Michael Lee Stallard

This post is a continuance of my prior post on evil in organizational cultures.

The “dark triad” — psychopaths, narcissists and machiavellians — represents a small part of the population. What unties this group of destructive personalities is that they lack empathy for other human beings and care only about themselves. Some end up in correctional institutions while others end up in leadership positions where they create dog-eat-dog cultures or cultures that are indifferent to human beings (this is opposed to Servant Leaders who create “Connection Cultures”).

For some interesting thoughts on psychopaths in the C-suite, see this post by Larry Kahaner of the McGowan Fund and the link in his post to an article entitled “The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis” that appeared in the Journal of Business Ethics.  The book and movie entitled The Corporation make the argument that organizations that care only about profit have effectively become psychopathic.

The way to keep members of the dark triad out of positions of leadership and out of organizations is to educate everyone so that they understand what a healthy culture is, how it’s based on character strengths and virtues, and how organizations develop people with both character and competence.  One project we are working on with Scotiabank is creating a monthly piece for leaders entitled Leading with Character. Each month’s piece highlights a particular character strength, explains how it’s relevant to the organization and how to strengthen one’s leadership in ways that reflect the character strength.  If you are interested in learning more, please email me at mstallard@epluribuspartners.com or call me at 203-422-6511.

Research by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson has shown it requires approximately 10,000 hours of intentional practice, with coaching, to become an expert.  Ten thousand hours is roughly equivalent to ten years of putting in 20 hours of practice a week.  The importance of perseverance and practice is obvious.

Every bit as essential to becoming great, yet less obvious, is the importance of developing the character strengths of humility and love.  Humility guides and encourages you to seek and truly accept coaching, and love is what allows you to give and receive the relational support of others needed to persevere through the inevitable ups and downs of life.

Years ago I met and spoke with Andre Agassi when he was playing a tennis tournament in Burbank, California.  This was during a period when Agassi had fallen from being one of the top players in the world to being so lowly ranked that it was difficult for him to get into major tournaments.  Andre had the skills but just wasn’t playing anywhere near the top of his game.  The Burbank tournament was the turning point.  Agassi won the tournament and went on to return to the ranks of the top tennis players in the world.  What happened? Read more »

We’ve been doing more work of late in the health care field, helping organizations such as the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center develop Connection Cultures that boost employee engagement and improve patient outcomes.   If you have a story to tell or are aware of practices that boost connection at hospitals, would you please post it on the comments below or email me at mstallard@epluribuspartners.com. Thank you.

On that score, while speaking recently at Texas Christian University, a student, Romel Schearer, told me about the remarkable story of Bill Cabeen, a cardiologist who had the courage to connect with one of his patients, Nikki Luederitz, rather than remain disconnected in the name of “professionalism.”  Dr. Cabeen’s courage and support not only saved Ms. Luederitz’s life, it changed her in a profound way. To learn how, listen to “The Tale of Two Hearts.”

Apple is now the most valuable company in the world in terms of market capitalization and U2’s recent tour just became the highest grossing of all time, crushing the previous record held by the Rolling Stones.  Learn about Apple’s remarkable rise in market cap in this New York Times article and learn about U2’s claim as the greatest band of all time in this article from the Atlantic magazine’s website.

Apple and U2’s continued success begs the question, “what’s their secret?” Read more »

A leader I know and much admire is Howard Behar, the former president of Starbucks North America and Starbucks International. Howard tells about the time 14 years ago this month when he received a call in the middle of the night at his home in Seattle alerting him that three Starbucks employees at the Georgetown store in Washington, D.C. had been shot and killed, including an 18-year who had just recently begun at Starbucks, his first job.   Behar immediately called Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ CEO, who was in New York on vacation at the time.

What Schultz didn’t do, says a lot about his character.  He didn’t call Starbucks’ public relations people or lawyers.  Instead, Schultz chartered a plane and headed straight to Washington, D.C.  When he arrived, he spoke with the police then proceeded to the store to get the addresses of the three murdered Starbucks employees. He went to each of their homes, told their families he was sorry and shared in their tears.

Howard Schultz’s heart was broken.   He showed courage by expressing the grief he felt. Doing so contributed to helping the victims’ families, friends and colleagues. As awful as grieving the loss of a loved one or friend is, it’s far worse to grieve alone. Read more »

My mind must have been on something else as I began to edge out a bit from a side street to make a left-hand turn onto a main thoroughfare.  At the same time, another driver was turning left onto the street I was on. I slammed on my brakes in time. Admittedly, the near miss was my fault and the driver I almost pulled in front of had every right to be upset.  What surprised me, however, was the intensity of his reaction.  He came unglued, turned blood red, repeatedly flipped me off and began spewing expletives and spittle.  The rage on his face is burned in my memory.  I kept an eye on him in my rear view mirror to make sure he wasn’t turning around to come after me.  Fortunately he didn’t.

Why are so many people angry these days? Read more »

Here is a video from YouTube of a conversation I had earlier this year about leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation with Dr. Homer Erekson, Dean of TCU’s Neeley School of Business.  Our conversation occurred as part of the Tandy Executive Speakers Series that featured CEOs of outstanding companies such as Nieman Marcus, Southwest Airlines and The Container Store.

During our conversation we discussed how most leaders don’t understand the importance of emotional connections to the success of the their organization.  Learn more about the “Connection Cultures” that great leaders create by reading Fired Up or Burned Out.

The New York Times has had a number of great articles related to connection and how it leads to success at work and in life.  In an article about what Google discovered from Project Oxygen, a rigorous study of its successful managers, Laszlo Bock, the leader of the study stated:

“In the Google context, we’d always believed that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a technical expert than the people who work for you…It turns out that that’s absolutely the least important thing. It’s important, but pales in comparison. Much more important is just making that connection and being accessible.” (italics mine)

This is exactly the point I made when I spoke about Connection Cultures described in my book Fired Up or Burned Out at Google in late 2009 as part of the Leading@Google series (you can see the video of my presentation at this link and read the article here.)

An article about Starbuck’s CEO Howard Schultz describes him as humbler and listening more as well as considering the opinions and ideas of his colleagues.  This reflects the character strength of humility and the element of Voice in a Connection Culture that our research shows builds emotional and rational connections with employees.  Read the article at this link.

Finally, The New York Times columnist David Brooks’ new book The Social Animal is reviewed.  In the book Brooks argues that the ability to develop social connections is under-appreciated and extremely important to our success in life.  You can read the review at this link.

Connection is a muscle that must be continuously exercised.  The more you connect with others, the better you become at connecting.  Here are three ways to connect that are common practices of outstanding connectors:

1. KNOW THEIR STORY – Invest the time to learn the life stories of the people in your life at home, in your community and at work. Take them out for coffee or a meal and ask them “so you were born and then what happened?”  Listen and ask questions.

2. ASK QUESTIONS UNRELATED TO WORK – Ask the people in your life what their interests are outside of work, what’s their favorite movie, musician or place of vacation.

3. FIND A WAY TO SERVE THEM – Look for ways that you can serve someone you want to connect with.  Perhaps they need to hear an encouraging word.  You might also consider offering to bring them a coffee or soft drink.  If they like gifts and they’ve been facing a difficult time in life, send them a gift they would like. You might consider sending one of my favorites: Ben and Jerry’s ice cream from www.icecreamsource.com.

Here is a video from YouTube of a conversation I had about leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation with Dr. Homer Erekson, Dean of TCU’s Neeley School of Business.  Our conversation occurred as part of the Tandy Executive Speakers Series.

The writer Jeff Benedict just emailed me some beautifully written and wise words he posted on his blog about staying connected with his son.  I hope you’ll take the time to check it out at this link.