Wisdom for Work

A leader charged into a meeting, a touch late and with usual impatience. The purpose was a discussion of collaboration. An article had been distributed. Individual team members had done their assigned task of identifying moments where collaboration was possible. For the numbers driven there were estimates of savings, projections of increased productivity and simplification of processes and increased alignment. The HR and training group understood what would be needed to shift to get people on board with the new ways of doing things. So it was with Marketing, Sales, Operations and IT. As the meeting began the leader responded with world class eye rolls. The next participant talked and watched the leader’s hands constantly fidgeting.  The next saw little of the leader’s eyes as they were drawn more to their phone than to the meeting. Suggestions were met with sighs and head shaking.The presenters were regularly interrupted. Suggestions were called stupid or “off the mark.” The meeting was tense and there were no clear outcomes.

Months later when the leader was fired it was because there was much in the business that they did not know. The board wondered how a leader could be so out of touch.

That was not a question that those who work in the company’s leadership would ever have to ask.

Got an email from a MBA student in Shanghai about Building Sustaining Relationships. She  has been recommending to friends in her leadership class.  I am glad to know it travels across cultural boundaries.

I have been asked to give a talk to a group of young leaders in a school setting. The core of these students have been through ropes courses, pep talks, group exercises and lectures all focusing on the theme of leadership.

I have been thinking about the how of things, what can one do to make a difference as a leader and for that matter a citizen and a human being.

I go back to this talk given by John Wooden on Success

Very old school, still a great talk.

Most of us remember some particular day. It may have included grogginess or alertness. We may have been in a huge lecture hall, in a conversation around a table or in a dorm room or we may simply have been reading a book; assigned or not. And on that day, some concept connected so completely and so clearly that it became part of our intellectual hardware forever. Continue reading »

Having just returned from a business trip to Germany I was again struck by how common it is for people in other parts of the world to speak multiple languages. As someone who is still working on the clear and effective use of English, it is a touch overwhelming and at times embarrassing to be in a meeting where everyone else has to step into what be their second or third language to communicate with me while I cannot take even a baby step in their direction.

That certain cultures support this and others do not is clear. Languages other than English are most often not required and in the continued slashing of funding for education, there are fewer options for students in the US who want to be able to function as global citizens. The limits on personal and organizational opportunities are growing.

I thought again about the work of Ferdinand Tönnies who coined the terms Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. The first, Gemeinschaft can be thought of as community and describes an orientation to the larger whole. The second, Gesellschaft, describes an orientation where the individual’s self interest is central and the larger whole is secondary. Culture’s whether of country’s, corporations, communities or families end up somewhere on the continuum of these two.

As political changes in the Middle East, responses to the devastation in Japan and various social media tools indicate collaboration has become an additional language for those who will influence and lead in our coming years.

It is fascinating and inspiring both to see this trend develop. My guess is that we have just begun to discover the ways in which this will change what is possible for those who develop this “language” and what will be lost to those who do not.