EOTA Blog 5

Servant Leadership

Here is an article that was sent to me a couple of years ago by a colleague who was working hard at becoming a better leader. Those of you who are teachers, mentors and coaches will have often lived the reality of not always knowing if your lessons and efforts are having the impact you seek. In this particular case, the young leaders’ name is André Bohren and the fact that he found and shared this article with the rest of his classmates was proof enough for me: he gets it, I remember saying to myself! And while I know that understanding doesn’t always transform itself into infallible action, I do believe that we make little progress towards accomplishing our personal vision if we don’t understand where we’re going and how to get there. On that day, André proved to me he did.

The article is by Marcel Schwantes.

This 17-Year-Old Sums Up in 1 Paragraph What Great Leadership Looks Like. Take a lesson from this standout high-school athlete: Leadership is not about you.

Servant leadership is an expression of character and values in how we conduct ourselves outside the workplace -- in our schools, homes, and communities. That expression is vividly clear and profoundly displayed in a recent column I read by David Lee, founder and principal of HumanNature@Work. Lee nails it by recounting a story on his TLNT column about servant leadership as expressed through the heart of a 17-year-old star athlete.

The story Lee paraphrases comes from the book Stadium Status: Taking Your Business to the Big Time, by John Brubaker, a former lacrosse head coach and now a nationally-renowned consultant, speaker and author. I'll let Lee narrate from here, which will lead up to a heartfelt one-paragraph summary of the meaning of great leadership.

From David Lee's column:

When [Coach] Brubaker took over as a college lacrosse head coach he inherited a team that had done poorly for years. Despite this, a high school standout, Stephen, was interested in playing at Coach Bru's college, even though he was aggressively recruited by far better schools. Coach Bru met with this young superstar and attempted to sign him, but Stephen refused, saying he wanted to wait until the following spring. He was, however, willing to give a verbal, non-binding commitment. Brubaker was desperate to sign this young star, and told him he would hold a scholarship for him until the spring. All fall and winter, other college recruiters came to Stephen's games to watch this amazing talent and hope he would change his mind. When spring came, Coach Bru and Stephen's coach sat down with him, asking him to commit and why he waited so long. And now, from the mouth of a 17-year-old... As Lee tells it, to Coach Bru's astonishment, this is what the 17-year-old said next:

“Coach, I don't know if you've noticed, but a lot of colleges come to see me play each week. Most of my teammates weren't getting scholarship offers or even being recruited earlier this year but now they are. By me not committing anywhere, all the college coaches who keep coming to see me play get a chance to discover how good some of my teammates really are. If I signed early with you, all the other coaches would've stopped coming to the games and none of my teammates would've gotten recruited.”

The lesson for all leaders. Let's face it: We've all just been collectively schooled by a (then) 17-year-old. His response to his coach not only defines servant leadership but illustrates the essence of great leadership, period. The reason his response is so mind-blowing for someone his age -- with star status to boot -- is that the world wasn't revolving around his axis, as most self-centered 17-year-olds typically behave. Instead, he was about helping other people -- his teammates.

As Lee writes further about Stephen: "He was already thinking about how he can lift up others, how he could help them achieve their goals. He had confidence in his own ability to excel and achieve what he needed to achieve; he wasn't obsessed with how to make that happen because he knew it would. Instead, he focused on how he could serve others."

And therein lies the lesson for every leader in the workplace: Your role is to lift up your employees and help them to joyfully achieve their goals so they can thrive. When they succeed, you succeed, and the whole organization succeeds. It's a thing of beauty.

That reminds me of a great quote by Robert K. Greenleaf, who coined the term "servant leadership" in the modern corporate setting. He wrote these famous words in his legendary essay "The Servant as Leader," published in 1970:

As I wrote in the past, when you serve first, it's for the other person's benefit. Like Stephen, you selflessly focus attention away from yourself and put the spotlight on others. Greenleaf noticed that these leaders got the best out of their employees; they were more motivated, more creative and more productive, which led to great business results.

7 ways to put servant leadership into action.

To add some practical elements of servant leadership into your work routine, Lee offers these great tips from his TLNT column:

1. Practice doing everything within your power to remove obstacles that make it hard for employees to do their best work. This means providing the information, technology, resources, and support for people to do great work.

2. Remember the law of reciprocity: What you put out is what comes back to you from others. If you want others to care, make sure you care about them -- and that you show you care.

3. Ask those who report to you: "How can I help you? What can I do -- and NOT do -- to help you be successful with this project (or in your job)?"

4. Look for opportunities to compliment -- catch people doing things right -- and show people you "see them."

5. Be on the lookout for articles, seminars, networking connections, and opportunities that would benefit those you serve. The very fact that you're thinking about them says a lot about who you are as a person.

6. Be more generous with your attention and time. Don't only ask, "Would this meeting benefit me?" Be willing to have meetings because they would help the other person.

7. When being a servant leader feels like it takes too much time or effort, remind yourself that what you put out comes back to you multiplied, for better or for worse.

Thank you all for summing up what Enabling Others To Act looks like in action, it really is a thing of beauty.

EOTA Blog 4

This Beautiful Man Helped Turn My Life Around

The pictures I publish here are from the Martin H. Ainley Archives Centre at Saint John’s-Ravenscourt School (SJR) in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

As indicated by this short paragraph in the Eagle yearbook, Martin Ainley, or “Ace” as we students knew him, arrived to teach and become a boarding master at SJR in 1958-59. I was sent to SJR as a misbehaving teenager in 1961, and although I didn’t know it then, my time with Martin paved some of the road to success in my life. Of course, he did not accomplish that Herculean task all by himself, my wife Linda deserves most of this credit, but that’s the heart of another blog (ETH Blog 5).

The simple fact of the matter of my being ‘sent’ to SJR was that my parents simply did not know how to deal with me. Had I stayed home in Edmonton instead of attending SJR as a boarding student for the next 3 years, my high school years, I am convinced I would have wound up in jail or dead. I was not on a good behavioral path.

“Ace” was my French and Latin teacher as well as my Boarding Master, the latter title meaning that he and his family lived in the school, near the Form V (Grade 10) boarders’ dormitories. Part of his duties called for him to check in on us at ‘lights out’, during which times I quickly came to realize that there was no wool to be pulled over those calm yet piercing, steely eyes of his. Avoiding Martin while sneaking out for a smoke was akin to being dropped behind enemy lines and looking to find the Résistance.

I could easily have chosen to write an Encourage the Heart blog about Martin, but I decided to post it here, in Enable Others to Act because I believe his great gift to me was in enhancing my self-determination. In 1961, I carried around a set of nasty baggage: I was judgmental, competitive, somewhat angry and very much focused on myself; I acted impulsively with little thought to the consequences of my actions. By 1964, I was still struggling with all those attributes, but I did pay a lot more attention to that simple life equation: responsibility = accountability, and I have Martin to thank for that great gift.

Until then, I had never met an adult whose attitude was: “Well, what do you think will happen when you do that? It’s your choice, you’re in charge.” What I was used to was: “You idiot! Only you would think of doing something that stupid!” The whole concept of self determination was a novel one indeed; and although I still have my moments, I have “Ace” to thank for teaching me this fundamentally important lesson.

I returned to SJR as a French teacher (hmm … same as Martin), with an M.A. (hmm … same as Martin) seven years later and Martin was now a neighbour (yes, I became a Boarding Master too; Linda and I had a small apartment in Thompson House … that had actually been my Form VI classroom! Too weird for words!) and Martin made it a point to befriend me. It is a testament to his adaptability that I could have been a challenging student and now be his colleague and friend.

Linda and I only stayed a year, we went on to climb other mountains, but “Ace” remained in my heart, I went back to a class reunion some 20 years after my graduation and I remember paying a public tribute to Martin as he was being honored, in person, so I know I was able to tell him what he meant to me. As a matter of fact, a number of younger alumni came up to me afterwards and told me I had been speaking for them, too, so Martin obviously helped a lot of us get on the right personal path.

ACE'S RETIREMENT CELEBRATION

I also remember responding to a request from SJR for ‘memories’ of Martin. My response was an attempt to explain that Martin does not exist in my memory, he exists in my very being … to this day. I know Martin read and understood that message because he showed me the publication some years later. Again, I am so glad he knew what he means to me.

As I say, a beautiful man. Thank you for enabling me, Martin.

EOTA Blog 3

The Role of Improv in Leadership Development

Some years ago, we were asked to put on a leadership development program for a small group of exceptional achievers who all shared a similar challenge: a perceived lack of ‘presence’.

In the dusty, cobwebbed corridors of my memory, something stirred … oh yes! I had once hooked up an immensely-competent-yet-somehow-understated professional with an actress (now called ‘actors’, I understand). Over a few one-on-one sessions, she managed to help my colleague ‘project’ a more powerful persona, and that in turn made me recall what I had learned in my university minor in drama: that we can show, or ‘project’ behaviors that shape the perceptions of others, even though those behaviors may not initially flow from our default modes. These were good memories to put to use!

So … we decided to reach out to Jim Wuest, our long-time deeply-trusted Industrial Psychologist, to see what/who he might suggest. He put us onto Vancouver Theatre Sports League and we subsequently met Ken Lawson. What a great door we walked through that day! Thank you Jim! Thank you VTSL! And, OMG … thank you Ken!

Ken Lawson,

“leap and the net shall appear”

Where to start with Ken?  First, he appears here in our Enable Others to Act section, not because he is teaching us what actors do, but because he is enabling PCL’s leaders to become powerful, impactful communicators by carefully strengthening their competence and their confidence. Until we met Ken, we had no idea that presence is a full contact sport!

Don’t get me wrong, we don’t just do Improv classes, we make them an integral part of the fabric we weave into our high-potential leadership development programs.  Improv might take up about 25% of our agenda in every one of our face-to-face get-togethers.  But that 25%?  Wow!  And BTW, we are still doing Improv in our new virtual world, but more on that in another blog …

Here are our learning objectives for Improv:

• building a powerful presence, through increased awareness of, and skill in, delivering verbal and non-verbal messages

• increased abilities/speed to hear/think/respond on one’s feet, particularly in uncomfortable/new situations … thus the special meaning to “leap and the net shall appear”

• focus on personal creativity and teamwork

• greater skill in storytelling

The results we are seeing from Ken’s contributions, his patience and perseverance, to say nothing of a never-wavering “Yes, Lets!” attitude are remarkable. And … how fun is all this?

EOTA Blog 2

“He Pushed Us Past Himself”

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This is a picture of Dick Pettinger, a legendary mentor in our company. The words used to describe his contributions to the success of our future leaders by those leaders themselves: “he pushed us past himself”, have always stayed with me.

Helping others become more than we are is something we are willing to do for our children, without question. Yet I can remember a guest speaker once challenging us in the audience with the question: “Why is it any harder for you to do so for your direct reports, your peers”?

Great question! Dick Pettinger, a man with Grade 8 education and a mind like a steel trap, knew the answer. I have a lot more formal education and a mind of a much weaker metal, and I have had to learn the answer slowly and often.

EOTA Blog 1

Blog 1: Multiple Intelligences. On the point of strengthening others, it all begins with the right mindset:

As I was growing up in a household of highly-educated parents, I heard a lot about how important it was to be intelligent. And back then, there was one major measure of intelligence: the IQ, a single number indicator that you could either brag about or never mention. So imagine my delight when, in 1999, I had the great good fortune to experience Dr. Howard Gardner, Professor of Education @ Harvard, at the 8th International Conference on Thinking.

Here’s a snippet of his fascinating story:

• while in grad studies in developmental psychology, he worked as a research assistant studying children’s artistic thinking

• then after getting his doctorate, he worked with brain-damaged patients at the Boston Veterans’ Administration Hospital

• so, every day, he worked with brain-damaged patients in the morning and with artistic kids in the afternoon. He came to realize that brain damage can be quite selective (e.g., language abilities disappear but the ability to produce music remains) and that some kids who were very good in music and dancing couldn’t write a coherent sentence

Long story short he used his experiences to develop his 1983 Theory of Multiple Intelligences, graphically depicted below:

And here’s the point about the ‘strengthening others’ mindset: imagine how you could put this theory to work as your base belief about others? Instead of asking yourself: “how smart is she?”, you teach yourself to ask: “how is she smart?” … and then by figuring out the answers to the better question, your assumptions about the person take a very constructive step forward into a relationship.