Are you familiar with this quote: “Attitude reflects leadership?”

I saw it written on someone’s whiteboard yesterday. I knew I had heard it before, and assumed it was a timeless quote uttered by a leadership guru of decades ago, or maybe a coach like Lombardi or Landry. Regardless, I couldn’t shake it all day, so I looked it up last night. Best I can tell, it came from this scene from the movie Remember the Titans in 2000:

Click here if you can’t see the video above.

Here’s my take: Leadership no doubt carries a huge amount of influence. And the best leaders are able to use that influence to inspire greatness in the group.

But I’m not willing to let my attitude be so reliant on my leader. Sometimes, your leader sucks. Other times, even great leaders can let you down. But it’s my attitude, not theirs. My attitude is my responsibility. As much as I respect the power of leadership, and as much as I agree with Maxwell when he says that “leadership is influence,” I’m still responsible for my attitude.

Not my leader.

Not my circumstances.

Not anything or anyone but me.

The minute I give the keys to my attitude to my leader is the minute I give myself an excuse that shouldn’t be there.

What do you think? I know the Remember the Titans quote is inspiring, but is it right? 

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I’ve spent the last two days meeting with the global marketing partners for my company. We operate in 17 countries, so this annual meeting is always a jam-packed but productive time where we can share ideas, frustrations and collaborate.

And as you can probably imagine, it’s also filled with plenty of presentations given with sub-par English.

One country’s group included their general manager and two managers from its marketing department. The general manager speaks excellent English, while the other two speak very broken English. I probably speak for the rest of the room when I say we all assumed the GM would be giving the presentation.

But he didn’t.

He let one of his managers do the job. And let me tell you: it was rough. Yeah, we all made it through it, but it was an effort to really understand what the guy was saying, unfortunately.

I found myself frustratingly wondering, “Why doesn’t the GM hop up and take over this presentation?!?” I mean, their presentation was essentially being hijacked by a communication breakdown of epic proportions. I stared at him as he just sat and smiled, trying my best to use the Force to get him to stand up and step in.

But he didn’t. He just kept smiling.

Empowerment in Action

That’s when it hit me what was going on here. The point wasn’t about the presentation being good or understood. The point was that the presentation was simply happening.

The GM was empowering his management team. He was giving them the opportunity to grow. And in doing so, he was allowing them to make mistakes. He was even allowing his country’s presentation to fail in terms of clarity.

It was a pretty bold move, I must say. But it made me realize that this is what empowerment actually is. Empowerment isn’t so much about handing the keys over once all the ducks are in a row, and the risk is low. Empowerment is about handing the keys over a little too soon, knowing that the most growth is going to happen when one is being stretched well beyond his comfort zone. It’s more than just delegation and influence; there’s a mentoring aspect to it, as well.

For it to work, empowerment must be uncomfortable.

To be fair, the presentation wasn’t an utter failure. I think everyone there got the point. But you know what? I bet we all forget that presentation within a week. And we would have whether it had been given in perfect English or Farsi. That’s just how things are.

But I guarantee you the presenter will remember it forever.

p.s. Alienating your comfort zones seems to be a common theme in any story worth telling. I call it “moving the box.” Here’s my five-minute explanation; watch it now.

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Admit that you’re wrong. Even if you’re not.

If resolving the conflict truly is priority number one, then admit to screwing up, say you’re sorry and move on. This is what everyone else is waiting for someone to do, and yet no one has the balls to actually do it.

Sure, there are times you need to stick to your guns. But probably not as often as you think. Most of the time, just resolving the conflict would make everything better, and is the most heroic thing you could do.

You big enough to do it?

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Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shyald/408562534/

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Can you push through the resistance?

It’s that time of year again.

I was walking around a park near my house just the other day. I noticed a couple, probably in their 40s, or 50s, walking briskly behind me as I began. They were focused, and clearly getting a head start on their New Year’s Resolutions.

I then heard their footsteps quicken behind me. The husband passed me, then looked back and saying “C’mon, baby.” The wife quickly snipped back with “I can’t.” The husband then doubled back to encourage her, and she managed to run a few more steps, only to further confirm her sentiment with a strong “I can’t do anymore!” The husband backed off.

I know exactly what the husband was thinking at this point. He was thinking, “Oh, you don’t even know how to push yourself.” I could see it in his eyes, his posture, everything. He was a relatively fit guy, and I’d be willing to bet he’s spent plenty of his youth on sports teams, at two-a-day football practices or the like, pushing himself with 50 other guys in a time that we men eventually, somehow, consider the greatest days of our lives.

What I’m saying is he recognized that the whole point of this running thing was to push yourself into pain, because he had experienced it before. He knew what to expect. His wife clearly had not, and thought you were supposed to quit at the first inkling of discomfort.

If you’re doing anything worth its salt, whether it’s exercise or a project, you’re going to confront pain points. In his recent book Linchpin (aff.), Seth Godin calls this the resistance. It’s a very natural part of all of us humans that fights against change, against challenge. And it’s always there.

Where most people get thrown off with the resistance is that they don’t expect it. The resistance surprises them. It sneaks up on them and completely throws them off-track. It was not in their plans.

And yet the resistance always happens. So why does it surprise us?

Foresee the Obstacles

Successful people seem to expect the resistance. Even welcome it. Just like the husband running. He knew that this whole resolution required some resistance in order for it to be effective. He pushed through it.  The wife apparently was surprised by this, and it completely threw her entire plans off-track.

So here’s what you should always do: expect the resistance. In most cases, you even know what the resistance will be before you start the project. There’s that one project manager who’s gonna throw darts at your plan. The sales team isn’t gonna back your idea because it’s not their idea. It’s easier to grab a quick burger during lunch than to work out. Whatever.

When you know what the obstacle is, get a picture of it or something to represent it, pin it up on your wall, and, when it actually happens, just look at it and say “I told you so.” Then deal with it. Because you expected it.

Other times, you won’t know exactly what the obstacle will be, but you still know they’re coming. Pin up a universal picture that represents obstacles to you and refer to it.

The point here is to acknowledge your obstacles at the beginning. Don’t try to avoid them, but simply prepare for them. Push through the pain; you’ll be surprised how easily it gives up.

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Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/

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Something pretty cool happened this past Tuesday night. Steve Woodruff and Lisa Petrilli launched #LeadershipChat on Twitter. I must admit, between putting a little boy to bed and watching the Rangers win their first-ever playoff series, I was only able to get in on about the last 10 minutes. But it was quite an impressionable period of time.

As you glance through the transcript and read some of the recaps (this one at Wright Creativity is excellent), you may have a similar reaction as I did: how many stinkin’ definitions and/or traits of leadership can we come up with? Those offered included …

• Influence (@drbret)
• Conviction (@mackcollier)
• Understanding of Power Structure (@raffel)
• Authority (@starbucker)
• Inspirational and loving (@margieclayman)
• Example-setters (@smsjoe)
• Respected (@kylemcshane)
• Good networker (@robert_rose)
• Experience great failures (@davemurr)

The list could go on and on. The discussion hinged on the idea of power being the centralized trait of a leader and the many different reactions to that idea.

Just my quick glancing over the notes at the end of the chat managed to spark a more basic idea to me, though. It’s really the most fundamental trait of any leader. The one all leaders share.

To be a leader, you must have followers.

Simple, huh? I’m reminded of something I heard John Maxwell once say (and I paraphrase): “If you’re leading and no one’s following, you’re not a leader. You’re just going on a walk.” That quote is so money.

Regardless of the method used, successful leaders are successful at getting followers. Granted, the goal should be to foster relationships so that people want to follow you, but it doesn’t have to work that way. Some people are good at forcing followers to follow. Others sell followers to follow. Others inherit followers. Some buy followers. Others are involuntarily raised up by followers. But all leaders have followers.

Put another way, the characteristics are a means to an end, and that end is followers following.

Is There Such a Thing as Common Leadership Traits?

Of course, you can ramble on and on about vision and power and inspiration and conviction. They are all important. But they are not fundamental. There are plenty of strong leaders who have existed and been successful that have not been the keepers of all (or any) of those traits. Heck, all the pied piper did was play a flute.

But they all had followers.

And we can give our opinions on what these leaders did with their followers. If they were good stewards of them. If they leveraged them, brought them together, built a team, abused them, led them in a bad direction, whatever.

But they still all had followers.

The point here is to realize that leadership is a lot like love; it’s hard to describe it, but you know it when you see it. There are many paths one can take, many cards one can play, many horns one can toot. But the result must be the same: followers.

So, asking what characteristics all leaders must have isn’t necessary. We know the answer (followers; have I beat that drum enough?). The question to be asking is what characteristics do I have that can help me get the followers I need to move toward the goal I’m after (or the goal we’re after). Put another way, what makes you specifically and individually a leader, not generically what makes us all a leader?

How do you most effectively get followers?

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If you like leadership philosophies, you’ll love this post on Moving the Box. And, you should consider subscribing to Marketing In Progress by email or RSS.

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“Smoking killed far more people than terrorists ever did. It’s just not as dramatic.”

You can thank Seth Godin for that loaded byte. His post on the power of slow change makes a great point: single events don’t crush anything; series of events over time do.

On the one hand, you have something to be happy about: no individual act is make or break for you. So stop treating it that way.

On the other hand, here’s something to worry about: there are things going on right now, right in front of you that are creating some kind of future disaster. Can you afford to stop focusing on now long enough to see what now is telling you about tomorrow?

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… is to make consensus your goal.

An individual person has amazing ideas. But people only know how to dilute ideas.

A person is bold and adventurous. People are just scared and boring.

A person can easily follow his gut. People depend on a vote.

A person can get something done by tomorrow. People can’t even finalize the members of the committee by tomorrow.

A person can be clear. People confuse and are confused.

A person can lead. People stall.

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Maybe the question you should be asking is not “Do we have the right people in place here?,” but rather “Do we have the right person in place?” Whatever that “place” is, it will be because of the leadership of a person

Feedback and advice and councils have their place. We just happen to always put them in the wrong place. This is why politics is so frustrating. Someone starts with a great, albeit polarizing, idea, and then it gets processed and homogenized via consensus until it (supposedly) pleases everyone and accomplishes nothing.

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Came across this post and the video below from Derek Sivers. It’s so good, and requires nothing more from me. I’d love your reaction in the comments.

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Nothing sharpens your perspective like challenges.

Take Jeff Healey. No one in their right mind would play a guitar the way he plays the guitar. It’s not coorect, and guitars weren’t meant to be played the way he plays them, laying the body in his lap and fingering the fretboard from above.

But Jeff lost his sight when he was eight months old, and started playing guitar when he was three. The way he wanted to play it. Because he didn’t know any better. Because it made perfect sense to him.

The real story here isn’t that Jeff Healey overcame blindness to become a great guitar player. There are lots of blind guitar players. The story here is that his challenges are actually what made him unique. His playing style opened up options that those of us who play guitar in the “normal” way simply don’t have. His style got him noticed by Stevie Ray Vaughn and Albert Lee; gave him chances to play with Eric Clapton and George Harrison. Heck, he even got to be in the movie Roadhouse.

What challenges can you embrace rather than avoid? What things do you need to unlearn before you can really move on?

FYI, things really get good around the 3-minute mark on this video.

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Fast becoming more annoying than tax season or budget season is the ever-popular, clearly link-baiting time of year marked with blogs filled with predictions for the new year:

• “10 predictions on social media in 2010.”
• “7 things that will happen on Facebook in 2010.”
• “47 ways advertising will die in 2010.”

It’s all baloney (yes, I know it’s spelled “bologna,” but I don’t want to chance you pronouncing it in your mind as bah-low-NUH), and it’s an utter waste of time.

“But shouldn’t one prepare for what’s ahead,” you ask. “Is it not a sign of knowing your industry?”

It’s definitely cool when someone knows an industry or trend so well that they repetitively prophesy and, poof, it happens.

Those people are rare. My guess is you’re not one of them.

Playing a Numbers Game

The problem with banking on predictions is that you are putting way too much stock in what has yet to happen.

Let’s say you make 10 predictions in your industry or for your company for 2010, and you put in place plans to address all ten. Now, fast-forward to 2011 and look back. Assume two of the 10 predictions came true. Granted, you are really ahead of the pack in those two areas, and it’s probably paid off to a certain degree.

But you wasted 80% of your planning process and strategic abilities on something that can’t even be used, because your assumptions never became reality.

Let’s face it: there are too many levers moving too quickly in the world today to know everything that’s coming. In fact, the sooner you realize there’s something always around the corner that you’re not prepared for, the better off you’re going to be.

Instead of waxing poetic on a year-end guessing game just so you get the thrill of proclaiming “I told you so!” at the end of next year, why not try building a different list.

How about figuring 10 things you can do now so you can easily react to what 2010 brings?

The all-stars of business today, especially small business, are those people who can react the fastest. Opportunity is always knocking, but it’s opting more and more for a speed-dating approach. If you don’t answer right away, it has no problem hopping to the next doorstep.

What processes can you put in place to get yourself and your team better prepared when the big 2010 moment hits? What processes can you eliminate? What do you need to learn? Who do you need to get to know? Who do you need to rally?

Two years ago I picked the Rams to win the Super Bowl. I think they won a total of three games that year.

Predictions mean nothing. Reactions and responses mean everything. Stop predicting and start preparing for the unpredictable.

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