Leading people in a field is different than working in that field

Business schools teach a lot of leadership. Other vocational schools do too. I don't know them as well, but I bet the following pattern applies to them. Say someone gets their MBA and gets a job in finance. They don't start at the top of a hierarchy. If they do well they get promoted to manage people like they were. Then they get promoted to manage yet more people. They keep getting promoted, always managing people in their functional area of finance. Eventually they start general management, where they manage people who do things different than anything they have experience…

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How much time did you waste on that project you loved?

People often ask me if I use my physics education today. You face similar questions from others, I'm sure. You probably ask them of yourself. Nobody's life follows a straight path from birth to where they are. I loved the field, but I don't publish or do physics experiments. I still love the field and can't believe everyone doesn't study it more in school. But I teach and coach leadership and entrepreneurship now. Was the six years of graduate school worth it? I don't look at the question that way anymore. I don't find evaluating the past useful. What I…

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Where greatness shows itself

  • Post category:Leadership

We don't consider a quarterback great for running the plays well. We consider him great when he plays well when the play breaks down. How does he get great at playing when the play breaks down? Ironically, by running plays so many times he knows them unconsciously. It's the same in any other place leadership shows. You have to practice what you can prepare for as much as you can to prepare as best you can for what you can't predict or prepare for. In other terminology, anyone can pilot a ship in calm weather. You can tell a great…

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The progression of performance-based skills

Any performance-based skill development follows a similar pattern. I'll describe it for playing guitar, but it follows for leading, acting, sports, any other musical instrument, singing, etc. The instrument: First you have to learn the instrument. If you don't know its parts and how it's assembled, you can't do anything with it. Your skill: Next you have to learn how to move your fingers. You can't play music until you know scales or chords. The music: Only when you can take for granted how to move your fingers without thinking about them can you play music. Your feelings: Only when…

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How you benefit yourself by leading others

  • Post category:Leadership

Ultimately leading effectively is about the people you are leading and the community you are serving. You develop skills with experience so you act effectively, but you focus on them and their interests, which you share or have complementary ones if you want to lead with authenticity and integrity. Some people want authority to use others to get more for themselves without meeting those others' interests. I call that "using" and "coercing," not leading, though I know many don't differentiate, which I think limits their ability to lead. Only when you get past your desires do you fulfill them, knowing…

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Why the rules of government prevent people who want to govern from doing what they want

The more I work with leaders and leadership, the more I distinguish between The skills to lead and The authority to coerce people to comply The more I look at concentrations of authority---mainly titled positions in corporations and government---the more I see people interested in the second who aren't interested in the first. I used to think the main purpose of the Constitution was to describe how to run the government. I'm increasingly seeing it as a way to prevent people looking for authority from getting what they want and limiting them when they do. I learned in grade school…

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Want to lead? Look for a leadership vacuum

"Working here sucks." "My boss is incompetent." "No one there knows what they're doing." I hear comments like these all the time from frustrated people. The more I coach, the more I see them indicate incredible opportunities. I see them as leadership vacuums---situations where no one is leading effectively but that lack leadership. People without skills to act effectively get frustrated, angry, impatient, etc and the more they feel powerless the more intense their emotions get. For people with skills, these situations are opportunities to act as the leader the project needs. People with those skills recognize other people's titles…

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Fashion and Leadership

You're invited to an event on fashion and leadership I'm helping organize next month in New York City. My friends and incredibly dynamic speakers Coco and Breezy will be panelists. You'll be glad you attended. From the registration page: Connecting the dots Today, the fashion world is more global than ever before. Opportunities and competition exist in abundance as geographic and cultural boundaries have disappeared. Yet, it sometimes seems harder than ever to cross the divide between buying and selling, whether it’s a new manufacturer or an existing retailer. How does one create a product that makes it into the…

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What makes relationships last: resolving conflict

Do you remember how your favorite relationships started? Business, personal, or whatever, you felt mutual attraction to work together, play together, or whatever. Something about the other person made you want to interact with them. Do you remember how your relationships ended? Sometimes you or they change and you lose interest. No problem. Often you want to keep the relationship yet it ends unhappily. Many people blame differences you couldn't overcome. I suggest the key point in those cases is not the differences but your inability to overcome them. No two people agree on everything. Every pair of people have…

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Look forward as you learn to lead yourself

Over and over as I work with clients and students, as they learn to understand and manage their emotions, when they look back at their lives they see choices and actions they now know they would do differently. They notice relationships they mishandled, choices they would make differently, behavior that led them astray, and so on. I do the same thing. I think of relationships I lost, school and job choices I missed, maturity I lacked, and so on. I know how to do things better now. Sometimes I lament with my clients and students, empathizing with them at what…

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Exercising authority isn’t leading

  • Post category:Leadership

Anyone can tell someone "Do this or you'll lose your job" and the person will do it if you have the authority to fire them. I don't call that leading. Some people see positions in hierarchies and organization charts more than they see the people in those positions. If you treat them like people first and positions in charts, you have a better chance of influencing them. If you see them as positions in charts, you have a better chance of dehumanizing them, undermining the humanity of your relationship, and feeling dissociated. Even miserable. Certainly not fun. You develop skills…

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How would you behave during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

The movie Thirteen Days illustrated how John Kennedy and the executive branch handled the Cuban Missile Crisis. I recommend the movie (and Robert Kennedy's book of the same name). I edited some parts to highlight one aspect of the situation---the personal perspectives and behavior of people closest to the President. While you won't likely face decisions with stakes as high as nuclear war, you'll face similar structures of conflict. Many people have written about conflict management, decision-making, avoiding groupthink, and other angles. https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/thirteen_days_clips.ogv I recommend watching these clips actively by trying to put yourself in the places of each character,…

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You don’t have to overcome adversity to achieve a lot

I keep hearing people say that if only they lived in a time of greater crisis, they could have achieved more. They look at George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and other famous leaders and notice they emerged through crises. I read a Harvard Business Review article implying people have to go through crucibles to develop as leaders. You don't have to overcome adversity to achieve a lot. You don't need an outside challenge. I think people don't look for counterexamples because it's easier to blame external factors than to take responsibility for realizing your dreams. It's like…

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Know your geese!

A friend and colleague visited a couple weeks ago. He invited me to breakfast with another friend of his who happened to be an incredibly successful founder and CEO of a business related to a project of mine. You don't expect to make such valuable connections. We made a great connection and may find ways to collaborate. I met the visiting friend in the first place through another guy I didn't know well, but who suggested we meet. He also put me in touch with my book agent. Agents are notoriously hard to find and create relationships with, especially at…

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The last time you interviewed someone

The last time you interviewed someone for a position on a team you were on... Did you talk about salary, bonus, benefits, and measurable things like that? Did you talk about the company or team goals? Are those goals your goals? If not, did you talk about your goals, passions, vulnerabilities, and so on? The company wants to sell products and services. You probably have aspirations beyond just that. What are your great passions, if not to be the number one provider of whatever your company does or whatever generalities its mission statement states? Do you want great relationships? Inner…

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The great masters of speaking with authentic voices

Following up yesterday's post's exercise for how to speak authentically, I wanted to give a couple more examples illustrating mastery of speaking authentically. People who speak authentically can say things others can't, meaning they have more freedom. We respect them not for their technical mastery of some craft but that they speak without that. A great master today is Charles Barkley, whom I wrote about the other day. He's famous for speaking about race, sex, class, and other topics many people lose their jobs for, yet people don't condemn him. They recognize he's sharing something about himself, not imposing his…

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Your authentic voice

For a leader to speak with an authentic voice adds to their credibility and ability to influence. So how do you learn to speak more authentically? I've been leading clients through a method that has worked with each of them for years. It works, and a lot more effectively than someone telling you principles to follow. Nothing works like experience. Most people's fear of saying something they'll regret inhibits them from speaking authentically. Holding back makes you sound inauthentic, but not holding back risks saying something you think you shouldn't, like that you hate someone. Yet we admire people who…

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Freedom, from speech

You have opinions about race, sex, homosexuality, class, politics, and other controversial topics. You probably only talk about them with people closest to you. Most of us won't touch them with a ten-foot pole, knowing how one public statement can destroy a life. We believe we don't have that freedom. If you don't believe you have it, you can't do it. How about talking about them to the media for twenty years and being loved for it. That's freedom. This article about Charles Barkley described him as Off the court, where he spun quotes and welcomed controversy, Barkley was arguably…

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Emotions and sharp knives

Yesterday I compared emotions to fire and pain---things we don't enjoy feeling but we can use to improve our lives if we know how to use them. Calling them negative leads us to suppress and deny them---the opposite of self-awareness---which takes away our ability to improve our lives. I call that counterproductive. I think sharp knives might make a more helpful analogy. I might call sharp knives negative if I handled them clumsily and threw them around carelessly. You don't let children handle sharp knives because they don't have the dexterity to use them without hurting themselves. Chefs train to…

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Leaders ask advice. Non-leaders think they lead when giving advice, but they aren’t.

  • Post category:Leadership

Leaders ask advice more than non-leaders. People think the opposite and hold themselves back from improving. People like giving advice and fancy themselves leaders. They think of leadership as the media mostly portrays, in command-and-control style, hear themselves giving instruction, and think they're leading. If they look at their behavior, not what they think of their behavior, they'd see they weren't leading while giving advice. How you follow when you give advice When you give advice, you suggest a new behavior for someone. You're reacting to their behavior. Reacting to someone else is not leading. Once you give the suggestion,…

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Involving people attracts and engages them. Pitching makes them evaluate.

[This post is part of a series on principles to create ideas people want to help you with and creating a helpful, supportive community around you. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view that series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] You wouldn't believe how much access you have to people, both the number of people and how much each one will listen to and help you. This principle surprises and helps people more than the other three. They're used to asking people for their opinions on their…

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Better than a great idea is an okay idea plus listening to your market plus flexibility

[This post is part of a series on principles to create ideas people want to help you with and creating a helpful, supportive community around you. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view that series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] The most common reason I hear from people who want to start projects or companies but don't for why they don't is that they haven't come up with a great idea. I've written about this common myth of entrepreneurship. People look at successful companies and project based…

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More important than personality is skills you can learn

[This post is part of a series on principles to create ideas people want to help you with and creating a helpful, supportive community around you. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view that series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] People with great soft skills seem to dominate many areas in business . I think of leadership and sales first, though also entrepreneurship. People erroneously see people who succeed in those areas as born, not made. Or they at least ask if great leaders or salespeople are…

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Why convincing rarely works and usually backfires

People often suggest one role of a leader is to convince people to do something. I disagree. People seem to associate the act of convincing with the outcome they want. If convincing worked as people wanted, I would associate them too, but I see it work differently in practice. If someone disagrees with you, using logic to convince someone still depends on your premises. So if the person doesn't agree with you, you have different premises. They'll see your attempts at convincing as imposing your values on them and push back, leading you to convince more, and so on. Argument…

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Meet the Global CEO of Deloitte, Barry Salzberg, March 19!

If you think you could learn from a leader with over 200,000 people reporting to him, operating in over 150 countries, and producing over $30 billion in revenue, I recommend meeting Barry Salzberg, Global CEO of Deloitte. Most of us wish for leaders like him. He rose through one firm over 38 years, retiring to teach leadership at Columbia Business School. His legacy includes championing Deloitte University, a $300 million world-class learning and development center, and helping weather Enron and Anderson undermining the industry. Yet he remains down-to-earth, approachable, and dedicated to helping others. On March 19 he'll speak with…

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