Enabling Leaders

Are you a leader who is currently enabling (unconscious or conscious) the bad behaviors of your people?  If you are, you have a lot of company.  This type of influence is a big contributor to why people fire their leaders/managers.  Environments where this dysfunction is allowed, are lacking in every way imaginable.

Now here’s a surprise…enabling is common to human beings.  We all tend to want to avoid confrontation.  Therefore, we avoid issues and behaviors in the name of "peace."  Sadly, avoiding the issue makes things worse.  Eventually, it will mean a messy clean-up.

I’ve had to learn (and still learning) that you must make tackling issues an act of will.  Without this, you’ll convince yourself that there must be another way. 

Once you’ve determined what the right thing to do is, then act and don’t think about the consequences.  Doing the right thing will take care of the consequences, and your people will be inspired by your willingness to act.

Chasing Destiny or Chasing Success

I’ve written before about the perils of chasing success, but I want to give you another "cure" for this epidemic.  I use such strong language because people are only experiencing half (or less) of what they were meant to. 

First, it begins with knowing the Designer of the design (you). 

Every human being is given a destiny…a unique destiny to be fully manifested in a lifetime.  Success is a by-product of this destiny.  It also produces a peace in the midst of great success.  There are many in America who are successful, but not many carry a peace with that success.  I think you’d agree that many are very dissatisfied and unhappy. Have you ever noticed that those chasing success never seem to catch it? 

When your destiny catches you, then success will pursue you.  Counter-intuitive?  Absolutely, but a truth I’ve experienced personally over and over again.  When you think about God’s power and creativity, you start to see the "magic."

Who’s Challenging You?

My entry on October 6 (A Sky Full of People) listed some penetrating questions around growth.  As promised, I want to address some things I listed as blocks to a succesful path of growing.

Here’s a big one to ponder…who’s challenging you to grow?  If you’re like many, the answer would be no one.  Our culture (American society) is content to live out growth through others or even to just be lazy.  People who think they’ve got time to get to one of the most important choices in life, are lulled by prosperity and conveinence.  I pray that you will awaken and recognize that life is a limited time offer.

I liken someone challenging me to grow as a great mentor or personal trainer.  They push us to go beyond our percieved limitations (job, family background, race, religon, etc.).  Often we would never discover what we could become without them.

I highly recommend that you find someone to challenge you.  Call them what you will, but get one! 

Innovation

Check out Ermengildo Zegna (http://www.zegna.com/).  This manufacturer, often viewed as a fashion design house, brings quite the spirit of quality and vision.  Look at the "Made to Measure" section, then fabrics, and then the "Traveller" choice.  They have a passion for innovation.

What if your organization brought this to the "table?"  I think you’d see more profits.

What if your organization applied this same passion to you the employee?  I think you’d see part of the corporate landscape change.

Its Your Choice

A wise mentor once told me that your life will be made up of 90% choices and 10% unexpected circumstances.  Obviously, the latter is made up of those things that you probably won’t understand on this side of eternity.  This principle, for the most part, has proved true in my life.  Therefore, I would say that life is based mostly on our choices.

So how much thought do you put into your choices?  Do you spend more time thinking about sports and entertainment?  Sadly, most Americans spend little time thinking about their choices.  Life is a limited-time offer, so we’d all due well to give more thought to something so powerful.

If you struggle with making good choices, try this exercise on for size:

  1. Go cause and affect, think through three major decisions in a day and measure the result of what you choose.
  2. Examine the results the next day to see how far reaching the choice becomes.  For example, do you rejoice or lament over your choices?
  3. Do the above for twenty-one days (habit forming).

Remember, life was never meant to be "easy," and growth implies change.  Good choices will produce a good life…that’s very epic indeed.

When We Grow Up

You’ve heard adults joke about knowing what they want to do when they grow up.  Often these are folks around my age (close to forty) who say this.  Do you realize that there are organizations (profit and non-profit) that are really in this situation.  They’re wandering in the desert, and have been for some time.  The organization’s survival is rooted in the kindness of the market or plain old-fashioned luck.

Individuals and organizations don’t have the kind of time they think they do.  Individuals grow old and at some point lack the tolerance for risk.  Organizations also grow old and "stuck," and lack the desire to change and grow.  The individual fades and the business ceases to be relevant.

I offer no anecdotes for the business enterprise, besides destroying the culture and starting over.  If the lightness of starting over scares you to inaction, then your organization is probably already extinct.  The individual has a greater chance of a turn around.  Most human beings don’t owe allegiance to stock analysts.  Therefore, you can choose to change based off of need.  Now don’t forget that humans hate change, so it is a difficult endeavor.  But five years ago I changed, and what a difference life is now.

Lonely Paths

Those with vision should prepare for lonely times.  Max De Pree says defining reality is the first responsibility of a leader.  That statement implies vision.  You must be in the business of the unknown.

Over the years I’ve made it a priority to help people learn the art of casting vision.  However it is not always a given that they will.  Its in these times that I believe people with vision are born with it.  You can be a quality leader and not be a visionary one.  To some degree this presents a quandary.  How can you define something you don’t know?  In a practical way you can only define what exists inside you, but there are those that feel things more deeply and have a sense of what is not seen.  Sometimes they "feel" cursed.

Don’t give up…