Great Leadership Books

One of the tools for developing the Management team reporting to me is what we’ve called “The Flamingo Book Club”.  Each month, we pick a book to read, and one person’s role is to facilitate a discussion about it with the rest of the group. 

I figure we could spend a bomb on sending the individuals off to leadership training; however, generally I think that you can get a lot out of just spending time with people and challenging them, giving them feedback, and working together to set boundaries.

We’ve done about 3 of these now, and they’ve gone really well.  After we have read and discussed each book, a couple of copies are added to the library, and we do a book review for the team at the full team meeting.  This way, we get to share the learnings and include the team in what the managers are up to.

The first book we chose was Susan Scott’s “Fierce Conversations”.  This is about having conversations with people that get to the heart of issues, rather than avoiding them and letting wounds fester.  She explores why this is needed, and how to approach it.  That first month, one of the managers used the techniques in the book to give some difficult feedback to one of her team members, and she was very successful.  Another manager felt extremely challenged by it because he is incredibly passive/defensive and won’t say what’s on his mind enough.  Now, when we give each other a bit of tough love, we say “Uh oh, a Fierce Conversation.”

The second book that we read was John C Maxwell’s “The 360 Degree Leader”.  I have loved Maxwell’s writing for many years, and his take on leadership and teamwork are particularly challenging yet simple and truthful.  I find his writing to be a wonderful checklist at any time.

I picked this particular book because I wanted my people to see that leading from wherever you are in an organisation is critical.  So many people think that they deserve to be leaders and that the world has not yet recognised their stellar leadership potential by making them CEO.  Great leaders have a stillness and self-confidence, and this book really gets into so many aspects of leading.  It was a great trigger for much meaningful discussion, and challenged one of my managers who is particularly competitive with others.

John C Maxwell has a great many other books, and I heartily recommend them, and his website at http://www.maximumimpact.com/

Our third book wasn’t a book: I asked everyone to watch the movie Thirteen Days about the Cuban Missile Crisis.  First, it’s an enthralling film.  Second, it closely follows history, which is borne out by the historical commentary and the book of the same name by Robert Kennedy.  Third, it shows leadership under pressure – stripped of all its flashy glitz, naked and in many ways alone.  It was by far everyone’s favourite leadership learning so far.  I’ll be doing a separate post on Leadership and the Cuban Missile crisis soon (although I do note that the new White House Press Secretary apparently had not heard of it before a couple of months ago…what a shocker).

Our next book is Lance Armstrong’s “It’s Not About the Bike”, which I hear is a corker.  We have a few others lined up to follow: “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, Daniel Goleman’s “Working with Emotional Intelligence”, “Authentic Happiness” by positive psychology guru Martin Seligman.  We ambitously put Nelson Mandela’s autobiography “Last Walk to Freedom” on the list.  I suspect it will take us a while to read.

The year end: when pride and melancholy merge

It’s when you reach the end of each year that you really appreciate how quickly they go.  Life is full of that sad cocktail of time whizzing by, but also grateful awe with what has been achieved.

I started my year consulting to the corporate regulator on a major corporate collapse, looking after the wash-up of mum and dad investors losing all or most of their dough because of some selfish and negligent corporate management.  Corporate Lunacy at its worst.  But I did some good for real people, and am so proud.

Before I started with the Company, I spent 7 wonderful weeks travelling to places as diverse as New York, Italy, Greece and Fiji (I basically just got to list all the places I wanted to go to and shove them into the one air ticket – spending some of my pay-out was truly fab).  My favourite moment was on the Greek island of Santorini where, after 5 weeks of travel, I was waiting for the bus to the capital, Fira.  One of Greece’s crazy taxi drivers asked me if I wanted a ride for 10 euro, saying the bus wouldn’t be along for another 45 minutes.  Normally, I’d have jumped at the chance.  But instead I slowly considered it and said “No thanks, I’ll wait”.  That moment, I think I was the most relaxed of any time in my life.  It was wonderful: relaxation in my core, the depth of my being.  Why oh why can’t life be like that more often?

Then I started at The Company and set about resolving the issues that had beset the Legal team for so long.  Sure, there were some bumpy times and some desperately low moments.  But they are behind us.  In that time, I have started to turn around our recruitment reputation, and brought on board some really wonderful new team members.  Plus, we’ve motivated and focused the great people who were already there.  I laid out a 3-year vision so they can see where we are going; no-one before had done that with them and followed through.

We had a bit of turnover in the first few months, as people who had waited too long for new leadership got itchy feet and headed off.  Happily, most left with regret as they wished they could also be part of what we were doing.  Two went overseas.  One very talented young lawyer told us she wanted to try private practice for a time, so I picked up the phone to the law firm she wanted to work with, and organised for them to meet her.  And she got that job.

Of course there were the people who we were glad left: the team is lighter, more hopeful without the weight of them.  But God there were tough times.  I learned a lot of new lessons this year, I can tell you. 

As for the Dispute Resolution Team, they are in a state of flux.  The new manager is wonderful – the whole team loves her, and she was exactly the right choice.  Two of the lawyers, Lisa and Anne, are like the Bobsy Twins - they always have their heads together.  They are the biggest fans of Mark, and live their lives seeking his approval.  As it turns out, they seek approval a lot, including from me.  Lisa is more the problem child – she’s like a duckling who adopts whoever walked past last as its mother.  Anne, on the other hand, is different.  Between the two of them, she’s the leader.  She resigned earlier this year, before I arrived, because her manager was such a disaster.  When I announced her old manager was going, she rang me the next day and asked to come back, which she did on a 12 month contract.  She was grateful for a second chance and, even when I announced Mark was leaving, she said I had her support (even though she knew her friends would crucify her if they heard her say it).  Our strategy with Lise and Anne is to divide and conquer.

This last week, we told Anne that, not only did we want her to lead one of our project teams next year, but that we were making her role permanent.  She was overjoyed, and said “I’ve been vindicated!”.  I think she’s referring to the frequent drinks/dinners/lunches that the DR Team (both current and former members) have to pick over the bones of old times, and bitch about old and new management in Legal.  I imagine they all told her that I was systematically trying to get rid of all of them, and I wouldn’t make her role permanent.  How wrong they were.

Meanwhile, Lisa was told that she missed out on leading a project team in 2008 – that she didn’t have the leadership skills the others had.  She is disappointed, but will be uncertain how to react to Anne’s being successful.

We’ll see how that goes the next year.

When is the small stuff really the big stuff…and when should you sweat it?

My assistant, Sarah, is a bit of a perfectionist.  I’ve talked in previous posts about how she is frustrated by the rate of change in the admin team in Legal, which she manages.  She would like to see attitudes change quickly, but I’ve tried to help her understand that real, lasting change takes a long time.

Now that The Manipulator has resigned, the No 1 problem child in the admin team is Amanda.  Amanda has been around for a few years, and used to work for a person who was universally hated by her team – the Dispute Resolution Team.  Amanda was used by her old manager as a “spy” on the lawyers in that team - she would regularly be asked who was saying what to who, and who was doing lunch with who.  This always put Amanda into a difficult position, as she didn’t want to spy on her work colleagues, and felt like the meat in the sandwich.

I fired her old manager in my 7th week (I would have done it in week 1, but it seemed a little quick).

So, Amanda was freed from her old boss, but her reporting line changed to Sarah.  Amanda says that she really likes Sarah, that she’s glad she got the job, and has no issues with her…except that Amanda treats Sarah with contempt.

Amanda gives a very good first, second, and third impression.  Where you run into problems is when you ask her to do work or look after a task.  Then, you find out that she’s great as promising but can’t really consistently deliver.  Plus, it seems like everything outside of work is more important to Amanda than her actual job.  This includes her boyfriend, her family, her car, her study to become a paralegal…the list is actually pretty long.

The lawyers who Amanda is meant to work for know that they can’t follow her up too much with overdue work, since she gets stroppy and takes on a defensive attitude, making life hard for all around her.  Sometimes, she even has a melt down, claiming all the lawyers are rude and demanding and she’s not paid enough to put up with it.  Then, once she’s slept on it, she’ll slink back in and apologise as if all should be forgiven.

Amanda gives Sarah a hard time.  Amanda leaves early – but doesn’t tell Sarah or get her OK.  Amanda’s boyfriend gets kicked out of his apartment – and Amanda has to take a 2-hour lunch break on a Friday to go and sign a lease for him.  Amanda is late to work most days – there’s always an excuse, though.  Plus, she gives the type of attitude that is hard to put your finger on: in her one on one meetings with Sarah, Amanda keeps looking at her watch; she blames other people for not giving her things that are crucial for her delivery on promises…

This is driving Sarah nuts.  As it should be.  But Sarah is trying to deal with every little issue, and she isn’t getting enough support from the (acting) legal manager (Anthony) who Amanda reports to.  Sarah is at the point where she is self-conscious raising anything with Amanda, for fear of having her head bitten off.  Anthony has told Sarah to “not sweat the small stuff”.

But when does the small stuff become part of a bigger picture of non-performance?

We have have 4 weeks until the new manager arrives.  This new person will be tougher, and will support Sarah 100%.  I think that Amanda won’t make it with us past around February or March next year.  If any of her issues were one-offs, you would turn a blind eye.  They would be small stuff.  However, as a total picture, it’s not great, and really the discussion needs to be around attitude and consistency of delivery.

But Sarah is now at the point where she is getting annoyed at every small thing that happens…and probably IS sweating the small stuff to some extent.  I’m trying to help Sarah through this, and helping her understand what to take issue with, and what to let slide.  However, I think I just need to tell her to back right off the girls until the new manager arrives, and they can come up with a plan to manage the underperformance together.

In the meantime, I am worried about Sarah.  She is right about Amanda, but Sarah is taking all of it so personally.  I’ve asked HR to help come up with some solutions to help me support her.  I’ll let you know how we go…this saga ain’t over yet!