With the ongoing spate of stories about Toyota's safety recall and this week's congressional testimony by Mr. Toyoda himself, it's easy to forget that it was just a few years ago that the company was enjoying a twenty plus year run as a quality leader in the automotive industry. During that time, they expanded their operations in the United States and now, on a direct and indirect basis, employ about 170,000 Americans. In my family, we own two Toyotas and are very happy with them. My guess is the company will recover from its current crisis.

Still, there are some pretty big leadership mistakes that have been made at Toyota lately. I don't think their mistakes are unique to Toyota. As Jim Collins outlines in his latest book, How The Mighty Fall, even the most successful organization's fortunes can turn quickly. Often it is the success that established them in the first place that can lead to trouble down the road. With that idea in mind, here are three things I've noticed about the Toyota situation that I think are lessons for leaders in any field:

Don't get too wedded to your own story: Deservedly, Toyota developed a story about itself as being the number one car company in the world with the best quality in the world. That story was the map that guided them. When the terrain (consumer safety problems) didn't match their map, it was hard for them to move quickly to correct the problems. The disconnect between what the map said and the reality of the terrain was too great. It's important to step outside your own story on a regular basis and poke your own holes in it.

Don't outgrow your talent: Toyota has grown over the years by redeploying their best and most senior engineering talent in new production facilities around the world. The idea was that the experienced people would mentor and train the people at the new facilities. That worked really well until Toyota dramatically increased its production capacity over the past five years or so and there weren't enough mentors to go around. Even in a tough global economy, there is still usually enough financial capital to invest in growth. The scarce resource is human capital. You can't grow faster than your talent will allow you to grow.

Don't sit on information: There's been a lot of criticism of Toyota for sitting on information about their cars that should have been shared. Some of this dynamic played out on Capitol Hill this week when one of their US execs did not have the information that he needed to answer a number of questions that were asked by members of Congress. As they say about the internet, information wants to be free. Especially when your organization is facing a crisis, you have to get ahead of the situation by sharing pertinent information with key stakeholders like your customers, employees and executives.

What's your take on the Toyota situation? What other leadership lessons can be taken away from what's happened so far?

In this week's video installment of life on the USS Harry S Truman, Lt. Cmdr. Rodney Mullins explains how he and his team use the "Ouija board" to keep track of everything going on on the flight deck. Lt. Cmdr. Mullins is the aircraft handling officer, otherwise known as the handler. If you liked my post last month on how to keep the plates spinning, you'll appreciate what Lt. Cmdr. Mullins has to say. He and his team juggle and move at a rapid pace to keep everything with aircraft operations moving safely and efficiently.

Prior to Lt. Cmdr. Mullins, you'll get a look at the C-2 Greyhound transport plane that took my group from the Norfolk Naval Air Station out to the Truman and a few shots of how things looked from inside the plane right after we landed on deck.

Up next week is the guy who runs the ship's air traffic control tower, the Air Boss. Stay tuned, it's a good one.

In case you missed it, there was a terrific profile in the Sunday New York Times on the new CEO of Xerox, Ursula Burns. The article, and her quotes within it, focused on one of my favorite topics, leadership transitions. There's a lot of valuable perspective and advice in the article. I want to pick up on one particular aspect in this post. How do you handle it when you move from being a member of the team (no matter how big) to the leader of that same team? 

The setting as described in the Times is a Xerox sales meeting in Orlando with several hundred reps.  Burns is "an old friend to many of them, and there are plenty of hugs to go around for the people she's grown up with during her 30 years at the company. But there is also a new distance, a new curiosity about what she will do, given that she is no longer just Ursula. She is Ursula M. Burns, the C.E.O."

That passage describes in a nutshell a phenomenon that many leaders experience at least once if not more in their careers. Whether it's expected or not, you end up leading people you've worked with for years. Earlier today, I was interviewing two women who are senior executives in the financial services and pharmaceutical industries for the upcoming second edition of my book, The Next Level.  Both of them offered some great advice on how to lead people who used to be your peers.

Here it is:

Call it out:  When you take over the top job, be up front about your agenda and what you think the organization needs to accomplish. Don't be reluctant to say what the priorities are and what you think will need to happen to meet them.

Go one on one:  The executives I've talked to about moving up note that some of your former peers will be all in immediately, while others will hold back. Go one on one with the ones that you don't think are with you. Talk about what's going on and what it will take to make it work.

Remember that it's different:  In the Times profile, Burns said, "The accolades that I get for doing absolutely nothing are amazing... The real story is not Ursula Burns. I just happen to be the person standing up at this point representing Xerox."  That quote sums up a lot about how things change when you hold the leadership role. Pay attention to what you say and how it lands. One of the executives I interviewed told me that soon after she was named senior VP of R&D for her pharma company, she attended a meeting with a group of her former peers.  She said to a colleague she hadn't seen for months, "Wow, you still work here?  Good to see you."  She meant it as a joke and everyone took it that way.  Everyone except him that is. After the meeting he stayed back to ask her if everything was OK. She was surprised he would ask and said of course it was. His response was,"When the head of R&D says something like that it makes you think."  His response made her think. She's much more careful with her sense of humor now.

That's a short list of tips for leading folks who used to be your peers. What would you add to the list?  What's challenged you as you've made moves like this?

Last Friday, I heard a presentation on a study that anyone concerned with building leadership as a competitive advantage should take a look at. It was from Richmond Fourney, a senior consultant with Hewitt Associates working on their biannual study of the Best Companies for Leaders. Joining him was Suzanne Danielle, the director of talent management for Lockheed Martin which ranked 16th of the top 25 North American companies for leaders. 

You can get a summary of the study from Hewitt (conducted with Fortune magazine and the RBL Group) here. In the meantime, I thought I'd share some high level conclusions from the research along with a bit of commentary.

The research says that there are Four Disciplines that the top companies for leaders follow:

Leaders lead the way - One of my favorite leadership maxims is that presence begets presence. That's certainly the case in the best companies for leaders. 80% of CEO's in the top companies spend more than 20% of their time on leadership issues. That compares with 34% of CEO's in other North American companies. Lockheed's Danielle checked on how many times over the past year and a half her CEO spoke to different leadership development sessions held at the company. The answer was over 90 times with an average length of 1 to 1.5 hours per event. 

Unrelenting focus on talent - The top companies for leaders take an integrated approach to building leaders and rely on six principles (which I noted are incorporated into our Next Level Leadership™ group coaching program) to accelerate development:

• Challenge -  Create opportunities to stretch leaders' comfort zones.
• Ongoing Support - Leaders get coaching and mentoring as they try new techniques.
• Exposure - to other leaders inside and outside the organization boosts learning.
• Network - Having a support group of colleagues facing the same experiences is key.
• Action Learning - It's important to immediately apply new techniques to real life opportunities.
• Structured Feedback - Feedback is most valuable when it's followed by an action plan of a few specific areas to work on.

Practical and aligned programs and practices - You've got to connect the dots between the results you need and the leaders you develop.  Leaders and organizations need "news you can use."

Leadership becomes a way of life - This, for me, was one of the most important points.  As the report says, when leadership is a way of life in an organization there's a rhythm to it.  It's not a series of initiatives. It permeates the culture of the organization and is reinforced through metrics, rewards and strategic planning.

When you think about your own development as a leader, what experience has made the biggest difference to you? What do you think separates the organizations that "get it" on building leaders from those that don't?

This has been a perspective stretching week for a number of my clients and me. Earlier in the week, I had the opportunity to sit in on a briefing between a client organization and a strategic partner they use for innovation inspiration. The two organizations really couldn't be much more different. One is large, the other is small. One is pretty conservative, the other is pretty far out there. One goes deep in a particular discipline, the other goes wide on a lot of disciplines.  On the surface, the two groups might remind you of The Odd Couple, Felix and Oscar. When you look at their results though, they come up with some pretty cool stuff from partnering together.

Later in the week I led a session on Tools for Next Level Leaders for federal government executives. As I often do in that session, I introduced a couple of basic coaching models and asked the participants to coach each other using those models. Most everyone got some great ideas for action steps out of eight minute coaching sessions using one of the models I shared with them. As a professional coach, I sort of take those models for granted. For most of the executives in the session, it was brand new and perspective shifting.

On the way home from that session I heard an interview on NPR with a shipping company efficiency expert named Matt LeBlanc. His job is to help his company figure out how to make and save more money through process improvement. He's a pretty entertaining guy and the interview is worth a listen. I'll admit that I'm not a naturally gifted process person. I tend to run in the other direction actually when someone brings up process. In listening to Matt, though, I realized that my aversion to thinking through process is really based on a lack of knowledge and perspective on my part.

The ah-ha for me was when LeBlanc told the interviewer that when he walks into a shipping facility he's observing it through the lens of an acronym called Tim T. Wood (transportation, inventory, motion, talent, waste, overproduction, over processing, defects). Now I know what all of the Six Sigma experts reading this are thinking right now - "That was your big ah-ha?!?"  Well, yes, actually it was. I felt like LeBlanc was sharing some of his secret sauce with me and could see how that might help me in the same way that the executives in my workshop saw how the coaching model I shared could help them.

Which brings me back to the beginning of this post. The executives at the client company I mentioned like to joke that no matter what problem they're presented with, their solution is going to include some version of their core discipline. They get bonus points for self awareness. Because they're aware enough to recognize their blind spot, they seek help and ideas from a group that approaches problems in completely different ways. They get out of their box by getting into someone else's box.

What problems are you working on that could benefit from a different perspective?  Who could you partner with that operates in a completely different kind of box?

What are some of your favorite ways to (as Steve Jobs might say) think different?

Regular readers of the Next Level Blog know that I've been sharing some videos from the trip I made last month to the aircraft carrier, USS Harry S Truman.I've been running the clips on Thursdays (here's the first overview video and interviews with the Commanding Officer and Executive Officer of the Truman) and have focused on what different people I met on the ship look for in a leader. I have more of those interviews I want to share with you in the weeks to come. This week, though, I thought I'd go in a slightly different direction.

To successfully launch from the deck of a carrier, a jet or plane has to go from a standing start to about 150 knots in under three seconds. That acceleration is achieved through use of a catapult system. Conversely, a plane lands on a carrier at about 150 knots and then comes to an immediate stop when its tailhook catches one of four arresting wires on deck. The caught wire is immediately retracted so that, when operations are in full swing, a plane can launch from or land on the carrier about every 45 seconds.

Obviously, there are a lot of crew members who have to work together seamlessly to ensure safe and effective aircraft operations. In this week's Truman clip, you'll hear from two of them. The first is a sailor who works in the catapult room below decks. The second is a crewmate who works on the system that controls arresting wire number three. One of the things that most impressed me during my Truman trip was the pride, knowledge and responsibility exhibited by the different sailors who explained to us what they do and how they do it. This video will give you a small taste of that.

In a group coaching session with a group of corporate directors yesterday, we were talking about the challenge of delegating actions and decisions to your team while still keeping yourself informed of things that could put either your organization or career at risk. In the course of the conversation, someone brought up a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal with Constellation Energy CEO Mayo Shattuck. Toward the end of 2008, a series of fast moving events almost caused the bankruptcy of Constellation and prompted deals to sell all of part of the company in short order. Here's what Shattuck said he learned from that period.

WSJ: What did you learn from the crisis?

Mr. Shattuck: It has probably led me to have less trust in the delegation of certain things. If you're the CEO, you want to have a group of superstars running your businesses. But if you get yourself too far removed or delegate too much, you are vulnerable.

I don't assume anymore that execution will simply happen because they're all really smart people--which they are--and wait to see the numbers after the fact. Now I question everything. I leaned too heavily on the notion that leadership was setting the vision and motivating people around it. Now I need to balance that with getting dirty with the details.

While none of the people in the group coaching session are managing a multi-billion dollar enterprise (yet), a lot of them could relate to Shattuck's reaction to his company's near death experience. We talked over what a leader can do to balance the need to spread the work and develop future organizational leaders through delegation while maintaining the capacity to know what you need to know and be brought in when you need to be. Here are some of the ideas we came up with on that front:

Start with small steps - Build the level of expertise in your team and increase your trust in their judgment by delegating in small steps at first. 

Create coachable moments - Use those first steps at delegation to set up what the US Army calls "after action reviews." Debrief decisions to determine what went well, what didn't go so well and what are the lessons learned for next time. 

Build in check points - Set up processes and systems that enable you to dip into the decision flow on a regular basis and that feed key performance metrics or milestones back to you so you can still influence outcomes if you need to.

Practice perspective transference - As a organizational leader, you have experience and access to information that your team probably doesn't have. The perspective you develop from that doesn't do a lot of good unless you share  it with or transfer it your team. If you practice perspective transference, your direct reports will eventually start asking themselves, "If I was (insert your name here), what would I want to know and when would I want to know it?" When your team members are asking themselves that on a regular basis, you're building the organizational capacity that makes delegation work.

Those were four of our key ideas on how to delegate while managing risk. What's worked for you that you want to share with your fellow leaders?  What's the biggest challenge you have with delegation?

For this week's Truman Thursday video, I asked three leaders at different levels to talk about what they're looking for in a leader.

First up is the senior non-commissioned officer on the USS Harry S Truman, Chief Master Chief Walker. The group I was in spent some time at breakfast and lunch with the Chief.  We heard about him, however, for the entire 24 hours we were on the ship. He is a presence. In last week's Truman Thursday feature, Executive Officer John Meier told me that his own leadership style had developed from working with Chief Master Chief Walker. The only time on the trip that I saw any stress in one of the lieutenant commanders who was our escort was when it looked like the group might be a minute or two late for the breakfast the Chief had organized for us at 0630. The Chief, who is retiring in March, after a 30 plus year career in the Navy, is a key player in keeping the Truman ship shape.

Following the Chief is one of the pilots attached to the ship. His name is Lt. Long and he flies F-18 Hornets.  He's a member of the Gunslinger Squadron VFA-105. We talked in the squadron ready room on a stormy, flight deck rolling evening when the pilots were doing night operations. If you think it would be hard to land a jet on an aircraft carrier at day in good weather, you should see what it's like in the pitch dark with rain blowing sideways. We watched those operations for about an hour that night and everyone in the planes and out did an amazing job.

Finally, you'll hear from Rear Admiral Boensel who is the commander of the naval bases in the Mid-Atlantic.  He stopped in to say hello to our group when we returned to the Norfolk Naval Air Station and was nice enough to give his take on what he looks for in a leader.

(By the way, in case you're wondering, the clips interspersed between the interviews are of an EA-6B Prowler on the flight deck and a monitor in the Truman's air traffic control center of an F-18 taking off.)

As I write this in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, it is snowing steadily and the winds are blowing. We're on our way to another 20 inches on top of the two feet or so of crusty five day old snow that we already have. Federal government offices in the region are shut down for a third day in a row and probably will be tomorrow as well. It's looking like school will be cancelled through April and I think the sound I hear in the distance is that of the calendars of busy people being blown into smithereens.

If you live in the Midwest or Northeast United States, you are learning to deal with the question of, "What do I do on a snow day (or days)?"  As a public service for immobile leaders, I offer some suggestions below and encourage you to add yours. (After all, are you so busy today that you don't have time to leave a comment?)  If you are among the group of leaders elsewhere in the world who can literally get where you need to go today, I encourage you to read along anyway. Perhaps you can learn from or offer some encouragement to those of us who are stuck.

Herewith, some suggestions for what to do on a snow day:

Accept It:  Remember the Serenity Prayer? I'm paraphrasing here but it goes something like, "Grant me the courage to change the things I can, the grace to accept the things I can't and the wisdom to know the difference." Embrace your snow days as an opportunity to practice radical acceptance. One thing's for sure. You ain't changing the weather.

Get to the Important Things that Have Been Crowded Out by the Urgent:  This one is inspired by the model from Stephen Covey that shows how we spend our time can be categorized into four buckets: Not Urgent and Not Important, Urgent but Not Important, Urgent and Important and Not Urgent but Important.  That last bucket is the one that many leaders never get to and it usually involves activities around building and strengthening relationships or building capacity for the future. Now that your calendar has blown up for a few days, what Important but Not Urgent activities can you get done? There may be some thank you notes you've been meaning to write or a catching up phone call with someone important to you. Maybe it's time to dip into that book you've been wanting to read. Use some of your snow day time to do something that's important but not urgent.

Practice Your Virtual Leadership Skills:  For those things that just can't wait until the roads are cleared, a snow day presents an opportunity to practice your virtual leadership skills. Your organization probably already has technology in place that lets you conduct conference calls, web enabled meetings and other ways to collaborate online. My observation is that while the technology is available, a lot of people haven't really figured out yet how to project the presence that they have in a physical location into a virtual setting. Play around with that during your online snow day meetings. In particular, focus on your energy level and tone of voice (you need more juice in a virtual setting to compensate for the lack of physical presence), keeping others engaged through asking open ended questions of specific people (e.g.  Bob, what do you think we should do next?) and sending out an agenda in advance so everyone can stay on track.

Make the Most of Being Stuck:  Chances are, you're stuck in the same place for several days with those other human beings known as your family. Take some time to enjoy each other during the snow days. The work will still be there when you get back. If you've reached your capacity on family time, remember that most of the people you work with back at the office have families too. Lighten up a bit on your expectations over the next several days. Everyone is dealing with competing commitments at times like this. Give them support and space to do so. While you're at it, do the same thing for yourself.

OK, that's my quick list. What advice do you have for your housebound compadres? And, let's be sure to give a big shout out to the folks on the road crews, power crews and first responders who are working their tails off in incredibly tough conditions to keep the rest of us safe. Let's all be sure to say thanks when we have the chance.

In retrospect, it wasn't really a fair fight. The Indianapolis Colts were only allowed 11 men on the field while the New Orleans Saints had 12 throughout the Super Bowl. 

It's rare when a team and its fans bond in the way that the Saints did with the people of the Gulf Coast. The result seemed truly magical. Sure, when the Saints won 31 - 17, there were the inevitable shots of Bourbon Street being flooded with celebrants. What put a lump in my throat and gave me a chill was when Rachel Nichols, a reporter for ESPN based in New Orleans for the Super Bowl, said that during the game the streets were absolutely deserted because everyone was inside watching the game. She said the only sound was when the Saints made a big play like recovering their onside kick at the beginning of the second half or when Saints cornerback Tracy Porter ran an interception 74 yards for a closing minutes touchdown that sealed the game. Nichols said at times like that she could literally feel and hear the cheers echoing throughout the city of New Orleans.

Like I said, it gave me chills.

When I woke up this morning, I was thinking about the game and the question that kept turning in my head was, "Who are you playing for?" In his post game press conference, Saints quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees answered that question:

"We played for so much more than just ourselves; we played for our city. We played for the entire Gulf Coast region. We played for the entire Who Dat nation that has been behind us every step of the way. What can I say? We've been blessed with so much. It's unbelievable... Four years ago, whoever thought this would be happening. 85 percent of the city was under water. People were evacuating to places all over the country. Most people left not knowing if New Orleans would ever come back, or if the organization would ever come back. Not only did the organization come back, the city came back and so many players, our core group of players that came in that year as free agents, we just all looked at one other and said, 'We are going to rebuild together. We are going to lean on each other.' That's what we've done the last four years and this is the culmination in all that belief."

So, hats off to Drew Brees and his Saints teammates who became a part of the city they won a championship for. Hats off to Saints head coach Sean Payton, who made the right calls in the game, but laid the foundation four years ago when he brought his team to the field of the Super Dome, showed them scenes of a Katrina-devastated New Orleans on the Jumbrotron and told them that they were playing for a community that needed healing and redemption. 

When you can define a purpose that's bigger than yourself or something as narrow and ephemeral as winning a championship, you create the conditions for something lasting to happen. The cliché in sports is that when you win a championship, they can't take that away from you. As the final seconds ticked away last night and Drew Brees took a knee to close the win, the people of New Orleans, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast got something that can never be taken away.

And now, as Mardi Gras starts early this year, to Saints fans everywhere, "Laissez les bon temps roulez!"  You've earned it.

Here's the latest installment of interviews I did with leaders on my recent visit to the USS Harry S Truman.  The featured officer this week is Captain John Meier, the XO of the Truman. As the number two leader on the ship, Meier is looking for three things in his leaders and they may not be what you'd expect.

From the flag bridge of the Truman, here's Captain Meier:

Lately, I've been working on a second edition of my book, The Next Level, to be released this Fall. It will still focus on what you need to pick up and let go of as you move into or up in executive leadership. The new edition will include situation-specific coaching tips, additional perspective from global business executives and advice targeted toward younger professionals who are in significant leadership roles. I've been conducting a lot of great interviews with leaders lately and had a particularly fun lunch with one of the younger ones last week, Frances Reimers, the communications and program manager for Sister Cities International.

In her Linked In profile, Frances describes herself as Dynamic Connector of People and Ideas. That is what you call truth in advertising. She is a woman who comes up with new ideas and makes them happen. As an example, check out this article from the Washington Post on her nonprofit, the Greater Washington Clothing Swap. I first met Frances last year when she was a manager at the ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership and I was a speaker there. She told me then that she had read my book and found a lot in it that applies to young professionals. I wanted to hear more so we had lunch last week to talk about it.

She had a lot of great observations and advice for young professionals moving into leadership positions.  I wanted to get some of them to you sooner rather than later, so here are a few of her tips. (By the way, I think these apply to leaders in any age cohort. Wisdom for all ages. Thank you Frances!)

Emotional intelligence is key.  As Frances told me, "You might think you're awesome, but if everyone else thinks you're obnoxious, that's a problem."

Practice two way communications.  Know what to say and what to leave up to the other person to ask.  Build those skills early in your leadership career.

Build your conflict resolution skills.  Frances points out that e-mail and texting technology has allowed a lot of people to avoid dealing with tough issues on a face to face basis. Conflict needs to be resolved through talking, not texting.

Look for mentors.  Frances says, "A lot of young professionals think a mentor is just going to land in their laps. It rarely happens that way.  You have mentors all around you. Look for role models and observe what they're doing."

Volunteer for leadership.  Seize whatever comes your way. Fill leadership roles outside of your 9 to 5 job. As Frances notes, "It expands your organization's reputation when you're out there involved in the community and it makes you feel great."

Manage up.  Frances speaks the truth when she says, "You're not going to get an awesome manager in every job. Sometimes you're going to get managers who absolutely stink and don't deserve to be there."  Her advice for when you do? Step back and observe what motivates them and how they want to be communicated with. You have to adapt to them. If that doesn't work, you have to know when to leave.

Embrace failure.  Everybody fails from time to time. Frances has this advice for when you do. "When you accept it, she says, you get over it much faster. People don't judge you when you fail. They judge you on how fast you get up and back into the race."

Which of the leadership tips from Frances hit home with you? What would you add to the list?  Are there other key things that younger leaders need to keep in mind? Anything that applies solely to younger leaders?

Early last week, my 10th grade son asked my wife and me for ideas on a speech he has to write for his composition class. The assignment is to write a speech that fills in the blank on, "I have a dream that..."  After thinking about it for a few moments, my suggestion was "I have a dream that our political leaders will actually work together for the good of the country rather than always positioning themselves for their next election."  He liked that idea and is writing the speech. (Every so often, you come up with an idea that your teenager thinks is a good one. Savor those moments.)

>So, I have to say that I saw a glimmer of my dream late last week when I watched the highlights of President Obama and House Republicans having a spirited, substantive and civil conversation about the issues of the day on live television. The setting was a House Republican conference in Baltimore. For the most part, both the President and the Members of Congress were impressive. The Republicans asked tough questions in a firm but civil tone. The President listened and usually answered multi-part questions point by point. 

The following 3:00 minute clip from C-SPAN via You Tube is pretty representative of the entire 82 minute meeting.

I don't know about you, but I'd like to see more of this in the future. You may say I'm a dreamer, but more televised sessions like this in which everyone feels compelled to act like grown-ups because they're on live TV might be what we need to raise the level of discourse and problem solving.

In the meantime, I think there are a few specific things that leaders can learn from how both the President and the Members handled themselves. It's a fairly common occurrence for leaders in organizations to have the need to address a skeptical audience. To get some good ideas on how to handle it, watch some excerpts from the entire event and look for the following:

Setting the tone:  Because of the role they're in, senior leaders almost always have the opportunity to set the tone for the meeting.  If the leader shows up as calm and thoughtful, the audience is more likely to show up as calm and thoughtful.

Doing your homework:  If you're going to take questions from a skeptical audience, you need to be ready with your take on the facts and know what points you want to get across.  An open meeting on important issues is not the time to wing it.

Listening with your whole body:  Your facial expressions, your head nods, your focus on the speaker and how you position your body toward the speaker all work together to convey how much you're listening.  If you show the right mix, you don't just hear the question, you convey respect for the speaker.

Being tough on the issues, soft on the people:  You can make your points and hold firm to your conviction without taking tough questions personally or making the questioner into a "bad guy."  The old line about we can disagree without being disagreeable matters a lot. When, like the President and the Congress are, you're going to be working together for a long period of time, it's important to treat each other well if you actually want to get anything done.

Showing up: You can't have the conversation if you don't show up. Kudos to the Republican leadership for inviting the President and kudos to him for showing up.  Kudos to both for engaging in the way that they did.  It's nice to have our leaders show up as role models for the rest of us.  Please do more of that!

If you had a chance to watch some or all of the President's conversations with the House Republicans, what were your takeaways?  Any leadership lessons for you in the exchange?