Wow - You're Different! Recognizing Differences as a Way to Launch Insight

It is not our differences that divide us.  It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.  ~Audre Lorde

Lately I've been thinking that it's not the obvious differences that make getting along difficult; it's the subtle differences that get under our skin, just simply annoy us, and probably make us a little judgmental. I've heard a lot of people say they are accepting of people who are different, but then I see behavior that tells another story. I'd suggest first that their definition of acceptance may really be tolerance. And second, I’d suggest that the understated differences in perspective and approach are what make us most irritated at the end of the day.

I was reminded of this recently in a conversation with my financial advisor.  I was describing some of the work I've been doing in consulting and coaching and he said the most critical lesson he'd ever learned was that people really are different. While that sounds simplistic, it's really quite insightful. In his case, for example, he recognizes that everyone has their own unique comfort level when it comes to their money. As he described me, some people like to keep a sizeable amount of money in their money market account so they have quick and easy access to cash, if necessary. While others, are okay to leave a rather small amount in their money market so they can immediately funnel any excess into their investments (which are not as readily accessible). He doesn't tell people what is the right way. Instead, he spends time learning their comfort level and then does his best to work with them within that framework. In other words, he recognizes, accepts and then celebrates his clients' differences.

In organizations I see leaders who get frustrated when others aren't sharing their perspective. For example, some leaders want to keep as many options open as possible and not be too confined by a narrow focus. However, their executive team may have a differing perspective and crave a specific focus so they can attack it. In other cases I've seen the overall pace, or at least perceived pace, cause angst among leadership teams. And I've had leaders say to me, “it would be a lot easier if everyone just thought the same way I do.”

Hillary Clinton said, "What we have to do…is to find a way to celebrate our diversity and debate our differences without fracturing our communities." While she was speaking on a more global level, I think the sentiment of that statement can certainly apply to organizations, both large and small.

Do we celebrate our differences or do we tolerate our differences and let them fracture our organizations over time? Synonyms for tolerate are stand, bear, put up with, endure, and stomach. Not exactly a culture most of us would want to be part of on a daily basis. Whereas synonyms for celebrate are rejoice, party, have fun, and enjoy yourself. That certainly creates an image that would make nearly everyone excited about showing up at work on Monday morning.

As leaders, are we celebrating differences or tolerating differences, even the subtle ones?

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Dr. Kathryn Scanland is the president of Greystone Global LLC, a consulting firm focusing on strategic planning, leadership development and organizational design. This post is republished with permission from Tuesday Mornings.

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New Website Shares Findings, Status of Three-Year Return on Values Research Project

CHICAGO:  Early results from the Return on Values research project display how CEOs of small and mid-sized businesses describe the relationship between their corporate cultures and their companies’ sustained growth and profit. These findings will be made available on a new website, www.returnonvaluesproject.com, established by the project’s founding partners.

The Return on Values project (ROV) is a three-year, $1 million research initiative of the Inc. Small Giants Community (ISGC, www.smallgiants.org) and the Center for Values-Driven Leadership (CVDL, www.cvdl.org). The study asks the question, “In small and mid-size businesses, what is the relationship between culture and profit?” >>Read the full press release and find links to videos, discussion guides, and articles. 

Hire, Fire, Develop and Reward: How Values-Driven Companies Leverage Culture for Growth

How do leaders in exceptional companies leverage culture to drive growth? Early results from the Return on Values research project highlight remarkable practices of leaders in companies that have exceptional growth trajectories combined with positive, people-focused cultures.

Researchers from the Return on Values project presented these early findings at the Inc. Small Giants International Summit in San Diego, June 8-10. The researchers noted four specific activities related to culture seen in exemplar companies.  Read a quick overview of the findings at our partner website for the Return on Values Project. >> Click here. 

The Problem of Leadership: Behaving All Day Long

Leadership requires a profound understanding of self.  The problem with leadership is you have to behave all day long.  ~S. Blanchard

A friend posted this quote on Facebook last week and I've been mulling it over ever since.  I struggle with the idea of leadership skills because I really don’t think leadership is a "skill." I've always put a skill into the category of something you can watch or observe and then copy or mimic. I believe that leadership is a way to behave and it's our behaviors that allow us to lead. 

This past week I facilitated a planning retreat for a client. The leaders in the room were divided into groups and given the task to come up with an implementation plan for the behaviors that they believe reflect the culture they are trying to create. I walked up to one of the groups who had been talking for some time but had not yet begun to write anything.  When I encouraged them to pick up their pace and begin to outline their plan they said they were stuck. They said, "You're really talking about changing someone's behavior and that's really hard." That was one of those moments as a consultant where inside I was jumping up and down and cheering because they got it. 

Changing behavior is really hard and that's why leadership is hard. It's not a skill. Many years ago, actually decades, when I was in high school I learned to type on a Selectric typewriter. One of those antiques with the metal ball that spins around and hits the ribbon as you type. We were told how to position our hands on the keyboard, which fingers were to hit which keys. Then the teacher would demonstrate so we could copy her actions. That's how I learned the skill of typing. 

Behavior, on the other hand, involves changing something that's ingrained into our routine or even into our being.  A physician friend often says that people don’t change their behavior until the pain of not changing outweighs the pain of change.    

William James, philosopher and psychologist, said that humans are biologically prone to habit or we are "mere bundles of habit." It is because of these bundles of habits that we are able to perform many of our daily tasks without thinking about it, like brushing our teeth. However, one could also conclude that trying to unbundle those habits, and change them, may not be an easy task.

Typing was a skill that I first learned in high school. Currently, I'm working to change my behavior to become more mindful, completely present for other people, and really listen. Even though this is a self-imposed goal and I can envision great benefits of reaching this goal, it's still really hard. Unbundling my current habits and replacing them with new ones is not easy. Synonyms for habit are routine, custom, tradition, and pattern. All words that imply something that's been around for awhile and sounds as if it might take an act of God to change it.

Continuously developing our leadership behavior is a challenge, no doubt. If it was easy, there'd probably be a lot more leaders. Blanchard said it well, "the problem with leadership is you have to behave all day long."

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Dr. Kathryn Scanland is the president of Greystone Global LLC, a consulting firm focusing on strategic planning, leadership development and organizational design. This post is republished with permission from Tuesday Mornings.

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The Integrity Effect: Why Who You Are Matters for CEOs

How much can your clients trust your 

hand shake? Or your contracts? 

The most important thing you can do for your business is a strategy that can’t be measured with any metric. It can’t be reflected on a dashboard, reviewed in a quarterly report, or balanced on a spreadsheet.

The most important thing you can do for your company is to focus on your personal integrity.

Researcher Laura Reave, of the University of Western Ontario, has shown that leadership success begins with personal integrity, which is then reflected in ethical behavior. Reave’s findings encourage us to focus more on who you are instead of what you do. Being a leader with strong personal integrity can have a significant positive effect on follower trust, which extends your influence and creates an environment where employees are satisfied.

Our Return on Values research team saw the integrity effect in action at Integrated Project Management (IPM), a Chicago-area consulting firm that is nationally recognized for its strongly ethical leadership.

As part of all contracts, IPM’s CEO C. Rich Panico asks his clients to sign a personal recruiting restraint agreement saying the client will not seek to hire an IPM consultant for a staff position. A few years ago, a client violated this agreement and Panico’s consultant accepted the position and turned in her resignation. Panico had to determine how to face this ethical violation.

The client was unwilling to rescind the offer, and instead offered to pay a penalty. “I don’t want that money in my company,” Panico told the client. “It’s dirty money. That’s not how we make money in our company.” Instead, Panico asked the client to donate the money to charities the IPM staff selected; he also terminated the relationship with the client.

I’ve known Panico for a few years, and have had the privilege to interview him in a variety of contexts over several hours. In every encounter with him, I’ve been struck by the strength of his personal integrity, which he credits to his values-based upbringing. Panico’s employees know of his personal integrity too, and see it lived out in the ethical behavior of IPM. That shapes the expectations and behaviors of his team. It’s part of what has equipped IPM to grow steadily, even through a recession.  

But perhaps more importantly, from the recruitment incident, Panico’s staff learned that he, and his company, would make strong, ethical decisions even when the outcome meant losing a client. “I can tell you that our people—they were thrilled,” Panico said. “They applauded it because we put our money where our mouth was in that particular case.”

That kind of trust from your employees can’t be bought: it can only be earned.

Jim Ludema
Director | Center for Values-Driven Leadership | Benedictine University 

Multi-Generational Mentorship: Three Reasons to Mentor & Be Mentored

Last Friday was my first meeting with a young woman I've agreed to mentor professionally. She was prompt and professional and our conversation was polite and fluid. But she made one giant faux paus:

As I rushed into the appointment, I mentioned that I had just dropped my son off at school. A few minutes later, the young woman asked what college my son attended. Since my son is in kindergarten, I was taken aback (read: horrified) by the suggestion that I could have an 18 year-old son.

I corrected her mistake and she apologized (though not nearly as much as I thought was necessary!), and the conversation continued unharmed. But the event reminded me of just how important it is to mentor, and be reverse-mentored, across generational lines.

Our circle of colleagues can often be homogeneous, in terms of age, gender, race, and life experiences. When we step outside these circles, we find what we know to be a little less certain. Things look different to an 18 year-old, or a 70 year-old, than they do to me. They look different to a single mom than they do to a retired father of three. The skill sets you need to master the corner suite are changing, and that 18 year-old probably knows more about some of the skills than you do. And leadership styles - what used to work may be broke and will not work at all tomorrow.

Three Reasons to Mentor & Be Mentored

1. You have wisdom to share. 

When asked to mentor someone, one frequent excuse is that "I'm not sure I have any wisdom to share."  I know, as I sat down across from an eager young woman, this is exactly how I felt. Her age faux paus reminded me that from her perspective, I'm an accomplished and mature professional. And it turns out, I did have a little wisdom to share.

We learn skills and develop capacity over time. The professional skills you now employ on a daily basis may seem old-hat to you, but they are flashes of brilliance to someone at an earlier career stage.

2. You have wisdom to learn. 

Tom Walter, CEO of Tasty Catering, has spent the last 10 years aggressively learning from the younger leaders on his growing staff. Though it wasn't through formal mentorship, these young professionals were bold enough to suggest how Walter might need to develop as a leader ... and he was smart enough to listen.

He tells the story of letting go of his old leadership style in this short video:


3. You have skills to learn. 

Bob Johansen is a professional futurist: he predicts the future of business and technology to help businesses be nimble in the face of change. Johansen says "digital natives," today's teens who are being raised in an age of abundant digital technology, do not see a clear delineation from their "online" and "offline" lives.

Those of us who weren't raised with laptops and cell phones struggle to fully grasp the super-connected future because digital technology is our second language. Your long-term usefulness as an executive may be dependent on your ability to learn this digital language, and for that you need a tutor. Johansen recommends reverse-tutoring: asking a 14 year-old to mentor you in video games, social media, and computer languages.

See more of Johansen's thoughts regarding reverse-mentoring in this video:



How has mentorship - being mentored, or mentoring someone else - helped you reach professional and personal goals? Share your story here.

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Amber Johnson is the CVDL's corporate relations advisor and a non-profit and small business communications specialist. She writes about forgiveness, and other non-business topics, on her blog, www.weddedness.com. 

The Campsite Theory of Coaching & Firing

The number one rule for any respectable 

camper? Leave the campsite better 

than you found it.

When my children were young, family vacations were often spent at campgrounds within national parks, where one rule prevailed: leave the campsite better than you found it. The idea, of course, is to respect the natural environment by not just picking up your own trash, but by picking up rubbish others have left behind as well.

Not long ago, while conducting interviews as part of the Return on Values research project, my colleagues and I heard how one company compassionately coaches struggling employees, and, when necessary, lets them go in a way that allows the terminated employee to keep her dignity and respect. One of our staff members commented, “It’s almost like the campsite approach to firing someone: you’re trying to help them be a better employee, even as they need to leave the company.”

Those of us in the room nodded our heads: that was exactly right. It’s not just for the benefit of the departing employee, either: when done well, and with respect, dismissing an underperforming or poor culture-fit employee can improve your workplace environment and the team’s overall performance. Let me share a story that illustrates this.

BerylHealth is a Dallas-area health care customer service firm. Andrew Pryor, Beryl’s vice president for human resources, introduced our research team to Beryl’s Decision Day process.

When an employee is struggling, either because of a poor culture-fit or poor performance, Beryl’s leaders work to coach the employee toward better outcomes. But when that’s not possible, Pryor brings the employee into his office for Decision Day. He told us:

“The conversation always goes something like this. We want you to be a part of our team. We think we made a correct hiring decision. You absolutely 100 percent have a job to come to tomorrow. But for today, we want you to go home. We’re going to pay you for today and we want you to make a decision. Is Beryl Health the company for you?  Do you think you can meet our performance standards? Do you think you’d be happy continuing to work in our culture?  And if not, come back tomorrow and resign and we part as friends. But if you want to come back tomorrow; if you want to be a part of this great organization we ask that you write a letter of commitment to us.”

In one case, an employee who repeatedly struggled to get to work on time returned from Decision Day with the title for a new, reliable car. Another employee whose argumentative attitude was hurtful to colleagues, returned with a letter of commitment vowing to stop listening to political talk radio on his drive to work so he could start his day with a better attitude. About 30 percent of employees choose not to return, but they do so with the knowledge that they were given the choice to make changes.

This may be the most compassionate approach to dealing with difficult employees I have ever encountered. 

In the academic literature, compassion in the workplaces is strongly associated with positive attitudes, feelings and behaviors that have a direct influence on factors such as employee retention and satisfaction. One team of researchers, led by the University of Michigan’s Jason Kanov, identified three subcomponents of compassion: noticing, feeling, and responding. In the Beryl example:

·         Leaders notice an employee’s struggle to meet expectations (in terms of job requirements or organizational culture);

·         Leaders have empathic concern for the employee, feeling the importance of this employee to the greater team, and also feeling the employee has the capacity to change behaviors, allowing him to stay with the organization;

·         Leaders respond by discreetly offering the employee a day to decide how he will respond. 

It’s tempting, when you’re taking down your tent and packing up the minivan, to leave the pop cans and chocolate wrappers behind. Likewise, it’s easy as a leader, to focus so firmly on getting a challenging employee out of your organization that you lose sight of caring for that employee as an individual. Beryl is an exceptional example of a company that does not forget a leader’s first job is to compassionately care for his or her people, even the ones that are on their way out.

Jim Ludema
Director | Center for Values-Driven Leadership | Benedictine University