Category: Authenticity

You’re worth it (accept it and move on)

You see the message everywhere in marketing:

“You deserve a break today…” (McDonald’s)

“You’ve earned it! Take a cruise…” (Norwegian Cruises)

“Because you’re worth it…” (L’Oreal)

We are continually inundated with assurances that we are amazing, we are hard working, we are entitled to some pampering and rewards.

And yet.

There are leaders out there who can’t believe they’ve reach their current level and are just waiting for someone to realize they don’t know what they’re doing.

There are employees out there who go to a job they hate every single day because they think they’re trapped and have no other options.

All too often we get in our own way.  We assume we don’t have the skills to do something different.  We think we’re selling out if we go for that higher level of job with a better salary or work/life balance.  We can’t understand why anyone would want to promote us, and we don’t know who thought it would be a good idea to put us in charge of that project.

We get sucked into a belief system – the belief that we are trapped by skills, ambition, lifestyle.  That we AREN’T good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people DON’T like us.

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I’m here to tell you that your belief system might be broken.

It’s okay to want that promotion you earned.

It’s okay to listen to people when they say you’ve got mad skillz and know what you’re doing.

It’s okay to realize that you aren’t in the right job at the right time and to have a plan to try something new.

It’s okay to NOT try something new, and decide that your job isn’t your everything and that you just need to find a hobby that makes you happy. (So says Laurie Ruettimann…and she’s pretty smart.)

The point is – don’t let the reasons you struggle be based on your belief that you don’t deserve it.

If you’ve worked hard, have half a brain, gained self-awareness, whatever it is – you’re worth it.

You DO deserve a break today, so give yourself one.  Remove those obstacles in your head and get to working on the real ones you face.

You’re worth it.

Expose yourself…appropriately

Leadership is difficult.

You are surrounded by people (those you manage and those who manage you) who want to tell you how to do your job. And then you have all those people out there producing content to teach you how to be a leader using this model or that model. And make sure you keep up on the latest and greatest in your industry. Slacker.

To survive, leaders go into lockdown mode and use what the “know” will work. They form opinions – both about themselves and others – and use those opinions to make decisions.

Stop it.

Lockdown mode will help you survive the short-term. And will make you irrelevant in the long-term.image

I’m at the 2014 Annual SHRM conference in Orlando, surrounded by HR leaders who are either here to reinforce their lockdown mode…or find ways to break out of it.

It’s hard to break out. It’s icky feeling. It’s scary. It’s filled with the unknown.

And it’s awesome.

I am here to challenge all of you to start looking at things in different ways. Expose yourself to people who think the opposite of how you think. Listen to a speaker you disagree with…and then find value in something that speaker says.

Employees can’t learn from a person who won’t entertain a different point of view, and leaders cannot grow if they surround themselves only with like-minded people.

Seek out the different. Expose yourself to it. You may not agree with it, but you WILL learn from it.

“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
― Voltaire

The REAL Leader’s Legacy

I do a talk/training on the Leader’s Legacy. Basically, it discusses how leaders need to understand the shadow they cast across an organization and a culture, and helps them define and shape their legacy for the present and the future.

What I should do is just tell them to watch every Tony Gwynn interview.  And then listen to, watch, and read every single tribute being given to the man who died from cancer on Monday at the age of 54.

While Tony’s legacy as a player has been brought up, it is in passing…as though his greatness on the baseball diamond was a given.  What has stood out to me is the impact he had as a person.

Over and over again, sportswriters (and managers and players and fans) have shared personal stories of how Tony Gwynn made a difference in their lives.  That he took the extra moment to remember that the reporters asking him the questions were human beings.  And he treated them as such.

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Buster Olney shared the story about a 19-year-old college student who approach Tony Gwynn for an interview for his small, one-man newspaper operation he published from his basement.  Tony saw he was wearing a Vanderbilt sweatshirt and said, “Hey, you should meet another guy I know who went there – he’s our beat reporter.”  And thus Tyler Kepner, now-writer for the NY Times, was introduced to Buster Olney.  There are so many amazing things about this story – 1) Tony took the time to do an interview for a 19-year-old college student; 2) Tony knew that Buster, who was a new reporter for the Padres at that point, graduated from Vanderbilt; and 3) Tony took the time to connect the two in a meaningful way.

Whatever legacy you think you’re leaving, ask yourself if you would have done the same in his shoes.

The world lost a good guy when it lost Tony Gwynn.