The Heart of Engagement : Leadership Development, Management Education, Retreat Facilitation & Executive Coaching : Mike Cook : AMJ Group

This past weekend my wife and I set out on what for us was intended to be an adventure. It was indeed an adventure and it turned out to be a humbling learning experience as well. The narrative that follows is a bit long but not nearly so long as my memory of the events of the weekend will be.

For some years now I have held to the belief that when it comes to teamwork and collaborative initiative the person you need to know best and first is yourself. Knowing what you want is only part of the equation for success. You also need to know what you are capable of and what you are not in order to know who to ask for help and for what to ask them. In 2008 in a slim volume titled ‘Managing Oneself’ managers are urged by the master of modern management theory, Peter Drucker**, to study themselves. He said in effect

  “Cultivate a deep understanding of yourself by identifying your most valuable strengths and most dangerous weaknesses. Articulate how you learn and work with others and what your most deeply held values are. Describe the type of work environment where you can make the greatest contribution.”

**The link here is to a remarkable piece by Business Week’s John Byrne shortly after Drucker’s death.

 Knowing your strengths is certainly a high priority but this weekend I learned first hand that not knowing your limitations can make you a liability that is invisible until the most inopportune moment.

Here on Fidalgo Bay in our home town of Anacortes, WA being on the water in one form or another is a natural part of living in the area. In fact not being on the water seems downright unnatural. We’ve been here for almost five years and with the exception of one tour on the whale watching boat we have not ventured closer to the water than to toss rocks from the shore of the many beaches we hiked to and from. Kayaking has always intrigued both of us and is in our future plans. Sailing, however, is a bit more familiar, at least to my wife who some years back spent many hours as a member of sailboat crews. So last week when she saw an announcement that adult sailing classes were going to be offered again by the local parks and recreation department she suggested we sign up immediately and just jump at the chance. So we did.

I have spent little time myself on the water over my lifetime. Water sports always seemed interesting but I just never made the time. I am not a particularly good swimmer, in fact I am poor but I have a lot of confidence in flotation devices and am always willing to put myself in the hands of instructors I feel are competent. Saturday was the perfect setting for a day on the water, bright sunshine, mild breezes and a cloudless sky. So we packed our lunches and by noon were already rigging our boat for our first turn on the water. My wife had mentioned that she always wanted to be the captain so I offered her first go at handling the tiller. Things went very well, I was her crew and with some trial and error she managed to get a basic handle on the notions of jibing and tacking, the fundamental turning moves in a sailboat.

When it was my turn to take the tiller the entire experience changed in the matter of a few moments. I found that I was confused by the necessary coordination that needs to go on between the mainsail and the tiller. Added to that the boat was small and the cockpit required an agility that I currently do not have, I kept losing my hold on the tiller as I made the exchanges from one side of the boat to the other. Finally, I found myself and the mainsail on the same side of the boat. According to my instructor this was a certain pathway to capsizing. He was correct.

In less time than it takes to describe my wife and I were both in the water and the boat was on its side. At first this may sound like just plain summer fun but we live in the northwest where the water stays at about 50 degrees Fahrenheit for most of the year. Research has shown that in water that temperature your chances of surviving a fifty yard swim wearing a life jacket are about 50/50. Not great odds as you can see so “in the water” is considered bad.

When I hit the water I was not prepared for the immediate cold I experienced. My breath was literally taken away. Fortunately our instructors were nearby in inflatable motor launches and within seconds they were alongside providing comforting words and encouragement. Within a couple of minutes I was able to catch my breath and comfortably hold on to the side of the motor launch. It was only then that I had my first thoughts of how my wife was faring! For a full three or four minute period after we hit the water she was out of my mind completely as I gasped to recover my normal breathing. Did I assume she would be OK because she is a strong swimmer? I’d like to be able to say I was that conscious. In truth I was so consumed with getting myself back under some sort of control that she was out of mind altogether.

The next awakening came once the boat was righted. We needed to get back in the boat. My wife scrambled in quickly and I grabbed the side attempting to pull myself up. It was then that I realized I was not strong enough to pull myself back in the boat! I turned to the young instructor and let him know that I’d need his help. Thankfully his experience, youth and strength were enough to compensate for my insufficient physical condition.

Back at home that night as I replayed the entire event in my head I suddenly realized that I had unknowingly put both myself and my wife in jeopardy. In my superficial approach to being out in the small sailboat it had not occurred to me that at some point I might be in the water, and what that would mean. It was clear to me then that if it had not been for the expertise of the instructors Saturday was not destined to end well. What’s more, rather than being a partner for my wife in an adventure I was an unintended consequence waiting to happen.

Sunday I returned to class and the first thing we needed to do was a capsize drill. I volunteered first but insisted that I partner with another man closer to my size. I knew my wife could not possibly right a boat if she needed to pull my weight as well and I also knew now that if I pulled the boat upright I still wouldn’t be able to get in on my own. So in choosing my partner I made my limitations clear at the outset. He agreed to assume responsibility for my limitations and within a couple of minutes we were able to intentionally capsize, pitching ourselves into the chilly water, and then successfully right our craft using a method that allowed me to be pulled back in the boat as it went upright.

I have been working out for a few months now but I now see that if I plan to pursue sailing or kayaking for that matter I need to resolve my physical limitations or the next water adventure may not end as well. And my wife has made it clear that there will be no two-person kayaking…ever!

• Are you sufficiently cognizant of your own limitations to know when you might be a liability for your direct reports or peers?
• Are you prepared to or have you owned up to your limitations in such a way as to empower and not deflate your reports and peers.

If you are really up for a challenge read “Stop Overdoing Your Strengths” by Robert Kaplan and Robert Kaiser. As you read the article you may be stimulated to ask yourself, “If I am overdoing my strengths what limitations am I masking?”

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Many thanks to Harold Jarche for his July 5^th posting, The Adaptive Organisation. As a result of his encouragement I just finished reading and enjoying Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure by Tim Harford.

The topic under examination in ‘Adapt…’ is the author’s contention that as much as necessity, failure may be the mother of invention. Not only does Harford argue for the acceptance of failure as a part of life he celebrates it as essential to progress, something no doubt that makes intuitive sense to many of us but seems avoided like a plague in most business environments.                                                

As I am reading I find myself reflecting on a career rife with a rich tapestry of failures. Certainly some of these I learned from but the most compelling part of Harford’s argument is the strong tendency we often have to promote failures by getting “stuck” in our successes. This point I could definitely relate with. I was reminded of my high school experience playing basketball, something to this day that when thought of still carries the sting of unfulfilled expectations.

I was at best an average high school athlete. Fortunately for me I chose to attend a high school and where the talent pool was somewhat lean and I was good enough to make the teams in baseball and basketball. Our newly appointed basketball coach had himself been a high school All American. At the time I was playing he was in his late thirties I imagine and still a better player than anyone on our team! He had come to our school from a much smaller town where under his guidance his team had won a state championship so his arrival was accompanied by high hopes that our lowly program would finally show some life and bring glory to our fans. In the two years I played for him there was no such luck!

In retrospect I am of the opinion that our coach experienced being stuck with his past success, at least in the years I was there. He insisted on a methodical style of play that placed a premium on ball handling skills and rebounding ability, areas where he excelled. As a group we were not great ball handlers and we were short, not ideal for the style of play he was comfortable with. As a group of players were better suited to a "run and gun" style of play. Our record reflected our inability to execute his system as much as it did our suitability for his system. So we lost a lot and we also didn’t have much fun while we were doing it which is a shame. Midway through my senior year I was replaced by someone, a better ball handler, who was two years my junior. We didn’t win any more, I sat the bench but coach had it the way he wanted it.  And he had bigger things in mind for himself. He was ambitious; our school was just a stepping stone to greater opportunities so our experience didn’t seem to be his top priority. 

In later years I played some city league ball and a couple of those teams won championships in their classes. The style was mostly what you would call “run and gun” making the best use of the speed and shooting ability of the players involved. We let the talent of the players on the floor dictate the style of play and in doing so not only had more success we also had more fun.

In the later chapters of ‘Adapt…’ Harford talks about organizations with successful pasts failing to adjust to current circumstances rather attempting to force their apparent formula for success. He says that the lessons learned are in many ways flawed because they do not take into account the circumstances in which success was achieved. Kind of like my high school coach they assume that all things stay equal so what they know from the past should work in the present. Not likely!

As a manager can you put the development of your people at least on par with your own success? Assuming that you’ll answer yes then the Palchinsky* principles of adaptability will probably work for you:

• Be willing to try new things.
• Make failures survivable.
• Know when you have failed.

                           *Harford loves Palchinsky and cites his principles more than once in “Adapt…’

I am betting that if you can adopt this approach and you know the talents of those  reporting to you then you also know if it is time for a methodical style calling for good ball handling skills or whether you should “run and gun.”

‘Adapt…’ concludes with a wonderful assertion;

“The ability to adapt requires a sense of security, an inner confidence that the coast of failure is a cost we will be able to bear…Without it, we will never truly succeed.”  

• Are you prepared to catch your people when they fall?
• Do they know that?
• Is there someone there for you in the very same way? 

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 I arrived at our office extra early one morning a few years back to find one of our employees sleeping on the couch in the reception area. As she heard the door unlock she awoke, stretched and said “Good Morning” as I put down my briefcase. “Did you sleep here all night?” I asked. “Yes” was her short answer, blushing like she thought maybe she had done something wrong. So I asked, “What’s up with that?”

“Well I sort of got a bit behind on the preparation for that big workshop that kicks off at noon today and I know you guys like to get there well ahead of time so I figured you’d want to be leaving from here early today. Guess I was right because here you are bright and even earlier than usual. I’m glad I decided to stay last night to get things ready!”

Amazing!

In the twenty plus years I was the founding partner in our small consulting business behavior like this was not uncommon. People taking the initiative  to cause extraordinary action and producing unpredictable results seemed to be the norm. Rather than opting for reasonable explanations for failures to deliver people stepped up. I had to remind myself frequently that the environment we had created was in many ways an ideal. And no one was ever criticized for taking the initiative. If a mess was made we cleaned it up together.

Please understand that we were by no means perfect. We were not strong in new business development, our products were mostly one-off creations that made administrative preparation chaotic, some of our decisions didn't work well and proved costly, we retained some people too long and not everyone we hired wanted as much freedom to operate as we offered nor the accountability we expected. So not everyone we hired worked out,but enough did!

• When we moved to our new offices about fifteen years ago I wanted a great looking place to come to work. I knew that would not come if I was involved (I’d work in a cardboard box!) so I asked a couple of our administrators, who I knew had great taste, if they wanted to take it on. Amazing!...fabulous colors, great art pieces and inexpensive too which was important.
• We needed a new copier. (“What do I know about copiers?”) I asked one of the administrators what she thought a suitable copier would cost. She said maybe $5000. So I said “OK, you can spend up to $5000 on a new copier, pick the one you think will work best for us.” She was twenty two years old and had never spent $5000 at one time in her entire life. She did a terrific job. Amazing!...and she came in well under budget.
• Ten years ago we were in the late stages of a merger when I was approached by two members of our administrative staff and asked to meet privately. When we got together it turned out that the purpose of the meeting was to let me know that they felt the merger would be a big mistake. They expressed their desire to preserve the working climate we had established and had serious concerns about the principals of the firm we were planning to merge with. They shared their experience of being treated in a dismissive manner by both the owners of the other firm when we had hosted a meeting in our office the week before as well as on other occasions. My partner and I listened sincerely to their concerns. Two days later we called off the merger, the two employees had caused us to face an uneasy feeling we had both been having for some time but not talked about. Amazing!...I have continued to this day to be grateful to those employees.
• Four other businesses have spun off from ours in the past twenty years, two of them started by people who came to us as office assistants, got intrigued with the consulting, asked for the opportunity and eventually became sufficiently qualified to want to do something on their own. Amazing!...and we still collaborate with all four.

It had been a while since I reflected back on these examples. I was reminded of these and other similar occurrences last week when I was reading Seth Godin’s most recent book ‘Poke the Box’. (This link will take you to an Amazon page, scroll down and read the guest review by Daniel Pink)  This is not so much a book as a long diatribe and he says as much himself several times, he calls it a manifesto to initiative. In one place in particular he points to the infrequently addressed truth that much of the work we offer employees is not all that exciting or naturally engaging.

And they trade their most precious resource, the time of their lives, to work in our organizations.

Seth says:

“…In many instances the nature of the work is inherently unremarkable. If you fear special requests, if you staff with cogs, if you have to put it all in a manual, then the chances of amazing someone are really quite low.”

From this remark I took the point that if your place of work didn’t hold the possibility of amazing for the employees why would the customer, clients, call them what you will, ever be amazed?

Oh yes, that employee who spent the night in the office. I asked her to not ever do that again. After that I never checked up on her. I wonder how that worked out?

• I challenge you to read Seth Godin’s ‘Poke the Box’ sometime soon and not get upset with yourself.

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Yesterday I was working by telephone with a young man who is a coaching client.  In my opinion this is a uniquely talented manager, rare in that he has a keen sense of what it takes to develop a staff that can function well or better without him. Most of my clients these days are under forty and I am finding more of them have an inherent understanding of the importance of and skills for staff development. Still, I find this instinct uncommon in many places of work.

The conversation we were having involved realizations my client had over the previous two weeks that some of the behaviors he was trying to alter were based on a false or at least no longer valid premise. He characterized it as realizing he had been playing a joke on himself. This would be no small awakening for any of us.

Here’s a guy who has made the high potential list in his company, probably would in most companies, who has been told there are some behaviors he exhibits that may hold him back. Sound familiar?  He’s come to realize that his actions in some cases are driven by false fear that is now so old it has become thoroughly justified and cloaked in explanation (story). In another context we might say he was under the spell of a superstition.

• I need to tip my hat here to a couple of folks at Harvard, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, authors of Immunity to Change and the work that they have done to demonstrate the underlying reasons people don’t change even when not doing so produces a negative outcome. (You can check out this overview article for a summation of their methods.) What these two researchers have come to understand is that behavior that produces negative outcome often has its root in positive experiences in the past, not bad motivation or character flaws.

The net of the work this client and I are doing together is not so much to get him to stop doing what he has been doing. Rather, we have gotten him to a place where he now sees he has a choice about how he behaves. Now we get to see what he is really committed to!

Do you appreciate how hard it is for a successful person to unwire a pattern that has led to success in the past? You do if you’ve ever tried it yourself.

Now put yourself in another position. Imagine you are average Joe or Jolene and you are not on anyone’s high potential list. You are not aspiring to anything special, you like your work and the standard of living it affords you. Most of the time you are able to get your work done in a satisfactory fashion but sometimes you have to work with THAT PERSON or THAT DEPARTMENT and then it is a different story. You often get “uncomfortable” when you have to interact with THAT PERSON and you don’t “feel welcome” when you sit in on meetings with THAT DEPARTMENT. In fact the emotions you experience in these situations are so powerful that even the thought of being in similar situations is enough to have you get upset. And around THAT PERSON and THAT DEPARTMENT your performance suffers. You don’t like it, your manager expresses frustration and nothing changes. Fortunately you don’t need to be in these situations often, in fact you go out of your way to not be available for them. Unfortunately for you, not being on a high potential list it is not likely you’ll have the benefit my young client has and you’ll continue to avoid these situations.

Chances are good that if the data I have from Target Training International holds up; and it has for me now for over fifteen years, the vast majority, somewhere between 65-70% of any given workforce are not motivated by strong negative emotions (think FEAR), in fact they are often paralyzed by the experience. Paralyzed as in not able to do what they know needs to be done. That is a lot of productivity that is at risk and guaranteed it is presented to you as the manager in a most reasonable package.

What are the warning signs to look out for?

As a manager, whether dealing with a direct report or someone you report to when you hear phrase like:

“I am not comfortable with this!”

“This doesn’t feel right to me!”

“I don’t like the sounds of that!”…

You are dealing with FEAR disguised as reason. Further proof will come as you attempt to provide a reasonable response. It will make no difference. Until the person you are addressing is able to identify their reaction as based in FEAR and can question their underlying assumptions you have no hope of proceeding successfully.

• It would be great for everyone concerned if you could become sensitized to the need each of your reports and, yes even your manager, have for someone to recognize the signs of paralysis by negative emotions. Remember, it is not cool to even have emotions in the workplace much less own up to the fact they guide your behavior.

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