Smart Leadership by Mark Miller
Have you ever considered what is holding you back from accomplishing your goals, dreams, and aspirations? Mark lumps all of these limiting factors into one metaphor: Quicksand…
When faced with quicksand, you’ve got 3 options:
- Sink – Give up and die
- Swim – Learn to swim (lead) in the quicksand
- Escape – Find a way to higher ground
Smart Leadership is all about finding the escape plan. It’s about moving to the higher ground of increased influence, opportunity, and impact.
If you know anything about story structure, you might think that quicksand is the villain (busyness, distraction, complacency, fear) in this metaphor but it’s not. You and I are the villains! Smart Leadership is not a story of leaders vs their environments, it’s leaders vs themselves.
Your impact hinges on your choices.
Our choices give us agency, opportunity, and responsibility.
4 Choices
Choice #1 – Smart leaders confront reality
- “When you want reality the way you want air, you’ll find it.”
- Find fresh eyes! Fresh eyes are people who…
Have a different worldview.
Have no stake in the outcome.
Are from outside your organization
New to the topic being discussed - People with fresh eyes challenge assumptions, confront your biases, ask the right questions, introduce new ideas, can get your attention, and tell you the truth!
Choice #2 – Smart leaders grow capacity
Smart leaders who want to grow capacity actually put margin in their lives.
Bigger your hopes/dreams/aspirations the more time you need in margin. You’ve got to reflect, assess, and think.
- Margin is not…
- Vacation
- Time to do email
- Extracurricular
- Expand your Energy!
- Exercise
- Fuel (food) and fluids
- Sleep
- Recreations
- Relationships
- Purpose
- Spiritual Practices
Choice #3 – Fuel Curiosity
- Curiosity is the fountain of youth
Curiosity…
Pays dividends in the short and long term
Opens new possibilities
Fuels growth
Challenges complacency
Creates energy! - Jim Collins suggests that you double your question to statement ratio. And then double it again!
Here are some questions to help fuel curiosity:
- What do you want to be true in a decade?
- How would you communicate this to a small child?
- If time and money were not an issue, what would the right answer be?
The more questions I ask, the better I lead. This is almost always true!
If things don’t go well, it probably means I haven’t asked the right questions or enough questions.
Talk with strangers. These are called curiosity conversations.
Choice #4 – Choose to Create Change
- You can make the first 3 changes and still be an awful leader.
- You actually have to change something in order be effective.
- Leaders are paid to be change agents. They help people move and grow.
- Change is a choice, you can’t miss that!
- Ask yourself: What needs to change in my life and leadership?
- Most people are resistant to change. Non-leaders don’t like change! (Roughly about 95% of people in an organization)
- Some may wonder, when will things stop changing? The answer is… When you die! (Or when I’m no longer your leader)
- Not everyone is going to be happy when you make change and that’s ok.
- If you can’t solve the problems you have, you won’t get bigger ones to solve in the future.
Front line workers:
- Model
- Coach
- Care
Q and A Highlights
5 things we require from all Chik fil a employees:
- See the future
- Engage and develop others
- Reinvent continuously – change = progress
- Value results and relationships
- Embody the values… walk the talk
Bottom Line… We do not know it all! Don’t pretend that you do.
Chess Not Checkers
As organizations grow, so does their complexity. You can tell if you’re playing chess or checkers by the types of problems that you’re facing. Are these problems that could have been prevented?
Checkers is fast pace, reactionary to your opponent’s moves, with pieces that all do the same thing. Chess is thinking ahead, using strategy, and each piece has different moves than other pieces. To raise your leadership game, start playing chess not checkers.
Developing your pieces is one of the most important moves in playing chess. A knight (chess piece) is less effective in a corner than out in the middle of the board. In the same way, leaders must develop their teams and add value to them, making sure they are well positioned to use their strengths to help the organization win.
If you’re not growing, you’re not gaining in experience. You’re just repeating the same experience over and over again – no matter how long you’ve been on the job.
Question: What is most important within the first 90 days of a new role or job?
Answer: It’s actually the first 40 hours on a job that is most important!
Overload community in the first 40 hours! (And the first 90 days for that matter). Get the person involved in community. So much of the culture is caught, not taught.