Next Level Blog

Three Mantras to Keep Your Ego in Check

Leaders have to walk a fine line. On the one hand, it’s important to leverage the footprint of the role that you’re in. As I said in a webinar on leading at the next level for Government Executive magazine yesterday, there are certain things that only you can do given the leadership role that you’re in. That brings us to “on the other hand.”  On the other hand, as you leverage that leadership footprint, it’s really important to remember that much of your capacity to get things done flows from the role and not because you’re God’s gift to leadership.

This lesson was powerfully brought home to me about 10 years ago when I announced I was leaving my corporate vice president’s job in a month to start my coaching business. I was amazed at how quickly my calendar went from being jammed to being able to drive a truck through the white space. Same thing with my e-mail inbox and my voice mail. Empty and empty. Once people knew I was leaving, they moved on to life after Scott.
 
I read a funny story that illustrates the same dynamic in Al Kamen’s In the Loop column in the Washington Post this morning. As a follow up to the State of the Union address this week, Kamen was writing about the tradition of one cabinet member leaving Washington to ensure continuity of government in case disaster strikes during the speech. He shared this story about former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman who was the designated out of towner during the 1997 State of the Union:

For the 1997 speech, then-Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman headed up to New York for dinner with his daughter in Manhattan. He flew on a small Air Force jet with a security detail, the "suitcase," and a doctor, he recalled Thursday. He was taken in a small motorcade to his daughter's apartment building.

The detail stayed downstairs while Glickman watched the speech. As soon as it was over, they called up and told him, "The mission is terminated." They took off and left Glickman and his daughter, unable to hail a cab, to walk 12 blocks to dinner in the pouring rain. "Ah, the fleeting limits of power," he observed.

Great story, huh? Leaders need to protect themselves and the people they lead by keeping their egos in check. Sometimes, like I did or Dan Glickman did, you’ll get a cosmic reminder to do so. A lot of the time you won’t. So, as a public service to leaders walking that fine line between leveraging the footprint of their role and not letting their ego run away with them, I offer three mantras to regularly repeat to oneself:

• It’s not about me, it’s about the role. It’s not about me, it’s about the role.
• The fun stuff that comes with my job doesn’t belong to me. The fun stuff that comes with my job doesn’t belong to me.
• This, too, shall pass. This, too, shall pass.

For best effect, spend at least five minutes a day with your eyes closed repeating one of the mantras over and over again to yourself. It’s probably best that you do this in private. People get nervous when they see leaders talking to themselves.

What mantras do you use to keep yourself grounded?

Truman Thursdays - Commanding Officer Joe Clarkson on Leadership

As promised, over the next several Thursdays I’ll be sharing interviews with some of the commissioned and enlisted personnel I met on my recent trip to the aircraft carrier, USS Harry S Truman. The basic question I asked everyone was, “What are you looking for in a leader?”  First up with his answer to that question is the commanding officer of the Truman, Captain Joe Clarkson. If you’re looking for insights into how the top leader of a complex operation approaches his job, listen to what Captain Clarkson has to say.

(By the way, the plane launching from the deck in the opening segment is an E-2 Hawkeye.)

Three Reasons You Should Fire the Prima Donna

Over my ten years as an executive coach, I’ve come across situations where one of my clients feels like they’re between a rock and a hard place because they have someone on their team who produces great results but alienates everyone around them. You know the type. It’s what we’ve come to call the prima donna. According to Wikipedia, the term comes from the world of Italian opera where the prima donna is the “first lady” – usually the leading soprano in the company with a reputation for arrogance, ego and irritability that makes them a real pain to deal with. These days the term has become gender neutral. Males can be prima donnas too. (American Idol’s Simon Cowell is the first male example that comes to mind.)

The prima donna dilemma has been on my radar screen a few times in the last year.  These situations usually have some common characteristics. The prima donna is talented in his domain and selectively builds relationships with a few key people who can help him accomplish what he’s trying to do. Meanwhile, he treats his teammates poorly and, as he puts more and more points on the board, starts making demands of the boss that have the whiff of extortion. You probably have seen how this plays out.  “If I don’t get the promotion, the raise, the big account, the glamorous assignment or whatever, I’ll take my services elsewhere and you’ll be left high and dry.”  He’ll usually make this move a few weeks or days before a critical meeting with a customer or in the midst of an important project where he’s  a player. Every time he gets what he wants it becomes fuel for a cycle of escalating demands down the road.

So, if you’re a leader with a prima donna on your team who keeps playing this game, what do you do?  It’s simple. Bite the bullet and fire them. Here are three reasons why you should:

Video Book Club: The Power of Full Engagement

Do you find yourself running faster and faster to keep up with all of your commitments?  If you do, you’re not alone. As I’ve noted here before, the lowest rated item among the hundreds of leaders that have received feedback through our Next Level 360 degree survey is “Paces himself/herself by building in regular breaks from work.”  We live and work in time-challenged times.

If any of that connects with you, then you’ll want to take a look at The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. In this Video Book Club clip, I share a little bit about their advice on energy management along with some tips of my own about creating consistent peak performance with routines. You can read more about that in chapter 3, “Pick Up Regular Renewal of Your Energy and Perspective/Let Go of Running Flat Out Until You Crash” of my book, The Next Level .

For now, here’s a bit on The Power of Full Engagement:

What I Learned on an Aircraft Carrier

Last October, I had the opportunity to speak on leadership to newly promoted admirals and senior executives of the US Navy in their annual symposium. That led to an invitation to join a group of civilians to visit the aircraft carrier, USS Harry S Truman, on a training cruise off the coast of North Carolina last week. As you can see from the photo to the left, I made the trip. (That’s your faithful correspondent, front row, fifth from the left.)

I’m not going to lie to you. I was pretty excited to go on the trip since we’d be making an arrested landing on arrival (in a C-2 Greyhound transport plane) and leaving the ship a day later via a catapult assisted launch. As much as I love Disneyworld, they’ve got a ways to go before they come up with a ride that’s as exciting as going from 150 knots to 0 in three seconds on landing or from 0 to 150 when you take off. It was a very cool experience, but I have to say was not even close to being the best part of the trip. The best part was the opportunity to see several thousand men and women of an average age of 24 working together to do amazing things on a round the clock basis. Over the years, I’ve watched hours and  hours of film on the Navy and thought I had some appreciation for what they do. Last week I learned that there is no substitute for seeing it in real life.

I shot about three hours of video on the Truman and have a lot of great interviews from the sailors about what they look for in a leader that I’ll share with you on Thursdays over the next several weeks. In the meantime, I’ve put together this 3:00 minute highlight video to give you a taste of life on the ship.

Also,  I wanted to share some of the big leadership lessons I learned while aboard the Truman.