Tag Archives: michael lee stallard

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Leading with the Power of Community

Do you ever wonder how past leaders could have missed what seems so obvious in hindsight? Sadly, most leaders live in an environment that makes them vulnerable to managerial failure.  The problem lies in a little-recognized reality of leadership: isolation.

Leading can be lonely.  Typically leaders have few, if any, high-trust relationships at work.  Because leaders have the power to make or break the careers of those around them, people are afraid to be honest with them and challenge their thinking.  Likewise, too often leaders are reluctant to let their guard down out of fear of losing the respect of their colleagues.

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HR: Order Takers or Game Changers?

The best HR leaders are game changers.  They develop conviction about what constitutes a high-performance work culture. They are a force that helps develop the values and processes necessary to make a high-performance work culture come to life.  The departments they run are NOT staffed with the type of order-takers Keith Hammonds described in his wildly popular Fast Company article entitled “Why We Hate HR.”

I recently wrote an article that describes a game changing strategy HR leaders should consider in light of today’s widespread employee disengagement.  The article was just published as the lead article in the UK’s Developing HR Strategy journal.  It’s entitled, “The Force of Connection: Boost Employee Engagement, Productivity and Innovation.”  You can download it at this link.

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Obama Leads Learning Organization

In this morning’s New York Times, David Brooks in his column entitled “The Analytic Mode,” argues that President Obama leads a learning organization.  I completely agree.  In the past I’ve argued that President Obama is an intentional connector in part because he is a bridge builder who accords respect to his political opponents and because he solicits the ideas and opinions of his advisors then considers them before making decisions.  This leadership approach creates Connection Cultures that keep members of his administration feeling connected so that they give their best efforts, align their behavior with organizational goals and take the risk to communicate information, especially information the president may not want to hear but needs to hears. President Obama might also be described as an “integrative thinker” who employs a “design thinking” approach.  What do you think?

Here are links to resources that will help you consider the wisdom of President Obama’s approach in general and specifically with respect to the decision to commit additional troops to Afghanistan.

David Brook’s NY Times column entitled  “The Analtytic Mode”

Speech I recently gave at Google on Connection Cultures and the “The Force of Connection”

Dean Roger Martin of The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management on the Integrative Thinker and Design Thinking

For some perspective on a president’s decision to increase troops, listen to this Bill Moyer’s program that includes taped conversations President Johnson had with his advisors prior to committing troops to Vietnam.

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Can the Force of Connection Save this College?

Buck Smith, a 74-year-old, grandfatherly man, is leading a remarkable turnaround at Davis & Elkins College, a small liberal arts school in West Virginia, one of America’s poorest states.  Key to Smith’s strategy is strengthening the connection among everyone who is part of the college community.  Check out Buck Smith’s story in an inspiring and enlightening article that appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Eduction entitled “Turnaround President Makes the Most of His College’s Small Size.”  As you read the article, look for the three elements of a connection culture: Vision (Inspiring Identity), Value (Human Value) and Voice (Knowledge Flow).  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Connection Cultures, read the free, downloadable Connection Culture Manifesto published by changethis.com and available at this link.

Thanks to Dr. Al Bowman, president of Illinois State University, for sharing this article with me.  Dr. Bowman is another college president who is leading a turnaround.   I’ll be writing about it soon.  Stay tuned.

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A Coach Whose Record May Never Be Surpassed

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.

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The Blind Side

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.

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Is Patriot’s Bill Bilichick Great?

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.

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Speaking at NASA and the GAO









Next month, my colleague Jason Pankau and I will speak about leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Exploring Leadership Colloquium. We’re excited about this in part because, as several NASA employees I recently spoke with said, “we do cool work.” We also believe our work is very relevant to NASA.  In our book, Fired Up or Burned Out, we wrote about how knowledge traps contributed to the Challenger and Columbia accidents.  I wrote a blog post about it entitled “When Failure is Not an Option.” If you are interested in this topic, take a look at the outstanding National Geographic video special entitled “Challenger: The Untold Story.”

Next month I will also be speaking at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in DC.  I’m thrilled to be speaking there too.  First of all, I’m a former auditor (at Texas Instruments).  I also know how critical the GAO’s work is to our country.  Checks and balances, including a strong audit function, are required to keep people honest, a topic that Montesquieu wrote about in his masterpiece, The Spirit of the Laws.

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Jim Blasingame Interview: Learn From Great Leaders

Today Jim Blasingame and I discussed how leaders can learn by reading about the stories of other great leaders from business, government, the social sector and sports. Our conversation was broadcast on Jim’s popular, nationally-syndicated radio program “The Small Business Advocate.” You can hear the interview by clicking on the “listen now” button below: