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Week 51

“If you choose the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Wayne Dyer

I’ve been privileged to coach and mentor some amazing leaders in my 30+ years of leadership development. Here is what I’ve learned.

To effectively lead others, we must first lead ourselves. Leading is not to be confused with managing. We manage schedules, resources, budgets, technology, and tools. Humans want to be led. Not managed. We thrive and make our highest contributions when we are inspired. We tend to resist being managed or forced.

The most effective leaders come from love, not fear. Love for the mission or purpose of the organization or institution. Love for the people who look to them for leadership. They lead and teach by example. They keep learning and unlearning. They are humble. They keep growing.

They lead toward a shared vision or a shared set of outcomes. They model a set of values. They are present for themselves and for those they lead. They build an environment of trust, cooperation, and accountability. They inspire others to become the best version of themselves, to just keep growing.

Fear-based leadership is defensive. It may appear as withdrawal, withholding, or shutting others down. Fear based leadership relies on compliance, rather than trust. As Stephen Covey teaches, when trust levels plummet, everything we do is harder. It sucks our life force and the life force of others.

Leading ourselves and others from a place of love takes intention, mindfulness, and a continuous, courageous investigation of our own operating system. Our motives. Leading from a place of love and respect engages and energizes us and all who look to us. Leading from a place of love is expansive. People grow all around us. They increase their capacity to serve.

The first place to practice and deepen our leadership competencies is with ourselves. Are we leading our lives or merely managing the events and circumstances surrounding us?

What about you? Do you have a personal mission and a set of values to lean on? To live by? To help you make decisions and discern your way through challenges?

My personal mission is to Just Keep Growing and to help others Just Keep Growing. This is who I am meant to be and what I am meant to do.

My personal vision is to live my life boldly, even when my views seem to conflict with those surrounding me.

My personal values include believing in the infinite potential of humans.

What about you? How would you describe 
Your Mission?

Your Vision?

Your Values?

Love, jeanne
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Week 52 

As an upwardly mobile, ambitious, young female in a male dominated, manufacturing environment, I was tasked with developing a new employee onboarding process. I was given free rein. The new onboarding process must be effective, efficient, and repeatable.

It must help our new team members validate their decision to join our organization, prepare them for what to expect, and lay out what was expected of them. It was to be a prototype for our plants throughout the country.

I was honored to be chosen for this high-profile challenge. I had the confidence of my boss, his boss and corporate bosses. I was in the spotlight. Or, was I under a microscope?

With a deadline looming and a corporate presentation to give, my script and visuals began to take shape. When I got them to a point of being sharable, I sought feedback from the bosses. “Great job.” “Most excellent.” “Just what we need.” “Why don’t you run it by the guys on third shift?”

Well, the guys on third shift were our newest, least senior, team members. They received little attention from us office folk, because who wants to go to the plant in the wee hours?

So, I did. I ran the script by our third shift team members, expecting to receive the kindly endorsements I had received from the guys on our first and second shifts.

They generously noted their impressions in the margins. “Wrong.” “This is B.S.” "Exaggeration, at best.” “What a crock.” “This is what really happens.” Well, you get the idea.

They ripped me/my work up royally. Back then, me and my work were one and the same. To say, I took their feedback personally, was an understatement. My perception was vastly different than the experience of the guys who mattered most. The guys closest to the work.

I Was Wrong.

I had invested weeks of my own time into this project. I was in love with my own ideas, my own words, my own beliefs. I was in love with my idea of our culture. I was on a tight deadline. And still in the corporate limelight.

I knew that the only right thing to do, was to stop. And to listen. And to learn. To learn from the guys closest to the work. The guys who made our business hum. The guys I had prided myself on being tuned into, my customers.

It was “a rude awakening,” as my Dad aptly described such experiences.

After a proper sulk, I knew we must do a better job of listening. And learning. And, it would need to start with me.

What’s the point of this decades old story, you ask?

It’s simply this. When experiencing one of life’s many disappointments/lessons, we can get busy being right or we can stop. Listen and Learn. Or unlearn. We can question our beliefs or our approaches. We can be better. We can do better.

Life is a competent and constant teacher. We get to choose whether to learn the lesson or whether to repeat the curriculum, the experience.

To learn the lesson and get on with it, we must first choose to get over ourself. Not always easy. But always necessary. Essential.

Are you experiencing a rude awakening of any kind?

What is life trying to teach you?

What’s stopping you from learning? From doing better?

Love, jeanne