Leading
The
Way
The Way, Truth and Life of Leadership
Pops Blair
Reviewing what we’ve learned about the Way. 16
Reviewing what we’ve learned about the Truth. 30
Reviewing what we’ve learned about the Life. 43
Introduction
There are so many books about leadership. Good and great, myths and pars, flywheels and hedgehogs, mice and cheese, you name it; there’s a leadership guru that’s done it. Everyone seems to have his or her own leadership book of methods to become a better leader.
About a year ago after reading all these and more, I decided it was time to stop reading and start doing. This really isn’t that hard if you think about it. Working with people is how we are made. So why am I writing yet another book on the subject you ask? Because it really isn’t that hard and I’d like you to see that before you spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on books and consultants, magazines and website subscriptions to give you the same advice over and over again packaged in different ways. This book will be short and to the point and hopefully you’ll come away with a clear picture of what it takes to be successful in leadership – no matter what that leadership looks like. It could be a fortune 500 company, a Boy Scout troop, your own household as a parent or a spouse, even a church. All of these places require simple leadership based on simple principles.
This book is based on one statement out of an ancient writing where I think the one and only Jesus gives us a glimpse into what He sees are the “bones” of leadership. There is no silver bullet, as business leadership, civic leadership, Church leadership, parenting, marriage and other forms are really just a lot of hard work and common sense. Success, however, in these areas is just hard work based on the right foundations which I believe the Bible gives us in the book of John in the New Testament where Jesus is responding to a question, and says “I am and the Way, the Truth and the Life….”
Now, this book is not really a religious book. I’m a big fan of the Bible and the teaching in it, but I also read ancient Asian writings as well as not so ancient European and American writings from centuries back to gain insight into life today. I’d like you to drop your guard for the few minutes to an hour that it will take you to read this book and let’s see what this statement of Jesus looks like in your skin. I’ll try to put flesh on the bones that we can show the way, tell the truth and give life to those who follow us, no matter what position of leadership we carry with us.
The Way
Have you ever had one of those moments where you just felt lost? If you haven’t, you are extremely rare. Most of us at some point sit on the edge of our beds and wonder what the heck we got out of bed for. A few years back I was having one of those moments at work. We happened to have a good friend and consultant visiting us who was helping us with business management as well as finance and he walked in my office and could tell something was wrong. He asked the obvious question: “What’s wrong?” My response was slow because during those “lost” moments we all have; it’s hard to grasp what is really wrong. I mumbled a few incoherent things and then asked him to close the door – which is always an ominous thing in an executive’s office. ( I’ve learned to be careful in using that phrase as it can sometimes put fear in the heart of even the strongest people.) As he sat down I said, “Have you seen that picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware River?” He told me he had at some point in his life, so I went on, “That’s what I need, someone standing up in the boat pointing the way.” Now I was recalling from memory what the painting looked like and later when I actually got a copy to hang on my wall in my office, I was surprised to see that General Washington was not actually pointing the way, but was just standing in the boat looking in the direction of the way they were headed. However, if you have ever studied this painting, which some believe is not a very good representation of the actual event but for me captures the essence of what happened, you see that a few officers are looking in the direction of the opposite shore and the rest of the crew on the boat are busying themselves with rowing or pushing ice out of the way or just trying to keep warm. It was enough that Washington knew where they were all going, no one else need to be worried with that task.
Embody the Way
I have a print of this painting in my office because it was a pivotal moment in my trek as a leader. I finally understood what I was yearning for in a leader and what the possibilities were for me as a leader. I could busy myself with all the tasks such as pushing ice out of the way or I could let others more competent in that work handle it while I make sure everyone knows where we are going. Whether this painting by German artist Emanuel Leutze is an actual representation or not of the events of that critical night in the revolutionary war, it is an exact representation of what I desire in other’s leadership of me and what I aspire to in my leadership of others. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” This saying from ancient Jewish writings is a stark reminder of how important showing the “way” is.
Now a guy named Thomas (you might know him as Doubting Thomas) starts Jesus down this whole line of discussion when he responds to the announcement that Jesus is going away and His followers can meet him there at some later date because they know the way. Thomas says back: “…we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" Isn’t this just like us? Details, we need details. “What road do we take, what off-ramp is it, how many miles, what do I need to do for preparation?” Jesus doesn’t answer this with a physical answer, but with a spiritual answer. “I am the Way…” This takes me back to General Washington and this is the verse I thought of as soon as I saw the painting. As the future 1st president is standing in the boat, he is the embodiment of the way. No one has even the slightest question on where they are going. One glimpse of him standing there and you know where you are going.
To give a vision to your people, your family, your spouse it must be clear and well communicated but most of all, you must embody that vision. This is not for the weak. You must be willing to stand your ground and die for what you believe in. No changing your mind half way through the project. This requires a lot of preparation.
Prepare the Way
I attended a speech a few years back by Rudy Giuliani at a Franchising convention. He had 7 point for leadership that he eventually turned in a book entitled “Leadership”. One of his points was “Relentless Preparation.” You cannot be an effective leader without relentless abandonment to preparing. If you give a vision without adequate preparation, you will probably end up changing that vision because of something unforeseen. If you are to give the people a vision, you better be prepared to back it up with details and how you have thought everything through. One of the biggest frustrations I see with leaders of companies is that often the leader will give a vision to the staff that they know has not been thought through well and will likely not happen because of a lack preparation. Worse than that, is having to follow through on a project because of a promise when you know the details weren’t thought through. All of us understand that at times you have to turn the ship quickly to avoid pitfalls or react to changes, but for the big projects or initiatives, no vision should be shared until the details have at least been fleshed out to the point where you know the vision is solid. Never. Vision without preparation is a recipe for destroying confidence in leadership.
This is the story of the Three Little Pigs. You remember this from when you were a kid, right? There are these three pigs from the same family that decide to go out into the big world and live on their own. The first one builds his house out of straw and quickly gets it up and ready for habitation. He’s sitting there all cozy in his house and the Wolf comes by for dinner. The first little pig doesn’t want the company of the wolf since he’s watching the big game on his new 42 Inch HD Flat Panel TV, so he wont let him in. So the Wolf, huffs and puffs around the 1st little Pig’s house until it falls over. Instead of coming in for dinner, he has the Pig for dinner.
A few days later when the Wolf gets a hankering for the other white meat again, he visits the second little pig who has taken a little more time in preparation, but not a great amount of thought and built his house out of scraps of wood and sticks he gathered in the countryside. He heard about his brother’s misfortune and while pondering his options watched a mother bird build a nest in a few hours and thought to himself, what’s good enough for the birds is good enough for me. So he builds his house out of sticks and such and hangs his hat on the hook and sits down to write a book on how easy it is to build a house over a weekend.
Well, you know what happens; he’s so busy writing this book that he doesn’t hear the doorbell when the wolf comes to call. The wolf is so incensed that the 2nd little pig would ignore him that he huffs and puffs around this house of sticks and finally blows it down. The wolf not only has ham for dinner, but takes the book that the little pig wrote and makes a best seller out of it.
So finally after hearing the plight of his two brothers, the 3rd pig decides to do what the other two should have done. He makes a good plan, finds a reasonable lender, hires some masons and bricklayers and builds the house of his dreams. While it’s being built he falls in love with a lovely young lady hog from Tennessee and when it’s finished they marry and move in together safe and sound. The wolf comes calling as he has the other times and low and behold the two young lover pigs are doing what young lover pigs do on their honeymoon and don’t want to come to the door. The wolf gets his feelings hurt and tries to huff and puff around the house, but to no avail. So the wolf climbs down the chimney only to find that there is a big pot of stew on the fire and the wolf gets himself literally into some very hot water. The young pig couple finally makes it to the kitchen to get some needed nourishment and find that the stew meat is much more stringy and tough than they like, so they throw it out and order in pizza.
The moral of this story is of course the moral of this chapter (otherwise I would have picked another story) that the only way to survive is to prepare for what you know is coming and for what you don’t. The wolf had never climbed down a chimney before, but the 3rd little pig was ready for him anyway.
Think through your vision and prepare for inevitabilities as well as the unknown as much as you can.
Scenario planning is one way you can make great headway in the preparation area of showing the way. There are many books out there that can give you guidelines and templates for scenario planning, so I won’t go into them here, but you should look at the history of Shell Oil to get a good glimpse of what it can do for you.
I won’t give you the whole story here, but the team at Shell Oil that planned for the future did several scenarios of what the world supply of oil would look like in the future. The one scenario that seemed the most likely was one that included an oil shortage that began with trouble in the Middle East. Through this scenario, the planners at Shell Oil made a recommendation to the leadership of their company to drill for oil in the North Sea, despite the cost of doing so because the return on investment would be high when the Middle East oil crisis came. They were right and it did pay off for Shell Oil. It’s a fascinating story that you should really take the time to read. I found the details in a book on business strategy: “The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World” by Peter Schwartz.
The one area you can’t afford to skip or even skimp on in leadership and in business is preparation or you’ll end up being someone’s lunch.
Communicate the Way
After preparation comes communication. Communicating the Way is where vision takes on flesh. The definition of vision on Dictionary.com is “A mental image produced by the imagination.” Until you get that mental image into concrete communication, it’s just a thought. Through the relentless preparation process, you should be able to completely communicate what the vision is. Here’s a test: If you can’t clearly communicate your vision even in the midst some hard questions, you haven’t done enough preparation. Here’s another test: If you call people “negative” when they ask questions you can’t answer about your vision, you haven’t done enough preparation. Go back to the start, do not try to communicate vision without preparation. That would be like a 5 year old trying to fly a 747. The ground is hard and it comes real fast.
Now, I am not talking about those “vision statements” that you can have generated on the web if you have enough adjectives:
“Our vision is to competently promote performance based deliverables so that we may endeavor to dramatically supply excellent paradigm changes for our customers.”
Huh?
This is not what I’m talking about with communicating vision. You must be able to clearly articulate where you are going and how you are going to get there in order to effectively show people the way. You also cannot embody the way if you do not know it yourself. Your staff, family, volunteers need to be able, with one look at you, know that you know the way intimately. If they can’t, you haven’t done enough preparation. This is why leadership is so hard and not for the weak of will. Anyone can spout off vision they read in a magazine or though through on a cross country flight. It takes a true leader to take the time to prepare enough (and care enough for his or her people to do that) to be able to answer the tough questions.
Now this takes time that you may feel you don’t have. My challenge to you is if you do not take the time up front, how much time will be wasted by your entire organization for your lack of preparation and communication.
The biggest task in sharing vision is to tell the truth, passionately.
“If you want others to bleed, you must hemorrhage” as Howard Hendricks says. I like to add that if the blood is just for show, it’s better that you don’t bleed at all. So many leaders I know are good speakers, but not good leaders. They know how to get a rise of emotion out of their staff through passionate pleas, but without the truth it will become obvious that the blood is just ketchup spread on their shirts for the sake of presentation. The more this happens, the less people listen. We’ll spend more time on telling the truth later in the book, but it is vitally important at this first stage that when you show people the way. Unless you tell the truth, all the truth and nothing but the truth, the vision is worthless. We need to see both sides, understand the exciting goals as well as the dangerous pitfalls along the way. What are the downsides, what are the upsides? Here’s another test: If you don’t see any downside or potential pitfalls, you haven’t done enough preparation.
At our local Honda dealer there was a salesperson whose nickname was Glow. They called her Glow because she “lit up” when she talked about Hondas. She’s always driven a Honda and loves everything about them with a passion that you just don’t see much in any kind of retail anymore. Now Glow could tell you everything you need to know about any model of Honda and she will also tell you the downside to ownership. For example, if you are looking for a car for a family, she will tell you that the Civic does not have a whole lot of cargo room, but if you travel much will get you 38 miles to the gallon on the freeway. However, if you want more Cargo room, they have the Honda CRV, which has over double the cargo space, but only gets 23 miles to the gallon on the freeway. Your choice, either one is a Honda so she is passionate about both models, but you need to choose which is best for your situation. She can share the truth, with passion and her customers always come away with a bit of her love for Hondas while knowing they won’t be surprised by the downsides to Honda ownership of a particular model. Part of the reason is that Glow, tells the truth, but she also tells it with so much passion for the Honda name that in choosing between a Toyota and a Honda, most will choose a Honda just because of her enthusiasm.
Truth and Passion. Veritas et Fervidus. I love putting phrases up on my wall to remind me of what I should be doing. This phrase is a new one for me – I’ll show you a couple more later in the book that I live by, but as you learn to communicate the way you should remember this phrase.
So, first you start with ample preparation for the way and then move to being truthful and passionate in communicating the way. The final step to this first section is making the way clear.
Clearing the Way
Now I’m not talking about communication again and making that clear, I’m talking about clearing the way for people to get moving along the way. It’s vitally important that you try to remove as many obstacles as you can for those that are following to be able to make progress quickly. This can be under the heading of resources, organization, location or many other areas that you can remove obstacles.
My brother Daniel has a Doctorate in Human Performance Technology from USC. (obviously, he the smart one of the family) He tells me that a main part of maximizing human performance in employees is to remove the obstacles that hinder performance. Finding out what those obstacles are is a full time job for most Human Resource departments.
In order to effectively help people along the way you intend them to go, you must make sure the way is clear. Part of this goes back to the relentless preparation in making sure that there will not be huge roadblocks that were unforeseen and part of it comes with adjustments around your people in the beginning and along the way.
I love the story of the Exodus in the Bible. Moses gets a clear vision from God that it’s time for his people to get out of Egypt. So Moses makes the long trek back to Egypt and gains an audience with the Pharaoh and shares the vision. “Let my people go” was the message. Moses clearly shared the way with Pharaoh, but he didn’t want to do it. He had all this free labor for building all sorts or things in Egypt. Moses shared the downsides and as the story goes God implemented all sorts of plagues and pain on the Egyptians until the Pharaoh relented. But even then, he took after them. Now, Moses had shared the way with the people, but they came upon the Red Sea and there was no way across with the Pharaoh’s army closing in. So what does God do? He clears the obstacle. He opened up the Red sea so the Ancient Israelites could walk across on dry land.
This is the most perfect example for us as we lead people, especially in difficult areas. Make sure you have the resources to make the way clear. Of course, it’s easy for God to adjust as things come along, but for us, that relentless preparation to see what obstacles could come up and making sure we have enough resources to make it work should we find our backs to the sea is what good leadership is all about.
I would be remiss if I didn’t add that you can’t know everything. Moses probably didn’t have a great plan for getting across the Red Sea and this is where the story falls apart for me a bit. The Red Sea was pretty big and even if they didn’t have an army chasing them, they had to get across this body of water. I suppose they could have walked for a while until they found a decent crossing, but it seems like Moses could have prepared for this better. Perhaps he did and knew that God was going to intervene. Obstacles that could not have been foreseen are not going to weaken your leadership at all with those who follow you. Obstacles that could have been predicted will.
Reviewing what we’ve learned about the Way
As you show the Way with those around you remember these four areas:
Embody the Way – let people see that you are intimately involved in the vision and that they can trust that you will not change.
Prepare the Way – make sure you do your homework and know that the Way is the right Way to go. Relentless preparation is a key to success.
Communicate the Way – Veritas et Fervidus. Tell the truth passionately. Make sure your people see both sides, but also see your passion for the Way in the process.
Clear the Way – Foresee and remove any barriers or obstacles that could block progress. Be ready to step in should unforeseen obstacles come into play.
The Truth
At the bottom of my e-mail signature I have had in the past another Latin phrase: Ubi Veritas, Ibi Fides. It translates roughly to “Where there is truth, there is trust.” This is a saying I try to live by and I firmly believe in. I have had it on every e-mail because I want to remind myself and others that you cannot have positive trust without truth. It can’t happen. I say positive trust, because you can have trust that if someone is talking they are lying. I know a few people like this. My dad used to say that “they would lie when the truth sounds better.” This is not a positive trust, more just knowing that you cannot trust. I do believe that you cannot build trust without first having the foundation of truth. Eventually a relationship will crumble if truth is not foundational.
In the same way we show the way, embody the way to those who follow us, we have to take the next step to tell the truth to everyone that looks to us for leadership of any kind. I believe this breaks down into a few areas that we can cover pretty quickly.
Be The Truth
Let’s go back to our painting of George Washington. While he is standing in the boat, embodying the Way, he is also embodying the truth. One look and you know that what he has told you is everything there was to tell. Nothing hidden, no agendas behind the scenes. The truth. It’s not revered much anymore, but when I was growing up and for generations before me the fable of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree and “fessing” up to it, was a standard lesson for kids. Today, the truth in society is an option. Take a look at all the claims that go through our legal system that are false claims or stretches of the truth. Millions are awarded on the basis of half truths and white lies. Worse, this is accepted as the norm. To find a man or woman of integrity that will tell the truth at all costs is a rare find these days. Sensationalism in the media has numbed us to the truth. Most of us would have a hard time knowing the truth when it is told.
To be a leader with truth as your foundation is not necessarily even prized in the workplace today. With all the layers of hierarchy in organizations today, one can find themselves in a quandary as to what the real truth is. We give just enough information out to negotiate whatever deal we want. We do whatever we can to please our supervisor or manager, the director, the VP, the President, the CEO or the stockholder. Entire companies like Enron can be destroyed overnight when the house of cards (or lies) finally folds. Along with these collapses go the hard earned money of many a stockholder. Yet, there are hundreds of other businesses in the same boat that will continue building these unstable entities just hoping to cash out before the fall.
As of late there has been a call for ethics and integrity in business. An article in the Wall St. Journal on April 12, 2005 (page B4) talks about ethics classes as part of MBA programs in US universities:
“A modern morality play opened recently on Broadway -- not in the theater district, but way uptown at Columbia University. Before an audience of Columbia M.B.A. students, actors performed "Scenes from the Slippery Slope," in which an investment banker is pressured to falsify expense accounts to conceal his boss's extramarital affair. At pivotal points in the mini-drama, actors called on students to advise the ethically challenged young man.
The presentation was part of Columbia's latest effort to infuse ethics into the M.B.A. program in an engaging way, a process that is proving to be a slippery slope itself for business schools. Three years after coming under attack for their M.B.A. graduates' involvement in corporate scandals, schools still are grappling with how to teach ethics more effectively.”
The article goes on to say that many professors and students don’t believe in teaching ethics as a separate class, that it should be integrated into every class. Some are characterizing the classes as a bone thrown to the administration. Professors feel they can adequately cover ethics as they teach other subjects. In an answer to this train of thought later in the article:
“Lynn Paine, the lead professor for the class, believes a stand-alone course is essential because "ethics discussion too easily gets crowded out" of other management courses. "The integration model sounds good, but many faculty members have no training in ethics and the law and don't know how to incorporate them well," she says. "The odd thing about ethics is that people assume anyone can teach it because everyone faces ethical issues in life. But just because you shop, that doesn't mean you can teach marketing.”
What really bothers me about this is that these college students should have learned the lessons of ethics already. At home, in the school system, everywhere truth should be held up like a light in the darkness. Without it, there is no hope for the future. Once truth or ethics or integrity becomes an upper level class taken in college, it is just another grade on the report card.
The answer to this is more people of the truth. It is easy to see in this dark world. Think through your list of family and friends. How many would you say would tell you the truth at all cost? I can count mine on my fingers and maybe a few toes.
I struggle here because I want people to be happy. Only when my values are challenged do I get fired up about the truth. Otherwise, it’s whatever makes people the happiest. I have been really working on myself in this are for the last 5 years or so and I hope that people have seen some incremental change in my behavior toward telling the truth at all times. It is my goal to be known as a man of truth in this world of so many lies. I would love my tombstone to read; “Here lies Pops Blair, he was a man of truth.” That is my hope and prayer for you also. That people would see you standing up in the boat and know that you are embodying the truth.