Eisenhower on deciding, resolving conflict, and uniting a divided team

People often ask me about resolving conflicts and how to handle them as a leader. This clip shows Eisenhower, played by Tom Selleck, handling a conflict two days before D-Day. It's dramatized, but not so much that we can't learn from it. Context Eisenhower and his team have been planning the Normandy invasion for months. They want to launch in the next couple days, but two major unknowns split to leaders on one aspect. The unknowns are the weather and the German army's preparations. The decision is whether to drop the elite paratroopers and gliders behind enemy lines the night…

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Dustin Hoffman on feeling understood about a passion and how it helps a leader

This clip wonderfully shows the effects of feeling understood about a passion---that is, a powerful emotion. You see how cathartic it feels for the person sharing the passion and how important it is for someone leading the person. Context: In a long interview, Dustin Hoffman is talking about the challenges of growing up under a stern father and how he escaped through movies, which evolved into acting. He starts to talk about how his exploring and understanding his relationship with his father and unexpectedly realizes he is revealing something deeply personal about his preparation for that role. What to look…

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How to start to lead

The more I teach and coach leadership and entrepreneurship, the more I see them as sets of behavioral skills anyone can learn. Behaving in certain ways results in people choosing to follow you. Behave otherwise and they won't. There's no magic to it. The question isn't if you can behave like effective leaders do. The question is if you choose to learn and if you find effective learning technique. Your behavior is backed up by beliefs, experience, skills, and so on, but ultimately you transmit all those other things through your behavior. Other people can't sense your thoughts or see…

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Phil Jackson on Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Shaquille O’Neal

  • Post category:Leadership

You should know Phil Jackson if you don't. One of the great basketball coaches of all time, he gets the best out of his players to motivate them to work as a team. He coached Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Shaquille O'Neal, among other greats to eleven championships, plus he won two as a player before coaching. When you see names like Jordan, Kobe, and Shaq in a leadership context, don't think "great players," think "headstrong prima donnas that resist authority." And I suggest not thinking "From him I can learn to coach others," think "I'm the prima donna I…

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Olympians, Nobel Laureates, Oscar winners, and others I’ve met

Over beers a colleague raised my eyebrows by beginning a sentence with, "So I walked in the Oval Office..." like walking in the Oval Office was just a casual thing everyone does at some point. It turns out he acted as a science advisor for two Presidents. And not just a meeting with a cabinet member here or there, but regular meetings lasting more than an hour. I decided to think of some of the brushes with serious greatness I've had. I don't know if the following list is bragging or not, since I didn't do any of those things.…

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Hustlers and clowns

Hustlers and clowns are two types of business people I've found. Actually, they're everywhere, not just business, but I'll talk about them in a business context. Hustlers Hustlers do what it takes to do the job by learning and meeting people's needs. I love working with hustlers, at least the type I mean. The student who sold an apple as a challenge for five dollars and made the buyer feel she was getting a discount in my post "How to make selling fun and effective" is a hustler. My friend offered him a job because when he told me what he…

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How do you motivate someone who claims to have no motivation?

An attendee from a recent seminar asked a common question I get about learning other people's passions: How do you motivate someone who claims to have no motivation? He did the exercise in this post, "How to make someone feel understood: the Confirmation Cycle," where you ask the other person their passion. He wrote: How do you deal with the "I don't know" when you ask people what they enjoy or what they're passionate about? I found this in trying out this exercise with several family members, I believe it's related to the idea that as a leader, it's your job…

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Video: How to make selling fun and effective

In motivation, influence, and persuasion, sales and leadership overlap a lot. Sales is also the most common route to CEO, I've heard, so if you want to lead, you benefit from learning sales. Below is a video interviewing a guy who is incredible at sales. He sold an apple for five dollars, with the buyer believing she got a discount! My retelling the story about it led to a friend offering him a job. And the guy is still an undergraduate at NYU. This video tells the story of his acting on my assignment to sell an apple for as…

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Grunt work and sales leads to leadership roles

  • Post category:Leadership

Most of the work of leadership is grunt work---doing what it takes to support the people you're leading. Then some sales work to make sure people don't see you as just a grunt worker. You have to take responsibility for how people see you because no one else will. I recently took on a leadership role in a project with incredibly accomplished people, helping create a potentially high-profile result. If it goes well, I may have an important achievement I can show to people. The value of success on this project is not that I can tell people I did…

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How to promote yourself without bragging or leaving information out

How do you promote yourself for a promotion? When you want a role on a project, how do you suggest you'd be great for the role? Promote too much and you risk sounding insecure, presumptuous, inauthentic, or like you're bragging. Promote too little and you risk not getting the role. Talking with one of my clients yesterday, when I described how I successfully promoted myself to a recent project, she made me stop and repeat myself so she could take down the words for future use. As I wrote in "The value of low-level instruction," I consider low-level instruction most…

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See Joshua Spodek on leadership at General Assembly, Sunday September 28

If you like entrepreneurship and you don’t know General Assembly, you should. They teach great courses and have built a great community around teaching relevant skills. On Sunday, September 28, 10am-5pm, I’ll lead a seminar with General Assembly on leadership in New York City. Register here, you’ll be glad you did. Here is the announcement (they use short descriptions, for a fuller description, see this announcement from an earlier event): Lead the Way: Effective Leadership Techniques Joshua Spodek Adjunct Professor at NYU-Poly About This Workshop You’ve ascended to a position of leadership, but how can you ensure that the people…

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Six reasons to learn leadership skills even if you don’t want to lead

People ask me if there's value to learning leadership if you don't plan to lead. Yes, at least with the style of leadership I teach, based in self-awareness and emotional skills. It helps across many areas in your life, especially your relationships and self-awareness. I'm not sure if command-and-control or some other styles help as much. Here are six reasons, not comprehensive, that come to mind first. 1. Leadership skills improve your relationships All relationships involve some give and take, negotiation, conflict management, listening, understanding, and so forth. These areas are what leadership covers. Developing skills in those areas, even…

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Handling leadership issues when you don’t have authority, follow-up

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a group I'm in with a leadership vacuum, "How to handle leadership issues when you don’t have authority." Several people in that group wrote with appreciation for the message in that post. None wrote to say they had problems with it, though the person with authority did push back slightly. Then after an anonymous comment from an attendee of one of my seminars pointed out nearly all my examples of inspirational speeches came from men, I researched tons of speeches by women. One of them turned out related to my group's leadership vacuum,…

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See Joshua Spodek at Cole Haan, Flavorpill, and General Assembly’s Inspiration Workshop, September 6

Post-event update: see a write-up and video of the event here -- http://flavorwire.com/477424/history-begins-here-starting-a-legacy-in-nyc. Everybody who attended it seemed to love it. My event had a packed room with enthusiastic participants. I made several great connections at my event and the others I attended. I hope to see you next time. See me next weekend The event is free and there's lots more than just me presenting on leadership. My part is next Saturday, September 6, 12:30pm-2:30pm. I'll talk on leadership and lead attendees through some exercises to develop leadership skills. People describe more workshops as inspiring and I teach others…

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Myers-Briggs doesn’t help you, it helps your manager, if anyone

I don't like Myers-Briggs tests. People make them look scientific and use scientific wording but they aren't based in science. They don't promote self-reflection any more than a horoscope. Most of all, they imply that you don't change much, a belief that discourages personal growth and exploring and using different skills for different situations. People who believe in Myers-Briggs tests say things like, "I'm an ESTJ [or whatever], so I act like [how Myers-Briggs says they're supposed to act] and work well with [whomever Myers-Briggs says they're supposed to work well with], but not [whomever Myers-Briggs says they're not supposed…

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How to handle leadership issues when you don’t have authority

What do you do when you see ineffective or counterproductive leadership of a group you're in and you're not one of the leaders? Do you just let it happen? Do you act? Do you talk to the leader? Usually I don't step in if I'm not in a position of authority and no one asked me to act. Rarely I step in. In 2008, I spoke up on a mailing list for Columbia Business School's alumni club when things seemed polarized, divisive, and moving toward desperate actions, which I posted here. The administration emailed me to thank me for that…

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The incredible value to a leader of making people feel understood

  • Post category:Leadership

If someone doesn't feel understood, they will not listen and will do what they can to feel understood until they feel understood. Or until they give up on you understanding them, in which case you've lost your credibility and ability to influence them. Want to break up with someone? Intentionally misunderstand them. They'll lose patience with you, feel increasingly frustrated, and want to spend increasingly less time with you. If somebody feels understood, they will share more about what they feel understood about. And what do people feel understood about? Their emotions and motivations---in other words, what you lead them…

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How inspiration feels, in depth

  • Post category:Leadership

My seminar, “How to lead people so they want you to lead them again,” and the General Assembly seminar coming up August 23, “Lead the way: Effective Leadership Techniques,” teach you how to inspire people. I talk about it in a work context, but the principles and techniques apply everywhere. Last week I outlined how inspiration feels. As a leader, inspiring people raises morale, loyalty, productivity, efficiency, and more. It also feels great to be inspired. Today, I'll go into more depth for each point. My post, "How to make someone feel understood: the Confirmation Cycle," describes the core exercise…

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Learn more leadership, motivation, and influence Saturday!

This Saturday, August 23, 10am-5pm, I’ll lead a seminar with General Assembly on leadership in New York City. Register here, you’ll be glad you did. This is the seminar that led to this testimonial: Josh, you may be interested to know I took out an Associate who will be working on my team and used your technique. She teared up, saying, no one ever asked her these questions and she is so grateful that I am taking an approach to her work based on what she likes and wants to do. It also revealed some of her deep fears and…

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My plan to solve executive pay

Executive pay in the U.S. is out of hand and everybody knows it. Wikipedia put it well Executive compensation in the United States differs from other employee compensation in the forms it takes, laws and regulation it is subject to, its dramatic rise over the past three decades and wide ranging criticism leveled against it. In the past three decades in America executive compensation or pay has risen dramatically beyond what can be explained by changes in firm size, performance, and industry classification. It is the highest in the world in both absolute terms and relative to median salary in…

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How inspiration feels

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My seminar, "How to lead people so they want you to lead them again," and the General Assembly seminar coming up August 23, "Lead the way: Effective Leadership Techniques," teach you how to inspire people. I talk about it in a work context, but the principles and techniques apply everywhere. I want to specify what I mean by inspiration because many people don't get to feel that inspired. You can learn how to evoke the following in people---coworkers, people who report to you, people you report to, friends, kids, spouses, family members, people you coach, etc. How inspiration feels Inspired…

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Problems with learning leadership skills only on the job

How many of the people in leadership positions over you do you think led well? Think of all the teachers, professors, coaches, Presidents, Congress-members, and so on. I'd bet no more than a few stand out as excellent. If your way to improve your leadership skills---presumably one of your best ways to get promoted, more responsibility, more pay, and so on---is to try to act like leaders you know, you don't have many role models. Learning leadership skills from watching people around you is like learning a sport from neighborhood pick-up games instead of finding an effective coach with a…

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A problem with teaching high-level principles

Most leadership books teach high-level principles and so-called "laws." I've read books that tell the reader to create purpose or meaning for their followers, or to engage them, without describing how to do those things. Leadership is experiential. We gain high-level principles from experience, not the other way around. High-level instruction like that doesn't help people learn to lead. It helps the people who need it most least. It's like telling a beginner pianist to play with feeling or to express themselves through the music when they probably haven't learned to play basic scales. Since few people have had explicit…

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How to manage your manager: the main concepts

"My manager sucks. How do I get them to manage me better?" People ask me this question all the time. The words differ for each person but the concept is the same. Probably every client I've coached, no matter what issue they started with, also wanted to work on improving their situation with their manager. Having coached enough on it, I'm putting the main concepts here. If I see demand I'll make a book of it. When the book "How to manage your manager" debuts as a best-seller, you can tell people you saw the first post on the topic.…

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Common traits among leaders and successful people across industries, fields, and disciplines

A reader asked me to write about common traits of leaders and successful people across different industries and fields. Of course there's a famous business book that covers seven of their habits. I'll look at it from a couple different perspectives. Functional skills hold you back at higher levels Functional skills are ones to do a specific type of work, like sales, programming, engineering, marketing, and so on. Most people get hired for functional skills. They look good on your resume when you start. A typical job progression for someone who succeeds at each level starts with a functional role…

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