Everyday Leadership (2 of 3 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Everyday Leadership by Daniel Granholm Mulhern. Copyright 2007 by Daniel Granholm Mulhern.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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INTRODUCTION (CONT'D)

This book is about that intersection in the lives of human leaders. Many leaders think they can have the leading without the serving and the being human. When they think of leadership, they think of being in charge, of having it under control, and of being seen as such; in some respects, they expect to be served more than to serve. They pretend to others (and probably to themselves) that they can put on the blue suit of leadership and make it happen. They think they need to keep their human side safely hidden away and can protect themselves by doing so. They pretend there are clear answers and that they have them. They hide from others (and, again, often from themselves) their human sides: doubt, jealousy, fear, big emotions such as sadness, and even small ones such as silliness or momentary embarrassment. They think a good agenda is the same as a good meeting. A clean desk is the same as an efficient business. They still tell more than they listen.
Consequently, their people do listen and promptly head back to their offices, where they say of the boss, “He still doesn’t get it.” Such leaders think people can be directed, told, and moved like chess pieces. And they don’t see that as a result they get lip service, not customer service; compliance, not commitment; what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.

On their bad days, these leaders--I’ll call them that, for they really do want to lead--make people’s lives miserable. At some level in their thinking it seems they want everyone to think, speak, and act like them, and because this is impossible they can be neglectful and even abusive of those who differ. Because people spend so much of their lives at work, such managers can cause them great anxiety and even illness, and the people who report to them go home with negative energy that will find some outlet. Many of us have lived in homes where we “breathed the secondhand smoke” from a parent’s or spouse’s toxic boss. These are the extreme cases. I don’t believe most such managers have any idea how hurtful they can be.

I say “they” do this, but this book is about how “we” lead humans in such inhuman ways. We can change, and we must.

In the fiercely competitive world in which we work, leaders need whole human effort. Yes, we need people’s time and their hands on the keyboard or the product. But if we’re going to produce, sell, and thrive, we also desperately need their creativity, their fearlessness, their spirit, their patience to work with other fallible and sometimes annoying humans, and their sweat. That’s all human stuff. We can’t tell people to give that level of effort, that much of themselves. We can’t bribe them to do that. We can’t for very long trick them or scare them into it.

The only enduring way to get humans’ best stuff is to be fully human ourselves. And being human means sometimes dealing with a stinky diaper. It means facing some of our stinky behaviors, thoughts, and feelings--such as feeling ignored or forgotten or wrong. And it also means we get to face the splendid possibility that we could be much better and happier leaders if we quit doing what we think we should do, what we’ve always done, what we’re comfortable doing, and instead do what our people need us to do.


I am inviting you to consider a more human leadership. It’s good for them and good for us. It is a leadership that in its essence lets us be the same person at work that we are at home or in church. It is a leadership that lets us just be us--the person with bumps and rough edges but also the person who can always improve a little more, the person who isn’t entirely sure but takes action. We get to be the person whose kid drives us nuts but who cries tears of joy at that kid’s graduation. We get to be the guy who is driven bonkers by a salesman who never seems to listen, but we also get to be the person who “high-fives” him when he gets better results than we could have imagined. This kind of human leadership lets us be the person who can get what our hearts most desire: a connection with other people in which we make each other better and do something together that we could not have done alone, a person not perfect but perfectly alive.

Leadership is often made out to be a BIG THING; leaders are superhuman, grand figures who make dramatic moves that they know are right! But really leadership for any of us is lived out in seemingly small, always human, little things. For instance, you could not watch Colin Powell’s public statements before and after President Bush’s decision to lead us into war with Iraq and not see that there were deeply human and personal struggles at play. Some of the struggles were clearly internal--a general turned secretary of state balancing his most cherished value of loyalty against his values of openness, candor, and conscience. And of course much of Secretary Powell’s struggle was external, bound up in the ideological battle within the White House. It was an ideological struggle but completely played out by people, and therefore these were personal struggles.
Although the audience is huge when it comes to players such as Secretary Powell, General Electric’s Jack Welch, or Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm, the stage is very similar to any leadership drama that involves a group of human beings.

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