Month: May 2011

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The Arts Can Teach Us to Lead, Part 1: Embracing Diversity Brings Innovation — The Compelling Case of Sissoko and Segal

I am a firm believer that we can learn much about how to lead from engaging with and in the arts. This post begins a series on the topic.

It’s a set of ideas I’ve been thinking and writing about for a long time. Quite simply, the arts “traffic in understanding,” in the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard – and understanding one’s internal and external worlds is at the heart of leadership effectiveness. 

The major challenges in leading – understanding and working with those who are different from us, forging shared interests and common goals, motivating, influencing while remaining open to new learning, understanding the roots of competing interests and conflicts, finding lasting solutions to complex problems – echo life’s larger challenges.

The arts lay out these grand dilemmas in accessible form and invite us to reflect on and learn from them. I’ve been reminded of this by some recent events.

The first was a Ford Foundation conference held May 4, 2011 called "Fresh Angle on the Arts: Reimagining Culture in a Time of Transformation" – a day of discussions and performances exploring the role of art and artistic expression in times of social transformation and revolutionary global change.

Different cultures, ethnicities, and social traditions can separate us. But understanding our own history and heritage and then broadening our perspectives on other cultures through education and collaboration can take us to rich, new heights and toward common ground despite our differences.

Listen to excerpts from the CD called “Chamber Music” as performed by Ballaké Sissoko (an African musician playing a traditional lute-harp from Mali called the kora) and Vincent Segal (a French musician playing the classical cello) at the Ford Foundation conference.

Through the music of Sissoko and Segal, you’ll hear and experience quite simply and enjoyably exactly what I’m talking about – and chances are you’ll understand the importance of leading through and with diversity in today’s global world faster and deeper than you might from a lecture, essay, or class on the topic. 

“Chamber Music” has been reviewed as “one of Europe’s most buzzed-about world music recording.” It is also a clear and powerful illustration of fusion without loss, synergy without dominance, differences as the springboard to innovation, shared leadership through true collaboration, and globalization without fear. 

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Hot News: What Are People Reading — China Tops the List

The online Economist has a nifty feature that identifies what people are reading and thinking about. Their opinion clouds are constructed so that the larger the bubble and bigger the font, the more interest.

I offer two below. The first gives an overall feel for topics of interest. China leads, followed by Israel and then economic issues in Europe. The U.S. makes the list largely through President Obama’s recent comments on the requirements for an Israeli-Palestinian accord and peace in the Middle East.

 

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The second diagram identifies what people focused most on in their reading about China. Their biggest topics of interest? Internal issues in China, followed by China’s relationship with Tibet, India, and the European Union.  

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I’m struck by two things in the visual. One, how much overall news about China is available to the average reader. Two, the broad range of topics and issues, including some pretty folksy stories (e.g., expensive chefs and busybodies); issues that are controversial to China (like the imprisonment of artist and activist Ai Weiwei and the activities of Fa Lun Gong); and insights into China’s evolving version of socialist capitalism and its relationships with a variety of other nations.    

For most of the last 18 years, we’ve taken our Bloch School Executive MBA students to China for their international residency. As recent as three or four years ago, students struggled to get any news on China from the popular press beyond sanitized press releases telling the official party line. Western scholars and policy types wrote books of analysis on big topics – and we could parse and compare their perspectives. Novels, histories, and Chinese films provided insights into culture and traditions – and offered another lens to inform analysis. But getting a real feel for day-to-day issues and happenings on the ground and in real time from the daily press just didn’t happen. That’s not true any more. China’s in the press everyday, and average readers are forming their opinions about the country – and about the policies and relationships we want our country to have with China — from what they read and see.

All this reflects China’s willingness to open its borders in multiple ways.

It also underscores the importance of good journalism – reporters who know China, its traditions and history, patterns and predispositions; who have the trust of and good guanxi with the right sources – and the experience to recognize the slips and screens. The press has a role to play in educating the world on a complex and important world power like China that has been so hard to know for so long.

How ironic that newspapers and services are cutting costs by shrinking and closing their foreign news desks, my colleagues in the newspaper business tell me, just at a time when we need them most.

As a child of the Watergate era, I saw the importance of deep thinking and investigative reporting that reflect strong journalistic field work and speak truth to power. I still want that. Don’t you?   

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Oprah Retires: May We All Go That Way

Oprah Winfrey retires with from her long-running daytime talk show today – and with plans for her next big challenge.  

After taping more than 5,000 episodes, she’s relieved to be moving on. In good Oprah fashion, however, she’s down-playing the pleasure out of respect for her show’s staff of 464 people (many of whom are now out of a job) and for the fans who adore her current venue.   

“I literally curb my enthusiasm for the end, because I realize that for the other people that are part of this experience, the end is a different experience than it is for me,” Oprah noted in a recent New York Times interview.[1]

Oprah is saying good-bye to a talk show, but not heading into the sunset or out of the industry. She’s moving to her next career phase: building her fledgling five month-old cable channel, OWN.

We can all learn something from Oprah about career self-management. She’s a self-made billionaire; a legend known to millions by her first name alone; a woman who understood the importance of creating and managing her own life, brand, and enterprise; and probably the most influential African American women in the United States.

Here are the lessons I’m taking from Oprah as she leaves network TV after 25 years.

Run your own race. No matter how good you are at something or how many people want you to continue doing what you do, when it’s no longer fun, have the courage to move on to something that is.

Be authentic. Oprah’s success has been attributed to her empathy, warmth, genuine curiosity, and humor. She morphed her talk show format over the years as it fit her interests and those of her evolving audience. She found ways to bring others along as she tackled tough issues that were deeply important to her, like racism, literacy, AIDs, women’s empowerment, sexual abuse, and more. Oprah wasn’t afraid to preach, confront, learn, or cry – and she transformed television and the lives of millions of viewers by some combination of all four.

Be smart, not beholding. Gender scholar Deborah Kolb has published widely on the topics of how poorly women negotiate for themselves and for the conditions to assure their success – and on what to do about that. Her book, Her Place at the Table: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiating Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success, is a classic. Oprah was a master at negotiating for her success. She understood the importance of artistic control – and wasn’t afraid to demand it at a time when women worried about losing media opportunities by rocking the boat (or gaining a few pounds).  

Believe in yourself – but stay grounded. Oprah demonstrated confidence in herself and her vision from the get go – even in the early days when she described herself as “just producing by the seat of my pantyhose.” [2] More important, she never let that confidence blind her to the work that needed to be done or what she still needed to learn. Star that she is, Oprah has always been a savvy business woman wed to the consummate student. That combination has served her well.

Take risks. Early ratings for Oprah’s OWN channel have been disappointing. What if she’s now lost the Midas touch? Undeterred, Oprah’s going to give it a try and give it her all. That’s all anyone can do.

Leave at the top of your game if you plan to continue in the sport. Oprah is a sensation on network TV. Her fans adore her. What a boost to spirit and creative juices to know that others love what you do – and want more.

[1] Brian Stelter (2011). Oprah Moves on to Her Next Best Life. New York Times. May 23, 2011, p. B1.

[2] Brian Stelter (2011). Oprah Moves on to Her Next Best Life. New York Times. May 23, 2011, p. B2.

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Joplin, Missouri: A Celebration of Resilience in Tornado Alley

I live in the Midwest, close enough to Joplin, Missouri to know where it is and to know people who call that city home.

The devastation from Sunday’s record tornado was shocking and sad; and the story has dominated TV, online, and print news as people struggle to make sense of the depth of the losses. Predictions of continued bad weather this week seem like a low blow from Mother Nature to the residents of “tornado alley.” 

Disasters have a sensational quality to them in today’s 24/7 media world. Look, for example, at the big name news anchors and personalities rushing to broadcast from small town Joplin, Missouri: Brian Williams, Anderson Cooper, Diane Sawyer, Harry Smith, Al Roker of the Today Show, and others.

The surreal photos of the town post-tornado and the media’s hype of and about them might lead us to miss something more subtle yet important in this story: the power, dignity, and importance of resilience.

Resilience is the ability to cope, adapt, and strengthen in the face of challenge, trauma, or stress. It’s a learned skill that increases with use.

Students of leadership spend countless hours and dollars trying to acquire resilience. I’ve spoken in past posts about it as the #1 Leadership Skill (see January 19 in the blog archives) and about how current and aspiring leaders can build theirs (January 21).

Midwesterners, if the people of “tornado alley” are any example, have a natural resilience – and they, thankfully, have lots of it. 

Those who lost everything this weekend quickly turned their energies to helping others and to planning to “get things back in order.”

A young Red Cross volunteer from Joplin listened calmly last night as an incredulous Anderson Cooper questioned her repeatedly about why and how she was able to do that when she had personally just lost everything. The young woman seemed genuinely surprised by Cooper’s question. She had “only lost a lot of stuff,” she noted.  Then looking Anderson square in the eyes she added, “And so what?” Helping was the right thing to do. She never thought of anything other than finding the Red Cross station and doing her part.     

Interviewee after interviewee talked with Cooper about salvaging what they could, rebuilding, coming back stronger, solving the problems Mother Nature had dealt them. They were thankful their losses were not greater. Many spoke of hope. Their beliefs in their capacity to rise to the challenge were obvious.

To quote Dave Adams, a resident of Reading, Kansas, another small Midwestern town leveled by this weekend’s tornados:

“I think for the most part people here have that American spirit. They’ll take this as just another bump in the road. I’m really optimistic,” he said[1] about rebuilding a town where half of the city’s business were destroyed and a significant percentage of its homes gone or severely damaged (including his own).

Resilience: taking life’s challenges as another bump in road. It’ll serve you – and others – well.

[1] Brad Cooper (2011). In Kansas, Small Town Vows to Fight for its Life. Kansas City Star, May 24, p. A11.

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Avoiding the Misery of Yves Saint Laurent: Happiness Strategies When L’Amour Fou (Crazy Love) is Not Enough

Pierre Berge, the long-term lover and business partner of the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, has been in the news. Friday marked the U.S. release of a French documentary about the relationship between the two men, and everyone is abuzz about the film’s attention to the frantic 2009 Christie’s mega-auction of the more than 700 art objects the men jointly collected during their 50 years together. The film’s title: L’Amour Fou – in English, Crazy Love.

Saint Laurent was complex, as creative genius often is. The relationship between the two men anything but simple, as relationships mixing the personal and professional rarely are. The art was indeed something – and the auction netted close to $500 million dollars. And Saint Laurent was a colorful public character with an enviable array of riches beyond the astounding collection: he had talent, fame, fortune, physical attractiveness, a profitable outlet for his creative expression, a comfortable life surrounded by beauty, a long-term relationship with someone who cared, influence in his field and beyond, access to people and international opportunities, and more.

I was struck, however, by Berge’s comment in a New York Times interview: Saint Laurent “was a very, very unhappy, unhappy guy.” He lived in misery and depression despite his success – and “even with a wonderful collection.” He eventually descended into alcohol and drugs.

The story begs the 64 thousand dollar question: what does it take to make someone happy? Think about your life. What makes you happy? Chances are your list includes the expected: a good job, family, friends, success, home, life partner, contribution. But even having it all doesn’t assure happiness. Just look at Saint Laurent.

Harvard psychologist and author of Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert, offers insights into why that is so. Basically, we’re all poor predictors of what will make us happy: choices we make in the short run don’t deliver as anticipated. Couple that with the fact that everyone wants happiness – it ranks above money and health, according to research by University of Illinois professor and happiness guru, Ed Diener – and you can see the problem.

We all want something that we’re not very good at getting for ourselves – and as a result, some version of the Yves Saint Laurent misery story could easily become our own.

Accomplish much. Live out dreams, passions, and talents. Choose a path – and a partner, hobby, and vocation – that we think will make us happy. Work hard. Build a credible and influential track record – and end up unhappy. A sobering thought.

We don’t help the world or ourselves when we’re miserable. And Saint Laurent’s story reminds us that, even if we’re content, we’re apt to run into unhappy others in unexpected places. Fake it ‘til you make it strategies are, well, fake. They can’t be sustained over time. What will get you closer to the happiness prize – and help others do the same?

Research and experience support two routes: (1) embrace mindfulness, and (2) give yourself permission to change, grow, and develop.

You don’t need to be a Zen master to employ the first. Mindfulness is basically training yourself to stay alert to the present and to enjoy it in all its richness.

On any journey, it’s easy to get bogged down in the details and complexity of the travel, focus excessively on the destination – are we there yet? – and fall into complaints about what and how long it takes to arrive.

An alternative: engage every moment of the trip. Enjoy the scenery, the newness of each place, your progress. See detours and delays as opportunities. Find splendor in the rush, the surprises, the unexpected. If Gilbert’s research is right, by the time you arrive at your final destination, you’ll wish you were somewhere else anyway. You might as well enjoy the process of getting there.

Second, give yourself permission to experiment and to change. Deepak Chopra, in Why is God Laughing: The Path to Joy and Spiritual Optimism, makes a case for how fear and ego lock us into patterns of behavior. We keep on doing what we’re doing even if it no longer works for us – or, worse yet, even if it never worked.

Happiness is, after all, more than happy feelings, concludes Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, in his hot, new book Flourish. It’s finding ways to spend time daily on the things that matter – and being honest with ourselves about how we actually use our time and about what really matters most.

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Leadership and Followership: A Dance of Equals

My colleague, Ira Chaleff, an expert on the study of followership, has created a great video to illustrate the importance of leader-follower collaboration and the active role of followership. You can find it on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cswrnc1dggg

When sending the url, Ira wrote:

 

A couple of years ago after returning from Buenos Aires, I took beginning Tango lessons. I was surprised and enthralled to find the teacher, Sharna Fabiano, spending time in every lesson to impress upon us the nature and importance of the follower and leader roles. She had us practice each role, regardless of gender, so we developed an appreciation for what our partner needed from us in our role. Sharna used creative exercises to give us a visceral feel for how to lead or follow, well or poorly. Recently, I invited Sharna to demonstrate the different ways in which the follower role can be done and the resulting positive or negative impact on the leader. To my delight, she enthusiastically agreed to participate in this project.

From this collaboration I have produced a video, "Tango: The Dance of the Leader & Follower," that utilizes the wisdom and grace of Sharna, who is the founder of Tango Mercurio and the Tango Mercurio Community Orchestra in Washington, DC and one of America’s most highly regarded Tango instructors. Through her and her partner Isaac Oboka, we gain new insights into how the partner in the follower role can bring out the creativity of the partner in the leader role. In the final sequence, Sharna demonstrates how a strong follower can steady a leader who has lost balance – something leaders in every sphere of life require at one time or another.

Ira’s website, The Courageous Follower, provides a good listing of articles on empowered followership.  Enjoy!

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Women Leaders Dominate: Truth or Fiction?

Media coverage on gender and leadership has been interesting of late. I celebrate reports of women’s  progress – and wonder about the impact of the messaging on men and boys.

The world is changing, no question. And so are the skills needed to lead in it. But all the hype can distort reality and make us complacent about work yet to be done to create that level playing field for all women.

Cover stories in Newsweek on “The Beached White Male,” “The Traditional Male as an Endangered Species,” and “Hillary’s [Clinton] War” (in the issue also featuring “150 Women Who Shake the World”) tell a story of role reversal and more. (Just contrast the visuals. You’ll see what I mean!)  Hanna Rosin’s powerful “The End of Men” in The Atlantic and other such pieces on the topic reinforce the message: women rule – literally! 

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And last week, the Independent  Television Service (ITVS) and PBS announced a new 50 film series, “Women and Girls Lead,” to air over the next three years. The project reflects the large number of documentaries in the pipeline on the issue and a proactive strategy for creating “a sustained conversation” about women’s evolving global impact.

It’s even cool to be a feminist again. The Daily Beast reports authors like Kathleen Parker, who angered feminists with her book Save the Males, have had a public change of heart. "I’ve become a born-again feminist after decades of feeling that feminism had veered off course,” to quote Parker. The reality for women in the Middle East changed her mind. "The struggle for free expression in cultures that condone sacrificing women to men’s honor gets the blood pumping again."[1]

The good news in all this: women have new levels of power, opportunity, and visibility. They should. Women are now the majority of the U.S. workforce, managerial class, college graduates, and enrollees in graduate and professional programs like medicine and law – with similar trends evolving globally. Two career families in the U.S. are the norm, and it’s no longer an anomaly for women to bring home the bigger slab of the bacon. The number of women heads of state continues to increase across continents and cultures. Surprisingly, even preference for male children has been declining in traditional societies like South Korea, China, and India. Parents in the U.S. now favor the birth of girls more than 2 to 1.

The opportunities and competition in a global economy have moved things faster than consciousness-raising and legislation ever could. Nations need to get on the bus, or be left behind.  Quote Rosin:   

“As thinking and communicating have come to eclipse physical strength and stamina as the keys to economic success, those societies that take advantage of the talents of all their adults, not just half of them, have pulled away from the rest. In 2006, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development devised the Gender, Institutions and Development Database, which measures the economic and political power of women in 162 countries. With few exceptions, the greater the power of women, the greater the country’s economic success.”

I saw this illustrated powerfully on a recent trip to China: the throngs of eager young women moving into the cities and economic development zones in search of work, training, mentorship, and advancement – and moving from job to job when advancement and management training come too slow.

During a trip to Boeing Shanghai, for example, a young administrative assistant assertively sought my time and “leadership wisdom.” She finds Americans more willing to teach and mentor than Chinese bosses; and, she added, “how will I advance if I have to wait to be taught?”  Amen, sister!

The press frames all this as the end of male dominance. My university experiences don’t support the claim. Take a gender lens on issues like academic salaries, endowed chairs, tenure, upward mobility as the result of advancement through informal networking, institutional leadership, the number of women college presidents – you name it – and the world doesn’t seem that much different from when I entered the academic game. [See previous post on women faculty at MIT for more additional data.]

And remember the socializing power of colleges and universities: they train and model professional life and values for coming generations of leaders. What’s the gender message sent and damage done?

A recent study of Princeton undergraduates is a clue. It reports women underrepresented in the university’s highest profile leadership positions and as recipients of its highest academic prizes for more than ten years – and in “marked contrast to the earlier days of coeducation.”

These are smart, competitive, high achieving women at an institution filled with diverse opportunities and supports. So explain the decade-long phenomena described as “men up front, women behind the scenes. Men at the top, women somewhere else. Men operating for public recognition, women for personal satisfaction.”[2]

Who taught Princeton women that they need to be “poised, witty, and smart – but not so witty and smart as to be threatening to men,” as the report tells us those smart, competitive, high achieving young women concluded?  Sounds 1950’s Leave It to Beaver to me.

Progress toward gender equity? Absolutely. Opportunities? Unlimited. Women’s leadership? Essential and growing in impact. Role reversal? No.  We’ve come a long way, baby – but we’re not there yet.

[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-06/newsweek-cheat-sheet-hillarys-war-and-150-women-who-shake-the-world/

[2] http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2011/05/11/pages/3779/index.xml

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Leadership Lessons from Mom

Happy Mother’s Day! I’ve not thought much about the links between motherhood and leadership, but today gives good reason to.

People struggle to understand leadership and how to do it. Take a lesson from mom and a process you’ve known your whole life. You’ll see leadership in a whole new way.

Like good mothers, good leaders are those who . . .

  • Create – and with a leap of faith and the deep giving of self, give rise to that which did not exist before
  • Hold and protect until the newly born is able to stand alone
  • Exhibit qualities important for the development of others, such as affection, nurturance, and belief in human capacities to learn and change
  • Teach, encourage, and socialize to important values and norms
  • Reward accomplishments with increased freedom and responsibility
  • Balance respect for differences with equity and fairness to all
  • Convey they have a tiger in their tank so that they don’t need to let it out often (as in Don’t make me call your mother!)
  • Are open, accepting, and approachable but never a buddy
  • Earn respect for their actions over the long haul
  • Love what they do and those they work with.
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We Like Our Leaders Perfect

Americans have a yearning to believe not only in a hero’s good deeds but in his goodness as a person.[1]

The quote is from a provocative piece in Newsweek about Greg Mortenson (of Three Cups of Tea fame) and his quick fall from grace following allegations by 60 Minutes and an expose (Three Cups of Deceit) by Into the Wild and Into Thin Air author Jon Krakauer of fabricated claims in Mortenson’s memoir and about his charity’s school-building in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as serious questions about his non-profit’s financial dealings and management.

I’ll let you read the details and sort through the hundreds of blogs, posts, websites, news stories, and online sources about the story to get to the truth.

I’m more interested in what all this says about us – and about why Mortenson’s grand story, as Krakow notes, went unchecked for years.

Plain and simple, we prefer our heroic leaders perfect, saintly, and on a pedestal.

It’s hard for us to look too close because we’d have to see them as human and acknowledge that imperfect or flawed people can still do great things.

Hampton Sides ties our preference for “neat” heroes to the quintessential American longing for the guy in the white hat – the perfect personification of our nation’s strengths and Manifest Destiny through a monochromatic Puritan lens.

I see it another way. If heroes are perfect, then I’m off the hook. Ordinary people like me don’t have to step up, speak out, take risks, or take a chance. We can just wait for the next perfect ones. And when their humanity begins to show, we can use our new-found social media capacities to take them down at break-neck speed too – or, as we do with our political leaders, throw them to the pundits and vote them out of office as soon as we can. Once free of these disappointing human beings, we can search for another perfect leader and again place all our hopes, dreams, and needs on that person. And the beat goes on.

There’s a simple alternative that will serve us better. We can all look for the leader within and act. Accept the fact that despite our foibles and imperfections, we can do great things – and in the process, learn  compassion for the imperfect others attempting to do the same.

There’s something deeply heroic – deeply American – about that.  

[1] Hampton Sides (2011). Shattered faith: What the fall of Greg Mortenson tells us about America’s irrepressible longing for heroes. Newsweek. May 2, 2011. pp. 5-6. Available online at http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/24/shattered-faith.html