Self-confidence – Me Versus We

After a couple of interesting incidents over the last couple of weeks, I have been reminded that hubris is alive and well in business.

It is true that self-confidence is essential to success - there aren’t many people who are “doormats” who have managed to become wildly successful in their field.  Doormats aren’t great at showing the self-confidence, vision and leadership necessary to get “stuff” done nor do they inspire others to do the same.

However, there is always some point in the execution of a company where help is needed.

And that’s where the self-confidence needs to change, from one of “I have everything I need” to one of “we have everything we need”.

The transition from “I” to “we” is essential in the internal dialog, starting before a collaboration is first suggested and being consistently present through to the completion of the collaboration.

Of the many companies I have been privileged to work with over the years, I have had a few organizations approach me for help with the following common scenario:

1. They have little or no strategy and their poor execution have led them to a very precarious position.

2. They have waited until the last minute to ask for help (and needed a miracle by the time they asked) and were now demanding immediate remedies.

3. Their self-confidence level is off the charts with no results to validate it.

4. They believe they can set the terms for what happens next and proceed to make a “my way or the highway” offer that heavily favors the people who created the problems in the first place.

One company owner, just before losing over 25 million dollars in a complete corporate collapse (a good bit of it being taxpayer money), said to me “Of course I can set the terms – this company was my idea and I deserve to harvest the majority of the rewards”.

Maybe so – but I know that if I am in trouble, the last thing I want to do when asking for help is to tell the world what it owes me.

It reminds me of one night back in the 1980’s when my car broke down while I was driving in the area of Gatineau Park in Quebec.  It was late at night, in a remote area, minus 40 degrees with the wind chill and before the days when everyone had a cell phone.

I was in trouble.

When the two Quebec police officers happened to come upon me by chance, did I say “I can’t believe you don’t have any coffee in your cruiser. What kind of rescue is this?”.

No – I was profusely grateful for the help.

I was reminded then as I have been many times since that, despite our belief in our abilities to get stuff done, there are always times when we need others.

Some moments call for an “I can do it”.

Others call for a “we can do it”.

Successful people know when each is appropriate.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

The same entry was posted on my detailed blog and can be found here.

To Influence the Mind of Others ….

… you MUST touch their heart.

In order to touch the heart, you must KNOW  the individual you wish to influence.  You must know what turns them on and equally important, what turns them off.

And despite this, many people seek to influence others in a somewhat random way and are often disappointed with the results.

One of the things I learned in my many years on Wall St. is the importance of knowing who I am dealing with.

When I have a need to establish a relationship for the purpose of collaborating, I immediately research the other person to understand:

• what they like and what they don’t like
• what ignites their passion and what throws cold water on it
• where they believe their sense of purpose is
• how they prefer to execute
• who their organization serves
• what their organization does and how it does it
• what my organization does and how it does it
• what I bring to the table to enable the person whom I am establishing the relationship with
• how the intersection of all of these areas produces the sweet spot for success for everyone involved.

People talk about establishing win/win relationships and yet they don’t know the person they are dealing with.

If someone doesn’t know what motivates another, how can one expect to influence them?

One may get lucky, but then again, who wants to rely on luck?

So, before attempting to influence someone else ask yourself two questions:

1. What do I REALLY know about the person I wish to influence and collaborate with?

2. Having learned as much as I can about them, how can I serve the needs of that person, in a manner that resonates with their own beliefs, values and execution style?

This is the age of knowledge, knowledge equally accessible by all.

Use it to your benefit and to the benefit of those whom you serve and collaborate with.

Some people think this is a lot of work.  Yes it is.  However, if you really want to produce positive results consistently, you will discover that it is definitely worth it.

Also, as you do this you will discover that in spending so much time learning about the other person that you are in fact making an investment in a very long-term relationship; the kind that produces true win/wins for many years to come.

Then again, you could rely on luck.

Which would you prefer?

In service and servanthood.

Harry

How Easily Intimidated Are You?

How easily intimidated are you when interacting with other people whom you consider to be “empowered” or “superior” in some way? 

Many of us have had an opportunity to interact with someone who feels intimidating to be around.  This perception of intimidation produces in some people’s minds, a wrestling match between their ego and the other person’s (even though the other person is unaware of it).  The wrestling match produces one of three outcomes from the perspective of the observer:

1. My ego is ok with this and we can find things to collaborate around.

2. My ego feels it is not worthy and I don’t understand why he would bother with me, therefore I will not participate for fear of not living up to his expectations.

3. My ego feels it is threatened, that his ego will exert influence over me or have knowledge that I don’t (thus making me look bad) and so I will avoid the opportunity to collaborate.

For those in categories 2 or 3, when they discover that the “intimidating” person really wants a true win-win collaboration, this throws their ego off even more and suggests to them that the other person must have an ulterior motive on top of an inflated ego.  This deepens their reasoning that their ego must be protected from embarrassment and ridicule at all cost and so a collaboration must be avoided.

Meanwhile, those in category 1 know that the only difference between arrogance and confidence in the one they observe is usually just perspective - notice I said usually :-).

People may be surprised to know how many people there are in categories 2 and 3 who are in high positions of power; whether in government, business or other institutions.  I believe that categories 2 and 3 make up a significant percentage of people in positions of leadership.

What a Waste of Potential

We waste so many opportunities to collaborate and to create positive results for the greater good when we fail to realize that we all bring incredible gifts, talents and strengths to the table. 

With such gifts, there is no need for ego-wrestling.  We all need each other.

The threatened observer, while perceiving a large ego in the observed …. 

is merely observing the gap in egos between the observer and the observed and not the ego of the observed.

In other words, it’s not that the observed person has too great an ego ….

it’s that the observer may have too small an ego.

A More Insidious Intimidation

While we choose to work with people (or not) based on this ego gap, there is another type of intimidation going on in the world that we accept but I believe is potentially more crippling or debilitating in our lives.

I call this intimidation “information or intellectual intimidation”, the use of facts, figures, credentials or a majority opinion to force people into a desired action even when the facts are nebulous, inaccurate or downright wrong.

One could write thousands of pages, citing many examples (I include some examples in my detailed blog here).   There are many challenges that trouble people privately and professionally and yet they are kept quiet for fear of losing their job, their friends, their family, etc.

The “emperor is not wearing any clothing” but for a variety of reasons, we stay quiet or look the other way. Meanwhile, our challenges grow – we just don’t discuss them publicly.

This seems to be to be the ultimate intimidation. and given the potential impact, a very dangerous one.

We Need To Decide What is Really Important

So our ego works to protect us from what it perceives as immediate threats against itself when we engage in one-on-one interactions, when many of those interactions may have produced results far greater than anything we could ever have accomplished by ourselves.

Meanwhile, greater threats to our prosperity and well-being are at play every day and yet we don’t see them or we are afraid to have an opinion about them, for a variety of reasons.

I wonder if our egos need to choose our battles more intelligently.

On the one side, our ego rises to protect us without having any facts to justify its behavior.

On the other side, it accepts things from certain people with specific titles, again without having any facts.  However, many of us make the mistake of assuming that having a title makes some people superior in intention, morals or values and so facts aren’t important in these situations.

When we strip the titles off those people, they are all just people and so our ego should hold them accountable to the same set of rules.

As Neale Donald Walsch wrote:

Be aware

Be honest

Be responsible

Let’s apply our ego consistently across the board – to collaborate, to question, to see the gifts in ourselves and others and to make a difference for ourselves and the greater good.

Better yet, don’t let your ego do the talking or thinking for you.  What does your spirit or instinct tell you?

In service and servanthood.

Harry

For my detailed blog “How Easily Intimidated Are You?”, please click here.

Collaboration – Life Lessons From a Sandbox

Collaboration, teamwork, empowered teams ….

Buzzwords that we like to throw around, brag about, lay claim to and espouse as our personal mantra when telling others the “secret to our success”.

Collaboration was on my mind as I watched a group of kids playing in a sandbox and as I observed their behaviors, it occurred to me that it may be possible to predict tomorrow’s collaborators just by observing these young people.

The kids fell into a variety of different groups.

The “Results and Fun” Group

The kids who were focused on having fun and accomplishing the desired result.  They mattered to each other.  Ego wasn’t important.  They represented human creativity and collaboration at its best.

The “My Way is the Best Way” Group

They struggled with whose idea was best.  During the fighting, some would start to cry and leave the group.  Some left in anger.  Some left in boredom when they realized their contribution didn’t matter.

Some stayed anyway, contributed for a bit and then suddenly kicked the castle down because they never liked it anyway – their idea was much better.

The “My Way is the Only Way” Group of One

One kid was building castles by himself.  It didn’t take very long to figure out why.  Every time another kid showed up to help, the first kid would say “I want you to do this or that”.  When the new child would offer a new idea, it was promptly rejected.  Some kids were more stubborn than others in pressing their point of view but eventually, the stubbornness of the one kid was too much and the others left.

The “If I Wanted  Your Opinion I’d Give it to You” Group

One kid who struggled with his castle asked others who were successful for help and when they told him what he was doing wrong, he told them they were wrong.  The kid went back to his castle, got angry and stomped on it, walking away from it.  He was frustrated with failure, not realizing that he was the cause of it.

The “Teamwork in Name Only” Group

One group of interest built a decent little sand castle and the parents were called over to admire it.  One kid prattled on and on about “the best castle in the park that he built”.  I’m sure the hearts of the other kids sank as they listened to him – the potential for a collaborative spirit being torn out of them by one person seizing the rewards. 

The “Non-Creative Way is Safest” Group

This is the group who constantly turned down one kid’s creative contributions with responses like “if we do that, it will fall down anyway so we won’t do it”.  The new kid offered a few suggestions as to why that wouldn’t happen and then walked away to play on the swings.  The potential for a great castle died because the strongest personality in the group didn’t like the idea.

The “I Don’t Like Any Of Your Ways” Group

This group was the saddest group of all.  They in fact were not building anything in the sand.  However, they took delight in occasionally running through the sandbox, destroying everyone else’s work.

They had no intention of creating anything.  Maybe they felt they couldn’t.  I don’t know.  All I know is that they didn’t want anyone else to create anything either.

Looking In My Own Sandbox

The sandbox was in fact a microcosm of the world I have been a part of for a long time.

We have all seen failures that fall into one of these groups – the leader who would not share credit but preferred the glory, the leader who delegated all the blame, the bully who crushed creativity and contribution, the leader who only liked their own ideas and nobody else’s or the leader who seemed to exist to take the wind out of the sails of others, crushing their projects and dreams without offering a contribution of his / her own.

The people who failed missed the key ingredient that the first group I described knew all along.

The first group knew that we need each other.

That our collective ideas are stronger than single ideas.

That focusing on our result and not on our ego produces a better result.

That sharing the credit encourages us to continue to work together on new projects and assures us that others will stick around to help us with the next sand castle.

That embracing team creativity takes all of us further than if we chose to follow our own ideas only.

Maybe the next time a team is looking for a consultant to help them solve their collaboration problems, maybe we should pay a bunch of kids $1000 a day to allow us to sit and observe them.

They will not offer us “stuff” to please our ego or to tell us what we want to hear.  They will not offer advice influenced by their own life experiences which may be empowering or disempowering.

They will just be themselves and in doing so, place staggeringly profound lessons in front of us.

If we are open to those lessons, it may be the most authentic lessons we will ever learn, lessons that are placed in front of us with no ulterior motive.

Aren’t they the most profound lessons of all?

I wish you well with your own “sand castles”.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

For my detailed blog “Collaboration – Life Lessons From a Sandbox”, please click here.