Upsize Your Leadership

This episode breaks with my typical focus on leadership per se. Instead, I take a look at the socio-political backdrop against which American leaders do their work today.

I begin with one of my favorite quotes from the famed humorist, Will Rogers. He was one of the first Americans to visit Russia after the Communist takeover. On his return, the press asked him about his impression of the USSR. He answered, "They are the greatest experiment on Earth -- except for us."

In this podcast I share my concerns that this grand experiment may be in danger. Ominous trends pointing in that direction are multiplying. Particularly worrisome -- and the theme of today's podcast -- is the diminishing level of respect for the courts.

In this week's podcast I show how the framers of the Constitution envisioned the courts as the ultimate check on raw power. The Constitution makes all political, social, and commercial power subservient to principles agreed on by all. Constitutional provisions subject even the most powerful government or military figures to the court's interpretation of the governing principles which we have agreed to. This total subservience of power to principle was the nexus of what Rogers called the American experiment.

The experiment has succeeded thus far because, whatever the issue, disputants have respected and agreed to abide by decisions of the court. Only this respect for the courts has prevented ruthless individualism and competition from ripping the American social fabric apart.

In recent years, however, respect for the judiciary has been plummeting. It's now the lowest in our history. If this trend continues, how long will it be before people who are dissatisfied with a ruling of the court opt to take things into their own hands and resort to the raw power to settle their differences.

Such a prospect is worrisome, indeed. Once raw power supplants principle as the way to resolve differences, the American experiment is dead. As leaders, we need to do everything in our power to combat outlooks and attitudes which would hasten that demise.

A PDF transcript of today's program is available at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast by following the link to download scripts.

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The challenge of maintaining balance between work and family life is not a new concern. But it is a distinctly modern one.

For most of man's time on the planet, work and family life were so integrated that there was no clear line of demarcation between them.

Think about American life in the 19th century. The vast majority of people lived in rural settings where agriculture was the dominant way of life. Every family member helped work the fields or tend the livestock. Work time was family time.

In the nearby small towns -- and in many larger cities -- the businesses were family businesses. Mom and Dad ran the store, and the kids all had assigned tasks such as sweeping, dusting, or stocking inventory. Work time was family time.

But no longer. Modern urbanity now sends Mom and Dad separate ways to work and the kids separate ways to school. Families have to make time for quality family life. And when work schedules are not in sync, finding a time slot for quality family activities is not a simple task.

This podcast traces that development and underscores the importance of leaders maintaining a good balance between their own work and family life and to be equally determined to optimize opportunities for their workers to have that same opportunity.

A transcript of this podcast can be downloaded at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast. Simply click on the link to download scripts.

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It's rare for our performance to transcend what we believe is possible for us. Leaders must therefore commit themselves to enlarging their sense of possibility -- possibility both for themselves and for their people.

Our sense of possibility, however, can never exceed what we believe to be true about ourselves and about those whom we lead. Knowing this, excellent leaders are conscientious about ridding themselves of beliefs which needlessly limit their sense of what's possible.

Their best efforts notwithstanding, leaders still frequently remain saddled with disabling beliefs without recognizing it. Why? Because many disabling beliefs disguise themselves by masquerading as facts. Grammatically they look like straightforward descriptions of the way things are. They give no appearance of actually being a belief. That's why I call them "sneaky beliefs."

So long as we see them as "facts," they leave the impression that there is nothing that we can do to change them. By their very nature, facts are impervious to change. But once we recognize these "facts" as beliefs, we can indeed change them and rid ourselves of their their limiting influence. After all, we've been changing beliefs for our entire life, right?

This episode outlines a strategy for ferreting out these culprits and banishing them from our thought process. Each time another of these sneaky beliefs is disarmed, our sense of possibility for ourselves and/or for our people grows larger. This episode is a how-to guide on achieving that outcome.

For a transcript of this episode, visit https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast and click on the link to Download Scripts.

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There is a war within a war on the battlefields of Ukraine. It's a cultural war. Not a war of Ukrainian culture versus Russian culture so much as a war between organizational culture.

On one hand are the Russians, who have maintained the authoritarian leadership inherited from their Soviet past, which in turn inherited it from the czars. By contrast, the Ukrainians have purposefully foregone authoritarianism for a collaborative and empowering style of leadership.

The outcomes which have spring from these opposing leadership cultures provide a monumental case study in the implications which attend one's choice of leadership styles.

By practicing large-scale empowerment of even small fighting units, the Ukrainians have maximized the speed with which battlefield elements can identify targets of opportunity, initiate engagement, and wipe them out. Thus the amazing ability of the outnumbered and out-equipped Ukrainians to inflict horrendous tolls on Russian personnel, tanks, tracked vehicles, trucks, and artillery -- and now even a flagship.

The Russians, meanwhile, are bogged down in a cumbersome decision-making process which does not entrust independent decision-making to those on the front lines. Approval for any action -- an attack, a repositioning of assets, or a withdrawal -- must come from the top. There are fundamentally no non-commissioned officer corps in the enlisted ranks. And leadership training for lower-level officers is minimal. After all, why train someone in how to act independently if they will never be granted that freedom.

In the podcast, I detail the contrast between the two leadership cultures. I trace the historical factors which have led to the Russian reliance on authoritarianism. And then I map out why the Ukrainians abandoned the authoritarian style of leadership from their Soviet past and adopted a collaborative and empowering approach.

A transcript of this episode is available at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast. Just follow the link to Download Scripts.

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You've probably never heard of paradox management. Management texts rarely mention it. But within every corporate culture, certain paradoxes are at work. And this is equally true in all corporate cultures, whether in the profit or non-profit sector.

In these cultural paradoxes, leaders are confronted with two choices which seem to be mutually exclusive. Doing one precludes doing the other. But the leader must do both. Paradox presents itself as an either-or issue. But it must be managed with a both-and approach.

A simple example is the IT director who is expected to maximize security on company networks, but is also expected to give all workers easy access to all of the data they need. The interests of one expectation undercut the interests of the other expectation. Yet both interests have to be honored.

When confronted with this kind of paradox, the leader must find an appropriate balance point which adequately addresses the interests on both sides. Odds are, however, that advocates for one interest or both will disagree with the balance point. They will push and politick continually to relocate the balance point to give their interest greater leverage.

The result is an inherent tension within the paradox which always threatens to give rise to conflict. Leaders must be astute at finding a defensible balance point, then marshaling the courage to cope with sometimes pronounced criticism from those who think the balance point inappropriate.

In this episode I delve into the nature of paradox and offer some practical advice on how leaders should manage it. A PDF transcript of the program is available at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast. Simply follow the link labeled Download Scripts.

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I've used the last two podcasts to explore little-known factors which account for the effectiveness with which the Ukrainians are standing up to the Russian invasion.

Today I look at the ingenuity of the Ukrainians in finding and exploiting weak spots in the way the Russian forces are conducting their offensive.

What is now becoming apparent is that the Ukrainians are demonstrating an amazing ability to learn and adapt much faster than the Russians. Their performance is a real-time example of Peter Senge's argument in The Fifth Discipline that the greatest competitive advantage which companies have at their disposal is to learn faster than their competition.

Senge urged every company to become a "learning organization," a term which he coined. This episode looks at specific examples of how the Ukrainians are putting the "learning organization" concept into practice. They are showing us as leaders and managers the powerful benefit of ,adopting this strategy ourselves.

Download a transcript of this podcast at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast. Simply click on the Download Scripts link.

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Charred buildings and massive piles of rubble are becoming commonplace in Ukraine as Russia unleashes its a campaign of annihilation might against the entire Ukrainian population. Yet, Ukrainian resistance seems undeterred. What does the future hold?

This episode delves into that question by examining the prospects for Ukraine if Russia wins and Ukraine's defenders are reduced to an insurgency movement. Mike explains why the spirit of improvisation and resistance which are deeply rooted in Ukraine's history and embedded in its collective psyche.

He then contrasts Ukraine's people and their propensity for on-the-spot, innovative decision-making with the rigid command-and-control structure of the Russian army, which withholds the right of independent decisions from anyone except those in the highest echelons of power.

He then looks at the implications of this contrast should insurgency become a way of life for Ukraine.

A transcript of this podcast is available by following the link to download scripts at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast.

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Because of Russia's recent invasion, Ukraine has been dominating the news cycle. But most Americans know little, if anything, about this little-known country, even though it is the largest nation whose borders fall entirely in Europe.

In this episode, I draw on years of firsthand, on-the-ground experience in Ukraine to give you an important backstory to the current events in Ukraine. It's the backstory of a nation which after centuries of domination by various empires has struggled for the past 30 years to forge its independence and establish its own national identity.

I outline the challenges which Ukraine faces in this effort to develop a sense of true national unity and pride. Linguistic, religious, and cultural differences have compounded the identity-building challenge, as this program explains..

Within the last decade, however, in response to Russia's previous annexation of Crimea, an unprecedented sense of national unity has taken root. And evidence of this pride is likely to manifest itself in whatever combat is about to ensue.

A transcript of this episode is available at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast. Simply follow the Download Scripts link.

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Ours is a performance driven world, especially for managers and executives.. They feel the constant pressure to hit critical numbers in terms of production and profits. To meet those expectations, they are continually tweaking their own performance and the performance of their team.

In this episode we examine the basic principle of performance enhancement advanced 40 years ago by Timothy Gallwey in his book The Inner World of Tennis. Gallwey had an unswerving belief that people genuinely want to perform well. What holds them back is some type of interference which thwarts their potential.

His formula for performance was therefore to eliminate the interference so that higher performance can blossom. The type if nterference which Gallwey addressed is internal. It's the self-deprecating self-talk which we easily slip into whenever we make a serious mistake, fail at an important task, or face a daunting challenge..

But performance-stifling interference can also be external. And these external performance inhibitors are the subject of this episode. Dr. Mike calls on managers reframe the way that they think about weak performance on the part of their people. He urges managers to develop an initial instinct to look for the interference, whether internal or external, which is choking off greater performance.

A PDF copy of this episode can be retrieved by following the script download link at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast/episodes/2204-increasing-performance.htm

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General Dwight David Eisenhower is famously known for having said that in preparation for battle, plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. These words from the man who planned the largest operation ever undertaken in human history, the D-Day landing at Normandy.

What we learn during a thorough learning process, Eisenhower knew, is far more valuable for future decision-making than the plan itself, no matter how well it has been put together. the plan is articulated. Like all military leaders, he knew the sobering truth of the adage that a battle plan becomes obsolete within five minutes of contact with the enemy. In battle, few things go exactly as planned.

When that happens, leaders must innovate by drawing on lessons learned during the planning process. Long after the plan itself may have become irrelevant, these lessons learned will serve as powerful guides for making judicious decisions..

The same principles hold in all organization. Wise managers enlarge the number of people who learn from the planning process by enlisting broad participation in the planning process -- especially plans which are long-term in nature. The result is an organization that is more resilient when the unexpected occurs, because they can fall back on lessons learned in the planning process even when the plan proves incomplete or outmoded.

A transcript of this podcast is available for download at https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast.

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