Yellow Flag. Red Flag. White Flag. Delegate or Divorce? That was the Question.

   “I don’t think this company is cut out for married people.” Those were his first words to me.  He had taken a position as a manager in a new facility and had work with his senior manager to find some really competent, though fairly new, assistant managers to join him. Even so, he was still working hard, about 80 hour per week, and was exhausted. While 80 hours a week may be necessary from time to time, it was not what the company expected on a consistent basis. His supervisor knew that a pace like this would be a disaster for this guy and he suggested he give me a call.  Having worked as a coach and counselor around his company for several years, and knowing numerous managers who were happily married, I asked what gave him this impression.  He said, “Man, everyone I know in management is working ungodly hours.  All the managers and assistant managers I know are either going through a divorce or are having trouble in their marriages.”

As a strong believer in the value of a good marriage, I expressed concern, then asked him, how he and his wife were doing.  He said he thought they were doing okay.  I asked, “Does she complain about your work hours and time away from the family?” He said, “Well she used to complain, but she knows what it takes to do this job and she knows this is just the way it is, so she doesn’t complain anymore.”   My next question caught him by surprise when I asked, “So, when do you think she is going to leave you?”  A little taken back by the question, he said, “No way my wife is leaving me.  We love each other and we have a little child and we are doing great.”    I cautioned him about his optimism, letting him know that when spouses are concerned about a problem they begin by bring it up for discussion and negotiation.  That is what I call the “yellow flag” of caution.  If they get no response they may periodically raise the “red flag” of anger.  If they still get no response they tend to become quiet, either to just go along to get along, or determine whether this is the life they really want to live, and if so, how they are going to live it.  I went on to tell him that the next flag he will see will quite likely be the “white flag” of surrender, when she walks out the door.  I also told him that I have found that most men say they were completely surprised when their wife tells them they are leaving.  They tell me that they thought things were okay, that they had discussed the work/life thing.  They often go on to say she was still cooking meals and having sex with him, that she was congenial and everything seemed to be going fine.  They couldn't imagine their wife leaving them, especially when they were working so hard to provide for them.

And that is when he stopped the conversation, with an “Oh my God!  This is just what happened to my brother-in-law.  My wife and I knew there were problems in his marriage for 10 years, but now he has been kicked out of his house, is sleeping on my couch, and all he can say is that he didn’t know anything was wrong and that he thought everything was okay.  That’s going to happen to me, isn’t.”  I told him that while I couldn’t predict the future, I have seen this happen to many marriages.  He said he didn’t want this to happen and would definitely commit to doing whatever it would take to keep his family intact.

I suggest that his first strategy may be to turn over some responsibilities to his assistant managers and begin working fewer hours.  He responded by suggesting that he didn’t think they were ready yet.  We discussed delegation strategies and how he could begin letting go and he said he would give it a try.  Three weeks later he called me back and said he was working about fifty-five hours a week now.  I asked him how he made this happen.  He said he gathered his assistant managers together and told him of his decision to make sure he and his family survived and thrived while trying to do this job, and that he needed to divide up some of the responsibilities.  He said they responded by telling him that they wondered how long it was going to take him to let go and trust the team he had put in place.  He said it is so much better being coach than it is trying to be the entire team, playing everyone’s part by himself.  He also said the he and his wife had a great discussion about his renewed commitment to his marriage.  They both agreed that, together, they will make this marriage and this job work, but if push comes to shove, he would chose their marriage over his job.

When Work Becomes Your Mistress

I have been writing lately about leaders and empathy deficit.  Such a deficit is seldom more evident than when it is toward the leader's own family, and when it is clouded by an illusion they have of themselves as a result of true or false adoration from their employees or constituents.

I will never forget the senior executive who contacted me as an employee assistance counselor, and after a brief hello, immediately said, "I need you to tell me how to tell my wife that she's too fat."    What surprised me was not so much his concern about his wife being perceived to be overweight, but the manner in which he approached the issue.  When I asked him to tell me a little more about his concern, he stated matter-of-factly that his wife was too fat, and he need to find a way to make her change, or else . . ..  He could probably sense my surprise when he heard me respond with, "You may have come to the wrong person for a solution to that one!  You sound like you are planning to give her a 'decision day'. or something."  A decision day is a suspension given to an employee to help them decide whether they really wanted to get with the program and align their behaviors to their manager's expectations.  I was even more flabbergasted when he said, “Yes” that was exactly what he wanted to do. 

My next question floored him.   I asked him, "So, how long has 'your company' been your mistress?"  You could tell from his reaction that he got the point, but he asked me to elaborate anyway.  I explained to him that when he was at work that required him to travel several days a week, he was the person in charge of his region or territory.  I also told him even if the people didn’t like him, they acted like they did because of his position and authority over their livelihoods.  They sort of bowed to him, met his every need, complimented him, admired him, needed him to solve problems, and responded to him in generally positive  and deferential ways.  He nodded in agreement. 

On the other hand, when he went home to his wife and children, they were not nearly as admiring, deferential or complimentary.  There were expectations and responsibilities at home that they needed him to step up to.   And instead of being the adoring family, they would complain about some perceived mistreatment or about the amount of time he spent at work.  The financial resources and good intentions aside, they were screaming for their emotional and relational needs to be met.  This left him feeling unappreciated for all his hard  work on the road and in the office.  And so the the cycle begins.  His feeling unappreciated compelled him to more frequently choose work over his family.  The more he chose work, the more discouraged and disgruntled his wife and children would become.  Unfortunately, this wife’s choice for comfort happened to be food, which gave him an additional excuse to consider getting his needs met elsewhere.  This viscous cycle often leads many to the brink of divorce and too many on over the edge.

All this because of his failure to step up and respond appropriately to the people he had claimed were the most important to him.  By the way, there is no value in the blame game in this scenario.  It's pretty easy to see that fault may lie somewhere in the middle.  But we are talking about leadership here and leaders step up.  Mature leaders would see through all the workplace adoration for what it is, and would step up to their primary responsibilities at home.   

What often surprises leaders who go through this is how disappointed his adorers become when he finally reneges on the commitments and promises he has made to his wife and family, and leaves them for some other person.  They are unaware that part of the reason they admired him in the first place was because of the value he said he placed in the things that his employees found to be important to them as well, things like home, family and relationships.   These same leaders have been the counselors to their employees, helping many of them find their way through difficult personal challenges that impacted their work.  Their words, as well as the life they modeled, gave these employees hope that things could be better for them.   But, when their leader’s personal life falls apart, their hope is often shattered with it.  Though these leaders continue to have positional authority, their capacity for maximum leadership effectiveness is eroded. 

Let me  switch gears and put on my Marriage and Family Therapist hat for a moment and say that marriage is one of the few places where we are going to see the most accurate reflection of ourselves.  If you don’t like what you see there, don’t blame the mirror who happens to be your spouse and children.  My experience says that your reflection will show up similarly in most any another mirror you chose.  It only feels different in the admiration stage of a new relationship (i.e. mistress).  But, when the new wears off; when the routine sets in; when the demands of work begin to stretch you; when the needs of this new person fail to be met consistently, when your needs fail to be met, the reflection in the mirror looks painfully familiar. 

If you find yourself in this situation it is important to do five things:  First, recognize the reflections as a cue to you that something is wrong and needs your attention.  Second, use these reflections first to learn how you may be coming across to those you love.  Thirdly, practice empathy by listening with an intent to learn.  Fourthly, communicate respectfully, and fifthly, respond differently.  These five things can end the vicious cycle.  Doing the same thing over and over is not the answer.  If you have difficulty doing these five things, or you try them and they do not get you where you want to be, call a coach to help you through the tough spots. 

What would Mr. Sam Do?

I had the privilege of being acquainted with Sam Walton before his death in 1992, and of building relationships with many of the people he impacted during the years immediately following his death.  Because of the significance of the loss, I, like many others associated with Wal-Mart can tell you exactly where I was when he died.  I was at one of the 16 regional Year Beginning Meetings that were scattered throughout the first quarter of that year.  The announcement changed the meeting as people began to tell stories of the impact Sam had on their lives, both personally and professionally.  

I have been writing a lot lately about leadership derailment.  Sam knew how susceptible leaders are to the mistakes and miscues that can lead to derailment.  That is why he led and coached the way he did.  One of the things that you would often hear around Wal-Mart after his death, was the question, "What would Mr. Sam do?"  The question was intended to honor Sam, and to help people do what they could to sustain the incredible culture of Servant Leadership that he instilled during his life.  

Since my last few posts have been focused on "empathy deficit" as a potential derailer, I have asked myself how does one restore empathy to leadership?  Sam Walton said you do it by MBWA, or Management by Walking Around, and teaching other leaders to do the same.  

For several years I had the privilege of working Andy Wilson, who was an SVP at Wal-Mart.  He humbly tells the story of his rise within the company, being the youngest Regional VP in the company at the time, with a great deal of responsibility for a guy his age.  He tells the story of how “Mr. Sam”, as he had come to be affectionately known, came to his office shortly after his arrival in his new role at the Home Office.  Andy stood up to greet Mr. Sam, and after a series of exchanges, Sam ended up behind his chair, while Andy ended up on the opposite side of his desk.  He then tells how Mr. Sam said he had one very important thing to tell him.  With that Andy got out his pen and yellow pad prepared to capture this moment.  Then Mr. Sam said, “Andy, don’t every make an important decision while sitting behind this chair”, and he slapped his hand to the back of the chair to reinforce his point.  Andy says he wasn’t certain at the time what that meant, but he wrote it at the top of the page, and was waiting for more wisdom from the man himself, but, with that, Sam graciously left his office. 

Andy said that after pondering this for several days, he received a call from one of his district managers who wanted to inform him that he was going to terminate one of his store managers whose store was under-performing.  This district manager was much older than Andy and had a great deal more experience than he.  Because of this, Andy was about to simply accept this recommendation and move on, when he remembered Sam’s words.  He told the District Manager to hold off on that decision until he came out to visit.  The District Manager said he didn’t see the necessity for such a trip, and told Andy that he had called simply to inform him of his course of action.  Andy told him that he had to travel out to some of his stores each week, and he would use the upcoming week to travel to this district.  Andy “persuaded” him to delay the action until after the trip and on the following Monday morning Andy was in this manager’s store.   The District Manager was eager to call the manager into his back office and get the deed over with.  But, as had been a practice he had learned from Sam, Andy wanted to tour the store first. He asked the District Manager to go do whatever he needed to do while he made his MBWA rounds.  So Andy went around the store asking associates about their departments and asking about their manager.  In the course of about an hour he learned that the manager was well liked, and that he had been taking time away from the store lately because he had been caring for his wife who was very ill with cancer.

After the store tour, Andy said he rounded up the District Manager and they went for a ride.  He asked the District Manager to tell him a little about this manager he was preparing to fire.  The fellow made a valiant attempt to do so.  Andy asked him to tell him about the manager’s family, and again the district manager made a valiant attempt to do so, but failed miserably.  Andy informed him what he had learned in just under an hour, while he, the district Manager, who lived in the area and visited the store frequently, never thought to inquire about.  In the Wal-Mart culture, such an offense in those days, would have been worthy of some type of discipline, up to and including termination.  But that is not the course Andy took.   He asked the District Manager to put together a plan to bring help from nearby stores in his district to get this store back up on track.  Together, they assured the manager that he could take the time necessary to care for his wife, and that his job would be here when she was well and he returned.  They announced the plan to the store associates at one of their infamous stand-up meetings and the employees erupted in applause.

Empathy is not hard.  However it does require taking your eyes off the scoreboard and paying attention to your players in the field.  No wonder so many Wal-Mart Associates still use the “What would Mr. Sam do?” as a measurement of their leadership.

The Disciplines of a Corporate Athlete

I continue to be amazed at the performances of the Olympic Athletes.  As a runner, who has run a few marathons and a cyclist who has ridden a few miles, I understand just a little about the effort it takes to prepare for a race. When I watch these athletes give their best effort all the way to the end, I find myself agonizing with them all the way across the finish line.  The years of hard work and focused discipline have finally paid off.   When I see them falter, I can only imagine the heartbreak that one small mistake in their performance must feel like as they experience the agony of defeat.

Much like these athletes, I have found that highly effective leaders tend to approach their entire life with a similar set of disciplines, ones that are most likely to result in their success, both personally and professionally.

When I created my Leadership Coat of Arms a few years ago, I incorporated the fitness symbol as seen above, accompanied by the following statement:  This symbol is my reminder to make sure that I am able, as far as it is within my control, to see my vision through to its end.  To see that vision through requires physical fitness, spiritual fitness, relational fitness, mental fitness, financial fitness and social fitness. The disciplines required for fitness in each of these areas consists of hard work and focused effort that will pay off in a life well lived with the few regrets.

What are you doing to build fitness in all dimensions of life?  As an Executive Coach, I often find myself working with leaders to help them clarify their personal purpose and vision, and with developing the disciplines that it will take to ensure they see their vision become a reality.  This is when I know that I have fulfilled part of my Personal Purpose: Helping People Achieve or Realize their God-given Potential.

Are You Seen as a Human Being or a Human Doing?

The challenge for leaders in any organization is getting to know their people in such a way that they truly are capable of demonstrating empathy, a quality of Emotional Intelligence that has been proven by researchers Daniel Goleman and Dr. Ruven Bar-On to be essential to successful leadership. 

One executive coaching client was on the path to become a partner in one of the big four accounting firms.   I had met him at a leadership conference for executives whose faith was very important to them, and whose desire it was to band together with like-minded leaders to find opportunities to use their influence and position to do good in the world.  When this gentleman engaged me as a coach, he explained that he had continued to run into roadblocks on his way to becoming partner, and that he had recently been approached by one of the senior partners whom he respected, and was told that because of the consistently poor ratings that others in the organization had been giving him, it was unlikely that he would make it unless he could get this turned around fairly quickly.

You would think that a guy with a strong Christian faith and values would not have these types of issues.  Let me assure you, that Christian people are human too, and that many of the problems that exist in the workplace are common to them as well.   The good news is that he was humble enough to search for solutions.

In our discussions I learned several things about this person.  He was a highly valued contributor in his firm.  He was well known for getting results.   He established great relationships with his customers and was highly sought after by them.  He was looked to as a teacher to others about his area of specialty.  He loved his wife and kids, and was involved in his church and community.  He could not understand why he had hit this roadblock in his career progression.

I conducted several interviews, administered personality and leadership assessments and reviewed his 360 degree multi rater surveys in order to get as much information about him as possible.  I even interviewed his wife to learn about her perceptions of his strengths and weaknesses.  What we learned can be summed up quite simply.  He had, what Daniel Goleman has termed “empathy deficit disorder”.  He had forgotten that his team members were people and wanted to work for a human being, rather than a human doing.  I discovered this by asking him about the members he had gathered to help him with his current project.  He disappointed himself in that he couldn’t tell me anything about them other than their specialty skills each brought to the project.  I asked him what he thought this team knew about him and he said, probably the same thing he knew about them, that he was competent in his particular area of specialty. 

He said he had never asked them about anything on a personal level, and had never spoken to them about his personal life, his wife and children, his involvement in his church and community, his values or the things that were really important to him.  He said it had just never occurred to him to do so.  He said he had always been “all business”.   Then he said, “No wonder they don’t like working for me.”  We discussed ways to remedy this deficit and make the shift to becoming a more empathetic leader, who cared about the people he led as much as he cared about getting the job done well.  This was actually pretty exciting for him, because one of the things he valued was making a positive difference in the lives of others.

He immediately invited his team out for a big dinner with their spouses or significant others, and told them that "tonight we don’t talk business".  He said, “I just want us to get to know each other a little bit better, so you can know who you will be working with on this project, and the things that are important to them.”   He introduced them to his spouse, and he and his wife began to share with the group who they were, what they did, who their family is, where they were from, and how they had gotten to this place in life and career, and about the things that were important to them.  He asked each of them to share as much as they were comfortable sharing.  He said the evening went quite late, but no one was bored, no one left early, and everyone readily engaged in the conversation.  The result was that this team walked away knowing each other a whole lot better.  They learned to respect each other in new and different ways.  They learned what was important to each other, and showed a willingness to step in and cover for each other when family or personal issues surfaced in the midst of the project, where before there had always been animosity and frustration when personal issues interfered with work.

That night he began the process of turning his team around and his career around.  He later told me that this experience brought him a new sense of energy and enthusiasm about his work.  He said that now it meant much more to him than just achieving a goal and being a rainmaker.  It was about making a difference for those he was charged with leading and developing.

Executives Losing Touch

I have written recently about reasons executives derail.  The following story is an illustration of one of the reasons why this happens so frequently.  They simply lose touch.

On one occasion I was called in by a senior executive to help her leadership team.  I had been working with her team on several leadership development programs for her senior leadership team over the years, but this year she said we needed a different approach.  She was concerned that this group of 30-35 high performing executives, from senior directors to vice presidents, had lost touch with the hundreds of employees they were charged with leading.  They had become so concerned about their projects and their goals that they were not taking the time to develop people, were firing people too quickly without giving them much of an opportunity to change or turn things around.  She was concerned that the culture, which was such a big part of their company, would be perceived as a sham if they didn’t turn this around. 

Some of these leaders grew up in fairly good socioeconomic conditions and had never really experienced what it meant to live from paycheck to paycheck as was the case for many of their employees.   Others who grew up through the ranks and remember well what it was like to be at the bottom of the food chain in a company.  But even then, the tendency is for leadership to erode empathy.    And, according to Professor Kelton of Berkley, the more power a leader gets, the more their empathy erodes, confirming Lord Acton’s maxim, Power tends to Corrupt and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.  For more information on this, read my post Exceptional Leaders and The Paradox of Power. 

So, how do you go about instilling empathy in a group of high energy, goal driven, powerful, high income senior leaders?  I pitched an idea to the senior executive that was a little out of the box, and took it back to our team to develop an experience that would bring these leaders back down to earth where most of the world they manage lived every day.  It was essential that they be capable of reflecting on the lives of the people impacted by their daily decisions. 

We took this group on a full-day field trip, if you will, to a nearby metropolitan area.  They were divided up into small groups, each with particular assignments and a pittance of a budget for their lunch.  In essence all three of them would have to eat on less than what one of them usually spent on their lunch.  They began to gritch and groan at the prospects.   We then brought them back together to hear anonymous recorded testimonies from their employees describing their lives.  They heard employees tell about living from paycheck to paycheck, from single moms who knew exactly how many trips they could make on a tank of gas, and how they budget their money for groceries and bills, from those who were living in situations where domestic violence was an imminent threat, and so on and so on.  These leaders were shocked that these stories were the true life stories of the people who worked for them.  They also heard from people about how important their job was to them, and how they worked hard to stay focused and to prevent these personal issues from interfering with their performance.

These executives ended their day at a local soup kitchen where they were assigned to serve food and have a meal with the guests.  Their assignment was simply to get to know the guests.  This was a very uncomfortable assignment for many of these executives.   Most had never talked to a homeless person.  Many had preconceived ideas about them, all of which were shattered that evening.  I’ll never forget the one executive telling me that what surprised him most is the one guest of the soup kitchen who told him that he too had once been an senior manager in his company, but fell on hard times and had not been able to find his way out.

The leadership session ended with a facilitated discussion about how leadership could look in their area of responsibility.  These leaders went back with a different kind of appreciation for their people, their capabilities and their courage.  They went back with a little more patience than before.  They went back with new perspectives and greater empathy toward people whose livelihoods were in their hands.  They were still charged with making decisions and achieving results.  They just learned that they can get this done in a little different way.

Reasons to Employ an Executive Coach. And the Greatest of These is?

Marshall Goldsmith, in his book, What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There, outlines twenty-two things that leaders do that cause them problems in their leadership.  Most of these are not done with intent to harm others in the organization,or their own career, but too frequently, that is the result.  I highly recommend his book.

I would like to add the following list of things that I have experienced in my executive coaching career that frequently have similar results.  This blog does not allow much room to expand on them, but each of these is accompanied by multiple stories of the impact on real leaders.  Those who reached out to an executive coach to assist were much more successful than those who allowed these issues to persist unchecked. That is why I site the last of these as the greatest problem of all for leadership effectiveness.

• Becoming too far removed from those they lead
• They lose the capacity for empathy
• Being unaware of the needs of others.
• Whether this is unintentional, due to their personality, or being overly focused on the scoreboard, it leads to the same impact, loss of credibility, and being seen as cold, insensitive or even psychopathic.
• Falling in love with the illusion of themselves.
• As ugly as this sounds, most leaders plagued by it don’t even see this in themselves, because few are willing to provide them with honest feedback. And that's for a lot of good reasons.
• Ignoring the power gap that comes with their position and authority.
• Again, often unintentional, but leaders who think they are just one of the guys, or fail to understand the magnitude of the impact of their words and actions are destined to either run good people off, cause them to freeze up, or derail themselves.
• Impatience with the processes required for their organization to function effectively.
• These are leaders who keep throwing, what I have come to call E-Grenades, into their organization, blowing it up and being surprised or frustrated with their people or the result.
• An absence of, or an ill-defined philosophy of leadership.
• These leaders either lead by the seat of their pants, or who hold to a philosophy that believes their employees are less than competent and unmotivated to succeed.
•   Being too insecure to lead.
• These leaders are threatened by the competence of the people they hire.   The result is they lose good people, their department remains in chaos, and they ultimately derail, all while frantically trying to keep that from happening.
•  Forgetting that they, too, are human.
• I guess it’s my Biblical up-bringing, but I believe and have witnessed our natural tendency toward self-centeredness and self-protection.  Without a clear acceptance of this and a concerted effort to change, leaders are headed for disaster.
• ISOLATION
• This is the greatest challenge facing most executives and leaders.  Some of it is due to the position.  Some of it is due to a unique personality style.  Some of it is self-imposed due to fear or pride.  Leaders who don’t have a true confidant who will provide them with candid feedback and coaching regarding their professional life, and their personal life where it impacts their professional life, are flirting with disaster.

The easiest thing to say when reading this is, "Whew, I am glad that I don't do any of those things."  But the reality is, that leaders often have blind spots in these areas, where they don't see these things in themselves.  They simply see their intentions, and believe they are okay.  An executive coach, utilizing assessments and 360 surveys can help leaders break through the blind spots and ensure they stay on the path to effectiveness. So whether its these issues, those outlined by Marshall Goldsmith, or simply for a leadership tune up, consider engaging an executive coach, if for no other purpose than to prevent isolation, which is often the precursor to greater problems down the road.