If you’ve not listened to the first episode of Leadership Challenges (a narrowed-down sub-series of the Grow Great podcast), go do that first. It’s on safety and the importance of establishing that before you can grow into a more effective, impactful leader.
Today’s subject is trust. Safety is first because if our people don’t feel safe with us, then we’ll never get them to trust us. The short command, “Trust me” won’t work. It’s not just a trite sales cliche, it’s baloney. It screams, “Whatever you do, DO NOT TRUST ME.”
Leadership is about relationships. This isn’t about styles of leadership. Those vary, just as much as personalities. Whether you roll like General Patton or Tony Dungy, your leadership hinges on being able to establish healthy relationships. There is a burden of leadership that requires you to show people the way. Forging the relationship is first your responsibility. Yes, all parties have to comply – to some degree. But somebody has to make the first move. That’s YOU.
And Houston, we have our problem. Too often leaders complain that so-and-so isn’t putting in the effort. They’ll complain how some team member isn’t cooperative enough, or reliable enough, or something else. If I had a buck for every time a leader or business complained about an employee who wasn’t proactive enough I’d be off lounging at a beach somewhere full-time. “I wish they’d show more initiative,” says the CEO. Well, duh. Yes, we want people to handle things, including relationships at work, in a more proactive, less reactive way. Unfortunately, when you hang around the place long enough you realize the top leader is often not demonstrating a proactive approach to building the relationship.
This was driven home not long ago when a top leader complained to me about one employee who was too passive for her tastes. She wanted her team to be comprised of assertive, “go for broke” type of people. This one particular person was more reserved and she was struggling to deal with it. Within minutes she was complaining about another employee who had overstepped her bounds. This mid-level manager had inserted himself in a meeting that the CEO felt was inappropriate. I had heard these kinds of conflicting stories before from this leader. She was hard charging, demanding and had lots of things going for her. Like all of us, she had simply gotten a bit blind-sided with her how frustrations. I knew how she felt ’cause every CEO suffers it every now and again. My job was to help her through her frustrations to find solutions that would help her grow as a leader — and help her grow her people, too.
She wasn’t paying close attention to the contrasting frustrations she had just expressed. So I held up a verbal mirror and restated these frustrations back to her. She leaned back, smiled and said, “Can’t win for losing, huh?” She was referring to how some of her people likely felt. I just said, “What do you think?”
“I think I probably need to own it myself first,” she said. Breakthrough.
Sadly, not enough leaders are as open-minded to accept responsibility to show their people the way. This leader had a strength – a humility and courage – to accept the responsibility to establish trust with people by first learning to trust them. Over time we discussed how our view of people can impact our culture and our organization’s performance. A CEO who suspects all employees are stealing time, materials and inventory will behave very differently than a CEO convinced that people want to get up in the morning, come to work and do a good job. How we view the world – and the people who occupy our space in it – impacts many things for us.
Proverbs 18:24 says, “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly.” Ditto for trust. If you want people to trust you, you must show yourself trustworthy. And you must first trust them.
A CEO may say, “Well, that’s stupid. People have to earn trust.” I get that. Again, we’ve got world views to consider. You can approach life from a no trust zone first, or from a trust zone first. It’s the difference in innocent until proven guilty or guilty until proven innocent. You decide.
I’ve heard tons of seemingly logical reasons offered by top leaders who talk of the negatives – the downsides – of trusting people. Words like “blindly trusting” people are used, indicating weakness and stupidity. When I press a leader to give me specifics of what they think those downsides may be they often aren’t able to list anything too terribly bad. Rarely have I heard a leader name an outcome that can’t be fixed or repaired after the fact.
Now, flip the exercise on its head and reverse it. What’s the downside of NOT trusting somebody? How much time do you have to investigate the negative possibilities? On and on we can go. Those typically far outweigh the negatives of trust. Yes, trust can (and sometimes is) betrayed. Husbands and wives betray each other, too. So should we not trust our spouse? How healthy would our marriages be if we all behaved like that? Same thing for our relationships at work.
The leader’s challenge is to first demonstrate trust in order to gain or facilitate trust. Show people the way. Behave your way to what you want. Yes, far easier said than done!
But true nonetheless.
It’s really not that hard — until people disappoint us. That disappointment can come when the person doesn’t do something we think they should have done, when they do something we don’t think they should have, or whenever we disagree or don’t fully approve of whatever choice or behavior they made. In short, when people do something we wouldn’t have done ourselves, or when people don’t do it the way we’d have done it — then our trust is tested. Sometimes it’s beyond tested. Sometimes, it’s broken completely. And some CEO’s have a really tough time forgiving people and letting people out of the doghouse. That won’t make things better.
Do you trust your wife? Sure you do, unless she’s given your reason not to.
Has your wife ever disappointed you by doing something you thought was stupid, or something you think you’d have never done? Probably.
Is she still in your doghouse because of it? Boy, I hope not. If so, your marriage is broken. And if I asked your wife the same questions she’s likely give me the same answers you gave. You’ve disappointed her with your acts of stupidity. But she still trusts you. Hopefully she still loves you.
We often have less harsh standards at home than at work – at least with some things. One mis-step by a team member and we may forever deem them untrustworthy. That’s it. One shot and you’re done!
If you’ve successfully raised teenagers you know how futile (and stupid) that is. Our kids learn trustworthiness because we train them, we trust them and we help them learn from their mistakes.
Guess what? It works the same way at work. As leaders, we owe it to our employees to train them, to trust them and to help them learn from their mistakes. Over time we can build stronger trust. Or we can handle it in more toxic ways and damage our people (and our relationships with them) making them less effective. How does that help us succeed as leaders? How does that grow our business?
Make your people safe. Train them. Trust them. Help them learn from their mistakes. Rinse and repeat.
During my years of running luxury retailing companies I was constantly urging employees to “be present” and “be in the moment” with shoppers and customers. How can you deliver remarkable customer experiences if you’re not paying close attention to the customer? You can’t. But neither can you deliver a remarkable experience to employees, friends or family without it.
People aren’t always honest with the CEO. His people. His trusted advisors.
They’re not dishonest. They’re just not always candid.
It was magnified the other day when the CEO dispatched a small group of people to survey the troops. He’d read a book about employee engagement and culture. It prompted him to find out how his culture was faring. He’s anxious to discover how things are going — confident that the morale will be fairly high, and that people will see the organization as he sees it. High performing. A winning team.
Three junior executives have been assigned to find out how people are feeling about their work, their leadership and their future. A few thousand bucks have been invested to get a survey from a consulting outfit specializing in employee engagement and organizational culture. There are just under 400 employees to survey, including about 50 part-time people. This is going to take awhile, but the CEO is anxious and schedules time with the 3-man survey team each Friday morning to get updates.
After week one the team has determined this project will take about 45 days to complete, but the initial results are in. They’re not favorable.
The 3 junior executives have been nervous about this project, but thankful it’s a survey purchased by the Chief. The results will be what they’ll be…and these junior leaders know they’ll simply be messengers of the news, whatever it may be.
Just 58 surveys have been completed and they have a universal theme. People are unhappy. They feel unappreciated. Most report that their leaders do nothing more than lean on them to do more, do better and work harder. The survey team huddles late Thursday because tomorrow morning is going to be the first report to the Chief. It’s not good. The CEO can become agitated, sometimes with little or no provocation. High anxiety washes over the survey team. They decide their best course of action is to present the survey results without commentary. Keeping one’s mouth shut just seems the safest course of action.
Friday morning arrives. They walk into the CEO’s office and take a seat around his small conference table. He offers them coffee as they settle in. It’s obvious he can’t wait to find out the early results.
The team selected one person, Billy, to lead the presentation. Billy is the right guy for this task. He’s well-liked by the CEO and knows how to handle himself well in live, real-time situations.
Billy prefaces the presentation – and handing the CEO a binder of early results – by telling the CEO just the facts. “We’ve surveyed 58 employees so far. All of them full-time. Ranging from supervisors to executives. All results are anonymous so we can obtain the most valid results possible, in accordance with the survey guidelines. These results represent only 15.07% of our total workforce, including part-time staff.”
With that, he hands the CEO the binder, which consists of a cover sheet with pie charts and other overall results. Individual comments and other details follow behind those first few pages.
The smile leaves the face of the CEO almost instantly. His brow furrows, his eyes squint and he now looks like he’s getting a headache. You can tell he’s completely surprised. Fearing he’s going to get defensive, the survey team has rehearsed what may happen next. They played out every conceivable scenario except the one that occurs.
The CEO asks, “Billy, tell me what you really think?”
Oh, crap. Billy is caught completely off guard. Janet and Brad, the other two members of the survey team feel sick at their stomach. They’re anticipating being asked to follow Billy in answering the same question. Hopeful it won’t happen, but fearful it will.
Billy says, “Sir, it’s too early for me to have any real valid thoughts.”
“Cut the crap, Billy,” says the CEO. “I know you’ve got a thought. And I know that a 15% sampling isn’t necessarily a full picture, but let me ask you – is this 15% representative of people in most areas of our company?”
“Yes sir, it is,” says Billy. “This 15% represents people from all sectors of our organization, except it doesn’t contain any feedback from part-time workers.”
“Then tell me what’s happening, Billy,” asks the CEO.
“Sir, I honestly would rather wait until we have more data,” answers Billy.
This goes on for a bit until the CEO has an epiphany – Billy isn’t wanting to tell him what he really thinks.
In a flash, the CEO asks, “Billy, what are you afraid of? You afraid I can’t handle what’s really happening out there?”
“Sir, I wouldn’t want to speculate. And I certainly wouldn’t want to give you incorrect data.” See, I told you Billy was good on his feet.
The group is dismissed from the CEO’s office and his Friday is shot. Emotions go from anger to frustration to resentment. All in about a 10 minute span.
Within 15 minutes of the survey team leaving the CEO’s office, he’s got 3 VP’s in his office sitting right where the survey team sat. He tells them what he’s learned, tosses the single copy of the early results onto the table in the middle of them and goes on a rant. During his rant they each briefly glance at the first few pages, attempting to make sense of the pie charts and other diagrams of the overall results.
“This is just 15% of the work force,” says one VP. “Let’s wait and see how things are when we have more data.”
The others chime in conceding that that’s the best course of action. It’s way to early to assume this represents the sentiment of the entire workforce.
Then it happens. The same thing that happened to Billy. “Gentlemen, I want to know what each of you think is happening? I want to know if you think this properly depicts what’s happening in our culture?”
They try Billy’s tactic, but it’s not working now. They’re not junior executives and the CEO isn’t going to let them off as easily.
The room grows quiet. Frank has been in the company for 6 years. He’s seasoned, even weather beaten. He’s about 8 years younger than the CEO, and he knows he’s well-regarded throughout the company, including the office of the CEO. He breaks the silence.
“Sir, if I might.”
“Please, Frank. Let’s hear it,” says the CEO.
“Let’s examine what we’ve done so far and what led us to this place. For over a year we’ve been wanting to improve our culture, fearful that we were headed in a direction that might steer us away from being the organization we’d most like to be. Employee engagement has been a constant focal point, rightfully so. We’ve questioned how engaged our employees are. We’ve questioned if our culture is fit enough to get us to the next level. So we invested almost $10,000 in this survey tool in order to at long last see if we could all get a better handle on what’s really going on. As leaders, we solve problems. First, we have to understand the problem to be solved. Else, we just act like bulls in a china closet and none of us want to damage the china. So we’re finding out what our people really think and how they really feel.”
“Sir, may I give you one word that I think may best illustrate what may be our initial problem with all this?”
“Yes, of course, give it to me, Frank.”
“The word is SAFETY. Sir, you asked about my thoughts. In my judgment we’re experiencing data that has somewhat blindsided us because our employees don’t feel safe. I don’t mean our workplace is physically unsafe, it’s very safe. But I mean emotionally safe where people can tell us the truth. I reiterate to our sales and marketing teams that our prospects are only going to become customers if we can first make them feel safe. After that, we must earn their trust. If we earn their trust, then we must work on having influence on them. Every time we short-circuit that process, we fail. We can’t make a sale if the prospect doesn’t let us influence them. That can’t happen if they don’t trust us. And the only way to trust is safety. Our prospects have to know we have their best interests at heart, even though we do want to make a sale. We want the sale to be what works best for our customers. I don’t see any difference between our prospects and our employees. First, we need to lead them in a way that makes them feel safe — and that needs to come from making them know we have their best interests at heart. It seems to me, we’ve failed on that front. The good news is, if the other results are consistent with these results, then we can begin today working on a plan to fix this. Isn’t that why we commissioned this survey to begin with?”
During his answer the CEO was quiet and attentive. You could almost see the wheels turning in his head. It was making sense to him.
He asked the other VP’s if they agreed. They did. Not much more conversation happened after that and the group was dismissed.
Alone in his office now, the CEO reflected on what Frank had said. His anger was gone. In its place, sadness. He was preoccupied. A few phone calls and another short meeting happened, but he couldn’t much remember what any of it was about. He was thinking about 15.07% of his workforce who felt taxed and under-appreciated. And he was confident 100% of the survey would likely reflect similar results. How did it get this way? It was never his intent. He just wanted a high performing organization. And he had one, or so he thought. Truth is, these people were doing great work. They were high performing. And he began to wonder how high performing people can feel so badly about their work and their organization.
He walked out of his office down the hall to Frank’s office. Knocked on the door and asked Frank if he had a moment. “Of course, sir.”
For 20 minutes the men exchanged no data. They just talked about what the CEO most wanted – employees who felt alive at work. People who felt supported to do the best work of their lives. And the CEO listened to Frank, the first person willing to tell him candidly want he needed to hear. Frank was encouraging and proactive. He suggested that the CEO allow he and his peers to take some time to figure out real-life answers – things “real people can do” as Frank put it. Before the CEO left Frank’s office, Frank said something that seemed to hit it squarely on the head.
“Let’s consider how valuable the truth is. If we can make our people feel safe think of the enormous benefits we’ll have in the market. When we know the truth we’ll be able to more proactive, more innovative and world-class. This may be one of the greatest days of my career here, sir. We’ve just discovered an untapped resource of power that we didn’t even know we had. I say we capitalize on it and make connecting with our people the priority of our leadership.”
Sometimes people need professional therapy. Our pain sometimes demands it. Our ability or capacity to process our pain often needs some shoring up. I’m not a professional therapist. I’m just a business guy with a lifetime of striving toward higher self-awareness. Spend your lifetime studying people – including yourself – and you learn a few things. Mostly, I’ve learned there’s so much I just don’t know. Today’s show is not intended to serve in place of a mental health professional. Some of the most successful people find they need help because success brings about its own pain and pressure. My best advice is, take care of yourself.
He was very small. Probably 4 years old or so. I don’t remember the specific circumstance, but I remember many conversations with him about the voice inside his head. I was probably 27 years old or so. He was my son, our first born. Patience, as with most 4-year-olds, wasn’t yet in his arsenal. My task was to help him discover it. Mostly, I was intent on helping him learn to develop resilience. My wife and I quickly realized that if he didn’t excel immediately, he grew frustrated and angry. His temper was mostly ignited at his own failure. We knew he was innately competitive.
I’m on one knee, bent down to look him in the face. The topic is the invisible little man who lives in his head and tells him, “You’ll never be able to do this. You’re an idiot for even trying. Look at you, you can’t even do it right the first time.” I worked diligently to help him understand that we all have an invisible little person living in our head who tells us lies, but we also have another little person telling us the truth – encouraging us, telling us we can do it, and urging us to silence the critic.
My son wasn’t getting professional help from me. I was a rank amateur with enough self-awareness and communication skills to know I didn’t want my little boy to grow up feeling defeated before he even began. Hitting a ball with a bat. Catching a ball. Anything like that frustrated him if he couldn’t master it immediately. Learning wasn’t acceptable. He was born with some wiring that compelled him to be instantly good, or worthless at doing something. To my wife and I, it went beyond the scope of childish expectation. Through the years we’d learn it was part of who he was. Our job was to equip him as best we could with the tenacity to understand it, manage it and harness it for his own good.
my son putting skates on his daughter
Today, he’s 35 and we couldn’t be prouder. Thankfully, we didn’t screw him up too badly. 😉 Now it’s his turn to avoid screwing up his own kids.
The other day I was remembering some of those down-on-one-knee talks with him, wondering where I got my stories about the “little man living in your head telling you all these negative things.” If I learned about it, I don’t remember. What I do remember is always knowing I had such a little man living in my head. He’s been there for as long as I can remember.
It’s likely where I first got my fondness for what was once called “self help” books. I’d read books, listen to audio tapes and consume quite a lot of that material, especially in my 20’s. It was interesting to me. I was mostly interested in the deeper stuff that had some scientific basis. I wasn’t so smitten with the rah-rah-sis-boom-bah stuff. That’s the stuff that jumped to the best seller list and I read too many of those, but mostly I found those trite and cheesy. I wanted substance. I wanted understanding.
In college psychology classes fascinated me. My library still contains a variety of books aimed at helping us understand ourselves and why we do what we do. Or why we fail to do other things we should. I wasn’t smart enough to pursue science, but I was highly interested. As a business guy – even as a hi-fi salesman during college – studying people was always the underlying reason for it I suppose. Finding out what people wanted and why. Listening to them tell their stories. Watching their faces as they talked of a favorite record, or band. It was all pretty interesting and I suppose in some small way I figured that if I could develop skills to better understand people, then maybe I could better understand myself. Maybe that was the point all along.
Understand Yourself Better
Doesn’t everybody have an inner critic? I suppose so. I can’t imagine somebody not having one. Or more than one.
I’ve already admitted my personal fascination with my own (and my children’s) inner critic and self-esteem. My children we born in the early 80’s and may well be the last kids to be raised by old-school parents who didn’t subscribe to participation trophies. We wanted our son and daughter to be independent, stand up for what they believed in, do the right thing no matter what and figure out what occupation would best serve them and their own families. They were experience driven. Much more so than my baby boomer generation ever was. We were materialistic and chased financial success. Our parents were part of what Tom Brokaw called “the greatest generation.” Our folks worked hard and we learned our work ethic from them. But was gave up quite a lot in the process. We worked a lot of hours, grinding away to climb the ladder and find success, which was mostly based on how much money we made. Thankfully, our children found a better way – a more balanced life.
Understanding ourselves often draws us back to our childhood. We’re all a product of our upbringing. My wife and I knew we were packing bags that our children would carry with them the rest of their lives. That’s how it goes. I was committed to making some of those bags I gave my kids as profitable and productive as possible. Time will judge whether I was able to do it as well as I’d hoped.
It all boiled down to helping them better understand themselves. Of course, first I had to better understand myself. That was always the hard part. Today, that’s the hard part for them now that they’re parents trying to pass on whatever lessons they’ve learned.
I keep reading, observing, writing and doing my best to pay attention. And of course, as always, trying to connect the dots and make sense of it all.
It’s a nice, plush quiet office. The CEO owns the business. He started the company 27 years ago. Slogged his way to profitability and things began to take off.
Around year 7 he started getting newfound and much needed traction. Business was good, but the growth was stressful. He was discovering new problems he’d never faced before. There were people problems. Capital always seemed too short. There were inventory issues. Systems were being taxed at every point. He was afraid. The growth has revealed all the things he knew were true – he wasn’t prepared.
So he did what most do. He dove in trying to figure it out along the way. Desperation is how he characterizes those years. He was desperate to figure it out so he just took action. Mostly, he admits, he got it wrong, but he tried to fix it as soon as he could. When he got it right, it paid off handsomely so he just assumed if he could win more than he lost, then everything would be okay.
That didn’t help him sleep at night. It sure didn’t help him build an organization, or develop a high performing team. No sooner had the euphoria of getting traction hit until it gave way to high anxiety. He had never been this afraid. He had employees. Payroll. Suppliers. Financial concerns. He was eating, drinking and staying awake at night fretting about the business.
Here we sit, two decades later. It’s in the middle of the afternoon. He’s troubled. Today, he’s lamenting a few opportunities he’s had to develop a key right-hand person. There was the young man he hired 22 years ago, before the traction took hold. A diligent young man with a high degree of willingness. Rough around the edges sometimes, but plenty of horsepower to work with. He just never took the time to really mentor the young man. Eventually, he left, telling the owner that he needed a new opportunity. The CEO figured he really meant that he wasn’t growing as he wanted — and they both likely understand the fact of it all.
After that, he figures there had been at least two more. He’s got a strong team today, but he can’t seem to get past the lost opportunities to have grown talent that would likely be serving him now in his latter years. Talent that might best help him achieve what he most wants now.
There’s regret on his face as he’s telling me the story. I asked him about himself. He’s telling me about past employees, but he’s not saying a lot about himself. “What’s the issue for you?” I ask. “Me?” he barks back. “It’s my business. It’s all an issue for me,” he retorts. Spoken like most business owners I’ve encountered through my career. I know how he means it, but I also know it can camouflage what’s really bothering him.
I ask him to help me understand how he’s feeling and what he’s thinking. His mood grows increasingly reflective, and pensive. He removes his glasses, rubs his eyes and says softly, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
It’s a bolt out of the blue. Catches even me off guard and I’m almost always on guard — that is, I’m pretty prepared for most things people tell me. I ask him to talk to me more about that. For the next 20 minutes or so he laments his life, organizationally and personally. He’s trapped by his success. Trapped by his business. Trapped by having to do it all. Trapped by making every big decision.
As the CEO of a mid-sized company with millions of dollars of revenue, just under 100 employees and a staff of about 7 direct reports, he’s surrounded by people. He speaks fondly of most of them, but continues to lament that he’s never fully developed a person capable of replacing him. Somebody who can help him ease into a new role that he longs to achieve – a wise mentor capable of providing historical context, industry know-how and other insightful service to a leadership team capable of soaring higher. Always higher.
“What are you most afraid of?” I ask, knowing it’s the time I can now ask and get an honest answer. He looks at me. Puts his glasses back on. Looks at some papers on his desk. Then looks up and peers at me with his eyes slightly squinted as if he’s got a headache. “Being alone,” he answers. “But that ship sailed. I am alone.”
His marriage ended shortly after his year of traction. One daughter is now off to college somewhere up north. He has confessed that his wife and mistress are one and the same – his business. He’s got many friends. Well, people with whom he can socialize. His calendar is full of activities. At work. At home. He’s surrounded by people. But mostly, he’s alone.
All the trappings of success are just that – trappings. He’s said so. This is no longer working for him. He’s a miserable man. Successful by all accounts and miserable.
Part of providing the opportunity to shell it down and be transparent is giving leaders the release they’ve longed to have. He seems to be breathing. I mean really catching a breath. Not just physically, but emotionally. I remind him that I’m not a therapist and my work isn’t therapy, but it is therapeutic. “Boy, don’t I know it,” he says.
He’s in his 60’s. He’s not the 4-year-old little boy I talked to when I was 27. But there’s still a little person inside him telling him things. Surrounded by talent and expertise in his business, he’s mostly listening to some unnamed little person living in his head. This trusted advisor has no name, no credentials and only one mission. To nag him into misery. Well, that seems to be the impact.
Over time it’s clear to him that he’s refusing to get too close to people. He wants to, but he’s afraid. Afraid it won’t work out. Like his marriage. Or those early employees who abandoned him. That’s his word: abandoned. No matter that they were willing, hard working and devoted. No matter that they likely weren’t feeling valued by him. He sees it the way he sees it. Clear or not, it’s his perspective.
Talk turns to our inner critic. That voice that sometimes wants to serve us, but has the opposite effect.
He concludes his inner critic is likely trying to protect him from being hurt, but those good intentions aren’t working. Instead, they’re causing him to repel against the very things he needs to do to get out of under this life he no longer wants. I’m here to help him with his business and professional life. But I care about his entire life and urge him to consider finding a professional capable of serving him in ways I can’t. He finds a professional and just after one session tells me what a gift it is to have two people serving him – me and a mental health professional, a therapist. I’m humbled.
Age Doesn’t Matter – Intentions Don’t Either
Whether we’re old or young, our inner critic likely never goes away. I’ve concluded maybe the best we can do is to understand it.
I’ve learned that often times my own inner critic is seeking my best. Or he thinks he is. “Don’t try that, it won’t work. You’ll only embarrass yourself.” Good little voice, trying to protect me from embarrassment.
Freedom From Your Inner Critic is a book written by Jay Earley and Bonnie Weiss. Part of what the authors point out is that our inner critic has old ideas about us. We listen to these antiquated images of who we may have once been. Our inner critic pushes us to remember an outdated version of ourselves. The problem is, that doesn’t fit our current circumstance. Or our current skills or experience. According to Earley and Weiss, our inner critic then goes to work to protect us, causing us to doubt ourselves. That makes us feel insufficient, often growing more miserable. That’s where our CEO business owner is at.
I encourage you to read and study about this more, but I’ll share with you three things Ms. Weiss points to as ways to tame this inner critic.
Step 1: Separate
That little person living in our head is just one of many. It’s one voice among many. The inner critic isn’t entirely you, but it’s only a part. Weiss says that voice has its own motives and world view. The way to tame it is to distance from it. Make a decision to listen, or not listen.
Sometimes you need to tell the voice to back off. She argues that we all need to find and get in touch with our higher Self (yes, it’s a capital S). Google IFS or internal family systems therapy and you’ll find more. I’m not saying this is the end all, be all. I am saying I’ve found elements of this helpful in better understanding myself and in helping others better understand themselves in the professional dynamics at work.
Like any voice or advice we get, we can choose to listen or not to the inner critic. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s possible. Some people may be able to figure this out with a bit of reading and study. Other people may require or want more structured help.
Step 2: Update
Weiss encourages us to ask our inner critic an important question, “How old do you think I am?” Most often we’ll find out that our inner critic thinks we’re still a small child. It’s as though our inner critic is stuck in time. All the effort expended to protect us is by a small (but loud) voice aimed at protecting a child, not a grown adult with the skills and experience we now possess. The more you’re able to show this part of yourself who and what you really are today, the more likely you’ll be able to update the inner critic into letting go of the dated concerns that little voice expresses to you, trying to protect you.
Step 3: Mentor
Weiss and Earley use a term I’m rather fond of, Inner Champion. That can be your new mentor. You need help in dealing with your inner critic. Weiss finds it helpful to give your Inner Champion some human qualities. She admits her own Inner Champion is part Katherine Hepburn, Margaret Mead and others. The job of the Inner Champion is to give you strength.
The Inner Champion often sounds like the voice of a good mom reminding you of your value and capacity. It encourages you to take reasonable risks so you can get what you most want.
The Inner Champion also has the courage to take a stand against your inner critic, telling it to leave you alone. The Inner Champion is the other voice in your head telling that inner critic that he’s not being helpful.
The value of the Inner Champion is in helping you develop a process or system to achieving what you want. When you lack a process, your Inner Champion helps propel you forward to devise a plan.
And the Inner Champion takes care of the fragile parts of you that are being protected by the inner critic. See, the inner critic is really intending to help you. It just doesn’t always work out that way.
Clarity
I’m a fan. Seeing things clearly doesn’t mean the news is always good. Or that the outcome is what we wanted. It just means we’re seeing it for what it really is. That provides us with an opportunity to make adjustments, fix what ails us and figure out what we’ll do next.
Life is about adjustments. It’s about learning. The CEO was learning some things for the first time in his life. He was putting in the work to avoid going it alone, thinking he had to be strong enough all by himself. Trapped by success, surrounded by people – he was already alone. And that’s what he most feared. When he saw it more clearly he was able to devise a plan he could own. Professional therapy helped. I hope I did, too.
He got some strategy in place, which drove his hopes higher. In time he got some optimism because he could see a positive outcome. Hopelessness gave way to optimism.
I encourage you to seek clarity for yourself. Leaders can get so busy and allow their lives to become more hectic than is profitable. “I’m too busy,” is a steady refrain I hear from every leader. I’m the guy who’ll ask, “Do you think Benjamin Franklin was a bit brilliant? How about Ernest Hemingway?”
Ben Franklin is quoted as having said or written, “Never confuse motion with action.”
Ernest Hemingway is quoted as having said, “Never mistake motion with action.”
Pick your brilliant guy. Their quotes are the same. And they were both right.
Today, right now, do something for yourself. Face that inner critic. Read a book (or four) on it. Confront it and seek professional help if you need it or want it. Some of us are out here ready to help you do the heavy lifting.
I’ve got REM playing in the headphones while I catch up on some paperwork. At some point their hit, Everybody Hurts begins to play. It’s a beautiful, but haunting song that admonishes the listener to “hang on.” Misery loves company and everybody hurts. Sometime.
Leaders regularly wear masks, hiding their fears, insecurities and challenges. It’s part of that “never let ’em see you sweat” mindset.
All bravado aside, deep down we all know R.E.M. is right. Everybody does hurt. Sometime. We look at people from some safe distance and think they’ve got it all together. No worries. No problems. Everything they touch turns to success.
Florence Chadwick is a name you may have never heard. She only had a 40% success rate. Experiencing failure more than half the time. That’s enough to knock anybody into the dirt. Unless you’re Florence Chadwick. She became the first woman to swim from England to France in 1951, but out of 10 attempts – she only succeeded 4.
Troy Aikman came to the Dallas Cowboys as the number 1 draft pick. New team owner Jerry Jones and new NFL coach Jimmy Johnson experienced tremendous failure right off the bat. Aikman was part of that colossal failure. He didn’t win a single game in his first year as a starter. 100% failure.
Success breeds comfort. Comfort quickly becomes complacency. But maybe more dangerous, success fosters a “What about me?” attitude among the employees, including the leadership team. Everybody wants more credit and more praise than they had previously. It’s the pressure winning brings. And it’s why success can be difficult to sustain long-term.
That kind of success can result in its own kind of failure. Just last Friday, Wal-Mart announced they’d be closing 269 stores. According to CEO Doug McMillon, the company is taking action in order to become more nimble in the face of competition from Amazon and others.
Sears was historically considered too big to fail, but they’ve been failing for years. They’re not alone. The business landscape is filled with companies who were once spectacular, but are now gone — or soon may be. Success can breed more success (as we talked about in the last episode about leverage), or it can cause us to grow comfortable and overconfident.
Failure sometimes comes in the form of success. Namely, success handled improperly. Or poorly.
Failure is certain no matter the endeavor. You will fail. Mark it down.
The biggest winners on the planet have failed. Often more times than anybody really knows – other than them. Mostly, because others aren’t counting your failures. They’re too busy counting their own.
Florence Chadwick tried to be the first woman to swim 21 miles across the Catalina Channel, from Catalina Island to Palos Verde on the California coast in 1952. She came up short. Literally half a mile short. After swimming almost 16 hours, the cold water and fog defeated her. An epic fail.
After getting out of the water and realizing how close she was, she told a reporter, “Look, I’m not excusing myself, but if I could have seen land I know I could have made it.“
Two months later she made another attempt, this time succeeding in just under 14 hours. Success. It had been a 50/50 proposition, but she persisted and made it.
For years that story has been told and retold as a lesson in resilience and keeping your eye on the goal. Maybe what’s often forgotten though are the attempts that resulted in failure. Or the stories of failure that resulted in success because people found a way to get out from under failure. Not everybody does.
History is littered with sad stories of people with insanely high potential who made poor choices, neglected to do the work and were never able to withstand the heavy weight of failure. Some just can’t find their way out of it.
On Joe Buck’s new show, Undeniable With Joe Buck, he interviewed his broadcasting partner, Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman. Troy confessed his first love was baseball. After the family moved from California to Oklahoma, Troy had no intention of playing football. He was planning to just play basketball and baseball. One day his dad returned home from work and asked, “They’re having football sign up’s in town. You’re gonna play, aren’t you?” Afraid to refuse his dad, Troy signed up. Three SuperBowl Championships and an NFL Hall of Fame entrance later – here he is working the Fox NFL broadcasts on the number 1 team for that network with Joe Buck.
Life throws all of us curve balls. Sometimes we can hit them. Other times we can’t even see them.
Serendipity happens to all of us, too. Sometimes it hurts us. Other times, like Troy’s dad telling him to go sign up for football, they set our life on a trajectory we could have never imagined.
Moments In Time
We’ve all heard the adage…
Success is never final.
Failure is never fatal.
I’m more sure of that first one. I’m not sure at all about that last one because I’ve seen failure be final when people made really awful decisions. Even so I appreciate the sentiment and you do, too.
Whether it’s our first attempt and it ends in failure, or whether we’re like Florence and we fail 6 out of 10 times, failure is really just a moment in time. It’ll pass.
Ditto for success.
In either case we often don’t think so. Failure seems to drag on and we think it’ll never end. Success feels the same way. Once we reach the mountain top and take a good look at the view, we think we’ve made it. This is gonna be our view from now on. Until life shows us how wrong we are.
Getting out from under failure can mean a bunch of things. It may mean that we have to make up our mind that we’re going to push past this moment of time – this moment where we’ve fallen on our face. It may mean that we have to determine we’re not going to buckle under the new weight of success we now have to shoulder.
Whatever it may mean to you, this much is sure. Getting out from under failure means we can’t stand still. We can’t sit down and take it easy. Sure we can catch our breath and regroup, but we need to get on with it. It’s so with our careers, our teams and our organizations. If we stay in one place too long failure will catch up with us and swallow us up.
The competition is always coming. The market is always changing. Customers are always being distracted or woo’d away by somebody else.
Daily it’s a fight to remain relevant and to be the top dog in our game. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a $500M company or a $500,000 mom ‘n pop shop. Success just has a bigger scale. So does failure. Which is why the weight of failure can really take a toll on a larger company. They have more weight that can used against them in the battle. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” can be very true. And in their lumbering way, they can find it much harder – and longer – to regain their footing after a fall, too.
You’re the leader. The organization – or perhaps your team – is looking to you to show them the way. What do you do when you’ve taken it on the chin? Maybe you were just stunned momentarily. Maybe you got knocked out cold, but you’re now coming back to your senses. I don’t know what your failure looks like, but you’ve had it happen. Maybe you’re enduring it right now. It sits on your chest like the weight of the world. You’re pinned down, unable to move. Or so you think. And if you did move, you’re not sure which way to turn. Do you turn left to escape? Or right?
Failure can not only beat you down, but it can make you lose your bearings. Find your true north people say. Shoot, when you’re failing you’d be happy to just know which end is UP.
Success is on the other side. Somewhere. If only you could see it like Florence Chadwick mentioned to that reporter…then you could make it more easily. But you can’t see it. Therein lies a major problem. You’re having to operate on faith. Much of that faith has to be in yourself. And in your people.
If It Is To Be, It’s Up To Me
Not in some self-centered, I’m all that and a bag of chips kind of way, but in an “I have to show the way” kind of a way. As leaders, it’s up to us to demonstrate our own resolve. People are closely watching us to see how we’re going to react. Will we stay down? Will we throw in the towel? Or will we learn from our failure, rally the troops and closely examine our failure so we don’t repeat it? What’s it going to be?
This is where that bravado can kick in an foil any really opportunity we may have to succeed. We can make a poor choice in our attempt to get out from under failure by laughing it off as a fluke. By puffing out our chest and saying as confidently as possible, “That won’t happen again.” We can don that mask of impenetrable superiority in hopes the troops don’t see our loss of confidence, or our fears.
A better option is candor.
We may find it most helpful for getting out from under failure by being real with ourselves and our people.
Back in the 80’s I first read about a guy named Jack Stack up in Springfield, Missouri. I had many close friends in Springfield so at first I was mostly interested because of that angle, but I quickly grew interested in this new thing Stack was doing. Open book management. It was remarkable, especially in the early 80’s.
This novel concept was primarily based on sharing information – particularly financial data – that would help employees better understand how their work impacted the entire organization. It seemed so drop dead simple. And powerful. And it was. That was around 1983. You’d think in the intervening 3 decades or so since that we’d all collectively smarter about our candor, not just with numbers, but with our emotions and concerns, too. Not so much.
Courage in the face of adversity is often depicted as stoic, stiff upper lip, gritted teeth forging ahead. That’s hogwash.
People don’t want a robotic leader. They want to follow a man or woman who is real. Somebody who really cares. Somebody who is free to feel pain and let people know it hurts.
We’re inspired by leaders who we see get knocked down, but with tears streaming down their face they rise back to their feet. Maybe they just stand there momentarily to gather themselves. Maybe they have to pick up their weapon, knocked from their hand in the course of the battle, but pick it up – they do! Wiping the sweat from above their eyes, they start to move forward again. As they walk we see a more steely resolve come over their face. It’s the look we love to follow. That look of tenacity that won’t be denied, even if there’s another knock down coming. People are watching for those things and when they see them, they rise to the occasion.
Use failure as a propellant. Use it to strengthen yourself and your organization.
Four years after failing to win a single game, Troy Aikman lifted the Lombardi Trophy as a SuperBowl Champion. It could easily be argued that without the failure he – and some of his remaining teammates – may have never understood the resolve needed to put in the work necessary to win it all. Maybe the coaching staff and front office would have never had the determination to do the work necessary to construct and train a team prepared to hoist that trophy had they never experienced having their teeth kicked in week after week. They learned how to get out from under their failure and in doing so, they learned how to succeed.
Success is always found in the same place. It’s right there after you figure out a way to get out from under that failure. It’s just waiting to see who is going to come get it.
In the morning the bed looks like we’ve been wrestling a bear. We tossed and turned until we finally got up. We read a bit. Browsed the web some. Even tried to watch something on Netflix, hoping sleep would eventually come. It didn’t. Not much of it anyway.
In spite of connections, sometimes found all the world — and in spite of service professionals like attorneys and accountants — and in spite of a terrific inner circle of direct report managers who are extremely capable — CEO’s can be among the loneliest and most sleep deprived people on the planet. I once considered hiring myself out at night for sleep study research figuring I might as well get paid for not sleeping. A capitalist to the core!
Recently, I was discussing all the compliance requirements required of financial advisors. With a financial advisor. The money, time and HR investment required to wrestle that problem was staggering to me. Forget your politics. Or mine. Well, I don’t have any really – except not being fond of anything that hampers our ability to operate in a free-market when we are committed to doing the right thing. But my business mantra has never been very sophisticated or hard to understand…
Small business owners will readily mount a pulpit anytime talk turns toward compliance issues, regulatory restrictions and tax rates. As I’m listening to this business owner talk of how daunting it is to maintain compliance with all the regulations, she says, “I’m afraid to do a break-even analysis on my compliance costs, but I should do it.” We agreed it’d like being sick, but not knowing what’s wrong. Ignorance is not bliss. It can be deadly. Her firm was handling the expense – they had no choice – but she was concerned with the ever mounting cost in both time and money. Couple that with the pressure to deliver more dazzling service to customers at lower and lower costs. It was an old, old refrain I’d heard many times since I first stepped into a hi-fi store at 16 to begin my first sales job.
Business problems.
That keep us up at night.
I’m happy to say that more often than not I’ve found business owners and CEO’s who were proactive, but that’s no surprise. Typically these are people with strong determination, tenacity and resiliency. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t likely be where they are. That doesn’t mean they’re successful in operating their business though. Or that they’re good at managing the issues confronting them and their business. Some are. Some aren’t. Some do well most of the time, but a sudden unforeseen challenge can lay them low.
In just the last few months I’ve heard of 3 CEO’s who are going through a divorce. The holidays seem to be a favorite time for some people to decide, “Enough.” As I listened to one story of a divorcing CEO I could hear the pain and sadness in his voice. It was apparent in his face. And I thought, “There’s no way this is staying out of the office.” How could it? Impossible.
I’m sure he’d had many, many sleepless nights leading up to this final death knell on his marriage. I’m equally sure most people at work had no idea. But those closest to him had to know something was wrong.
Conversation turned toward those circumstances and how employees left to wonder, “What’s wrong with the boss?” can lead to some really awful cultural collateral damage. As bad as his divorce was for him and his family, the employees were likely thinking of something far worse — something that impact THEM. It’s reasonable. It’s not that they’re uncaring about their CEO, but they have their own families. Their own concerns. Their own dreams. He’s the boss though. And his life has a direct impact on theirs.
True servant-based leaders shoulder that burden, too. They understand how they impact the lives of their employees. And vendors. And financial partners. And customers. Just keep piling on that weight until our knees buckle, right? As the sign in my office says (bought by my daughter who no doubt has grown tired of hearing me say it repeatedly)…
Divorce? A business problem? Yep, it sure is when you own the joint or you’re the CEO. A flat tire on the way to work that vexes you, is also a business problem. Especially when you hit the door ready to bite a nail in two.
Then there are those strategic and organizational issues. Compliance stuff. Industry disruptors. Technology challenges. The every present people problem of finding the right people and putting them in the best spots, then hanging onto them. There are inventory problems, payroll problems, lease problems, sales problems, cost containment problems, distribution problems, pricing problems…the list just keeps on going. Pick your poison.
I know the pain very, very well. Through the years I’ve also learned a thing or three about handling them in a way that moves me from being uncomfortable to being positively action-oriented toward a workable solution. Heavy emphasis on workable. Some solutions are pie in the sky or completely unreasonable due to expense or the take required. While none of us enjoy fire-fighting, sometimes there is a fire. In those cases, it’s grab the management equivalent of a fire extinguisher and get the blaze under control. Worry about the damage later. First, stop the fire from burning the joint to the ground.
4 very practical and effective steps to conquering the demons that keep us up at night
a. Plan your attack, even if the plan is imperfect (and you know it)
You’ve heard the adage that even a bad plan beats no plan. Well, it’s certainly true when it comes to the issues that keep us up as CEO’s or business owners. The toughest thing is the wondering what we should do? Our minds get on that hamster wheel of wondering and questioning. Should I do this? Should I do this?
The longer you stay in this land of limbo the more sleep you’re going to lose. And the more weary you’ll become. This is the sleepless death spiral that we’ve all experienced when we’re just vexed and frustrated (and worried) beyond the everyday issues we regularly face. Come on, most problems don’t keep us up at night – thankfully. But these – these elephants in the room – prevent those sheep from entering our room as we can count them and get some shut eye.
What’s the very next step you need to make? Who do you need to call? What do you need to do? Right now.
This can be much, much tougher than it sounds because as CEO’s and business owners we want to connect the dots all the way to the end. Sometimes, we’ll spend too much time trying to do that, only to find that we missed a dot, or we connected two dots that never should have been connected.
Besides, there are circumstances that our next one step will likely bring about that we may have never seen coming. The issue very well may change once we head in the right direction.
So, while you’re up tonight pondering the problem, wrap your head around answering this question…
What one thing can do right now or first thing in the morning to start fixing this problem?
It’s a one-step plan, but it’ll fuel your mind to think more clearly about the step after. Right now, you just need to do something meaningful knowing that you can always retreat, pivot and morph your ideas to suit the situation as it more fully develops.
This step prevents crisis management when crisis management isn’t necessary.
b. Don’t overthink it and delay.
Most of us are prone to overthinking after the fact. By nature, most of the CEO’s I’ve ever known were decisive people able to make fast decisions with very limited (but compelling) information. That’s not hard for most of us. What may be hard is doing that in our mind – making a decision – then prior to execution we begin to wonder if we ought to do something else. Or maybe we wonder if we should just delay an hour, or a day. Or two.
Delay causes greater vexation. Vexation in a CEO causes untold anxiety throughout a company. The ripple effect I talked about last time in a CEO’s own professional development (see episode 4002) works in reverse here. When the CEO is fretful it ripples to everybody around him and pretty soon the whole place is worried. That’s too high a price to pay for putting off what you can do right now – even if what you attempt right now isn’t the perfect or final solution. At least you’re trying.
And you’re trying right now. Besides, you want to show your people how important speed is in handling problems. You want to lead a remarkable, decisive, proactive organization. Then you’ve got to be remarkable, decisive and proactive under the most intense pressure.
c. Make your next move based on new information.
I don’t play chess, but my son used to play quite a lot. Every now and again I’d play him. I understood only enough to know how the players can move. He understood the strategy, something I never learned.
He’d begin by making a move. I’d make a move. My move would impact the move he made, especially later on in the game.
That’s how this problem should be handled. You make a move. Maybe it’s ideal. Maybe it’s not. No matter, it’s not going to be wrong for long because based on the outcome you’re going to make adjustments. Depending on how your first action impacts the situation you’ll decide what to do next.
Did your first move seem to lower the pressure of the problem? Great, then now what are you going to do? Take in that new information and make adjustments.
If your first move made matters worse, then you have to take action quickly to reverse matters. Either way, your next step is based on the impact your first step had on the situation.
It’s what you do in running your business. You’re always looking for data to support whether we’re moving up or going backward. And the faster you know the faster you can adjust. Sometimes the trend is slight. Other times it’s extreme. But as the CEO we’re hungry for data. We need feedback to know how good our aim is. So go ahead and take that first shot, then look closely at the target so you’ll know how to better aim the second shot.
d. Keep doing it. Rinse and repeat.
The more we take action the easier it is to keep taking action. The more we worry about something, the easier it is to keep worrying. You decide.
Action or worry.
Action may keep you up at night, but only because you’re working. Worry on the other hand will keep you up at night and exhaust you.
Weary leaders shouldn’t remain weary for long. The company is looking to you for leadership. A sleep deprived CEO in a funk isn’t fit for the battle. So get battle ready and stay that way…because your business depends on it.
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I keep reading, observing, writing and doing my best to pay attention. And of course, as always, trying to connect the dots and make sense of it all.
