MTW Blog 8

Advice On Living Up To A Chosen Value

What appears below is the text of an email I recently sent to one of our 2023 leadership course participants.

As part of his preparation for the course, he was asked to choose 3 core values, then check-in with a few people (family, friends, co-workers) who have had plenty of opportunity to observe his behaviour patterns, to see what they think his 3 core values might be, then do some thinking about his ‘evidence’.

Having completed this process, he emailed to describe the fact that only one of his chosen 3 was validated by the observations of others, and that his main purpose, that of making a difference, seemed just be a “goal in his head”. He wanted some feedback. In the hopes my noodling might be of some use to you readers, here’s what I sent back:

Hi X … thank you for sharing your thinking and your reality checks.  I have some thoughts which I will share below and I have copied in Y, since you have included him in communication and because he, like me, is still working on being who he wants to be.  We are both students of the process.

First, I applaud you for recognizing that the perceptions of others are excellent measuring sticks.  Second, I believe you can consider your “family” value as firmly validated.  Third, the rest of your list seems to be a combination of who you want to be and who you are (as perceived by others).  All very normal, I trust you are not shocked or dismayed.  I also congratulate you on realizing that some of who you want to be may just be a “goal in your head” for the moment.

Here are some thoughts for you to consider as you choose how to go forward:

- despite our best intentions, we are what we actually say and do, repeatedly, as experienced by others

- additionally, we have to remind ourselves that others experience us in the context of home or work or school or community … and that our role in each of these settings varies … so that we may show behaviours of the leader in one or a co-leader in another, a participant/colleague in a third, or a follower in a fourth, and so on 

- at the same time, we will each have some basic character traits that transcend these roles … these have to do with our personalities and how we approach life … examples are different levels of humour, determination, analysis, decisiveness, competition … you need to sort through all these as well, so that you are not just accepting that the impulses of a lifetime dictate who you are.  To give you a personal example, I love laughing/being funny and my first glimpse of a situation has always been to look for the humour in it … this is sometimes appropriate and more often not, so unless I want to be a ‘frivolous’ person to others, there are times when I have to step on my impulse and look for a helpful human insight to share (which I am also good at), because I’d rather be known for that.  I am 76 years old and still working on this

- our goal in asking you and your 2023 classmates to undertake this values clarification exercise is to help you make your behavioural decisions more deliberate and feed the ideal of “who you want to be”.  If we take your “making a difference/purpose” value as your personal example, I am guessing that you are exactly right, that you have not turned your ‘goal’ into any repeated/habitual behaviours (what you always/never say and do) that would cause others to stop and say to themselves “boy, X is all about (insert value), isn’t he?”

- the great news is that you can immediately start doing and saying things that indicate what your purpose is and how you want to make a difference in the world.  Just pick your target and go.  Want your family to be known for Z?  Enable them to become that for others, encourage what you think they need to say and do more of.  Want your work teams to be more customer-focused?  Preach it and reward it and don’t ever do or say anything that detracts from that message.  For some, making a difference can be as simple as “being 100% emotionally and physically focused on others” when they ask for your attention … the effect over time can be to be known as a person who lives life in the service of others … and trust me, there isn’t a whole lot of competition out there!  

My best advice is to pick something you are good at, something you believe is important in life, and then just start acting in ways that take small steps in that direction … I think you’ll be surprised at how quickly you can form new habits in what you say and do … and beware, the biggest challenges will be in keeping your purpose front of mind, particularly when the “you-know-what” hits the fan or when something unexpected takes your attention away.

This is the work of a lifetime. Not trivial, not easy, but as meaningful as meaningful gets.

Hope this helps.  Cheers!

MTW Blog 7

The Behaviours of Influence

This blog appears here in Model The Way not because it highlights the behaviours of a particular person but because it describes how we can all effectively act (what we Say and what we Do) as we go about the process of influencing others.

The author of this wonderful work is Geoff Curzon (see ISV Blog 7). To create this practical list of our action options, he went to Aristotle, the Greek philosopher who thought and spoke some 2,370 years ago … and who is obviously still worth listening to. Aristotle presented three means of rhetoric, or the orator’s art of using language to convince or persuade: logic (logos), emotion (pathos) and credibility (ethos). What Geoff has so brilliantly added to Aristotle’s work are lists of behaviours that we might well choose as we move from one means to another. Enjoy! We hope you find it useful.

To access the document, click on the title below, then click on the file heading in the box at the bottom left of your screen. Click on the heading and you will have uploaded Geoff’s document.

The Behaviours of Influence:  from Aristotle on the art of rhetoric …

MTW Blog 6

A Personal Values Story

This story (told in 2 parts) is one of my favorite stories about my great friend, Mike Olsson.

To set the stage, I need to tell you that our friendship flourished right at the tail end of my career with PCL. I had just moved back to Edmonton, Alberta after spending 8 years living and working in Denver, Colorado and my wife Linda and I had determined that I would work a couple more years before retiring. My new boss, Peter Stalenhoef, asked my to act as Mike Olsson’s leadership mentor in my remaining time. Although I dd not know Mike well at that time, what I did know was that he was always “up”, a strong team player, serious about professional development (our métier), a terrific athlete and a lot of fun to be around. Who could say no to deepening a relationship with such a character? Not me!

That was 10 years ago, and I do know Mike a lot better now, well enough to call him a great friend. I am a generation older, so you already know that Mike wasn’t just ‘on the take’ as my protégé … he gave more back to me in demonstrating his learning, his encouragement, his steadiness and his perseverance than I could ever have imagined: the return on this mentoring investment is one of the best gifts of my life, so thank you to our shared boss Peter! But this story is really about these particular attributes of Mike’s most excellent character.

Part 1: Mike has completed a number of Ironman competitions, those long-distance triathlons that combine a 4K swim, a 180K bike ride and a 42K run … not your average Sunday morning jog. The training that goes into preparation for an event like this is massive: Mike says he put in at least 10 hours of training a week for 7 straight months and that he should really have been doing twice the training, but he also has a beautiful family and a day job.

Here are 3 pix of the Hawaii Ironman, just to give you an idea of the triple challenge:

I did say that Mike is a terrific athlete, but I shouldn’t imply that his athleticism transcends ALL sports. In fact, when he did the Hawaii Ironman, he says he didn’t think he would even be able to finish the swim (first) portion, since moving through water quickly is definitely not his forte. But, his forever-positive outlook allowed him later to boast that his bike was the easiest to find when he finally did complete the swim …

In 2007, having improved his performance as a swimmer, Mike competed in Ironman Canada. He felt he was fit enough to achieve a finish time he could be proud of and came out of the water earlier than ever to start the bike portion. 60K in, he got a flat tire, fixed it in a few minutes and kept going.

20K later, second flat tire … then the third … the fourth … the fifth. Mike says he had never felt such frustration and disbelief … until the sixth flat!

After more than an hour wasted on the side of the road, he was finally able to replace the entire wheel and complete the bike portion. So much for that time to be proud of!

But Mike didn’t quit, as I know I would have ... didn’t even occur to him. After using up his own 2 spares tubes, he waved down other triathletes for their spare tubes and cartridges; in fact, after the 6th flat, he borrowed a whole wheel from a spectator! Quitting, complaining were never options for Mike: he finished the bike portion and then ran a pretty decent marathon, incredibly achieving his personal best despite the setbacks.

How was he able to accomplish this feat? That is the deeply interesting part.

Part 2: This is Mike’s Dad, celebrating at the summit of the Chilkoot Trail, in 2012, at the end of a strenuous 5-day hike in Alaska and the Yukon.

As a father, Gordon Olsson continues to give his son Mike great gifts. Now almost 80, he has spent a lifetime modeling the way. A career land surveyor, he had always wanted to hike the famous Chilkoot Trail, retracing the steps over the continental divide that the prospectors followed during the Gold Rush in the late 1800’s.

What the picture doesn’t obviously show is the fact that Gordon was born without fully-formed fingers and feet. He only has a few half-fingers and his feet are really just heels … no real ‘ball of foot’ or toes. But Gordon never let this slow him down in life: he has always been active and has never used the ‘disability’ excuse … ever! So … is it any surprise that Mike would let 6 flat tires get in his way of finishing?

Mike Churchillian attitude of “Never Give Up!” is deeply who he is … because it is who Gordon is … and has always shown to the world.

Like Father, like Son … both models for all the rest of us!

MTW Blog 5

Peter’s Parable

In the winter of 1983, I fell into a deep career funk.

The previous fall, I had completed the toughest learning assignment of my life, the University of Western Ontario’s Management Training Course, a 5-week business school program during which I and my classmates worked through a mere 96 case studies. I did it because the president of my organization had promised me greater responsibility if I made my way through the program successfully. However, soon after I returned to work, that president left and a new one took over. Despite telling me he would honour his predecessor’s promise, in the end the new one did not. Thus my funk.

To describe my performance over the next 8 months in a nutshell, I was the worst employee, colleague and boss you could imagine: self-absorbed, cynical and angry. You can also guess how much fun I was as a husband and father. I had never before been this bad for and to others … hardly the stuff of a desired legacy!

It was at this time that I decided to participate in a Banff Wilderness Seminar, the mountain-climbing Outward Bound course I described in CTP Blog 3. What I did not disclose in that blog was the fact that the last 24 hours of the program were spent alone in the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies … no real food (only an apple and a handful of nuts), some water, tea bags, a campfire and a personal journal for nourishment, safety and company.

Let me set the stage just a bit more before I tell you the outcome of my story here. One of our guides had walked me to my “site”, which I was told was about a mile from the next fellow’s site. No visitation privileges. We were not allowed to converse on the walk in and I was tasked with being by my lonesome for the next 24 hours, at which point my guide would return and we would walk back out (a couple of miles) silently. The intention was to give each seminar participant undistracted time in which to sort out whatever each individual had “going on”. Given what I told you about my funk, I had things to sort out, in spades.

The next 24 solitary hours were already going to be agony for a gregarious social being like myself. But as he left, the guide pointed to a large pine tree nearby and offered me two parting words: “bear tree”. Meaning I should climb it if a grizzly happened by. No distractions indeed! I immediately gathered more wood for my campfire than I would need for a month alone and spent the deepest and darkest night of my life wide awake, hearing all sort of strange and alarming noises around me.

I did not sleep a wink. Having no one to talk to, I opened my blank personal journal and started writing. Those 96 case studies the year before had drilled a problem-solving process into my thinking and it took most of the night for me to figure out what had happened to me … or rather what I had done to myself AND what I needed to do to fix myself.

Given my university studies in literature, what came out on paper was the basis for Peter’s Parable. By the time I had finished writing it, I knew what I had to do, and it was well within my power to do it. Here’s the parable and my subsequent action plan:

An errant monk stopped on the stony slopes of the main highway he was travelling. He had come upon a sightless man groping to regain the higher ground.

From a distance, the monk called to him gently: “Are you in need?” To which the sightless man replied: “Yes, I have lost my way - will you help me?”

“Of course,” said the monk, “are we not brothers of a larger family, and is it not a brotherly duty to help one another?”

“You will excuse my lack of brotherly love, my friend,” retorted the man harshly, “but it was one your ‘brethren’ who caused my eyesight to be lost … I am no part of his, your or any family for that matter.”

The monk breathed deeply, drinking in the sense of the man; and behind the cynicism, he softly touched despair.

The monk thought for a moment, and then asked: “Are you travelling alone?”

“As you can well see,” replied the man, somewhat irked.

“Perhaps, but I meant not only companions on the road.” said the monk, “whom do you carry within?”

And the sightless man fell silent for a long while.

“No one,” he replied at last. “Shortly after I lost my vision, the muse within departed for more hospitable climes; the mirth no longer surfaces … and the child in me disappeared many years ago. But why do you ask after my inner silences?”

Came the strong and measure reply: “Find these your former friends, and you will know your way again.”

And the blind monk slowly regained his road.

MTW Blog 4

Ernie Poole’s Rules

Here’s a story about a gift that goes on giving … despite the fact that it was never given in the first place!

In 1989, I joined PCL Construction as their first-ever training and development professional. At the time, they were (and still are, BTW) Canada’s largest general contractor, operating in the commercial, industrial and civil construction industries.

I was challenging myself to join them, moving as I was from an educational institution (The Banff Centre for Management) into the fray of the private sector. Adding to my interest was the fact that PCL is employee-owned, so the work environment was quite different to what I had observed of the private sector in my time with The Banff Centre.

I only came to understand what employee-ownership at PCL really meant as I worked and lived with my fellow owner-operators over the next 20+ years. What I had observed in 10 previous years of presenting leadership and management courses to the public, private and not-for-profit sectors is that the private sector is all about generating opportunity for innovation, growth, profit … pretty exciting energy! I had also observed that many managers and leaders in the private sector saw themselves as competition to their colleagues for the next step up the ladder, which of course occasionally led people to stray a bit away from teamwork and more towards self-service. Would construction be the same, I wondered? It’s a pretty tough industry. Would I be up for it?

Me joining PCL?

It turned out that employee-ownership makes a tremendous difference in the power of shared values in a constructive work environment. Here’s what I learned in my time with PCL and how I learned it:

A couple of years into my relationship with with PCL, I was asked to start a series of videos on “PCL Legends”, the many leaders who had made PCL into what it was. Of course I already knew some of the history of the company:

• started in 1906 by Ernie Poole, who had come out west from PEI on a harvest train and never went back. Built a farmhouse in Stoughton, SK, never looked back;

Ernie Poole

• Ernie sold Poole Construction Ltd to his sons John and George in 1948;

• who in turn sold the company to Bob Stollery and 24 other trusted, hard-working employees in 1977-78; and

George and John Poole, with Bob Stollery, signing the historic employee purchase agreement

• today, there are 4,500 employee-owners!

We had already produced a video of Bob Stollery, who had led the employee purchase of what was now known as PCL and my assignment in this instance was to interview and record some John Poole historical perspective. Having had some experience in writing and acting, I felt comfortable with the assignment and assumed I would be scripting, directing and editing the final product. Well, I certainly did those tasks, but the experience was not quite like I had imagined.

John Poole and his beautiful wife Barbara, legends of philanthropy

I quickly learned that the John Edward Poole perspective uncovered a truly astonishing man. In my work with him, I tried to be organized, intelligent and diligent. He more than matched that and taught me additional lessons in how to be prompt, courteous, prepared, attentive, responsive, curious, honest, humble, respectful and professional. In all of my career, I cannot think of a series of interpersonal interactions that have left me in more human awe.

And that’s not even the story here! But I think you will see why I needed to set the stage this way, because of what happened during our rehearsals (yes … the gentleman demanded we rehearse before filming and I had thought I would have to talk him into taking that step!).

At any rate, during one of our filming sessions, he arrived with a single piece of paper covered with hand-writing in pencil, said he had found it the night before, while he was going through his father’s papers, just to make sure he wasn’t forgetting something important for us to talk about. Here’s what he showed me …

On the left is the piece of paper John brought to the recording studio; on the right, a typed-out, more legible rendering (we did this later). John told me that his father must have started working on these values and guiding principles in the 1940’s, but had never published them for his employees to see, he just kept them amongst his business papers, to refer to, like personal maxims. And John thought us seeing them now might help explain his father’s legacy and what John and brother George were trying to use to Model the Way in their time as company leaders.

You could have knocked me over with feather! These behavioral guidelines were exactly what I had been ‘feeling’ in my short time with PCL, so I knew the Poole family and many of their chosen leaders over the years had been acting in concert with the implied values … BUT!!! how much more could we say and do, I thought, if we were to let everybody in the company know what behaviors we expected of them as they lived and worked with PCL?

And what about our business partners: the owners, the designers, the engineers, the trades, the suppliers? Shouldn’t they explicitly know what dealing with PCL meant? If we published these as corporate behaviors, we would have to actually live up to them, day in and day out. Pretty good pressure!

And that’s just what we’ve done. I am persuaded by my work with helping people articulate their own personal values, attach specific behaviors to them, then publish them in their lives, that this is the greatest gift a leader, an organization can offer (more on this in another blog). And Ernie didn’t offer it up for all to read, he just lived it. It took his son John to make the gift official some 50 years later. Thank you John, you were and are an exemplary PCL role model!

P.S. The other little thing I noticed about Ernie Poole’s Rules, and you can only see it if you can view the original document, is that this was a ‘working document’ for Ernie. You can see places where he erased some words and replaced them with others … this was perhaps the first PCL personal journal! Subject of another blog, another time …

MTW Blog 3

An Inspiring Start to a Personal Vision

As we think about who we are and who we want to be, is there a better place to start than with our loved ones? And if we are already an inspiration to them, then we know we have the capability to inspire others as well.

MTW Blog 2

Darcy Belanger, Role Model Extraordinaire

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A Most Beautiful Man!

Yesterday, we attended Darcy’s memorial service. He lost his life on March 10, 2019, on his way to Nairobi to represent MAPS (Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary) at the United Nations Environment Assembly. This journey was undertaken on personal time, a labour of a lifelong commitment to helping provide a healthier future for life on earth.

He leaves all of us with holes of different sizes and shapes in our lives, yet his own life managed to fill our hearts with the possibility of what we can each become. We can do with our own lives as Darcy did with his: this is noble personal vision indeed!

So for those of you who wish to build on his example, this blog is a call to Yes, And! Darcy’s life:

• lead yourself to a place of acceptance and growth before you deign to lead others; this will most likely require removing personal interferences, or “barnacles” as Darcy called them

• deeply anchor your mindset in servant leadership, so that your skills are built first on listening and understanding

• always make it clear to others that their choices in life belong to them and help them see the possibility that lies ahead

• be as well-prepared as you can be, process can be a powerful foundation for progress

• become an explorer: be curious about the world around you. Never done it before? Give it a try, you might surprise yourself AND you will earn the respect of others

We would love to see what others would add here, to help us each emulate a life lived “all in”.

MTW Blog 1

Blog 1: Deliberate Mindset? A suggestion for a mental habit … always asking yourself “what should my mindset be, here and now?” Mindset comes from the Buddhist concept of “mindfulness”, it is all about focus and attention in the present AND it turns out it also helpful to your future ability to recollect and retain what actually happened.

If a deliberate mindset can become a lifelong habit, then we know you will be more successful than going into meetings and work sessions without an express attitudinal purpose … which makes you more vulnerable to having someone hijack your attitude, or to having an uncontrolled, emotionally-unintelligent reaction.

The fit with Modelling the Way? A deliberate mindset operates like a personal value: it anchors what you say and do. Examples:

• as you meet someone new, if you choose to be ‘interested’ instead of ‘interesting’, you will keep the conversational focus on the other person, you ask a lot of questions and you will gain terrific information that the other person considers to be important about them. If you choose to be ‘interesting’, you will likely make sure you talk about yourself and you will miss the opportunity to show respect (a personal value)

• faced with a difficult meeting? Perhaps the deliberate mindset of ‘resilient’ will serve you well, help you surf the waves of challenge coming your way

• have a personal goal of becoming more strategic in your thinking? Mindsets in search of ‘outsight’ (see Challenge the Process) and ‘forward-looking’ can become useful mental habits.