“Be mindful of the responsibility you have to those you serve, but be more mindful of the responsibility you have to those who serve you.”

In other words, it is critically important to take care of your employees, perhaps more so than it is for you to take care of your customers.  To a large degree, it is your employees that take care of your customers, not you.  If you treat your employees well, they will do the same FOR your customers.  If you treat them poorly, they will do the same TO your customers. Both are a reflection of how you have treated them and how they feel about YOU!  Think about that!

How you get things done is a reflection of YOUR character as a person and as a leader, and it creates an expectation of how people will expect you to act in the future. 

Similar to the last quote, I like this quote because it speaks to “how” you get things done as a leader, more so than ”what” you get done.  In this case, though, it is speaking to the “how” as a reflection of Values rather than Process. 

As a result, it defines the behavior that people within your organization will come to emulate.  It defines the culture that you will create in your organization, and how the organization will grow to operate in the longer term.  It defines the character that the organization will come to have and for which it will become known, inside and out. 

It will define YOUR legacy.

Heard this one the other day…I thought it showed great poise.

Terry Francona…Manager of the Boston Red Sox was being questioned by the media about the batting slump that David Ortiz was experiencing for the first few weeks of the season.  Is he over the hill?  Has he lost it?  Should he be replaced?  How long will you wait before changing him out for someone else?  How do you plan to react?

He replied, “You can’t react to everything”.  The implication was right on.  As  a leader, you can’t react to everything.  Sometimes you have to let things play themselves out a bit before jumping in and taking action.  Immediately acting on everything raises the level of pressure on the situation, and creates an atmosphere in which everything becomes a crisis.  It creates a level of stress which inhibits everyones ability to perform effectively.

By letting things play out a bit you show poise and calm, which is so needed by your constituents…in this case the other team members, the fans, and the owners.  You demonstrate that the situation may not require intervention at this moment.  You diffuse the pressure.  You make it clear that you are aware of the situation, the implications, and that you have it under control.  It is critical to your constituents that they know you are in control of the situation.

In this situation Terry Francona was absolutely right.  David Ortiz is a pro.  He, like any other professional athlete, will have slumps and hot streaks.  If he were to have gotten all excited about this situation it would have made the situation worse.  It would have put extra pressure on Ortiz to resolve his problems, and it would have demonstrated to the team that they had better not go into a slump, or they would come under the same kind of scrutiny.  That would negatively affect the performance of the team.

What Terry Francona did not only silenced the media and took the pressure off Ortiz, he protected the core of the rest of the team and the organization from the same kind of pressure…a great leadership response on his part. 

The result of Terry Francona’s leadership was exactly as one would expect…Ortiz did come out of his slump in grand fashion and has been on a hot streak for the past several weeks.  Now, one could say that Ortiz would have come out of his slump anyway, which is certainly true.  But, the bigger effect of his actions is in how the rest of the team, the fans, and the ownership respond to his ability to manage the media and public scrutiny of their performance. He minimized the effect that external inluences could have on the performance of the team.

(By the way…I am to be congratulated on my objectivity in this post since I am a die hard Yankee fan.)

I like this quote because it speaks to “how” you get things done as a leader, more so than ”what” you get done.  To me, the “how” has a greater affect on your ability to sustain organizational performance than it does on achieving a short term result because it defines an approach which, if reflective of your style and attitude, is representative of how you will do things in the future.  It is therefore also reflective of the results you will continue to achieve.

The quote goes:

“Being successful as a leader does not mean having all the answers, it means getting them.”

This quote speaks to knowing the strengths of your team and being able to access their knowledge and expertise for the use and benefit of the entire organization.  By doing so you leverage your own strengths and abilities, and you exponentially increase the results your organization can achieve. 

This aspect of leadership requires having the right processes and mechanisms in place…something we discussed in the post on leadership as being a process rather than a set of skills http://www.scottneilson.com/?p=63

It also implies a strong degree of empowerment in your workforce which enables people to draw on their own creativity and motivations to excell in their work and bring all their skills and abilities to performing their daily taks.  This is a big subject and one which I really want to get into.  It has many sub-parts which must work together to be successful.  It combines aspects of several posts I have done recently, and will be a nice assimilation of the thoughts in each…showing how it all ties together.  That has to be a subject for another post.

” You must BE the change you wish to see in the world.”  Mahatma Gandhi

This is one of my favorites…though sometimes I struggle to live up to it!

As a leader though, it really does speak to the fact that we MUST “walk our own talk” if we expect others to support the changes we are trying to make in an organization.  That means that we must believe in ALL aspects of the change that we are trying to effect.  Seems obvious and simple enough.  However, at times I think leaders may be to quick to compromise away some of their core beliefs in order to get to an agreement.  They seem to do so almost unknowingly…perhaps not recognizing the danger that lies in front of them by doing so.  That danger is that at some point they will violate those norms because they do not TRULY believe in them.  When they violate them, they lose all credibility for the change they are trying to make.

In conclusion, when it comes to using participative processes (and I DO believe that participative processes lead to the best result) to design a culture, manage a change process, or move an organization forward, it is essential that your minimum requirements (as the leader) are met.

By BEing the change you wish to see in the world, you embody the essence of it…and you become a living example of the desired future you are trying to achieve.

This one brings with it a heavy message of responsibility…

“You never touch someone so lightly that you do not leave a trace.”    Unknown.

As leaders we have the opportunity to touch many people…to effect the lives of many.  It is a responsibility that must be taken seriously.  How we manage our own behavior…our own actions…often effect people in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine.  It is important that we not be careless in making those choices.

Cool quote I heard…

“Your constituents don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – Unknown

That kind of speaks to developing your skills of listening to your constituents and acting on what you are hearing.