Next Level Blog

Leadership Lessons Podcast: Tony Award Winner Michael Cerveris

And for this latest edition of the Leadership Lessons Podcast, something completely different. I’m talking today with the Tony Award winning Broadway star Michael Cerveris. Since his Broadway debut in 1993 as the lead in The Who’s Tommy, Michael has been nominated for four Tony Awards including best actor for Sweeney Todd and winning best actor for his role as John Wilkes Booth in Stephen Sondheim’s The Assassins.  His credits are too numerous to mention here but you may also know him as The Observer in the Fox series, Fringe.  This Fall he’ll be appearing in the new film, The Vampire’s Assistant with Salma Hayek and John C. Reilly and, beginning in October, will open at Lincoln Center as one of the leads in In The Next Room.

An impressive career to be sure, but why is Michael doing a Leadership Lessons Podcast? Here’s the deal. Michael and I have been friends since we were third graders back in Huntington, WV. Earlier this year, we got together for a visit when he was in the DC area to appear at a cool program for aspiring high school drama students called ArtSpeak. It was a combination of a performance and a conversation similar to what James Lipton would do on Inside the Actor’s Studio. In listening to Michael that evening, I was struck by how many things he said that relate directly to the practice of leadership. I wanted to share his insights with you and he graciously agreed to do a “best of” conversation for this blog.

Here are some of the parallels between actors and leaders that we cover in the conversation:

• Dealing with the gap between your expectations and the current reality.
• The importance of showing up centered and how to prepare for that.
• Overcoming stage fright by redirecting your focus.
• What leaders can learn from the best and worst directors about how to get the most from your people.
• Keeping yourself grounded when you have very visible success.

It’s a pretty fascinating conversation if I do say so myself so I hope you’ll give it a listen.  I can practically guarantee you that it will be awhile before I have another guest with a resonant voice like Michael’s. Enjoy!

The Life of Ted Kennedy: Two Lessons I Haven’t Read Elsewhere

Most Americans alive today cannot remember a time when a Kennedy of the generation of John, Robert and Ted was not playing a major public role in the life of the nation. The passing of Ted Kennedy this week literally marks the end of an era and is, I think, one reason why his death has moved so many people.  It is the clear end of an era in all of our lives.

There have been so many perceptive and thoughtful commentaries and remembrances written about Ted Kennedy in the past few days that it feels somewhat redundant on my part to add to the mix. Still, there are three quick things I want to address in this post.

First, I want to point you to some of the columns on Kennedy that I’ve found most thought provoking.  They include David Broder’s in the Washington Post, David Brooks’ in the New York Times and John F. Harris’s and Alexander Burns’ on Politico.com. 

Second, I want to share a couple of leadership lessons from Kennedy’s life that I think are important and that I have not seen clearly stated elsewhere (with complete acknowledgement that they may have been. I haven’t read everything.)

Ben Bernanke: An Indispensable Leader?

In my presentations and group coaching work, I’m fond of quoting Charles DeGaulle’s observation that,  “The cemeteries are full of indispensable men.”  The point I’m trying to make with that line is that while every leader has unique opportunities and responsibilities in their role that only they can do, no one is personally indispensible.  President Obama’s renomination of Ben Bernanke for another term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve has me thinking that Bernanke may be the exception that proves DeGaulle’s rule. As Robert J. Samuelson writes in the Washington Post today, Bernanke, with his unique background as one of the world’s foremost experts on the Great Depression and his willingness to take decisive and innovative action to restore faith in the credit markets, could merit a Time magazine cover headline as “The Man Who Saved the World.”

While the praise for Bernanke’s reappointment is just about unanimous among economists, there are two basic criticisms of his performance to date. The first is that he didn’t see the crisis coming (who, in a position of authority, did by the way?) and, second, that along with then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and then President of the New York Fed, Tim Geithner, he allowed Lehman Brothers to fail thereby taking the global economy to the brink. Fair enough, but what gets me about these criticisms is they come with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. It’s easy to see the impact of Lehman ‘s failure in retrospect. You have to wonder if anyone else would have done a significantly better job of managing all of that at the time.

The great thing about Bernanke as a leader is that while the global credit markets began to freeze, he didn’t. He drew on his technical knowledge of the Great Depression and immediately pivoted to exercise what two of my mentors, Harvard leadership experts Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky would call adaptive leadership.  (Check out their new book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership.)  He didn’t just stick with the traditional Fed response of lowering interest rates, he recognized that completely new solutions were needed to keep the credit markets alive and, with his team, came up with new “liquidity facilities” that pumped $1 trillion into the system. Much of the rest of the world’s finance chiefs followed his lead and, today, the global economy appears to be on its way back.

It’s interesting to think about how a guy whose previous leadership responsibilities were primarily within the faculty of Princeton University pulled all of this off. Looking through the lens of leadership presence that I outline in The Next Level, I would say that Bernanke demonstrated strong performance in the three main categories of personal presence, team presence and organizational presence.  In the category of personal presence, he demonstrated confidence when the world desperately needed him to and, as I wrote here in March, he stepped far out of the mold of his predecessors to custom fit his communications to vastly different constituencies such as the American public, Congress, business leaders and global finance ministers.  In the category of team presence, people I know who work at the Fed have told me that morale there is high because Bernanke is the kind of leader who seeks out input from his team and looks to them to solve problems. Finally, in the category of organizational presence, Bernanke is someone who clearly gets the concept of interagency and global collaboration, takes an outside-in view of the problems that needs to be addressed and who has taken unprecedented steps to exercise his leadership footprint in a constructive way.

 

As this week’s renomination suggests, Bernanke’s work is far from over.  He now has to unwind a lot of what he and his team created to avoid a devastating period of inflation.  It’s going to be a tough job, but if he continues to lead in the way that he has, I’m optimistic.

Finally, one thing I’ve learned from blogging about topics like this is that my readers have strong opinions and often radically disagree with me.  So, let’s hear it.  What do you think of Bernanke as a leader?  What can we learn from both his positive and negative examples?

Middle Managers: The Meat in the Sandwich

A lot of the clients I work with in our group coaching program are middle managers. They’ve moved beyond the level of front line leaders and supervisors, but have not yet reached the ranks of the most senior executives. They’re the directors, senior directors and vice presidents in the private sector and the GS-15’s and SES – 1’s in federal government. And, based on my experience in working with them over the years, I would say that more and more they are the meat in the sandwich. By that, I mean they’re constantly squeezed from pressure above them and below them in the organization.

Over the weekend, one of my colleagues from the Georgetown Leadership Coaching program, Marijo Puleo, shared a McKinsey survey report, Leaders in the Crisis, on the alumni list serve. In that same daily digest from the list serve there was an extended conversation sparked by another colleague who has a client in crisis. Like a lot of people these days, this client simply has too much work to get it all done and still have a semblance of a life. About ten coaches responded to that issue and said they’re seeing the same thing with their clients.

How much more evidence do we need that middle managers are the meat in the sandwich? The McKinsey survey had some interesting results that illustrate the point. Here are a few factoids for you.  Middle managers, compared to the top execs surveyed, are:

• Less committed to staying with their organizations
• Less enthusiastic about their work
• Less satisfied with their own performance and
• Far less satisfied than the seniors with how their bosses are doing. (Ouch!)

Does anyone else see a problem here? These are not just the people responsible for keeping things running during the current economic challenges, these are also the leaders that organizations are counting on for long term growth and success. The stakes around keeping this group engaged are pretty high. Here are a few ideas based on the McKinsey research about how to do a better job with that.

What Leaders Can Learn from a Doctor About How to Deliver Bad News

One of my favorite sayings about leadership is that it’s a two part job. The first is to define reality. The second is to offer hope. The challenge is to strike the right balance between the two in a given situation.  It’s hard to get it right. Some leaders go long on reality and short on hope. Others, perhaps because it’s more fun and energizing to focus on the future, don’t spend enough time and attention on defining reality.  

Of course, another factor in avoiding the discussion of reality is because it often involves delivering bad news. Unless they have some sort of pathology, delivering bad news is not something that most leaders enjoy or look forward to. As a result, a lot of leaders aren’t particularly good or effective at delivering it.  In a time of great change and upheaval, as this one is, leaders will frequently find themselves in a situation in which defining the new reality requires delivering some bad news. It’s important to develop some skills in this domain and that’s the point of this post.

What got me thinking about this topic was an article in Thursday’s New York Times by Anemona Hartocollis called, “At the End, Offering Not a Cure but Comfort.”  Her reporting focuses on Dr. Sean O’Mahony who, as a palliative care specialist, informs and counsels patients facing the end of their lives.  The article is informative, instructive and beautifully written.  I highly recommend it to you.

Dr. O’Mahony spends his days delivering bad news and, as the article makes clear, he is highly skilled at that. He strikes a fine balance between establishing connection with the patient while maintaining a level of detachment that he needs to protect himself so he has the emotional reserves to serve the next patient. While many leaders do not have to deal with literal issues of life and death, if you lead long enough at a certain level or above, you’re almost guaranteed to have to deliver bad news. It could be firing someone, closing down a division, disappointing someone who was expecting something they’re not going to get or any number of other situations. How well you handle these situations will determine how well things go for you and the organization after you deliver the bad news. As a former executive myself and now as a coach, I’ve had a lot of direct and indirect experience with delivering bad news. I know how hard it is. There’s a lot that leaders can learn about how to deliver bad news from how Dr. O’Mahony does his work. Here’s a list of the lessons I noticed in the Times article: