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Leadership and Emotional Control--Is there a Time and Place for Strategic Loss of Cool?

Over at N2Growth, Bloggers Hub member Mike Myatt is encouraging leaders to exercise EC--emotional control:  "Emotional outbursts, rants, and rages will rarely do anything but cause you to make poor decisions and to lose credibility." So what to do with those pesky emotions that so clearly under-gird human behavior, but can just as easily destroy your ability to lead as help it? Clearly, you can't escape them entirely--nobody wants to follow a passionless leader. But, nobody likes a hothead either. Chess legend Gary Kaspaorov wrestled with the issue and came up with this:

So let's assume you have your emotions in check, and you've integrated them into your decision-making, but you make a tactical decision to engage them to light a fire under your team. You're still in control of your emotions--you just think that a strategic rant makes sense. Good or bad? Take it from another Bloggers Hub member, Terry Starbucker, who pondered To Yell or Not to Yell, That Is The Question (And 5 Things To Think About Before You Answer It). Starbucker thinks "the rant" can be a leadership tool, if used properly and only after you take into account the following five factors:

• Like any other messaging delivery system,  what we really need to look at is the content of that message.
• Then there is the timing of that message. [Pick] a time when everyone [is] already in a heightened state of awareness.
• Frequency: If you are prone to yell at the slightest provocation, or need to jack up the volume every time you feel you need to provide inspiration, it will get old really fast, and people will tune you out.
• Another consideration is the person behind the yell – how “outside the box” is this outburst?  I classify rants in several ways – there are the natural “in the moment” sounding ones, very contrived and fake ones, and then there are the “fight or flight“  fear generated ones.  Humans are very perceptive creatures, and they can pick up on these nuances very quickly.
• Lastly,  you have to “put your money where your mouth is” - that is, if you’re going to yell at people to get them to perform at a higher intensity and focus, then you better do the same yourself. 

If it sounds like the strategic rant would be hard to pull off...well, it should be. What Starbucker is suggesting doesn't run counter to the advice of Myatt or Kasparov. Starbucker is suggesting that you be able to do a little method acting now and then to express appropriate emotion. And that is the height of emotional control.

 

The Bloggers Hub Cap--Essentials from Top Business Blogs

Here are the can't misses in recent business blogs:

Economy, Trends, Change:

Bernanke Translated (WSJ Real Time Economics )

When U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke talks, people listen, though they may not understand what he says. On November 19, Bernanke spoke in Frankfurt to explain and defend the latest round of quantitative easing (QE2), as well as to assail China for failing to allow the Yuan to appreciate faster. If you're head is already spinning, Wall Street Journal economis editor David Wessel arrives to offer up some plain english for Bernanke watchers, juxtaposing excerpts from the Chairman remarks against the lay translation. Example:

• “The level of output in the advanced economies is currently about 8% below its long-term trend, whereas economic activity in the emerging markets is only about 1.5% below the corresponding (but much steeper) trend line for that group of countries. Indeed, for some emerging markets the crisis appears to have left little lasting imprint on growth. Notably, since the beginning of 2005, real output has risen more than 70% in China and about 55% in India.” TRANSLATION: “China, India and other emerging markets have resumed their rapid growth with surprising speed, but despite all my efforts the U.S. is mired in painfully slow growth — and Europe and Japan aren’t doing much better. Sigh.”

Enjoy.

Leadership, Performance, People:

How to Treat New Employees (Alexander Kjerulf--The Chief Happiness Officer)

"Studies show that new employees who have undergone a successful start-up process are 69% more likely to still be in the company after 3 years and they reach their full production rate 2 months faster." The CHO offers four tips on how your organization should treat new hires:

1. Be there for them the first day;
2. Have the practical stuff ready;
3. Give them a solid technical introduction; and
4. Lay down the culture.

Because it's never a good sign when the first day is the beginning of the end.

Strategy, Innovation, Communication:

What Makes a Great Tagline (Denise Lee Yohm--Brand as Business Bites)

The title says it all. Why do we remember "The Ultimate Driving Machine," while forgetting other marketing taglines that are, well, forgettable? While Yohn doesn't offer a precise answer to the question, she does review Forbes list of 25 "best loved" taglines (that BMW line gets number one honors) to determine if the best taglines share particular attributes. She can't detect any, which means that a great tagline may well be just a moment of inspired genius. So don't try and turn this art into a science; know your product and let the feelig express itself.

What is the Purpose of Your Business? Why Should People Care?

"The best leaders hire over their head every time...they sit in a group at a team meeting and everybody in every position on that team is better than them. And they relish that moment where they look across the table an they say, 'Everyone at this table is so much better than me. I'm pumped; I'm a helluva leader.'" That's SAP's iconic leader and co-CEO Bill McDermott waxing on leadership at World Business Forum 2010 in New York City. Watch the video below; you can't help but get pumped yourself and want to work for the guy, or someone like him or, if you are a leader, to mimic his enthusiasm.

McDermott says his philosophy of leadership is premised on two foundations:

1. You need a compelling vision for your business--what is the purpose of your business? Why do you matter in this world, and why should people care?
2. Put people first and build great teams.

The leader who can't answer the first questions probably can't execute on team building and, well, then why be there? Understanding the business is more than simply knowing what it does and how it works--it's the understanding of why the business matters in the world, to your customers, to society and to you. The questions can be answered for Fortune 500 companies and mom and pop stores alike.

Anyone who has worked with a leader who doesn't understand fundamentally the purpose of the business knows that there is generally also a people problem. And managers know how disheartening it is to have leader who doesn't understand the business because they generally cannot revel in the brilliance of their teams. These are the leaders who would, for some reason, prefer to show up their managers and rank and file for the sake of their own egos. No matter how good managers and staff are, under that regime, they will eventually lose focus and move on or, worse, end up just going through the motions, marking time until they are pushed out. That leadership style reveals a fundamental insecurity in a leader, and as McDermott says, "Show me a leader that's insecure, and I'll show you a bad leader."

  If you consider the great business leaders of any era, you know that they understand why the business they are in exists, and believe in it passionately. And because of that, they revel in their people. The one follows from the other like night and day. If something seems missing in your business, start with McDermott's first questions--you might find the answers make all the difference in leading you to be inspired by your people, who will no doubt reward you in turn with their best.

Kenichi Ohmae: Is there a Cyberleader in the House?

Who knows--when the Martians finally land on earth, they may be demanding, "Take me to your cyberleader."

As if understanding your business, employees, product-line, distribution chains, financials, and holding the room during meetings (annual or otherwise) wasn't enough, today's executives often preside over far-flung enterprises and oversee employees on more than one continent, let alone in more than one city. In addition, your company's online presence, especially if it includes social media, can mean that you are pursuing 24/7 exposure to the world at large. Are you able to hold that larger room?

Management guru Kenichi Ohmae ("Mr. Strategy") urges that you strive to play the new room just as well as you play to the traditional room--that requires honing your "cyberleadership" skills. This new skill set includes being able to communicate with people you've never seen or met and who, most likely, are culturally different from you: these are your employees in Asia, Africa, Europe, or South America (if you are a North America-based company). Your favorite war story or NFL analogy might not fly in that room. How do you express your leadership dynamism in that circumstance? Well,it's certainly not intuitive, and it's generally not been taught in college or business school, though that will undoubtedly begin to change. You have to strive to develop a new skill set to address the larger room--like learning a new language, you'll have to be able to do traditional leadership and cyberleadership interchangeably. You might even have to speak the leadership equivalence of Spanglish.

But cyberleadership doesn't stop when you perfect videoconferencing with your colleagues from Barcelona to Beijing; it extends outside the company "walls" and through the entire chain of management skills that today's leaders must develop. Leaders need to know how to deal with cyber-customers, and the advent of crowdsourcing (opensourcing of the development process) means leaders need to know how to deal with a coterie of people who while only tangentially linked to the company, may be integrally involved with a development process:

 

When "they" demand to be led to your cyberleader, will you be able to step up?

The Bloggers Hub Cap--Essentials from Top Business Blogs

Here are the can't misses in business blogs for the past week:

Economy, Trends, Change:

The 50K College Club (Paul Kedrosky--Infectious Greed)

Is there a higher education bubble? In an economy where education is more and more important, is it becoming ever more unattainable for most? And is your company positioned for a world in which education again becomes the domain of an elite and where the next, great manager might not be able to go to school? It might be time to give some thought to what the following means for the already displaced workforce: the new list of colleges and universities with an annual tuition in excess of $50,000.00 has been released, and now exceeds 100 institutions, many of which are not what you'd consider "elite" in any sense of the word. Along with the price of gold, this could be one of the top "eye popping" charts of the year.

Leadership, Performance, People:

Three Ways to Make the Workplace Richer in Feedback (Daniel H. Pink--danpink.com)

Is it time for managers to consign the annual performance review to the dustbin of "that used to work," or at least enhance it with new workplace feedback opportunities made possible by technology and a new generation of workers that crave, even demand more feedback? Daniel Pink thinks so. Millennials have been connected their entire lives--they've grown up in a constant feedback loop and expect more than an annual "how'd you do" when they show up for work. In light of technology, annual reviews are a vestige of a bygone time when frankly, offering feedback was more complicated. It doesn't have to be anymore. Feedback can be a regular process, and Pink offers three ways to make it so: "DIY performance reviews, peer rewards, and some groovy new software — to pump a little more feedback oxygen into our employment caves."

Strategy, Innovation, Communication:

Don't Innovate - Steal Ideas and Create Value (Caspar Van Rijnbach--Blogging Innovation)

Anyone with a memory or a few minutes on his hands knows or can deduce that the i-pod was not an original idea, in the sense of being first-to-market. So how did Apple succeed with borrowed technology where others could not, and how can this inform your innovative process? Steve Jobs is a believer in "stealing" ideas and using them to competitive advantage. With i-pod, "Apple combined all the ideas and inventions [that made up the MP3 revolution], incorporated them in the i-pod and i-tunes and did it a little better than anybody else (while making sure to stay ahead in the game). Besides that, the company knew how to market the innovation and how to protect it." Bottom line--you don't have to be Einstein to be a successful innovator.

 

The Bloggers Hub Cap--Essentials from Top Business Blogs

Here are the can't misses in business blogs for that past week:

Economy, Trends, Change:

Will the Verizon iPhone Cripple Verizon? (Nick Bilton--New York Times Bits)

The mobile wireless battlefield is heating up once again. For years, U.S. consumers have clamored for Apple's iPhone to be made available on a network other than AT&T, which has been jammed since the phone's debut. (Calling an AT&T iPhone owner can be nightmarish.) The question is whether the same will happen if/when Verizon introduces its long-awaited iPhone. And what does a new iPhone carrier mean for carriers in general--for AT&T, which might suffer abandonment, as frustrated users flock to the competitor, or for the second-tier carriers like T-Mobile and Sprint?

Leadership, Performance, People:

Howard Roark Would've Made a Great Football Coach (S.M. Oliva--Mises Daily)

Do ideas matter more than talent? Oliva examines that difference between entrpreneurial and bureaucratic leadership highlighting an October 31 NFL football game between the Detroit Lions and Washington Redskins--specifically Redskins Coach Mike Shanahan's decisions late in the fourth quarter to pull star quarterback Donovan McNabb and replace him with journeyman Rex Grossman. Answer to the question opening this paragraph? "Ideas without the talent to execute them are worthless in the marketplace. It doesn’t matter how brilliant an architect you are if nobody wants to buy and occupy the damn building."

Strategy, Innovation, Communication:

3 Steps to Foolish Marketing (Brian Clark--Copyblogger)

Applying the tactics of the highly successful Motley Fool investment advisory service, Clark highlights the differences between foolish online advertising (which most online ads are) and Foolish online advertising--that is, "without wasting your money and annoying people" (which most online ads do). This is all about the power of content-driven, opt-in, education-based strategies that cost little and guarantee you no income at first (because you're always giving something away for nothing). Your content replaces traditional banner and click-through ads. This works because online consumers want content; your educational content becomes your advertising. And eventually, you can pitch to your new, loyal students.

 

The Bloggers Hub Cap--Essentials from Top Business Blogs

Here are the can't misses in business blogs for that past week:

Economy, Trends, Change:

Pimco's Bill Gross: Dollar Could Fall 20% (Wall Street Journal Market Beats)

As the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank prepares to engage a second round of quantitative easing (i.e., turning on the printing press by buying bonds), money pros are speaking out, in particular PIMCO Chairman Bill Gross. The point of quantitative easing (QE) is to jump-start economies by making exports cheaper. But the bond-house big says QE2, as it is not so affectionately referred to, could lead to debasement of the dollar and then an all-out currency war as other nations, in response, try to protect their export base. What does it mean for business when countries begin a race to the "currency bottom"?

Leadership, Performance, People:

Efficient vs. Effective (N2Growth Blog)

While there's nothin wrong with efficiency efforts, Mike Myatt laments that, too often, they come at the expense of effectiveness: "If efficiency starts diluting productivity rather than increasing it something is woefully amiss." Sometimes, the innefficient process can leader to the most productive outcome.

Strategy, Innovation, Communication:

Managing Innovation is About Managing Change (Blogging Innovation)

Innovation always sounds great; we assume that innovative companies have a bunch of geniuses sitting around coming up with revolutionary products and processes that the companies seamlessly integrate into the business model. That may be so when it comes to what Braden Kelly calls "incremental innovation," which doesn't require much genius anyway. But in his new book, Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire (excerpted in this Kelly post), Kelly examines the difficulties presented to all companies by "disruptive innovation." The changes generated by such innovation "often disrupt not only the market but the internal workings of the organization as well – they also require a lot of explanation." And even more internal management of a company's entire "ecosystem."

Six Core Traits of Effective Teams: Telling the Orange Revolution Story

Have you worked in an organization in which everyone knew the story of how during a blinding blizzard, a certain manager and her team hand-delivered key materials by walking three miles in the snow? Or how about an organization in which everyone, new employee as well as old, can recount the story of how a team came up with the idea and execution for the company's leading product? If so, you may well be part of a "breakthrough team."

Breakthrough teams and how they can remake a company is the subect of Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton's latest book, The Orange Revolution: How One Great Team Can Transform an Entire Organization (Simon & Schuster 2010). What's more, they will be presenting, for the first time in public, the data that went into the new book during the free, live HSM webinar on November 3 entitled appropriately enough, The Orange Revolution. (Why "orange" and not, say "purple"? Orange is the color of carrots, and Gostick and Elton's best-seller was The Carrot Principle: How the Best Mangers Use Recognition to Engage Their Employees, Retain Talent, and Drive Performance. The Orange Revolution is the logical next step from recognition management.)

To write the new book, the authors surveyed over 350,000 people at some of the leading companies. The November 3 webinar will reveal what the authors discovered about the characteristics of breakthrough teams. In a recent Business Week article excerpting the book, the authors explain that while breakthrough teams "always include competent people, most are not comprised of a preponderance of people with remarkable intelligence or unique expertise. They are not so-called Dream Teams." The authors realized that "world-class results come only partly from who makes up these teams, but more importantly what these teams do." All told, The Orange Revolution identifies six core traits that the authors consistently found at companies with breakthrough teams:

• big dreams and ambitious goals;
• belief in in each other
• belief in what the team can accomplish together;
• take calculated risks while closely measuring results;
• perseverence despite problems or conflicts that arise; and
• they have a "charming habit of Telling Stories" exemplifying what they are trying to achieve.

That last one that makes you stop and think. What are they talking about? Well, anyone who has worked in such an organization can attest to the importance of the story, as it makes every team member a part of the evolving company narrative and history. And that's what makes a team breakthrough in every sense of the word.