Randy Cantrell

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Day 19. September 19, 2021. 

While most of the things contained in this 30-Day Micro Leadership Course are timeless, there is a current disruption that may last for years – the great resignation. Google it and you’ll be overwhelmed with search results. There are millions of people who, thanks to the Pandemic and other reasons, are opting out of traditional work. Additionally, my generation – the baby boomers – are reaching retirement age, even though many of us have no plans to quit working. Leadership roles have been largely filled by baby boomers who are now stepping away to retire or do different work. All of this is leaving an incredible, unprecedented void in organizations. Many experts predict this void will be in place for a number of years to come. 

Developing people, serving people and growing people are more crucial today than ever before because of this shift. Neglect this work and you run the high risk of being left in the dust by organizations dedicated to it. 

Business is comprised of 3 basic things: ideas, money, and talent. There’s no lack of ideas. Everybody seems to have a great idea. Few of those ideas ever see the light of day because most people don’t do anything about their ideas. As for money, it’s always available. Sometimes it’s easier to get than at other times, but usually, it’s just gauged by how good the ideas are. When the economy is robust, even bad ideas can get funded. When the economy isn’t so good, great ideas still find the money needed. But talent is always a struggle. And even more so today!

The good news is that YOU are the differentiator. So are the people on your team. Or the people in your organization. 

Yesterday we talked about looking at your organization as a garden – a garden where you’re growing people. Now let’s get busy figuring out how.

Step 1: Focus on the individual.

Effective high-performance leaders know the value of making growth personal. Now, this isn’t practical if you’re the CEO of a large organization with thousands of employees. It’s not even practical if you’re the number 1 leader of a small to medium-sized organization with hundreds of people. But it’s always possible with the people who report to you. Or the people within the immediate proximity of your work, those folks you interact with on a regular basis. 

Who are these people? I don’t mean their names. I mean what details do you know about them? What are their dreams and ambitions? What do they each consider growth opportunities? If you don’t know, then you’re understanding the gap in your leadership – it’s not personal enough. 

Step 2: Focus on the collective.

Another disruption made worse by the Pandemic is the siloing of employees and departments. It’s always been a challenge, but the Pandemic made it worse. People understand their role and often fail to understand the role of their teammates, especially those teammates outside of their immediate team. Sometimes they even fail to understand the various roles of teammates with whom they work. It’s easy for us to get our head down, focused on our work, and never give thought to those around us, much less those completely outside of our department. 

Effective leadership involves finding ways to give employees the opportunity to understand they’re not alone, and that we’re all in this together. This isn’t merely some team-building philosophy, but a more practical reality where people have the chance to see one another as humans who share an experience. Those folks down the hall in that other department aren’t likely so different from you. It’s highly probable that they share some frustrations with you – along with a host of other things, positive and negative. 

Leaders who find a way to help the collective develop into a more cohesive unit will find employees who are better able to understand each other, connect more deeply with one another and collaborate to elevate the performance throughout the organization. It’s done with communication. Just like step one. 

Step 3: Care, challenge, and build accountability.

It begins with making sure you care about people. I know you care about results. You likely care about systems and processes, too. Maybe your business is product-focused so you have to care about that. You may be in city government where you have to care about politics, including the community you serve. There are lots of things to care about, but none is more important than caring about your people. 

I don’t have a magic bullet or pill you can take to help you care about people. Can people learn and improve empathy? It depends. Not if you’re a psychopath! 😀 

We can all grow through improved vision. By seeing things more clearly, everybody can get to a new level of performance. Even when it comes to caring. 

In my earlier sessions where we went through the ingredients for the recipe for improved leadership, we talked about compassion. The verb “care” has the same connotation, “a focus on others.”

Great leaders have the capacity to focus on others. And they’re always willing to find new heights within themselves to keep improving it. Why? Because they understand that’s where their biggest competitive advantage happens. They understand that talent is the name of the game. And talent isn’t some grandiose notion – it’s real world. It’s a daily effort where people know they matter because leadership continues to make them the priority. 

If you’re married, do you know whether or not your spouse cares about you? Are you able to gauge whether your spouse makes you a priority? 

Then don’t you suppose your employees can figure out whether you care about them or not? And how much you care? And whether or not they’re really a priority?

Go back and revisit earlier sessions where we talked about employees needing congruency in order to grow and thrive. You can’t say one thing and do something different. It will drive people away because they’ll be unable to make sense of it all. The pieces won’t fit as they hear you say something, but they fail to see it in action. 

You have to care and you must demonstrate how much you care by doing everything possible to help people succeed. That means putting people in the best positions possible to achieve their goals – and to be superior performers. No, you can’t do it for them, but it’s your job to put them in ideal situations so they can succeed. Set them up for success, not failure. 

Challenge and accountability are part of caring. If you’re a parent I can easily demonstrate it. If you didn’t love your children you’d have no expectations for them. Because you want their best, you have high hopes for them. Not to live their lives for them, but to set them up for a great life. You know it’s important for them to be responsible. So you give them chores, you expect them to stick with things, you want them to complete school assignments – in short, you want them to accept responsibility for their own work. You don’t want them to rely on laziness or procrastination. So you challenge them, sometimes in spite of their objections and tantrums. You do it because you love them and want their best. 

Remember my definition of leadership — influence and doing for others what they’re unable to do for themselves.

Doesn’t that sound like what we do for our children? They’re not able to see what we see so we’re working diligently every day as they grow and mature, hoping to teach them valuable lessons that will benefit them now and later. 

Do the same thing for your people. And when they disappoint you – and sometimes some of them will – then keep serving them. Care about them because they’re humans and they’re part of your team. Be responsible for your influence and your ability to do for them what they can’t do for themselves.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Happy Saturday. It’s day 18 of our 30-Day Micro Leadership Course. 

We’re now leaning heavily toward a discussion about elevating our leadership in order to establish a high-performance culture inside our organizations. Before we dive more deeply into that I think we need to make a distinction between management and leadership. 

We lead people.

We manage the work.

Both are necessary. I put leadership first because the people are doing the work. We all rely on the employees to each do the work for which they’re responsible. Fixate on the task instead of the person and pretty soon you’ll have a task that needs to be done, but nobody is available to do the task. It’s urgent that we get busy growing people. 

As we think about leading people and managing the work I’m going to use a garden as my metaphor for growing people. Great leaders tend the garden well. 

High-performing cultures are the best gardens in which to grow people and produce better work. If it were easy, everybody would do it. Fact is, most organizations don’t commit to it because it’s not how they see the world. Largely, they see the world and their workforce as things to exploit for higher profits. That’s why there’s far more talk than action when it comes to high-performance environments. It’s also why publicly traded companies have grossly escalated CEO pay in the past 20 years. Greed tempts us all. And it ruins many organizations from achieving stellar results – both in building organization (developing people) and in building a business (growing revenues and profitable at a sustainable/predictable rate). 

Planting a garden, and tending it is hard work. But consider the payoff. 

You plant your favorite fruits and vegetables. You make sure conditions are ideal to produce the harvest you want. Daily you watch over it, protect it, and nourish it. In time, you’re able to pick and enjoy all your favorite things. And if you continue to take care of the garden, you’ll be able to enjoy it year after year. 

People aren’t plants, but the principles are similar. We all need an environment in which to grow. We all need protection from the things that would destroy us, or stunt us. We all need to be nourished so we can develop fully into being our best. 

Because the workplace is filled with other people fulfilling many other roles, and since we don’t live or work in solitary confinement, then how we interact with one another forms the environment in which we must work. Toxic is how some people describe their work environment. Toxicity might be a result of tyrannical leadership. It might be leadership indifference. It might be that nobody trusts anybody. It may be that nobody has candid, honest conversations. It could be pure ineptness. Many things can make a work environment toxic. This much is true, nobody grows a great garden in toxic soil. You won’t grow great people in a toxic setting at work either. The good ones will hit the eject button to get away before much damage is done to their life or career. The bad ones will linger, contributing to even greater toxicity. 

Till the soil. Turn it over. Weed it. Make sure it’s ready to plant the seeds of what you most want to grow. And be aware that the soil for growing greatness is pretty terrific for growing all kinds of weeds, too. Left alone, the weeds will thrive in the soil you prepare. Leadership isn’t for the wimps unwilling to withstand the rigors of pulling weeds. 

Plant what you want to grow. Look for and hire people who are ideally what you want – or what you know you can help them become. Not because you’re going to impose your will, but because you know they’re not yet who they most want to be – but you know they’re dedicated to putting in the work necessary to become better! Feed and water them regularly. It’s your number one job. Serve them well. Don’t be distracted into thinking your work is about something else. Most of all, don’t get sucked into thinking it’s all about you. It’s not. It’s about them. 

Great players on your team will thrive when you surround them with other great players. Likewise, they’ll grow increasingly frustrated if you surround them with weeds (unproductive players). Don’t make your stars live in an environment where they’re surrounded by thorn bushes and weeds. Get rid of the thorn bushes and weeds as soon as possible. The moment you realize they’re undesirable elements in the garden, take swift action to uproot them. Few things will kill your environment faster. 

Protect your team from predators. Some may be internal, but some may be external. Be on guard. Be prepared to fend off anybody or anything that might get in the way of your employees and their ability to perform well. Your service, as a leader, is to influence and do for your people what they may be unable to do for themselves. You are not there to do their job for them. Or to rob them of the opportunities for growth, development, and improvement. You certainly aren’t there to enable them to behave or perform poorly. Set your expectations high – both for yourself and your team. Then get busy doing everything in your power to help your team meet or exceed them. 

Leading people is all about finding out what they need to get to the next level of high performance. It’s about your commitment and willingness to remove roadblocks, to knock down speed bumps, to provide the necessary resources, to fend off any obstacles that might stand in their way — so together you can all achieve more. 

You must be THE person people can trust and look to for the help necessary. Otherwise, your leadership is failed. And you’ve become an impediment, not a service. 

Too many bosses (aka leaders) want to blame the people for failing to grow or improve when they’ve neglected to do those same things in their own life. And they’ve failed to tend the soil by not providing an environment in which people are even able to grow. “Deadman walking” isn’t simply a description of a prison inmate walking to the execution chamber. It’s also an apt description for too many people who just have yet to find a garden in which they can thrive and flourish. Create a place like that and see if you don’t find yourself attracting and retaining more people able to perform at much higher levels. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Day 17. September 17, 2021. 

Employment has been disrupted more in the past 18 months than at any other time in my lifetime. The Pandemic, government economic incentives (or whatever else you’d like to call them), and people migrating from one place to another – it’s all led to major problems for employers all over the country. Perhaps worldwide. 

According to commercial real estate services company Cushman & Wakefield, Dallas/Ft. Worth has experienced the largest growth of any metro area in the country. They predict that will continue through 2029 when the DFW may reach 9 million. As of 2018 (the July 2018 census), we were around 7.5 million. It’s estimated there is an average of 200 people moving into the area every day! And we’re not alone in experiencing new citizens. 

With remote work becoming more commonplace, many people are leaving larger metro areas opting for smaller cities and towns where the cost of living is lower and the quality of life may be higher. Some small towns are also offering a cash bounty if families will relocate there. 

We’re experiencing employment disruption. And it crosses every industry sector. From police officers to medical staffers, to nurses, to school teachers, to engineers, and just about any other role you can think of – employers are struggling to find people. We used to say finding good or great people is tough. Today we’re saying finding people is difficult. Many employers report just needing “warm bodies,” and finding it hard.

I don’t bring all this up to depress you, but to introduce an important topic of establishing a high-performance culture. This is important no matter the landscape or economy. A high-performance culture is always vastly better than the alternatives. Even in times like these, the companies with a high-performance culture – an environment that fosters growth, improvement, and high achievement – have a clear advantage. Why wouldn’t you want to lead your enterprise into being such a culture? 

In 1982 I stood before a group of employees and told them, “Who knew being polite would be a competitive advantage? But today, if we’ll be fanatical in saying “please” and “thank you,” “sir” and “ma’am,” then we’ll be vastly ahead of our competition.” It was true then. It’s still true today. 

That illustrates how simple it can be to elevate our work. The hard part is first making up your mind to do it, and then, to follow through with execution. 

So it is with establishing a high-performance culture. It can help us better lead people. 

We’ve been talking about and thinking about story – our narrative. We’ve talked about the importance of crafting our story – figuring out our ideal outcome. Then we talked about writing our story, which is our metaphor for taking full responsibility for the life we live. And then we talked about making sure we tell our story well. Well enough for others to accurately comprehend it, which is how I define understanding. 

Today, let’s talk about the story our employees tell themselves. Few things impact all of us more negatively or positively than the story we tell ourselves. As leaders, we have to be mindful of all our employees, individually and collectively. 

Leaders must provide a great story for every employee. A story that tells them where they fit in the organization and how they make a positive contribution to the enterprise. If we fail to do that, they will craft a story about those things and it will not be good. People don’t automatically think the best. Most of us think the worst. Leadership must serve people with a great story. 

I’m not talking about fables or fiction. This isn’t about patronizing people with something that sounds good but is completely untrue. 

High-performing cultures are killed by many things, but there are 2 things in this area of story that contribute greatly to employee dissatisfaction: not knowing how they can make a positive contribution and incongruency (leadership says one thing, but does something different). 

Whether you’re leading a very small team within the enterprise or you’re the number 1 leading the entire organization, you can influence the outcome. Start by making up your mind that you’re going to grow and improve as a leader. Make up your mind that you’re going to serve everybody so they too can grow and improve. How do they make a positive difference? Tell them. Show them. Make sure they understand it. From the lowest skills workers to the highest skill workers, people need to wake up each workday knowing that what they do matters. And it does. But if they don’t see that, then it won’t be long before they’ll lose heart. In time, you’ll lose their physical contributions because their heart left long ago. Avoid that by making sure they know and are constantly reminded of where they fit and how their work makes a positive difference!

Don’t be a hypocrite. I’ve preached that sermon before, but we have to keep preaching it because it’s easy to say one thing and do something completely contrary. Some think as long as we say the right things, then it doesn’t matter what we do. Wrong! Our actions and words must be congruent. It’s among the chief reasons why people leave. They can’t make sense of the incongruency. They hear what we say. They see what we do. They pay attention to our actions and decisions. When they don’t match up, people are confused. Worse yet, they lose trust (assuming they ever had it). And when we lose the trust of people, we lose the people. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Day 16. September 16, 2021.

Writing your story means architecting your life. Living the life you most want to live. Hopefully, that means being as good as you can be. 

Today, we’re thinking about telling our story. We want to pursue our ideal outcome and give high effort to growing and improving. We also want others to accurately comprehend (understand) our story. 

Misunderstandings are common. Up and down every organization. People get pegged as somebody a bit differently than who they really are. The false assumptions don’t have to be dramatic to have a negative impact. Even slight misconceptions can derail a career. 

Are you responsible for people misunderstanding you? Yes. Remember the power of the corner, the mirror, and moving forward. You refuse to make excuses and you accept responsibility for everything! Again, we’re not finger-pointing. We’re working to find a path forward in our life. Can people still get it wrong in spite of our best efforts? Yes. But that’s on them. What is on us is giving it our best effort to help them get it right. We’re all able to do what we want – including people who are determined to think the worst or get it wrong. 

Consider the options here. You can refuse to accept responsibility for helping others understand – accurately comprehend who and what you are – and some people will innocently fail to understand because you didn’t do your best. Had you done better, they’d have better understood. The folks determined to judge you harshly will likely always judge you harshly no matter what you do. Question: Should you still do your best? Of course. Because it’s the right thing to do. 

Words matter. Be sure you’re telling your story with language that helps people understand, especially your boss (and frankly anybody else you’d like to influence). 

Don’t be lazy. Or irresponsible. Remember, this is the story you are writing and influence is all about people reading, seeing, and understanding your story. We’re talking about your life. Professionally and personally.

Imagine Stephen King writing a great story. That is, he has in mind this awesome story that he knows will be as compelling as anything he’s ever written. Unfortunately, in an uncharacteristic fashion, suppose he fails to write it as clearly as he usually does. The story is terrific. He just fails to do his usual world-class job of telling it. Is it his responsibility or the reader’s responsibility to get it right? 

You must be the guardian to YOUR story. That means you have to handle it with the care it deserves. It’s in your best interest – and in the interest of the positive influence you want to have – that you take telling your story seriously. 

The easy excuse is, “Well, that’s not my problem.” Maybe it’s not your problem, but it is your responsibility. 

Consider Cindi, a VP of a software company that specializes in accounting for aerospace manufacturing. Cindi reports to the COO, the Chief Operating Officer. She is smart, capable and according to her boss, Kelly (the COO), “She’s not taking seriously enough building her team.” Kelly wants to help Cindi add some skills to her leadership, but she’s got a story built of how Cindi operates. Kelly believes Cindi views people development as a task to be completed. Kelly views it as an ongoing endeavor, one she’d like every member of her leadership team (about 7 direct reports) to make part of their ongoing work. The CEO is very intent on having a team that grows together because he believes part of the company’s competitive strength is having people who are learning together year after year. Regularly, he preaches about the power of continuity. Kelly fears Cindi doesn’t fully understand that directive or may not know how to achieve it in her department. 

Cindi is a high achiever. She has a reputation as somebody who will get the job done. Quickly, efficiently and effectively. People like her, too – which helps. She also has a reputation as somebody is knocking off a to-do list as well as anybody in the company. Turns out, Cindi does need a bit of help in the people development part of her job, but mostly, she needs to work on how others are reading her story. 

She is bringing along two people who are part of her leadership team. They report all sorts of things Cindi does personally to help them grow and improve. It’s clear they have great respect for her and both indicate she’s among the best bosses they’ve ever had. I start getting a different story from the story the C-suite knows. 

Over time it becomes apparent that Cindi is so intent on acting proactively that her speed is causing her to spend no time – I mean NO TIME – in making sure she’s accurately even telling her story. I’m not talking about bragging or looking for accolades. I’m talking about simply being informative to her boss, Kelly. Cindi admits she has never considered sharing some things with Kelly. “I never thought that was important. I just let my work speak for itself,” she says. 

Her work isn’t speaking for itself though. People are drawing conclusions that aren’t quite accurate about Cindi’s work in making sure her department has the bench strength so important to the CEO. At first, Cindi is put off thinking this is so ridiculous, but she quickly realizes her best response is to kick all the excuses to the curb and focus on doing what is best for the company, for her boss, for herself, and for her team. By accepting responsibility for the way others “read” her story, she now feels more in control of the narrative. And understands that writing is just part one. Part two is telling it in a way where everybody has the opportunity to truly understand it. 

Cindi learns that telling her story is her responsibility. She starts learning how to tell it so Kelly, her boss, and everybody else, understand it better. In fact, within 30 days Kelly reports that she’s noticing Cindi’s progress. “I can tell she is starting to take more seriously ensuring the continuity of her team,” says Kelly, Cindi’s boss. Truth is, Cindi is putting on the work to get better at that, but mostly, Cindi has changed how she’s telling her story, and the influence she now has – and her narrative – is changing because of it. 

Sometimes it’s important for us to change the story we’re writing (by crafting our ideal outcome). Sometimes we need to alter the way we’re telling our story because people aren’t quite getting it right. Write your story well. Tell it even better!

…or if you fail to tell your story well. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Here we are at the halfway point in our 30 Day Micro Leadership Course. Day 15, September 15, 2021. 

Writing Your Story

View your life like a book comprised of many chapters. Your name is on the cover. You alone are writing the story. There may be many characters who are part of your story, but they’re not writing it with you. You’re in control of the writing because you alone are taking full responsibility for your life, remember? No more excuses!

Your humanity is going to come through in the book you’re writing. Some chapters of your life aren’t going to be ideal. Bad things are going to happen to you. Sometimes they might even be your own fault. But even if they aren’t, you’re going to own it all. There’s no downside to you when you do. It’s the path forward. 

You can write great chapters to your life. Chapter after chapter. Even when bad things happen, you can still write a great chapter of determination to get through the tough or bad times. Here in a few days, I’ll tell you more about the hero journey – the journey you’re going to write about. That’s in stark contrast to the victim journey many are writing. Maybe you’ve written your story as a victim’s journey in the past, but that was then. This is NOW.

Your story will be congruent with the pursuit of your ideal outcome. That’s why it’s urgent that you get clear on your ideal outcome. Again, don’t worry about it being unchangeable. Just make sure it’s what you most want to happen today! As you continue to write your story you’ll adjust for things that happen. Twists and turns will be a big part of your story. That’s how life goes. Your response to those twists and turns is what will characterize your story. And you’re in charge of those reactions. 

Based on my work I must insert here that your story is a complete story. It’s not singularly based solely on who you are at work. Are you a wife? A husband? A father? A mother? A son? A daughter? Are you a grandparent? How do you spend your free time? What things do you love? What do you hate? What are you saving your money for? There are a variety of things that determine your context. I’m not saying that your boss or your teammates know all these things…or that they should. I am saying all these things – and more – are part of your story though. 

I’m a husband, father, and grandfather. These are just 3 roles in my story, but they’re very important. And some of the parts of my story are horrible because I’ve suffered some tremendous sorrows. Some far beyond my control, but all of my reactions to them — fully in my control. My suffering is part of my story. Each time I have to carefully write and craft the story of my reaction to the suffering. So must you. 

I want to make sure you really understand the task. This isn’t about some fantasy or work of fiction. It’s you crafting your life – writing your story. Think of it as a completely accurate autobiography. Every detail is chronicled. Nothing is left out. 

Writers pre-think what they’re writing about. You should, too. Don’t just let life happen without thinking about what you most want to happen. And how you most want the story to go. 

Since we’re focused on leadership then we have to focus a bit more on that. Your leadership.

What kind of a leader are you – and how is that going to differ from the leader you most want to become? How can you begin to write a better story, one more congruent with how you’d like to be. Only fools think it can just happen. Heros know they have to make intentional decisions to bring out the best story possible. Act like a hero. 

Begin with your own dissatisfaction. What parts of your story do you acknowledge as true, but you don’t like them? 

It’s the quickest place to begin to write a better story. As you do, keep looking at the mirror to improve your accurate comprehension of who you really are. You can’t ignore reality and think you’ll write a work of fiction that you – and others – will see as true. This isn’t the work of a hypocrite. It’s not a work of fantasy. Or deception. Or self-delusion. It’s 100% true. So make it how you most want it to be because you’ll know if you’re lying. You are the writer and you’re also the first and most important reader of your story. Make yourself proud. 

Be well. Do good. Grow great!