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

You may wonder: “What are these teams like?”
Here are some of my observations:

1. The barbarians are at the gates and all sorts of unhealthy behaviours are overlooked.
2. It’s a game of “where egos dare”
3. There are meetings before and after the main meeting, because no one trusts that decisions will get made or supported in practice.
4. There are constant feuds between the various Robber Barons and their fiefdoms.
5. There is little integrity or moral courage

So in such environments some leaders mistakenly add more rules regulations and processes.
Countries even do the same (look at the FSA) but that doesn’t mitigate for the lack of trust.

That takes inspiring leadership and moral integrity.

Good luck
Warm regards Jonathan

One business leader told me this weekend of yet another round of redundancies he is responsible for implementing. His large global firm wanted a further cut of 20% of his team of 220 talented people. This was the third cut in 8 months. The firm had indicated that the first cut was likely to be the only one.

He had got rid of his bottom 10% (“the fat”) in that round. Then they asked him to cut into muscle, now on the third round it was cutting into the bone.

He didn’t know how he was going to do it. He had previously done the usual round of looking at annual performance reviews and removing the low performers. Next the medium performers. Did he really want just a small team of the high performers with high expectations and demands? They weren’t always the team players, but too self absorbed.

He was going to have a large tumbler of whiskey and then do 1, 2, 3, sack, 1, 2, 3, sack ……
These are emotional decisions based on whether he liked them or not, since he couldn’t differentiate on technical ability. Right or wrong, it is how our brains differentiate.

In conclusion be competent at your job and avoid arrogance or disdain – they are often a screen for social inadequacy and under confidence and draw fire from others at critical moments of selection.

Good luck
Warm regards
Jonathan

So I went to see him and over tea he said these 5 words as a benchmark for my life choices’ “memories are better than dreams”. They did change my life!

In my book “Inspiring Leadership” I share the value of using the wisdom you have acquired and also that of mentors.

Time and again I have chosen to take the courageous, yet fearful route and experience something amazing; airborne selection, going into business from the army, starting my own business. In each case there have been frightening moments and anxiety, yet they have all given me wonderful memories and stories to share to help others learn from my many mistakes and a few successes.

So go out and create your memories today.
As Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe said:
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius power and magic in it.
Begin it now!”

Warm regards Jonathan

http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/aaker_happiness_2011.html

This article entitled “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy, Consider Time” is an excellent piece of research

from Stanford University Business School. How are you spending your time – is it in relationships,

or just work and wealth creation?

I know when I focus on being more present and in the moment and enjoying the relationships with

the people who I live and work with that my level of happiness increases.

Good luck using your life-time wisely.

It is everything and all you have

Warm Regards Jonathan