Rose-Colored Glasses are a Part of Every Successful Culture

“I have played with many players who have succeeded as professionals. I’m not sure that most of them have more talent than many of us. Most are not as good as they think they are. And that may be the secret to their success. I have come to believe that it is their belief in themselves that is the primary reason why they are successful pros and why I am prematurely retired.”

These were the words of a golfer who was once judged the best junior player on the planet but whose professional career went off track when he lost his confidence.  We were discussing our shared belief that the best, in any field, simply refuse to succumb to the trappings of self-doubt.  

Instead, the best believe that their abilities are not fixed, that they are constantly improving, and that their best days are always in the future.  They seem convinced that given the opportunity, no matter the odds, they can build a car, put a man on the moon, or win a Ryder Cup match with the world watching.

Most of us don’t possess that kind of confidence and optimism.  Somewhere on our journeys, our dreams were diminished.  We allowed ourselves to believe that we were not meant to change the world.  We were taught, often unintentionally, not to expect too much - to be practical and to set realistic goals lest we become frustrated and disappointed. I can still remember the teacher who labeled me a non-singer at 13 years of age after listening to only five notes. Unfortunately, I believed her, and I have spent the last half-century proving her right.   

Maybe I would have been a non-singer no matter how the teacher reacted to my off-key intro to her favorite Christmas carol.  However, what seems unmistakably true decades later, is that the expectations of our teachers affect how we think and what we think is possible.  We know that expectations matter.  Expectancy theory has been memorialized in stories told throughout history. It is the myth of Pygmalion.  It is the story in the play My Fair Lady and the movie Pretty Women.  The beliefs of others can have an outsized effect on our lives.

It is our shared belief in the power of expectations that make it all the more curious that, as leaders, we systemically expect so little from so many.  Too often, we depend on inherent leadership practices that rely on fear to control or incent performance and we are far too accepting of the waste of human potential that results.  

When we limit the number of high grades a teacher can award in a class, when we unnecessarily limit decision-making authority, when we use incentives to motivate or control, or when we build internally competitive cultures where one person’s success necessitates another’s failure, we are communicating a set of expectations nearly guaranteed to disappoint.  When we set goals that are attainable with modest effort, we are telling people that modest effort is all that is expected.  It is not that we intend to promote mediocrity - but we do with distressing regularity.  

The best leaders we encountered in our recently completed study of more than 700 leaders, refuse to fall victim to the tyranny of moderate expectations.  They expect more from people than most people expect of themselves. They are demanding.  For them, mediocrity is the enemy never to be tolerated. They look for the best in every person and they work to create an environment where people reach deep to find that person. They believe that there is greatness in every person just waiting for the opportunity to excel.  Their confidence in themselves and those they hope to influence is contagious.  For them, creating a culture where people can reach their potential is not a tactic, it is nothing less than a moral imperative.  

Arnold Palmer was once asked what he would tell a young golfer if he could only give that person one piece of advice.  He said that every day he would tell that golfer “that they can play.”  He would ensure that the aspiring player understood that greatness was within his or her grasp if he or she did the work.  He believed that parents, coaches, teachers, and leaders are more impactful than they realize - that their beliefs were contagious. He understood that confidence can take years to develop but can be undermined in a fraction of the time by people in authority who often mindlessly underestimate the ability of ordinary people to make extraordinary contributions.

I have often advocated building cultures where people face tough issues quickly and strive to see the world as it is - and not as we wished it were.  That still feels sound.  We need to see reality in order to change effectively.  However, I now believe that we must also be willing to see the world through rose-colored glasses that might seem unrealistic to most. It is the confident belief in the power of a team to do what others consider unrealistic that is the secret to doing the remarkable.  “We may not be as good as we think we are” but sometimes, it is our collective, unfounded confidence that can enable us to change the rules of the game that others find limiting.

It's Time to Act

The demonstrations filling our streets today have made me more mindful of the realities of our society.  They have made it more difficult for me to live on autopilot enjoying a life aided by privileges that I rarely take time to fully consider.  I am thankful for those who have taken to the streets and who refuse to go quietly into that good night.  It is their engagement and perseverance that have me rethinking the meanings of words like ‘fairness’ and ‘justice’ as we search to create a more perfect union.  

This morning I am engaged and frustrated.  My emotions are real but the empathy I feel comes with the realization that I cannot know what it feels like to walk the streets of our country in fear or to have to have ‘the conversation’ with my kids.  I can’t possibly understand what it feels like to be harassed for simply driving a nice car or to be in fear of my life because I chose to go jogging.  Even though I grew up on the streets of Baltimore, I can’t possibly know how different my life would have been had I not been born a white male.  

The anger I feel at the injustices I am watching fuels the frustration I feel for having ignored the injustices in our society that have been obvious for centuries.  It is inexcusable that I have adopted - that we have adopted - a sort of motivated blindness when it comes to the suffering of our fellow citizens and that we have told ourselves that it is someone else’s responsibility to ‘fix’ the problems.  I can only hope that this time - these demonstrations and the unfairness that fuels them - will not be relegated to the dustbins of our memory as they have so many times in the past.  

Martin Luther King in his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,”  implored us to look beyond the unrest of the moment and to grapple with the causes of that unrest.  He warned us that the greatest danger to our society is not the action of racists but the inaction of people of privilege who are not willing to rock to the boat.  He was right then.  He is right now.  The only action that is unacceptable in the future, is inaction. If we tolerate unfairness, we teach that unfairness is acceptable.  To be a great society, we must believe as Dr. King did that: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  We must collectively act to confront systemic problems because “Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”   

It is time to act even if that action makes others uncomfortable. It is time to speak out even if that makes us uncomfortable. It is time to choose love - not fear - as we learn to stand with people who don’t look like - or think like - us.  Our diversity has been our strength as a country only when we embrace our differences.  We must remember that America is a fragile experiment and that creating a more perfect union is hard, often uncomfortable, work.

There's a Hero in All of Us: CEOWorld Magazine

Read Gary’s latest article, “There’s a Hero in All of Us: 8 Ways Leaders Create Extraordinary People,” today:

It’s not news that in times of crisis, we think and act differently. When our lives and well-being are challenged—as they have been during the COVID-19 pandemic—we’re not concerned with petty rules or receiving credit for our actions. The cause becomes prepotent. Team welfare trumps self-interest. We are more willing to face our fears. In these times, we’ll listen to any idea, follow any person, or try any suggestion that makes success more likely. During a crisis, everyday people become extraordinary heroes.

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The Natty: A Leadership Lesson We Cannot Afford to Ignore

By Gary Heil and Ryan Heil, PhD

On January 13, the Clemson Tigers will play the Tigers of Louisiana State University for the National Championship of College Football (the Natty). 

The Tigers of Clemson are coached by Dabo Swinney who has led his teams to participate in four of the last five national championships.  LSU’s head coach, Ed Orgeron, is leading his Tigers to their first appearance in the Natty since the inception of the College Football Playoff.  Two very talented teams with passionate fan bases. It will be quite a show when the teams meet in New Orleans.  

As different as the two teams appear on paper and as different as the two coaches are in backgrounds and personalities -- and they are very different -- they have one important and unmistakable thing in common.  Both coaches break the traditional coaching mold of yesteryear and have chosen to build cultures founded on positive emotion. They are unabashed in their love for their players. They’re also willing to tell anyone who will listen that they believe the secret sauce to their on- and off-field success is the fact that they have built cultures where people love each other. 

For these coaches, love is not some touchy-feely concept right out of Never Never Land.  It is not just a description of a compelling positive emotion. For them, it appears that love is also a lens through which they view their responsibility to build an environment where every person feels that they can reach closer to their potential.  

Make no mistake, these coaches are demanding.  They got to the Natty because they expect players to learn, grow and give their best effort daily.  They demand excellence and they believe that excellence is best sustained in an environment where positive emotions are more prevalent than fear.  By reaching the Natty, these coaches are challenging us to see what has been visible for decades-- if not centuries. Cultures built on love, gratitude and positive emotions are fundamental to extraordinary performance.  

Since Machiavelli was first asked whether a leader should choose love or fear, people have known, at least intuitively, that when leaders choose love, people are far more likely to be open to new ideas, be expansive in their view of the world, and develop confidence in their team’s ability to be remarkable.  Research by North Carolina’s Barbara Fredrickson over the last couple of decades has provided even more proof that positive emotions make extraordinary performance more likely and that fear renders people more change-averse, narrows their field of vision, inhibits learning, and leaves them less adaptive.  

Make no mistake, fear moves people to action.   But it does not motivate them to greatness. Rather, it moves them to do whatever is necessary to eliminate fear -- which is usually more of what they did yesterday.  It creates a fight or flight response rather than a passion for development and better execution. Building a culture with a foundation of fear is building a culture that makes perpetual underperformance more likely. 

Yet, too often, fear-based cultures remain the norm.

College coaching has a long tradition of using fear to try and produce ‘peak performance.’ Tough coaches have been revered and imitated for as long as we can remember.  As a result, we have often tolerated (or worse yet imitated) behaviors more akin to bullying and hazing, than effective leadership. We have watched as many abusive coaches were excused as simply demanding or results-oriented.  

Most have remained resistant to change even after studies have demonstrated that fear-based coaching is harming athletes.  According to an American College Health Association assessment, more than 40% of college athletes are “so depressed that it [is] difficult to function,” and 52% feel “overwhelming anxiety.”   Ben Tepper’s studies at the Ohio State Fisher College of Business demonstrated that intercollegiate student-athletes are 2 to 3 times more likely to be abused by their leaders than employees in business.  

We are not arguing that all college coaches choose fear as an organizing principle.  We were lucky to have felt the love that was part of playing baseball on a team coached by the late Tony Gwynn.  But, we have also experienced the fear created by another coach that picked his starting shortstop using a process more akin to a UFC match than a college baseball competition.  We are arguing that choosing to build a team culture based on fear is both common and ineffective. We are arguing it is time to trade in tired notions of ‘tough’ coaching and to summon the courage to choose love as a foundation of team culture.   

Based on the coaches in this year’s Natty, there is reason to believe that the times may be changing.  Perhaps Coaches Swinney and Orgeran are part of a new breed that is committed to finding a more positive way forward, one that is more consistent with what we know about how and why people fully engage and perform closer to their potential. 

Maybe their successes will encourage future coaches to choose love as an organizing principle.  When they say they love their players, maybe it will become more difficult for us to continue to ignore what we know to be true.  People don’t play well when they play scared. People perform better on the field, at work, and in the classroom when there is at least 3 times more positive emotion than criticism in the team’s culture.

Clemson versus LSU.  It should be one heck of a game.  As you watch the game and listen to the coaches, listen to their language.  Watch how players treat each other and hold each other accountable. We hope that what we will be watching is the beginning of a different trend in coaching.   We hope that their example will demonstrate to a new generation of leaders, coaches, and teachers that choosing love and not fear is not only a more human strategy but it is also a more effective winning strategy. 

We know where we will be at kickoff.  We will be watching the game, all in. We will be cheering for the Tigers who play in the REAL Death Valley to win the game.  And we will be celebrating the successes of two coaches who continue to choose a road far less traveled.  

What does love have to do with great leadership?  For these two coaches, the answer seems obvious: Just about everything.

The Democratization of Society is Narrowing Our Leadership Choices

The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, co-written with Ryan Heil, PhD, entitled “Choose Love Not Fear: How the Best Leaders Build Cultures of Engagement and Innovation that Unleash Human Potential.”

The topic - the democratization of society - is rapidly becoming more relevant to those of us in leadership roles. Consider the following:

Democratization is Narrowing Our Leadership Choices

The all-powerful leader may have been successful enough in the past. However, in today’s world, that type of leader is quickly becoming a liability. The one trend in the practice of leadership that has been consistent over time is the transfer of power from those who used to hold all the power to those who, historically, have had little. Today, we stand at the brink of a digital revolution that is accelerating democratization at a pace that will render leaders less powerful. That is a good thing. Leaders with an abundance of power inhibit engagement and the expression of creativity. When leaders hold more power, people have less freedom. They have less need to be fully engaged when one person has the answer and make the rules.

To be successful in the future, we will need less powerful leaders. The changes that we will experience in the next couple of years will be far greater than what we have experienced in the last couple of decades. We will be challenged to move faster, innovate quicker, and lead teams of people who are far less willing to follow absent a worthy cause. The changes at our doorstep will rock our world and force us to find a way to influence people more through the power of our beliefs than through our positions.

Just as Martin Luther used the printing press to gather support in his revolt against Rome and radio and television were instrumental in bringing down the Iron Curtain, recent developments in technology have accelerated the pace of change and shuffled the rules governing how people will interact. As people find new ways to share information and connect with like-minded souls, they invariably become more courageous when they realize they are not alone. Just as there is power in information, there is even more power in groups of people connected in a ubiquitously informed community. The lone voice today can find kindred spirits around the world without leaving the couch. A frustrated team member can alert a significant number of teammates, customers, and regulators in short order regardless of the accuracy of the information.

We are not saying that today’s leaders are not powerful or that they are less important. We are saying that we will be required in the future to find a more inclusive way forward. We are saying that the last chapter of fear-induced, command and control leadership is being written. We are warning that, although leaders can still command compliance in many cultures, future efforts to achieve such compliance will require more power and will come at a much higher price. The methods that formed the foundation of yesterday’s successes are likely to be less effective, and shifts in our leadership thinking and actions that might have been perceived as optional yesterday will quickly become more necessary as innovation becomes the most valuable currency in every endeavor from reinventing the spread offense in college football to changing the way customers connect and purchase products.

Today, many teams are still led by baby boomers (one of us), most of whom learned to challenge traditional authority much more than their parents did. But a willingness to challenge orthodoxies pales in comparison with what is coming. Millennials (one of us) those born between 1980 and the turn of the century, are here and they are different. They grew up in the middle of a communication revolution - the effects of which baby boomers often underestimate. They are capable of great commitment but won’t give that commitment easily. They are likely to be less trustful and more self-confident. They are less willing to follow authority blindly and have been conditioned to connect with others while challenging the existing order. They are accustomed to being informed because, for their entire lives, every answer has only been a click away. “Informed and connected” is what they know and, therefore, what they expect.

This is all good news because if we are mindful, we will understand that there will be no effective retreat to yesterday’s methods of using fear to control. We will no longer be able to pretend that when 30 percent of our team members are highly engaged, we are leading effectively. Bad leaders will finally be too expensive to support. And we will no longer be able to ignore people’s need to belong to a group that is connected through a gratifying level of positive emotion.

Instead, we will need to acknowledge that times are changing and that shifts in our leadership choices that might have been perceived as optional yesterday are quickly becoming more necessary as tomorrow’s most coveted recruits are demanding a different kind of culture and a different kind of leader.

Recruiting is a Cultural Statement Worth Examining

RECRUITING IS A CULTURAL STATEMENT WORTH EXAMINING

For years as a board member for various committees and organizations, I have been guided by the belief that if you are filling an executive vacancy of a successful company with a supportive culture, it is best to look to internal candidates.  If on the other hand, the company is struggling and needs cultural transformation, an outside candidate can help jump start that process because they are likely to be less supportive of the present culture, better able to identify what is needed to reform.  

I still believe that this logic seems appropriate.  Transformational change requires different leadership and different ideas. The caveat being that change that we are encouraging by hiring a particular outsider is purposeful in that it is consistent with the change in culture that we hope to engender.  What I have learned, often the hard way, is that most board members and managers don’t understand their present cultures and they are not mindful of all the ways that outsiders are likely to reshape the future of their organizations.

Historically, the vast majority of vacancies were filled by finding the best internal candidate for most positions including management positions. In the late 1970’s, nearly 9 in 10 jobs were filled by people who were already working for an organization.  But, those days are long gone. Recent surveys have found that less a third of jobs are now filled by internal candidates and only 28% of HR leaders report that internal candidates are an important source of talent acquisition. There has been a gradual and accelerating trend toward recruiting outside talent even though more than 90% of all hiring is focused on the filling vacancies that exist because of voluntary turnover.  

There is little evidence to support the notion that this move to external hiring has been an effective means of consistently hiring better talent.  Despite an army of consultants and a boat load of available data, most leaders remain frustrated by existing talent management strategies. For example, the trend toward hiring outsiders not presently looking to change jobs (so called passive candidates), has often resulted in the hiring of people who don’t share the same priorities.  A person who is happy in their present job can frequently be recruited if the difference in pay is significant enough. Should we be surprised that people who come primarily for pay will often be pay-focused when they arrive? It’s no wonder that according to a Price Waterhouse 2017 CEO survey and the latest Conference Board’s Annual survey, CEOs and their teams consider their ability to find the right talent the biggest future threat. In a world where every day brings a new mind-boggling discovery, we live in the middle ages when it comes to understanding the effectiveness of our hiring practices; by all accounts, we seem to know it even if we don’t know what to do about it.

There is substantial evidence, however,  to support the notion that this trend toward hiring outside applicants has had unrealized effects on many cultures.  When a preponderance of candidates are hired from the outside, the message sent in the present culture is clear and unmistakable.  “Most of you will have to leave to advance.” Not much of a retention strategy. It can also lead managers to believe that development is less necessary and less valuable.  “We shouldn’t worry about development, they are going to leave anyway.” Or, “Development is less critical, we’ll just hire the talent we need when we need them.” And, of course, less development leads to less engagement and less commitment.  We should not act surprised by our engagement challenges if these are the messages that we are even unintentionally sending. 

I am not arguing that hiring from the outside is bad or ineffective.  I am arguing that we need to be more mindful of the trend and its cultural effects.  Yes, we need diversity and recruiting outsiders can be an important part of our strategy to ensure that we are not living in the past.  We are arguing that we need to be more mindful of the actions we take and their effects on our ability to build a great team and we need to learn to be better recruiters of talent.  It must be the right people-- inside or out. As leaders, it is our job to evaluate the process. Putting the process on auto-pilot is a recipe for disaster. 

We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”  Cartoonist and Pogo creator Walt Kelly’s parody of an old Naval quote seems appropriate when it comes to thinking about we get in our own way when we try to get the right people on the team.  

Recently,  working with a mid-sized service company whose growth had stalled, I learned how quickly a culture can turn.  The management team had come to realize that they didn’t have the skills on the team, at least as they were presently organized, to compete in a marketplace that was transforming at warp speed.  As they took a clear-eyed assessment of their challenges, they quickly came to the inescapable opinion that the majority of the hires that they had made over the preceding five years had been a bust.  It also had become painstakingly clear that, in making these hiring decisions, many of the best people in the organization had left or been forced out while others had stayed, albeit in a less engaged way.  This meeting had the feeling of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, realizing the challenges they faced, deciding to jump off the cliff yelling “Ah Sh**” at the top of their lungs because they had made a mess and had no choice but to change course. 

The CEO and the management team were frustrated.  Unwinding these hires would be costly and disruptive.  They kept asking themselves, “how this could happen?” They had tried to be careful.  They took time to interview these candidates, they checked references, they gave potential managers tests that purported to evaluate leadership potential and had let a broad swath of employees participate in the interview process.  Still, bad leaders were hired, necessary skills were missing and many of the new hires did not share the core values that the CEO believed were fundamental to the organization’s past successes. How could the hiring process go so badly?  How could they let top talent leave? Or more importantly, why did the best performers choose to leave?

As they struggled for answers, they simplified their focus and mindsets in moving forward with the following ideals and initiatives. I recommend the same for other organizations looking to make the most of their hiring process:

1. Continue to recruit your best players every day.

Yes, the ones that are already on your team; the ones that would be difficult to replace; the ones whose loyalty you have already secured.  Throw them in the deep end. They can probably swim better than you think. The best learn quickly and will probably teach you that ‘the five years experience’ that you think you need when trying to hire someone is dramatically overstated and unnecessary.

2. Make sure that you hire talented people who share your values, especially when hiring outsiders

You can’t teach values.  And most teams don’t have the time or resources to teach people basic, necessary skills.  Interviews should be structured (to ensure less bias) and should be focused on ensuring that the candidate will help you get closer to your aspirational vision of the future.  

3. Be mindful of the cultural messages you are sending with your actions

Sounds like common sense.  But, it is not common for people to understand the present culture of their organizations.  This has to change. The most powerful cultural forces in our organizations are tacit, unarticulated and operate at a level below our conscious thought.  It need not be this way. Understand the present and think about the messages your actions are sending.  

The way we recruit and hire are important to people and send strong messages that will guide future choices.

4. When in doubt, remember the best predictor of future success is past success

There is a reason why some companies prefer to hire college athletes.  It is not because they can shoot a basketball or spike a volleyball. It is because they have proven that they can commit to an endeavor and persevere .  They have lost and won. They are proven learners. People who succeed at what they do, succeeded for a reason and that is probably the most potent predictor of future success.

Hiring based on past hiring practices will lead to more of the same. Take the time to evaluate your methods before carving out a path to move forward. Tomorrow’s success may depend upon it.