Leading by Executing 2: From Goal Setting to Goal ACHIEVING

Leaders are paid to produce results -- to execute when given a goal. Yet while most leaders know all about goal setting, few know what science says about goal achieving. The Figure below employs the eXpansive Leadership Model (XLM) to illustrate a simple synthesis of several hundred research-studies on how to achieve difficult goals. There is a very high probability that you and your team will achieve any difficult goal if you follow the four powerful steps outlined in this figure and described in this, and subsequent, blogs.

The Four Steps of Goal ACHIEVING

1. Set a long-term goal. In their extraordinary book Goal Setting and Task Performance, Professors Locke and Latham summarize 393 separate research studies on goal setting, involving 40,000 subjects performing 88 different tasks, in eight different countries, over time spans ranging from minutes to years. (1) According to their research, the probability of reaching your goals increases when you:

- Set specific and difficult goals

- Limit the number of goals

- Create short-term and long-term goals

Thus, a large body of evidence advises leaders to access their visionary style by setting and communicating a compelling vision with long-term goals. Goal achieving does indeed begin with smart goal setting.

With all the research on goal setting, you might think writing an excellent long-term goal would guarantee success. But it doesn’t. As you strive to execute, the predictive power of just knowing where you’re going diminishes. In other words, as goals get harder, writing them down doesn’t predict achievement. The science of goal achieving tells us that when goals become more difficult you need a plan. Setting long-term goals without a plan is like setting sail for a treasure without a map.

Setting a long-term goal is the first step in goal ACHIEVING. The next three steps consist of the three keys to an effective plan, illustrated in the previous figure. The are:

2. Gain commitment to the goal

3. Build belief that you can reach the goal with a plan

4. Use feedback to stay on track as you pursue the goal

We’ll describe each of these three in detail in subsequent blogs. Which of these keys to goal ACHIEVING do feel is your weakest? What could you do about it?

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

1. Locke E and Latham G: A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance. Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, 1990.

Execution: From Goal Setting to Goal GETTING

Knowing Where You Are Going

I have been an avid goal setter for more than two decades. Over the years, I hit many of my targets, but became frustrated whenever I missed the mark. I blamed myself, and sometimes others, when I fell short. I thought missing personal or business goals meant I was doing something wrong in the goal-setting process. It took me years to uncover that goal setting was only the first step of goal achieving.

In the extraordinary book Goal Setting and Task Performance, Professors Locke and Latham summarize 393 separate research studies on goal setting, involving 40,000 subjects performing 88 different tasks, in eight different countries, over time spans ranging from minutes to years. (1) Leaders must set and communicate a compelling vision that includes long-term goals. Goal achieving does indeed begin with smart goal setting.

How to Set S.M.A.R.T. Goals

The science setting a goal requires that you get S.M.A.R.T., an acronym for:

Specific –where are you going?

Measurable – how will you keep track of your progress?

Attainable – does the goal inspire you to stretch?

Responsible – who are your stakeholders?

Timed – when will you reach your destination?

S – Specific. Do you know where you are going? It's a simple question and yet leaders often confuse their followers with lack of clarity when setting a long-term goal. Confidence fades when the horizon is foggy. I was recently working with a financial institution and asked a human resource executive what their long-term goal was. She pointed to a poster in the training room that described the vision of being the world leader. I pointed to their annual report that described their long-term goal of being a leader in a specific segment of banking in a specific region of the United States. This HR executive didn’t understand that inspiring a team to achieve difficult goals begins by painting a clear picture of the destination.

M – Measurable. How will you keep track your progress? If you can't measure it, how can you manage it? When you set a long-term goal, you must have metrics in place to make sure everyone knows that progress is being made. One organization I work with publishes industry benchmarks every quarter so that their leaders have a valid and useful yardstick to track progress. Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE, says “Every needs a metric.” (2)

A – Attainable. I received a greeting card that read, “Shoot for the moon -- if you miss you’ll be among the stars!” Sounds nice. But then I thought, shooting for the moon could also get you lost in space! In his best-selling book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge at MIT compares the stretch between where you are and where you want to go to a rubber band. (3) He points out that there is a recurring tension between vision thinking (where you want to go) and rational thinking (the demands of your everyday surroundings). You might want to consider how you will manage this “creative tension” as you set your attainable goal. Goals should stretch your team, but not so far that they roll their eyes in disbelief or feel like they are going to snap.

R – Responsible. The sun is setting on the lone-star leader. Leaders may be responsible for achieving their goals, but these days they need help from others inside and outside their organization to reach their destination. Today’s complex market and demanding customers often require leaders who are independent and interdependent. Expansive leaders know how to work on their own and with others to meet their goals. Thus, the R in S.M.A.R.T. refers to stakeholders, who are also “responsible” for your success. A stakeholder is someone who has a vested interest in, or is affected by, your goal.

Stakeholders may include those in other divisions or departments, vendors, industry experts, association executives, outside consultants and so forth. I recommend that you create a top 10-stakeholder list. These are individuals to stay in touch with as you pursue your challenging goal.

T - Time. When will you reach your destination? Write the date you will reach your goal. It is not good enough to write that you will accomplish your goal in six months. You must put a specific date.

Knowing Where You Are Going… Doesn't Get You There

With all the research on goal setting, you might think writing an excellent long-term goal would guarantee success. But it doesn’t, of course. As you strive to execute a long-term goal, the predictive power of just knowing where you’re going diminishes. That’s because the science of goal achieving teaches that as goals become increasingly difficult, the impact of having written goals on achievement decreases. In other words, as goals get harder, just because you wrote them down doesn’t mean you’ll reach them. The science of goal achieving tells us that when goals become more difficult you need a plan. Setting long-term goals without a plan is like setting sail for a treasure without a map. To execute, you need both a well-defined destination and a plan to reach it.

The need for a S.M.A.R.T. goal and plan is also supported by research Zig Ziglar and I conducted on 104 people attending one of Zig’s seminars. Individuals that had written goals and written plans to achieve their goals far outperformed those who “only” had goals. (4) So, make sure you have a goal and a plan when you embark on your next journey... and you'll graduate from being a a goal setter to a goal GETTER!

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

1. Locke E and Latham G: A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance. Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, 1990.

2. Thomas A. Stewart; Growth as a Process: The HBR Interview with Jeffrey R. Immelt, Harvard Business Review, June 2006.

3. Senge P: The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. Doubleday: New York, 1990.

4. Goldman BM, Masterson SS, Locke EA, Groth, M, Jensen DG: Goal-directedness and Personal Identity as Correlates of Life Outcomes. Psychological Reports, 91:153-166, 2002.

Understanding the Leader’s Seven Decision-Making Traps

Yesterday’s blog identified the seven most common decision-making traps leaders fall into. As promised, this blog discusses each one in more detail.

I. Anchoring - Let me ask you two quick questions:

1. Do you think that the population of Malaysia is greater than 100 million?
2. What is your best estimate of the population of California?

If you're like most people, the answer to the second question was influenced by the "information" in the first question. This is an example of the anchoring trap -- our tendency to give a disproportionate weight to the first information we receive. When do you fall into this trap? How about when creating forecasts? Do you rely too heavily on past data? The trap is also seen frequently in negotiations (opening positions), during the hiring process (first impressions last), and during performance evaluations (let me review last year's evaluation first). Leaders who answer today’s challenges with yesterday’s solutions also fall into this trap. (By the way, the population of Malaysia is 25,274,132 and California is 36,756,666 :-)

II. Status Quo - Please complete this sentence, “a body in motion tends to..." if you answered, "stay in motion" you get a gold star. This physics law is also at work when we make decisions. We have a tendency to stick to the status quo -- to leave well enough alone and go with the flow. When making decisions, this means that leaders feel safer not to trying something new. That's because they have been conditioned by their organization’s culture not to rock the boat. It’s less risky to do what is conventional in most organizations. As Professor Hammond states, "Sins of commission (doing something) tend to be punished much more severely than sins of omission (doing nothing).” (1)

III. Sunk Costs - Have you ever continued to fund a project that should have been canceled long ago? Did you ever spend too much time trying to improve the performance of an employee that you should have fired earlier? Have you heard about bankers who continued to lend money to a failing business? These scenarios are all examples of the sunk costs trap -- "the tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made." (2) The reason leaders continue to “throw good money after bad” is that they are reluctant to admit errors to themselves or to others.

IV. Framing Trap - The framing trap can be illustrated by asking you a few questions:

Would you accept a 50-50 chance of either losing $300 or winning $500?

What if, instead, I asked you this question:

Would you prefer to keep your checking account balance of $2,000 or to accept a 50-50 chance of having either $1,700 or $2,500 in your account?

If you actually had $2,000 in your checking account, these two questions pose the same problem and risk. From a rational perspective, your decision should be the same. However, numerous studies have shown that many people would decided to refuse the 50-50 chance in the first question, but accept it in the second. This is because of their different reference points (i.e., frame). The first question emphasizes absolute gains and losses, which triggers the thought of losing money. The second question, with its reference point of $2,000, frames the decision in a different perspective by emphasizing the relatively minor financial impact of losing money when you already have $2,000.

You also see the same principle apply in this stem cell debates. The pro-life politicians frame stem cell research as "murder" because it destroys human embryos. Stem cell advocates fight back by framing the research as our best hope of attacking debilitating diseases, affecting millions of Americans. Advocates know that it is difficult to call an influential spokesperson like actor Michael J. Fox a “murderer.”

V. False Assumptions - Professors Robert Cross and Susan Brodt tell the story of a Fortune 100 company that made a major investment to manufacture and distribute a core product in Asia. (3) They reported that the project’s champion knew very little about Asia, but was convinced he could succeed there just as he had in the United States. He held fast to his assumptions despite financial, operational, and strategic information that contradicted his views. After the fiasco, the project manager and senior executives realized that they had made a bad decision because of false assumptions. How often do you ever do that?

VI. Missed Signals - In the Mid-1990s, one of England's oldest merchant banks was bankrupted by $1 billion of unauthorized trading losses. A federal report on the collapse of this bank concluded that “a number of warning signs were present, but that individuals in a number of different departments failed to face up to, or follow up on, identified problems.” (4) Based on the current economic situation, many financial institutions have not paid attention to these signals. How often do you miss the signals?

VII. Competition Trap - The emotional urge to win during a competitive challenge often leads to costly decision errors. Boston Scientific fell into this trap during its acquisition of the medical device maker Guidant. As you may recall, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) announced plans to acquire Guidant late 2004. Soon thereafter, J&J threatened to pull out and lowered their purchase price offer because of Guidant’s pacemaker recall. That's when Boston Scientific -- J&J's rival -- offered to buy Guidant. The bidding war was on. Eventually, Boston Scientifics’ final and “winning” offer of $27.2 billion was $1.8 billion more than J&J's initial bid. Most financial analysts believe that this was a disastrous acquisition by Boston Scientific. According to an article in the Harvard Business Review, the emotion of winning overrode sound decision-making. (5) Does this sound familiar to you?

Just like a sand trap in golf, these decision traps are hazards to be avoided. Which ones cause the biggest problem for you?

Keep on eXpanding,

Dave

1. John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa; The Hidden Traps in Decision-Making, Harvard Business Review, January 2006, pages 118 -- 126.
2. Itmar Simonson and Peter Nye, The Effect of Accountability on Susceptibility to Decision Errors, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 51, 416 -- 446, 1992.
3. How Assumptions of Consensus Undermine Decision-Making, MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2001, pages 86 -- 94.
4. Information Failures and Organizational Disasters, MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2005, pages 8 -- 10.
5. D. Malhotra, G. Ku, and J. Murnighan, Harvard Business Review, May 2008, 78 -- 86.

Leaders Fall Into Seven Decision-Making Traps

If you had all the time and money in the world to put forth a maximum effort whenever you had a decision to make, do you think you could make accurate decisions? Many leaders say yes. But that’s the problem with decisions, isn’t it? You don’t have all the time or money in the world. Research says that when you decide how to address any issue, you are subconsciously weighing a trade-off between effort and accuracy. (1) This trade-off between effort and accuracy leads to what Professor Hammond and his colleagues call, “the hidden traps in decision-making.” (2) Like sand traps to a golfer, these decision traps can bog you down and keep you from achieving your goal – an excellent decision.

This blog identifies the most common traps leaders fall into. Subsequent entries will discuss them in more detail, and how you can use the eXpansive Leadership Model (XLM) to avoid these traps and improve your day-to-day decision-making.

1. Anchoring Trap – The inclination to give a disproportionate weight to the first information we receive.

2. Status Quo - The tendency to stick to the status quo, to leave well enough alone and go with the flow.

3. Sunk Costs - The predisposition to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made.

4. Framing Trap – The propensity to be influenced by different reference points (i.e., frames)

5. False Assumptions – The proclivity to assume something is true without evidence to support it.

6. Missed Signals – The penchant to ignore warning signs.

7. Competition Trap – The urge to win during a competitive challenge that blinds leaders to reality.

The product was called Strategy - an interactive CD-ROM that automated medical marketing. I spent two years and a truckload of money creating and marketing this innovative product. It failed miserably because I fell victim to these traps. (I'm still convinced it would have been a bestseller... if more people bought it! :-) My early profit projections were based on optimistic market penetration, thus subjecting me to the perils of the anchoring trap. The status quo trap reared its ugly head when I refused to kill the project when I realized the project was in deep trouble. Sunk costs almost buried me because my ego encouraged me to throw good money after bad. I fell into the framing trap by comparing my losses to the many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who were struggling. I also made a number of false assumptions, including the belief that users would spend time entering data and that physicians cared about marketing. Finally, I missed many signals, including hints from colleagues in the medicine who were not enthusiastic about my product.

Just like a sand trap in golf, these decision traps are hazards to be avoided. Future blogs will show you how to use the XLM to shoot past them.

Keep on eXpanding,

Dave

1. John W. Payne, James R. Bettman, and, Eric J. Johnson, The Adaptive Decision Maker, Cambridge University Press, New York, New York, 1993, page 2.

2. John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa; The Hidden Traps in Decision-Making, Harvard Business Review, January 2006, pages 118 -- 126.

How Leaders Motivate Their Team in Tough Times

“They should be grateful that they still have a job.” I heard that comment recently from a middle manager who failed to understand that in a down economy, turnover among the best performers goes up! Yes, you read that right. A Towers Perrin study of 90,000 global employees found that 58 percent of all employees are actively looking to change jobs or at least open to leaving if a good opportunity emerged. (1)

Contrast that middle manager’s attitude with that of the vice president of a Southern California company who recently asked if I would speak at his management meeting about “Staying Positive When Things Seem So Negative.” He pointed out that the cost of recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and training an employee was between $6,000 (to replace a frontline employee) and $90,000 (to replace an IT engineer). He said that if I helped one manager retain one employee, it would cover all my expenses.

So, what’s your strategy for keeping your best people fired up as the world tries to pull them down? Professor Nohria and his colleagues from Harvard may have some clues for you. (2) They surveyed employees at 300 of the Fortune 500 companies and found that motivation consists of four core emotional drives:

A. Acquire. This drive relates to our desire to obtain physical goods, positive experiences, and social status. It tends to be relative, meaning we always compare what we have to others. Thus, the drive is NOT met when everyone at work receives the same reward or perk, regardless of his or her contribution. Equal is seldom fair. (3) When I was conducting research at UCSD, our luminary leader Dr. Froelicher satisfied this drive by making sure rewards were tied to performance. For example, we were not able to go to scientific meetings unless we had our research abstracts accepted. If we didn't conduct excellent research, regardless of our status, we didn't go to meetings. How could you reward your better performers?

B. Bond. Human beings have an internal impulse to connect to others. This includes small groups such as our families, as well as larger collectives, including organizations, associations, and nations. At work, employees who feel proud of an organization are very motivated. At UCSD, Dr. Froelicher fostered bonding among coworkers by having Friday afternoon parties, picnics at the beach, and encouraging us to exercise together. In addition, we frequently collaborated with other divisions. We attended their meetings, invited them to ours, and shared best practices. How might you encourage more camaraderie, collaboration, and cross-functional communication?

C. Comprehend. Everybody wants to make sense of the world around him or her. People become frustrated when things seem senseless. At work, people try to satisfy this drive by making meaningful contributions and making meaning out of what happens around them. This drive was satisfied at UCSD because we had a wide latitude in the type of research each of us was able to conduct. We investigated areas that we found interesting and meaningful. We also contributed by educating our colleagues at local and international scientific meetings. How could you increase motivation by improving job flexibility and lifelong learning?

D. Defend. Defending property, positions, and accomplishments is core to who we are. This drive is rooted in the fight or flight mechanism that has evolved over millions of years. In a competitive market, staying in touch with what may threaten you is critical and motivating. Knowing that we were competing for very limited research funds kept motivated at UCSD. How can you motivate your team by educating them about market conditions, threats, and opportunities?

These are the ABCDs of human motivation. Give me a call (310 397-6686), and we’ll discuss how to adapt them to help you motivate and retain your best people during these tough times.

Keep on eXpanding,

Dave

1. A Towers Perrin study of 90,000 global employees: http://www.towersperrin.com/tp/showhtml.jsp?url=global/publications/gws/index.htm&country=global

2. Nitin Nohria, Boris Groysberg, and Linda-Eling Lee; Employee Motivation - A Powerful New Model, ‘Harvard Business Review,’ July-August 2008, 78 - 84.

3. Joel Brockner; Why It's So Hard to Be Fair, Harvard Business Review, March 2006, 122 – 129.

How Leaders Coach

Effective leadership coaching is strongly associated with employee engagement, retention, and work satisfaction. Yet surveys show that while 79% of organizations report that their leaders coach, only 40% say they hold these leaders accountable with performance coaching measures; and a mere 37% say that their organization has a specific coaching framework. (1) In other words, you may have the responsibility to coach but no methodology. Here are five steps to help you implement a consistent and effective coaching framework:
1. Define the vision. Ask the person you are coaching (coachee) to answer several questions such as, where do they want to be in five years? What type of responsibilities would they like to have? What do they like most about their current job? Do they have any specific goals?
2. Assess what is true today. Use a variety of tools, such as interviews of the coachee's coworkers, 360 feedback, self-assessments... to understand the employee’s strengths and weaknesses.
3. Agree on a plan. Discuss the difference between their vision and today's reality. Brainstorm different approaches to minimize the gap. When I coach leaders, I focus on helping them lead with their strengths while managing weaknesses. This means creating a plan that builds on their strengths and deals with their weaknesses. Dealing with weaknesses includes spending a little time every day working on those weaknesses if they’re important to the vision.
4. Experiment and practice. Encourage them to try new behaviors and test different approaches. This stage also works best if you are able to employ those with whom the coachee interacts on a regular to help reinforce their practice.
5. Conduct after action reviews. Meet with your coachee on a regular basis to assess their progress against the plan. It is also helpful to begin building systems that help reinforce the new behaviors.

These are the fundamental steps I use to coach executives and to teach leaders how to coach. I encourage you to adapt them to fit your organization. In fact, I'd love to hear what methodology you are currently using or how you adapt this one to help your leaders coach.

Keep on coaching,
Dave

1. Annette Fillary-Travis and David Lane; Does Coaching Work or Are We Asking the Wrong Question?, ‘International Coaching Psychology Review,’ Volume 1, Number 1, April 2006, 23-36.

How Leaders Choose Positive Questions in Negative Situations

“If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a noise?”

I believe that the answer is... NO! The noise is made when the sound waves strike the eardrums. The metaphor is that no matter what happens in the external environment, we can choose how we receive and process it. That’s the immaculate reception!

Think about it. If this were not true, everybody would be affected by every situation the same way. Without choice, we would be twigs in the river of life, victims of current circumstances. Top performing leaders understand that if they let negative circumstances dictate their daily actions, they are giving those circumstances control over them. Choosing to respond, and not react, to negativity reveals one of the deepest truths in leadership and life: It is in the receiving that meaning is made.

Between stimulus and response is a space called choice.

Steven Covey

How often do you hear questions like these around the office, home, or in your head?

1. Why can't our engineers get it right?
2. Where’s service when you need them?
3. Why can’t marketing give us what we need?
4. Who messed this up?

We all ask these questions at various times. It’s normal to be hard on ourselves for a short time, especially when we make mistakes. However, the problem with asking these “negative questions” for too long is that they lead to victim thinking. They suck us into the dark abyss of the “woe is me” mindset. Instead of helping us fix the problem or learn a lesson, negative questions seduce us into pointing fingers and assigning the blame. Asking negative questions limits our options, because like an ostrich with its head in the sand, our view of the world becomes limited. Negative questions may feel good in the moment, yet over the long haul, they leave us stuck in the muck because they don’t lead to productive action.

Optimists choose to ask “positive questions.” Positive questions focus on action and personal responsibility. Leaders who ask positive questions move themselves and others from victim thinking to meaningful activity. They encourage others to pull their head out of the sand, and see more options.

I like to keep a list of these positive questions with you (e.g., 3x5 index cards, appointment book, PDA, post-it-notes...) to review anytime you feel yourself slipping into the deep, dark abyss of sinking thinking. Here are several of my favorite “generic” positive questions I often ask:

- How critical will this seem five years from now?

- What does this irritation tell me about me?

- How can I see this differently?

- What’s my lesson in this “messin?”

- Who can help me deal with this?

- How can I let this go now?

- How can I shine my God-given talents in this darkness?

- What positive questions could I ask myself right now?

Choosing to ask these questions will help you and your team see your own light during the dark night. Choosing responsibly is the fourth key competency of a commanding leader because choice determines how well leaders handle failure, tackle adversity, and stay positive when things seem so negative.

Let me know how these ideas are helping you.

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

The Top 10 Tips Leaders Use to Stay Motivated

I booked a keynote presentation (How to Stay Positive When Things Seem Negative) at an association meeting a while back. Here are my top ten tips to maintain personal motivation based on the research I did for that keynote. Let me know if you have any others.

1. Ask expansive questions (EQ’s). People who let negativity affect them often ask lousy questions (LQs), such as “Why does this always happen to me? Who screwed up this time? How come he’s not pulling his weight?” All these questions are legitimate AND lousy because they don’t lead to positive thoughts or actions. Expansive questions (EQs) are: “How can I make sure this doesn’t happen again? What can I learn from this? How can I ensure I pull my weight?” EQ’s focus on action we can take, instead of the blame game we can play. The more EQ’s we ask, the more we choose responsibility and better we feel.

2. Write S.M.A.R.T. goals and review them daily. We move in the direction of the dominant images we place, or let others place, in our minds. Goals keep you focused on the big picture.

3. Use positive affirmations and self-talk. Since we all talk to ourselves anyway, write a few of your favorite qualities on 3x5 index cards. Repeat them to yourself throughout the day, especially when sinking thinking elbows its way to center stage.

4. Listen to positive audio-programs in the car. Are you spending or investing your time in car?

5. Read positive books before you go to bed. Have something other than the nightly news dancing around your brain all night.

6. Spend more time with positive people. Spend less with those who are “optimistically challenged” or "negaholics."

7. Use the “secret complimentor” to increase your team’s or family’s look-for-good culture. People who look for good often find it.

8. Start your meetings or dinners with an uplifting story (e.g., Chicken Soup for the Soul) or humor.

9. Go for a short walk (i.e., 20 min.) walk with a loved one 3 times/week. Discuss only positive things.

10. Make a list of what you are thankful for once a month. Focus on what you have.

Which of these work for you now? Which one's should you try? Let me know how it goes.

Keep expanding,

Dave.

The Three Choices of Resilient Leaders

'The Rambo types are the first to die.'

Navy Seal

Choosing to manage failure well is critical to expand commanding leadership skills. Yet, it is insufficient. Every leader encounters significant adversity throughout his or her career. How they choose to confront these hardships greatly determines their success.

Do you know any leaders who have been struck down by adversity and struggled to get back on their feet? Benedict Arnold, a traitor during the American Revolution, comes to my mind. He was actually a brilliant general in the Continental Army until he was blindsided by injury and insult. He handled it by turning his back on his country. Contrast that approach with those who seem to handle tough times like a rubber ball, bouncing back in record time. Former President Jimmy Carter recovered from his devastating 1980 reelection loss to Ronald Reagan by building the Carter Center and winning the Nobel Peace Prize. What's the difference between these leaders?

Diane Coutu, senior editor at Harvard Business Review, has studied Holocaust survivors, resilient children, and business leaders who bounce back. (1) According to Coutu, the most resilient individuals choose to:

1. Accept of reality.

2. Value meaning.

3. Improvise.

1. Accept of reality. In his book Good to Great, author Jim Collin interviewed Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was held prisoner and tortured by the Vietcong for eight years. He asked Stockdale, "Who didn't make it out of the prisoner camps?" The leader responded, "Oh, that's easy, the optimists. They were the ones who said we are going to be out by Christmas. And then they said we'd be out by Easter, then the Fourth of July, then by Thanksgiving, and then it was Christmas again." Stockdale added, "They died of a broken heart." (2).

Commanding leaders choose responsibly by seeing reality the way it is and having faith that it will get better. That's what Collins calls the Stockdale paradox. The sun will come out, but probably not tomorrow.

This is the approach Gene Dimon chose to take when he was fired as president of Citigroup by then chairman Sandy Weill following 16 years of collaboration. Dimon scanned the already-prepared press releases and understood that the board agreed with Weill. He saw reality staring him in the face and walked out. A year and a half later, he took over the job of CEO at Bank One.

2. Value meaning. When we struggle, we try to make sense out of the struggle. We search for meaning. Coutu’s research shows that choosing a strong value system provides successful organizations and individuals meaning, especially during tough times. These values offer a way to interpret what is going on and how to act. Look how the self-serving values of the Benedict Arnold (e.g., arrogance, prideful, angry…) compare to the servant-leader values of Jimmy Carter (e.g., caring, compassionate, humanitarian…).

As an educator, one of my strong values is learning. So, when adversity strikes me, I search for meaningful lessons. I'll ask questions such as, What could I learn from this? How can this help me grow? How might this situation serve others?

3. Improvise. Leaders who thrive in adversity have options. The delivery company UPS considers improvisation a core skill. They empower their drivers to "do whatever it takes to deliver packages on time." This is exactly what they did one day after hurricane Andrew devastated southeast Florida in 1992. People were living in shelters and their cars because their homes had been reduced to rubble. Yet that didn’t stop the UPS drivers from delivering packages to these desperate, homeless people.

Laurence Gonzales concluded that versatility, the ability to perceive what's really happening and adapt to it, is critical to surviving life-threatening circumstances after he studied thousands who survived wilderness accidents. (3)

Which of these three can help you?

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

1. Diane Coutu; How Resilience Works, Harvard Business Review, May 2002, 46 - 55.

2. Jim Collins; Good to Great, HarperCollins, New York, NY, 2001, page 85.

3. Gonzalez L: Deep Survival - Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. W. W. Norton: New York, 2003, page 279.