by Jane Perdue | Character, Inspiration, Leadership
Curmudgeon, bellyacher, and old biddy are but a few of the unflattering terms used to describe people fond of calling out pretense, bad behavior, hypocrisy, or the unnoticed downsides of conventional thinking.
Some of these cross patches live to annoy. Picture the sourpuss who snarls and bites because he’s motivated by malice, the malcontent who sees arguing as a competitive sport, or the family spitfire who delights in disrupting holiday dinners with her dissenting opinions.
Big pains you know where.
But not all cranks and crabs are mean-spirited, looking to troll, anger, or insult. Some contrarians see something different. Others see the greater good.
Either way, their messages should prompt us to reflect, not criticize. Their point, if we listen to it, can encourage us to look beyond our own self-interest. There’s lessons to be learned.
Curmudgeons’ versions of the truth unsettle us, and we hold it against them. ~Jon Winokur, The Portable Curmudgeon
About that greater good thing that some mavericks see. In a crazy, busy world in which people take pride in their uniqueness of character and experience, talking about the greater good can feel uncomfortable. Something woo-woo, socialistic, or based in bottom-line oriented cost/benefit analyses.
What is the greater good?
The greater good is defined several ways. A few examples:
- Aristotle says it’s a shared happiness in which everyone has wisdom, virtue, and pleasure.
- Frances Hesselbein, former CEO of the Girl Scouts, says it’s having healthy children, strong families, good schools, decent housing, and work that dignifies.
- Others describe it as improving lives, so people suffer less and feel valued.
Some individuals conflate the idea of a greater good with controlling people’s destiny and dictating their thoughts.
That’s not the case.
With a measure of self-awareness, openness, and compassion, it’s possible to promote collective well-being without having a collective identity.
There’s lots of truth in—and lessons to be learned—from the old line about variety being the spice of life.
The pressures of conformity, the focus on winning in the quantifiable sense, and the quest for materialism are capable, individually and collectively, of making us forget (ignore? reject?) the joys of difference. The grinches and whiners who tilt against the grain can help us remember.
Civilizations should be judged not by how they treat people closest to power, but rather how they treat those furthest from power—whether in race, religion, gender, wealth, or class—as well as in time. ~Larry Brilliant, philosopher, hippie, and author
In business environments that values profits over principles and people, it can be easy to adopt that same narrow bottom line perspective and forget about caring for or respecting all people. Even if they see the world differently than we do.
Lessons to be learned
However, if we give ourselves permission to be open to considering their message, the grumps and grouches who point out inconvenient truths can help us see the bigger picture.
If we let them, antagonists and killjoys can serve as a reminder for us to be less selfish and insensitive.
If we let them, the malcontent’s message can serve as a hint that it’s time for us to step back and reassess.
Advice from the Dalai Lama is helpful when reassessing. He counsels us to ask ourselves as well as others just who benefits by what we’re about to do. Is it an individual or a group of people? Just one group or everyone? Is the benefit for right now or for the future?
In the rush to grow the bottom line, to have more, and to be the biggest, perspective about the greater good often gets lost. If we let it, the resistance of whiners can help us tap into our curiosity and enable us to see from a different point of view.
The grumbler’s gripes can be like the canary in the coal mine that alerts us to our mind being closed and having lost the ability to see the other side without taking sides.
I place a high moral value one the way people behave. I find it repellent to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word—politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit. ~Fran Lebowitz, author
The next time a scold speaks out in a meeting, resist the urge to discredit or dismiss his words. Choose not to be annoyed by her lack of team spirit.
Choose instead to listen. To reflect. To consider. To question.
To step out of the profit-driven moment and think about the greater good. Look for the lessons to be found in being a better person and making a difference.
Being open-minded is a choice, and curmudgeons exist to remind us of that choice.
Image credit before quote added: Pixabay
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
I almost spoke but didn’t—and was glad of it.
My words weren’t helpful, noble, or persuasive. Only critical. As Dale Carnegie once said, any fool can criticize. I didn’t want to be another fool; several others were already present.
Serving up one-and-done criticism is the easy stuff of fools. Criticism delivered from a detached distance and couple with a lack of concern for those who may be hurt, belittled, or marginalized is safe and effortless.
Criticism is, at its core, disapproval based on perceived mistakes or faults.
Ways of expressing that disapproval can be either constructive or destructive. If there’s intent to aid in improving those mistakes or faults because they’re really mistakes or faults and not merely biases, then lots of work comes after speaking. Criticizing is but the first step in what should be a process.
My experience has been that it’s the rare person who’s willing to invest in the whole process. You?
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help. ~Abraham Lincoln
Parents, teachers, bosses, and others remind us to be mindful of what we say and how we say it. In the spirit of being our best possible selves, why not expand that advice to include thinking about why we say what we say—before we say it?
A few seconds spent examining our motives—am I speaking constructively in pursuit of solving a problem or am I speaking to prove my superiority—can make a dramatic difference in whether outcomes and relationships take a positive or negative turn.
Had I spoken that day, my comments would have joined similar useless words full of judgment and short on constructive feedback or persuasive reasoning.
To belittle, you have to be little. ~Khalil Gibran
Instead of serving a meaningful purpose, criticism can easily lapse into self-serving swagger and become destructive. Hurtful criticism leads to contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling, and polarization—all downward spirals of activity that fail to advance the greater good and further drive people apart.
Google the word criticism and hundreds of entries appear that offer advice on how to handle being harshly or unfairly criticized.
Perhaps, if people paid a little more attention to the “why” of their words, the number of articles would decrease because there’d be more compassion and less conflict in our interactions.
People seldom refuse help if one offers it in the right way. ~A.C. Benson
The next time criticism dances on your lips, begging to be spoken, pause and examine your motivation. Explore your purpose for speaking by asking yourself some questions.
Look for the “why” of your criticism
Ask, am I criticizing because…?
- …I want to make someone look bad so I can look good?
- …I think I deserve special treatment and I’m not getting it?
- …I see a way to amplify my own achievements and social standing?
- …I see an opportunity to devalue something or someone I disagree with?
- …I want to gain power and control to humiliate someone into submission?
- …I see the chance to advance my personal agenda?
- …I enjoy pointing out what’s wrong and who’s to blame?
Criticizing for any of these reasons speaks volumes about someone’s character, purpose, and motivation.
Criticism is the only reliable form of autobiography. ~Oscar Wilde
Sharing alternate points of view often produces better results, so don’t hold back.
Being open and authentic, though, isn’t a license to be rude, hurtful, condescending, or manipulative. Disapproval about perceived mistakes or faults can be expressed without judgment, without personal attacks, and without meanspirited nitpicking.
The next time you express your disapproval based on perceived mistakes or faults, be kind. Display a willingness to help. Think bigger than yourself. Speak to help, not to hurt.
If the only reason you’re criticizing is to make yourself look better, just shut up.
Image credit before quote added: Pixabay
by Jane Perdue | Bias, Leadership, Paradox & Polarity
“You can’t do that. It’s not in the plan.”
How many times have you heard that line or one like it spoken at work?
Planning is important. Business plans, contingency plans, succession plans, project plans, etc. are all good—until they aren’t.
Plans bring order and continuity. However, they can also become obstacles to innovation, inclusion, and creativity.
Think about the colleague who has a detailed plan for everything and refuses to deviate from it, no matter how compelling new information may be. Think about the company that fails to recognize the institutional bias that’s been embedded in its long-time succession and promotion plans.
It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date. ~Roger von Oech
A few years ago, I served on the inaugural steering committee for a new community conference intent on becoming an annual event. The first conference was a roaring success; the second even better. The third not so much.
One of original steering committee members who had stayed the course shared her diagnosis as to why the third event was unsuccessful. “The plan had worked well, so we relied on it too much. Because we stuck to the plan, we missed out on including some excellent panelists and speakers. No one wanted to step outside the lines and do something different.”
Ever been in that spot?
Through social conditioning, training, preference, or the desire for convenience, people fall into one of two mental traps about planning and get stuck in their thinking.
One camp frets that chaos will result if there’s inadequate planning and control. The other believes too much planning and control will stifle creativity. The concerns of both camps are valid.
If both concerns are valid, then what’s the problem?
The problem is either/or thinking—accepting the notion that planning is either about control or chaos.
Planning for and achieving successful outcomes require both chaos and control, both disorder and boundaries.
These paradoxes are equally important but essentially different management requirements according to the late management consultant Peter Drucker. Regardless of how contradictory dealing with both disorder and boundaries sounds, they’re interdependent. Like it or not, both are necessary for success. Either/or doesn’t work.
The Wright brother flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility. ~Charles Kettering
The natural tension between the disorder that improvisors thrive on and the boundaries that control freaks adore can be managed provided people are willing to be curious and flexible.
3 ways to find the sweet spot for planning
Doing three things aids us in keeping curiosity, flexibility, and success front and center as we first create and then execute our plans.
1) Have a general game plan.
Know what you want to accomplish. Have a timeline. Define roles, responsibilities, and measures of success. Think about what could go wrong and how to deal with problems. Identify resources and stakeholders. Be willing to flex or scrap it all and re-invent when circumstances shift.
2) Get comfortable being slightly uncomfortable.
Recognize that always sticking to the plan provides a false sense of security that obscures new opportunities. Learn to be flexible with “how” the “what” of the plan is implemented. Be willing to challenge the end goal. Embrace and reward purposeful discomfort. Be willing to be vulnerable and sometimes not be certain of the next step.
3) Leave room for serendipity.
Whether that interaction with an unintended outcome or moment of “aha!” realization is engineered by an app or a spontaneous stroke of fate, be open and receptive to the mad genius possibilities it presents. Don’t let existing plans become a straitjacket. Roll with the punches.
Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you’ve found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for. ~Lawrence Block
Finding the sweet spot between too much and “just right” planning takes time and patience, but it can be done.
Have how you learned to manage the tension between chaos and control?
Image credit before quote added: Pixabay
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
Wouldn’t it be lovely if humility smelled like warm chocolate chip cookies so we could easily find ours when we lost it?
A small group of us were sharing comeuppance stories—times when we’d gotten too big for our britches and had taken a big fall from grace.
Betsy’s fall was the most dramatic. She’d been off-the-charts successful in her marketing job for a cosmetics company. Another company recruited her for their CMO job, complete with huge salary, signing bonus, and jaw-dropping perks. Betsy enjoyed her amazing perks for only five months. The CEO who’d recruited her fired her, saying Betsy was overly self-righteous, too self-important, and unnecessarily scornful of employees who weren’t executives.
“Go. Now. Be gone,” said the CEO as she made a sweeping away gesture with her hand. “I want you out of here immediately.”
Betsy said the CEO’s office had glass walls. So, while the CEO’s words were unheard by others, she saw everyone watching the dismissive gestures. And smiling.
It took Betsy five months to be able to say she was glad the humiliating experience had happened. Without it, she said, she would have remained too big for her britches, believing the myths about herself. She said she might have even become more unbearable.
“I got what I deserved. I let my success go to my head,” she said.
As do too many others.
Getting what we deserve
The endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. ~Anne Lamott
Not letting success steal our self-awareness is at the heart of staying humble. We control whether that happens or not. Either we let success go to our head and become self-important jerks, or we don’t.
Success isn’t some kind of a sentient being that inhabits our bodies, takes control of our mind, and miraculously makes us someone new.
Becoming successful or powerful or rich only shows what we really were all the time.
Hubris is an accessory we acquire.
If we were kind before being successful, we stay kind. If we were thoughtful, we stay thoughtful. If we were open-minded, we stay open-minded.
Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real. ~Thomas Merton
How could Betsy and the rest of us have stayed grounded enough so we didn’t have a comeuppance story to tell? A smorgasbord of choices and options exists. To make sure we don’t get too big for our britches, all we have to do is be self-aware.
If you’re looking for suggestions for how to avoid having a comeuppance story, here’s 31 ideas to get you started. Take a look and think about what could work for you.
31 things to do
- Practice gratitude
- Admit to being wrong, don’t double down
- Accept challenges with grace
- Adopt a beginner’s mindset
- Focus on the effort, not the outcome
- Ask for feedback and really listen to it
- Confront your prejudices
- Choose purpose over passion
- Be curious and ask questions
- Kill your pride
- Appreciate others
- Accept good enough
- Understand your weaknesses and faults
- Be gentle with the weaknesses and faults of others
- Keep your abilities in perspective
- Don’t fear failure
- Accept others as they are
- Don’t measure yourself by material possessions
- Practice self-compassion
- Live your values and do so with grace
- Let others live their values with grace, too
- See happiness as a by-product of purpose
- Give credit where it’s due
- Connect deeper than generalities
- Don’t evaluate others by their position or status
- Accept criticism as a gift
- Laugh at yourself
- Forgive
- Be mindful of the expectations you set for yourself and others
- Listen more, talk less
- Serve someone
Humility is a quiet gift we give ourselves and others.
Quiet anything easily gets lost or overlooked in today’s hurly-burly pace of life. But, as with most good and worthwhile things in life, we have to want quiet humility. Have to work at having it. Have to never lose sight of its importance.
Owning the responsibility to maintain our humility makes all the difference.
Image credit before quote added: Pixabay
by Paul Thornton | Leadership
Whether he or she works as a CEO, a coach, or any job that requires motivating others, a great leader is at heart a good salesperson.
Why?
Because, if an organization’s leadership isn’t constantly persuading the rest of the team to buy into an idea or a philosophy, the team is likely to splinter, which means everyone starts moving in his or her own direction.
Selling and persuading is much more than simply barking orders, which, regardless of the circumstances, rarely gets the job done.
Leaders don’t always have formal authority or positional power to compel people to do what they want done. So, in many situations, they need to persuade, convince, and sell people on their ideas.
If a leader is to be a successful salesperson and influence others, he or she must first understand what their people are thinking. Then, the leader taps into whatever the person’s strongest emotion is at that time.
Ultimately, being an effective leader who can persuade and influence others is a matter of appealing to people’s heads, hearts, and hands.
Appealing to their head, heart, and hands
Here’s how a leader who’s a salesperson makes persuasion and influence work:
- The Head – This is an appeal to the intellect.
Leaders can persuade people through rational arguments that include market research, customer surveys, and case studies. They also should highlight the business benefits of ideas and how they will help employees. In some situations, it helps to explain the consequences of not changing. Explain what’s at stake and what they will lose out on if they don’t change.
- The Heart – This is an appeal to emotions.
People only change their behavior when doing so makes them feel better. The leader needs to connect to people’s need for status, order, honor, security, and purpose. Engage their hearts by making employees feel they are part of something big and special.
- The Hands – This is persuasion through direct involvement.
Give employees something to experience viscerally, like the way salespeople let someone take a car for a test drive or how new restaurants offer a taste test. Demonstrations help people experience the value and benefits of a particular idea or innovation. Direct experience can alter how a person thinks and feels about a new initiative.
Leader as salesperson
Having the right mix of facts, emotional appeals, and involvement helps sell ideas and proposals. Once that’s done, the leader needs to close the deal by asking for people’s commitment to whatever is proposed.
Commitment is an act, not a word. ~Jean-Paul Sartre
In some cases, you may need to start small. Get people to commit first to taking baby steps. That’s progress.
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Today’s contributor, Paul Thornton, is an author, trainer, speaker, and professor of Business Administration at Springfield Technical Community College in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Image credit before quote added: Pixabay
by Jane Perdue | Leadership, Paradox & Polarity
A former boss was well-known for his flamboyant language and turns of speech. One of his favorite analogies was to compare a leader’s job in dealing with conflict with being the pooper scooper at the circus.
He’d tell us it was our job to clean up the messes people on our team made.
Even though we frequently rolled our eyes when the boss was on one of his circus rants, his point was a good one. Why? Because usually what we had to smooth over was some sort of conflict. Something that could have been avoided had the situation initially been handled more thoughtfully.
Conflict is challenging, so some people avoid it.
Others see conflict as a life-or-death scourge to be stamped out.
Some see differences of thought, opinion, perspective, and experience as deficiencies because they generate conflict.
Avoiding differences when looking to solve a problem is a glass half-empty approach.
Conflict, while often messy, actually presents opportunity to devise better solutions.
Bernie Mayer, Professor of Dispute Resolution at Creighton University, is a leader in the field of conflict resolution. In his book, The Conflict Paradox, Mayer examines seven polarities we encounter as we try to make sense of conflict.
The seven polarities are:
- Competition and Cooperation
- Optimism and Realism
- Avoidance and Engagement
- Principle and Compromise
- Emotions and Logic
- Impartiality and Advocacy
- Autonomy and Community
As with all polarities, the elements in each pair are but one side of the same coin. While the elements may sound contradictory, both of them are necessary for success and survival over the long-term.
As a team leader, one must realize the paradox that surrounds conflict. The team needs to embrace conflict as a means of generating and evaluating ideas. While at the same time, it must shy away from it to prevent frustration or alienation. The biggest challenge for the team leader is figuring out how to balance these two factors. ~Erich Brockmann, professor
It’s natural to prefer one element over the other. When we encounter a person who prefers the other element, there’s the possibility for conflict since we’re now dealing with a clash of interests. I like competition; you like cooperation. You prefer principle; I prefer compromise
As leaders, it’s our job to help those on our team transcend finger-pointing and right versus wrong arguments. Everyone is right!
So that conflict helps us grow and find the best solution, our job is to:
- Steer conflict from dysfunctional to functional, from destructive to constructive, from disregard to respect—all in pursuit of healthy conflict that facilitates innovation and openness.
- Assist people in dealing with issues as well as helping them remember the lessons learned in childhood about sharing and handling disappointment because rarely do we get 100 percent of what we want.
- Acknowledge inequity and injustice, frame solutions that draw from both poles contributing to the conflict, and assist people to recognize there’s always a greater good that transcends individual wants and wishes.
- Weave connection and humanize the difference. “The other” has a name, a face, and feelings, too.
- Build an environment where it’s OK to disagree, but it’s not OK to fail to listen and learn, or label “the other” as being wrong.
All legislation, all government, all society is formed upon the principle of mutual concession, politeness, comity, courtesy; upon these, everything is based. ~Henry Clay, 19th century lawyer and stateman
Sometimes the contents of the pooper scooper get heavy and smelly. However, that’s when we—if we want to call ourselves leaders—do our best, and most meaningful, work.
Image source before quote added: Pixabay
