“Not in the clamor of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Blog
-
Quote to Consider: Waiting for the Applause
-
American Idol Savvy: Coaching From The Sidelines
They are known as the judges. Much of the time they evaluate as judges. More and more, though, Simon, Randy, Kara and Ellen are coaching the young singing contestants.
Judge or coach. Or does it matter?Both roles provide good entertainment, which is what the show is about. (See our discussion last week.)
But as coaching goes, they leave much to be desired. Their primary context for giving constructive feedback is once a week during the show itself. In other words, they are coaching from quite a distance.
It’s the difference between a soccer coach taking a player aside in order to talk over his or her performance one-on-one, and yelling feedback from the sidelines during the game.
It’s difficult to understand the long distance coaching in the midst of an intense game. The player’s focus needs to be on the game more than the coaching. The coaching tends to be extremely context-specific; that is, related to the particular moment, decision or action. Such advice can be difficult to integrate into one’s overall improvement strategy.
Hence the confusion many contestants express about the seemingly contradictory advice they are receiving. They are thinking in terms of their overall strategy. (The big picture.) The judges are commenting on a specific performance. (A much smaller picture.) The two pictures relate intimately, but it can be confusing for a young contestant to sort how how.
What about your coaching? How do you help people integrate context-specific feedback into their overall improvement strategy? Or do you?
– Karl
-
Question of the Week #8
What disincentives to taking the initiative would a visitor observe in our company?
The Question of the Week is offered to increase awareness of one’s personal leadership practices and encourage experimentation with creative alternatives.
-
Listen In -> Good Leaders in Bad Times #3: Training People to be Better Than You
Come on now. Do you really believe that you got the promotion because you know more than everyone else on the team?If you have a “more than” mentality about the tiers on the organizational chart, then this episode is for you.
The question becomes, whose skills, capacities and energies are you quenching if you have to know more than everyone else on the team? What talents and expertise are you missing out on by not being able to hire those who have more experience than you?This week Claudia and I discuss the value of training people to be better than you. Imagine with us the breadth and depth of skills and experience you could amass if you didn’t need to be better than everyone else!
Listen in.
-
Thought Leaders Unpacked -> What the Dog Saw #7: Open Secrets
Craziness. Think about it. Enron was not keeping secrets. The executives explained their actions to the early inquirers. It was all out in the open.But it was complex. Complicated in detail and extent. Possibly too complicated for any one person, team or company to wrap their minds around completely. Certainly too complicated for the average investment manager to comprehend… even though all the information was available all of the time.
I think I learned more from this chapter than any other so far. Most powerful to me is Gladwell’s distinction between puzzle and mystery.
The significance lies in the different approaches to solving, understanding, and perceiving that take place depending on whether an issue is dealt with as a puzzle or a mystery.
Perception is reality. And therein lies the rub. If you’ve already decided that something bad has happened and the perpetrator must be identified and held to account, then you look for a perpetrator. Your eyes are closed to other avenues of inquiry.
On the other hand if you see that something bad has happened and intend to explore what the contributing factors were, how they came together and resulted in the current bad situation, then you look for multiple causes, issues and dynamics. Your eyes are open to all avenues of inquiry.
How many of the analyses, verdicts, and positions of attacking leaders, biased pundits and suspicious spouses arise from mistaking complicated mysteries for solvable puzzles?
How might you catch yourself treating a mystery as a puzzle? What was you main take-away from this chapter?
Each week I post my reflections from one chapter of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.
-
Quote to Consider: Integrity Tell All
“The only measure of what you believe is what you do. If you want to know what people believe, don’t read what they write, don’t ask them what they believe, just observe what they do.”Ashley Montagu
-
Loving Monday: Lukewarm Coffee
Lukewarm coffee.If you’re a coffee lover like me, those two words can’t possible fit in the same sentence. For a beverage to be lukewarm, by definition, means that it cannot be coffee.
Fresh, strong, and piping hot equal coffee. Nothing else.
Sadly, as the morning progresses, my coffee slowly turns into non-coffee. Hot becomes lukewarm. Delicious becomes distasteful. Right becomes wrong.The work week can feel the same. We begin the week in an energetic sprint. We end the week with a weary limp.
Lukewarm work isn’t any better than lukewarm coffee.
How then do we keep our “coffee” hot?
Drink it while it’s hot. Focus, stayed engaged and see things through. Play at 110%. It’s energizing to play at the top of your game. Don’t let chores accumulate. Confront problems as they arise. Impress yourself.
Get a warm up. Take a break. Get up and walk around. Surf the web. Chat with an associate. Do something for yourself that recharges your juices.
Pour it out and start over. What can I say? Sometimes there’s nothing else to do but pour out the cup of lukewarm blahness and begin again. Such a drastic reset could take the form of going home early and make a plan for how to begin differently tomorrow. Try sweeping everything off the top of your desk and allowing only items related to your current task. Or go for a long walk during which you do an attitude check and reset.
There is nothing more foul than lukewarm coffee. To keep sipping is the worst alternative of all.
Here’s to enjoying hot coffee!
– Karl
-
American Idol Savvy: An Entertainment Bias… Of Course
Sure, American Idol is a singing competition.Yes, America gets to vote, and we have no reason to believe the votes aren’t tabulated with integrity.
But, American Idol is entertainment as well. And the judges are there to ensure that we don’t lose any of the entertaining contestants too early in the contest.
Note the different treatment of Casey James and Lee Dewyze.
Lee, with an admittedly amazing voice, gets criticized every week for being too nervous/self-conscious on stage.
Casey, with an average voice, is just as nervous/self-conscious when he sings, but never has this fact mentioned to him.
Of course, I would assert, Lee will stay in the competition based on his vocals. There is room to criticize him without undue concern about him getting voted off. Casey, though, has only his good looks at this stage going for him. So the judges give him a free ride on his lack of star persona so that he doesn’t leave the competition early.
Why else revisit the Kara-as-cougar attraction thing week after week after week? Because Casey is weak on vocals but good for entertainment.
The show ultimately is about attracting viewers. About money. Don’t ever forget the primary purpose. And the producers are not.
What about you? Are you keeping your eye on your primary purpose? Is it the bottom line? Upholding a particular value? Achieving a certain level of notoriety?
Take a lesson from the entertainment specialists. Even a singing competition must remain good entertainment to bring in the viewers. The judges will make sure of that. Even if they have to bias their feedback to attain it.
-
Question of the Week #7
How can you create three opportunities to redeem a recent failure?
The Question of the Week is offered to increase awareness of one’s personal leadership practices and encourage experimentation with creative alternatives.
-
Loving Monday: Stretch and Reach
Stretch and reach. It sounds like a painful exercise routine.Exercise of a different sort it most certainly is.
I’m partial to Mondays… The beginning of the week… It’s an opportunity to begin anew… Start fresh.
The question, though, is how to maximize the benefit of that fresh start for myself and my work. It’s one thing to simply recycle the same routine over and over again. It’s quite another to use the new week as a personal tool to stayed engaged, increase interest, and learn new things.I suggest a weekly practice of stretch and reach. As the physical analogy suggests, each Monday you make plans to try one new thing. One new thing that feels like a stretch! Something that is a bit beyond your comfort zone… A bit beyond what you ordinarily undertake.
It can be an increase of some sort. An increase in accuracy, an increase in productivity, and increase in sales, etc. It can be something brand new. A new skill to learn, a new relationship to make, or a new method to try.
The point is that you are stretching and reaching in one area at the beginning of each week. The effort will carry through to your attitude and approach all week long.
Try it and get back to us with how it worked out for you.
On your side,
– Karl
