John Sexton, the president of New York University, is been aggressively expanding NYU at home and abroad. Now the faculty of NYU’s largest school, Arts and Sciences, have scheduled a no-confidence vote on Sexton. An article in yesterday’s New York Times entitled “A Test of Leadership at NYU,” described the no-confidence vote as coming about because dissident faculty felt Sexton was acting like a maverick CEO. How did this happen? It appears that Sexton’s mistake was failing to give faculty a voice in major decision-making and failing to address their legitimate concerns such as increased teaching loads that require travel abroad and the impact of the expansion on student-teacher ratios. “Voice” is one of the three elements in a Connection Culture (the others are Vision and Value). When a leader fails to give people a voice in decisions that affect them, he or she runs the risk that some people will organize and seek to have the leader replaced. This article describes that scenario. Note in the article that one astute observer comments: “had more faculty been involved in the process…few if any professors [would be actively opposing Sexton].”
Tag Archives: michael lee stallard
Life-Giving Cultures in Health Care Organizations
You can’t give what you don’t have. That’s why cultures in health care organizations need to be life-giving in order to energize health care workers who give so much of themselves to their patients. This is an important issue today. In some health care-related fields, as many as one-third of employees leave their jobs each year. What can be done? To learn more, read the article I wrote for the Fall 2012 Addiction and Behavioral Health Business Journal entitled, “Connection Culture: Creating a Life-Giving Environment in Health Care Organizations.”
When Mission Matters
Organizational missions are inspiring when they communicate how an organization brings truth, beauty and/or goodness to the world. For example, organizations in research or education help bring truth to the world (e.g. biotech companies, universities, schools). Organizations that produce goods or services reflecting aesthetic or artistic beauty or functional excellence bring beauty to the world (e.g. organizations that produce goods or services reflecting a high level of quality, advertising and design organizations, entertainment organizations). Finally, organizations that help improve the wellbeing of people, bring goodness into the world (e.g. healthcare, consumer products or leisure and entertainment organizations).
Citibank’s recent television commercial is a great example of an organization communicating a mission that inspires. The ad shows some of the projects that Citi helped finance including the transatlantic cable, the Marshall Plan to rebuild a post-World War II war-torn Europe, and the Space Shuttle Program. Now those are some accomplishments to be proud of and collectively they have brought greater truth, beauty and goodness into the world.
Wisdom in Seeking and Considering Opinions of Others
Seeking and considering the opinions and ideas of others reflects the character strengths of wisdom and humility. Today’s world is complex and rapidly changing so that we need to hear the perspectives of people who have had different experiences and who possess different thinking styles. Doing so helps improve the likelihood we will make optimal decisions.
Is Too Much Stress Damaging Your Chromosomes?
Too much stress, including stress in your workplace, damages “telomeres” on the ends of your chromosomes and causes rapid aging. Interestingly, when people connect in supportive relationships it triggers the production of enzymes called “telomerase” that heal damaged telomeres. Check out this outstanding 58 minute National Geographic documentary entitled “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” about this and other research on the effects of stress. It includes an excellent segment on the famous Whitehall research studies in the UK that established stress and mortality were inversely related to hierarchy in organizations.
Update: I recently returned from speaking, teaching and meeting with leaders of organizations in business, higher education and government in Houston, Fort Worth, Texas and Erie, Pennsylvania. ASTD’s The Public Manager recently published a version of a case study I wrote about CNO Admiral Vern Clark’s improving the U.S. Navy’s culture. The article is entitled “Great Leaders Connect with the People They Lead.”
In a Crisis, Culture Matters: the Navy on 9/11
Within hours after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, destroyers and cruisers were in place to protect America’s shores. Naval leaders anticipated what had to be done and took action before they received orders. At the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., planning for America’s response began while fires from the attack still smoldered nearby.
The rapid response of the U.S. Navy on September 11 was in part due to the culture led by Admiral Vern Clark who served as the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) from 2000 until his retirement in 2005. The CNO is the principal naval adviser to the President and the Secretary of Defense on the conduct of war. The Navy achieved some impressive gains during Clark’s tenure as CNO and the naval leaders I’ve met or spoken with have praised his leadership and positive impact. By the time Clark retired as the second longest serving CNO in U.S. Navy history, he had led changes that would have a positive effect on the U.S. Navy for years to come. Learn about Admiral Clark’s leadership of the U.S. Navy in an article I wrote for Leadership Excellence that you can read at this link.
Achieving Greatness Requires Coaching
Did you notice at the Olympics that all the world class athletes had coaches? No one becomes great without coaching. We all have blind spots we cant see that are sabotaging our performance. This is true of leaders, too. Coaches and mentors help leaders see their blind spots. They also provide advice and encouragement to help leaders overcome their blind spots and strengthen their strengths.
Are you stuck in your career or want to accelerate your growth? If so, get a coach.
Update
Check out the interview I did on Connection Cultures with Ago Cluytens of Coaching Masters in Switzerland. You might also enjoy this article I wrote for the August edition of Leadership Excellence entitled “Great Leaders Connect.”
NYTimes: Why Coach K “Coaches Like a Girl”
Recently I was delighted to read a great USA Today article about Coach K of Duke leading the U.S. Men’s Basketball Team in the Olympics. Coach K has won four NCAA college basketball titles as the head coach of Duke, a gold medal as an assistant coach of the 1992 Dream Team in Barcelona and a gold medal as head coach of the U.S. mens team in the 1998 olympics in Beijing. He’s a servant leader who creates the “Connection Culture” where his players feel connected to him and to one another, a phenomenon we wrote about in Fired Up or Burned Out. Coach K cares about task excellence and relationship excellence. He cares about people and results.
To learn more about Coach K’s leadership style and the surprising story of how he evolved as a leader check out this fascinating New York Times Magazine article entitled “Follow Me.” In it you’ll learn why this extraordinary leader, a guy’s guy from an all boys Catholic high school, West Point and the U.S. Army, coaches, as the author Mike Sokolove says, “like a girl.”
Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?
Check out this excellent article in The Atlantic entitled “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” Some eye-popping statistics and quotes from the article include:
- In 1950 less than 10 percent of American households contained only one person. By 2010, nearly 27 percent had just one person.
- A 2010 AARP survey found that 35 percent of adults older than 45 were chronically lonely as opposed to 20 percent a decade earlier.
- Roughly 20 percent of Americans — about 60 million people — are unhappy with their lives because of loneliness.
- “Across the Western world, physicians and nurses have begun to speak openly about an epidemic of loneliness.”
The rise in loneliness has led to an explosion in the number of paid confidants. A 2010 Hoover Institute paper stated in 1950 the U.S. had a combined 33,000 paid confidants including clinical psychologists, social workers and therapists. By 2010 that number reached an estimated 1,091,00 paid confidants which includes new categories such as mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, and life coaches.
Clearly, Facebook and other assorted addictions to media are not the only contributors to the epidemic of loneliness. The geographic spread of families, increased time spent working/commuting to work, and the decline of relationships in the workplace are also responsible. Regarding relationships in the workplace, the push for productivity has contributed to a rise of cultures that label people who take time to build relationships as slackers. Today, having lunch alone in your office is the norm. Unfortunately, productivity and innovation take a toll when workers burn out from a lack of human connection. They learn to play “face time” games that make it look like they’re working, when in reality they’re not. Creating Connection Cultures in organizations to achieve “relationship excellence” is wise. We most recently made the case for Connection Cultures in an article entitled,”The Science of Engagement,” that appeared in the Spring edition of Training Industry Quarterly.
In addition to the The Atlantic article on Facebook making us lonely, here are two other readings I recommend.
