Next Level Blog

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Boss

By now, you’ve no doubt heard the buzz about Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother . It’s her memoir about raising her two daughters in the strict and demanding way that her Chinese immigrant parents raised her. The buzz machine on Chua’s book went into overdrive when the Wall Street Journal ran a column of excerpts from it under the headline of Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.  The Irish Times does a pretty nice job of summing up Chua’s parenting approach with the following list of seven rules:

1.    “Schoolwork always comes first.
2.    An A-minus is a bad grade.
3.    Your child must be two years ahead of their classmates in Maths.
4.    You must never compliment your child in public.
5.    If your child ever disagrees with a teacher or coach, you must always take the side of the teacher or coach.
6.    The only activities your child should be permitted to do are those in which they can eventually win a medal.
7.    That medal must be gold.”

All of the talk about Chua’s book has gotten me to thinking about opportunities for brand extension.  How about Battle Hymn of the Tiger Boss?  My concern is that such a book would encourage the kind of management behaviors that my readers and I documented in a post last year called Seven Simple Rules to Create a Fear Based Culture.

When it comes to deciding what kind of leader you want to be, I encourage you to take a “both/and” rather than an “either/or”  approach. Ironically, Chua makes a good case for the both/and approach at the end of her WSJ column:

“Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.”

If you substitute the words managers for parents and employees for children in Chua’s quote, you set up a pretty interesting debate on motivational theory and developing people and cultures. Why does it have to be an either/or proposition? Can’t it be both/and? Shouldn’t leaders (and parents) be striving to incorporate all of those attributes in their approach?

What do you think? Is it possible as a leader (or a parent) to, in Chua’s words, be both Western and Chinese in your approach? If it is, how do you do it?

What Middle East Protestors and The Best Companies for Leaders Have in Common

My guess is you weren’t expecting to see the two topics in the title of this post strung together. Here’s the back story. 

As I was scanning the headlines this morning, I read the New York Times report about tens of thousands of Egyptians flooding into the streets to protest their government. This follows similar scenes in Tunisia a couple of weeks ago and it looks like Yemen is next up. All of these protests have been stimulated by a flood of information being shared through satellite news channels and by the citizens themselves through Twitter, You Tube and Facebook.  The information flow allows the protestors to learn the latest, take inspiration from it, connect with each other, collaborate and coordinate their efforts.

Earlier this week, I received an email from the Hay Group about their newly released study on the world’s best companies for developing leaders. Reading over the results, it seems to me that the leaders of these companies understand that the dynamics that are facilitating the protests in the Middle East can be leveraged for competitive advantage. To take advantage of today’s internet-enabled communications environment, the best companies are developing leaders who connect, collaborate and coordinate.

Here are a few headlines from the Hay study that illustrate that:

• 90% of the Best Companies expect employees to lead, regardless if they have a formal position of authority.
• 100% of the Best have programs to develop leaders who can bring together resources across the organization.
• 100% of the Best get local leaders to participate in decisions made at HQ to share ideas and best practices.

When you read the Best Companies for Leaders data in the context of what’s going on in the rest of the world, you realize pretty quickly that we’re in the midst of a structural shift about how organizational leadership is practiced.  As the protests in the Middle East show, people want to be heard.  The data on the Best Companies suggests that they’re working to make sure people get heard and that the best ideas surface.  We’re moving further and further away from hundreds of years of practice of hierarchical leadership structures and towards flatter, more participative models.

At least that’s what I think. What do you think about the practice of leadership?  Are we in the midst of a structural shift? Where do you think things are headed?

Leadership and the Human Connection: Lessons from the State of the Union

If you’re looking for an example of how much things can change in one year, play back a recording of last night’s State of the Union address and compare it with a recording of last year’s. Last night, of course, moved by the tragedy of the shootings in Tucson this month and the grave wounding of one of their colleagues, the Members of Congress sat together in the House chamber in a bi-partisan fashion. Instead of the traditional division of Democrats on one side and Republicans on the other, they all sat together in bi-partisan pairs of friends, as mixed state delegations and, in one case, as the House women’s softball team.

It was just a year ago that the State of the Union speech was interrupted every few minutes by the denizens of one party or the other jumping up to cheer like fans doing the wave at a football game while the other half of the room sat in sullen disapproval with arms crossed, typing on their Blackberries or, in one case, shouting out, “You lie!” at the President.  The television commentators reported  that the “”You lie!” guy was sitting with a couple of Democrats last night.

How did the scene change so much in one year? Searing tragedy that hits home in a personal way can remind us of our common humanity and the ties that bind. It’s a perspective builder – at least for a time.  Another factor is the pressure of peers. Apparently once the idea of the parties sitting together gathered momentum, just about every Member of Congress made sure they were sitting with someone from the other party. The result was perhaps one of the most coherent State of the Union addresses ever if for no other reason than the speaker wasn’t interrupted by vociferous partisan demonstrations from the floor every few minutes. The room looked like a body of people that were mainly there for a common purpose.  For me, it was the kind of thing that makes you proud to be an American.

Will the comity last? I hope so, but as they say, time will tell. Is there a larger leadership lesson here?  Perhaps. Last night, for however briefly, colleagues were reminded of what they have in common and the broader purpose they have come together to serve.  It took a tragedy for that to happen in the case of Congress, but that doesn’t have to be the case in your organization. If you’re the leader, give some thought to the occasions you can create that bring people together on a human to human level.  If you’re honest with yourself, there’s probably not much of that in your organization on a regular basis. 

Why should that be the case?

Three Tips for Managing an Olbermann

It was probably inevitable that Keith Olbermann and his managers at MSNBC would have a stressful parting of the ways. The career history of the talented, iconoclastic, maddening, entertaining (even if he’s the guy you love to hate) Olbermann has been one of resigning from or getting fired by every network he’s worked for.  As one NBC executive said to the New York Times, “Give us a bit of credit for getting eight years out of him. That’s the longest he’s been anywhere.”

About a year ago, I wrote a post called Three Reasons You Should Fire the Prima Donna. Re-reading that this morning, I’m guessing that some of those reasons came into play with Olbermann’s departure from MSNBC. If you’ve got someone on your team who is clearly a star but regularly disrupts the chi and makes life difficult for others on the team, you’ve got a tough problem as a manager. But, before you get to the point where you say, “You’re fired,” you’ll want to give it your best shot at working things out. After all, great talent doesn’t grow on trees. It’s hard to find.

So, how do you manage the superstar that has a penchant for stirring things up? Here are three tips:

Found in Translation

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?