Archive for the ‘Quintessential Leadership’ Category

Book Review of “Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva”

Posted: July 13, 2016 in Quintessential Leadership
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Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana AlliluyevaStalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva by Rosemary Sullivan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of the most heartbreaking stories I’ve read in a long time. There are times reading about Svetlana Alliluyeva’s life when you just want to reach out – although she’s been dead for several years now – and hold her in comfort and fix all that is emotionally broken in her to give her peace and stability. And yet that is beyond me – indeed, it is beyond any human capability.

Even though she was the daughter of Joseph Stalin, Svetlana was also just another one of his victims. Stalin’s effect on his family, his associates, and indeed on the citizens of Russia shows what tyrants, despots, narcissists, and power-hungry people in positions of leadership leave in their wake. The damage outlives them and it is, in the end, their only lasting legacy.

Joseph Stalin was a cruel, heartless, and loveless man. Whether he began life that way isn’t clear, but in his effort to gain power and control over Russia after Lenin’s death, he lost any humanity that he may have had before he embarked on that quest.

He treated Svetlana’s mother, his second wife, with a cruelty that perhaps drove her away from her home and her children from the time they were born. (In many ways, Svetlana never had a mother, although she did have a nanny who loved her and whom she loved, but it was not the same as having a mother.) What is certain is that Stalin’s last act of cruelty to Svetlana’s mother was the catalyst for her subsequent suicide when Svetlana was 6 1/2 years old.

Stalin was in the midst of consolidating his power and his purges and gulags were already in motion when Svetlana’s mother died. Until then, both sides of the family were around and a part of Svetlana’s life. Because many of her mother’s relatives knew Stalin when he began as a Georgian Bolshevik, they also knew his secrets as a young man.

Suddenly, they began disappearing from Svetlana’s life into exile or the death camps that took care of Stalin’s problems and rivals. Death, secret police, and the constant threat of harm were things that Svetlana became aware of early on. Neither she nor her brothers were exempted from that threat or the sudden eruptions and violence that accompanied her father’s wrath.

Stalin and Svetlana had a push-pull relationship that was never secure for Svetlana. When she matured enough to realize how terrible her father was and the extent of his cruelty and disregard for human life, she began what would be a complicated love-hate view of Stalin the rest of her life.

All of this led to an emptiness, a restlessness, a searching in Svetlana that never got filled, not got eased, and never got found in her lifetime. The hole of emptiness was bottomless. The persistent restlessness never found a quiet, peaceful place to alight and anchor to. The endless searching was chasing ghosts and illusions of things that never existed to begin with.

Yet despite all the psychological damage that Svetlana suffered, she was generally sane, very cogent, extremely intelligent and insightful, and, most amazingly, enduringly resilient. Although she had trouble forming and maintaining stable and healthy relationships (she suffered from anxious-preoccupied attachment and made terrible decisions and choices because of it), she took whatever came her way – and it was a rollercoaster from the beginning to the end of her life – and, for the most part, dealt with it with a stoicism that is quite remarkable.

The leadership – or lack of it – lessons abound in this book. And Svetlana’s life – as well as the detailed descriptions of Russian life in general and Russian lives specifically in Stalin’s family and associates – puts the results (which lasts beyond the grave) of unquintessential leadership under the microscope.

It’s an education we can’t afford to miss.

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Father’s Day 2016: My Dad Was My Human Role Model for Quintessential Leadership

Posted: June 16, 2016 in Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership, Qualities of a Quintessential Leader, Quintessential Leadership, Quintessential Leadership is an Art
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Dr. Ned M. RossThe first – and one of less than a handful of people whose lives have intersected with mine in which I’ve seen an unwavering commitment to quintessential leadership – quintessential leader in my life was my dad, Dr. Ned Moses Ross. He modeled quintessential leadership  in everything he was, he did, and he said. (more…)

Quintessential Leader Observations: The High Cost of Cutting Corners

Posted: May 13, 2016 in Examples and Analyses of Lack of Leadership and Unquintessential Leadership, Quintessential Leadership
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Quintessential Leaders don't cut cornersCutting corners is an English idiom that means “[to] undertake something in what appears to be the easiest, quickest, or cheapest way, especially by omitting to do something important or ignoring rules.”

Its origin comes from the phrase “to cut a corner,” which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “to pass round a corner or corners as closely as possible; fig., to pursue an economical or easy but hazardous course of action; to act in an unorthodox manner to save time; also, to act illegally.” (more…)

The Four Types of People You Will Always Have on Every Team

Posted: April 15, 2016 in Quintessential Leadership, Team Building & Development
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team-building-quintessential-leaderTeam-building is one of greatest challenges that quintessential leaders face. I believe this is because quintessential leaders do something that most people in leadership positions don’t do: they actually build a team thoughtfully and carefully, looking for individuals who will both complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses and who will be able to work together well and gel to form an integrated whole that can move forward successfully together. (more…)

Is “Good Enough” A Quintessential Leader Standard?

Posted: January 8, 2016 in Quintessential Leadership
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Total accuracy and consistent high quality are the quintessential leader standardOur society has gradually lowered its standards and expectations for total accuracy and consistent high quality and it has elevated numbers and speed to the place that accuracy and high quality once held.

As a result, the expectation and standard for performance, outcomes, and things has become “good enough.”

The expectation and standard of “good enough” has permeated every corner of our lives, including our organizations, our teams, our families, and even us personally, if we have not resisted going with the flow and following the crowd.

We accept “good enough” as consumers, expecting things we buy to be cheaply and quickly manufactured and expecting that we will have to repair or replace them within a relatively short time frame.

We, increasingly, have come to accept our giving and our receiving of “good enough” in every strata of our work lives and in every strata of our private lives.

Built into “good enough” is an “acceptable margin of error.” What this means is that we have decided that imperfection is okay and that we expect it within a quantifiable range. We are willing to live – both being the cause of and having to deal with – with mistakes, screw-ups, and sloppiness in our everyday lives because it’s become the norm.

If we’ve adopted the “good enough” standard as how we do life, then we’ve settled for stagnation, mediocrity, and, eventually, failure.

Although “good enough” may get us through the short-term, when our standards are any less than total accuracy and consistent high-quality all the time, then over time our standards for “good enough” and “acceptable margins of error” will get lower and lower until anything goes and we don’t even care anymore.

Here’s the interesting thing about those of us who have accepted “good enough” and “acceptable margins of error” as our standard operating procedure in life. Although this what we do, there are still some places where we expect total accuracy and high quality.

For example, we expect total accuracy and high quality from medical professionals. This is why malpractice insurance is very expensive. What if a surgeon said to you or a loved one that they expected the surgery to be “good enough” with an “acceptable margin of error?”

We also expect total accuracy and high quality from the people who handle our money: the payroll people at work, the banks, and the accountants who handle our taxes? What if each of these told you that they were doing a “good enough” job of taking care of your money with an “acceptable margin of error?”

If we expect these groups of professionals to be totally accurate and produce high-quality results, then, why should we settle for a different standard for ourselves?

Good enough and acceptable margins of error are not part of quintessential leaders' standardsQuintessential leaders don’t. “Good enough” is not a trait that you will ever see in a quintessential leader.

You will also never hear a quintessential leader talk about an “acceptable margin of error.”

The reality is that as humans we all make errors, but for quintessential leaders it is not acceptable to let errors remain errors. We do everything to the very best of our ability and when we make errors, we correct them.

Doing things right and well the first time takes more time. But the result will bring long-term success and will build trust and trustworthiness.

In other words, quintessential leaders can’t afford to accept “good enough” and “acceptable margins of error” because they realize that this becomes a way of thinking and believing that will affect every part of their lives and will destroy their character on every front of their lives.

Have we allowed ourselves to accept and adopt the “good enough” and “acceptable margins of error” standard in a quest for numbers and speed in our lives?

Or or we tenaciously holding onto the quintessential leader standard of total accuracy and consistent high quality?

How are we doing?

Are We Quintessential Leader Pretenders?

Posted: October 7, 2015 in Quintessential Leadership
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unimitable unquintessential leadershipThe lack of a synchronized life of imitable authenticity among humans – and people in leadership positions – in what they say, who they are, and how they conduct every part of their lives is bemoaned almost constantly.

The reality is that what we do observe is an abundance of synchronized lives of not-to-be-imitated authenticity, more so now than ever before. 

We now live in a society where being fundamentally selfish, self-centered, and driven by power and greed – something often hidden or obscured from public view in times past – has become not only visible, but accepted, expected, and applauded. 

While some people in leadership positions posture with a public face of integrity, honesty, selflessness, transparency, and altruism with their words when their actions are the exact opposite (these are the ones who cause the bemoaning), most people in leadership positions now don’t try to hide how nefarious they are as people and in their leadership positions.

Bullying, cheating, one-upping, fighting, lying, treating people abominably, being perpetually profane and denigrating, and overall defective character among people in leadership positions is now considered admirable and the mark of strong leadership.

Are we who say we are striving to be quintessential leaders different? We should be. Increasingly, though, it seems that although we say we are different, in fact everything else about us says that we are less different that we purport to be.

Are we who say we're quintessential leaders in fact hypocrites?In other words, we are hypocrites, saying one thing about ourselves while the rest of our lives says the exact opposite. It seems that we have gotten comfortable lying to ourselves – and others – about ourselves.

When we live (and believe) a lie – saying one thing and doing and being something completely different – we are not quintessential leaders, but instead we are destroyers.

Most importantly, we destroy trust. With trust, we destroy credibility. When we lose trust and credibility, we destroy our teams. In every part of our lives.

Oh yes, the people around us may do – or pretend to do – what we tell them to, but it is not out of trust and respect.

For a few – and it’s a small few – of our teams, the reason is fear.

For most of our teams, though, it is a stopgap measure until – and they are scrambling to find the fastest exit – they can get as far away from us as possible. 

If we’re losing our teams in droves, as quintessential leaders (this implies we care and we don’t want to lose them – no effort means we were lying about being quintessential leaders to begin with) we need to ask ourselves the following questions.

Do we want to inspire fear in our teams? Do we want to threaten and coerce our teams into doing whatever we want or else? Do we want our communication to be profane, denigrating, disrespectful, and dismissive?

Are we willing to cheat – the end justifies the means – anywhere and everywhere in our lives to get what we want and/or to get ahead? Are we willing to throw other people under the bus to make ourselves look good? Are we willing to be dishonest (lying, stealing, faking) to either avoid consequences or to get more for ourselves?

Do we care about our teams or are they just expendable commodities that we use, abuse, and then throw away when we can’t use and abuse them anymore? Are we sycophants with people we see as useful or important and tyrants with everyone else?

Who are we really? Do we know? Do we care? Does it matter?

The people we are best at fooling are ourselves. Most of us, even those of us who are striving to be quintessential leaders, are not aware of the depth of our self-deception about who and what we really are on the inside.

Where are the disconnects in our lives?Today, I challenge each of us to take stock of ourselves, of our lives, and of the disconnects we make between what we say we are and what we actually are.

We all have disconnects in our lives. Quintessential leaders acknowledge that, become aware of theirs, and undertake the process of doing something about it.

That’s imitable authenticity and that is a repeatable step (we can’t do it once and believe we’re done – it must be a daily part of our lives) that will lead to a synchronized life that sets a positive, realistic, and credible example to all the teams in our lives.

Anything less is unacceptable for quintessential leaders.

How are we doing? 

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