The most talked about moment from week six of the NFL season was the near-miss post-game smackdown between San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh and Detroit Lions coach Jim Schwartz. As you can see in this NFL.com video, when the 49ers eked out a win over the previously undefeated Lions, Harbaugh literally started jumping for joy. By the time he got to Schwartz for the post game handshake, he was really jacked up, grabbed Schwartz's extended hand and slapped him on the back - hard. As the video was endlessly replayed on TV last night, you didn't have to have a masters' degree in lip reading to see that Schwartz was not too happy about the exchange. He was so unhappy, in fact, that he chased Harbaugh 30 or 40 yards down the field to the end zone to, umm, continue the discussion.

I read some of the sports columnists from the San Francisco Chronicle and the Detroit Free Press this morning to get the local angles. While both papers agree that Harbaugh got carried away in his celebration, Schwartz is taking more of the heat for losing his composure.

You don't have to be an NFL coach to lose your temper at work. It's even possible that you could get so ticked, you feel like running after someone and throttling them. Not a good idea. That sudden rush of anger is the "fight" part of the fight or flight response that comes from a little part of your brain called the amygdala. When you have a sudden urge to throttle someone, you're experiencing what emotional intelligence pioneer Daniel Goleman calls an amygdala hijack. The fight or flight response was actually pretty useful when our Flintstones era ancestors never knew if a saber tooth tiger was the next thing coming around the corner. It's not so useful in a professional setting (even the post-game sidelines of an NFL stadium).

So, with Coach Schwartz as inspiration, here are three things you can do to avoid a smackdown situation the next time you lose your cool.

Prepare Yourself: As the final seconds ticked down on the game, Schwartz knew his team was going to lose. He probably didn't know he was about to get whacked on the back by the opposing coach. Still, he's been around the game long enough to know that post game emotions run high. When you know you're going to be in an emotion laden, high energy situation, it's helpful to mentally prepare by visualizing how you want to handle yourself. Having a clear picture in mind of how you want to show up makes it more likely that you'll show up that way.

Take a Deep Breath: There's a reason you hear this advice so much. It works. As reported on NPR, researchers at the National Institute for Mental Health tell us that slow, deep breathing stimulates the Vagus nerve which counteracts the "smackdown" reaction that comes from an over stimulated amygdala. Work on training yourself to take three deep breaths when something unexpected happens. It could give you the space you need to respond rather than react.

Talk to Yourself: After you've put the brakes on yourself by breathing, talk to yourself about what you should do next. Doing so can remove you a bit from the situation at hand. If you have the space, you might even talk out loud to yourself. Literally hearing yourself talk can be a bit like having a coach or trusted advisor at your side reminding you how things might play out if you run with your rage.

What do you do to regain your composure when someone really ticks you off?

One of my idiosyncratic sources of fun is inserting random lines from movies into everyday conversation. Kevin Bacon shouting, "All is well. Remain calm!" right before the riot runs over him at the end of Animal House would be an example. Another one is when the Lloyd Bridges character in Airplane is looking at a report on a big piece of paper and turns to Jonny asking "What do you make of this?" Jonny grabs it and says, "Oh, I can make a hat, or a broach or a pterodactyl."

It's amazing how much the Lloyd Bridges question, "What do you make of this?" comes up in day to day life. For instance, when an organization is going through a big change, "What do you make of this?" is a pretty germane question. People's answers will depend on the framework and context they have. That's where leadership plays a critical role.

Change usually involves the end of something which usually means that at least some people are losing something that matters to them. The leader's job is to start some conversations that focus on "What else can we make of this?"

An executive I know was promoted to be the CEO of his organization. He's following a much beloved leader. Like most organizations these days, they're facing a tough operating environment. It's natural that the people there might focus on the downside of losing a leader they love at a time when it's hard to meet goals. The new CEO is asking the question, "What else can we make of this?" When you ask that question, the possibilities open up. You give people the opportunity to come up with new options and new ways to view the roles they play or could play.

In his book, Managing Transitions, William Bridges reminds us that before anything new can begin, something else has to end. Leaders need to help their organizations acknowledge the endings and engage them in the new beginnings. Asking "What else can we make of this?" seems like a good way to engage people in reframing their context and getting ready for what's next.

What do you do to help people focus on the possibilities?

This past weekend, I had the great opportunity to spend a couple of days with the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Venturous on patrol in the Florida Straits.  I'm organizing my thoughts, pictures and videos from the trip and will have more to share on that in the days and weeks to come.

Today, I'm writing about the end of the trip. For operational reasons, the Captain needed to drop me off in Key West early Sunday morning about 10 hours earlier than the original plan of late afternoon. I stowed my bags at the Coast Guard station and set out for the day with my wallet, my cell phone and absolutely no plan whatsoever. 

By the end of the day, I had:

• seen where Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls,


• met a six toed descendant of one of his favorite cats,


• climbed to the top of an old lighthouse,


• had a long lunch and a few drinks,


• saw the bar where Jimmy Buffet got his start,


• talked with probably half a dozen nice people and


• had a margarita in Papa's favorite bar before walking back to the station to get my stuff and head for the airport.

About halfway through the day, it occurred to me that I was literally killing time. I had nothing else to do. The earliest flight off the island was the one at 7:05 pm that I already had a ticket for. To conserve its battery, the only thing I used my cell phone for was looking up the address for Hemingway's and taking pictures. Did not check a single email. When the sun got a little too hot, I moved to the shady side of the street. Time literally slowed down.

I hate to admit it, but I honestly cannot remember when I last killed a whole day by just wandering around. I read a column lately in which the author made the point that with mobile devices like smart phones always around for e-mail, Facebook, games and such,  boredom is headed for extinction.  There is always some sort of digital input to fill up the white space. For me, this past Sunday was a day for non-digital input.I came away with a much more relaxed perspective and a bit of an ah-ha about how much time I spend plugged in and what the impact is of that.

I intend to get better at learning how to kill time every so often. Margaritas will be optional, not required.

One of the things I enjoy the most in my work as a coach is helping my clients come up with regular practices that will make them better leaders. One of my guiding principles as a coach is the line from Aristotle, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."  I've learned over the years that if my leadership clients can identify a few key things to do on a repeated basis, they can quickly make positive changes in their effectiveness. The secret is to find some things to do that are in the sweet spot of easy to do and likely to make a difference.

Take the recent example of a client I'll call Bob. One of the big messages in a 360 degree survey I conducted for Bob is that he comes across as a micro manager who jumps into solving his teams problems and gives them the answer when they're not looking for the answer.  This was not a revelation to Bob.  When we were talking about it, he even referred to himself as a "micro data collector."

He also agreed that for the good of his team and his own future opportunities he needed to change his ways. One simple repeatable practice that we came up with was for Bob to keep track of his questions to answers ratio in conversations with his team.  The goal with this one is to raise his awareness of when he wants to provide an answer and to build his skills in the alternative behavior of asking open ended questions like, "What are your options?" and "What do you think you should do?"

Then we came up with a practice that's going to hit Bob in the wallet if he doesn't change his ways.  I call it curing the curse of the V-Bobs.

Bob told me one of the things that is an inside joke with his team is what they call V-Bobs. A V-Bob happens when they send a presentation for Bob to review and he makes tweaks, corrections and edits and sends it back with V-Bob in the title. In other words, it's Version Bob. In talking about the V-Bobs, Bob acknowledged that a lot of his changes are minor and issues of personal preference.  I asked him how many V-Bobs he sends back in an average week.  He quickly said around five a week.  We both agreed that was a lot. My question was what would it take to get it down to two V-Bobs a week?  We kicked ideas around for a bit and then I asked what difference would it make if you had to pay for the privilege of sending V-Bobs? Bob said that he would certainly stop and think about it if he had to pay extra for his V-Bobs.

The next step took some good natured negotiating on both of our parts but here's where we ended up.  Bob gets two free V-Bobs every week. For each V-Bob over the weekly two, he has a deal with his team that he has to kick 25 bucks into a team party pot. Bob pushed back on the dollar amount at first.  "How about five bucks?" was his first suggestion. My response was it's got to be a big enough number that you'll think about it before you act.  After briefing his wife on the deal (smart move, Bob), he agreed and told his team about the V Bob challenge. They, of course, loved the idea.  I'm not sure how big a party they're going to get out of the deal, though. The reports over the past several weeks are that the V Bobs have shrunk from a flood to a trickle.

Have any micromanagers in your life? Is it possible that you see one in the mirror in the morning?  What are some easy to do, likely to make a difference routines you could come up with to encourage a change?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post titled "Are You an IBM or a Dell?"  Today's post continues with the tech ID theme and is inspired by an article in the New York Times by Randall Stross. In it, he makes the point that the big decisions at Apple are made by one person, Steve Jobs relying on his gut and sense of design.  In contrast, the big decisions at Google are made by groups of people relying on data.  As Stross frames it, it's the auteur vs. the committee.

I thought it was a great article because it makes the point that there is rarely only one right answer about how to get things done. In my own case, I'm more naturally inclined to the Google model where decisions are made by lots of people providing input based on fact based arguments. On the other hand, I'm writing this post on my iPad, totally love my iPhone and am the last person in my family who is not working on a Mac. I can see both sides of the argument.

So, which side do you come down on? Auteur or committee? What are your thoughts on when it's best to go with the edict of the genius and when it's best to go with the wisdom of the crowd?

Earlier this year, I was with an executive who was proudly showing me the Power Point presentation he had prepared for an upcoming strategic offsite.  

We got through three slides and he turned to me and asked me what I thought so far.  I asked if he really wanted to know and he said yes. My response was that I had seen the same exact presentation at a company conference in an entirely different industry just the day before. He looked crestfallen,  but, to his credit, he asked for details.  As kindly as  I could, I made a little "Blah, blah, blah" motion with my right hand and said that his first three slides were classic signs that the rest of the presentation was going to stink.

They're classic because they're so overused that when the audience sees them appear it immediately shuts down with a "Seen it before," barely suppressed yawn.  Does your presentation deck have them? 

Here's the checklist:

The From/To Slide:  The dead giveaway on this one is the big huge arrow moving from left to right at the top of the slide. Then you have two columns of matched bullet points that tell the audience what the organization is moving away from and moving to. You know,  things like moving from working in silos to working across boundaries.   

The Table of Strategic Initiatives Slide:  The classic version of this stinky slide is a table with five to seven columns with the title of a strategic initiative in the top row of each column. The titles are usually no bigger than a 16 pt. font because it's hard to get that much text in with a bigger font. The rest of each column is filled up with an indeterminate amount of bulleted action steps that support the initiative. Those are usually in 10 or 12 pt. font because there's even more to squeeze in.

The Org Chart Slide:  Can't have a strategic presentation deck without an org chart, right? Seriously, though, does it really look that much different than the previous org chart? Probably not. It especially doesn't to the people in the audience who have totally checked out by this point.

So, if you've read this far, you're probably experiencing one of two reactions right now. 

The first is a mixture of annoyance and chagrin because I've more or less described the deck you've been working on so diligently.  If that's the case, I hope there is some food for thought in what I've shared.  Remember, a slide deck is not a memo.  You want to share the headlines and images that set up a compelling story, not document every last detail of your message. For expert advice on creating a compelling slide deck, check out Presentation Zen by Garr Renyolds and Resonate by Nancy Duarte .

The second likely reader reaction is knowing nods of the head because you've had to sit through the same presentation I just described. If that's the case, what would you add to the list of signs that your slide deck stinks?

It seems like I talk with clients about the challenge of taming their calendars at least two or three times a week. In the age of interconnected scheduling systems like Outlook and the continuous push to get more done with less in any given day, more and more leaders feel like Sisyphus rolling that big rock up the never ending hill.

What in the heck can you do to get your calendar back under control and have time to think, reflect, relax, connect, have some fun and a life outside of work? I've been brainstorming that question with my clients lately. Here are five strategies we've come up with that make a difference:

Keep Your Most Important Objectives in Mind:  If you're really clear and honest with yourself, you likely have three or four big objectives that represent about 80% of what success looks like for you. Keep that list in front of you and make sure you're not spending a lot of time on things that don't further those objectives.

Use the Help That's Available:  If you have a good assistant, help them help you. Have regular conversations with your assistant about your goals so they can help prioritize requests for your time.  Ask them to schedule and protect regular blocks of administrative time for you to think and catch up.  Give your assistant permission to say, "No," on your behalf.  If you don't have an assistant, get in the habit of doing these things yourself.

Negotiate on Requests for Your Time: For example, if your boss asks you to attend a two day conference to wave the company flag, look for the highest impact half day on the agenda and negotiate to just attend that portion. Get clear with the requestor on specific desired takeaways from your participation. If there are no specific benefits, maybe you don't have to be there at all.

Beware of Standing Meetings: Don't fill up your calendar with standing meetings that you attend because you're not doing anything else. Get in the habit of asking yourself, "Is this the highest and best use of my time?" If you've already attended three status meetings on a project in one week, how much marginal value is there in attending a fourth?

Bundle Meetings by Location:  The time it takes to travel to and from meetings is an often overlooked and insidious time suck. Don't waste time traveling back and forth to the same place multiple times a week. Reduce your cumulative travel time by bundling your meetings together by location.

So those are five favorite time management strategies my clients and I have come up with lately.  What are your favorite calendar taming techniques that aren't on our list?

Today is my 50th birthday. It's a little strange to write that down. When I think of 50th birthdays, I think of those films you see sometimes about the 50th birthday of Disneyland.  You know the ones with all the ecstatic little kids with crew cuts and pig tails and how quaint Tomorrowland looked fifty years ago?  I'm not that old, am I? Apparently, the good folks at AARP think so as they sent me an introductory membership card last week. Sorry guys, not happening.

Since it's been fifty years, I thought I'd share a short list of things I've learned about life and leadership. Most of them I've had to relearn more than once.  That said, they seem to have worked for me. Your mileage may vary, but here's my list of things it's taken me fifty years to learn.

1. Most good things require the help of other people.  I can track pretty much every good thing that's ever happened to me or I've gotten to do to the help and support of someone else.  There's no such thing as a self-made person.
2. You get what you give. That's the title of a great song by The New Radicals.  It also happens to be true.
    
3. Good manners get you a long way. When I was about eight my grandmother gave me a copy of a book called Stand Up, Shake Hands, Say How Do You Do.  I read it and it's come in handy ever since.  When you're at a fancy dinner, it's good to know which one is the salad fork. 
    
4. Most things are not as important as they seem at the time. Keep your perspective. 
   
5. It's usually not necessary to yell.  First learned this when I was Senior Patrol Leader of my Boy Scout troop.  It's just not a very effective long term leadership strategy.  
   
6. Most people like to talk about themselves. It's a good idea to develop a few questions that get people talking about themselves.  You learn a lot more listening than you do talking.
   
7. The unknown is almost always scarier than the known.  That's why they call it fear of the unknown.  You can lessen the fear by talking with people who have done it before and then mentally preparingyourself based on their experience.
   
8. Goals matter. It's important to stay flexible in reaching your goals but having clear intentions makes a lot of difference in getting things done.
   
9. Routines are powerful. One of my favorite quotes is Aristotle's, "We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."  I've found it's a good idea to reverse engineer back from my goals to determine the routines I need to follow.
   
10. Practice and repetition make you better. Geoff Colvin has a whole book on this called Talent is Overrated.  With the right kind of coaching and guidance, practice makes you better.  It's been true for me as a speaker and, lately, it's proven true at yoga.  Did my first headstand during class yesterday.  Cool.
    
11. Quick wins are a good thing.  In the last couple of years, I've started looking for things that are relatively easy to do and likely to make a difference.  They build confidence and momentum.
    
12. If something is perpetually eating at you, let it go.
    
13. Don't beat yourself up.  It stresses you out, makes you less productive and makes you fat.
    
14. Take care of your body.  Eat real food.  Sleep.  Exercise.  Stretch.
    
15. Give your brain space for problem solving.  Most problems don't have linear solutions, they have free form solutions.  Your brain needs to take a break to solve those problems.  Ever notice how many problems you solve in the shower?  There's a reason for that.
    
16. Think long term to control your stupid impulses. Consider the consequences of your actions.
    
17. Being a smart ass is not a long term strategy for endearing yourself to others.  Definitely still working on this one.
    
18. You've got to be present to win. It's amazing what happens when you show up.  If you add the mental and emotional domains into the mix with the physical then things really start cooking. 
    
19. Self observation is a good practice.  I love Ron Heifetz' advice for leaders to regularly get off the dance floor and get up on the balcony to observe the bigger picture.
    
20. Nothing lasts forever.  This is true for both good things and bad things.  It's just the process of life.  Enjoy the good times and have faith that the bad times won't last forever.
    
21. Different results require different actions.  If you want to get different results, you're likely going to have to pick up some new behaviors and let go of some old ones.
    
22. A great partner makes all the difference.  In my case, I have to attribute this lesson to providential grace.  My wife, Diane, is everything I could hope for in a life partner. 

So, that list of life and leadership lessons ended up being longer than I expected it to be.  That said, I doubt it's exhaustive.  What have you learned so far that keeps you on track?

One of the big stories in Washington this week was the state visit of Chinese President Hu to the White House.  Most of the early analysis and reporting suggests that, all things considered, the meetings between the Chinese and the Americans were worthwhile.

There are probably a lot of leadership lessons to be gained from how the meetings and dinners were handled by the principals. Here's a quick one that dawned on me as I was listening on my car radio to the joint press conference between President Obama and President Hu.

What if we had to wait on a translator to repeat what we had just said in every meeting or conversation we're in? 

Here's the scenario that got me thinking about that question. Obama went first with his opening statement. He would deliver about a paragraph's worth of remarks and then pause for a translator to repeat what he'd said in Mandarin. It was interesting to listen to how the translation routine changed the normal rhythm of Obama's speech. When he'd  start talking again after the translator finished,  it was like you could almost hear him slow down to think about what he wanted to say next.  I'm sure he was speaking from prepared remarks but the quality of the delivery had a different impact because of the enforced breaks in the speaking. (Hu went through his entire speech before the translation was provided, but that's another story.)

So, what if we had to wait on a translator to repeat what we had just said in every meeting or conversation we're in? Sure, the conversation might take longer but perhaps the time everyone had to think while the translator spoke would improve the quality of thinking and the words that follow the thinking. 

The urge to jump in to speak, to give the answer, to cut to the chase is a common challenge for executive and management leaders. You usually have to be reasonably intelligent to get a job like that and smart people often get to the "answer" quickly and can't wait to get it out there. Conversation shuts down as a result and, as I wrote earlier this week, decision quality suffers.

Do you have the challenge of slowing down long enough to really think about what you're saying and giving others space to think? Why not pretend you have to wait on the translator to share your remarks before you move on to the next point?  What do you think you'd find in translation?

So, if you're a regular reader of this blog, you might have expected me to have some sort of leadership lessons post on yesterday's mid-term elections.  I'm waiting to see how the various players respond in the next couple of days before I get to that topic.

One that I'm very clear on, however, is that the Washington Redskins are still one of the go-to resources for real-life lessons on how not to lead.  You may recall that about this time last year, I wrote a post titled Learning What Not to Do from the Leadership of the Washington Redskins. That post, which mainly focused on team owner Dan Snyder, went a little viral.  It was picked up by a bunch of Redskins fan sites and led to my five minutes of fame in an interview with DC's Fox TV affiliate.   It's the only post I've ever written that received dozens of comments that all agreed with what I wrote.

I must acknowledge that, at least from my limited perspective, Snyder has changed a lot of the things I criticized last year (not that I'm taking any credit for that). He's improved the fan experience by adding high def jumbotrons in the end zones (and even took out some seats to do it). He publicly owned up to accountability for the team's lackluster performance at the end of last year. He fired his lackey and hired a professional general manager. He appears to have removed himself from the day to day management of football operations. You have to give him credit for all of that.  And, of course, he hired a Super Bowl winning coach in Mike Shanahan to lead the team from the sidelines and a five time Pro Bowler in Donovan McNabb to lead the team on the field.

Leading the team on the field unless it's a closing two minute drill to beat the newly energized Detroit Lions.  Down by five points in the closing minutes last Sunday, Shanahan benched his Pro Bowler and replaced him with second string QB Rex Grossman who was intercepted by Detroit's scary good defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh who ran the ball back for a game clinching touchdown.

You can argue about the intelligence of Shanahan making the substitution. Rabid sports fans are known to disagree after all.  What doesn't seem open for much debate, however, is the poor leadership that Shanahan showed in the hours and days after the game.  While he's put his own unique spin on them, there are three  "leaders don't do this" lessons from last year's post that Shanahan is demonstrating this year:

Embarrass Your Key People in Public:  OK, so you recruit a beloved Pro Bowl QB named Donovan McNabb to Washington to lead your team. He immediately becomes part of the fabric of the community.  He's the face of the team.  He leads the team to some close victories and keeps you close in some losses.  The fans are recommitting to the team.  And, oh by the way, McNabb has run more than a few game-on-the-line two minute drills in his long NFL career.  So what do you do if you're the coach and you're trying to beat Detroit in the closing minutes?  Bench McNabb.  Makes perfect sense right?  Only if you want to publicly humiliate him.

Offend and Insult People's Intelligence:  Based on news reports, McNabb's teammates couldn't believe he was benched.  The disbelief extended to just about everyone who follows the Redskins when Shanahan said after the game that the complexities of running the two minute offense was why he had sat his Pro Bowler down for an average at best QB.  Really?  It was the complexity?  Apparently not, because the next day Shanahan said the reason was the cardiovascular challenge of running the drill.  Seriously?  As they say on Monday Night Countdown, "C'mon man!"  It's one thing to insult the intelligence of your fans (read that as customers).  It's another to insult the intelligence of your team.  Either way, it shows a leader who's arrogant enough to think that people are just going to accept whatever he says.

Make Your Organization an Extension of Your Own Ego:  And that second lesson sets us up for a third lesson from last year where Shanahan is plowing new ground. The way he handled the McNabb situation and his long running tooth and nail battle to show defensive lineman Albert Haynesworth who's boss suggests that Shanahan is making decisions with his ego. The message sent by Shanahan's actions?  The only one who's not expendable around here is me. Get with my program or get out.  That's not how you build an engaged and energized team.

OK, if you've read this far you must be both a football fan and a student of leadership.  If you are, you know that the NFL this year is full of both good and awful examples of leadership.  Which ones stand out for you?  The Favre/Moss/Childress drama in Minnesota?  Rex Ryan's bluster in New York?  The practice makes perfect example of Peyton Manning?  There are so many more to choose from.  What's your favorite and what's your leadership lesson?