Next Level Blog

Palin's Poetry Interpreted by the Priceline Negotiator

It’s the end of July and I’m on vacation so let’s have a little fun today. Let me start out by saying that I love William Shatner. He was great as Captain James T. Kirk, hilarious as Denny Crane of Boston Legal and I never get tired of his Priceline Negotiator bits. The man completely knows how to walk the razor’s edge between maintaining his dignity and making a complete fool of himself. That takes a lot of self awareness.

Over the past couple of weeks, he’s shown up on Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show to offer interpretative poetic readings of Sarah Palin’s resignation speech as Governor of Alaska and, last night, to read verbatim selections from her Tweets. So, ladies and gentlemen, for your listening and viewing pleasure, Mr. William Shatner:



Priceless, no?  Now you’re negotiating!

For Armstrong and Contador, the Leadership Wheels Come Off

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?

Amygdala Hijacks, Professor Gates and the Cambridge Police

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:

Even More Leadership Lessons from Rock and Roll

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!

Way Back Weekend: Astronauts, Cronkite and Watson

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time watching the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. (I spent a lot of time watching TV, period.)  They used to have a segment on the show called “Peabody’s Improbable History,” in which the highly intelligent talking dog, Mr. Peabody, and his boy, Sherman would use their WABAC machine to travel back in time. The events of this past weekend took me way back to my childhood in the 1960’s and 1970’s. In thinking about them, I learned a little bit about more about how some of the things that happened back then shaped me as an adult and a leader. In particular, I’m talking about the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, the death of TV anchorman Walter Cronkite and the completely improbable (Mr. Peabody would have loved it) performance of 59 year old Tom Watson at the British Open.

So, jump into the WABAC machine with me for a few minutes and let’s see what we can learn.