Archive for the ‘Practical Quintessential Leadership’ Category

What Quintessential Leadership Looks Like: Admitting When We’re Wrong, Sincerely Apologizing, and Making Amends

Posted: September 10, 2015 in Practical Quintessential Leadership
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Admitting wrongs is quintessential leadershipNone of us is perfect.

We all screw up from time to time. And, sadly, because it’s part and parcel of being human, we screw up a lot more than most of us are willing or honest enough to admit to ourselves and to others.

However, the difference between quintessential leaders and unquintessential leaders is what we do after we’ve screwed up.

Since screwing up is inevitable at some point, we all have to decide if, when, and how we handle it.

And what we choose to do after our screw-ups will demonstrate whether we are quintessential leaders or not, because this is the true test of our character and this is the accurate measure of who we are and what we are in every aspect of our lives.

Consistently choosing a path of dealing with our screw-ups will establish a pattern of behavior and, with time, that pattern of behavior will become our habit.

So the choice we make to address our screw-ups is the key to whether we are becoming quintessential leaders or unquintessential leaders.

Let’s look at what the unquintessential leadership path of dealing with screw-ups looks like.

President Bill Clinton models unquintessential leadership when dealing with wrongs

Unfortunately, this unquintessential leadership consistency of choice that leads Hillary Clinton models unquintessential leadership when dealing with wrongsto a pattern of behavior that becomes a habit in dealing with screw-ups is no better exemplified than with the public lives of President Bill Clinton and his wife, 2016 presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Since the Clintons began a life in public service, they individually and together have an established pattern – now a habit – of dealing with screw-ups:

  • Ignore it
  • Deflect attention elsewhere
  • Deny it
  • Dance around it with technicalities to suggest no screw-up
  • Point to all the other people doing it
  • Call it an unjustified attack by enemies
  • Joke about it
  • Sort of admit it finally, but with excuses and justifications
  • Sort of apologize, but clearly don’t mean it or believe it

I will not rehash the many past instances of this pattern/habit during the Clintons’ many years of public service. It’s not my intention to make them the subject of this post, but to point out that they represent unquintessential leadership in dealing with screw-ups.

However, I will show how this looks right now with how Hillary Clinton has handled the issue of using a private email server and private email account for State Department communication during her time as United States Secretary of State.

errors-wrongs-mistakes-quintessential-leadershipQuite simply, Hillary Clinton screwed up. Although the policy of using State Department servers and emails was not in effect when Clinton became Secretary of State (a point she keeps invoking and twisting to justify and excuse why she did what she did), it was within just a few short months into her tenure.

Despite the government policy – and one of the unquintessential leadership traits common to not just the Clintons, but almost everyone in public office around the world, is “the rules don’t apply to me” – going into effect, Secretary Clinton ignored it and continued to use her private email server and private email account throughout her term as Secretary of State.

When it was finally revealed publicly (don’t believe that everybody in the U.S. government didn’t know about it already and just turned a blind eye until the media got wind of it), Hillary Clinton executed the unquintessential leadership habit of dealing with screw-ups that she has perfected perhaps over a lifetime.

Hillary Clinton, this week, finally got the the last step of this unquintessential leadership habit of dealing with screw-ups.

However, Clinton’s last step looks, in the video of her sort-of apology, as if someone’s got a gun to her head and is forcing her to make a statement that Clinton doesn’t agree with and doesn’t believe.

The irony is that it seems the poll numbers – in favorability and with other present and potential Democrat candidates for president – have pushed Hillary Clinton to the last step of the unquintessential leadership habit that she and her husband have developed for dealing with screw-ups.

But if took this long and this much drama and avoidance to deal trust-trustworthiness-quintessential-leaderwith, in the big scheme of what presidents have to deal with both nationally and internationally, a less significant screw-up in personal conduct and following the rules, then the essential issues become Hillary Clinton’s character and trustworthiness in everything.

How, then, do quintessential leaders deal with screw-ups?

To be fair, there are times that we don’t know right away that we’ve screwed up.

But those cases are more rare than we can sometimes lead ourselves to believe because quintessential leaders have very sensitive consciences that knock on our brains pretty quickly when we’ve messed up and don’t stop knocking until we fix it.

As soon as quintessential leaders realize they’ve screwed up, they take immediate action to:

  • Admit it
  • Own it completely (no excuses or justifications)
  • Sincerely apologize for it
  • Make amends for it by taking action to fix it
  • Learn from it so they don’t repeat it

This is the tangible evidence of who is and who isn’t a quintessential leader. In the process of doing this as a consistent pattern of behavior, it becomes the quintessential leader’s habit for dealing with screw-ups.

In the process, trust and trustworthiness is established and things get resolved quickly and correctly, instead of snowballing into something way bigger than whatever the original screw-up was.

five-alarm-fire-from-embers-not-doused-quicklyAnd this affects the bottom line for quintessential leaders, their teams and their organizations because they don’t waste their time, their energy, and their resources constantly firefighting ignored easily-quenchable embers that blow up into 5-alarm fires that threatens to destroy everything. 

So what path do you and I choose to handle the screw-ups we inevitably make in our lives, personally and professionally?

Do our patterns of behavior look like that of an unquintessential leader?

Do our patterns of behavior look like that of a quintessential leader?

Or are our patterns of behavior a mixture of unquintessential leadership and quintessential leadership?

I daresay this is one area where we all need to change and improve to make our patterns of behavior – which builds the lifelong habit – reflect quintessential leadership.

Nothing less is acceptable.

How are we doing?

 

 

 

The Unquintessential Leadership Aspects of Emotional Marketing

Posted: August 31, 2015 in General Things about Quintessential Leadership, Practical Quintessential Leadership, Qualities of a Quintessential Leader
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The Unquintessential Leadership Aspects of Emotional MarketingWe live in an incredibly noisy world.

The world is so noisy, in fact, that most people have resorted to the most base tactics – and those involve emotional reactions and responses – to be seen and heard.

These tactics, which are more common than not and are all around us, even though we may not even be aware of them, include gimmicks, sensationalism, and manipulation.

But are gimmicks, sensationalism, and manipulation okay to use? Should quintessential leaders use them?

That’s the topic we’ll discuss in this post.

Lets look at some examples of what gimmicks, sensationalism, and manipulation look like first.

As you go through your day today, I challenge you to look at all that you read and see and be aware of whether they are gimmicks, sensationalism, and manipulation or not.

If you’re paying attention, I believe you will have an eye-opening day.

The front page of the August 27, 2015 New York Daily News, pictured below is an example of sensationalism.

Gimmicky, Sensational, Crass Communication is Unquintessential Leadership

The ad below for the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) featuring Sarah McLachlan’s 1997 hit song “Angel” is an example of manipulation.

These quotes and titles from a random sampling of the internet in the last week are gimmicky, sensational, and manipulative.

“…with ABC company’s finest immune boosting products as well as various soothing and calming treasures to help beat the stress…”

“How to Wreck Your Future”

“This Kind of Olive Oil Can Kill Cancer Cells in One Hour”

“Lose 20 Pounds in 21 Days”

What do all of these have in common?

First, they appeal directly to emotions and are designed to provoke an intense emotional response. Disgust. Sadness. Elitism. Fear. Hope. Happiness.

The second thing that they have in common is that they are dishonest, deceptive, manipulative and unproven.

The third thing they have in common is that they play on the gullible susceptibility of humans by promising, in most cases, something they can’t deliver.

But this is the way the majority of society has adopted to entice people to open the doors of their message or product because “smart” marketing says if someone opens the door the odds of them coming in and staying are very high.

This is the bait and the hook. And once emotions are involved, it doesn’t matter whether it’s true, right, logical, factual, or proven. Because emotional decisions don’t depend on anything real (how things are), but instead on sensation (how things feel).

Back in the day, this would have been called yellow journalism. Now it’s called emotional marketing.

There are many things wrong with these techniques. Here are a few of them.

Emotional Drivers are the heart of Emotional MarketingFirst, when a person or an organization is appealing to emotion, they are appealing to the irrational side of humans. Decisions made strictly on an emotional basis, with no consideration of logic and facts, are always, at the least, regrettable decisions and, at the worst, bad decisions.

And these kinds of decisions can – and often do – have disastrous consequences in peoples’ lives.

Second, a person or organization using emotional marketing is being dishonest and deceptive. Not only are they promising the moon, which no human can deliver, but they are intentionally misleading and manipulating other people to buy whatever they’re promoting or selling.

If a person or an organization draws people in under false pretenses and in an untrustworthy manner, then the logic follows that whatever they are promoting or selling can’t be trusted in terms of efficacy, quality, or longevity.

Third, people or organizations using emotional marketing are revealing both a lack of care and concern for others and a lack of personal integrity and character.

Because emotions are subjective and easily manipulated by gimmicks and sensationalism, using this type of marketing to reel customers in is a reflection of both a win-at-all-costs and the-end-justifies-the-means mindset, which is at the core of unquintessential leadership.

Unfortunately, most people are unaware of the emotional marketing that is thrown at them continually. And because society, in general, has abandoned logic, reason, and critical thinking in all its decision-making, it’s a safe bet to say that most people don’t really care if they are being manipulated and deceived by emotional marketing.

But we all should be aware and we should care. Consider the following statements from a generic emotional marketing campaign:

generic emotional marketing gimmicks

Notice that the first statement can’t be substantiated and has no objective data (ingredients that are different or better than specific competitors or the results of customer taste tests), but it promises healthier and tastier than any other tea that exists in the world.

The second statement also can’t be substantiated and is again lacking objective data to quantify it (e.g., 100 people who drank XYZ brand of tea in Yuma, Arizona on a 118-degree day in August said it was refreshing).

The third statement appeals to how a person looks (less calories equals less weight) and how a person feels (better than ever before).

The question of “how do you know?” is never addressed because of our lack of awareness and lack of care about being manipulated into buying something because it appeals to us on an emotional level.

emotions versus rational and critical thinkingWhen we get accustomed to accepting things without proof, to using our emotions to guide our decisions and choices in life, to abandoning logic, critical thinking, and reason – which emotional marketing makes easier and, eventually, the default way we live life – we are at great risk for being more susceptible to deception, dishonesty, and manipulation every where in our lives.

Quintessential leaders don’t use emotional marketing. They don’t use gimmicks, sensationalism, and manipulation. They use facts, logic, and critical thinking. They prove what they say and do before they say and do it. And they expect everyone – their teams, their audiences, and their customers – to do the same. Nothing less than this method is acceptable.

The reality is that nothing less than this method should be acceptable for any of us, but even more so for those of us who are striving to be quintessential leaders.

The mirror test, as always, will tell us whether we have fallen into the trap of emotional marketing as quintessential leaders.

Do we consistently appeal to emotional responses by gimmicks, sensationalism, and manipulation to motivate our teams, to build our customer bases, and as a way of life?

Have we abandoned facts, logic, and critical thinking in our decision-making? Do we prove everything for ourselves or do we just accept whatever we see, we read, or we are told without any substantiation?

Have we moved more toward emotional marketing and away from factual, logical, and provable information in our lives, both as leaders and as consumers?

Do we even know the answers to any of these questions?

If we find that we don’t know the answers, then now is the time to examine our lives and figure out what we are doing and why.

If we find answers that show that we have embraced emotional marketing both as leaders and as consumers, then today is the day to begin to change that with a return to facts, logic, critical thinking, and truth, which will lead to us rebuilding our integrity and becoming trustworthy.

Does this matter to you?

If not, then you cannot claim to be a quintessential leader. In fact, you can’t claim to be any kind of leader. Instead, you are a duped follower of a dishonest, deceptive, manipulative, and untrustworthy system that has infiltrated every part of modern society.

If that’s okay with you and you can live with it and yourself, then this post won’t matter to you and you’ll dismiss it along with any other things in your life – including those occasional pangs of conscience that knock on your brain but you brush away and ignore – that demand a higher standard, a different standard, a standard that sets the right example for others.

But if it’s not okay with you, then join me in daring to be different and daring to do the right thing all the time and daring to become a quintessential leader in every aspect of our lives.

How are we doing?

What Quintessential Leadership Looks Like: Giving Others the Benefit of the Doubt

Posted: July 14, 2015 in Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership, Practical Quintessential Leadership, Qualities of a Quintessential Leader
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Technology gives society the false idea that is perfectWe live in a society that has, in large part due to technology, been hoodwinked into the beliefs that each of us knows everything, sees everything, understands everything, and is an expert about everything.

In other words, most of us never give – because we don’t have to – everybody the benefit of the doubt.

More of us have been entrapped by this fallacy than we might believe. Before we jump in – this is one of the signs that we are in the majority of the entrapped – and say, “That doesn’t apply to me!” let’s examine what it not applying to us looks like.

We may be surprised at what we find if we’re willing to listen and are willing to be honest with ourselves. Unfortunately, those traits are very rare anymore because most of us are convinced that we already know all the answers so there’s nothing else that we can learn.

Learning and the change and growth that comes from that, my friends, is at the heart of unquintessential leadership.

However, if we believe we already know everything and there’s nothing else for us to learn, then that is our death kneel to becoming quintessential leaders. We will never become quintessential leaders if this is our mindset and our attitude going in.

It is in this aspect of the societal tendency to not give the benefit of the doubt that quintessential leaders stand out from everybody else.

benefit-of-the-doubt-wordsQuintessential leaders distinguish themselves as being willing to give the benefit of the doubt to other people by what they are and what they understand about themselves and what they don’t do.

Quintessential leaders are humble. They do not elevate themselves in their own minds nor do they try to elevate themselves in others’ minds.

They’re not always clamoring for people to look at them or to be the center of attention. They understand that it’s never “all about me,” but instead quintessential leaders understand it’s “all about others, and in reality, very little in life is actually about me.”

Social media has done a lot to destroy humility in general.

All the selfies and “Hey, look at me!” tweets, instagrams, and status updates have played right into the pride, vanity, and narcissism that seems to be hardwired into human nature. 

To achieve, maintain, and grow in humility, then, in this environment of easy self-centeredness and self-absorption, takes constant, diligent, and honest effort along with persistent self-control.

Quintessential leaders exercise self-control and they are constantly inventorying themselves: their attitudes, their motives, their thoughts, their words, and their actions.

As a result, quintessential leaders know their limitations and they know their strengths and weaknesses and that leads them to give the benefit of the doubt to others.

What does giving the benefit of the doubt to other people look like in quintessential leaders? (The opposite of these are what unquintessential leadership and not giving the benefit of the doubt look like.)

Quintessential leaders recognize we are not omniscient. We can’t read minds. We can’t read hearts. We don’t know The Great Gatsby's symbol for omniscienceeverything about everything.

Quintessential leaders don’t know everybody. We don’t know everything about everybody And while quintessential leaders may be experts in a few areas, we are not experts in everything.

And we are certainly not experts on everybody, because we know we aren’t even experts on ourselves (in other words, there’s a lot about ourselves that we don’t even know).

Therefore, because quintessential leaders know we are not omniscient, we are not always at the ready with answers for everybody about everything with the understood premise that these are the right answers and these are the only answers.

Quintessential leaders know that is the height of vanity and foolishness.

Life and people are way, way more complicated than that and none of us mere mortals is up to the challenge of knowing everything about there is to know about everyone and everything.

Because they listen to hear instead of running roughshod over everybody else to talk more loudly and to make and remake their point because they’re right and it’s so important that Jumping to conclusionseverybody knows it, quintessential leaders don’t jump to conclusions.

Quintessential leaders understand that jumping to conclusions will always lead us down the furthest path from the truth. And it will damage, sometimes irreparably, our relationships with other people because it creates chasms and builds walls, instead of building bridges.

Quintessential leaders understand that there is an unknown backstory behind every human being and that our experiences in life are customized and unique, so they don’t make presumptions and assumptions based on their backstories and their life experiences.

PresumptionSince quintessential leaders aren’t living life from a self-centered and self-absorbed perspective, we don’t inject ourselves and our lives into the lives of other people by being presumptive and making assumptions.

AssumptionBeing presumptive and making assumptions are another sure way to go down a path that is the furthest from the truth. And this damages relationships too. Sometimes beyond repair in this lifetime.

Quintessential leaders are not quick to accuse and are not quick to criticize other people. 

While quintessential leaders evaluate behavior (actions and words) at the highest ethical and moral standards and are responsible for bringing that behavior to light and correcting it by coaching, they are careful not to personally quick to accuseattack the people who have the behavior that needs to be corrected by accusation and criticism.

This is probably the most difficult part of giving the benefit of the doubt. We who are striving to be quintessential leaders fail in this part, hopefully not regularly, more than we should.

Being quick to criticize and being quick to accuse other people quick to accuseshows a lack of mercy and this will also lead quintessential leaders down the furthest path from truth and it will damage – almost certainly beyond the ability to fix in this life – the relationships.

There is an constructive, big-picture method that quintessential leaders use to coach toward correct behavior.

Very few people know and understand this method, nor are more than a small minority adept at it. And, of course, there are always people who just don’t care.

Coaching a wrong, misguided, or negative behavior looks like this:

  • This is wrong (misguided, negative).
  • This is why (concrete facts, not feelings).
  • This is what you replace that with (concrete facts, not feelings).
  • This is the framework of what it looks like, step-by-step, from start to finish (the big picture).
  • I’ll be right here beside you to guide and help you, as you need me, through the process (investment in the process).
  • We’ll succeed (common shared goal).

Unfortunately the “reward” of quick accusation and quickly criticizing other people on a personal, below-the-belt level is much more attractive and much stronger to the majority of people than the reward of actually offering to invest in the process of coaching and helping someone change and correct a behavior.

So the time has come for us to look into our own quintessential leader mirrors to see if we strive all the time to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Don’t look at anybody else. This is about you and your mirror. This is about me and my mirror.

I can’t change anybody else, but I can certainly change me. You can’t change anybody else, but you can certainly change you.

Do we usually give other people the benefit of the doubt?

Do we give the people we like and/or are most like us in personality, temperament, background, and interests the benefit of the doubt, but not the people we don’t like and/or who are unlike us in personality, temperament, background, and interests?

Do we never give anyone the benefit of the doubt?

We need to look in our mirrors closely, honestly, and rigorously to answer these questions. 

Do we have the character, the desire or the courage to look in our mirrors, or will we assume it doesn’t apply to us and on go on doing what we’ve always done.

I have the character. I have the courage. I have the desire.

Do you?

What Quintessential Leadership Looks Like: Handling the Heat of the Moment

Posted: July 7, 2015 in Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership, Practical Quintessential Leadership
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Emotions run very high in the heat of the moment“I’m so…you make me…I just can’t be around you anymore! I’m leaving!”

“Fine! Go! Walk away!”

“Fine! I will!”

Two otherwise-mature adults, their bodies defensive and tight with rage, turn their backs on and stomp away from each other with whatever led to this emotional climax unresolved in the heat of the moment like two three-year-olds fighting over a toy.

Immature? Yes.

Can we all identify? Yes.

Have we all done it? Yes.

The purpose of this blog is to define what quintessential leadership is, what it is not, and to show what it looks like in practice.

Being quintessential leaders is the goal. Becoming quintessential leaders is a process. And the reality is that none of us are completely there yet.

But we all, if we’re reading this, want to become and are on the path to being quintessential leaders.

Sometimes it’s helpful to take a unquintessential leader moment – we all have them – and analyze it to see what happened and why it happened.

Then, as we think it through, we can identify what steps (i.e., what it looks like) we could have taken and, hopefully, in the future will take to be a quintessential leader in this area of our lives.

Handling the heat of the moment consistently as a quintessential leader is one of the most difficult areas we will routinely encounter in our lives.

We face it, sometimes on a daily basis, as parents, as children, as siblings, as spouses, as friends, and as team members.

Because intense emotions rise to the surface in these encounters, it is difficult, at times, to step back, so to speak, dial down the emotional aspect, and exercise the discipline and self-control not to end up saying things we don’t mean, hurting feelings, and stomping away in anger with nothing resolved.

And sometimes the words we say are so harsh, the feelings are so deeply hurt, and the abandonment so angry and final that incurable wounds are left and relationships are damaged beyond repair in this lifetime.

No one wants this.

So let’s examine what quintessential leadership looks like in the heat of the moment. In the process we will see the places in these encounters where things can quickly either go right or wrong, leading to a domino effect that either leads to strengthening the relationship between two people or, at worst, destroying it permanently.

What causes the heat of the moment?

It’s usually something as simple as a word or a gesture.

Whichever it is, it pushes our buttons on such a fundamental level that our first reaction is extreme and negative emotionally.

When this happens, our gut response is to immediately turn off, shut down, and shut off whatever provoked our emotional firestorm.

We do this with defensive and angry words – most often in the form of a vicious verbal attack designed to hit below the belt for maximum effect – and defensive gestures (finger pointing, aggressive leaning in, etc.).

If this doesn’t shut up the person who has pushed our buttons and they try to explain why they said or did what they said or did, then we get angrier and more determined to stop the source of our emotional turmoil.

We pull out all the big guns of accusation and intimidation, talking over the other person, refusing to listen to anything they say, getting louder, angrier, and more aggressive to stop them.

If that doesn’t work, then finally we spit out the words at the very beginning of this post that convey that our disgust, our hatred (in that moment), and our rejection of that person is so deep that it has rendered us unable to even to complete a thought or a sentence so we have no choice but to leave.

This is an unquintessential leader response.

And our actions and words create anger, hurt, and frustration in the person we’re trying to shut down, so they have an unquintessential leader response as well.

Unquintessential leadership in the heat of the moment can lead to irreparable relationship chasmsIn other words, everyone fails to be a quintessential leader. And if the chasm we’ve created is too wide and too deep to be filled or bridged, we’ve also destroyed a relationship.

What does quintessential leadership look like in the heat of the moment?

First, quintessential leaders put the brakes on after the first gust of their emotional upheaval appears. They know their triggers well, but they also recognize that words and gestures that may mean one thing to them may not mean the same thing to other people.

So, instead of jumping to the conclusion that they know what the other person means by a word or a gesture, quintessential leaders engage with the person to find out what is behind the word or the gesture.

In other words, quintessential leaders put their own ideas, reactions, and assumptions aside and they start a conversation with the other person.

But starting a conversation is not enough.

Quintessential leaders listen to the other person. By listening, I mean they let the other person explain fully what they meant by what they said or did (there might even be an apology if they realize it was wrong or inappropriate) without interruption.

Quintessential leaders hear the words, they process the words, and they don’t make mental assumptions and arguments while impatiently waiting for the other person to get through talking.

Quintessential leaders then affirm that they heard the other person by summarizing what that person said. There may be a place here – if it is appropriate (most of the time it is not) and if it can be done peaceably, kindly, and gently – for quintessential leaders to explain their initial response to the word or gesture the other person used.

It is at this point that potential conflict is defused and a meaningful dialogue that can benefit both people starts. This is part of how we get to know, to understand, and to learn about each other, which is the quintessential leader way.

But what if neither person was a quintessential leader in the heat of the moment and they both ended up stomping off in anger?

There is still an opportunity to be a quintessential leader.

One action does not define who we are. If it did, we’d all be toast.

It is the sum total of our actions that show whether, in the balance, we’re on the path to becoming quintessential leaders or not.

The next opportunity to be a quintessential leader for both people is to reach out and apologize and extend peace.

Quintessential leaders extend peace after conflict regardless of faultIt doesn’t matter whether we were the attacker or the recipient of the attack in the heat of the moment.

As quintessential leaders we bear the responsibility to, as much as lies within our ability, do the right thing.

It may be that there is no acceptance of or response to our overture to make peace. That doesn’t mean we don’t do it anyway. It is the right thing to do. Always.

If the other person doesn’t accept it or respond to it, then we know that we’ve done what quintessential leaders do and we can have a clear conscience going forward.

And we’ve had a teachable moment for how we need to respond to all our future in the heat of the moments. We can learn valuable lessons even in the worst circumstances and those lessons should change us for the better.

Now is the time we all look in our own mirrors of our own lives. No, as tempting as it is, we don’t look around at everybody else. Look at yourself, just as I look at myself.

Are you and I quintessential leaders all the time in the heat of the moment?

Are you and I quintessential leaders sometimes and unquintessential leaders other times in the heat of the moment?

Are you and I always unquintessential leaders in the heat of the moment?

The odds are favorable that most of us fall into the category of the second question I asked. And that means we need to do some homework.

We need to figure out when we are sometimes unquintessential leaders in the heat of the moment what causes it (triggers, buttons) and why (response) we are.

Then we need to work on addressing those whats and whys so that they don’t light the emotional fire in us that makes us unquintessential leaders.

We can’t hold other people responsible for them (“well, if XYZ hadn’t said or done that, I wouldn’t have reacted that way”). That’s an excuse and a justification that makes everybody but us responsible for the changes we need to make.

This is our work on ourselves in becoming quintessential leaders and no one can do that but us. And some of this work may be extremely painful and it may last the rest of our lives.

But if we’re committed to becoming quintessential leaders, then whatever it takes to reach that goal is worth it.

How are we doing?

 

 

 

 

 

The Quintessential Leader Perspective on Practically Lending a Helping Hand

Posted: April 23, 2015 in Giving Back and Paying Forward, Practical Quintessential Leadership, Quintessential Leadership is an Art
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The Quintessential Leader Always Lends a Helping HandQuintessential leaders are always looking for ways to practically help other people whose paths intersect with ours. This is part of the integrity of our character and the authenticity of who we are.

What this means practically is that we are conscious and continual observers of all the people we cross paths with, whether it’s just one time, occasionally, frequently, or continually. It also means that we have a heightened awareness of all situations and genuine needs that arise in these relationships.   

In other words, quintessential leaders are always paying attention for opportunities where we can practically lend a helping hand to others.  

Quintessential leaders don’t look at these opportunities as a burden, nor do we look at them as a one-time obligation that we check off a list and move on from. Because quintessential leaders are teambuilders and relationship builders, we stay involved and we keep lending helping hands with the goal of assisting others to be able to stand on their own again, so that they can then lend a helping hand to the people who cross their paths in life.

Quintessential leaders do this all their lives. They prefer to be anonymous, in the background, and quietly providing the practical help that others need. The greatest satisfaction for quintessential leaders is to see those we’ve endeavored to persistently help along the way in practical ways succeed and move into a position where they are able to help others.

What are some ways that quintessential leaders practically lend a helping hand to others?

You more than likely will never know about any of this because quintessential leaders never talk about what they are doing (we don’t take out billboards, literally or virtually, and announce it to the world) for others. Instead, we just do it, freely, modestly, and continuously lending our hands whenever and wherever there’s a genuine need that we can fill.

However, because we are striving to be quintessential leaders all the time, we need to know the what and the how of what practically lending a helping hand to others so that they can get back on their feet and pay it forward looks like in practice.

There are impractical and practical ways to lend a helping hand.

If (and this seems to be an increasingly rarer “if” in our “what’s in it for me?” society, where most people either simply don’t care, are totally oblivious to the needs of others, or they glance at needs and then promptly forget that the needs ever existed) people are inclined to lend a helping hand, the help is often short-term and immediate (impractical in the big scheme of things because it doesn’t address the root cause of the need), instead of long-term and big-picture (practical because it works to lessen or eliminate the root cause of the need).

So we’re going to look at a few practical ways that we can lend a helping hand to others and show how quintessential leaders use all our networks to enhance our help and work to reduce and eliminate the need.

This, by the way, was supposed to be the functional outcome of professional networking and social networking, but both have failed miserably.

Professional network to lend a helping handThese networks, however, have ended up being nothing more than, in the first case, a closed club with a college sorority/fraternity feel involving bar meetups to drink and hook up, and, in the second case, social-networksa closed inner group of select people (the wider group of contacts and friends is off the grid and nobody even notices – it’s as though they were never there) who just hang out with each other all day.

The first way that quintessential leaders practically lend a helping hand is by volunteering their time and expertise whenever and wherever they find people in need. They create opportunities to volunteer by establishing and actively participating in specific groups to meet specific needs.

Throughout their sustained efforts in making these groups a place for information, education, and help, quintessential leaders also invite and respond Quintessential leaders volunteer to lend a helping handto ongoing individual needs within the groups. 

While most people aren’t even aware of it, quintessential leaders always spend a lot of one-on-one time with individuals within the group when the needs arise, with the goal of lessening the burden for those individuals and helping where they are able in a practical and proactive way.

Another area where quintessential leaders are constantly practically lending a helping hand is in the area of helping people who are looking for employment and financial stability. These are tied inextricably together, but it seems that society, in general, doesn’t realize this. 

There are a few people who see the financial aspect of someone looking for employment and they give a little bit of money to the person. While this is appreciated, there is a better and more practical way to lend a helping hand in terms of the long-term and big picture need, which is employment and being financially self-supporting.

There’s an old saying that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for life. There’s an parallel in this saying that applies to someone looking for employment and financial stability.

As noble and as kind as the gesture is, the reality is that handing somebody who’s looking for a job a little bit of money doesn’t give them employment or financial stability. In fact, it usually, at least emotionally and mentally, makes things worse for that person.

Why?

There are several reasons:

  1. A one-time small amount of money doesn’t pay the bills;
  2. The person doesn’t want to freeload or mooch, but instead work and earn the money they receive;
  3. The money doesn’t – and can’t – address the long-term and big picture need of employment or financial stability.

So let’s talk about better and more practical ways to lend a helping hand to someone who is looking for employment and financial stability instead.

Anybody who is looking for employment has undertaken a full-time job. It’s a job with no pay, a substantial time investment, mostly silence or rejection as the outcome, and a hiring process that makes Dante’s hell seem like a stroll in the park. 

Quintessential leaders lend a practical helping hand to people looking for employment in the following concrete ways:

  1. Engaging with the people looking for employment to know what their skills and experience are, what areas they are looking for, and what their soft skills are.
  2. Getting resume or website links from people looking for employment and actually reading them.
  3. Sending the resume or website links to their professional contacts with a brief summary of qualifications, areas of competence, as well as a recommendation (i.e., a reference) and a request for a time-delimited followup. If their professional contacts don’t do the followup, quintessential leaders do, both as a reminder and as an advocate for those looking for employment.
  4. If there’s interest, setting up a face-to-face for the potential employer and potential employee to meet.

What does impractical look like (although some of these are the best people know how to offer – which is why we all need the education provided in this post – if you want to make people’s employment searches even more frustrating and hopeless, do any or all of these)?

  1. Reviewing the resume or website links and saying “Oh, that’s great experience” or making suggestions to change it, but doing absolutely nothing else with it.
  2. Indicating, by a weak or lackluster response, that you’re not going to go out of your way to do anything with the information.
  3. Promising that you’ll do something and then promptly and forever forgetting about it.
  4. “Advising” people looking for employment in a way that is condescending (when this is a person’s full-time job, they’ve already turned over every rock we can think of and many we can’t even imagine) or deceptive (dishonesty in any form is unacceptable – if we suggest it, we are definitively not quintessential leaders).
  5. Sending generic newspaper articles or job fair notices of hiring that you’re not connected to and don’t have any direct influence (or interest) with to people looking for employment.
  6. Giving people “leads” on jobs they aren’t remotely looking for, are overqualified or unqualified for, and/or are infeasible because of location differences and expense involved.

Another practical way that quintessential leaders lend a helping hand to people seeking employment and financial stability is to support their other attempts to create revenue streams and use their networks to help generate revenue from these streams.

Many people who are seeking employment and financial stability have looked at every possible avenue for earning an income and being self-sufficient. In addition to their full-time employment searches, they have put in long hours creating things of value (using skills like sewing, knitting, crocheting, woodworking, jewelry-making, baking, confection-making, writing and self-publishing books to educate and inform, etc.) to offer for purchase, so that they can not only earn the money they receive, but the person who pays gets something of value in return.

Esty revenue stream lend a helping handThese items are generally sold through venues Amazon lend a helping handlike Etsy or Amazon, where the seller gets a fraction of the purchase price for each item sold (for example, for a $10 printed book, Amazon authors get less than $2 in payment, while they do not get anything for the Kindle version unless someone buys it after purchasing the hard copy).

Quintessential leaders invest the time and interest to find out if people looking for employment have these kinds of items for sale. If they do, instead of handing cash to these people, quintessential leaders lend a practical hand by:

  1. Committing to buying their products (once every three months, for example);
  2. Reviewing the item at the purchasing site;
  3. Getting a firm commitment from a certain number of people in their social and professional networks to buy the item and asking those people to do the same with their social and professional networks and to pass the same instructions on with each iteration of getting social and professional networks involved in the process.

This is win-win all the way around. The people purchasing are getting something of value at a great price. With enough volume from the cumulative social and professional networking and purchasing, the people selling are actually earning the money they receive and it may give them enough financial stability to be able to hang in there until employment materializes. Or it may lead to something totally different that opens new doors and new opportunities for the person who is seeking employment.

Most importantly, it gives these people the ability to pay forward being able to practically lend a helping hand to the people in their lives.

As always, we as quintessential leaders need to look in our own mirrors to see how – or whether – we are doing.

Do we practically lend a helping hand to other people? Or are we guilty of being impractical in our attempts to help, pulling further down the very people we should be making every effort in our power (and we have a lot, but it takes our attention, our time, and our effort) to pull up?

What are we doing? How are we doing?

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