Empowering Leadership and Music Articles
Each article uses our empower framework that we also use for our leadership coaching services.
Together managing…
đ The view from the new office was great – facing east over a man-made lake, I would be rocking out to Ray and watching the sunrise most mornings. I had negotiated hard for my offer – with the encouragement of my mentor, and was now glowing in the realization that I was well-positioned. A role that was a mix of technology leadership which I knew, and people development which I wanted to focus on now, Together in one place. One morning in the first week I was there, the recruiting manager who I had negotiated with came in, closed the door, and asked âDo you have anything you would like to tell me?â
engaging Together
âOh wow. That is going to really cost youâ. I had just gotten a call from the recruiter for the role that would take my career to the next level. Having made it through most of the interviews, I had won her over, and it was now down to the âfinalâ interview: dinner with my family at the home of my boss and my peer, the CTO – Together with their families. They both had smaller kids – 8 and 6. Having started early (surprising you right ?) my kids were now mostly grown⌠so who would I take with me? And would I be able to pass this âcharmâ interview?
renewing Courage
A well-orchestrated job search, as 100âs of leaders I have worked with over many years say, ends with 2 outside offers, and one inside offer. It then takes Courage to choose between them, and also a lot of faith that you have done the best you can, and look forward with that same Courage. It all sounds very clean and tidy, which might lead you to wonder why I was in the building on a Saturday morning early, loading up most of my âstuffâ with my wife … and slinking out of the garageâŚ
executing Couragously…
I landed the role I am writing about this week late in 2002 with some luck during the opposite of what we are seeing now. An economic downturn after 2001 had frozen hiring, depressed salaries, and I felt fortunate to get anything, even this now meat-grinder role. The Courage to think about doing something else was tied up in one of the hardest issues to confront – money. Do we have enough, will we have enough, particularly with kids just heading into College. And yet, I knew that this was going to slowly kill me if I stayedâŚ
wonderful Courage
âI know that we have the right team to pull this off!â said our VP from the front of the packed room. Giving us encouragement was one of the wonders of this particular leader’s talents, and what had got us all together. And, the wonder now was that this speech was exactly the same we had heard about a year before⌠and wasnât working. Now it sounded more like pleading⌠and the feeling in the room was different – more desperation, and less belief we could actually do thisâŚ
observing Courage
It was 5 pm, and we were all lining up to go into the everyday âEvening Status Meetingâ on the top floor of Pho IV, the newest building in our complex, and the heart of all of our work. I rarely left the building during the day, with breakfast, lunch, and dinner catered in so we didnât take time away from the âworkâ. These meetings were twice a day – morning and evening – but the evenings are always brutal. As the âserviceâ organization, the IT team was brought in nightly to be drawn and quartered by the SVPâs of the business, on âwhy havenât youâ…
The Courage to partner
If anyone tells you there is only one way to do something, they are lying or very misinformed. And it is particularly true in IT systems – both being told there is only one way, and that not being true. Our current predicament was caused by an IT person who was disgruntled with the way systems were being built, and left the org to build systems âin the businessâ – otherwise known as âwithout oversightâ. And because he built them quicker and also knew more about the underlying business, the business used his group more and more. Now – those systems had to be replaced and completely re-implemented by âourâ official IT group⌠and I had to be his partnerâŚ
Courage to manage
The Bermuda Triangle of my corporate experiences are: Pain, Change, and Courage. You might wonder why I chose Lovin, Touchin, Squeezin as the soundtrack of this post, and to be very clear, unlike others managers in the corporate world, those were never done by me đ But leveraging the principles of understanding what people really need and want from their workplace helped me manage and navigate between all of these elements. So what best practices have I experienced?
engaging with Courage
âDonât be a Fredâ. By now we are used to the different Southern Virginia dialect, so when our minister was reading one of the most prominent phrases in the Bible, we knew what he meant. Sorta. âFear NOTâ is one of those phrases that is like everything I do now – Simple, but not Easy. In the face of Continuous Change, most of which may NOT be of our own making, how do we engage Courage over Fear? I canât solve this, but I believe it is something worth engaging inâŚ
renewing Continuously for a Change…
âIf your employees need their weekends to rest and renew, you might have a burnout culture.â I saw that headline ⌠and the only edit I would suggest is to remove the word âmightâ. There are articles almost every day about it, and many leaders I work with are moving between roles to get away from it, believing that is caused by their situation. Sadly, it travels with them, and the dirty secret is the person who is most responsible for burnout is⌠you. I know – because it was (and is) meâŚ
executing Change Continuously…
So what the heck is a Change Agent anyway? I didnât see that career path in the College Catalog, but there are sure a lot of people out there with that title on their business cards. Youâve seen them, I am sure – in conference rooms, and in my generation, nice looking suits/pantsuits, expensive briefcases, and a stack of forms and âbest practicesâ that they are bringing to your neighborhood to âhelpâ you. And they always have an execution plan – timelines, milestones, and something called âdeliverablesâ that they are going to âhelpâ you develop. Yeah – like I actually have time to execute anything else⌠other than them đ
Continuously wondering about Change?
If you study people, you quickly recognize that putting them together into groups and teams is⌠complex đ And if you wonder why I love studying musical groups, you can see how simply adding one new person completely changes things. In the research around Teams, the highest performing have been together for more than 2 years⌠but less than 5. Balancing Change and Continuous is something that is worth wondering aboutâŚ
Continuously observing Change…
God is in fact a comedian. If you donât believe me, then why would he put me into a ânaturalâ career path where my most Continuously uttered phrase is âSlow Downâ? Never a core competency of mine, it is the stance that I try to help others with ⌠as they whiz past something important that they have said, or missed an implication of not observing what they actually know – versus what they want to be true. They are interested in Change – sure – but often miss the signposts on their Journey that make change both possible, and positiveâŚ
Continuously Changing partners?
Today I am hosting one of the final workshops for a group of brave souls who are piloting the Designing Your Life material that I prototyped on myself for the last year. They have all discovered the magic needed to sustain Change, particularly Continuously: partners. I would love to claim it is the material, and even my excellent leadership – but you all know me đ There is something about realizing that you are not aloneâŚ
managing Continuous Change…
âWhy do I have to Change⌠AGAIN?â It is one of my most often asked questions — usually as I wrote about yesterday, in a raised tone of voice. The less polite version is clearer — âTHEY should Change!!!â Yes⌠and âTheyâ are not in this conversation⌠you are. You asked for this. Or didnât, but either way, here we are again, managing Change⌠and the impossible nature of that work. In a workshop early in my Coaching career, a man said he can cure migraine headaches.
engaging with Continuous Change?
Change is exhausting. Continuous Change would then be constant exhaustion. So why would anyone actively choose to engage this as a stance for their life – work or personal? If we have learned something from the last 2 years it is that Change is in fact always happening, and either we get good at it, or we are constantly the victim of it
renewing The Middle
In the span of a little over 24 hours we were with friends who have celebrated over 50 years together, and then other friends that were celebrating the marriage of their daughter. The latter was filled with other young people who met at a Christian Camp set in the mountains of Virginia near Roanoke. The outdoor celebration was perfect for any occasion… but particularly perfect in this very strange year.
To execute The Middle
Many of you don’t believe all these things happened, and I don’t blame you. Unlike now, you didn’t have a camera in your pocket to record video – but boy if I did… IBM was the Apple of the 80’s – growing faster than the US economy, without rival in the computer business, literally called Goliath.
wondering what is The Middle?
The Moody Blues create music you cannot approach casually. Yes, they have amazing – well everything – but it forces me to really think — hard — wonder about things. Even the title of the albums put you in a different place – like today’s – To Our Children’s Children’s, Children. Those don’t exist for me – yet..
How do you observe The Middle?
The clearest way to know you are in The Middle is you are taking fire from all “sides”. In politics, another native Texan, Jim Hightower, said it colorfully — “There’s nothing in The Middle of the Road other than Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos.”