In her book Quiet Susan talks about how to bring out the best in Introverts and not force fit 1/2 to 1/3 of your team into the world run by extroverts where they are less comfortable.

Much of what she says makes great sense.
There is a significant enhancement that she needs and that is to make use of Nancy Kline’s “Thinking Environment”. This is where people work as thinking Partners which develops far more creativity than leaving people on their own to get on with being creative.
Neuroscience research highlights that when such a partner listens without interruption then the thinker can develop their finest most creative thinking.

Good luck thinking without interruption
Warm Regards
Jonathan

Sadly it seems that there are too many parts of corporate business, backed up by my own experience and shocking stories from some of my clients, that there are too many managers who don’t really care a fig about the best interests of their own staff or of their clients.

I include a recent article about Goldman Sachs and how some people were accused of disdainfully describing the clients as “Muppets”. Whether it is true or not I will let you draw your own conclusions. In my book inspiring leadership I explain why it is important, and makes great business sense, to love the work you do and care about your staff and the customers who you deal with.

Here’s the extract from one of the newspapers:

“Departing Goldman Sachs Banker Slams ‘Rip-Off’ Culture.

Goldman Sachs faced an unprecedented assault from one of its own on Wednesday after a banker published a withering resignation letter in the New York Times, calling the Wall Street titan a “toxic” place where managing directors referred to their own clients as “muppets.”

It was the latest blow for the investment bank. The company — dubbed a “great vampire squid” in a 2009 article in Rolling Stone Magazine — has been embroiled in the biggest-ever insider trading scandal on Wall Street. And just weeks ago, a top judge criticized Goldman for big conflicts of interest in an energy deal.
In an opinion column in Wednesday’s Times, Greg Smith, who worked in equity derivatives, said Goldman had become “as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

“It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as ‘muppets,’” Smith said.
In the United States “Muppet” brings to mind lovable puppets like Kermit the Frog, but in Britain, “muppet” is slang for a stupid person. (Goldman, as it happens, was at one time also the bank for the family of Muppets creator Jim Henson.)

PAST MEDIA STORMS
Goldman Sachs — fourth among investment banks last year based on fee-income rankings compiled by Thomson Reuters and Freeman Consulting — has a history of tension with client interests, experts say.
“Greg Smith refers to the last 12 years, but in fact Goldman has been doing this kind of thing since going back to the Great Depression,” author William Cohan told Reuters Insider.

“It’s not just the last 12 years; unfortunately it’s part of the firm’s DNA,” said Cohan, author of the Goldman profile “Money and Power” and a former Wall Street banker himself.
In recent years the company has faced other high-profile incidents damaging to its image after the near-collapse of the global banking system in 2008.

Earlier this month it was accused of a major conflict of interest for advising El Paso Corp on its sale to Kinder Morgan, while being a significant shareholder in Kinder.
A lawyer representing an Australian fund in a lawsuit against Goldman over mortgage-backed securities filed in New York last year and alleging fraud and breach of contract, said he may seek Smith’s deposition to help bolster his case.

“Part of Goldman’s defense is everybody is sophisticated and everybody knew as much as we knew did,” the lawyer, Eric Lewis, said. “But if you’re calling your clients muppets — most muppets don’t have the cranial capacity of Goldman.”
Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman, called the Smith piece a “reflection of the change in market mentality over the last 15, over the last 20 years” at an economics summit in Washington hosted by the Atlantic Magazine.”

Whether true or not those articles quoted above should make us all reflect on the way we treat and appreciate those we work wiht and those we serve.

Warm Regards Jonathan

So you CAN teach old dogs new tricks. With repetition and commitment, new neural connections are made and leadership behaviours altered.

I have been greatly impressed by the neuroscience work of my friend Professor Paul Brown and recommend you read David Brooks (The Social Animal) and John Medina (Brain Rules).

Two simple sayings are influential:
1. “Neurons that fire together, wire together”.
2. In neural terms, “use it, or loose it”.

So there is hard neuroscience behind our soft skills. It pays to continually keep your brain active, in middle and old age, with learning new skills (helping minimise the risk of Alzheimer’s).

Work with someone to make healthy connections and learn from experience to become a better leader. It’s sometimes cheaper to learn from others mistakes. I’ve made more than my fair share!

Warm regards
Professor Jonathan Perks MBE

I enjoyed Ian Cooper’s simple but effective book “Just ask the right questions to get what you want”. Move quickly past the first slightly superficial section into the meat of the book and the tips are there to use immediately. Sound common sense which is remarkably “uncommon”.

Go on – just ask!

Warm regards
Jonathn

Far too many people and especially apparently successful leaders (admired and envied by others) are living lives of quiet desperation.
They compromise and suppress what they really want to do do out of a sense of duty, obligation and peer expectations.

Are you sleepwalking through your life, or are you awake to every sense and experience? Do your relationships enhance and enrich your life, or detract and diminish your spirit?

It is time for you to be frank and avoid self-denial.
What is your “True North” and just how good could your life be every minute, hour, day, week month and year?

Build some time to think and create what my friend Oliver Johnstone calls “elegant design” for your future life. You have choice and can shape it. Mundane or exciting life? I choose exciting!
How about you?

Warm regards Jonathan

However with “Time to Think” – an approach designed by Nancy Kline, as introverts you will have the space to share your views, opinions and freshest thinking. You will surprise the extroverts by sharing your voice and creative thoughts. So change the way you run meetings to unlock the potential of 50% of your talent that your organisation suppresses and discriminates against.

I enjoyed Terence Blacker’s controversial article in The Independent. He likes stirring things up like Darren Robson and to be the shark in the fish tank. So I will definitely read Susan Cain’s new book when it comes out at the end of March “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking”.

I do agree that we need uninterrupted time to think to be creative. However from 32 years experience I don’t subscribe to the extrapolation of that view that collaborative team building events are less effective than solitude for producing the best results.

The way you can run team building events will make it possible to bring out the best in both introverts and extroverts and does not need to be polarised to favour one or other.

It can fundamentally change teams for the better.
There is a better way to be creative, innovate and inspire you and your team.

Warm regards Jonathan

What is so tough is that good leaders have built strong friendships with their direct reports. They may have played golf together, been out to dinners and drinks or had them back home for dinner. Now you have to sit some of them down and say “I’m really sorry but I’m going to have to let you go……”

This is a horrible moment. The more brutal managers say bluntly,”that is why I am distant and never build close relationships with direct reports; you can fire them without any qualms!”

I don’t subscribe to that approach; I have experienced that teams that are inspired and well lead have close trusting relationships. Such leaders also have the courage to eyeball those they lead and tell them the difficult truth about firing them. They do it with dignity and kindness and help them transition to a new role. They don’t shy away. They are often thanked later for the way in which they did it and helped them with a different career path.

Have the difficult conversations. Remember someone may be doing the same to you one day.

Warm regards Jonathan

Various systems are experimented with; matrix organisations with accountability in 3 different planes, upwards sideways and diagonally. If you don’t understand that, then you’re not alone. Then there are Councils with silos and horizontal accountability. Then there are co-heads, so both are responsible for leading a department and everyone has to be consulted and have endless corridor conversations.

You also have “Solid and Dotted-line” accountability. A fudge if ever I met one.

The result is hours and days of meetings, consultation, lobbying and endless politics and clashes of egos. Wasted time, effort and money that can’t be afforded in today’s austere times.

In the military in peace and on operations we had one commander and a clear chain of command with very specific accountability and responsibility. You couldn’t hide or fudge your resposibility. The buck stopped with you.

Business is not the military; I have worked in both. There does however need to be clearer accountability; in organisational structure, role descriptions and personal moral responsibility.

Go on take responsibility and sort out the fudges and shirkers.
Warm regards Jonathan

So goes the argument of a friend of mine who is a Professor at a top business school. And I wonder does he have a good point?

There may be an element of truth in what he says, based on some of my own experiences.

I do come across highly driven leaders who have had quite a dysfunctional upbringing; with one or other of their parents being killed, or leaving them when very young. In one case a senior leader is still attempting to prove to his long dead father that he is good enough for his father’s approval. In another a female leader was desperately seeking for the love and approval of her highly critical mother from whom she never received the slightest praise for any of her considerable achievements and this pushes her on to achieve even more. Nothing was good enough for her mother and neither is it for this talented leader.

My friend’s argument goes that, “if an individual was fully balanced, with a happy childhood full of sufficiency, then they would not have that burning, obsessive desire and drive within them to push themselves ever onwards. Instead they would be contented, relaxed and quite happy with their lot”. They would find a job in which they were content, go to work and do a reasonable job, come home and spend time with their partner and their children. They might also spend more time socialising with family and friends. For them work would not be a major part of their life. They would work to live rather than live to work.”

To balance such an argument I must add that, despite the fact that personally I have been very driven by a slightly dysfunctional family upbringing (in which my father was killed when I was 3), I have many cases of fully functioning leaders with happy upbringings. In spite of this apparent “disdvantage” they are very driven to do an outstanding job and constantly strive to produce nothing but the best.

I’m interested to hear what your own experience have been and are as a leader. Was your upbringing a functional one, or a dysfunctional one and how has that shaped your drive for status, recognition, achievement and making a difference in the world?

Good luck inspiring leadership wherever you go.

Warm regards Jonathan

Darren has aptly chosen for himself the image of the shark and he tells the story why on his website.

We met up again today and I am very inspired by the philanthropic work he is doing.   We have known each other for some years and I continue to be stimulated by his creative and imaginative ways of improving people’s lives both in business and those who are less fortunate than ourselves.

The question is are you prepared to be challenging and two initiate different ways of thinking?  As Einstein intimated we will not solve our current problems at the same level of thinking where we first created them.

If you are prepared to be challenged and to learn how to challenge yourself then think about bringing Darren Robson into your organisation.

warm regards Jonathan