Category: Leadership Development

David Letterman most likely had it right when he said, “Life experience is the best teacher.”  But I’d add a word and say that BAD life experiences are probably the best teacher, at least when you’re trying to grow in leadership and you’re willing to learn from them. 

Our Horizon Point team had a discussion about something related to this concept in a meeting based on some client experience that I can’t even recall now. This led to the idea of using this theme for a blog post.  

My team encouraged me to write about the lessons learned from difficult experiences with my oldest son, some of which I’ve written about before. This includes his challenges with epilepsy, medicines for epilepsy, reading, and his combined personality of being impulsive therefore lacking in self-control at times. These experiences and circumstances have shaped him and me.

When this came up, I shared with them how much I felt like he’d matured (and how much I had too as a parent watching him) in the last year or so.  Maybe it was just now developmentally appropriate to expect him to think about his thinking and his experiences, but over the last year it was becoming evident how the hard things had been molding him somehow. He’s finally gotten some outward wins, but in truth, the real wins have been from learning his way through hardships. 

All that he’s experienced has led him to be more empathetic, less likely to judge, and a heck of a hard worker. He’s gritty and determined. He’s competitive, but supportive and encouraging of other people’s successes nine times out of ten. He sees people, often people others neglect to see, and he feels deeply.  He’s becoming what my husband and I have wanted so badly for him, and if we are honest, what we have wanted so badly for our own selves and self images that we often can’t put aside no matter how hard we try.  He’s becoming a leader. 

We plan for blog posts about a month in advance. Little did I know that right before I was scheduled to turn in this post, I’d learn more and more about how the seemingly bad experiences shape us and also become answers to prayers, ultimately leading us to God’s purpose and direction for our leadership and lives.

I’d say that bad experiences make us the best leaders if we choose to learn from them. Through our attitude and self-reflection, we can turn them into good. Here’s why: 

1. 1. We become more self aware when we experience bad things and when we fail. It makes us stop and think why much more often than the good and the winning if we allow it to. What ownership do I need to take in the bad?  What is it I can and should control and what can’t I? What systems and structures have created or contributed to the bad? How can I impact them? It helps us understand ourselves better, and self-awareness is where great leadership has to start.
   2. We become more empathetic. Because we have struggles of our own, we are more apt to see others struggles, ask about them, listen well when they are shared, and try to empathize with them. We care. We develop more other awareness. Leadership skills have to be developed through the platinum rule- treat others as they’d like to be treated.  You have to know people well enough to be able to know how to treat them, and that starts with an empathetic mindset.
   3. We become more vulnerable.  We are less likely to know it all, try to be it all, and perfect it all and we are also less likely to expect others to do and be the same when we have experienced some healthy doses of humble pie. Leaders are at their best when they are transparent and that usually begins with a comfort level with being vulnerable.
   4. We are better able to realize who our true friends and advocates are and who we want to align ourselves with. There’s nothing like being kicked when you’re already down and that often happens when we experience bad things. Others can come full force with their feet sometimes, whether they realize it or not, when people are down and out.  Leaders have to build strong and safe teams around shared values, and sometimes the only way to know a friend from a foe is to see them from our own spot of rock bottom. I loved this podcast where Reese Witherspoon articulates the “bottom third” to steer clear of. You sometimes are only able to identify the bottom third of people actively working against you if you aren’t on top. 

Self awareness, empathy, vulnerability and strong teams are the cornerstones of leadership and, sometimes, they are only taught and learned through the school of hard knocks. 

How have you learned and come out leading through the bad?

We’ve had the opportunity to begin training a group of leaders for a client using a global curriculum the client developed.  As facilitators, we have the opportunity to take the quality content developed and structure learning in a way that allows the participants to apply the content to impact their behavior at work. Hopefully, this will lead them to invoke positive influence on those they lead and interact with. 

Any good training frames learning around well-researched models or theories.  And there are a lot of models and theories out there! How you sort through them all and determine what to use can sometimes be difficult. 

The keys, we believe, are to do a few things: 

1. Create your content around key organizational values or outcomes you are trying to achieve.
2. Choose well-researched models that follow the scientific method.
3. Use models/theories that help convey the values/outcomes you are trying to achieve.
4. Less is more! Don’t overload people with theory! 
5. Encourage synergy across models and frameworks. How does one model connect with another, and more importantly, how do all the models connect with the overall training purpose? 
6. Engage participants in applying their learning during the training as well as post-training on the job. 

Here are some models that we rely on frequently based on these above recommendations. Some of these we will cover in more detail in the coming weeks!

For innovating:

• Design Thinking
• Growth Mindset

For leading effectively:

• Situational Leadership
• DiSC
• Servant Leadership 

For navigating team development and success:

•  Lencioni’s work
• Psychological Safety

What leadership models and frameworks guide the way you lead?

MYTH: Individual Contributors can’t shift the paradigm at the organizational level. 

Our team has a long-term partnership with a multinational company to facilitate leadership training for all of their Managers of People (MOPs) and Individual Contributors here at the local site. The program we’ve developed for them consistently receives glowing reviews, with one caveat: Individual Contributors are skeptical of a real shift among the “higher-ups”. The feeling is something like, “This is great and all, but unless corporate changes the way we do things, I can’t have an impact.” 

Let’s tackle the myth. 

Willie Pietersen, Professor at Columbia University and former CEO, refers to leading up as “The Neglected Competency” and says, “Leading up effectively is not easy to pull off. But I think we owe a duty to help each other learn and grow regardless of rank. We all have our blind spots. When I look back on my corporate career, the subordinates I valued most were those who helped me grow as a leader.”

Did you know that Starbucks didn’t always write customer names on the cups? Pietersen highlights this story as an example of small, incremental change that influenced a corporate shift: 

In 2011 an imaginative barista decided to enhance [the] personal experience by writing the first names of customers on cups, instead of just calling out the name of the drink that had been ordered. The idea raced to headquarters and today this simple practice happens four million times a day at 30,000 locations worldwide.

Individual Contributors can and do influence organizational change every day. Sometimes it happens slowly, with small, incremental changes within a team or a department. Sometimes it happens overnight on a global scale. In every case, it takes guts and it starts with leading the self. John Maxwell emphasized leading the self when he crafted a simple message nearly a decade ago with 9 Ways to Lead Your Leader:

1. Lead yourself exceptionally well.
2. Lighten your leader’s load.
3. Be willing to do what others won’t.
4. Do more than manage – lead!
5. Invest in relationship chemistry.
6. Be prepared every time you take your leader’s time.
7. Know when to push and when to back off.
8. Become a go-to player.
9. Be better tomorrow than you are today.

So we bust the myth; we learn to lead ourselves in such a way that we Lead Up and influence organizational change…and then we tackle the fact that we need our top leadership to Learn Up in order for our organization to be a living, thriving place. 

Pietersen says, “Arguably the most important learning is that which occurs from the ground up. When that circuit is blocked, an organization faces a survival problem. According to a Gallup poll, companies that listen to their employees are 21 percent more profitable than the competition.” 

Leaders who Learn Up are more likely to see higher profits! Organizations that encourage Individual Contributors to Lead Up and Leaders to Learn Up are likely to make. more. money.

Be a workplace of and for the future. Lead Up and Learn Up.