Jim Collins on how to lead in a way that avoids demotivating people

Remembering Grandma

Grandma was tough…especially when pursuing something she thought was right, such as keeping a clean house. She was so intense that she didn’t understand it when others would make observations about her “spunk” or determination. She thought it was normal.

I’ll never forget the morning Grandpa decided to carry the trap outside the shed…before removing the skunk.

It looked like a direct hit from my vantage point.

My eyes started watering just standing next to him. So I told Grandpa I’d take care of the skunk if he wanted to go change.

He walked across the garden, up the steps, across the back porch, and into the house.

No sooner had the door clicked shut behind him…but it flew open again, and Grandma marched forth, holding a Wal Mart sack that apparently contained the clothing Grandpa had so recently been wearing. She didn’t slacken her pace until she deposited it in the garbage can.

After Grandpa’s heart attack, she fiercely guarded his diet—no more ice cream, bacon and eggs, bear claws, peanuts. Grandpa had to settle for passing out sugar free candy to the grandkids. She sweetened jam with fruit juice concentrate and thickened it with tapioca.

Down at John’s Thrift, later John’s Foods, Grandma cared intensely about every detail and she had high expectations of her coworkers. After David Baergen worked at the store, nobody else measured up. “He was such a good worker,” she’d say.

On one occasion when my parents left my sister and I with our grandparents for a week, Grandma convinced me my baseball cap would cause my ears to permanently stick out. So I struck a deal with her…and started wearing my ears inside my cap.

She always fixed plenty of food. “You better have some more,” she’d say, handing me the casserole for the fourth time. Oddly enough, she seemed to approach recipes in somewhat the way a jazz musician approaches sheet music—as a starting point for variation.

Every morning, somewhere between singing and chanting, she’d greet you with “Good morning to you!” When Grandpa would talk about getting old, she’d say, “Age is a state of mind.” She usually smiled, but she believed it.

She talked about the need for a “moment-by-moment” relationship with God, and she prayed for her children and grandchildren and great grandchildren to really know God, not just about God.

As her body failed her in the last several years of her life. She experienced the physical suffering and the emotional pain of not being able to serve people or express herself. Even then you’d sometimes hear her praying, “Oh, God, help us.”

I’ll never forget watching my Mom and Grandma pray together as another of their weekly visits came to a close. Grandma hunched over in her wheel chair, Mom putting her arm around Grandma’s rounded shoulders, both of them crying. Crying because they were parting for another week, crying because of the pain they felt, crying because they felt each others’ pain. Because when Grandma’s strength failed, there was one place she turned.

Thanks Grandma.

Who Cares?

A couple of weeks ago, Rhonda Thomas of the Single Parent Support Network presented her organization’s work to the staff at Character First. She talked about the complex factors causing single parenthood—a single or widowed relative becoming responsible for a child, divorce, military deployment.... And she discussed the importance of relationship in helping people.

If we don’t know someone, she said, we can’t really know what they need.

On one hand, this statement seems obvious. Most of us know what it's like to be treated like a project, and most of us don't like it. It doesn't matter how good the intentions, we know others ought to care about us, not just about our needs.

On the other hand, this statement poses a profound challenge. What does it mean to know someone? Is our curiosity satisfied once we know the kids' clothing sizes and make a quick donation? Would we even notice when a coworker seems quieter than usual? Do we give kids a chance to surprise us by showing initiative? What about when the guy taking your money at the drive through says he's "been better."

Donating clothing to a needy family is a good thing, but if that's as far as it goes, are we caring? Or are we just donating clothing?

When to Ignore Compliments

You need only watch a few American Idol auditions to realize loved ones sometimes exaggerate our talents. And sometimes we want something so badly we tell ourselves we have greater ability than we actually have.

These situations can provide cheap entertainment, provoke mild annoyance, and occasionally derail an entire project. So…how to get an accurate assessment of one’s skills…without berating well-meaning family members for being too nice…and without obsessing about what the boss might have meant by this or that.

Listen for hints from trustworthy friends. One of my friends in particular has a very diplomatic way of responding to my entrepreneurial ideas. When he responds enthusiastically, I know I’m in the ballpark. When he hesitates, I keep listening, and he usually points out areas he thinks would be a particular challenge. When he changes the subject…

Attach relatively more weight to feedback based on a particular benefit the other person experienced. So if your supervisor thanks you for thinking through a project and tells you how it benefited your team, it means a lot more than a general comment about your thoughtfulness.

Attach relatively more weight to feedback from individuals who have credibility in the field. When an established writer likes something you wrote, it means something different than it would if a relative liked it...unless you happen to be related to a great writer.

Stop worrying about being “world class.” Focus on the process rather than the outcome. A person can maintain a professional demeanor, refuse to take shortcuts, and require nothing less than 100 percent effort from himself or herself…and still not get the big promotion. A baseball player might set a goal of making it to the big leagues, but he has relatively little control over that outcome. He does control his diet, work ethic, and attitude toward coaching, but his best efforts might not yield a high enough batting average or low enough earned run average to earn a trip to the big leagues.

Ask direct questions of experts you respect. The more you understand about what it takes to succeed at your job, the better questions you can ask. Respect the other person’s time by asking specific questions. It’s always possible you’ll get more criticism than you expected. Or maybe the person won't give you much feedback at all. Maintain the relationships you can establish.

Doing Things Worth Doing

Last Sunday afternoon, we were eating some delicious lasagna at the home of some folks from church when the conversation turned to how—or whether—we share our faith.

From my perspective, our host’s credibility as a retired wrestling coach and his outgoing personality make it relatively easier for him to strike up conversations. But he tends to discount it when others say he has a “gift” for evangelism because he’s only conscious of the effort he makes to “have conversations about Jesus.”

Maybe a future post will allow us to discuss sharing one's faith more directly, but for now, let's focus on the issue of talent and how we develop them. Our host wasn’t primarily arguing he did or didn’t have a particular ability. He focused on the value of the activity itself, and he saw talk of giftedness potentially obscuring the essential point.

Perhaps the strength of his approach lies in the way it gets us out of our own frame of reference. Rather than identify real or perceived strengths and then try to find activity that uses those strengths, his approach focuses on the value of the activity and deals with talent questions second. Different people might have different ways of doing something, but if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing, even if “such-and-such isn’t my strong suit.” And it’s worth doing to the best of my ability, even if my best isn’t very good yet.

The apparent bias toward action lends itself to continued evidence-based decisions. In his Harvard Business Review article, “Managing Oneself,” Peter Drucker recommends analyzing strengths on the basis of decisions made. Every time a person makes a decision, he or she records the expected outcomes. Then he or she comes back in 9 to 12 months and compares expectations with reality. If a person is particularly good at understanding and relating to IT professionals for example, his or her intuition and decisions in that area will probably ring true over time. If not, the person can recognize those patterns too and get outside perspective or compensate in other ways.

So…maybe the best way to discover—and develop—one’s talents is to do something constructive and then adjust one's approach in order to focus where one can do the most good.

When faced with unpleasant conditions...

Try to be yourself. Joy is not about putting on a show but about making life pleasant for others in whatever way you can. Adapt to the way others like to receive encouragement, but realize the way you encourage others will be different from the way someone else encourages others. Be okay with that.

Admit when you’re wrong…especially if you’re a leader. The quicker you accept the stabbing pain of being wrong, the quicker you can get out of a negative cycle. Be matter-of-fact about your failings. Everyone else already knows about them.

Refuse to brood. If you’ve already thought something two or three times, it’s time to change the subject. Think through what went wrong, learn what you can, and pick your head up for the next play. At the end of your shift, leave yourself notes and then clear your mind so that you can focus on your loved ones when you get home. Go for a run or walk to reduce stress.

Get some sleep. Everything looks worse when you’re tired.

Value others. Don’t say something hurtful, even if it also happens to be horribly funny. And weigh how your words and actions will affect others. Don’t take relationships for granted, especially close relationships. “Brush the teeth you want to keep; make an effort for the friends you want to keep.”

Celebrate other’s achievements. You’d be surprised how much you can achieve when nobody cares who gets the credit. So when you have teammates who take all the credit, let them have it.

Initiate. The surest way to remain discouraged is to think only about yourself. Take a few minutes to greet a coworker. Start that new project today instead of putting it off till next week. Think of something special to do for a family member.

This is an article I wrote for Character First the Magazine. I republish it here with permission from Character First.

Dear God, Please tell Grandpa he's my hero.

My earliest memories of Grandpa and Grandma revolve around their visits to our house in Kirkland and our visits to their house in Coulee City. I remember going to stay with Grandpa and Grandma when Anita was born, and I remember Grandpa winning a race across the church parking lot to the red Beauville we used to have.

Grandpa didn't go to school past the eighth grade. He never had a very complicated view of the world, and he refused to let me complicate it. On one occasion I was wondering out loud how a granite boulder got to its current location when all the surrounding rocks were basalt.

“I think God put it there,” he said.

“Well, yes, Grandpa, but how did He do it?”

He also managed to stay clear of our cousinly rivalries…most of the time. On one occasion, Kerry and I were wrestling, and Grandpa said something like “Come on, pin him. There you go.”

“Who are you cheering for, Grandpa?”

Pregnant pause… “Oh, I’m for the winner,” he said, but from the look on his face, I’m pretty sure he was rooting for Kerry.

Grandpa was always doing something, and when he wasn’t doing something, he was thinking about doing stuff. I remember wondering what was wrong with me because I never went to bed thinking about fixing fences or installing irrigation systems or which way to run the rows in the garden.

But Grandpa’s greatest gift was the freedom he gave us, and the patience he had, letting us learn to use it well. He let us drive his John Deere 318 around the yard, even after we bumped into the burn barrels. He’d smile knowingly at my plans and then he’d be there to help out when those plans ran into reality.

He hauled my first cow home in the back of Old Blue. He was there on a predawn October morning when a steer ran up the chute into the pickup, jumped over the racks, and continued across the yard…without slowing down.

When I got my driver’s permit—several days before Kerry got his—Grandpa sat quietly on the passenger side of the vehicle. The only observable sign of anxiety was to slide his hand out of his lap onto the seat to brace himself. When I talked about how fast I was going to drive… “Whatever you feel is safe,” he said.

I remember asking Grandpa questions not because he had the answers but because his answers were somehow reassuring. When the world was too much, I went next door and tell Grandpa and Grandma my troubles, and they would still believe in me. On those occasions when we got to “read the Word” with Grandma and Grandpa, we had the privilege of hearing them pray specifically for each of their children and grandchildren.

For grandpa there were some things you do, some things you don’t do, and some things that just are.

In Memory of Wayne L. Knopp, 1920-2010.