Who was your best coach?
April 12, 2007
Behind most great performances lie great coaches. I was thinking recently about one of my personal peak achievements and realized the truth of that afresh. If you’re looking for a wow-inducing peak achievement, prepare yourself to be underwhelmed. But here it is.
When I was 17, I competed in a music competition. (This was way before American Idol - and thankfully didn’t involve public embarrassment in front of Simon, Paula, and friends.) The winners got a chance to play as soloists with an orchestra in a classical concert. I ended up being one of the winners and a few months later, stood in front of the orchestra with my French horn to play my chosen piece.
In the years before this, I had had several teachers who led me down the way. These included an elementary school music teacher, the middle school band director, and an incredibly arrogant (and genius) teacher at a prestigious music camp. All played an important role.
But the guy who started it off didn’t play French horn and wasn’t even at the concert. His name was Stanley Hummel, a top-class pianist who had groomed a love of music in me from the time I started taking lessons with him in third grade. He pushed and encouraged and laughed and inspired me to get the most from my above-average musical talent.
Though Mr. Hummel wasn’t on stage that day, I wouldn’t have been there without him. That’s true for other peak achievements I’ve had in my professional and personal life. Behind any of them was at least one coach who kept drawing the best from me.
How about you? Who were your best coaches and what did they do?
Start-up Insurance - Pre-emptive Goodwill
April 10, 2007
A recent Harvard Business Review article, Firing Back: How Great Leaders Rebound After Career Disasters, points out the initially obvious point that a deep network is vital to getting back into a senior executive role after a career speed-bump. But dig deeper into the text and you’ll find a gem that every leader - especially those in the first few months of a new assignment - should grab.
Telling the story of Bernie Marcus, the founder of Home Depot who rebounded from a previous firing to start the omnipresent DIY store, the authors throw in this detail.
Whether they were close friends and colleagues with whom he worked or acquaintances he dealt with on a casual basis, Marcus treated others with uncommon honesty, respect, and trust. (Emphasis added)
Notably, Marcus didn’t start treating colleagues that wat when he needed them (i.e. when he was trying to start Home Depot). He just did it as a normal course of business.
I almost wrote “he just did it naturally.” But who knows if that’s the case? For most of us, it takes effort to look at our colleagues and pre-emptively give them uncommon honesty, respect, and trust. (Otherwise, it woudn’t be uncommon!) But one thing is certain - it is much easier to handle the ups and downs of your first 3-6 months in a leadership role with a store of goodwill in the bank than to repair strained relationships that never had a fighting chance.
Dirty Word #6 - Followership
April 2, 2007
OK, do a quick scan of your bookshelf, podcasts, and mental catalog of leadership talks. How many have you heard on the art of following well.
After looking through literally hundreds of those artifacts collected over twenty years, I found exactly…. ONE! (Incidentally, it was a very useful talk given by a leader at a high-growth church known for its strong leadership.)
Why is that? Why is it that when someone quotes the tired saying, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way,” we really see only one good option - to lead! I’d guess there are a lot of reasons, but our world certainly glorifies heroic leaders whose brilliance single-handedly tilts the earth to the benefit of their grateful followers.
Here’s the irony: nearly every great leader needs to also be a great follower. We are all accountable to someone - a boss, a board, shareholders, partners, an electorate - and we owe those people our best service. And yes, that service sometimes involves doing things their way instead of our own. It may be a blow to our egos, but that’s what it takes to follow well sometimes. (It also involves giving straight information, pushing back when we think leaders are missing something, and keeping our promises to our leaders - but those are topics for a future post.)
This ability to be influenced is a pretty good indicator of the quality of relationships we are bound to have as leaders or followers. John Gottman, a leading relationship researcher, says that a good predictor for marital health or breakdown is how open the partners are to influence. Those who allow their partners to influence their decisions and way of working typically have longer and happier marriages than those who resist influence. (Incidentally, he also finds that women tend to accept influence more than men. Sorry guys…)
So if we want to improve our relationships (and increase our influence), we can ask ourselves the question, “How good am I at following?” Counter-intuitive as it seems, it might just give us clues for growth.