Upsize Your Leadership

Tales from a Total Solar Eclipse in Siberia

Two Very Funny Stories

I live just north of Dallas, so we are in the direct path of this month's complete solar eclipse. It's all the buzz around here.

I'm sure that the event will spin off lots of personal stories as people relate what happened around them during the eclipse. But I doubt that any of these stories will top two of mine from my last total eclipse. And they won't be nearly as funny.

The stories occurred in Siberia, where I was conducting a series of workshops along the Op River. I think about them often, because they revolved around two of the most humorous statements I've ever heard.

So, I'm taking a departure from my normal topics for this podcast to share them with you. I believe you'll get a good chuckle from them.

A PDF transcript of this program is available for download at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.

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War in Ukraine: What the Final Outcome May Look Like

Now that the spring thaw has begun in Ukraine, the year's most intense season of combat is about to start. How will this war end? It's almost anyone's guess.

But whatever the outcome, it will be shaped by the influence of the backstories which we've focused on in the last three podcasts. With this episode, we bring the series to a conclusion by examining the prospects for both Russia and Ukraine, however the war happens to conclude.

Putin believes that time is on his side, that he can persist in his efforts until he wears down Ukraine and exhausts the resolve of Ukraine's allies, so that he has the upper hand in dictating the terms which eventually bring the conflict to a close.

A host of practical questions will shape the contours of any final settlement. One of these is whether Ukraine, economically depleted and with a population millions smaller than when the war began, would have the manpower and wherewithal to defend its borders should they be restored to their prewar status.

And if Ukraine does not regain those border, the its future may well hinge on the answer to one question: how many of its ports can Ukraine reclaim through combat or peace negotiations.

With its economy centered on grain transport, and with only the port of Odessa still under its control, the resolution of this issue is pivotal to Ukraine's viability after the war. In this wrap-up episode, I explore a host of questions along this line.

A transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.

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Russian Perspectives on the War

The Historical Backdrop

This is the third program in a four-part series examining historical and cultural factors which shape the backdrop against which the war in Ukraine is playing out. Having devoted the first two programs to Ukrainian perspectives, in this one we shift to how Russia views both the war and Ukrainians themselves.

For reasons which I explain in this episode, there is a paranoia that is characteristic of the Russian people in general and its leaders in particular. They have long seen themselves as surrounded by enemies, both east and west.

Historically, they have built vast buffer zones of territory to protect their European centers from invading forces. Traversing those buffer zones exhausted Napoleon's men and supplies in 1812, then did the same to Hitler's armies in the Second World War.

The war with Ukraine stems in large measure from a resurgence of that paranoia. During the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact, controlled from Moscow, buffered against another invasion from Germany or France. Ukraine buffered against attack from the Mediterranean.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, with former Warsaw Pact nations joining NATO and Ukraine declaring its independence, these strategic buffers were lost. With Ukraine moving to join the European Union and perhaps NATO, the last semblance of a buffer zone disappeared.

Early on, as the Warsaw Pact fell apart, Russia could do little to counter its reversal of fortunes, because Russia itself was in such social turmoil and economic chaos. The calamitous fall of the Soviet Union was a sore blow to Russian nationalistic pride, even among those who were not particularly fond of the Communist regime.

Putin has been successful at merging that injured pride with the historic sense of paranoia to justify reclaiming Ukraine as Moscow's own vassal. Human nature becomes more determined when its pride is injured. And paranoia will motivate people to take irrational measures.

All that comes together in the way that Russia is prosecuting this war. And because of these factors, finding a workable peace settlement, short of Ukraine's complete annihilation, will do little to ease Russian paranoia. And being fought to a stalemate by a supposedly second-rate power will only add to Russia's injured pride. At best, therefore, any peace settlement promises to be a recess from hostilities, not the end of them.

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You can download a PDF transcript of this program at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.

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Ukraine's Newfound Patriotic Zeal

An Unintended Gift from Putin

It's clear that neither Vladimir Putin nor his war planners ever anticipated the strength and the tenacity of Ukraine's resistance to the Russian invasion.

A war which the Russians expected to last a few hours or days has now entered its third year, and Russian offensives have been stymied month after month.

What explains this Ukrainian determination to in the face of what would appear to be overwhelming odds? It stems in part from a sense of nationalism and patriotism which the Ukrainians have developed for the first time in their history.

Prior to the invasion, Ukrainians had a sense of pride in their country and their culture. But they had never been united around patriotic fervor. The war has changed all that.

In this episode I explain how this happened and what it implies for the future course of the war. I also explain why the Ukrainians are likely to fight on, even if their aid from the U.S. and western Europe dissipates entirely.

A PDF transcript of this episode can be downloaded at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.

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Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, I worked extensively in both Russia and Ukraine. I managed offices and staffs in both countries and interacted closely with everyone from the most common laborers to top government officials.

Not only that, my duties required me to travel widely in Russia and from corner to corner of Ukraine. I became intimately acquainted with how Ukrainians feel about Russia and how Russians feel about Ukraine.

In spite of their cultural, historical, and linguistic commonalities, I soon learned that Russians tended to view Ukrainians with disdain, and Ukrainians tended to view Russians with resentment.

Those deep-seated, historic feelings aggravate the challenge of finding a solution to the war now raging in Ukraine. Yet, most Americans -- even otherwise well-informed political commentators -- are either unaware of this attitudinal divide or disregard it in analyzing the conflict as it has unfolded.

With this episode, I undertake a series of podcast programs dealing with this attitudinal divide and other critical backstories which make resolution of this conflict highly complex and perhaps impossible. Even if one side triumphs militarily over the other, the tension -- and now, outright animosity -- will live on.

I give this first episode to the roots of Ukrainian resentment of Russian rule. I zero in on two events in the 20th century that permanently poisoned Ukrainian outlooks toward their huge neighbor to the north.

A PDF transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/.

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The Action Agenda for Every Leader

This is the fourth episode in a series examining the meaning of leadership. Previous programs explored the people-centric nature of leadership and the orchestrating role of purpose at the heart of the leader's endeavor.

This final episode in the series examines the three-part action agenda which every leader must carry out. First is to rally people around the purpose. Then motivate them to pursue it. And third is to mobilize them to achieve it.

I discuss the importance of each of these functions and why their success depends in large measure on the leader's personality and strengths. As a leader, where does your effectiveness lie? In rallying people to your cause? In motivating them to get behind it? Or mobilizing them to make it happen?

The first two of these functions are people-centered. The third -- mobilizing -- is process-centric. The most successful leaders move effortlessly from motivating and inspiring people to managing processes, and vice versa.

Others are not so versatile. They excel at engaging and inspiring people, but pay insufficient attention to the process side of leadership. And naturally, there are leaders for which the opposite is true. They are superb at managing processes, but weak at bringing out the best in their people.

You will find the analysis of these dynamics quite thought-provoking. You can download a transcript of the episode at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.

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How We Developed a Muddled Concept of Leadership

In my early 20s, when I began conducting trainings on leadership, few books on the subject existed. The business world was somewhat exclusive enthralled with management, and that was reflected in the inventory choices at the typical bookstore.

It would be another 20 years before Warren Bemis and others began publishing works which drew a sharp distinction between management and leadership. The popularity of their books touched off an steady outpouring of leadership books ever since.

The explosion of interest in leadership toward the end of the 20th century resulted from a striking change in the American labor force. At the outset of the century, workers were largely uneducated and somewhat limited in their skill sets.

By the end of the century, the workforce was highly educated and thoroughly advanced as skilled specialists. To bring out the highest performance of a worker community like this, companies had to adopt a more people-centric approach from those which had prevailed just two generations before. Leadership filled that bill.

But the way that corporations initially attempted to create a leadership culture had an unintended consequence. The concept of what it means to be a leader became somewhat muddled.

It In this episode I trace how that happened and elaborate on three questions which I developed to determine whether someone is indeed a leader or merely wears the title. This episode not only expands on those questions. It also explains the historical influences which made them important.

A PDF transcript of the episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2404-muddled-concepts-of-leadership.pdf.

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Implications of Viewing Leadership as Art

Last week we began parsing the definition of leadership which I developed 20 years ago: Leadership is the art of rallying people around a shared purpose, then motivating them and mobilizing them to achieve it..

In that episode, we examined the import of the terms "people" and "shared purpose." This week we take up a third term: "art."

Last week we examined two key terms from my definition of leadership. This week we take up a third term, "art." Leadership is far more akin to an art than a science.

And because it is, there are no objective measures by which to judge a leader's work, no more than there are objective measures by which to judge an artist's work. People either like it or they don't.

In fact, people might like the results a leader gets, but dislike the leader's style or personality. And since their judgment of the leader is entirely subjective, it is not easily refuted.

Leaders must therefore have a strong enough sense of self that they are not knocked off course by criticism that is uninformed, mean-spirited, or the product of personal prejudice.

A transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/2403-leadership-as-art.htm,

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Leadership: Anchored in People and Purpose

Any quick search on the internet will uncover dozens of definitions of leadership. Some are more appropriate to leadership at very high levels than they are to leadership in day-to-day life.

About 20 years ago, I developed a definition intended to capture the essence of leadership wherever its found: Leadership is the art of rallying people around a shared purpose, then motivating them and mobilizing them to achieve it.

At the heart of this definition are the words "people" and "shared purpose." Those two terms capture the essence of what leadership grounds itself in. It is ultimately about people -- rallying them around a cause, motivating them to lend their effort to it, and mobilizing them to carry it out -- and the cause itself, the purpose.

For leaders to be effective, they must never grow lax in either staying involved with their people and rivited to their purpose.

A transcript of this program is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/2402-leadership-anchor-points.pdf.

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Minimize the Adverse Impact of Unintended Consequences on Otherwise Good Decisions

In every arena of life, what once seemed like great decisions turned out, in hindsight, to have brought about unintended consequences. Often these consequences imperil the benefits which the decision was to provide.

As managers and leaders, finding solutions to problems is our daily task. But when a solution leads to adverse unintended consequences, at times (to quote an old adage) the cure is worse than the disease.

This episode explores a variety of scenarios in which otherwise good decisions led to negative consequences. Then it offers suggestions on how to minimize the frequency with which this development occurs.

No one can foresee every consequence which will flow from a decision. But careful application of these suggestions will reduce the number of unexpected problems which emerge once key decisions are implemented.

A transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.

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