The curious incident of the leader who came out of his cockpit

The curious incident of the leader who came out of his cockpit

It happened last April. At the time it took me a few minutes to figure out what was different.

Its impact has stayed me since then. And I have told a few of my coaching clients the story to illustrate a point regarding their leadership.

It was about 7pm in a plane on the tarmac at London City Airport. All the passengers had the usual look of weariness from a combination of a day’s work and the usual battle required to get through airports in this day and age.

We were waiting for the  “final few passengers” or the plane was “going through its final checks or something” when the captain turned on the PA system and spoke to the passengers about the expected flight time, the flight path and the weather in Dublin.

Nothing strange in any of that. But it was not what he said that stayed with me but HOW he did it.

The pilot did something I have never seen before or since. He came out of the highly secured cockpit, picked up the phone that the steward/stewardesses use and he looked at us and we looked at him as he spoke.

This was the man you was going to take a 100 people and lots of fuel up into the air and down again safely and instead of a voice in the ether we got to see the leader.

And it made a difference. I paid more attention to what he was saying, I bizarrely felt safer because I got see him and he wanted to see us, and I felt respected after two hours of being treated like just another object moving through check in and security. It changed my mood.

Why do I tell the story to my clients – cause too many have got caught leading their teams through emails or from behind the “always busy” closed office door.

The pilot didn't have to stand there in front of his passengers. Am sure he could have found something else to do.

But it had a powerful impact on me.  Still does 4 months later.

So is it time you come out of your cockpit and be visible to your team and organization?

Resurrecting your career by following the rules of the stock market

It's resurrection time as mother nature comes back to life after the Autumn and Winter recess.

So let's look at a common coaching challenge I often see - resurrecting one's career in your current organisation.

The fact that one's career needs help can often catch you unawares, like the lobster not noticing the rising temperature of the water around it in the pot.The awareness that there's an issue often comes from some form of comment or feedback from a boss or senior stakeholder  through a process like a 360. 

The analogy I use with clients who find themselves in this situation is that of their personal stock price. Historically they have experienced career advancement,  their stock price consistently rising. But now suddenly we discover that people are selling as opposed to buying the individual's stock.

Here are the steps I advise my clients to follow to get their career growing again

1. Get to the issue.

Be relentless in finding out what the perceived problem is - why is your stock price falling. Even if you have feedback, go back and get even more specific feedback. The more data you have on why people have a specific perception of you and your career, the more focused you can be in addressing the perception.

2. Identity the institutional investors in your career.

Stock prices are not based on individuals like you and me trading - its all about the pension funds and the big institutional shareholders - their decisions move the market. So as opposed to convincing the whole organization how great you are, identify who the big institutional investors are in your career. This may or may not include your manager depending on how senior they are. Very often it is some key folks a couple of levels above you in the company.

3. Get a sponsor to help you demonstrate value to the institutional investors. 

Companies need intermediaries to get them in front of investors and venture capitalists. So do you. Who is going to get you in front of the senior people while also selling your worth to them when you are not in the room. This is were a supportive boss or mentor can really help you.

4. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate.

Wall Street does not support a stock just because they like you or think that you may have value - they buy based on stated intentions, follow through on those intentions, demonstrated results and constant communication of all these. You need to start broadcasting to your sponsor on a regular basis so they can both sell you and challenge negative perceptions about you that come up in senior leadership meetings. And you need to broadcast, on an appropriate basis, to the big investors in your organisations to show them your impact and value. This is not PR over results - it is visibility into your results.

The four steps above have helped my clients get focus and leverage to rebuild their personal stock price.

But! But if the above steps represent plan A, I always encourage my clients to start building a plan B no matter how tentatively. Sometimes the perception is so ingrained with very senior people that at some point one needs to be able to cut ones loses and go elsewhere. In other words, you need to think about refloating your stock in a new market.

PS: the other bit of resurrection going on here is with my blog which has been dormant for over a year. I want to try and make it a more regular process for me

Two lessons I learnt last month from Mai and Dave;

1. Don't write for perfection - just put your thoughts out there i.e. let the writer me, not the editor me, own this process.

2. Write for a few mins every day - something will come out of the simple discipline. 

Try on some Faulty Thinking today - free trial

Read the following:

1. I see a Tiger
2. I think I’m in danger
3. I feel afraid
4. I run.

Consider this - statement 3 (and 4) is actually derived from statement 2, not from statement 1 as many would initially believe.

They way you feel does not come from your surroundings or even your direct perceptions. It comes from your thinking.

Epictitus said “Man is not disturbed by events, but by the view he takes of them”

As a leader, your thinking can be an enabler or an inhibitor to your success and to the success of your team and organisation.

So how about trying on a few faulty thinking styles to see which ones you tend to, unconsciously, use most? See the list below!

Personally, I seem to like a mix of #4 Mind Reading and #6 Personalisation – and of course they bring out the worst in me (anger, hurt, avoidance, withdrawal). All derailers to me being impactful and effective (not to mention to being fun to be around)

But here is the cool bit – by naming my faulty thinking I make them conscious and therefore I now have the ability to choose to use them or not!

What about you? Do you recognise yourself in any of the 15 styles below? Do you also recognise the often ineffective consequences of these styles in terms of your behaviour and feelings?


Styles of Faulty Thinking

1.Filtering: you take the negative and magnify them while filtering out all of the positives

2. Polarized Thinking: Things are black or white, good or bad. You have to be perfect or you’re a failure. There is no middle ground. Things are either awful or terrific. Useful for judging self or others.

3. Overgeneralization: You come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If some bad happens one, you expect it to happen over and over again. If someone lets you down once, you assume they are incompetent or can never be trusted.

4. Mind Reading: Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do, especially in terms of how they feel towards you.

5. Catastrophising: You expect disaster. You notice or head something about a problem and you assume the worst possible outcomes.

6. Personalization: You think that everything that people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You constantly compare yourself to others.

7.Control Fallacy: If you feel externally controlled, you see yourself as a totally helpless victim of fate. You don’t believe that you can influence the important outcomes. Or conversely, you feel excessively responsible. Everything depends on you, and if things don’t go well, it is all your fault. You feel responsible for the pain and happiness of those around you. This is a huge burden.

8. Fallacy of Fairness: Fairness is a big standard. You feel resentful because you think you know what’s fair, but other people won’t agree with you. When things go wrong, you are liable to say “That’s not fair. Its just not fair”

9.Emotional Reasoning: You believe that what you feel must be true…automaticlally. If you feel stupid and boring then you MUST BE stupid and boring.

10. Fallacy of Change: You expect other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them enough. Some of your relationships are based on the premise that you can change the other person.

11. Global Labelling: You generalise one or two qualities into a negative global judgement. If you have one bad interaction with someone in a department, you will tell others that that whole department is full of idiots.

12. Blaming: You hold other people responsible for your pain or conversely, blame yourself for every problem.

13.Shoulds: You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people SHOULD act. People who break these rules make you angry and you feel guilty if you violate those rules. Your SHOULDS are perfectionist.

14. Being Right: You are continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and this makes you defensive.

15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: You expect all your sacrifice and self denial to pay off, as if there is someone keeping score. You feel bitter when your reward does not come . Often it doesn’t and this upsets you.

(sourced from Bruce Peltier “The Psychology of Executive Coaching”)

“Who’ll be my role model? Now that my role model is gone, gone ……….”

Two random events in a space of four days has got me thinking a lot about role models.

The first, which I am not proud about, involved me arguing with my wife on a Saturday morning in front of our three kids. As I stomped out of the kitchen in my best childish huff, my wife said sarcastically “… and a fine role model you are to these boys!”

Even after peace had broken out thirty minutes later, the significance of me now being a role model to these little boys stayed with me. What kind of imprint do I want to leave with them as they grow and face the challenges of a complex world?

Three days later and as I flick around the TV channels I come across a documentary on Joan Baez. While not a fan of her music I became absorbed in the bigger story of her consistent involvement in the civil rights and the peace movement from the early 60’s to today. It was never the standard celebrity “My accountant and I think peace is a good thing.” Joan Baez marched, got arrested, was spat at and insulted because she stood up for what she believed in and because she got involved.

The impact on her record sales didn’t matter. These were her beliefs and they reflect what she continues to stand for.

That documentary left me wondering again about this idea of a role model and the questions “what do I want to stand for?”

I did think about picking someone like Mandela or Martin Luther King and saying “I want to be like them” . I even went onto a role models website - its big announcement was that it was removing Tiger Woods from his role model status. It seems even role models get rifted.

But to be honest picking someone else, famous or not, did just not sit with me. How can you try to be like someone else when it is hard enough to be fully who are you yourself?

So my new role model is going to be….me.

And that means me stepping up and proving worthy of the role. So what might that look like?

Robert Kegan and Otto Laske have separately worked on defining the main stages of adult development. With stages 1 and 2 being focused on us as kids or teenagers, the next three stages are :

Stage 3 – Socialised Mind – being highly influenced by what I believe others want to hear with constant interpreting of how I fit in and overriding my gut in order to meet others expectations.

Stage 4 – Self Authoring – being able to step back and identify and act from my own authentic value system. Taking stands and challenging the status quo based on my beliefs.

Stage 5 - Transforming – being less attached to own solutions, able to handle complexity, knowing own limit and accepting of others regardless of their view point. A Zen Buddhist state of being.

I definitely know that I start 2010 in Stage 3 – so my role model is going to hit the gym and build some stage 4 muscle this year! It is not going to be easy but then again if it was easier where would be the development?

So what is your role model signing up to in 2010?

What next for Leadership?

What a 12 months it has been!

Financial institutions that once swaggered now stagger. Governments are saving banks that still dish out massive bonuses to their executives. Politicians call for us all to tighten our belts while using taxpayers’ money to maintain their expense driven life styles. Once mighty employers shed staff every hour of every day.

And the concept of leadership in the last 12 months? What leadership?!

The 2009 model of leadership is not winning too many awards right now and the brand of being a business leader is tainted in a way that the role of clergy has in the recent past – not to be quite trusted.

So will a new perspective of leadership emerge from the rubble? Will “followers” place different demands based on what has and is happening around the world? What flavour of leadership might we be heading into? Below is a sample of leadership styles that I am hearing more and more about in recent months

The idea of “servant-leadership” is more and more visible in blogs and HR magazines. It sees great leaders as being those motivated by the desire to serve others. Its success is measured by the growth of those being served by the leader, in terms of their development, their autonomy and their wisdom. It seeks to combine two opposite notions of leadership a and service. Simply put, if you lead people, are the growing under you or not?

“Authentic leadership” seems to be referenced in every second email I get from leadership consultant these days. It can mean a lot of different things to different people. The Authentic Leadership in Action council state that when we are authentic and true to “our internal compass” we get the most out of others. So are you truly yourself when you are with your team?

One of my favourite leadership books, “The Extraordinary Leader” by Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman now has a follow up called “The Inspirational Leader”. While initially claming that no one of the sixteen leadership competencies identified in “The Extraordinary Leader” was more powerful that an others, the authors have now identified “Inspiring and Motivating Others” as the one competency that separates good from extraordinary. Do you inspire and motivate your people? Have you asked them this recently?

One of my mentors, Pete Bluckert, has identified the combination of strategy and intimacy as the next focus for leaders with the intimacy element being about the heightened connectedness of a leader to themselves as well as others. Are you capable of real intimacy with your team?

Much more will be heard about these and other visions of leadership but at the core of each of them is the growing importance of connecting with people at an individual and group level through the leader’s use of self.

I am in no doubt that our concept of what it is to be a leader in the 21st century has been changed by the revelations of the last 12 months. Leaders can never again expect their word to be taken blindly without proof of character and deed.

Welcome your comments and thoughts!

Colm Murphy

"Now you love me as a loser, but you're worried that I just might win"

This week I came across the following Thomas Edison quote in a discussion document about innovation

“I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that don’t work”

Two day later and I am in a coaching session with a client trying to help them to reassess their fear of failure in order to assist them to become unstuck in driving a new initiative.

Fearing failure can become such a huge block, turning bright and successful people into statues of procrastination and paralysis.

As their coach one should definitely avoid the General Patton approach which involves slapping the person in the face and screaming “coward” at them - that nearly got Patton sidelined for the rest of WWII.

So what can you do?

Firstly you need to respect, relate to and acknowledge the clients’s fear of failure – such feelings serve a useful purpose in our lives and generally helps us all avoid huge personal disasters (unfortunately there is a growing section of our society who have been born without any appropriate sense of failure and they all seem to end up on reality TV talent shows).

What next? I then tend to use a combination of the following questions to raise awareness and help the client reframe their fear;

“Have you failed in the past and what did it do to you?” – we have all had failures but over time we learn and grown from them - we survive - we were not forced out of our town or made to wear a bell around our neck – life goes on and successes still continue to happen to us.

“If you could let go of perfection, what is success for you in this venture?” – accepting that you are never going to achieve perfection - on the golf course, or in every sales pitch you make. or in every bit of marketing you write, - is often so liberating, and allows the person to accept new standards and generate momentum again.

“Think of your many initiatives that have been successes, Did you ever fear failure when you started them?” Working with clever successful people means that the coach can always remind them of their previous successes, some of which would have had a risk of failure initially.

Finally, a question I always find helps raise awareness and generates options; “If I was in your shoes, what advise would you give me?”

These questions are not about dismissing the client’s fear of failure – they are about challenging it, normalising it and reframing it in terms of previous experiences and what is success.

Thanks to Leonard Cohen for today’s title.

Welcome thoughts, ideas and insults as always