Independent Thinking » Leadership

On Scholars, Athletes, and Leaders

Daria Steigman — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:04:18 +0000

“Rhodes Scholars are chosen not only for their outstanding scholarly achievements, but for their character, commitment to others and to the common good, and for their potential for leadership in whatever domains their careers may lead.”

Patrick Witt played a football game on Saturday. By that ordinary action, the Yale quarterback seems to have demonstrated the character, commitment, and leadership that the Rhodes Trust has valued for over 100 years.

But Witt, a Rhodes Scholarship finalist, won’t be a Rhodes Scholar. Because the Rhodes Trust scheduled his interview to coincide with his game, he had to choose.

He chose his team.

After an enormous scandal brought on by a failure of leadership in college sports, it’s refreshing to see someone who understands what it means to be a leader.

What do you think? Should Witt have taken the interview? Does it make a difference knowing that Harvard crushed Yale?

Photo by Jayel Aheram (Flickr).

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4 Leadership Lessons from the Penn State Scandal

Daria Steigman — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 09:04:01 +0000

It’s impossible to ignore what happened at Penn State. Which is ironic since Penn State officials, impossibly, chose to ignore what was happening.

This was a massive failure on many levels.

Here are four leadership lessons:

1. Leadership is about making tough decisions. The president of the university didn’t. Joe Paterno didn’t. But the Board of Trustees did, taking quick action once the scandal broke to start to clean house and appoint a special committee to investigate how things went so wrong.

2. Dissent should be encouraged. I don’t know this, but it certainly appears that no one involved with the Penn State football program made a move without consulting Paterno first. Because otherwise I can’t for the life of me understand why a 28-year-old’s first thought after witnessing an assault wouldn’t be to call 9-1-1. You can’t be a good leader if you don’t let people act independently–and disagree with you.

3. Bubbles are bad for business. Tracee Hamilton wrote a terrific column for the Washington Post in which she said in part:

If [Paterno] really loved Penn State as much as he professed, he’d have fallen on his own sword a lot sooner, rather than letting the situation on campus reach a boiling point while trying to engineer his own retirement… If he wanted to save his school and his program and even his friend from the firestorm engulfing them all now, all he had to do was pick up the phone and dial 9-1-1. Three digits.

Paterno was the definition of a ”big man on campus.” The problem with bubbles is that you only talk to friends (see #2) and see what you want to see. And you think you can control everything.

4. The letter of the law is not enough. You can’t lead by technicality. The argument that (indicted and/or fired) Penn State officials have tried to make is that they did what they were legally obligated to do. That might save Joe Paterno from criminal liability, but it certainly doesn’t save him from moral accountability.

What leadership lessons learned would you add?

Photo by Russell James Smith (Flickr).

The Secret to Mobilizing Everyone

Daria Steigman — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:45:56 +0000

I’ve always been fascinated by people-powered movements. (Heck, I even took on class on them in graduate school.) That point where people decide they’re done sitting by. They’ve had enough. They break through the fear barrier. Or the paralysis barrier. Or just the fed-up barrier.

Lately there’s been a groundswell of these, from India’s anti-corruption movement (terrific article here on what U.S. businesses can take from that) to the Arab Awakening to the Occupy Wall Street movement springing up across the United States. The last is driving the media crazy, because they can’t figure out how to condense it into a soundbite. As a communications strategist, I’m usually the first person to talk about “messaging.” Having a clear story to tell.

But messages can be messy–and maybe we need more often to allow context to seep in.

Journalist Chris Hedges, who’s covered his share of people-powered movements over the years, said the other day that:

The whole non-hierarchical structure [of Occupy Wall Street] is really brilliant… They can’t destroy [a] movement like that. The fact that you rotate people through positions of leadership. The fact that you’re completely transparent.”

Whatever your politics, there’s some good food for thought in here about both leadership and how we tell our stories.

Photo by Justin Cozart (Flickr).

Are Companies Confusing Accountability with Leadership?

Daria Steigman — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:12:55 +0000

I heard yesterday that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) is going to spend $15,000 to hire a consultant to provide leadership training. The reason: apparently some senior managers don’t play well with each other.

Now, WMATA has a lot of issues–from concerns about safety to the fact that on any given day it seems more escalators are broken than are actually in service. And that’s just the rail part of the system.

So it doesn’t need managers squabbling over turf. (Not that any business does.)

Sure, this organization desperately needs leadership. But maybe it needs accountability more.

Kumbaya moments are no substitute for performance metrics. Before I’d put anyone in a room, I’d make sure the structure was in place to reward collaboration (and everything else done right) and ding the detractors.

Are some companies confusing accountability with leadership? What do you think?

Photo by Andrew Malone (Flickr).

5 Reasons to Think Thought Leadership

Daria Steigman — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:04:16 +0000

There was an interesting conversation about thought leadership on #profschat the other day around what it is, what it means, where it fits into an organization’s priorities, who “owns” it, and how to execute a successful thought leadership strategy. And it got me thinking anew about a strategy that’s increasingly important in today’s fragmented marketplace.

Here are five things to consider:

1. You can’t anoint yourself a thought leader. Doing so is akin to saying you’re a guru or begging people to “like” you. No matter how many times you put “renowned expert” in your bio or on a profile somewhere, it doesn’t make it so. It’s up to other people to judge your content valuable, interesting, and useful to them.

2. Thought leadership is an investment. It’s not an insta-solution. Before you can be brilliant, you have to know what you’re talking about. That means understanding your business goals, your competitive differentiators, and your customer’s and prospect’s pain points across both the product/service lifecycle and your company’s operations. And that’s all before you develop a content strategy to educate people, problem solve, and be a go-to resource.

3. One-size-fits-all fits no one. If you understand your business and are targeting the right audience, what works for another person or company won’t work for you. Don’t imitate. The best voice—whether in words or in pictures—is your voice.

4. It’s okay to focus on today and look ahead. During the Twitter chat, Bruce Hallas expressed frustration at the difficulty of positioning himself as a thought leader when he’s interested in what happens 3, 5, or 10 years from now but his clients are focused on the “now.” Why can’t you do both? The “now” responds to people’s current needs. The “thinking” piece is an opportunity to educate us on the things we don’t know we don’t know (or don’t yet recognize as needs). I’d create special, perhaps-gated, content (e.g., white paper, e-book) to showcase your forward-thinking smarts. You can always re-purpose some of that content into bite-sized nuggets to tease your everyday audience.

5. Thought leadership pays off. Look at IBM. After years as a products company, IBM has reinvented itself as an ideas business. But you don’t have to clone IBM to be successful. In fact, a thought leadership strategy is perhaps even more important for small companies who don’t have the deep pockets to supplement their content marketing initiatives with mass market brand advertising It’s all about differentiating yourself and giving people a reason to pay attention.

Photo by visualpanic (Flickr).

Are You Inspiring Your Team?

Daria Steigman — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:31:50 +0000

Did you see what happened when Michael Vick came into the Eagles-Packers game in Week 1?

The team got excited.

Vick’s past character issues aside, this is a talented guy who can lead a team. As soon as he came into the game, the Eagles perked up. They had energy and a belief that they could succeed. And they played better (and almost won). The last time I saw this so vividly was when Rex Grossman came into a game late in the 2005 season.

How are you inspiring your team?

Photo by Matt Denton (Flickr).

Saks CEO On Business: Start By Valuing People

Daria Steigman — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:28:30 +0000

Check out this terrific interview with Saks CEO Stephen Sadove in the New York Times. He talks about mentors, valuing people, focusing on processes, and what it takes to be a successful leader. For example:

“I grew up in a world of lots of interesting people, and you really valued learning from them and talking to them. I grew up valuing lots of different kinds of opinions and people of different backgrounds. I was relatively comfortable with adults because we always were entertaining. So you never worried about being uncomfortable in a setting like that, or shy.”

Or this gem:

It’s the people, the leadership, the culture and the ideas that are ultimately driving the numbers and the results… What I try to teach people is, don’t ask the first question in terms of numbers. Let’s talk about the people, let’s talk about the culture, let’s talk about the ideas and the innovation.”

There’s some good stuff here.

Photo by bigcityal (Flickr).

Does Experience Count Less If You’re Not Paid?

Daria Steigman — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:38:28 +0000

Do you value Michael Bloomberg’s experience as mayor of New York any less because he’s only making $1 per year? I’m betting his salary is irrelevant to you. So why do so many people undervalue their own or others’ volunteer work?

This post was prompted by an e-mail I received from Stacey Torrano in response to a column I wrote and the 6 Reasons You Should Serve on a Board post from a few months ago. She was looking for advice on how to market her new role as vice president of her co-op board.

My advice: identify the key business skills you’re using in that role, much as you would for any paid position. And don’t forget to talk about accomplishments.

For resumes, placement is tough, because people typically expect to see a chronology of paid positions. Thus I’d probably put the VP, Co-op Board position into a “Leadership” or “Other Professional Experience” category, depending on the structure of your resume. On LinkedIn, however, I’d consider adding it into the chronology (see my profile as an example), depending on what value it brings to you now and what other positions you need to post.

What advice would you give Stacey?

Is Leadership About Nature or Nurture?

Daria Steigman — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:02:00 +0000

Do you have what it takes to be a leader? And is this even the right question to ask?

John Ryan, president of the Center for Creative Leadership and a former superintentent of the U.S. Naval Academy, has a great column in Business Week that posits that leadership has as much to do with environment as it does with innate abilities. He writes:

If you live in a culture where your colleagues believe you can be a leader and help you develop the skills you need, you will enthusiastically embrace the mantle of leadership… [R]egardless of your occupation, you will view yourself as a leader at home, at work, and in your community. But if you live in a culture that assumes leadership is not for everyone, is dependent on whether you have innate leadership skills, and that leadership is defined by your job title rather than your actions, you will have an entirely different view.

With this concept in mind, Ryan then suggests that organizations need to look at how they manage employees and whether their corporate culture permits risktaking.

This is interesting stuff, not least because of its implications for entrepreneurship. If we applied Ryan’s model to the typical entrepreneur, would we find a similar mindset?

Wal-Mart Vice-Chair on the Crux of Leadership

Daria Steigman — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:28:02 +0000

Great interview with Wal-Mart Vice Chair Eduardo Castro-Wright about leadership and what they don’t teach you in business school. The crux of leadership: trust. Leadership is “about being able to get people to go to places they never thought they could go,” he said in an interview with the New York Times.

Other highlights:

“You can accomplish almost anything in life if you do not care who takes credit for it. So I’ve tried to do more of that. And I’ve tried to do less of the things that make business more complex. I really like simplicity.”
“I think that business schools could do more to prepare kids to deal with the often more difficult side of business management and leadership. The balance of courses is probably weighted to the numeric side of business as opposed to the people side of business.”
“I honestly believe … that cultural differences, which are so often touted as the rationale for making decisions in business, are grossly overrated, and that human behavior really doesn’t have a language. It’s pretty much the same everywhere.”

And my personal favorite, in response to how people make business more complicated than it is: “I think that all of us read far too many business books…We have a very clear view of what we do for consumers around the world. And we can describe our complete strategy in 10 words.”

Read the entire interview here.