth, conflict and thriving in the 21st century workplace:

1. Teamwork Is A Result Of Conflict And Confrontation, Not Consensus And Agreement

2. Feedback Is Constructive When Its Goal Is To Give People Information That Helps Them Learn, Grow, And Change

3. In The Absence Of Feedback, People Will Always Assume The Worst

4. Leadership Can Be Defined As An Exercise In Continual Disappointment

5. Great Risk Goes With Great Opportunity—You Can’t Have The One Without The Other

6. Uncertainty Requires You To Identify Your Values

7. Nothing Will Lower Your Credibility Faster Than Avoiding Conflict

8. You’ll Never Maximize Your Opportunities Unless You’re Willing To Put Everything At Risk

9. Clarity Creates Advocates And Enemies

10. There Are Only Two Types Of Professionals: Trusted Advisors And Vendors. The Former Determines The Fate Of The Latter

11. If You Can’t Set Boundaries, You’ll Get Commoditized

12. Challenge Is A Test Of Your Ability To Engage And Invest In A Relationship

13. People Want Reciprocity And Responsiveness More Than Answers

14. All Change Is Loss—It Doesn’t Matter Whether It’s “Good” Change Or “Bad” Change

15. Your People Are Your Greatest Asset And Your Greatest Risk

16. Information Inevitably Creates More Conflict

17. Leadership Is A Perpetual Exercise In Managing Conflict

18. Sustainable Organizations Have Charismatic Cultures, Not Charismatic Leaders

19. Any Relationship Worth Having Is Worth Leaving

20. Desperation Always Creates Abuse And Abandonment

21. The Easier You Are To Read, The Better You’re Able To Lead

22. Don’t Expect People To Grow Without Feedback

23. Feedback Is Truly The Gift That Keeps Giving

24. The Quality Of Your Life Will Be Determined More By How You Say Good-Bye, Than By How You Say Hello

25. Risking Early Has The Greatest Likelihood Of Creating Quick Credibility

26. Time Spent Together Is One Of The Poorest Indicators Of Intimacy Achieved

27. Intimacy Is Impossible To Achieve Without A Commitment To Engage In Self-Disclosure And Conflict

28. The Two Key Skills In Life Are The Ability To Make Decisions And The Ability To Build Relationships. Everything Else Is A Distant Second

29. If You’re Not Judgmental, You Don’t Really Care

30. Unconditional Acceptance Is Simply A Slick Form Of Abandonment

31. Goals Are Where You’re Going. Values Are How You’re Going To Get There

32. We lead Our Lives Based On One Of Two Theories: The Theory Of Plenty, Or The Theory Of Scarcity. We Learn One Of These Well Before We’re Five

33. The Theory Of Plenty Allows You To Be Selective, Focused, And Collaborative

34. The Theory Of Scarcity Traps You In Desperation, Fragmentation, And Isolation

35. Affluent People View Relationships As An Investment In Life; Rich People View Relationships As A Drain On Their Resources

36. No Emotion Will Enhance Your Success More Than Anger

37. Anger Is The Outward Manifestation Of Disappointment. Disappointment Is The Gap Between What You Have And What You Want

38. Harnessing Your Anger Gives You The Ability To Act In Your Own Behalf

39. Mediocrity Is The Choice To Live With Disappointment

40. All Relationships, At Some Point, Are Disappointing

41. Disappointment Is The Catalyst For The Next Stage Of Growth

42. All Business Is Personal

43. There Are No Business Problems—There Are Only Personal Issues Which Get Manifested At Work

44. People Don’t Suddenly Forget How To Do Their Jobs. Undealt With Personal Issues Cost People Their Jobs

45. Caretaking People Breeds The Need For Revenge

46. The Best Leaders Have The Most Uncompromising Values And Beliefs

47. Mediocrity Is A Buffer Against Loss

48. Relationships Don’t Have Problems, People Do

49. Addictions Are A Replacement For Conflict

50. Successful People Use Feedback Immediately

51. People Don’t Resist Change, they Resist Loss

52. Personal Growth Is The Key To Retention

53. One-Way Relationships Disable The Recipient

54. Loyalty Should Be Based On Mutual Growth

55. Professionals Don’t Compromise Their Recommendations

56. The Most Difficult Risk To Take Is To Overcome Your History

57. If They Aren’t Causing Your Problems, Then The Only One Left Is You

58. If You Want To Change, Then You’ll Have To Do Things That Scare You

59. Growth Isn’t About More; It’s About New

60. The Pain And Discomfort Of Change Are Nothing Compared To The Alternative

61. In A Survival Organization, Disappointment Is Cataclysmic; In A Growth Organization, Disappointment Is A New Beginning

62. In Today’s World, If You Do What You’ve Always Done, You’ll Get Less Than You’ve Always Gotten

63. It’s Comforting To Believe That Success Is Just Something That Happens To The Lucky Few. If We Believe This, Then We Don’t Have To Deal With The Painful Realities Of Why We’re Not Among Them

64. We Gravitate Toward Leaders Who Possess An Emotional Core That Doesn’t Vary

65. Many People Make The Mistake Of Equating Caring With Comfort

66. In Relationships, We Get Just What We Bargained For. We Choose Partners Or Colleagues Who Reinforce Our Familiars And Then We Mistake That Comfortable Feeling Of The Familiar; For Intimacy Or A Productive Work Relationship

67. When We Reach Adulthood, We Lose The Right To Keep Waiting For Someone To Change Our Life

68. What Stops People In Their Careers Is Not That They’ve Gone As Far As They Can Go, But That They’ve Gone As Far As Their Familiars Will Allow

69. Any Organization With The Goal Of Never Letting Anyone Down Is Doomed To Failure

70. Speaking The Unspoken Truth—Making The Covert Overt—Can Be Liberating

71. The Familiar Causes Us To Misperceive A Comfortable Job As A Growth-Oriented One: It Makes Us Mistake A Terrific Opportunity As “Wrong For Us” Because It Makes Us Uncomfortable

72. Personal Transformations Produce Extraordinary Influence And Attraction

73. It Is Empowering To Give People The Dignity Of Their Struggles

74. You Don’t Always Get Your Way, But You Always Get Your Say

75. If You Can’t Grieve, You Can’t Grow

Posted in Articles, Uncategorized

Your Employees And Your Bottom Line: Getting The Most Return

It’s more important than ever to get maximum return from your employees. Change-management expert Morris Shechtman tells you how . . .
and it has little to do with increasing salaries.

They say that time is money. And while that old adage still rings true, in today’s business environment it might be more accurate to say that people are money, or rather, that the time and resources put into recruiting and training your employees takes money. And don’t forget that there is a direct correlation between employee productivity and your organization’s bottom line. So how do you get the best return possible on the investment you make in your workforce?

According to Morris Shechtman, change management expert and author of the new book, Fifth Wave Leadership: The Internal Frontier (Facts on Demand Press, 2003, ISBN: 1-889150-38-X, $19.95), you need to focus on internal issues and develop the workforce you have. Just because the current state of the economy means that more people are looking for work doesn’t mean that they are the right people for your company. Instead of viewing employees as expendable, Shechtman insists that you should be deliberately creating an environment where they can thrive.

“Employee retention is still a very big issue,” says Shechtman. “It always will be, regardless of the state of the economy. After all, the key to long-term growth and productivity is a workforce that’s familiar with your company and in sync with your business goals. Your workplace should excite and motivate your employees, so they’ll want to stay around. And that means creating an environment that challenges people and helps them grow not just as employees, but as people,” he adds.

“Most employees if given the choice between a nominal raise and a great work environment, will choose the latter. After all, so much of our lives are spent at our jobs. And making the job site an emotionally challenging and motivating environment is key to retention and productivity.”

This theme—fostering what Shechtman refers to as “self-information”—is thoroughly explored in Fifth Wave Leadership. It essentially means that people want their jobs to teach them about themselves, to provide valuable information that not only makes them more marketable in today’s marketplace, but that also helps them become better spouses, better friends, better people.

So how do you foster a growth-oriented workplace? Shechtman offers the following insights and tips:

• Forget monetary incentives: focus on relationships. Fat salaries and bonuses, more vacation time, and other such perks will not increase employee loyalty. All they do is create a bigger sense of entitlement. They tend to tie people to your company in the same manner that one trains a dog to stay in the yard—until that is, the company across the street offers a bigger, juicier bone. But creating a culture in which better relationships are valued gives employees a more profound and rewarding reason to come to work every day. Only through relationships can people change and grow . . . and personal growth is a requirement for survival in our increasingly complex world.

• Help your employees find their familiars. What is a familiar? Simply put, it’s a feeling state we return to again and again. It is an emotional pattern that holds tremendous power over our choices, our relationships and our careers. Rooted in our families and our upbringing, the familiar is a feeling that we unconsciously reproduce, sometimes to our benefit, but often to our detriment. 

For instance, the eldest child of a large family might have grown up having to subrogate her needs for the needs of the younger children. Perhaps she was told she was selfish for asking for things for herself. It is no mystery that as an adult she is frustrated at work and has trouble communicating her needs to her boss. Her familiar—the feeling that she doesn’t really deserve to ask for anything—is reproduced in her work environment, where she is unable to assert herself. 

You can help your employees tremendously by learning about familiars and encouraging your employees to identify—and subsequently diminish—their own. 

• Question employees relentlessly. A big part of creating a growth-oriented workplace is to constantly question your employees. “Did you notice what you did there?” “Why do you think you said that?” “I noticed that when your position was challenged in the meeting, you didn’t defend it—why do you think you backed down?” Creating a “question culture” will help employees ferret out their familiars. It will raise performance expectations throughout the company. It will train employees to think carefully about how they do their jobs and ensure that they have sound reasons for every decision they make. 

• Encourage conflict and confrontation. Yes, you read that right. The purpose of the workplace is not to make everyone happy—it is to grow people to their maximum potential. As Shechtman writes: “The enormous popularity of consensus decision-making/negotiation, participatory management, and self-directed work teams is a sign of the times that is validating our unhealthy quest for comfort above all.” 
Conflict and confrontation are rarely pleasant, but they are the very definition of teamwork. They are also necessary to growth relationships. 

• Provide honest, caring feedback. You should constantly tell your employees how they are coming across, or how they are doing. It goes without saying that sometimes this feedback will be negative in nature. Honest feedback can be painful for both parties, but it is the backbone of a growth organization. A relationship without honest feedback is what Shechtman calls a “mutual toleration society.” He maintains that unconditional acceptance—in both personal and professional relationships—is a form of abandonment, robbing the other party of the most important catalysts for growth and change. (Hence the reason the feedback is labeled “caring.”) 

• Practice the art of self-disclosure. Of course, feedback cuts both ways. You want your employees to provide it to you as well. One way to do so is through self-disclosure. If you want to turn a stagnant employee relationship into a growth-oriented one—or start a new relationship out on the right foot—share your feelings first. This is a big risk because you don’t know how the other person will respond; you must be prepared to deal with any type of reaction you receive. But it’s a risk worth taking because you can learn a lot from your employees. Self-disclose often and you teach by example the kind of relationships you expect to flourish in your company.

• Form an accountability group. Many people fear receiving or giving feedback; they don’t want to show others a weakness or make someone else uncomfortable. Put them in the right setting, however, and they may be willing to provide others with clear and compelling feedback. Accountability groups are one way to foster such feedback. In these groups, people give and receive feedback, create action plans based on that feedback, and hold group members accountable for implementing their plans. 

“I have found accountability groups to be amazingly effective in helping clients overcome their debilitating work and personal problems,” says Shechtman, who writes at length about these groups in his book. “Done correctly, they really can lead individuals and organizations to transform themselves from the inside out.” 

It’s worth adding that the actions detailed above are almost certain to increase your company’s productivity. After all, people who are personally and professionally fulfilled are better employees. This alone is enough reason to foster a growth-oriented workplace, especially given our current economy. But the big reason has more to do with tomorrow than today.

“Creating a work environment rich with opportunities for self-discovery is an investment in the future of your company,” Shechtman concludes. “It’s seldom an easy journey, but it’s one you must undertake if you want to attract and retain talented employees. Begin it now, and when the economy rebounds, your employees won’t leave you for greener pastures. Why would they? Your company will be meeting needs far more important and compelling than a biweekly paycheck.”

Posted in Articles, Uncategorized

July 2010

A part of this newsletter is about unexpected experiences.  One of those occurred this past Saturday, when Arleah and I took a boat trip up the Flathead River with our friends, Deb and Jere Newell.  The Newells live on Flathead Lake and asked us to join them in exploring the river, which connects Glacier National Park with the lake.  They had not been up the river this year and we had never seen it from a boat, in all the years we have lived in Montana.
     
Deb had briefly mentioned something about the “cars” on the river, but it didn’t mean much at the time, so we didn’t pay much attention to it.  As we made our way up the river, we were primarily paying attention to the homes along its banks, and an occasional log feature created by nature.  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, we came upon our first sighting of the “cars.”  Placed along the bank of the river was a montage of rusted out cars from past decades.  Most looked like they were from the 40’s and 50’s.  They were stripped of anything useful or valuable, although a few had shiny chrome bumpers glistening in the sunlight, and one had the insulation from the roof hanging down like a torn shroud.
What struck us was that these cars were not simply abandoned and strewn around the ground like a mini junkyard.  They had been purposefully placed along the bank, most of them half in and half out of the water, hugging the shoreline and each other.  Occasionally, there was one positioned on top of the others, like a painter would do who couldn’t resist that last brushstroke that would complete the picture.
As we pulled in close to one of these “installations,” (there were a few along the river), Deb pointed out a number of cars that had completely slipped into the water and were lying on their sides.  They were eerily visible thru the crystal clear water of the river, and I couldn’t help feeling like I was in the presence of a kind of shrine. 
I know that it may sound strange, but I felt like I had come upon a cemetery and these cars were strange and story-filled grave markers.  One of the cars sitting on top of the others was a big, bulbous Hudson.  We had one of those when I was a child; and my father was so very proud of it.  I think that his practice had finally taken hold, and that Hudson was a message to the world – this first generation American had made it.
As I scanned the row of half-submerged cars and peered down at the sunken hulks, I couldn’t help but think of how many family picnics were launched from those cars; how many trips to grandma and grandpa were taken; and how many children were conceived in those back seats.  Maybe I’m just getting old, but I hope that no government agency or environmentalist hauls those memories away.
Business Tips
“Snap Judgments:  The Virtues of Telling the Truth”
I had an interesting experience a few weeks ago at the Salt Lake City airport (where I’m a de facto resident).  I was sitting in Delta’s Crown Room, in between flights, when I couldn’t help but overhear a cell phone conversation taking place a few feet from me. (I’ve given up feeling like I’m eavesdropping, or feeling embarrassed for people.  Cell phones have removed all shame from telephonic communication.  I’m just glad we haven’t figured out how to do colonoscopies over the phone.)  The fellow I found myself listening to, was quite agitated.  And the theme of his agitation revolved around being discouraged and prevented from dealing with people he worked with, in a direct, open, and honest manner.  At one point, he literally said – “If I can’t tell people the truth, then I can’t get my job done.”  There were a number of variations of this theme, and it was obvious that someone on the other end of the conversation was discouraging him from being straight with people, and encouraging him to be more “tactful” (i.e. dishonest).  He was quite frustrated and was getting more and more distressed.  I don’t know how things turned out, since I had to leave and catch my connecting flight.
This fellow’s dilemma was particularly meaningful for me, since I had just left a consulting engagement in which I was asked to assess and give feedback to three relatively new sales professionals.  I had done this, initially, after meeting with them for a few minutes.  I told the first individual that she struck me immediately as arrogant, distant, and uninterested in anyone other than herself.  I told the second person that she radiated distress and that she had a painfully polite smile that never modulated its shape.
And I told the third person, that he had an ingratiating, professional persona, almost charming, but unreal and artificial.  At first blush (no pun intended), the two women did not take the feedback well.  The young man said he was fine with the feedback, but I had no doubt that if I had told him that he was slated for the gas chamber within the hour, he would have considered it an interesting experience.
I take no pleasure in telling people things that upset them.  I do it for two reasons.  First, I care about people and their growth and development.  Second, I have a life-long commitment to the truth.  Most discussions about the truth revolve around grand and glorious corporate mission statements, or pious recitations of eternal clichés.  Few of them connect the truth with feedback to people about who they are and how they impact others. 
For over thirty years, I have heard, ad infinitum (and often ad nauseam) about talented people who never reach their potential; about difficult people who no one wants to work with; or about cynical, unhappy people who love to sully silver clouds with black linings.  At this point in my life, I’ve grown tired of the whining and complaining about people who don’t change.  If you want people to change (and I firmly believe that people can change), then tell the truth – the truth about who they are, and how they impact other people.  If you’re not willing to do this, then stop whining and hold your peace.
I will occasionally have clients question the validity of my initial feedback, on the grounds that it’s simply a first impression, and may not be an accurate picture of who a person “really is.”  My response is that they may be absolutely right, but the point they’re making is irrelevant.  You’ve heard the phrase – “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.”  Nothing could be truer in our time.  We live in a culture of instantaneity. Twenty-four hour news, email dialogues, overnight stardom.  Who you “really are,” better be apparent to people right away.  Otherwise, the defenses you’ve developed to deal with the world you’ve grown up with, will carry the day.  And those defenses will define you.
The young lady that I gave the feedback to about her arrogance and distancing personae, is actually quite talented and interesting.  After spending some time with her; her humor, articulateness, and warmth create a very different and attractive impression.  (Her unattractive defenses cover her fears and anxiety about being accepted for who she believes she is.)  Unfortunately, most prospects she encounters will be quickly put off by her initial behavior and not experience her engaging side.
The research on connecting quickly with people, is quite sobering and startling.  I have always been intuitively aware of how quickly the process of connecting (or disconnecting) happens, but I recently came across a statistic (courtesy of my friend and colleague, Keith Ferrazzi), that is amazing – “The first eight seconds is the length of time the average human can concentrate on something and not lose focus.”  The study goes on to make the point, that if you effectively connect in these initial eight seconds, you have only an additional 110 seconds to make your case (and your impact).  If you have no idea of how you impact people in those first 118 seconds, you are in for a long, painful and puzzling struggle.
One more point.  Don’t overreact to other people’s overreaction to your feedback.  When you tell people the truth about who they are and how they impact you, they will almost always have a strong reaction.  If they don’t, they have real problems.  When they have their reaction, ask questions about it:  “How do you feel about the feedback I just gave you?”  “Do you feel like it’s accurate?”  “If so, what parts strike you as accurate?”  “If not, what parts strike you as inaccurate?” Don’t try to make people feel better about what you just told them!  It’s the worst, most counter-productive thing you can do.  It removes the fundamental catalyst for change. If you worry about hurting people’s feelings, I have a question for you:  “Would you rather someone have a bad day, or a bad life?”  Think about it.
Political and Cultural Observations
“The Politics of Identity:  Obama’s Racial Ambivalence”  
In all the commentary and discussions about the Obama presidency, I am struck by how little of it talks about Obama, the person, and in particular, Obama’s mixed race background.  He is, in fact, not America’s first black president.  He is America’s first mixed race president.  On the psychological plane, this is no insignificant fact.
    
Personal identity is a complex phenomenon. It is a complicated, often confusing mix of biology, family history, cultural imperatives, psychological gifts and wounds, and core values.  It poses a continual challenge to our attempts to arrive at any kind of clarity – to be able to answer one of life’s fundamental questions:  “Who am I, and what do I believe?”
I have had the privilege of working with a number of very powerful, influential, and impactful individuals in the private sector, as well as in the public arena.  One of the most important things I’ve learned, working with these people, is that huge, colossally important decisions they’ve made, have been driven either by their crystal clear clarity about who they are, or their massive confusion about their identity.  In the best case scenario, these individuals recognize all the varied forces that shaped them; consciously put them aside; draw on their deeply held core values; and do what they know is the right thing.  In the worst case scenarios, other individuals unconsciously and impulsively make profoundly impactful decisions based on being triggered by unresolved issues from their past.
Let me give you some examples.  Bill Clinton is obviously a bright, talented and shrewd politician.  Too bright and too shrewd to intentionally and consciously decide to engage in the numerous boneheaded and self-destructive gambits he got caught in.  If you only had a room temperature I.Q., you wouldn’t decide to have oral sex with a young intern, in the oval office.  So what’s going on here?  Clinton’s childhood is widely known and much written about.  He grew up without a stable male figure; a lonely and unhappy mother; and with demands on him to play a role, as a child, that he was not (and should not have been) capable of playing.  The upshot of this was the evolution of an identity focused around feeling disappointed in, and being habitually disappointing.  This was so ingrained in him, that you could mark your calendar, with great certainty, every six months with the expectation that Clinton would be in the midst of another personal disaster.  He had, seemingly, no control over his propensity to be disappointing.  It dominated his identity.
George Bush’s identity was also dominated by early childhood damage, but with a different permutation than Clinton’s.  Bush grew up in the shadow of indecisiveness and unpredictability from a male figure.  (This probably played a role in his early problems with alcohol.)  Consequently, when he took a position, that was it, for life.  What, in some respects was a strength – his apparent decisiveness – was a critical weakness.  He struggled mightily to re-evaluate decisions, and it was next to impossible for him to admit a mistake and apologize.  His issues with his father and his compensatory rigidity all came together in his decision to invade Iraq.  I have no doubt that the driving force in this decision had more to do with his father’s strategic blunders, than with the national security of the United States.  In essence, he invaded the wrong country.  Sadam Hussein was undoubtedly a madman and a murderous psychopath.  But in terms of global insecurity and national defense, he paled in comparison to the mullahs and lunatics running Iran.
Let’s look at examples of identity being shaped by core values.  In the mid-90’s I had the opportunity to lecture in South Africa at an international conference put on by YPO (the Young Presidents Organization).  What was particularly extraordinary about the conference was the attendance of both Nelson Mandela and F. W. deKlerk, the seventh and last president of apartheid-era South Africa.  The transition to black rule was just beginning, and people at the conference were expecting a firebrand talk from Mandela, and a speech full of mea culpas from deKlerk.  Neither happened. Mandela surprised everyone by not referencing his years of imprisonment and his hatred of apartheid.  He addressed his remarks to his black brothers and sisters and challenged them with an unexpected message.  He said, paraphrasing him – “Don’t expect this [political transition] to be easy, and don’t expect things to be handed to you.  Nobody is going to give you what you’ve been missing, and you’re going to have to work for it.”  The audience was surprised and a bit stunned.
deKlerk’s talk was one of the most forthright and courageous political addresses I have ever witnessed.  He got right to the point.  Apartheid was evil, immoral, and beyond any justification.  And then he galvanized the audience (I paraphrase):  “My followers despise what I am doing [handing over power and calling for elections allowing blacks to vote].  We have one of the most powerful military machines in the world and we could crush any opposition and stay in power perpetually.  But it would be the wrong thing to do.  Ending apartheid is the right thing to do.”  (deKlerk was, at this time under 24hour protection from serious and constant death threats.)
Both Mandela and deKlerk put aside compelling forces from their past, and both came from their core values.  We rarely see this in contemporary politics, business or civic life.  I often say, in my work, that courage is the decision to overcome one’s history.
Barack Obama is very confused about his identity.  And this confusion comes across in his bouncing back and forth in his decision making.  He wants to close Gitmo and extend a hand of friendship to the Muslim world; and he fully supports the pulverizing drone bombing along the Pakistani border.  He wants accountability for educators and opportunity for minority students, and he fails to utter a peep, when the first thing the House does, under his presidency, is kill the voucher program for charter schools in D.C. (populated almost exclusively by poor black students).  There are many more examples involving immigration, fiscal policy, the justice department and on and on.  A lot of people attribute this ambivalence to political pandering and manipulation.  Some of it, is undoubtedly due to those choices. But most of it, I believe comes from his identity confusion.
Being part white and part black is an extraordinary burden.  I have worked with many individuals, as a clinician and a business consultant, who share that burden.  Anywhere they turn, there is loss.  Trying to please both communities is impossible.  If there is any kind of resolution to this dilemma, it lies, from my experience, in the courageous act of articulating a core value system that pleases no one, fully, but creates respect across the board.  A commitment to this, is, in my opinion, the only hope we have of creating anything close to bipartisanship on a political level, and true dialogue in our civic life.
Personal Notes
“Inspiring Heroes:  My Visit to M.D. Anderson”  
Before I talk about my time at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (as a consultant, not a patient), I wanted to make a few comments about a visit with my mother.
Last night Arleah and I went to a family barbecue at my mother’s nursing home.  It is always a sad experience, but last night was especially poignant.  I found myself running the emotional gamut from deep grief to a kind of dark humor.  The best way to convey the experience is thru some random bullet points:
I guess its nature’s irony that I would find myself sitting at a table helping my mother eat.  Here’s a woman who was a professional dancer, appeared in three motion pictures, was a manager at a flagship Saks Fifth Avenue store, who can’t put condiments on her hamburger, without help.
There was a woman across the room, who I thought was looking at me.  She had deep blue, almost black eyes, and pure white hair.  I smiled at her, to acknowledge the eye contact, but got no response at all.  I then realized that she was not looking at me, or anyone else.  She was not even staring off into space.  She was in some private place, all by herself.
There was a woman at the table next to us, who had been served a bowl of soup (or something liquid), instead of the barbeque fare.  She made attempt after attempt to get some in her mouth, but never succeeded. It all ended up in her lap.  I thought, somewhat perversely, that John Cleese and the Monty Python Group would have a field day here.  They could do a senior citizen version of “A Fish Called Wanda.”
At the same table, two residents were locked in a super slow motion battle to unhook their wheelchairs that had gotten fused together when they both tried to leave the dining room at the same time.  There was no upset; no angst; no show of emotion at all.  It was another Monty Python moment.
There was a country western band playing throughout the evening.  Their average age was probably about 80.  They were absolutely terrific.  The fiddle player and the harmonica player were awesome.  And the woman playing the keyboard and singing had an unbelievable voice.  If you closed your eyes and forgot where you were, you would swear that Patsy Kline was in the room.  One gentleman resident, undoubtedly hard of hearing, pulled his wheelchair within inches of the band and lapsed into a kind of catatonic state.  They were absolutely unphased and kept on playing.
Amidst this profound sadness, the staff was flitting around like hummingbirds.  Bringing people things, wiping chins, cleaning tables; seemingly oblivious to the quiet suffering all around them.  We have gotten to know many of the staff, and they care deeply about the residents, and do an amazing job of taking care of them, and truly meeting their needs.  But they have to protect themselves, emotionally; from the stillness, the depression, and the absence of engagement. 
Lastly, the great grandchildren running around was a welcome and stark contrast to the helplessness pervading the room.  They were full of themselves, giggling and shouting, without a care in the world.  They were taking everything for granted, and thank goodness for them.  Life is precious.
And now, for my visit to Anderson.  Last week I spent three days at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.  I had been invited there to deliver a lecture to about 80 of their professional staff that had previously taken part in a number of leadership development programs; and to meet in small groups and one-on-one, with key leaders in the organization.  I received the invitation because of a relationship that had developed with a Neuro-Oncologist who had read one of my books (“Fifth Wave Leadership”), and had been deeply impacted by it.
I had heard about M.D. Anderson for years, and knew it as one of the most prominent and perhaps, preeminent cancer research and treatment centers in the world.  And I have been to a number of research/treatment centers as a professional and thru Arleah’s experience with cancer.  So, I assumed it would be very much like I had seen before.  But I was wrong.
Anderson is of a scope and magnitude that is hard to describe.  It is a mini-city of building after building; research centers, treatment facilities, hotels, restaurants, conference facilities.  It employs nearly 20,000 people (about 3,000 credentialed health care professionals); serves around 75,000 patients a year; and has a budget of nearly three billion dollars.  It is a branch of the University of Texas, and the physicians and doctorate level staff have faculty appointments.  There are 43 distinct departments that all share the mission of wiping out cancer.  What is even more amazing is that Anderson is just one part of the Texas Medical Center, a complex of medical facilities unlike anything else on the planet, employing nearly 80,000 people.
As impressive as this all is, the size, scope, breadth and depth of Anderson, was not what inspired and impacted me the most.  It was the people I met and got to know.  There were two, in particular: Janis Apted, Associate Vice President of Faculty Development, and Dr. Morry Groves, the Neuro-Oncologist who read my book and introduced me to M.D. Anderson.
Janis plays a vital role in making sure that the faculty continues to grow, personally and professionally.  In addition, she has a strong and clear commitment to minimizing the dysfunction inherent in an institution of that size and complexity; particularly one employing a few thousand super-intellectual, narrowly focused specialists.  To say that they work in silos would be the understatement of the century.  You can image the challenge of leading, managing, and developing that population.  You’ve heard of the phrase – “Herding cats.”  This would be better described as herding grizzly bears.
Janis is perceptive, persistent, courageous, and a straight shooter.  She is not easily dissuaded from her mission, and her commitment to make Anderson the best it can possibly be.  She could easily back off, take a low profile posture, and create and sponsor the usual pre-digested, mind-numbing training that passes, in most institutions, for professional development.  She has chosen not to, and for that, she has my respect and admiration.
Morry Groves is a fascinating individual.  Besides the fact that we share the same first name and both went to graduate school twice (he is an attorney and a physician), he has an out-of-the-box commitment to knowing himself better, and to be a better person in his home life, and in his work with his patients.  He does extraordinary work; he is clearly embraced by his patients; he is respected by his colleagues; and he has not one iota of pretense or arrogance about him.  In addition, he is remarkably trusting of himself and others, and is wide open to feedback about who he is, and how he impacts others.
The high point of my time at Anderson (and the inspiring part of the visit), came during the last afternoon I was there.  Morry had mentioned, in earlier conversations, that if I were interested, he would love to have me come to “clinic” with him.  “Clinic” is when he sees patients, primarily to track their treatment and update them on their status and progress (or lack of such).  He is accompanied, usually, by a resident, or a nurse practitioner, or both.  He reiterated his invitation to join him, and added that he would appreciate feedback on how he related and worked with his patients.
We began that afternoon by going thru the medical history of the four patients we were going to meet with.  (Morry is a specialist in brain tumors.)  I got a crash course in brain cancer and a complete overview of each patient’s diagnosis, treatment history, and prognosis.  And even though I have the requisite credentials, clinical background, and experience with issues of confidentiality, I felt honored by being included as a member of the team working with these patients.  I also got a brief history of the research done on these tumors, and the progress made in prolonging the life of those afflicted.  The gains made don’t, at first blush, seem very great.  But if you’re fighting for your life, another couple of months is a long time.
I was nervous and anxious preparing to meet with the four patients scheduled that afternoon.  In my fifteen years of clinical practice, I had dealt with the death of a few of the people I had worked with; and I certainly had experienced gut-wrenching suffering.  But I had never worked every day with people who were almost certain to die while I was helping them.  That’s the world Morry and his colleagues live in.
The interaction that penetrated to my core, occurred when we met with the third of the four patients.  She had been a teacher; had led a very active lifestyle; and was now, for all intents and purposes, confined to a wheelchair.  Her tumor had wreaked havoc with the left side of her body, and it was not responding to the treatment regimen.  She was accompanied in the consultation room by her daughter (who was taking notes on a laptop), and her husband, who looked drained and exhausted. 
The moment Morry, myself, and a resident entered the room and sat down (after some brief introductions), she began talking about her lack of control over her left side, her inability to walk, and her fears of having a painful death.  She asked Morry some questions about how things were looking, but answered them herself.  She knew it was bad; she knew it was going to kill her; and she knew she didn’t have a lot of time left.  It was gut-wrenching.  No one knew what to say.
Something clicked for me.  I asked her if I could ask her some questions.  She nodded.  I asked her what upset her the most, and she answered that she was so frustrated by not being able to control her own body.  I then asked her to identify the strongest feeling she was having from a list of five – mad, sad, glad, hurt, and afraid.  I no sooner had the words out of my mouth, then she blurted out – “mad,” and broke down into uncontrollable sobbing.  Her grief exploded like a volcano.  Her daughter followed immediately, as did the resident.  The tension in the room dissipated completely, and there was a palpable look of relief in her face.  Life-threatening illness is an incomprehensible loss, and requires constant and explosive grieving – a grieving that frightens everyone.
From that point on, I pretty much took over the consultation (once a therapist, always a therapist).  I talked with the three of them about her need to grieve daily and to create a list of at least ten people who could sit with her and let her grieve (grieving is exhausting for everyone, including the listener).  The consultation ended on as good a note as was possible, and Morry reviewed her meds and made some adjustments.
The impact point came for me, as we were walking back to the staff room.  Morry thanked me for my help and turned to me and said – “We miss 90% of what’s going on with our patients.”  At that point, a strange feeling came over me.  What I felt was – I had just changed people’s lives in a way I had never experienced before.  Perhaps this is what some call a spiritual or religious experience.  Whatever it was, it has changed me.
There is a lot of talk these days about heroes.  Last week, I met many of them.  The clinicians and researchers fighting cancer, and the patients fighting for their lives, are my heroes.
Morrie

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morrie@fifthwaveleadership.com

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A Place To Grow: What Motivates Today’s Employees

It’s more important than ever to keep your workforce happy. Change-management expert Morris Shechtman tells you how . . . and it has little to do with money.

Right now, making your workplace attractive to employees is probably the last thing on your mind. If there’s any positive to our weak economy, it’s that dozens (if not hundreds) of job candidates are lined up outside your door. So if one of your employees wants to leave, let him. There are plenty of people ready and willing to take his place. Worrying about what motivates and inspires your employees should be the least of your concerns. Right?

Absolutely wrong, says change-management consultant Morris Shechtman, author of the new book Fifth Wave Leadership: The Internal Frontier (Facts on Demand Press, 2003, ISBN: 1-889150-38-X, $19.95). He contends that quantity does not equal quality. The fact that plenty of people are looking for work doesn’t mean they are the right people for your company. That’s why it’s imperative not to view your employees as expendable—in fact, you should be deliberately creating an environment where they can thrive.

“Employee retention is still a very big issue,” says Shechtman. “It always will be, regardless of the state of the economy. After all, the key to long-term growth and productivity is a workforce that’s familiar with your company and in sync with your business goals. Your workplace should excite and motivate your employees, so they’ll want to stay around. And that means creating an environment that challenges people and helps them grow not just as employees, but as people.”

This theme—fostering what Shechtman refers to as “self-information—is thoroughly explored in Fifth Wave Leadership. It essentially means that people want their jobs to teach them about themselves, to provide valuable information that not only makes them more marketable in today’s marketplace, but that also helps them become better spouses, better friends, better people. 

So how do you foster a growth-oriented workplace? Shechtman offers the following insights and tips:

• Forget monetary incentives: focus on relationships. Fat salaries and bonuses, more vacation time, and other such perks will not increase employee loyalty. They tend to tie people to your company in the same manner that one trains a dog to stay in the yard—until that is, the company across the street offers a bigger, juicier bone. But creating a culture in which better relationships are valued gives employees a more profound and rewarding reason to come to work every day. Only through relationships can people change and grow . . . and personal growth is a requirement for survival in our increasingly complex world.

• Help your employees find their familiars. What is a familiar? Simply put, it’s a feeling state we return to again and again. It is an emotional pattern that holds tremendous power over our choices, our relationships and our careers. Rooted in our families and our upbringing, the familiar is a feeling that we unconsciously reproduce, sometimes to our benefit, but often to our detriment. 

For instance, the eldest child of a large family might have grown up having to subrogate her needs for the needs of the younger children. Perhaps she was told she was selfish for asking for things for herself. It is no mystery that as an adult she is frustrated at work and has trouble communicating her needs to her boss. Her familiar—the feeling that she doesn’t really deserve to ask for anything—is reproduced in her work environment, where she is unable to assert herself. 

You can help your employees tremendously by learning about familiars and encouraging your employees to identify—and subsequently diminish—their own. 

• Question employees relentlessly. A big part of creating a growth-oriented workplace is to constantly question your employees. “Did you notice what you did there?” “Why do you think you said that?” “I noticed that when your position was challenged in the meeting, you didn’t defend it—why do you think you backed down?” Creating a “question culture” will help employees ferret out their familiars. It will raise performance expectations throughout the company. It will train employees to think carefully about how they do their jobs and ensure that they have sound reasons for every decision they make. 

• Encourage conflict and confrontation. Yes, you read that right. The purpose of the workplace is not to make everyone happy, although many companies try to achieve that goal. As Shechtman writes: “The enormous popularity of consensus decision-making/negotiation, participatory management, and self-directed work teams is a sign of the times that is validating our unhealthy quest for comfort above all.” 

Conflict and confrontation are rarely pleasant, but they are the very definition of teamwork. They are also necessary to growth relationships. Let your employees know that you expect them to speak up not when they disagree on a work-related issue, but also to call them on negative behaviors and attitudes. Which brings us to our next point . . . 

• Provide honest, caring feedback. You should constantly tell your employees how they are coming across, or how they are doing. It goes without saying that sometimes this feedback will be negative in nature. Honest feedback can be painful for both parties, but it is the backbone of a growth relationship. A relationship without honest feedback is what Shechtman calls a “mutual toleration society.” He maintains that unconditional acceptance—in both personal and professional relationships—is a form of abandonment, robbing the other party of the most important catalysts for growth and change. (Hence the reason the feedback is labeled “caring.”) 

• Practice the art of self-disclosure. Of course, feedback cuts both ways. You want your employees to provide it to you as well. One way to do so is through self-disclosure. If you want to turn a stagnant employee relationship into a growth-oriented one—or start a new relationship out on the right foot—share your feelings first. This is a big risk because you don’t know how the other person will respond; you must be prepared to deal with any type of reaction you receive. But it’s a risk worth taking because you can learn a lot from your employees. Self-disclose often and you teach by example the kind of relationships you expect to flourish in your company.

• Form an accountability group. Many people fear receiving or giving feedback; they don’t want to show others a weakness or make someone else uncomfortable. Put them in the right setting, however, and they may be willing to provide others with clear and compelling feedback. Accountability groups are one way to foster such feedback. In these groups, people give and receive feedback, create action plans based on that feedback, and hold group members accountable for implementing their plans. 

“I have found accountability groups to be amazingly effective in helping clients overcome their debilitating work and personal problems,” says Shechtman, who writes at length about these groups in his book. “Done correctly, they really can lead individuals and organizations to transform themselves from the inside out.” 

It’s worth adding that the actions detailed above are almost certain to increase your company’s productivity. After all, people who are personally and professionally fulfilled are better employees. This alone is enough reason to foster a growth-oriented workplace, especially given our current economy. But the big reason has more to do with tomorrow than today.

“Creating a work environment rich with opportunities for self-discovery is an investment in the future of your company,” Shechtman concludes. “It’s seldom an easy journey, but it’s one you must undertake if you want to attract and retain talented employees. Begin it now, and when the economy rebounds, your employees won’t leave you for greener pastures. Why would they? Your company will be meeting needs far more important and compelling than a biweekly paycheck.”

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