Michael Lee Stallard

One of my heroes celebrated his 99th birthday last month. I’m not going to tell you his name just yet because it will spoil the story for some of you.    In his honor, I’m posting an excerpt from my book Fired Up or Burned Out that describes why he is such a great leader and admirable individual. There is much to learn about leadership, employee engagement and productivity from his example.

Connection and the Legend

So often in life, good things bloom from the seeds of hardship. The personal character of a young teenager who went on to become a great leader was immeasurably shaped during the Depression when his family lost their farm in Indiana.  His father’s reaction to the loss was unusual. He wasn’t bitter about it. Instead, his dad focused on the future and told his children that everything would be all right. And it was.

During those impressionable years in this leader’s life, he learned that, like the Depression, some things in life are not in our control. His father taught him that he should always strive to do his best at anything he chose to do and not worry about the outcome. He would later spread that philosophy to countless other.

Another perspective he gained during those formative years was to value people. By watching his mom and dad and hearing the stories of faith they taught him, he learned the joy that came from making people and relationships his focus in life.

The young boy grew up to be an outstanding high school and college basketball player in a state that was rabid about the game. After college he married Nell, the love of his life and the only woman he had ever dated. He taught high school English and coached basketball until 1943 when he enlisted to serve in the Navy during World War II. When he returned from the war to the high school in South Bend, Indiana, where he previously taught, he was offered his old job. Other returning GIs were not, however, and so he refused the offer because he felt it was wrong for the school to deny veterans the jobs they had left to serve their country. Instead, he accepted an offer to become athletic director and head basketball coach at Indiana State Teachers College.

A Caring Coach

For the 1946-47 season Indiana State received a post-season invitation to the National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball (NAIB) national play-offs. After the coach learned that a young African-American, second-string guard on his team, Clarence Walker, would not be allowed to participate in the tournament because of the color of his skin, he declined the offer. Read more »

I highly recommend seeing The Blind Side, a movie about Baltimore Ravens’ offensive tackle, Michael Oher.  It’s worth the price of the ticket alone to see Sandra Bullock’s tour-de-force performance as Michael’s adoptive mom, Leanne Tuohy.  What I especially like about the movie is that it shows how the right social environment helps people thrive in life.

I don’t want to give away the story so let me just say in a nutshell that it was Leanne Tuohy who reached out to Michael.  It would have been easy for her to ignore him, but she didn’t. Instead, Leanne felt compassion for a young man who was wearing shorts in the winter and hanging around a high school gym just to stay warm.  She took the time to get to know him and his life’s story.  While others saw him as “Big Mike,” a quiet, giant, African-American young man from the Memphis ghetto, Leanne Tuohy saw him as a thoughtful boy with a big heart and protective instincts to match.  She called him “Michael,” a name he much preferred to “Big Mike.” Leanne’s insights helped Michael discover who he really was deep down inside and who he could become. These insights helped Michael see himself as a protector who “has the back” of his family and those he loves. It should come as no surprise then to learn that Michael Oher thrived in football as an offensive tackle responsible for protecting his teammates from the defense.

The Blind Side shows how the social environment we live in shapes us for good or ill. Read more »

Bill Bilichick is being criticized for his decision to go for it on a fourth down in last night’s game against the Indianapolis Colts. I wrote admiringly in Fired Up or Burned Out about Bilichick and Tom Brady’s leadership of the New England Patriots. Neither man is perfect, of course*, but there is much to admire. Steven Levitt’s Freakonomics column in The New York Times provides another reason why Bilichick is among the best coaches when it comes to team performance. Levitt argues in “Bill Bilichick is Great” that statistically the coach made the right decision if his goal was to win even though it would subject him to endless criticism if the decision failed to pay off.

*filming the signals of opposing teams, as the Patriots were caught doing, is one shameful example.

To be successful, employee engagement efforts must educate and inspire then model, mentor and measure.  Most employee engagement efforts educate employees and thereby lay out the rational case but they utterly fail to inspire.  Research has shown that emotional factors are four times as effective as rational factors when it comes to the amount of effort people put into their work. Stories move people’s hearts, capture their imaginations and, as a result, they inspire people to make the effort to change.  When we hear inspiring stories about great leaders and individual contributors who engage the people around them, we inevitably want to emulate them. This gets people started on the right track.

To keep them moving in the right direction and build habits that engage, modeling, mentoring and measuring are all necessary. Most leaders understand they must model the behavior they want to spread.  Mentoring and measuring are also necessary to provide honest feedback, help us see our blind spots and provide the encouragement individuals need to persevere.  Absent these essential elements, any program is unlikely to succeed.   Here are some questions to consider:

1. Do your employee engagement efforts inspire as well as educate?

2. Do your employee engagement efforts mentor to provide encouragement and measure results to provide honest feedback?

If your answer is “no” to either or both of the above, you need to address the gaps.

Update

Here are a few updates related to my work.

Corp! magazine recently published an article on the presentation Jason Pankau and I gave at the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement, an affiliate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.  You can read it at this link.

The Boy Scouts of America selected Fired Up or Burned Out as a text for its People Management 3 course for advanced staff leaders.

On Jan. 26-27 I will be chairman of the Human Capital Institute’s Talent Management for Life Sciences conference in Princeton, NJ.

This month, Developing HR Strategy, a journal based in the UK, published an article I wrote about how leaders develop emotional and rational connections with their followers.

Last week I did a webcast for members of the America Society for Training and Development (ASTD). The webcast covers select research findings from the field of neuroscience and their implications for leadership, productivity, innovation and employee engagement. ASTD is the world’s largest association dedicated to workplace learning and development professionals.  The webcast and slides are available at this link. (Note: clicking on the link will begin an automatic download of the webcast and slides.)

I don’t normally post on Sundays, but today I’m making an exception.  Today is Frances Hesselbein’s birthday and in her honor I’m posting a chapter I wrote about her from my book Fired Up or Burned Out.  Mrs. Hesselbein is the chairman of the Leader to Leader Institute.  Recently, she was appointed a Chair for the Study of Leadership at West Point.

Mrs. Hesselbein, thank you for your tireless efforts to advance leadership, your passion for inclusiveness, for kids, and for leaders in the social sector.  And thank you for the personal encouragement you’ve given me over the years.

Happy birthday Mrs. Hesselbein!

With respect and admiration,

Michael

Peter Drucker’s Kind of Leader

The preeminent management sage, the late Peter Drucker, knew some of the greatest leaders of our times in business and government. If he had been asked to name who he thought was a model leader, would he have chosen President Dwight D. Eisenhower, General George C. Marshall, the legendary Alfred P. Sloan Jr. of General Motors, or one of the many other heads of major companies throughout the world he came to know during his distinguished career? It’s an interesting question, given the reach and influence of Drucker. Periodically in his interviews and writings you will encounter what may be his highest praise for a person who, he once said “could manage any company in America.” Who is she? Read more »