Storytelling Redux with Seth Kahan

Following up on our recent interview of four experts on business storytelling, we drill down into the how-tos of good storytelling, including when to use which type of story. My returning guest is Seth Kahan of visionaryleadership.com, who will also discuss his forthcoming book "Getting Change Right."

There are types of stories?

Yes, says Seth.  One expert, Steve Denning writing in Harvard Business Review identified eight (8) different types, of which we touched on three in particular:  

• Building Rapport
• Inspiring Action
• Teaching Lessons

Seth was introduced to the power of storytelling through the work of Joseph Campbell.  In addition to his "day job" at the bank, Seth was doing a lot of theater, and exploring ancient human rituals and rites of passage.  One day Seth's boss asked about his life outside of work, and this boss was excited by the possibilities of using stories as a way to communicate better inside this large organization.

That was important because people routinely fail to communicate well inside large organizations.  You can use status reports, charts, graphs and memos, and a dozen other tools (including hiring consultants), and see people "not get it" -- or your message connects yet there is no behavior change.  For this boss, the one-on-one conversation seemed to be effective, yet that doesn't scale up.  To really get through to people, they found, nothing beats a good story.

Pretty quickly they found that both the story telling, and some of the elements of ancient rites of passage, all worked really well.  They had to "transpose" the rites of passage -- you don't bring in inappropriate things like  mandatory three-day fasting or bonfires on the conference tables.  They found ways to adapt ancient practices to modern circumstances.

Invoke your Meetings
A good example was invocations at meetings -- Seth's folks would start their meetings with an invocation.  Across cultures and across history, meetings would be started with some form of invocation.  This was just 30 seconds or so where attendees are asked to put away outside concerns, enter the room and be fully present, and be reminded of the purpose of the group and the purpose of the meeting.

For instance, the person convening the meeting might say "Let's begin.  I'd like us all to agree to be fully present at this meeting, silence your cell phones, put away your messaging devices, and put to rest your outside concerns.  As we all know, our group exists to help third world children get the education they need to have a better future.  The purpose of today's meeting is decide details of our annual membership party."

When you start each meeting by re-connecting with the energy that drives the group, it makes for a better meeting.  You set a very clear context, which allows people to have much more constructive conflicts within a frame of shared values.

Meetings have changed substantially due to the Internet.  Meetings are no longer to share scarce information.  We have lots of information.  We don't need more content.

Meetings are really about context.  The power of meetings includes the power of convening people together, and allowing each one to bring their unique genius to the challenges we face.

Takeaway: work with your people to craft an invocation that works for them, and use it to open every meeting.  Script the first 3/4 word for word. This invocation should:

1. be short (about 30 seconds)
2. help people clear their heads (and silence their cell phones)
3. reconnect everyone to the glorious mission of the group
4. state the purpose of this specific meeting

Stories to Build Rapport and Increase Trust
For this purpose, a good story is anything that is true and comes across as authentic, that reveals things about me, and that other people can relate to.  And it's important to swap these stories.  (This is similar to "Structured Disclosure" covered previously.)  These can and should be practiced.  When you practice, ask if the story is resonating with people.  And it's okay to repeat your story.  In other cultures it's much more common to re-tell a story many times -- Americans are a little less prone to do that, however you should feel free to do it.

Stories to Share Knowledge and Wisdom
Knowledge sharing stories often do not have happy endings.  They don't have to.  As long as your message is put in the form of a story, it's more likely to be remembered and acted upon.

Seth was going camping with his 80-lb dog, and he noticed his dog walking strangely and foaming at the mouth.  Suddenly he remembered when the dog jumped in the truck, Seth heard a yelp as if the dog had banged his belly on the tailgate.  And a story suddenly came into Seth's mind that he had heard three years earlier on the radio, about how a large dog's stomach can torque, can flip over and be sealed off on both ends like a baggie, if it's full of water or food and if the dog bangs it on something the wrong way.  It's a lethal condition if untreated, because nothing can get in or out of the stomach including blood -- without an operation within 4-5 hours the dog will die.

All of this flashed into Seth's head in an instant.  He hurried the dog back to the truck and went knocking on the door of the last house he'd passed on the drive in.

Notice what would happen if I stopped telling this story right here.  You feel up in the air -- you want to hear the rest.  That's one of the characteristics of the good knowledge story -- we want to hear the end.  We get involved.

Seth got the name of the nearest vet and called -- it was 5 pm on a Friday and the vet was just about to switch on the answering machine and leave the office.  The vet said "you have to bring the dog here and I have to operate."  She was two hours away.  Seth said "can you meet me halfway?"  The vet said "no, if you've diagnosed this right we'll need the operating room.  Bring him here."

Seth drove his dog two hours through the winding mountain roads, got there and the vet operated for 90 minutes.  She came out and said "your dog is alive and well.  Go finish your camping trip and pick him up when you're done."  All because Seth remembered that radio story.

The story has to have a charge to it.  It has to have a very clear message.  When you're under fire, under pressure, the average person can only remember one thing.  It better be the right thing.  A good story can be a single thing that's remembered, and the story provides lots of handles for hanging on to the lesson.

Stories to Call People to Action
This is the sort of story you tell when you want to motivate others to go out and do things in the world.  Steve Denning calls these "springboard" stories and covers it in his book.  These stories are very short -- 45 seconds.  The audience can see themselves in it.  The protagonist must be someone the audience can relate to.  Tell your line workers a story about a line worker.  Tell your people about a customer.  It must be wholly true -- when people research it they must come to the same conclusion you do.  (If you said "on the maiden voyage of the Titanic, 700 happy passengers reached New York," you're leaving out key facts, and distorting the story.  People will hang you on the difference.)  It must have a happy ending.

Afterward, you don't want people saying "what a great talk."  What you want is people to come up and say "here's what I'm going to do."

The classic example is this one used at the World Bank to kick off a knowledge management effort, about when knowledge management work.  It was told in 1996.

"In June of last year an impoverished farmer in Zambia went to the web site of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and got an answer to a question about treating malaria.  Zambia is one of the poorest countries in the world, and this happened in a tiny place 600 km from the capital.  The most striking thing about this story is that the World Bank is not in it.  Despite our know-how on  so many poverty related issues, our knowledge is not available to the millions of people who can use it.  But imagine if it were.  Think what it would be like if our organization could do this?"

That story was responsible for taking an unfunded idea to a $60 million annual allocation in two years.  That story lit a fire throughout the organization, so people took action, and said "here is how I am going to make my information available" -- without any supervision from Seth's small unfunded team.

That story was unique to that organization, so leaders need to come up with their own.

Listening to Stories
As a leader you also need to listen to stories and capture them.  In Seth's book he describes the Reconnaissance Report -- a one to two page summary of those stories, that shows people that you've heard them and understand them.

Taming the Grapevine
Stories can be used to defuse rumors and help stop the undercutting of a leader's agenda.  When Bill Clinton was running for President in 1992, his opponent George HW Bush said that Bill's wife Hillary would be a bad first lady because she didn't bake cookies.  How do you defuse that?  In politics the strangest things can hurt you, so you may not be safe if you ignore it.

If you engage directly, and start talking about the baking of cookies, now you look foolish.  You need to re-engage at a different level that is humorous and undercuts the assumptions in the first story.  So what Bill Clinton did was say "my opponent isn't running for President -- he's running for First Lady."  That ridiculed the rumor and invalidated it without addressing it directly.

As a consultant I might face a rumor that I'm there to lay people off.  To re-direct that, try something like "Some folks are focused on losing their jobs -- we need to be focused on turning this company around and serving our customers even better, so that we can all keep our jobs."  However I cannot use that re-direction if my plan does involve layoffs.  I cannot lie and be effective -- that makes it much, much worse.

What if the truth is, that there may be layoffs?  Then Seth suggests meeting privately and speaking and listening candidly to the people carrying the rumors, to share with them what's going on, both good and bad.  Engage with them constructively.  95% of them can be worked with.

There are also toxic people.  They may need to be handled differently.  Seth covers this in greater detail in his book.

Other Resources
Don't miss the upcoming Storytelling Weekend at the Smithsonian on April 15-17, 2010.  That's Thursday afternoon, and all day Friday and Saturday.  More details at stevedenning.com. Sphere: Related Content

What is Trust?

A big part of our last show on rebuilding a damaged team included the importance in the team of trust.

What is trust?

One formulation suggests it is:

• Predictability - I know what you will do and can guess with high confidence your future behavior in certain circumstances
• Value Exchange - we engage in mutually beneficial exchanges
• Delayed Reciprocity - we offer value without needing an immediate return; when others offer value without a demand, we remember and reciprocate later 
• Exposed Vulnerability - all progress involves some risk, so team members have to feel safe taking risks and doing things that make them feel vulnerable --or else they won't take the risk, and thus won't make progress

I think that makes a great list of things to look at when seeing why trust has eroded, and finding ways to fix it.

For example, we could ask team members to rate each other and themselves in these four areas, and define clear social expectations and rules of engagement around them. Sphere: Related Content

Re-Building your Virtual Team

How can you re-build a virtual (i.e. geographically dispersed) team that has had some negative interactions within the group? If you had a single in-person team meeting, how would you go about rebuilding trust and a sense of camaraderie within the group? Or can it be done?

I posed this question to a panel of world class experts:

• Mr. Peter Bye - former Corporate Diversity Director at AT&T, he was selected in 2008 by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) as one of 100 distinguished global thought leaders
• Mr. John Bender - holds an Executive MBA from Harvard University, and led the world-wide HP/Compaq Integration Office responsible for planning and executing the $19B acquisition, which involved creating multiple virtual teams
• Mr. Tim Flanagan - Senior Instructor and Director of Custom Programs at the Leadership Development Institute and the co-author of three books:  Becoming a Conflict Competent Leader, Building Conflict Competent Teams, and Developing Your Conflict Competence
• Ms. Danna Beal - author of the book The Tragedy in the Workplace: The Longest Running Show in the Country, and creator of the "Healing the Workplace Culture Series" that teaches individuals how to operate from authentic power and genuine self worth, rather than egos and personal agendas
• Dr. Mike Kroth - Assistant Professor at the University of Idaho in Adult/Organizational Learning and Leadership, and author or co-author of three books including Transforming Work: The Five Keys to Achieving Trust, Commitment, and Passion in the Workplace and The Manager as Motivator
  

This may be our best program of the year so far.  (read the full article) (listen to the interview)

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Derek Sivers' Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy

It's delightful how a simple video becomes a powerful teaching tool in the hands of a master like Derek.  Enjoy.


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CEO Tips for Email Sanity

There are two groups of topics I cover -- issues unique to CEOs and business owners, and topics more universal that I know many CEOs care deeply about.  This topic is the latter -- Email Sanity.

I found the perfect resource for this hour-long interview:  Randy Dean, the "Totally Obsessed Time Management Guy" who has spent several years understanding the best -- and worst -- habits we have around email, and why it wastes so much of our time.

Randy says that there are two fundamental ways we mis-use email.  First, we have bad personal processes -- such as re-reading the same email five times before deciding what to do about it.  Second, email encapsulates bad communications habits -- we forward someone an email without explaining why we did it, or what we want them to do with it, and the time we "saved" by not telling them that is then lost when they either ask us to clarify, or they guess wrong and do the wrong thing.

(read the entire article)

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True Supplier Partnerships

I interviewed two experts on True Supplier Partnerships (listen here) -- Rick Pay (The R Pay Company, LLC), an expert on manufacturing process improvement, Lean, and related disciplines, and Kate Vitasek, lead researcher and author of a new book on the concept of Vested Outsourcing.

(read the entire article)
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Quote attributed to BF Skinner (via Sam Carpenter and Mathew Strong):

When people work only to avoid losing a job, study only to avoid failure, and treat each other well only to avoid censure or institutional punishment, the threatening contingencies generalize. It always seems as if there must be something that one ought to be doing. As a result very few people can simply do nothing. They can relax only with the help of sedatives or tranquilizers, or by deliberately practicing relaxation. They can sleep only with the help of sleeping pills, of which billions are sold in the West every year. They are puzzled by, and envy, those in less developed countries whom they see happily doing nothing.

Moral to the story: don't work for avoidance -- work in favor of positive things.  And learn to relax. Sphere: Related Content

Taking your Product or Company International

What does it take to go international?  I interviewed expert Mark Ross (Global Sales, Marketing & Business Development, linkedin.com/in/markross101) -- Mark "creates the blueprint to take a company international." He relates stories and lessons from his 20 years of international product market development.

Why go international? Because:

• 90% of the world's consumers are outside of the United States
• Diversifying outside the United States reduces your economic risk
• Meeting the challenges of going international will make your company a better company

(read the complete article)

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An Example of Brief, Clear Communication

I just received an email that impressed me in some perhaps subtle ways:

Thomas,

I have been asked to schedule a ½ hour (or so, if that is enough time) conference call for you and M__ . M___ is traveling heavily right now so we are looking into the first week of March. Would you be available Monday, March 1st from 3-3:30 PM orTuesday, March 2nd from 9-9:30 AM. If not, please advise me of your schedule and let’s get some time secured.

Thanks so much ~

D____ 

Executive Assistant to the President

What struck me about this was the brevity, clarity, vigor, and sense of polite assertiveness.  In four sentences, I knew

1. What the writer knew 
2. What her agenda was (schedule a call)
3. What the options were
4. What the escalation path was
5. What the common goal was

I especially liked the firmness of the "let's get this done" attitude, combined with the "we" sense of teaming up.

I seldom see so confident a communication that is also this respectful -- of both me and the author herself.

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The Blue Collar Millionaire

Great article in Inc. Magazine about a highly profitable pizza restaurant chain and its owners' ability to create big profits with low staff turnover in a business that's typically the other way around.  Read it here.

The lessons I take from it are:

1. Build Systems that
2. Enhance Trust and
3. Empower Workers while
4. Retaining Oversight.

Their relentless focus on culture, values, training, and execution are awesome.  Anybody could do this, with any business.  Most folks won't. Sphere: Related Content

Pete Friedes on Praise and Management

I wished I'd booked an hour or more for my interview with Pete Friedes.  He's the retired CEO of Hewitt and Associates, a firm that under his leadership grew over 23% per year for 23 years.  Pete is an engaging guy and one who obviously knows how to grow the leadership skills of others.  He's currently the architect of the organization "Managing People Better."

Pete condensed his wisdom into his 2002 book "The 2R Manager: When to Relate, When to Require, and How to Do Both Effectively" which I plan to read very soon.

At the core of Pete's wisdom is the belief that we need to do two things when we lead and manage -- we need to maintain good relationships, and we need to require good performance.  And we need to do both of these at the same time, which is the hard part.

(read the complete article)
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Three CEOs on Praise

Three CEOs shared their perspectives with me on what role praise plays in their leadership style. My guests included Robert Stack, President and CEO of Community Options; Mitch Pisik, President and CEO of Breckwell Products; and Bob Fishman, CEO of Resources for Human Development.

(read the whole article)

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CEOs in a Tough Industry - Commercial Banking

Think you're in a tough market? Try commercial banking, where the fundamentals are as ugly as they've been in decades. What are savvy banking pros doing to respond to this hostile environment? What lessons can we all learn from them? I talked to Chris Hurn, CEO and Cofounder of Mercantile Capital Corporation; and Drew White, CFO of Sageworks, Inc.

(read the complete article)
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Latest on Beating Procrastination with Dr. Renate Rieman

I invited Dr. Renate Rieman back to discuss her newly released CD, "Move Beyond Procrastination™ and Get Things Done!"  She's a returning favorite -- her first appearance was the #1 most popular episode of Tom on Leadership in 2009.


The CD is an outgrowth of a popular workshop Renate has put on for a while. She recorded one of the workshops and then added more material, and edited it, to make it useful for home study.


She starts with reasons why we procrastinate, then with techniques to address the reasons, and finally implementation for long term success. There are lots of exercises.


Most people don't know why they procrastinate, and they get very upset with themselves -- this eats up the energy that they have, so they have neither the ability nor the energy to make progress.


I asked Dr. Rieman where someone should start. She first recommends looking at reasons and triggers for procrastinating.
(read the complete article)






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The Listening Leader

Why is listening so powerful, and how can we use listening to be more effective leaders? (Listen to the full interview here.)

As my guest Mark Goulston hints in the subtitle of his book "Just Listen - Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone", effective listening helps you get through to anybody.

In one of the first stories in his book, Mark relates the story of a suicidal man sitting in a mall parking lot pointing a shotgun at his own head.  The negotiator is having no luck connecting with him, until he says "I'll bet you feel that nobody knows what it's like to have tried everything else and be stuck with this as your only way out, isn't that true?"

That was the first thing anybody said that actually got through to this suicidal man.  It worked because it reflected his inner state -- he felt listened to.

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Handling Toxic Coworkers and Bosses

What are toxic behaviors really?  Is it more than just a personality conflict?  Yes - toxic behaviors obstruct performance.  My experts were Mitch Kusy and Elizabeth Holloway, co-authors of "Toxic Workplace!: Managing Toxic Personalities and Their Systems of Power".

Toxic people:

• Shame, humiliate or bully.
• Engage in passive hostility or passive-aggressive behavior.
• Sabotage their teams.

The toxic worker engages in a pattern of behaviors that harm team performance.  And, they get away with it.

Toxic workers don't exist in a vacuum - most have at least one enabler -- a "toxic enabler" or a "toxic buffer" or both.

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For Consultants: Getting Published

Many consultants enjoy the aura of expertise that comes with having their articles published.  I interviewed one widely published consultant I admire, Steve Balzac of Seven Steps Ahead.

Why to Write
For a consultant, writing creates your brand.  The more you publish, the more widely you are seen.  That gives a prospective client something to find when they are researching you.  Being published also allows people to get a sense that they know you -- it enhances their trust.  Since consulting work is based on trust, anything that enhances a prospective client's sense that they know and trust you will help you sell your services.

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Coaching Senior Executives

What is this thing called coaching?  How can CEOs and business owners tell if they themselves are coachable?  What does it take to successfully coach senior executives?

I asked two returning experts, Susan Steinbrecher, founder of the leadership and coaching firm Steinbrecher and Associates and author of Heart Centered Leadership, and Henry Evans, co-founder and Managing Partner of Dynamic Results and author of "Winning with Accountability: the Secret Language of High Performing Organizations."

There's been an explosion of use of the word "coach" -- you can find a self-described coach for everything in the world including your relationship with your pet.

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Never Manage Attitudes

A good leader should never, NEVER try to manage people's attitudes.  Attitudes are a trailing indicator.

If you're unhappy with any person's or group's attitude, the way to fix that is to increase performance -- because when people perform well at a task they care about, they start to feel better about their work and everything else around them.  (See the movie 12-O'Clock High.)

Focus on these four pre-conditions to see if they are weak or missing for each person:

1. Clear and worthy goals that are detailed enough to measure
2. Frequent (daily) and timely (immediate) feedback by the system on progress against the goal (# calls vs. target; # appointments vs. target, # twitter followers vs. target, etc.)
3. Match of skill to challenge -- listen for sounds of frustration or high anxiety
4. Autonomy within clear boundaries -- ask people to tell you their version of what they have here

Fix these (and I promise you some of these are broken) and attitudes will align soon after performance begins to improve, which it will within a week or two. Sphere: Related Content

Leading Lean

Hype around "lean" (and related terms like "Six Sigma" and "Kaizen" and so forth) has long been part of the business literature.  That hype doesn't male Lean a good idea - nor a bad one.

My experience around hyped business concepts is that there's often some grain of truth under it all.  Sometimes it's hard to find that grain - and finding it is always worthwhile.

I interviewed two experts -- lean manufacturing guru Rick Pay of The R Pay Company LLC and returning guest Mitch Goozé of The Customer Manufacturing Group.

I asked Mitch, what does "lean" really mean, and how does it differ from "Kaizen" or "Six Sigma"?  I'm sure the manufacturing people who use it already understand it.

Six Sigma is a tool that was created in Motorola to reduce variation in output.  Kaizen means "good change" and is a process for creating small changes.  And Lean comes from the Toyota Production System.

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Obama's Executive Style

This is an impressive piece of journalism, and it reveals what I see as a solid executive style by Obama.  That's especially significant due to his relative lack of prior executive experience.

What's to like?

• Acknowledging when someone you disagree with is right
• Not blaming people and instead focusing on systems
• Willingness to listen and be flexible in approach while maintaining constancy of goals

Not a bad collection of attributes.  We could all of us do worse. Sphere: Related Content

Good Sticky vs Bad Sticky

Business relationships can be either transactional or relational, and can be non-sticky, good-sticky, or bad-sticky -- and you want to embrace good-sticky and avoid bad-sticky.

In a business relationship, what does it mean to be sticky?  It tells you if it's easy or hard to give up this vendor and go with another one.

If it's easy to give up one for another, that's transactional and non-sticky.  It's like picking a gas station -- as long as there are at least two of them nearby, you can pick either one with equal comfort.

If it's hard to give up one for another, that's relational and non-sticky.  If you tried to give up your QWERTY keyboard for a DVORAK keyboard, for example, or if you tried to switch accounting software, or children, or primary spoken languages -- for most of us, these would be very tough or impossible.  Sticky.

Sticky, however, comes in these two flavors, good and bad.  When it comes to my kids, I'm glad I couldn't conceive of swapping them out for new kids.  That's because we have a special relationship, and no new kids could take their places.  When you're glad to have the relationship, that's good-sticky.

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Leading More Effective Meetings

We often hear, and sometimes say, we hate meetings.  To be clearer - we hate bad meetings.  Even good leaders sometimes have bad meetings.  How can you lead a more effective meeting?

Make your meetings:

• Short - start and stop on time
• Meaningful - have a purpose and declare it up front
• Have an output or outcome related to the purpose

According to Henry Evans of Dynamic Results, you can make a big difference by using the language of accountability.

Henry is an internationally known expert on the subjects of “Creating High Accountability Cultures” and “Emotionally Intelligent Leadership,” and teaches MBA students worldwide.

Henry believes that, to deliver results, a firm must invest in the "language of commitment" and the language of accountability.  He taught his accountability methods on Tuesday to some MBA students, and they are already blogging about the way those methods are improving their meetings.

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Steve Ballmer on Time Management and Time Budgeting

The Walls Street Journal carries this excellent, brief video of Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft describing how he budgets his time for an entire year, while maintaining flexibility.




See other videos in the Wall Street Journal's "Lessons in Leadership" series here.
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Controlling Your Own Emotions And Responses

How can we be better at controlling our emotions?  How can we actually choose how to respond to difficult situations, rather than merely reacting in some automatic and possibly destructive fashion?

Most reactions have to do with a sense of loss-of-control, and most of us just react.  We will start to control our own emotions and responses as we move from reaction to response, from the automatic and unthought into the chosen, deliberate and thoughtful.

My first guest was Aila Accad, RN, known as the “Stress-Busters Coach” -- she is an award-winning speaker and best-selling author who holds both Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in nursing.  She specializes in quick ways to release stress and reclaim energy.

After teaching stress-management for over 25 years, Aila had her own stress crisis, which led to an instant stress breakthrough. She just published her findings in the new Amazon best-seller, "34 Instant Stress-Busters, Quick tips to de-stress fast with no extra time or money."   She is president & founder of LifeQuest International, LLC.

How did she get moved to focus on stress? As a senior in nursing school she heard that 85% of illness comes from stress.  Aila has come to believe that all stress comes from a single, root cause.

That "one cause for stress" is the sense of a lack of control. 

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Better Meetings - Use a Smarter Summary

This is so good I'm just passing it through in its entirety, slightly edited by my for formatting and clarity.

Daily Tips for Consultants - Institute of Management Consultants USA:
Posted By Mark Haas CMC FIMC

Q: I just attended a meeting with my client and the assigned project team. Although there was a lot of really great ideas and approaches discussed, I fear that very little will be acted on and I'm not sure what to do.

A: Take the 'soft' initiative of preparing a summary of the meeting. Organize it in a smart and actionable manner. For instance, include key headings such as 'Key Points Discussed', 'Issues/Root Causes Identified', 'Suggested Actions', 'Expected Benefits', and 'Open Questions'.

Here's a short example...

Meeting Summary
Key Point Discussed: Uncommonly high rate of spoilage in inventory.
Root Cause Identified: Unacceptable level of refrigeration system temperature variation
Suggested Action: Purchase new refrigeration system.
Expected Benefit: The $17,000 cost should be recovered within 16 months based on demonstrable reduction of spoilage. In addition we should see a significant reduction in customer complaints and resulting loss of business.

Tip: Providing a blueprint for action in the form of a well-designed meeting summary will make it much easier for your client to act on the recommendations discussed.

Be sure to tune in to "Conduct Better Meetings" on my radio show.
-Tom Sphere: Related Content

Why Leaders Exercise

A trait often identified with strong leadership is physical fitness.  Now comes additional evidence that regular exercise makes you more positive and helps you resist stress.

Note to all leaders - your role contains stressors that will tempt you to experience anxiety and stress -- you can follow in the footsteps of other great leaders and experience the power of physical exercise to lower stress and raise mental agility.

Researchers found that, at least for rats, the big benefits kick in between the third and the sixth week of exercise.  Humans should probably commit to at least six weeks of exercise and see how they fare -- don't give up.  Persevere. Sphere: Related Content

Alignment Across Silos

Alignment Across Silos

How can we get teams working well across silo boundaries?

Our first guest, Dr. Deana Pennington, is a Research Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico.  She studies the difficulties that scientists have in working collaboratively with each other when they come from different disciplines or different areas of study – for example, geologists working with chemists working with climatologists working with computer scientists.  The speak different technical languages, they have different starting points and often different starting assumptions.  What she has learned, has implications and lessons for anybody trying to get people and teams to work across normal lines.

Deana tarted off in the oil business working on cross functional teams, then went into high tech and programming.  She discovered she was good at bridging between groups, such as between clients and developers.

She went on and got her PhD in remote sensing – combined geology and computer science.  She then got interested in “informatics” which is all about working in teams that are put together across departmental lines.

In these groups, Deana noticed, everyone had energy and enthusiasm and intelligence.  All were highly motivated.  And yet they were not able to work well together, in part because they had too vague a goal.  To create a more targeted goal, you have to get the group to create it – it will not be handed down from on high.

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Quick Test of Your Own Delegation Skill

Think you just delegated something?  Don't ask "do you understand?" -- that question doesn't work.

Here are the two questions you should ask to find out if you did, in fact, delegate.

1. What do you understand?
2. Why is this task important?

If the answers you get back match the answers you would have given, then you have delegated successfully.  If they are different, you have a communication gap.

Hat tip: Mark Goulston as interviewed by Jason. Sphere: Related Content

Testing Time-Management Strategies - WSJ.com

Testing Time-Management Strategies - WSJ.com: "No Time to Read This? Read This"

Excellent overview of three time-management techniques. Definitely worth reading. Sphere: Related Content

The Work of Leadership

"Followers want comfort, stability, and solutions from their leaders.  But that's babysitting.  Real leaders ask hard questions and knock people out of their comfort zones.  Then they manage the resulting distress." 

 ~~ Ronald Heifetz and Donald Laurie in Harvard Business Review Sphere: Related Content

Architecting your Sales Force

How does a business owner or CEO go about setting up an effective sales force?  In "Architecting your Sales Force" I ask Jeff Schneider and Scott Gustaff for their insights.

Jeff suggests that a common practice -- promoting a top sales person to be the sales manager -- is not the wisest approach, and frequently fails.  That's because the skill set required to sell, is different from the skill set required to manage and lead.

Sales people tend to be independent.  Sales managers have to be inter-dependent.
Sales people need to develop skills in themselves.  Sales managers gave to develop skills in others.
Sales people are focused outside the firm.  Sales managers are focused inside the firm.
Sales people can be unconscious of their strengths.  Sales managers must be conscious about how strengths work.
Sales people can be intuitive.  Sales managers have to be more analytical. 
Sales people must constantly prospect.  Sales managers must constantly recruit. 
Sales people nurture customer relationships.  Sales managers create a "sales culture" -- based on their own leadership -- that either retains or drives away good people.

Jeff currently teaches the Sandler sales system to both sales people and sales managers.  Many of his lessons are universal, and apply regardless of which sales system you use, or whether you use one.

On the people side, the sales force needs to be created and maintained by these basic three activities:

• Recruit
• Train
• Retain

The best recruits are already employed, often with your competitors.  The time to work on recruiting them is well before needing them -- so, socialize with them through trade associations and industry events.

As the CEO or business owner, you should be able to turn to your VP of Sales and ask to look at their recruitment "funnel."  It's just like going over a sales person's sales funnel.  And as the CEO you should do so periodically.

One way to look at your sales culture is to ask the sales manager (and separately to ask each sales person) to provide a single word that would describe the sales culture.  Then, ask yourself why it's that word, and whether it's something you are deliberately shaping or are allowing to grow organically. 

And finally you can identify a single word to describe the culture you want, and begin to make plans for how you might shape the culture deliberately in that direction. Sphere: Related Content

Reducing Stress

How can leaders - or anyone - systematically reduce stress?  On this week's radio show on Reducing Stress we got the input of two experts, John Chappelear and Dr. Greg Nigh.

John was a high-performing CEO of a multi-million dollar business who lost his wife, children and business before he learned to step back from his personal rat race and learn how to adopt new habits and practices that simultaneously reduce stress and increase effectiveness.  The story of his learning makes up his book, The Daily Six.

John brought up a recent New York Times article I've also read with great interest, the 18-Aug-2009 "Vicious Stress Loop" story by Natalie Angier.  Researchers find that, under chronic stress, the brain loses its problem-solving ability and becomes more prone to "rote" or habitual behaviors.

The good news is, we can replace bad habits with good ones.  

John suggests starting with "willingness" -- an openness, each day, to doing things better.  Don't try to make some life-changing commitment to being different forever -- just take on today and be willing to change today.

Next, pick up some sort of "mind-body technique" such as meditation, prayer, mindfulness, breathing, or the like.  Use your chosen technique for 15-45 seconds before you take an important phone call, going into a big meeting, or responding to a problem.

The idea is to practice this until it's second nature.  And work into your life an end-of-the-day "Quiet Time" where you contemplate your successes on the day, note some lessons learned, and record them in a journal.  I've noticed that when I do this, I can easily cast my eye back over the past few days and remember my successes and feel a sense of victory and progress.

John contrasts a non-aware, rushing, hurrying life versus a well planned, self-aware, showing up early sort of approach.  The latter is far less stressful and far more effective at producing results.

Third is Service.  John spent time mentoring prisoners, and found it to be a very powerful positive experience.  Serving others is very rewarding.

Fourth is Love.  Love is a great way to succeed in business, because it puts us on the same side with the customer.  It's the ultimate in customer focus.

Fifth is Forgiveness.  Forgiveness is not for others - it's for us.  Carrying a grudge is just a needless burden that saps our psychic energy. You can still learn lessons and remember -- it's not about forgetting -- however forgiving is greatly freeing.

Sixth is Action.  As John put it, "There is never a wrong time to do the right thing."  Taking action will give you an immediate boost of improved attitude, and will allow your other work in the first five steps to take greater effect.

Once you've practiced some of these habits and enjoyed their positive impact on your life, you'll become a believer.

My second guest was Dr. Greg Nigh.

Dr. Nigh deals with a lot of stressed folks.  Stress takes a physical toll on us, and there are things we can do physically to address both the root causes and the symptoms of stress.

While sickness puts stress on us, it's also the case that stress weakens the body and makes us more susceptible to illness.  So often, Greg finds, chronic illness is connected with some level of stress, either causally or in some sort of mutual reinforcement.

I've read the manuscript of a new book by Dr. Kathryn Retzler, where she describes the very serious problems that come with excessive levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.  If your life contains sources of stress that act as an open faucet, pouring cortisol into your body, you'll have symptoms.  No amount of treating symptoms will close that faucet -- you need to turn off that tap.

With chronic stress and chronically high cortisol, you have

• higher blood sugar that can lead to diabetes
• mineral loss from bones
• suppressed immune response - and increased risk of illness
• interference with Vitamin D (and thus an increase in cancer risk)
• interference with thyroid hormone (which can further boost cortisol, in a negative feedback loop)
  

Dr. Nigh sees good stress management as being a three legged stool, regarding nutritional deficiencies, food reactions, and mental state.

Leg One: Nutrition

The first leg is to notice the lack of key nutrients and other missing elements that can show up as a higher likelihood of having a stress response to an external event.

There can be big improvements in people's lives just from correcting (say) a Vitamin B-12 deficiency or a Vitamin D deficiency. 

The good news is, simple and standard blood tests can really open a window on where the body is.  The bad news is, many physicians just look for red flags on labs, and miss the yellow flags, or the patterns of numbers that, taken together, paint a clearer picture. 

For example, if you're low on B-12 you'll tend to get red blood cells that get fat or "blimp up" -- this shows up on the lab as the Mean Corpuscular Volume (MCV) -- and an MCV over 100 will show up on the blood test as a red flag.  If your MCV is 98 you may be told "you're fine" yet the reality is you could be feeling a lot better.

And one peculiarity of B-12 deficiency is that it's unlikely be due to a bad diet -- usually there's something preventing the body from absorbing it.  That can become an interesting puzzle that differs from one person to the next.


Leg Two: Food Reaction

The second leg is noticing what foods can cause the body to react negatively.  The most reliable (and inexpensive) approach is to eliminate food types from your diet, then slowly re-introduce them one by one and notice how the body responds.  This "Elimination Re-Introduction Diet" can quickly reveal some foods that can be having remarkable effects.  Dr. Nigh has had patients eliminate egg or gluten or soy or whatever, and the patients will sometimes discover that their asthma, or their migraines, or anxiety or whatever, clear up and don't return.

Dr. Nigh has written an e-booklet describing the Elimination Re-Introduction Diet in detail, titled "Quick Guide to Food Allergies & Elimination Dieting".


Leg Three: Mental Stress Reduction

Dr. Nigh has found that much of external stress is caused not by our circumstances but by how we interpret and respond to our circumstances.  "Stress management is really thought management.  Stress is a pattern of thought we have about the world, and the physical manifestation of those thoughts," says Nigh.

He works with patients to learn to interrupt the thought pattern, the story we are telling ourselves in our heads about the world.

"There is nothing about the job that will force stress into your life.  It's the story you tell yourself about it," he says.  When two people react entirely differently to the identical circumstance, it's because they interpret those situations differently.

One of my favorite computer techs, whenever a computer would misbehave, would blurt out the word "Cool!"  He loved learning, and whenever he got something unexpected, it was an opportunity to learn.  He had very little stress in his job.

Dr. Nigh teaches folks to interrupt their thoughts, notice what the thought was, classify the thought ("I was thinking about my job") and notice what part of the body tensed up or contracted.  Finally, he teaches them to concentrate on the physical sensations of their surroundings.  Focusing on the moment - the sights and sounds around you - removes all room for stress. Sphere: Related Content