“Until” is Now

Like an annoying relative that comes for a weekend visit and stays for three months, what we thought was temporary has become life as we know it. Six weeks ago, statements like…

• When things get back to normal,
• I’m doing this until,
• We found a workaround, and
• This is only temporary  

…were logical and expected explanations. As the Covid-19 pandemic gains new ground and economic uncertainty takes on alarming dimensions, professionals committed to success recognize that much of what was judged temporary has become the way we now live and work.

More than ever, executives must lead forward, not around. It is time to replace temporary plans implemented in May with strategies that chart a course for 9 or 12 months, or even longer. Businesses and those who lead them can no longer afford to engage with customers or employees using an “until things get back to normal” mindset. This is normal and leaders face the responsibility of creating agile plans that create a path for growth and achievement with the assumption circumstances will not change dramatically for the foreseeable future. The past three months have shown us that, in many cases, the model of work and engagement used in the past is not necessary and, in some environments, not viable.

Leaders will benefit from helping people embrace four new dynamics we can’t ignore.

How We Talk

Mindsets drive language. How a leader views a crisis defines how the leader responds to and speaks in the crisis. While there is a heightened need to invest time in showing empathy and care when connecting with video-fatigued employees, it’s time to stop beginning calls with a review of the latest cycle of bad news. Without turning on the sunshine pump and ignoring the magnitude of the situation, leaders can choose words that convey confidence, courage, and hope—while remaining firmly anchored in reality. Shorter and more frequent connections with teams and clients will improve effectiveness. If a phone call will work—use it to reduce video overload.

Where We Work

It’s time to move beyond conducting team and client video conferences from a setting that shouts “this is the corner in the house I claimed.” If what is behind you when you are on-camera doesn’t look professional, invest in a $50 green screen or black backdrop from Amazon. If lighting doesn’t provide a clear view of your face, invest another 50 bucks in some small video lights. If your laptop’s camera is grainy, order a high-definition video camera. Demand may require that you pay twice or three times the normal price, but the investment is worth it. And while you’re at it, improve eye contact on video calls by looking into the lens of your camera rather than at the screen.

How We Engage

Rather than fighting the digitization of job functions and the expansion of AI, leaders can help people let technology do what it does best—free people to do what technology can’t do. Technology isn’t designed to make people feel heard, understood, respected, and valued—the four driving needs of every human on the planet. People do that. Leaders do that. The current environment gives leaders—and those they lead the unprecedented opportunity to transform their roles to provide greater value than being purveyors of data and information.

On the client side, give clients what they need while you wait for them to need what you sell. Clients are struggling to find a path to the future as well. They need expertise, new insights, and connections with other leaders that can help them determine the best path forward. Keep researching your client’s business and their clients’ needs. Use your expertise to help clients become better thought leaders in their industries. Are you wishing you could take a client to lunch? Ask them where they like to eat in the city where they live and order lunch to be delivered to their house. Do the same for yourself and enjoy the virtual business lunch together. It may be a long time before you enjoy the luxury of a meal in a restaurant or your business club.

To be continued…

Listen, Learn, Lead

The words “listen” and “silent” use the exact same letters.

Hostage and crisis negotiators are taught that a barricaded person or hostage taker will generally move between two styles of behavior. When showing instrumental behavior, the subject presents a list of demands and defined objectives that will benefit the person. Expressive behavior communicates the subject’s passion, despair, anger, or other feelings. The only way a negotiator can deescalate a volatile situation and guide a negotiation to a successful resolution is by using active listening to determine what the person wants and what the person wants someone to hear.

Words like hear and listen are slippery. We use them so often their meanings become blurred, so when we encounter them in conversation, we slide past them to the next idea. When we hear, we perceive a sound. When listening, we give attention to the sound. In a hostage situation, the difference between perceiving and giving attention can be literally, life and death. In a business context, the impact of choosing to hear and not listen may be less immediate, but it is no-less perilous.

The bad news about leading people is you don’t get to pick your crisis or choose when it happens. And crises have a nasty way of not waiting for one to pass before a second hits. A health pandemic, an economic tsunami, painful decisions about business survival, and the impact of long-standing social inequities have arrived at the door of every leader—and these challenges will not be ignored. Listening is quickly becoming a force multiplier.

Most communication courses focus on better presenting, not better listening. But talking before listening, perpetuates the malady captured by Swiss psychologist Paul Tournier 30 years ago when he said, “Listen to all the conversations of our world, between nations as well as between individuals. They are, for the most part, dialogues of the deaf.” 

A leader that wants to effectively lead through the smorgasbord of crises currently facing corporate executives will refuse to hide in a dialogue of the deaf and will leverage three tools that turn conversation into communication.

Ask for the opinion you don’t want to hear. Andy Stanley is right—”Leaders who don’t listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say.” In a moment of crisis, a leader is tempted to seclude him or herself in an inner circle of close relationships that generally align with the leader’s thinking. Leaders that find a solid path through a crisis promote with their teams and across their organizations, the psychological safety that encourages desperately needed cognitive diversity. An effective crisis leader possesses the self-security that welcomes opinions and ideas that challenge and reveal inadequacies in commonly and even widely-held beliefs.

Seek understanding before a solution. Stephen Covey insightfully taught that, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply . . . reading their autobiography into other people’s lives.” A leader that effectively traverses the unanticipated is someone that stops saying, “I understand,” and says instead, “Help me understand.” When people in an organization show anemic enthusiasm for a proposed solution, it is often because they aren’t convinced leadership is fixing the real problem. Symptoms are noisy. Root causes often are not. The only way to get past the noise of symptoms is by taking the time to fully understand what problem demands a solution.

Pursue and speak only the truth. One senior leader discovered as he inherited greater responsibilities, he also acquired a group of people whose jobs appeared to be keeping the truth from landing on the leader’s desk. This wise executive assembled a clandestine network of people he could call to tell him what was really happening across the organization he led. While the truth does set one free, that doesn’t mean the truth is easy to hear, that truth never hurts, that it results in a pleasant ending, or that telling the truth solves the problem. In some cases, stating the truth creates more problems. The leader that guides people through a crisis accepts that while discovering the truth can bring pain, it is much preferred to the agony that comes when the truth finds you.

The tragedy of this entire discussion is that many crises could be avoided if someone had led effectively from the start. The leader that guides people through an unexpected crisis is usually someone who is already leading in a way that prevents or avoids a calamity. Leaders rarely get the opportunity to choose their crises. They always get to choose what they will do in a crisis. Their priority in a crisis is to listen—deliberately, carefully, and openly.

Zoomed Out!

When Ozzie and Harriet were giving us our first taste of reality TV, everybody loved Lucy, and Alfred Hitchcock scared the daylights out of us every week, Zoom was what you ate, not what you did. In the era of classic television and sugar-saturated cereals like Sugar Smacks, Sugar Pops, and Frosty O’s, Zoom was a healthy alternative full of whole grain wheat and disgusting stuff your mother said was good for you.

Fast forward 65 years and a company that launched in 2011 as Saasbee is making Zoom a vital link between millions of people wanting to be productive and connected in a world of life by video. In the ever-changing dynamic of a COVID-19 marketplace, Zoom is also providing the medium for a new phenomenon that didn’t exist six weeks ago … Zoom fatigue.

When people look for ways to avoid a video conference, pass on potential business conversations because the meeting is by video, or tell friends gathered for an online chat that the conversation is their 10th hour on Zoom that day, the situation is worth consideration. While still only vaguely defined, Zoom fatigue is gaining legitimacy through articles in Psychology Today, National Geographic, and Harvard Business Review.

Video overload is driven by a long list of factors including –

Intensified Focus – Engaging with people in a video platform requires more focus than routine meetings in a conference room. If you look at your phone or read a document in an office meeting, no one notices. Look away in a video call-even to take notes, and all the faces in the Hollywood Squares grid see you and wonder what you’re doing. One writer states the brain stress of looking at a dozen faces at once is like trying to watch 12 television programs at the same time.

Loss of Connection – May people are feeling relationally estranged after weeks of separation. A quick survey on LinkedIn found the loss of energy from being in a room together and the absence of handshakes and hugs is a noteworthy loss. While video telephony provides a vehicle for communication, those mini-second delays create a truncated process, at best. As one LinkedIn responder noted, free-flowing in-person conversations aren’t normally punctuated with, “Sorry, go ahead.”

Lack of Leader Visibility – In a world of Zoom, Teams, and WebEx there are no unplanned leader interactions. A large part of an executive’s day is filled with valuable conversations that begin with, “Do you have a second?” and happen in a hallway or by the coffee machine. Now, every interaction is planned, scheduled, and intentional. While a virtual world enables business, it also eliminates those moments when a senior leader can stop by the cafeteria and informally interact with any group of employees grabbing a meal at the same time.

Absence of Boundaries – Many who joke about living at the office now do. Spouses, kids, and pets are now co-workers. Colleagues and bosses that don’t have a history of respecting personal boundaries may respect them less now. Requests to “jump on a call after supper” that might have been negotiated in the past are harder to resist when 14% of the population is looking for a job. People with kids at home want to show the team that even with managing schoolwork, they are in the game 100 percent. They may find it hard to draw a line and say, “I’m sorry, that time is already committed.”

If you ask Google how to overcome this new effect, you get about 900,000 responses. Here are several you can try-

Make breaks as intentional as your meetings. A day of video calls is not the same as a day of meetings. Life by video equates to more hours in a chair than normal and the chair is probably not the ergonomic wonder you have at the office. Moving between offices and conference rooms is gone. You biggest walk now is to the bathroom or the kitchen. Give you brain and your body a break. Every call doesn’t have to begin at the top or bottom of the hour. Schedule calls so you can pause your brain and stretch your muscles. Fully dress so you can get up and move during a call without being embarrassed. And if your pet walks into your office, letting him jump into your lap may be the moment of levity everyone needs.

Shut off the camera. Just because you can use video doesn’t mean you should. Most people aren’t used to looking at themselves during meetings. They are hyper-critical of their appearance (especially those needing a haircut or color) and they feel like they are on stage as much as on a call. If you don’t need to share a document or see the person, as the day wears on, cut the camera or use the phone.

Manage your mental diet. Unprecedented is a frequent description of the current environment and social media enables every well-informed expert and half-loaded nut case to offer equally convincing explanations about what’s going on. If you get a moment free at your desk, it’s tempting to scan a news outlet or social media platform only to rediscover that bad press spreads faster than good news-unless you are John Krasinski’s SGN program. If you are eating a lot of junk your body is feeling it. If you are loading your brain with negativity both your brain and your body are going to hurt. Intentionally engage with people or sources that are anchored in reality-while staying fueled by optimism.

The COVID-19 business environment isn’t temporary and wise leaders will find ways to manage themselves and their teams to get things done without zoning out. Leverage the technology without losing your mind.

When Hope Becomes a Strategy

An over-used axiom and the title of a popular book says, “Hope is not a strategy.” Under normal circumstances, that may be true. In a time of global crisis, hope may be all you have.

How well do you remember what we were talking about in January? A scan of USA Today tells us the Dow was up, the Dow was down, Puerto Rico had an earthquake, and Ricky Gervais did whatever Ricky does at the Golden Globes. That was all in the first week of the year.

When the majority of people in the country are forced to refocus attention on the first two rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy (physiological and safety needs), what caught our attention at the start of the year is quickly eclipsed by matters of, literally, life and death. We’re tired of frightening headlines, quarantines, self-isolation, social distancing, avoiding people who obviously cannot estimate what six feet looks like, and dodging people in stores who believe a mask, gloves, and a grocery cart make them invincible. Millions of people who thought zoom meant to move fast have discovered a virtual lifeline on the meeting platform. Dining rooms all over the country have become make-shift offices or classrooms. On the up-side, families have had more conversations over cooked-at-home meals in the last three weeks than they normally have in months.

While we are happy to see toilet paper and a bag of flour reappearing on grocery shelves, we’re ready for a disease we knew little about four months ago to stop sucking life, energy, and hope out of the economy and our lives. After weeks of small wins and major losses, difficult circumstances, and repeated disappointments, it is tempting to pack hope in a box in the attic of your mind and think that the worst that could happen might be the best that will happen. Doom and Gloom become your jogging buddies as you sadly realize that the pound of chocolate you stress-ate mysteriously turned into five pounds of something when you stepped on the scale.

In 1936, Václav Havel was born into one of the wealthiest and most influential families in Prague. His grandfather was a leader in the arts, and his uncle’s work laid the foundation for the Czech film industry. Following the 1948 communist coup, Havel’s family lost most of its wealth. A gifted author and playwright, Havel was a banned writer after his condemnation of the Warsaw Pact invasion. In 1977, he was charged with trying to subvert the state, and in 1979, sentenced to four years in jail. Ten years later, he was again incarcerated, this time for standing in the street. During long nights in prison, Havel could not have imagined that he would one day emerge as the central figure of the Velvet Revolution and become the first president of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.

Repeatedly slammed by discouragement, defeat, and the brusque unfairness of life, Havel continued to pursue his dream of a better future for himself and his nation. He learned to see beyond his current circumstances, refusing to allow the realities of the present to dim his convictions about the future. While speaking at the Hiroshima Memorial in 1995, Havel shared a message that articulated the beliefs that kept him pressing forward after hitting wall after wall of opposition.

“Many times in my life and not just when I was in prison, I found myself in a situation in which everything seemed to conspire against me, when nothing I wished for or worked for seemed likely to succeed … Whenever I found myself immersed in such melancholy thoughts I would ask myself a very simple question over and over again, ‘Why don’t you just give up on everything?’ … Each time, I would eventually realize that hope, in the deepest sense of the word, does not come from the outside, that hope is not something to be found in external indications simply when a course of action may turn out well, nor is it something I have no reason to feel when it is obvious that nothing will turn out well … hope is a state of mind, and we either have it, or we don’t, quite independently of the state of affairs immediately around us … Indeed, only the infinite and the eternal, recognized or surmised, can explain the no less mysterious phenomenon of hope … I do not know of a single case in which there is a genuine acceptance of some bitter personal fate … which can be explained by anything other than humankind’s sense of something that transcends earthly gratification.”

While we haven’t been given the option to choose many recent events and circumstances, we have not lost the opportunity and ability to choose our responses. Positive thinking doesn’t ignore reality in a quest for a sunny view of life. Mature, healthy thinking looks reality in the face and chooses to embrace hope, while taking practical steps to find a way through the immediate crisis.

Difficulties in life are not dispersed through a merit system. Unexpected events often bring unwanted adjustments. As a leader, one of the valuable roles you play in the lives of the people you lead-even when you work from home is demonstrating genuine hope – a hope you choose, that tomorrow will be better than today. Take advantage of every opportunity to provide a realistic and hope-filled assessment of the present and the future.

Branding Lessons from the Nicest Guy in the Neighborhood

Conventional wisdom tells us building a brand demands comprehensive market analysis, a thorough knowledge of the competition, and constant reassessment to ensure the brand position remains strong.

What do you do with a guy who held a very simplistic view of his market, rarely gave his competition any consideration, and successfully engaged with his audience using the same format for over 30 years?

When Fred Rogers died in 2003 at age 74, he left a legacy of 33 seasons on television, 895 programs, and generations of children who journeyed through early childhood listening to a man who built a brand out of being kind and convincing his audience, “There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you, just the way you are.”

Fred Rogers was a uniquely gifted and extremely talented performer as well as a highly successful business professional. At his peak in the 1980’s, Rogers was watched by 10 percent of American households. His quiet, yet very visible life offers valuable lessons in personal branding.

You can’t pick where you begin; you choose where you go.
Born into one of the wealthiest families in Pittsburg, Fred Rogers was a pudgy kid chauffeured to and from school, and frequently bullied for being who he was. Rogers leveraged the benefits of affluence to fund his early efforts in children’s television and to create the financial stability that allowed him to take risks without fear of personal financial disaster. Rather than using his father’s connections to begin his career at the top, Rogers relied on his dad’s help to get his first job after college working as an apprentice in production at NBC.

Authenticity is your greatest competitive edge.
Fred Rogers rarely watched television and paid little attention to competing children’s programs. He was interested in creating the best programming possible-not doing something better than a competitor. Anyone meeting Rogers in person quickly realized the Mr. Rogers appearing on television wasn’t a character, he was Fred. The same Fred that was married for over 50 years, raised two sons, and would keep a union production crew waiting in a studio while he stopped to interact with a child he met on the street. As biographer Maxwell King described it, “Fred Rogers was so intent on shaping a good program that he didn’t even think about portraying a character-he was just Fred being Fred.”
Rogers was not a saint. As the creator, chief scriptwriter, producer, songwriter, singer, puppeteer, and host of one of the most popular shows on television Rogers had “a strong will and determined focus.” He could be stubborn and tended to be self-absorbed. He had no time for phoniness in an adult and the fastest way to see his anger was by deliberately misleading a child.

Kindness is not weakness.
Fred Rogers believed with all his being that, “human kindness will always make life better.” As he built Family Communications, the non-profit organization that produced Mister Rogers Neighborhood, people severely underestimated the benign man with a quiet voice. Beneath his gentle manner was a core of steel and keen business instincts learned from observing a father and grandfather who built successful companies in the steel industry. As a fierce defender of the quality of his program Rogers once engaged in a contentious meeting with two associates after which one said, “I wonder at what age Fred no longer likes you just the way you are?”
In 1969, President Richard Nixon wanted to cut proposed funding for public television by $10 million to fund the Vietnam war. During the hearings determining the fate of PBS, Senator John Pastore heard little to convince him to keep the budget-until Fred Rogers spoke. Pastore said Rogers’ testimony gave him “goose bumps” and let the public television budget remain intact.

Keep playing to your strengths.
Rogers once said, “You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.” (p.227) In 1975 he forgot his own counsel and ended Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, feeling he had covered everything he needed to discuss with children. He wanted to talk to the adults in the families where he had made friends since 1954. But Old Friends . . . New Friends revealed that Rogers didn’t have the formula for creating compelling adult television and after four years, he was looking for new funding for the next iteration of Mister Rogers Neighborhood. The program ran in its new format for another 20 years.

Staying healthy isn’t an excuse for ignoring your health.
From age 40 through the end of his life, Rogers began nearly every day with 30 minutes of swimming. His strict exercise routine and vegetarian diet (he couldn’t comprehend eating anything that had a mother) enabled him to maintain a weight of 143 pounds most of his adult life.
But his commitment to health caused Rogers to ignore the stomach upsets occurring over several years. He finally agreed to an endoscopy in October 2002 and it revealed advanced stomach cancer. Rogers had promised to be one of the grand marshals for the Rose Parade in January, so he delayed treatment. His first surgery required removal of his entire stomach. Rogers died a few months later-perhaps much earlier than if he had listened to his body.

Never stop learning or building the capacity to learn in others.
Through his entire life, Fred Rogers maintained a child’s level of curiosity about the world which undoubtedly enhanced his ability to communicate with children. Rogers believed social and emotional learning are more important in the first few years of human life than cognitive learning. He focused on developing self-discipline in children rather than imposing it from outside, teaching them to be accountable for their own actions. Rogers always wanted to develop the people around him.

Many emerging leaders in companies across the country were proteges of Fred Rogers. One can hope as they build and lead enterprises, they will remember the wise counsel of the man who branded kindness.
“There are three ways to ultimate success:
The first way is to be kind.
The second way is to be kind.
The third way is to be kind.” (Fred Rogers)

Brands, Risks, and Dragons

Innovation and re-invention are inherently risk-driven propositions. Taking an organization, or yourself from where you are to where you want (or need) to be demands valuing ambiguity, a level of comfort with the unknown, and embracing the unavoidable risk woven into every change. The turnover of companies on the Fortune 500 list over the past decade underscores that managing a brand from a posture of protection rather than expansion is a proven path to obsolescence.

Medieval cartographers made a practice of including illustrations of mythological creatures like dragons and sea monsters on the uncharted areas of maps-especially locations far out to sea. The perils were unknown, and the risks were great, so early map-makers labeled these alien places with the characteristic phrase, “here be dragons.”

If you aren’t embracing the dragons of risk with your brand you aren’t building your brand. By avoiding risk, you face a greater probability of becoming stagnant and irrelevant in the circle in which you operate. Whether an enterprise or an individual, if history is any indication, markets and market influencers are far more understanding of a brand that grapples with evolution and reinvention than they are of a brand that remains safely cocooned in a world of sterile self-protection.

No stranger to embracing if not pursuing risk, Elon Musk grabbed fate by the throat when introducing his electric Cybertruck to the market. Musk knows a brand doesn’t get noticed by presenting the expected, promoting the mundane, and promising staid predictability. During the introduction, the vehicle withstood a sledgehammer to the body and guests watched a slow-motion video of a bullet bouncing off the exterior as well. Musk’s’ effort to demonstrate the truck’s shatter-proof glass resulted in glass shattering onto the seats and egg trying – but failing – to land on Elon’s face. The unplanned mishap did little to deter excitement at the event. The brand-builder took a risk and the market largely applauded with approval.

On a broader scale, Forrester’s recently-released research titled The Future of Organizations underscores the market demand for brands that move beyond protection to innovation noting that, “. . . in today’s customer-led and disruption-rich market, most organizations are proving to be slow, rigid, and culturally tone-deaf. Designed on the principles of stability, accountability, and control, they protect entrenched politics and create hard-walled, politically laden silos, long decision cycles, and disjointed customer experiences that stymie change – and frustrate customers.”

As you plan for 2020, allotting time to calculate some well-planned risks is a prudent investment. Perhaps it’s time for a change in industry. Maybe you should consider a move to a division or team where you aren’t well-known, and you don’t understand that part of the business well. The greatest risk you might take could be choosing to interact with your colleagues with more candor and engage in the conflict that will help you lead your part of the organization to new levels of productivity and profitability.

Dragons in uncharted waters are no reason to stay in port. As William Shedd wisely reminded us, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”