GovernmentExecutive.com

For most Americans, cycling's annual 15 minutes of fame has come and gone with Sunday's conclusion of this year's Tour de France. In case you missed it, this year's winner was Spain's Alberto Contador. Finishing third and making a comeback after a three and a half year retirement was the seven time winner Lance Armstrong. One thing that made the race more interesting than usual this year was that Contador and Armstrong were on the same team although you'd never have known that from the way they're sniping at each other now.

In a post race press conference, Contador said, "My relationship with Lance is zero.  He is a great rider and has completed a great race, but it is another thing on a personal level, where I have never had great admiration for him and I never will."

Armstrong fired back on his Twitter account. Quoting the tweet, "Seeing these comments from AC (Alberto Contador). If I were him I'd drop this drivel and start thanking his team. Without them, he doesn't win."

Snap and double snap.

I'll acknowledge that I know next to nothing about the sport of cycling. I do, however, find the leadership aspects of the sport pretty intriguing. As you probably know, guys like Armstrong and Contador win their races with the support of teammates who provide offense and defense for them throughout the event. It's sort of amazing that Contador and Armstrong came in first and third as members of the same team. That seems like one heck of an achievement and one worth celebrating.

Instead, the post race attention is on a clash of egos and arguments about who should have been the designated leader of the team.

I think there are two broader lessons from this story that leaders in any field can apply. The first is drawn from Johan Bruyneel, the manager of their team. What should he have done to get Contador and Armstrong on the same page? From the press accounts, it sounds like the two superstars barely spoke to each other over the three weeks of the Tour. Shouldn't the job of a manager (any manager) be to facilitate communication and cooperation among the stars on the team? I think so.

The second lesson is an illustration of one of the most common causes of conflict on a team. When the roles and responsibilities of the team members aren't clear, you're setting yourself up for a clash.  That's even more the case when big egos are at play. The manager's  job is to make sure that the roles and responsibilities are understood and everyone knows how they fit in. Over the course of the Tour, the daily drama was who going to cede to who - Contador or Armstrong? Shouldn't they have figured this out ahead of time?

There's more to it than that obviously, but I think those are two reasonable places to start on looking for leadership lessons in this year's Tour. I'm sure that some of the Next Level readers are both serious fans of cycling and students of leadership. What's your take on the way things played out between Contador and Armstrong?

Let me say from the outset, that this is one of those posts that I've debated writing. Let me also say what I'm not writing about. I'm not writing about racial profiling or who was right or wrong in the situation of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates being handcuffed and arrested by Cambridge, Mass. police officer Crowley in his home last week. You've probably heard the story by now that after returning to his home from a trip, Gates and his cab driver were jimmying a stuck door to get into the house. A neighbor who observed them working on the door called the police. After Gates was in his house, Officer Crowley arrived and asked Gates for his ID. This is the point at which their stories diverge in terms of who did or said what. One thing that is clear, however, is that the situation escalated to the point that Gates was led out of his house in handcuffs.

The key phrase for me is that last sentence is "the situation escalated." I've been doing a lot of reading on this case the past couple of days and have been surprised that I've seen nothing on the role that one or more amygdala hijacks likely played in the scene at Gates' house. If you're not familiar with this phrase, I believe it was first developed by Daniel Goleman the author of Emotional Intelligence and many other books on the topic. The amygdala is a small part of the brain located just above the spinal cord that stores emotional memories, particularly those associated with fear. It's where the fight or flight response resides. If you're in a situation that feels threatening to your physical being or your ego, it's the amygdala that stimulates your reaction to either fight or get out the heck out of there. The fight or flight response was probably really useful for our prehistoric ancestors who had to deal with the occasional sabre tooth tiger. It's usually not a particularly useful response in today's world. When the amygdala kicks in the adrenaline surge it releases can overpower or hijack the logical, critical thinking skills that come from the brain's frontal cortex.

Given the tense situation at Gates' house and the outcome that resulted, it's not hard to imagine that one or probably both of the men involved suffered from some form of amygdala hijack. We're all going to find ourselves in situations where we're going to feel threatened from time to time so what can we do to prevent a reaction that leads us to say or do something that ends badly? Here are a few tips:

• Mental preparation: Sometimes we know in advance that we're going to be in a conversation or a situation that is likely to set us off. In those cases, it's a good idea to take some time in advance to ask yourself, "What am I trying to do in this situation and how do I need to show up to make that outcome likely? How do I want to respond when that person does something that pushes my anger button?" By thinking it through in advance you're using your frontal cortex and are preparing it to help keep your amygdala in check.
• Notice your physical reaction: Sometimes we don't have time to prepare, we're just suddenly presented with a situation that makes us feel threatened in some way. When threatened or angered, most people have physical cues that they're headed down that path. It could be a tightening of your jaw, a flush feeling in your face, your vocal cords tightening up or something else. If you notice that, it's a cue to step back and move on to the next tip which is...
• Breathe deeply and intentionally: This actually oxygenates your brain in a way that will reduce the effect of the chemicals stimulated by the amygdala and give your frontal cortex a chance to operate more normally.
• State what's happening: If you can either say out loud or to yourself, "I'm getting angry here," you put yourself into more of a role of self-observer rather than actor. It can be easier to make thoughtful choices about what to do next if you can decouple yourself from being the actor.
• Try to see the other person as a person rather than a threat: Once you've decoupled a little bit, ask yourself a few questions about the other person. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? What do they want? Shifting over to their perspective will get you out of your own reactive mode and will put you in a better position to solve the problem.

Last week, I sent out one of my periodic newsletters, which featured my recent blog post on leadership lessons from the Boss, Bruce Springsteen. That article prompted a note from Rich Beach, a director at IT services provider CGI and an alumnus of our Next Level Leadership™ group coaching program. In addition to being a smart and interesting guy, it turns out that Rich is also a great writer and quite the rock and roll aficionado. In his note, he shared with me one more leadership story about Springsteen and a lesson from the Beatles about getting the right people on the bus.

So, with his permission, and in his own words, here's Rich Beach with two really cool leadership lessons from the history of rock and roll. Thanks Rich!

OK you hooked me in with your Springsteen theme. I'm not a huge fan, although I was back in the day (mid 70s) when the Boss was still hungry and touring college campuses like crazy. I read somewhere that in those early days Springsteen took his band to see a Detroit band called Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels - an act that was known for its legendary stage act. His point was to drill into his band that his vision was to be "just like those guys". Another example of great leadership.

Another rock story I like to tell is about the Beatles' drummer, Ringo. Lots of people like to say that Ringo was the "lucky Beatle" who found himself in the right place at the right time and got to ride the "fame train" with marginal talent. I beg to differ. The Beatles in their formative period were gigging constantly in Germany and Liverpool, and they rose to the top in a Liverpool music scene that was cluttered with hundreds of talented local bands. But when they hooked up with their manager Brian Epstein and their producer George Martin, they were instructed to fire their drummer and replace him with someone more talented. Ringo was at the time known to be the drummer on the Liverpool scene - he was a great drummer who was also serving as "front man" for one set a night in a band called "Rory and the Hurricanes" - so the Beatles went out and got the best. Within two months they were sitting on top of the world....with a markedly improved backbeat laid down by a seasoned pro with charisma and stage presence who fit in perfectly. Another great management decision!"

For the past several months, the New York Times has been running interviews on leadership with the CEO's of well known organizations. They're almost always interesting. Sometimes I agree with the points they make, sometimes I learn something new and, honestly, sometimes I find myself wondering, "How did this person become a CEO?" The latest Times interview subject is Dave Novak, CEO of Yum Brands. I think it's the best one in the series so far.

To counteract the karma of my last post about how terrible leadership helped blow up AIG, I thought I'd share seven thoughts from Dave Novak on how to be a great leader along with a tip from me on how to follow through on that thought. The bold face points are direct quotes from Novak, my accompanying tip is in plain face type:

If you have someone who's smart, talented, aggressive and wants to learn, then your job is to help them become all they can be. When you think back on your own development as a leader, you probably grew the most through big stretch assignments that took you out of your comfort zone. Look for and create opportunities for your best people to be even better by asking them to lead new initiatives or fix important things that are broken.

The best leaders are really pattern thinkers. Build your capacity for seeing the bigger picture by doing three things. 1.Get into the habit of regularly asking yourself, "What are we really trying to do here?" 2. Question your assumptions. 3. Read outside your area of responsibility or expertise and look for insights that can be applied to your work.

If you're the leader, you've got to provide the coaching. Coaching is about asking questions, not giving the answers. Accelerate the development of your best people by asking questions like, "What did you learn from this?" Help them process the lessons they can learn from experience and determine how to apply those lessons going forward.

Make sure that you're focusing on action versus activity. Think about the outcomes you're trying to create over the course of the year and then reverse engineer back from that to determine the actions that are most likely to lead to the results you want. Share this approach with your team and coach them to continually assess whether their involved in actions or activities.

No one's going to care about you unless you care about them. It's all too easy for results oriented leaders to overlook the importance of connecting with people. Make it a habit to open a meeting or conversation with a couple of questions about the other person. Learn what's important to them and look for ways to act on that.

You care enough to give them direct feedback. As Novak suggests in his interview and Ken Blanchard recommends in the The One Minute Manager, start your feedback with what they're doing that you appreciate. Tell them what the positive impact is of their action. Then connect your developmental feedback to how it will help both them and the organization be even more effective.

When you're the leader, people want to see you. The larger the leadership role, the more demands there are on your time. I encourage leaders to think about their communications and visibility strategies as both retail and wholesale opportunities. Retail visibility is in person and usually one on one or in small groups. Wholesale visibility makes use of large group meetings and technology (e.g. web conferencing, video and teleconferencing, blogging, Twitter, etc.) to consistently get key messages out and maintain dialogue with a broader audience.

There was a lot more wisdom in Novak's comments than there is space in a short blog post to cover them. Take a look at it and let me know a couple of things. What are your taking away from the Novak interview? What thoughts or tips would you add to the list of what great leaders do and how to do it?

If you're looking for a textbook example of how to be a dangerously ineffective leader, look no further than the great writer Michael Lewis' article, "The Man Who Crashed the World," in the current issue of Vanity Fair. It's the story of a guy named Joseph Cassano who ran AIG Financial Products from the end of 2001 to 2008 when his unit helped crash the global economy. Based on reporting he undertook after receiving a few phone calls from a former AIG FP trader, Lewis details what can happen when what he calls a "cartoon despot" ends up running something important. It's an amazing article and worth your time. If you want my Cliff Notes version of how to lead your team to a $182 billion loss, read on.

What most people probably don't realize is that AIG Financial Products began in 1987 and, for 15 years, managed risk in a reasonable way by insuring the debt of blue chip firms like IBM and GE. Under Cassano, AIG FP moved into insuring subprime mortgages to the point where those mortgages represented 95% of the company's portfolio. To simplify a complex story, people below Cassano started to see huge impending problems with this but could not get him to listen to them.

This was the pattern that had been established by Cassano over his years heading the unit. His game was to bully, scream and intimidate his staff into submission and then make sure they were very well compensated to incentivize them to put up with him. Here's one paragraph from Lewis' article in which people who worked for Cassano explained what it was like to work for him:

"The culture changed," says a third. "The fear level was so high that when we had these morning meetings you presented what you did not to upset him. And if you were critical of the organization, all hell would break loose." Says a fourth, "Joe always said, 'This is my company. You work for my company.' He'd see you with a bottle of water. He'd come over and say, 'That's my water.' Lunch was free, but Joe always made you feel he had bought it." And a fifth: "Under Joe the debate and discussion that was common under Tom [Savage] ceased. I would say what I'm saying to you. But with Joe over my shoulder as the audience." A sixth: "The way you dealt with Joe was to start everything by saying, 'You're right, Joe.'"

Just in this one excerpt we have a succinct list of what insecure, lousy leaders need to do if they want to destroy their teams and their organizations:

• Intimidate people
• Yell at them
• Encourage them to walk on eggshells with you
• Conflate your ego and the organization
• Discourage dissent
• Make money or job security the only incentive to stay

When I'm working with a group of leaders (as I was yesterday), I usually ask them to think of the best and worst leaders they've ever worked for and then give me short words or phrases to describe that person. It's interesting that there is almost always a lot more energy around the characteristics of the worst boss. They usually sound a lot like the list for Cassano. It's sad, but I guess the good news is that most bad bosses don't have the leverage on the economy that he did.

If you're feeling depressed at this point, tune in Friday for an example of a boss from whom we can learn some positive lessons. In the meantime, what's your best advice for dealing with a boss like Joe Cassano? Most people have had or will have one like him at some point. What's the best strategy for survival or better when you have one?

Any executive who has ever been charged with leading a turnaround has to empathize at some level with President Obama. How would you like to be accountable for two wars, a shaky economy, fixing the health care system and dealing with Iran and North Korea - all at once? If you've led a turnaround, you know that the flood of issues can overwhelm you and make you more than a little frantic. The image I have in mind is the little Dutch boy trying to plug his fingers into all the holes leaking water from the dike.

Regular readers know that I'm an Obama supporter, but I'm beginning to worry (as is Colin Powell) that he's trying to plug too many holes at once. As he travelled to Russia, Italy and Ghana last week, Obama needed to take time out to walk back comments from Vice President Biden on the economy and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on health care reform. You just get the sense of someone who is trying to keep too many plates spinning.

At the beginning of a two week period when his biggest issue, health care reform, is coming to a head in Congress, (hold on, maybe not) Obama is keynoting an all day summit on America's cities. Not that cities aren't important, but can't this wait a bit longer while the bigger rocks are addressed? As the Washington Post reports, White House staffers are showing the physical strain from the 24/7 pace they're on. I'm guessing the mental strain isn't far behind.

Obviously turning around a company or an individual government agency is simpler than leading the whole country, but I think there was a good lesson for the President and all leaders in a turnaround situation hidden away in the Business section of Sunday's New York Times. The subject of one of their "How I Got Here" interviews was Mark Ordan, the CEO of assisted care company, Sunrise Senior Living. Having a couple of friends who used to work for Sunrise in its glory days, I know personally that the company is going through a very rough patch these days. It's a classic turnaround situation and here's what Ordan has to say about how he's spent his time and attention since he came to the company in March 2008:

"This past March, we restated the earnings and explored the possibility of bankruptcy. Still pending is a federal securities inquiry targeting Sunrise's accounting, which could continue for some time ... In June, HCP Inc., which owns the retirement communities we manage, said it would be seeking to end some of our management contracts -- another challenge that could last for years.

So far, we have avoided bankruptcy by divesting everything that isn't our core retirement community business, and I'm keeping the company on a steady course in the midst of a lot of turbulence."

Ordan seems to understand that if you're leading a turnaround, you've got to prioritize. It's the old story that if you want to fill up a jar with lots of different size rocks, you but the big ones in first and then fill in the spaces with the smaller rocks. This story presumes, however, that you have identified the big rocks first. That seems like one of the most important tasks for anyone leading a turnaround - deciding what's a big rock and what's not.

One of the many fun things I get to do in my work is serving as a faculty member of the Leadership Coaching Certificate Program at Georgetown University. Last month, I had the pleasure of reading through some great papers by the current group of students offering their best ideas for developing the practice of leadership. I was particularly intrigued by a practice shared by Susan Palmer, an attorney and educator from Vermont who's next act will be centered on leadership coaching. It's what she calls finger painting meditations. With her gracious consent, I want to share with you what that's all about and a couple of her own creations that really grabbed me.

Regular readers of this blog know that I am a devotee of the work of Ron Heifetz and his idea that leaders regularly need to get off the dance floor and onto the balcony to observe the bigger picture. This idea is very similar to one that Susan cited in her paper. In their book, Leadership Agility, Bill Joseph and Steve Joiner contend that the essence of being an adaptive leader is reflective action which they describe as "a process of stepping back from your current focus in a way that allows you to make wiser decisions and then fully engage in what needs to be done next."

Sometimes stepping back really does mean stepping back and that's where Susan's finger painting meditations come into the picture. Her suggestion for leaders who want to build their capacity around reflective action is to spend ten dollars on some finger paints and paper and take some time once a week to unplug and create. Specifically, Susan suggests that you set up your materials on a table, stand up, use both hands and start painting. When you're done, give your picture a title and then step back and notice how you feel about it.

So, let me acknowledge here that I haven't tried this yet but I promise I'm going to. In the meantime, here are a couple of my favorite works by Susan that she shared with me as examples of her own finger painting meditations. As I said to her earlier this week, just looking at her work was meditative for me. I found myself getting lost in the colors and the patterns. So, I've already benefitted from the practice without even getting my fingers messy!

Here's a request and a question for you. Request: If you've enjoyed Susan's work, let her know by leaving a comment. Question: What practice or routine do you follow to step back from your current focus?

As a 48-year old, I am too young to have a first hand recollection of the role that former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara played in shaping the Vietnam War. As a student of leadership and history, I've been fascinated to read the many different obituaries, articles and editorials that have been written about the man since he died earlier this week. They range from sympathetic (as an example, see this interview with George McGovern on Politico ) to reflective (for instance, David Ignatius' column in the Washington Post) to angry (Bob Herbert's column in the New York Times is one example).

Of all the articles I've read on McNamara, the most comprehensive is the front page piece by Thomas Lippman in the Washington Post. With respect and acknowledgment to those who experienced Vietnam as young adults, here are a few lessons that I've picked up from the life of Robert McNamara that I think leaders should keep in mind.

Subjective Information Matters at Least as Much as Objective Data: McNamara established himself through his application of statistical process control techniques to the bombing of Japan in World War II and, later, to the manufacturing process at Ford Motor Co. After his first visit to Vietnam as Defense Secretary in 1962, he famously said, "every quantitative measurement we have shows we're winning this war." What the measurements didn't account for was what McNamara himself later described as "large indigenous support" bound by "bonds of loyalty" among the Viet Cong. I think the lesson for leaders is to not be so wedded to a particular management system or methodology that you become blinded to the actual dynamics on the ground.

The Second Most Important Thing for a Leader to Say May Be, "I Made a Mistake." In 1995, 20 years after the Vietnam War ended, McNamara wrote a book in which he said that he was "wrong, terribly wrong" in his prosecution of the war. There are different points of view as to whether or not he went far enough in acknowledging the depth of his errors. What does not seem debatable is that he waited far too long to acknowledge that his policies were flawed. The record shows that McNamara had private doubts about his strategies as early as 1964 and certainly by 1966. It's beyond my realm of expertise to diagnose what kept McNamara from acting on this realization when it could have made a difference. Perhaps it's best to leave it to the words of the late journalist David Halberstam who wrote that McNamara was "a prisoner of his own background... unable, as indeed was the country who sponsored him, to adapt his values and his terms to Vietnamese realities." Perhaps a lesson for leaders here is to regularly question your assumptions and motivations when making decisions when the stakes are high.

The First Most Important Thing for a Leader to Say Might Be, "I'm Sorry." As I read the first few articles to come out after McNamara died, my initial thought was that he did a lot to redeem himself through his leadership of The World Bank in the late 1960s and 1970's. The more I read, however, the more I understood how many people are still enraged by what McNamara did on Vietnam (The Bob Herbert piece is the best example I've seen of this). I think I understand at least part of the source of the anger. As far as I can see from my reading, while McNamara eventually said he made a mistake, he never said, "I'm sorry for what I did." Clearly, there's a difference. As human beings, we can't expect perfection from others but I think we do expect an apology when we've been hurt or wronged. I wonder how those who still feel aggrieved and enraged by the decisions McNamara made would feel if he had offered a clear apology for the mistakes he said he made. Sometimes leaders need to say, "I'm sorry."

The latest Leadership Lessons podcast interview is guaranteed to go well with your grande Caramel Macchiato. My guest is Howard Behar, the former president of Starbucks Coffee Company. His book, It's Not About the Coffee is out in paperback with a new preface on leading in hard times and is available on Amazon.com.

Howard brings a unique perspective on leadership to our conversation. He joined Starbucks in 1989 as its VP of sales and operations when the company had 28 stores in the Pacific Northwest. When he retired as president in 2003, Starbucks was a ubiquitous global brand. He continued to play a role in the company's strategy as a member of the board of directors until 2008.

In preparing for my conversation with Howard, I thought it would be interesting to get his thoughts on what needs to stay the same for senior leaders and what they need to change as their organization moves from the start-up phase to rapid growth and success and now, as is the case for Starbucks and many businesses these days, retrenchment. Howard is both passionate and clear about what leaders need to focus on as well as the mistakes they must avoid as their companies change.

Click here to listen to the podcast

I'm spending a lot of time this week talking with high potential leaders in our group coaching program about the next level strengths and opportunities that are showing up in their 360-degree feedback results. The goal is to get the focus down to improving one or two behaviors that will make the biggest difference in how effective they are as a leader over the next year. One thing I've learned in coaching busy leaders is that there's a much greater chance of success if you focus your attention on one or two opportunities that could make a big difference than it is to spread your attention across five or six or even more things. My rule of thumb is if you can't remember what you're working on, then you're probably not going to get much better.

That's where the T shirt comes in.

When we do the initial debrief on the 360 in our first group session, I ask the leaders to imagine they're in the T shirt business. The way you sell T shirts is by printing clever slogans on the front and , sometimes, the back of the shirts. Of course, the slogans on the shirts have to be pretty brief to fit and the more clever they are the more shirts you're likely to sell. So, what I want the leaders to come up with is a slogan for the front of the shirt based on something they feel good about from their 360 and, on the back of the shirt, something they want to take a look at. I've heard some pretty good slogans over the past couple of years but I might have heard the best one yet in a coaching call today.

The leader is a really smart and talented woman who manages a market research function for a well known consumer services company. In summarizing her 360 feedback, she told me that the front of her T shirt should say, "I know my ABC's," and the back of the shirt should say, "but not my D's and E's."

Here's what she means by that. Her strengths as highlighted in the survey are mental Acuity, a Big picture perspective and Communication and Connection with others. The two things that she thinks she needs to work on are Delegation and Energy management. A, B, C, D and E. Pretty clever, huh? Yep, and easy to remember.

So, here's my question for you today. When it comes to the key strengths you want to leverage and the one or two things that you want to work on to be an even better leader, what's on your T shirt?