My friend, Ioan Mitrea, who founded his company, Sellerengine, sent me this terrific post on the challenges of leadership: What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology. The author, Ben Horowitz, is writing about being a CEO of your own company. But his words ring true for stepping up into any leadership position:

The first problem is that everybody learns to be a CEO by being a CEO. No training as a manager, general manager or any other job actually prepares you to run a company. The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company. This means that you will face a broad set of things that you don’t know how to do that require skills that you don’t have. Nevertheless, everybody will expect you to know how to do them, because, well, you are the CEO.

Read the full post here.

I was browsing through some old movies the other day and came across Love Story. Remember Love Story, Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw? The line the movie made famous was Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry. I was a teenager when the movie came out, and I thought that sounded pretty cool. Looking back, I think it’s ridiculous. If anything, love means having to say you’re sorry… often. Or as John Lennon said, love means having to say you’re sorry every 15 minutes. (more…)

Last post I talked about what makes a good learner, sharing some of what I presented at my seminar in Australia, Beyond our Grasp: The Art, Science and Flow of Learning, Performance and Change. This post deals with the challenges of giving and getting feedback and coaching others’s performance.

Having to give and get feedback is a topic that generates a lot of conversation- whether we are teachers, managers, supervisors, or coaches. A lot of the literature on feedback and performance centers around the problem of information: What information is relevant? From what sources do we gather it? How do we deliver it? And for the one receiving feedback, the same: What do I think my strengths and weaknesses are? Am I open to the feedback? But often overlooked is the conversation between the giver and receiver of feedback. Feedback is a process, not a delivery. At its best, it’s a conversation and an exploration. Let’s look at the two parts of the conversation.
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I just finished teaching a seminar in Australia, Beyond our Grasp: The Art, Science and Flow of Learning, Performance and Change. I really enjoyed working with a new topic, and having the opportunity to trial new ideas and learn together with such an enthusiastic and experienced group of participants.

We looked at the challenge of learning and outcomes: when learning is tied to an outcome, a funny thing happens. The outcome is experienced as external to ourselves. Our learning is now complicated by the presence and pressure of someone or something outside ourselves –  a teacher or program requirements, the organization’s goals, a manager, coach, or teacher, a professional association, or even a result or number. Even when the goal is self-assigned, for instance, quitting smoking or losing weight, because we are changing something about ourselves, it creates an inner conflict: one part of us against or trying to change another. Even the tiniest sense of conflict or lack of consensus with our self-interest can torpedo the whole enterprise. This is why research on workplace motivation shows conclusively that intrinsic motivation trumps external motivation, including paid incentives:

people who expect to receive a reward for completing a task or for doing that task successfully simply do not perform as well as those who expect no reward at all.

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One of my favorite topics. I wrote a post a few years back, which I originally called Game Day (changed to Leading Under Fire) talking about leading under stress, and the challenges of performing under pressure. Peter Bregman’s post, The Big Test: How to Handle Performance Pressure, here captures two of the essential points I find helpful: use time pressure to your advantage, and focus in on the essential reason you’re there, a purpose that can help focus and calm you.

In his blog post early this week, The More Leaders Make, The Meaner They Get, Scott Berinato reports on research by Sreedhari Desai on whether sky-high pay leads to worse treatment of workers. According to Desai’s study, the answer is yes:

Increasing executive compensation results in executives behaving meanly toward those lower down the hierarchy.

Chalk one up for Lord Acton. But is it money that makes leaders meaner? Or the power connected to money? While Desai’s research shows a correlation between high pay and mean behavior, it doesn’t establish a cause between the two. Desai’s research suggests that money is an insulator. It shields leaders from the results of their actions. (more…)

In a post-game interview, L.A. Laker Ron Artest thanks his psychiatrist for helping him relax under the intense pressure of the playoffs.

First reactions to his comments were critical, yet when players thank God or Jesus for help, which they often do, I rarely hear criticism about that.

In my mind, the two are not not that different – both offer a vantage point, a detached perspective from which to handle the extreme stress and pressure of the situation. In fact, I think it would be great to hear more from athletes, politicians, leaders, and others working under fire: what do they turn to for support to help them stay awake and useful under such immense stress?

A friend posted this great video clip of Viktor Frankl on Facebook. What an extraordinary man he was, and what a treat to see him in action.

Frankl’s analogy of learning to fly and how he learned to aim ‘north’ to arrive at his destination, reminded me of my high school yearbook quote. In the 70s, it was fashionable to put a quote underneath your photo. Most classmates had rock lyrics, like, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” but I was captivated by a line from a Robert Browning poem, “Ah, but a man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” (more…)

Last week the American Psychiatric Associations released a draft of DSM-V, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The final version is set to come out in May 2013. It has a number of proposed revisions which have been widely blogged about, including a new diagnosis of hypersexuality. In just about every post I’ve read, at some point, the author proposes Tiger Woods as the poster child for this new diagnosis.

As a blog on power and leadership, I’ve spent a fair amount of time here discussing instances in which power goes awry, in particular, why and how public figures and leaders torpedo their careers by engaging in risky sexual behavior. How can public figures like Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer and Tiger Woods, believe their sexual behavior can be kept secret from the world?  It is easy to see it as a mental disorder and it very well may be. Undoubtedly we’ll even find the gene that’s responsible, but making this a medical disorder keeps us from contemplating it as a behavior on a continuum, one we’re all prone to. (more…)

I asked my trainer and owner of Recreate Fitness, Nathan, if he would coach a “cross-fit club” with my 5^th grade boys from the I Have a Dream foundation. It’s one of my kids and leadership clubs I’ve been doing. It’s definitely been fun, but also challenging. Some of the games and activities require technique, balance, or strength. And even the most athletic kids, the ones used to winning the races and being chosen first, suddenly find themselves in the unusual position of struggling. They realize it’s hard, and not something they can just do. For kids who aren’t confident or kids who have been taught to expect praise for whatever they attempt, their first response is to get impatient and frustrated. This is a critical moment in our emotional development which has profound lingering effects. When progress isn’t immediate, when gratification or success is deferred, the difference in how we manage that moment is critical to our success in life. The well known marshmallow test shows how kids deal with delayed gratification.

So how are my boys managing this? Well, a few of them get serious and focused. A couple of them just give up after one or two attempts, and wander onto something else. Some internalize their frustration, and get upset with themselves. And others externalize their frustration. They get angry at the activity itself, me, Nathan, or whatever they deem is in their way of success. One of them, Adbul, has really gotten my attention. (more…)