The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture.
I am defining leadership in terms of the role, not the position.
Most of my important lessons about life have come from recognizing how others from a different culture view things.
Questions are taken for granted rather than given a starring role in the human drama. Yet all my teaching and consulting experience has taught me that what builds a relationship, what solves problems, what moves things forward is asking the right questions.
Telling puts the other person down. It implies that the other person does not already know what I am telling and that the other person ought to know it.
Our wants and needs distort to an unknown degree what we perceive. We block out a great deal of information that is potentially available if it does not fit our needs, expectations, preconceptions, and prejudgments.
Help in the broadest sense is, in fact, one of the most important currencies that flow between members of society because help is one of the main ways of expressing love and other caring emotions that humans express.
Organizational analyses that show separate boxes for “culture” and “strategy” are making a fundamental conceptual error. Strategy is an integral part of the culture.
Check out your own emotions and intentions before offering, giving, or receiving help.
When our true intentions are something other than providing help, such as getting a job done or beating someone in a game, we are most prone to falling into the traps described throughout this book.
Remember that the person requesting your help may feel uncomfortable, so make sure to ask what the client really wants and how you can best help.
Everything You Say or Do Is an Intervention that Determines the Future of the Relationship.
The point is that no matter what you do or don’t do, you are sending signals; you are intervening in the situation and therefore need to be mindful of that reality. Unless you are invisible you cannot help but communicate, so your choice of communication should be based on what kind of intervention you intend.
When you are giving feedback, try to be descriptive and minimize judgment.
We know that negative reinforcement or punishment works well for behavior that should be eliminated. And we know from feedback theory that the best kind of feedback is descriptive because the client can then make the evaluation. These are valid guidelines but they don’t solve some of the subtle issues that can arise in the relationship.
Minimize inappropriate encouragement.
In building the helping relationship, encouragement – via positive reinforcement – certainly seems appropriate. But if it is not sensitively handled, such encouragement can quickly become patronizing and insulting. My.
If a client insists on getting a recommendation from you, always give him at least two alternatives so that he still has to make choice.
Share your helping problem. More often than I care to admit I have found that when I was supposed to be helping someone, I suddenly did not know what to do next. When this happens, the best thing to do is to say to the client, “At this point I am stuck – I don’t know what to do next to be helpful.
Leadership” is wanting to do something new and better, and getting others to go along.
Telling is only an investment if you know for sure that what you are telling is of value to the other person. That is why it is safest to tell only if you have been asked, rather than arrogantly deciding on your own to tell somebody something.