On more than one occasion, I found myself in the emotionally challenging position of telling employees at The Berry Company, “I love you, but you just don’t get to work here anymore.” As difficult as that message was to deliver, they were better off working elsewhere because they were in circumstances where they just weren’t going to prosper.
The third, and last, distinction is that blending strength of character and love for your fellow man does not weaken your manhood or womanhood. Blending character and love is a fundamental quality for leaders, one that I underline with audiences because it’s so important. I have seen far too many leaders who are afraid to show the side that makes them special.
Dr. Robert Quinn, from the University of Michigan, and one of the thought leaders who has spoken at the Center for Leadership & Executive Development, spotlights the best leaders as “transformative” and defines them as “those who are enormously demanding and enormously caring.” I’ve worked with countless business leaders, and very few have a problem with the demand side of the model… that’s easy! It’s the caring side of the model that causes most leaders to struggle.
Caring defines our uniqueness not only as leaders but as human beings. Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence was a major breakthrough and much has been written to support his belief that to be effective in getting the most from people around you, they’ve got to know you care. Very few of us are comfortable enough with ourselves to reach that breakthrough in relationships. Paradoxically, far too often we are guilty of over-managing the relationship which takes away the responsibility of people managing themselves. The most effective leaders, as Quinn noted, learn to master both sides.
As we prepared to roll out “The Leadership Pledge” as the company’s operating philosophy, we spent a great deal of time uncovering the defining moments in our lives and what they really felt like. Think back to a euphoric experience when you stretched yourself beyond your capacity or you dared to dream big, either individually or as an organization.
I describe that feeling as “arriving at the destination.” Others call it winning, or getting to the top of the mountain. While winning has to be the ultimate objective for any individual or organization because it’s how we are measured, there is a vast distinction between outcome goals (the final destination) and process goals (the journey to get there).
Outcome goals are those milestones that we tend to affix a number—a sales goal, a revenue target, or the ten pounds we want to lose. If I’ve learned nothing else over forty years of coaching, leading and advising, I realize it is paramount to prevent these outcome goals from shaping how we feel about ourselves.
Process goals are those objectives we put in place to reach our outcome goals. These must be seen as links in the chain, and in many ways, are the ultimate reason for success or failure.
First and foremost, we must have big dreams if we are going to get the most from our lives. Far too many people underestimate themselves. Only when we truly dare to stretch ourselves beyond our capacity, to dream big, can we get a glimpse of how far we can go. Once we see our goal in our mind’s eye, it becomes real, attainable, and reachable.
So the question is… where do we get the daily shot of “I can do this”? I believe we get it from the pursuit of those big dreams. That’s the source of our self-esteem. We can’t base our sense of self-worth solely on outcomes, and it’s not other people’s responsibility to make us feel good about ourselves. If we behave in the way we know will yield positive results, our self-esteem is reinforced, and our actions echo our intentions.
I’m almost left speechless when I hear that often-used comment following the passing of a family member or friend, “It makes you think about your priorities.” My response is always the same: “Since no one leaves this earth alive, why does it take someone’s passing to re-evaluate our priorities?”
It’s quite simple: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift. For me, it’s always been about the hunt, not the kill. Vince Lombardi invoked the same when he talked about his ’68 Packers. He said, “We’re going to chase the hell out of perfection, and hopefully we’ll catch some excellence along the way.” In the end, our lives are about the journey we all take!
There are two friends who accompany everyone on the journey to achieving success and becoming a leader: change and choice. There are two things we know about change. First, change is constant in our lives—you can’t get away from it, yet folks struggle mightily to stop it. Second, change never leaves us like it found us!
As it relates to the journey, I want to draw the distinction between incremental change and “deep change” as Dr. Robert E. Quinn describes in his book of the same name. He says, “Incremental change usually does not disrupt past patterns… [and] is an extension of the past. Deep change differs from incremental change in that it requires new ways of thinking and behaving. It represents a change that is major in scope, discontinuous with the past and generally irreversible. Deep change means surrendering control.”
So you need to make choices when confronted with inevitable change. Quinn goes on to say, “There is an important link between deep change at the personal level and deep change at the organizational level. To make deep personal change is to develop a new paradigm, one that is more effective with today’s realities.”
Every day our lives are different due to internal change or change that is externally imposed on us. For instance, externally, our lives have been forever altered since 9/11. Internally, I’ve watched too many friends stricken with cancer and have marveled at the choices they made in how to confront it. Most of what happens to us in our lives depends on how we choose to respond and what choices we make when confronted with change.
It was in Buffalo, New York, in July of 1981 that I, along with several colleagues at The Berry Company, made the choice to find a better way… and our lives, personally and professionally, were forever changed for the better. This is the journey I want to share with you.
In the yellow page industry, we manage our business by annual schedules and deadlines called campaigns. All customers had to be contacted and all agreements signed. Advertising had to be designed and ready for the printer in accordance with schedules and deadlines. The New York division, which I managed, had just completed the Buffalo campaign. This unit had been in a downward spiral, and as the campaign ended, we hit rock bottom. There were lots of contributing factors. The economy in Buffalo was devastated as the steel industry collapsed. Unemployment reached staggering numbers and we had serious competition from the White Directory Company, which meant that for the first time, advertisers had a choice for how they spent their advertising dollars.
Internally, we were struggling as well. We had lost a number of our salespeople and managers to our competitor, and the usual morale issues that afflict an organization in disarray were mounting. The company we worked for, New York Telephone, was terribly insensitive to the plight of the advertiser as well as our ability to meet unreasonable goals.
Only many years later can I look back on this life-altering experience and realize it’s never the economy nor the competition that brings an organization down, but rather the inability to respond. That response has to start with the leader.
As division manager I was focused on three things back then: winning (which was important to me then and still is, by the way), getting ahead (or maybe a better description, climbing that corporate ladder), and pleasing my boss (preserving our culture). While all of those elements are necessary to success, I was missing the key element. What I didn’t understand, realize, or appreciate was that I was imposing my value system on a hundred and seven employees with little regard for what they believed was important to them.
So when they looked to me for leadership, what they got instead was a leader facing failure for the first time in his business career and behaving accordingly. I wasn’t winning. I was losing… and in a big way. I got my first life lesson about leadership:
The only time we realize our dreams is when we help others realize theirs.
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