S.H.A.P.E. on Leadership

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, do more and become more, you are a leader." -- John Quincy Adams

The sirens are going off again. Can you hear them? Sounds like the intro to Black Sabbath's classic, "War Pigs." The song has been circulating airwaves for the better part of four decades now and has been converting generation after generation of new listeners along the way. The sirens, on the other hand,  have been sounding off for several millenniums. And judging by the latest books in route to the publishers, the sirens will continually be heard.

The sirens are warning us about engagement levels in the workplace. They are crunching numbers, counting beans, and taking notes on how much production is theoretically lost by relatively low employee engagement. Some estimates state the overall cost to the U.S. economy is around half a trillion dollars a year. We could probably (thinking optimistically) bring Detroit back from the gallows with that kind of money. Throw in Cleveland too as a bonus. Surely a solution, some type of remedy must exist, right?

We could tighten the ratchets down on the old school 20th Century approach to management - the good ole carrot and stick. Dangle a bigger, shinier new carrot closer in front of our fellow employees. Keep them tirelessly reaching for the light at the end of the tunnel and if they get too close, buy more tunnel. Or we could sharpen the stick to a fine point to ensure nobody dares lag behind. People will receive the message loud and clear, right?

C'mon, this is the 21st Century already!  Surely we, the human race, should have this down to a science. Engagement levels should be humming along smoothly at the top with little to no waste like a new car engine running off sea water. Why do we seem to be regressing as time marches on?

The sirens sound off louder and closer than ever. We are all familiar with the sound. We are able to interpret the warning; yet, our collective actions leave overwhelming empirical proof that we are clearly not doing enough to silence the sirens. And let's be clear, the sirens are solely about one function: leadership.

Many pages have been and will be written on the subject of leadership. Therefore, we will only cover five of the main topics I feel are most important:  Leadership ≠ Management, Movement versus Motivation, Champion, Integrity, and Sales (not just for Salespersons).

Leadership ≠ Management

These two words are used so often interchangeably that they must be synonymous, right? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong on two fronts: A) Having a management title puts you in a position of leadership but does not automatically classify you as a great leader. B) Reread the quote at the top of this post: no title is needed to be a leader period. Furthermore, you can be a great leader with no formal title of authority whatsoever.

In an ideal world, every single person put into a formal management role would be vetted inside and out on their leadership skills first and foremost before even being remotely considered for the position. However, we all know that is not the case in the real world. Whether promoted to the ranks by nepotism, cronyism, Peter Principle, or pure incompetence from management levels above; we all have been victims, witnessed, heard, or read about these poor leaders. Promoted to the ranks of management alone is not predictive of what kind of leader that person will be.

Management is important and necessary - someone needs to keep the ship in line.Without any structure, standardization goes out the window as well as best practices among the group. Therefore, we need good managers to keep the finger on the pulse and monitor the ship to ensure it stays on course.

People, however, do not wake up, stretch out, and say, "I can't wait to be managed today!"  Reports can be managed, as well as metrics, email, workload capacity, and so on. These are all things though. People want to be led not managed.

Management, in itself, is keeping with the status quo - enforcing current active policies and procedures. Color inside the lines serves its purpose. However, managing too well has the crippling ability to extinguish an environment ripe for innovation. Leading is about reaching outside the boundaries and pioneering new fronts. Stressing too much inside-the-lines thinking kills the very spirit of the heart of leadership - challenging the status quo. In today's high speed, ever changing environment, leadership is more important than ever. Complacency is the enemy and when one manages too well, they should not be the least bit surprised when their people set up camp and establish residency in their own comfort zone. Great leaders in management fully understand this and push their people to further develop themselves.

Speaking of pushing people, how you do so is of paramount importance. In the military, I had the experience of looking at people at uniform and having their rank noticeably visible. If they outranked you, you did what you were told and filed a grievance later if you felt it was unjustified. Not all leadership in the military was this poor, but it certainly did exist. Donning a uniform or management title will create movement among your reports - people have proven they can and will endure a lot to keep their jobs. However, movement is not motivation.

Movement v. Motivation

Frederick Herzberg, clinical psychologist and pioneer of 'job enrichment,' wrote about the distinction between movement and motivation in the most popular Harvard Business Review article in its history, "One More Time: How Do you Motivate Employees?"  Herzberg, in a nutshell, classified movement as a "kick in the ass (K.I.T.A.)" - management uses punishments and rewards (carrots & sticks) as a means to push their employees. Motivation, on the other hand, is the result of such factor as recognition, nature of the job itself (job enrichment), sense of achievement, responsibility, and promotion rate.  

Both movement and motivation look a lot alike to the outside observer. After all both can and do produce the intended results. However, they are fundamentally different. Think of movement as a battery within you that cannot hold a charge. An external source is constantly needed to feed your battery and keep you moving. Those external sources often look a lot like a golden carrot dangled just in front of your face or a razor sharp pointy stick merely inches behind you. Whereas motivation is a battery equipped with its own charger inside you. External sources are not needed. Not only can you charge your own battery, the charge you produce is powerful enough to charge other's batteries - power an entire grid.   

Great leaders know how to the distinguish the two apart. They do not worry about "when the cats are away the mice will play" scenarios. They help create leaders in all who they lead. 

Stephen Covey, author of  "7 Habits of Highly Effective People," spoke about about two levels people fall under: dependent and independent. Dependent people rely upon other to take care of them. Independent people make their own decisions and take care of their selves. One of the main goals of leadership is to create what Covey refers to as "interdependence" - cooperation among independent people that leads to higher achievements that cannot be be achieved independently.   

Movement and dependence go hand in hand. If a leader actually wants to continually make the effort to move those they lead, they should not be the least surprised when those followers never reach independence. Just keep cracking the whip and wondering why you have to.  

Independent people are key to any growth sustained over the long term. This is what every leader should grade themselves upon. Great leadership is about how many people you helped build not how many bodies left in your wake. Champion your people and your legacy will write itself.

Champion 
                    
I see a lot of praise for executive leaders across the board for all the money they saved their companies, how much money made for their investors/shareholders, and how much they should be revered around the globe. We have created rock star individuals and placed them on the highest pedestals. Of course, we also have the base of the pyramid with absolutely no shortage of people who want so badly to emulate these leaders in hopes they will reach the same holy ground someday.

People can and do accomplish amazing feats no doubt about it.  However, I know from my own experiences (much lesser feats like successfully finishing marathons) that I sure as hell did not accomplish them alone. And if I did have to train for another one and handle it all by myself with no support, I know the chances of succeeding would be quite low. Therefore, I hold very little belief and whole lot of doubt that any of these rock stars, anointed by the media and their peers, accomplished their own feats alone. Furthermore, how did they accomplish their feats? In business, do they land at the desk of CFO by means of chopping heads to keep their numbers looking solid?  Do they operate by the ends justify the means philosophy? Well, I have a problem with that -- we are not means.

Here's to hoping that everyone has equal opportunity to become the best leaders they can be and reach their full potential. One of the sweetest features in life is being able to witness our own or someone else's successes. One of the most sour aspects of life is witnessing others (or, forbid, ourselves) race towards their goals without regards to how they arrived there -- how they affect the people around them in the process. Great leaders never sacrifice the means just to meet their ends. The means are everything. Great leaders do not worry about how many books will be written in their honor and if they will be worshiped as an idol. Great leaders sleep soundly at night knowing that they have no blood to scrub off their hands. They have a clear conscience because great leaders champion those they lead.

Anyone with the slightest bit of ambition has a natural tendency to prove to themselves they can do what they set out to do on their own. We want to make our own grade. Great leaders encourage us and inspire us to take risks and set out to do above and beyond anything we have accomplished to date. They realize that our successes further define their own successes. Altruism mixed with a hint of self interest. Not a bad thing. Great coaches develop their players and as the players come into their own the coaches brag, loudly and proudly, about them. Why does it seem that this only applies to sports?

Great leaders dig deep and take a genuine interest in everyone they lead. They understand them well and know how to capitalize and build on their strengths. Pride is about helping them achieve feats they never felt on their own possible before being exposed to your leadership. I want to read about the phenomenal leaders who have built up so many around them. Want to read about them much more often than any numbers Wall Street cares about. If you are in a leadership position and are not championing your people, what is your excuse?

For clarification purposes, I purposely chose the term "champion" over recognition. Recognition is an important aspect of leadership and should be honored whenever possible. Most leaders know effective ways of recognizing those they lead. Championing would be best described as how Ken Blanchard & Sheldon Bowles'  defined "Deliver Plus One" in their book "Raving Fans." Meaning to not just stop at just simple recognition -- go the extra mile and be a rock in their corner. Have some integrity.

Integrity

"If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values: they're hobbies." - Jon Stewart

We have all heard that knowing is half the battle. Yes, knowing the key ingredients to great leadership is not to be downplayed. However, the level of difficulty goes from novice to ninja when the high winds from the storm reach the sea. No practice scenario will adequately prepare you for everything and anything that can come your way. Are you strong enough to persevere and lead through tough unforeseen situations?

Without integrity, one will never be measured as a great leader by any standard of the definition. If a leader's integrity is in question, so is their credibility and character. All bets are off. Those being led will see right through the facade and run for cover in a heartbeat. Good luck shaking that reputation if you should fall on this front.

Inaction is worse than making the wrong decision(s) during a crisis. People will forgive bad decisions from a leader especially given the circumstances just as long as the decision(s) were made with the best intentions. However, inaction is a cop out. A great leader keeps a solid finger on the pulse at all times and recognizes when things are amiss. They do not bury their heads in the sand or worse: switch to self-preservation mode.   Great leaders step up and take action with little regard to the politics involved.

Politics. Nothing will damage the reputation of a leader more than playing the game of politics. Telling people what you think they want to hear and not being the least bit transparent serves no other purpose than that person's self interest. Integrity will crumble under the weight of one's values being sold out in the name of politics. Politics are the results of not effectively dealing with complex human social interactions (interpersonal communication). No question politics invade just about every single social circle in existence. Selling people on tough, personal matters is hard work. Punching the ticket to great leadership was never sold as easy trip. If the road to exceptional leadership was straight and narrow, we would have saved an Amazon worth of trees from being printed into the plethora of books on the subject.

Speaking of selling people on...

Sales

If you are like I was in not-so-distant past, you may be scratching your head as to why Sales would be on any list of main topics about leadership. Then I read Daniel Pink's stellar book: "To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others" and shortly after Chip and Dan Heath's book: Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard." Now it is clear to me -- selling is a skill every aspiring leader should be schooled in.

Like it or not even if you do not consider yourself a leader, you are a salesperson. A product or service you may never have to pedal, but you do have ideas. Ideas that cannot be initiated by yourself -- need a buy-in. You also have wants - how do you persuade others to go along? I want my kids to go to bed on time to ease the pain and hassle of waking them up in the morning (and to have at least a couple hours of sanity before I too go to sleep).  In order to do so, I must convince them to quit stalling and just embrace the shuteye. We are constantly selling whether we realize it or not.

As mentioned earlier, leading is about challenging the status quo. Navigating uncharted waters. Change. I guarantee it is a hell of a lot easier to peddle vacuum cleaners to individuals than to close the deal on wholesale change to an entire group. Selling change is the hallmark of great leadership. Do yourself a great big favor and read the two aforementioned books if you have not read them already. Well worth your time.

Are you a leader or in a position that implies leadership? Here is a good exercise to either calibrate or re-calibrate your leadership skills: ask yourself: why would anyone want to follow your lead? Then work on your campaign to sell those you wish to lead on it.

"Leadership is a choice, not a rank." - Simon Sinek

We are all leaders to some degree or another. We all have the power to influence others, ourselves, our children. Do we not owe it to ourselves and those we lead to be the best leaders we can be? Hopefully this proved to be either enlightening or a refresher to help us become even better leaders than we already are. I have not held a position of authority since my last year in the Navy. However, I do not need to be on the top of any given ladder to have a good understanding of fundamental leadership principles. Nobody needs to and no one should wait until reaching a ranked position to learn them. The better we are understanding and exercising sound leadership, the better our environment will be. Understanding the principles will make you more likely to demand better leadership from those whom lead you and yourself in leading others. We may not be able to silent the sirens overall but with enough concerted effort, we just might be able to mute them in our region.  

S.H.A.P.E. Philosophy is about building a better tomorrow for all. The only way to do so is look out for one another and embrace the humanity. We are all part of the same tribe - together we can thrive. Whereas, individually, we merely survive. Life is too short to just get by surviving. Great leadership is key. 

 




 

Let's get in S.H.A.P.E.!

What a delightful era we are living in! Ten million dollar smiles on television advising the masses on the mysteries of life. Colorful and crass talking heads caked in enough makeup that would make Bozo and Cookie blush. Daytime infomercials disguised as news and/or entertainment. Reality TV  more heavily scripted than cartoons. Endless hyperbole. And enough plastic in their DNA to bottle all the oceans and coat every beach with a nice Tupperware hue.

So many answers for sale so nicely packaged and ready to be shipped right to your door, downloaded right to your smartphone. A wonder why everything - all questions and concepts - have not been nailed down to a science already. A wonder why we do not have ports in the sides of our heads to insert a flash drive and just upload all the knowledge we need. Sorry, that was last decade - more like a microscopic chip implanted in our brains that can receive updates via wireless networks. Learning for yourself is so old school.

We live in the golden age of information and misinformation. An age of mass distraction. An age where availability of information is not as valuable as the curating of information is. An age where old 20th century ideology still holds on for dear life while new progressive 21st century's version fights feverishly to kill off that ideology for good.

Instant gratification, quick fixes -- dopamine fixes galore.  A wonder that we accomplish anything significant riding one dopamine fix to the next.  Somebody please stop this train and add some badly need clarity to all this madness!

We are all making a living on this spinning ball together.  We all have universal needs and desires.  No matter how much noise the contemporary distractions try to trip us up, the fundamentals for success have not changed.  All the centuries leading up to today and all the centuries to come will not change the fundamentals of success.  Now a rogue planet could blast through the Milky Way and pulverize the earth and end all of human life, and at that point who cares?  However, no matter how many or how invasive the bread & circuses become, the fundamentals for success remain intact and unchanged.

The Success Hope Ambition Potential Excellence (S.H.A.P.E.) Philosophy was designed to be your lighthouse in the fog of distraction.  Your compass in the woods of information overload.  A fail proof navigation system that will work when applied in any scenario in any culture under any circumstances.  We did not create the fundamentals of S.H.A.P.E.  Those fundamentals have been around for thousands of years and researched by many far smarter than me. Therefore, we are not recreating any wheels, recycling old programs, or repackaging themes to brand them as my own.  Rather the S.H.A.P.E. philosophy was created to be a type of user-friendly reference guide to help anyone willing to help themselves reshape or enhance their lives. Share in the "student for life" philosophy.

Are you still skeptical at this point?  Good, I recommend a bit of healthy skepticism.  The proof is in the pudding and the recipe cannot contain any secret ingredients and remain credible.  We did not create S.H.A.P.E. overnight with all the original thoughts floating in my head.  I have spent nearly a decade researching and reading a lot of what makes us tick, and I fully intend and plan to explicitly cite every source that has helped create the S.H.A.P.E. philosophy.

Without further ado, let's explore at high-level overview the S.H.A.P.E. philosophy section by section!

Success

“Success is the progressive realization of predetermined, worthwhile, personal goals.” -- Paul J. Meyer

Just looking at the S.H.A.P.E. acronym initially, the question is begged why Success comes before the rest and not on the end. We decided to go with the late Stephen Covey’s: “begin with the end in mind” philosophy. Success cannot be achieved without first knowing what the definition of what success is for that given individual. One of the nine principles of war is to define a clear objective.  How can one assess, quantify, and/or measure their level of success without first knowing what target they are aiming for? Lewis Carroll summed it up perfectly from his famous Alice in Wonderland: "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."  Success is not found by wandering aimlessly through life. Therefore, vision and mission statements need to be spelled out. Values must be determined.

Success is such a subjective term. We are not attempting to define success in one-size-fits-all fashion. Rather, we do want to provide and/or share solid fundamentals principles and values that will help you achieve your own success. The main goal here is to not let the ends justify the means behavior corrupt their pursuit. The means of pursuing their respective goals are just as important as the ends themselves.

Kay Sprinkel Grace speaks about her book, "Beyond Fund Raising", the notion of laying out your plans at philosophical, strategic, and tactical levels. Success in this portion of the program is directly focused on the philosophical level – really answering the questions: “why?” and “what?” success is to the individual.

We also want to focus on what is central to the entire theme of S.H.A.P.E. – the four wins. Stewart Friedman, author of Four-way Win: How to Integrate Work, Home, Community, and Self and founding director of Wharton’s Leadership Program at University of Pennsylvania, describes the four pillars/wins: Work, Home, Community, and Self -- we really want all of our S.H.A.P.E. students to succeed in all four of these.

We believe we can strongly benefit our S.H.A.P.E. participants by assisting them in defining success at a philosophical level with the focus on solid principles and values and with the focus on work, home, community, self.

Hope

“Hope is a waking dream.” – Aristotle

“Believe you can and you're halfway there.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

Success cannot readily be achieved with any percentage of probability or even possibility without hope thrown in the mix. People simply will not make any real concerted effort to pursue anything they do not believe can ever come to fruition. Therefore, we must address hope/optimism in our program in order to inspire and fuel the drive for students to succeed overall.

We plan on being open, honest, and transparent with our participants. S.H.A.P.E. has to be grounded in realism in order to meet its objectives. Unbridled optimism without a hint of realism could be as dangerous of having none at all.

Hope alone will not change anything, but it is critical for the student’s buy in. However, hope without a plan is meaningless and empty. We plan on including a lot about self-discovery in this section so the students can really obtain what they are really after with much more clarity than before they entered the program.

Ambition

"There's no shortcut to a dream
It's all blood and sweat
And life is what you manage in between" - Broken Bells "October" 

“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

If hope is fueling the success, ambition is the engine driving it. Motivation is the key. We do not want to take our students in and recharge their batteries – enough for profit programs and books exist in that vein that do just that. No, we want to build a battery charger within each our students so they can become independent and tackle any challenge put forth in front of them or any of the many challenges life with throw at them in general.

Many motivating factors exist that especially most teenagers, no fault of their own, will not be aware of. And according to Leigh Branham, author of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, most managers are not aware either. These can be make a huge impact if we would just teach them – most schools stick more to teaching what they call the hard skills (i.e., science, math, accounting etc.) rather than the interpersonal skills and other soft skills (i.e., emotional intelligence, EQ, related skills) absolutely needed to succeed. We want to not just help our students discover what motivates them but how they can motivate others as well. The Excellence section in S.H.A.P.E. covers that in more detail.   

Potential

“If you haven't confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started. ” ― Marcus Garvey


Keeping an optimistic, open-minded, reasonable, rational approach with a great deal of motivation and a clear picture of what success looks like are all keys to reaching one’s full potential. By continually aligning daily achievements with principled goals and values, the students will learn how to track their path to success. Over time they will be able to develop these skills into talents.

S.H.A.P.E. is designed to teach the students how to recognize their individual potential and build self-confidence. Recognize it the point they can consistently evaluate where they are regarding their potential and improve upon it.

Excellence

“By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.” -- Voltaire

"Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not.” -- Neil deGrasse Tyson 

Unless you are hopeless narcissist never interested in anything outside of fulfilling your own self interest at any cost and at everyone else's expense, successfully completing your own goals alone will not lead you to the promise land of fulfillment (excluding goals to help others).  People are naturally inclined to be social and cooperative beings.  Too many sources to site on this account alone.  Therefore, the S.H.A.P.E. philosophy would be incomplete without a paying it forward model. 

Mentoring is probably one of the first concepts to come to mind  when thinking about excellence.  However, the notion often leads to a weak connotation -- mentoring does not require a lot of or enough skin in the game.  Easy to give out advice and help another with no real commitment especially if the mentored fall off the wagon motivation wise.  

Sponsorship fits more in terms with what the S.H.A.P.E. philosophy stands by.  Sponsors are more than just mentors.  Sponsors are coaches in your corner through thick and thin.  Sponsors actively follow up with their partners and encourage them.  They operate with steadfast integrity.  If you have an idea, they champion it and help move mountains for you to help make it happen.  If you are gunning for a new position, they help clear the path to make it happen. Although just as one being sponsored (the protege) is not a mentoree, the protege is more than just a receiver of advice and feedback.  Proteges operate in a quid pro quo relationship with their sponsors.  In defining your success, we want to turn you into a protege.  Upon reaching your potential and moving into Excellence, we want you as sponsor.

******

A lot of trees were slain and squids squeezed dry to print out all the books read to put S.H.A.P.E. together. And they only make a mere fraction of what is left to be discovered on this journey.  We are just scratching the surface.  We have a ways to go but rest assured the time and attention you invest in S.H.A.P.E. is well worth the effort.  I hope you will find as much value in the program as I have along the way.