WISDOM FROM FRIENDS: STAY PRESENT

Our final bit of advice in honor of the New Year and Decade is the present of presence, via our friend and Larry Dressler, our fellow Berrett-Koehler author who authored Standing in the Fire. He posted a blog about “holiday presence” that we found meaningful and useful as a guide to remembering the power of being present to the moment.

Staying present is essential to having authentic conversations. It helps us be both participants and observers as we engage others. The participant/observer skill will help you manage your own emotional reactions so they don’t get in the way of what you’re trying to accomplish, so that you can better observe the emotional reactions of others. If we can describe what we’re seeing in others — without judgment or defensiveness— we can help get those emotions expressed, which will allow the focus to remain on the content of the conversation.

Larry suggests keeping a talisman with five knots in your pocket, with each knot representing a question that will help you stay present. Adapting this technique to keep our intentions for authentic conversations at the forefront is easily done:

§         Who am I here for? (What is it I want to create in this moment, with this person?)

§         Why am I here? (How will this conversation serve the good of the whole business or enterprise in which we are engaged?)

§         What can I release from my grasp (e.g., an expectation, distractions, judgment, desire to “win”) that will put me into a stronger partnership with my reason for being here?

§         What would my wisest friend or teacher whisper in my ear at this moment? (Who are your role models for being authentic?)

§         Where in my body can I imagine compassion hiding, taking safe refuge, and reminding me of its ongoing presence? (How can I demonstrate goodwill, even if things are getting tense, or difficult?)

Reflecting on those questions before a conversation, or in the moments when the going gets a little difficult will give you the gift of “presence.” And don’t forget to breathe.

 

Written by Maren and Jamie Showkeir

Owners of henning-showkeir & associates, inc., and co-authors of Authentic Conversations: Moving from Manipulation to Truth and Commitment.

 

 

A LESSON IN MANAGEMENT: BLAME THE PERPETRATOR, NOT THE 'PARENT'

David Sokol, a top Berkshire Hathaway executive who once was speculated to be Warren Buffett’s next-in-line, resigned under a cloud when it was revealed he purchased $10 million worth of Lubrizol stock a day after he set in motion a merger with Berkshire.  The company’s acquisition of Lubrizol for $9 billion increased Sokol’s holding by $3 million. Although Buffett initially defended Sokol, at a shareholder’s meeting on April 30, he called Sokol’s actions “inexcusable” and “incomprehensible.”

 

What got our attention about this coverage was the nattering in a New York Times article on April 23, which quoted a series of experts who wondered whether Buffett’s management style is too “hands off.” It cites a paper from Stanford University's Graduate School of business: "Did Sokol’s actions reveal shortcomings in the company’s governance system that need to be addressed?” We think it's the wrong question, and illuminates the thinking that has created and fostered the entrenched parent-child cultures that are so damaging to organizations.

 

This is fed by the mythology that one person can be in charge of another's accountability. If Sokol’s actions were unethical (as most agree they were), why speculate about whether Buffett’s hands-off management style is to blame? The fact is, a trusted leader made a choice to behave in an unethical way. Unless Buffett was actively encouraging an unethical culture, why castigate his management style? Would a more stringent management style have prevented that from happening? Maybe. And maybe not: All kinds of abuses and unethical behavior can and have emerged in hierarchical, strictly controlled business environments.

 

Buffett also announced at the shareholder meeting that he had no plans to become a “stricter parent” in the wake of Sokol’s resignation. It would be a shame if he had. Many people have extolled the generally ethical environment at Berkshire Hathaway. As Berkshire’s vice chairman, Charles Munger, pointed out, “We’ve had a close brush with scandal two times in 50 years. We’re not going to devote a lot of time to this.”

 

Buffett’s business philosophy, as outlined in a recent Vanity Fair article, has long been to let the leaders of Berkshire Hathaway’s subsidiaries run things as they think best, based on their experience and expertise. The company is decentralized and the responsibility for operations rests solely in the hands of local managers. And this clearly hasn’t inhibited Berkshire Hathaway’s success.

 

Can promoting this kind of management freedom result in abuses and bad choices? Of course! (And it also presents opportunities to learn from the fallout.) But when a smart, experienced adult chooses to behave in an ethically questionable way, the blame should land squarely on the person who made the choice, not on the boss for being a “bad parent.”

A GOOD TRY WORKS, EVEN IF IT DOESN'T

The first newspaper I worked for as a freshly minted journalist had a monthly bulletin that doled out kudos and critiques to the writers and editors. We would applaud our colleagues for snappy headlines, great writing, and beating the competition on a news story.  We were invited to nominate the best news and feature articles, with the final winners chosen by a committee. It shined a light on the unsung heroes of the copy desk, publishing the mistakes they caught before our readers ever them, and helping us learn what not to do again. It also pointed out the mistakes that did get through, and areas that needed improvement. Everyone was encouraged to contribute.

 

One of the monthly “awards” I have learned to particularly appreciate over the years was called The Good Try that Didn’t Work.

 

Our editor, Max Jennings, believed passionately in helping us learn to take the initiative to try something different. Whether we were crafting a story, photographing a news event, or designing a page, Max didn’t want us to be afraid to butt our heads against perceived boundaries. And he wanted to make sure we celebrated attempts to push beyond our comfort zones, even when those attempts fell flat. One of his favorite sayings was, “If it ain’t broke, let’s break it so we can fix it.” It used to drive us crazy, and we used to tease him that his motto should be “Ready, Fire, Aim.” But his influence fostered one of the most dynamic, creative, passionate organizations I have ever worked in.

 

I was reminded of this when I saw that Seth Godin had released another book called Poke the Box. In a Q&A published on his Amazon book page, he says that conformity once was crucial to success, but compliance has become a killer in today’s competitive world. “We need to be nudged away from conformity and toward ingenuity. Even if we fail … we learn what not to do by experience and doing the new.”

 

So take the initiative to try something completely different. Maybe it will be a mistake. If it is, you will still have a reason to learn and celebrate.

EFFECTIVE LEADERS NEED EFFECTIVE FOLLOWERS

We have long been fans of the work of the Institute for Global Ethics and its founder, Rush Kidder. He has authored several books, teaches seminars on ethics and has done important research on the common ethical values that exist in almost every society and culture. As subscribers to his newsletter, we enjoy his weekly, topical commentaries and find they often have relevance to our work.

His January 31 commentary talks about talks about followership, an oft-overlooked corollary of leadership. People such as politicians, corporate CEOs, academics,  and religious figures may be seen as “leaders” but they won’t be effective unless they attract followers who respect them enough to engage a vision.  As Rush points out, the  $50 billion leadership industry is thriving, but how is the return on that investment manifesting? Judging from people’s cynicism about many of the world’s foremost leaders (and for that matter, the leaders we work with every day), the dividends aren’t always visible.

One of Rush’s questions in particular got our attention: “Have we so undernourished our sense of followership that [people] equate “we-ness” with weakness?” We have a related question: Are the skills for effective collaboration required to create a preferred shared future being lost in the obsession to look out for No. 1? Kidder argues that ethical leadership must take good followership into account because “if we teach leaders to respect followership only so that they can become even better at controlling others, we’ve missed the point. Followership isn’t a means to somebody else’s end. It’s the essence of community-building.”

This is a concept that is baked into our notion of authentic conversations, which calls for setting aside self-interest in favor of working toward the success of the whole. It means shifting the perspective of “if you win, I lose” (and vice versa) to an understanding that cooperation and collaboration help us maximize the success and well-being of all.

The notion of effective leadership shifts from getting others to do things your way to encouraging people to coalesce around a greater, defined purpose. It means that people share values and a vision for a preferred future and work together to develop the roadmap and necessary tools for getting there. In that sense, we are all leaders and followers.

Authenticity demands forgoing to the manipulation of others to serve our selfish interests and instead engaging each other transparently and with goodwill. As our friend Ira Chaleff writes in his wonderful book The Courageous Follower, followers don’t orbit around a leader — leaders and followers both orbit around purpose.