Amazon and Jeff Bezos: A Primer on What Unquintessential Leadership Looks Like

Posted: August 18, 2015 in Examples and Analyses of Lack of Leadership and Unquintessential Leadership
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Amazon: What Unquintessential Leadership Looks LikeIn an August 16, 2015 article, The New York Times took an in-depth look at how Amazon, initiated and encouraged by CEO Jeff Bezos, operates internally. Even in a time when unquintessential leadership is the norm in almost every organization, the environment and culture at Amazon stands out as being at the most extreme end of unquintessential leadership.

Let’s look at what unquintessential leadership looks like from Amazon’s playbook. I hope everyone reads the article because the details are that important, but I’m going to look at the big-picture areas of unquintessential leadership here.

There is no teamwork at Amazon. Instead, each person is out for themselves and is encouraged to do whatever it takes to get themselves noticed, promoted, and distinguished from everyone else.

There are no boundaries and there is no room for respect. The environment and culture at Amazon says, instead, that everyone else working there is the enemy and must be eliminated with extreme prejudice.

Extreme prejudice is a military euphemism for assassination.  Amazon not only encourages extreme prejudice, but it promotes it by having many mechanisms in place to accomplish it.

The Amazon culture and environment is one of competition, backbiting, sabotage, bullying, and spying. Everybody is looking at everyone else and looking for something, anything to denigrate, criticize, or destroy everybody else. If nothing exists in actuality, the culture encourages manufacturing it (lying) to get ahead.

A secret feedback system is in place where everyone can continuously give feedback on everyone else based on every interaction they have with each other. Amazon spins this as a state-of-the-art data-driven performance system, but it is really a tool that seeks to eliminate with extreme prejudice. 

Beside the malevolent intent behind this feedback system, which is in itself unquintessential leadership, the data – which now rules everything in our society – is corrupt because it depends on humans. Who have bad days. Who have positive and negative emotions. Who sometimes have really bad interactions with or negative reactions to even people they love and cherish and would give their lives for, but who are far, far more prone to those with and toward people they don’t know, don’t like, or they see as their enemies.

Unquintessential leadership at Amazon can also be seen in its oppressive micromanagement system. It appears that the people in mid-level leadership positions spend all their time with microtracking the corrupted data about their employees and using short threat-filled and bullying mostly faceless interactions based on the corrupt data instead of actually working with their employees and helping them to contribute to the company.

The Unquintessential Leadership of Jeff Bezos and AmazonEverything’s a test at Amazon. Emails sent in the middle of the night with an expectation of immediate response. Working long and grueling hours. Sacrificing everything – health, family, and life – to Amazon. Amazon is the god that must be exclusively worshiped by its employees.

If an employee can’t make and keep that commitment, then that employee is eliminated. And much like the people who disappear in George Orwell’s 1984, every trace and record of the eliminated is expunged. They simply never existed.

Amazon’s culture is designed according to the unquintessential leadership dream: completely break everybody. Those who survive can be rebuilt into the automaton Amazon mold of unquintessential leadership. Those who don’t survive were weak, useless, unworthy, and never mattered anyway. They are not missed because they never existed.

This quote from the article highlights this aspect of the unquintessential leadership at Amazon: “Bo Olson…said that his enduring image was watching people weep in the office, a sight other workers described as well. ‘You walk out of a conference room and you’ll see a grown man covering his face,’ he said. “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.'”

These are the overarching areas of what unquintessential leadership looks like at Amazon. 

But I challenge each of us not to sit here smugly patting ourselves on the back because we’re not like THAT.

The reality is that a lot of the elements of unquintessential leadership at Amazon – for which the company is not only unapologetic for, but also wears like a badge of honor – exist in most organizations today. 

It may be more hidden, more subtle, or sugarcoated as being helpful or productive, but it is just as dangerous, just as damaging, and just as destructive.

As quintessential leaders, we can never allow ourselves to be deceived into thinking any manifestation of unquintessential leadership is permissible and okay. It is never permissible and it is never okay.

Here’s where the mirror test comes in for you and for me.

What do you and I think about the unquintessential leadership at Amazon? 

What do you and I think about the unquintessential leadership in our own organizations?

Are you and I okay with it or are you and I standing up to it and fighting against  it, even if it costs you and me everything to do so?

Our answers to these questions determine whether we are on the main road of unquintessential leadership or we are on the less-traveled-by road of quintessential leadership.

How are we doing?

What Quintessential Leadership Looks Like: Taking AND Staying on the High Road

Posted: July 30, 2015 in Qualities of a Quintessential Leader, Quintessential Leadership
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Quintessential leaders strive to consistently take AND stay on the high roadTaking the high road is an idiom that describes a person who is consistently making the conscious choice to travel exclusively on the highest moral and ethical ground, regardless of what anyone else and everybody else is doing.

Taking the high road also characterizes a person who unwaveringly chooses to endeavor to do the right thing all the time, no matter what the circumstances.

Taking the high road is a choice. It is a choice that every human being on this planet decides to do or not do in every single situation we face. Taking the high road is a choice that quintessential leaders are committed to making continuously in every area of their lives for their entire lives.

Although we all fall short in consistently taking the high road at times, quintessential leaders distinguish themselves from everyone else by their determination, their tenacity, and their dedication to always taking the high road.

More than that, though, quintessential leaders work – and this is, I believe, the hardest work each of us has the choice to do in our lives, because it is the work of continual monitoring of and continual application of self-control in our attitudes, our motives, our thoughts, our words, and actions – diligently and tirelessly to also stay on the high road.

Before we look at what taking AND staying on the high road looks like in quintessential leaders, let’s see what the opposite looks like (unquintessential leaders).

Stop right now and think about everything you’ve heard, seen, read, thought, said, and done today up to this point. Everything. Do all of these things, added and averaged, tend toward taking AND staying on the high road?

If we’re unflinchingly honest – and that, my friends, is part of taking AND staying on the high road and unflinching honesty is scarce to non-existent in everyone and everywhere today – the answer will be “no.”

We humans tend to to like the low road because it appeals to the basest parts of our nature and it doesn’t make any demands on us.

We can be as dishonest, greedy, vitriolic, accusatory, condemning, condescending, mean, blaming, disrespectful, profane, and all-around-nasty as we want to be because that’s, unfortunately, the easiest way for us to be.

Sadly, it makes us feel smug and victorious to lie and get away with it, steal and get away with it, accuse others, condemn others, to put everybody in their place, to say whatever is on our mind however we want to say it (“and if they don’t like, well they can just get over it, because it’s our right!”) and never apologize for anything we say or do.

It’s all around us. Everybody’s doing it. And when we take the low road and stay on it, we fit in with everyone. We are popular. We get the kudos. We get the laughs. We get the “attaboys.” We get the praise and the glory.

And these things, which have kicked our natural tendancy as humans to be narcissistic, selfish, and self-absorbed into high gear with the ubiquitous intrusion of technology into our 24/7 lives, are incredibly powerful motivators to continue to choose to take and stay on the low road.

I’m a keen observer of people and human nature. There’s very, very little that I miss.

Why?

Because instead of talking, I listen. To every word. To every context. To every nuance.

Instead of engaging in frenzied action to constantly be the center of attention, I carefully watch actions and behavior and I process and I analyze.

Just this week, I can think of three public figures who have clearly taken and decided to stay on the low road. The interesting thing that I have observed in the process is that we all, with the exception of the rare quintessential leader here and there, identify with and side with these people because we’ve decided to take and stay on the low road ourselves.

Tom Brady takes the low roadThe first public figure is Tom Brady, quarterback for the New England Patriots. The quarterback of a football team is in a leadership position (but that seldom means they are quintessential leaders).

Brady was involved in deflating footballs for the Super Bowl game in January 2015. His team won the game. 

Whether the deflation of the footballs actually had anything to do with the outcome of the game is irrelevant. The obvious cheating to put the game in the Patriots – and Brady’s – favor, however, is totally relevant.

The NFL found Brady complicit in the attempt to throw the game and suspended him for four games in the 2015-2016 season.

Now Brady is claiming to be the victim and is blaming everyone else for the deflated footballs. He’s saying he cooperated with the investigation – in spite of the fact that he destroyed the cellphone he used in that game – and the NFL is not being fair.

And a lot of the public agrees with him. Despite the cheating, the dishonesty, and the finger-pointing, most of the public believes that this is not a big deal and that it’s certainly not a punishable offense, and that Brady is getting a raw deal being suspended from playing four games.

The majority of us have chosen to take the low road and stay on it.

Donald Trump takes the low road in everything he is, says, and doesA second public example of someone taking the low road and staying on it is Donald Trump, one of the 2016 Republican presidential candidates.

Trump, who epitomizes narcissism, is intentionally and brutally offensive, using sarcasm, finger-pointing, condemning, and outright lying in both his actions and his words.

There is no filter on his mouth: everything he says is exactly what he thinks and believes and he doesn’t care who or what is on the receiving end of it.

And he doesn’t see anything wrong with his behavior, so he never backs away, never backs down, and never, ever apologizes for anything. Pride and arrogance are often an integral part of taking and staying on the low road.

And, yet, incongruously Trump has vaulted to the top of the list of most political polls, both on the national and state level.

John Heilemann, a co-managing editor for Bloomberg Politics, did a focus group meeting with Trump supporters in New Hampshire this week to find out why they supported him. I saw a short excerpt this morning, and one of the prevailing reasons is “because he’s one of us.”

That’s an incredible admission that these people probably weren’t even aware they were making. But what they said was, in essence, we’ve chosen to take and stay on the low road and we like Trump because he’s made the same choice we have.  

Mike Huckabee chooses to take the low road to get a spot in the Republican debateA final public example is ordained Baptist minister and former Arkansas governer Mike Huckabee, another of the 2016 Republican presidential candidates. 

It appears that Gov. Huckabee is so desperate to make the final cut of participants in the first Republican debate on August 6, 2015 that he is willing to follow Donald Trump’s example in choosing to take and stay on the low road.

Earlier this week, he declared that the pending nuclear deal between the United States and Iran is equivalent to the actions of the Germans’ genocide of the Jews in the Holocaust: ““This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.”

While there are legitimate concerns with this pending agreement that should be addressed, Gov. Huckabee’s headline-grabbing hyperbolic and incendiary language represents the low road. The high road would have been to actually talk about the real issues regarding this agreement and how he would rectify those.

What is even more damning for Gov. Huckabee, however, is that in 2008 he proposed the exact same path of this agreement according to the Des Moines Register: “Huckabee wrote in Foreign Affairs that ‘all options’ must be put on the table in dealing with Iran to avoid a military confrontation with them. He said at the time that the real winners in such a war would be the Sunni extremists who attacked America on 9-11. Iran is a Shiite Muslim nation.

Huckabee called then for the establishment of a sanctions regime against Iran coupled with direct negotiations with that country.”

Despite a strong negative backlash to his inflammatory and contradictory statement, Gov. Huckabee has continued on the low road by refusing to backtrack on the harshness of his rhetoric and to acknowledge the inconsistency with his position seven years ago.

Now that we’ve seen what choosing to take and stay on the low road looks like, what does choosing to take AND stay on the high road look like? Since we are striving to be quintessential leaders in every area of our lives, it’s not only important to know what we should not do, but also what we should do.

Quintessential leaders choose to take AND stay on the high road by:

  • Always thinking before we speak, making sure our words are not sarcastic, condemning, mean, accusatory, disrespectful, condescending, bombastic, insensitive, and hurtful. A lot of times that process means simply being quiet until we have the time and perspective to deal with our thoughts and our words properly.
  • Always considering how our words and actions will affect other people. The simple test we run everything against is “will what I want to say or do hurt, harm, or help other people?” Notice that quintessential leaders are outward-focused (they are never “it’s all about me“), which is a high-road characteristic. If it will hurt or harm other people (dishonesty, greed, stealing, crushing someone with less strength just because we can, etc.), then we don’t do or say it. If it will help others, then we ensure that we do or say it in a way that is respectful, kind, gentle, generous, and completely without strings attached.
  • Always refusing to choose to stoop to the low-road level that others may choose to take by refusing to respond at all by arguing, retaliating, attacking, badmouthing, either to their faces or behind their backs, and seeing if we can go even lower than they are going.

The high road is at times a difficult choice for all of us to make because it seems we’re naturally wired for the low road. But quintessential leaders are those rare people who choose to fight and struggle and wrestle with themselves (and this goes on almost constantly at an internal level) to take AND stay on the high road.

It is a lifelong war that we all lose battles in from time to time. But winning this war should be the goal that every quintessential leader has. And the only way we can win it is to do it.

We each need to look deep inside our own lives to see whether we have chosen to try to take AND stay on the high road everywhere, every time, all the time in our lives.

Or have we chosen to take and stay on the low road for all the wrong reasons?

How are we doing?

 

 

What Quintessential Leadership Looks Like: Acknowledging Your Limitations

Posted: July 22, 2015 in Qualities of a Quintessential Leader
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Unquintessential leaders don't acknowledge their limitations and are chameleonsIt seems to be more and more difficult – if not impossible – for people to acknowledge their limitations in any area of life. Because of the ubiquitous influence of technology – and our exploding addiction to it – society in general seems to have been lulled into the deception that everyone’s an expert, everyone knows everything, and no one has any limitations.

Quintessential leaders stand out as the increasingly rare exceptions to this general trend. We know our areas of expertise, but equally important, we know our limitations even in those areas as well as our limitations in all the other areas where we are either not experts or truly don’t have clue. 

What does not acknowledging our limitations, which is what unquintessential leaders do, look like? What causes it? And what are the results?

Do you know people who seem to be chameleons? Are you a chameleon?

Chameleons – the reptiles – are notorious for adapting to whatever environment they are in by changing their skin color to match the environment around them. This is both a protective function (you can’t be eaten if you can’t be seen) and a predatory function (if your prey can’t see you, they’ll willingly stroll casually right into being your dinner). 

In many ways, human chameleons can have the same protective and predatory functions.

Not all human chameleons are even aware that they are chameleons. In this case, the chameleon function is protective.

Protective chameleonThe way it looks in humans as protective function is that they change completely to fit in whatever group they are in at a given time. They literally look like several different people in one body.

Perhaps these chameleons are unaware of the striking contradictions this presents in the big picture of their lives. Perhaps it doesn’t matter because the reward they receive is what matters most.

These protective chameleons are insecure with themselves and with their abilities. They are people-pleasers and they want everybody to like them and to accept them. They are consummate “yes” people to everybody. They’re always the first to agree, the first to raise their hands, and the first to say they’re on board with anything in any group they are in.

The results of being a protective chameleon bring about the exact opposite of what protective chameleons are trying to achieve.

Because they can’t possibly do everything they agree to do, they either just simply don’t do most of what they say they will do or they take so long to do it that someone else ends up having to get it done.

This often looks like procrastination, but in reality it’s the result of needing to be liked and accepted to such a great extent that protective chameleons overpromise and overcommit, knowing they can’t do – and perhaps not even intending to do – what they’ve promised and committed to do. 

Therefore, protective chameleons are undependable. They appear to be wishy-washy. And they destroy trust.

Predatory chameleonPredatory chameleons are consciously duplicitous and deceitful. They knowingly pretend to be an integral part of whatever group of people they are with. These people are often charming and engaging, and they will encourage full disclosure with assurances of confidentiality in each group they’re with.

Predatory chameleons are information brokers. Their sole intent is to get information and use that information for their own gain (money or power or both).

Predatory chameleons have played the game a long, long time and they know exactly what they are doing and they know the rewards it will bring them. In other words, they don’t care as long as they get what they want.

Like protective chameleons, predatory chameleons also destroy destroy trust. Unlike most protective chameleons, predatory chameleons also intentionally destroy lives. That is actually part of the reward for them.

No matter which type of chameleon these people are, one of the common characteristics they share is the inability and the unwillingness to ever acknowledge their limitations. In other words, they are fundamentally, whether its conscious or not, dishonest.

Quintessential leaders, on the other hand, value honesty and integrity as essential parts of their character.

Quintessential leaders are not going to pretend to be somebody they are not or to know something they don’t or to do something they either can’t do or don’t want to do.

Saying “no” is not taboo. In fact, it’s often the right thing to do. It is often the smart thing to do. It is often the sane thing to do. 

But we live in a society where saying “yes,” even if it’s a lie, to everything is not only accepted, but expected.

That’s a significant integrity problem that the entire human race is saddled with now. And, sadly, few people recognize it and even fewer people struggle against it to do the right thing.

Shame on us.

There is also a lot of integrity in saying “I don’t know,” which is what quintessential leaders do when they really don’t know something.

Of course, they always offer to find out if that “I don’t know” is just something they are unfamiliar with, but would be able to do with the right resources or if that “I don’t know” means they really aren’t able to do something.

So, quintessential leaders not only recognize their limitations, but they also acknowledge them. They believe in and practice full disclosure of what they are able do and what they aren’t able to do at all times.

It might cost them financially because they lose potential business and income to someone else who can do what they can’t.

It might cost them socially because they won’t conform to norms that violate their principles and beliefs.

But here is the one thing it won’t cost them: trust. Even if quintessential leaders lose potential customers (and income) or they lose social relationships because they acknowledge their limitations, they will have built trust.

The social relationships generally don’t come back and that, in the end, is just as well. But even those people will remember the quintessential leader as someone who had integrity and courage even if they vehemently disagree with them.

Potential customers, on the other hand, even though they may have chosen a different route, will remember the trustworthiness of quintessential leaders and they will come back in the future. That’s a guarantee.

Especially in a world where honesty and trust is in short supply and each passing day reveals more broken trust and dishonesty everywhere we look.

Once trust is broken, it is, seldom, if ever, possible to regain it and/or repair it. It is one of the most valuable things that each us has and it is heartbreaking to see how lightly and casually we treat it. 

So now is the time for you and me who are striving to become quintessential leaders to look into our own lives and see where we stand in the area of acknowledging our own limitations.

chameleon-unquintessential-leaderAre we chameleons? 

If we are chameleons, are we protective chameleons or are we predatory chameleons?

If we are chameleons, are we okay with being chameleons, no matter which type we are?

Are we consistently striving to be quintessential leaders in this area of our lives?

No matter what you and I answer to these questions, if we aren’t happy with the answer, there is a remedy.

The remedy is change. Change requires us to be rigorously honest with ourselves. Change requires us to be conscious of the things that we are doing and why. Change requires us to consciously replace the behavior we don’t want with the behavior we do want.

As always, change is a process and none of us change easily or perfectly or overnight. But we can’t change if we don’t commit to it and don’t take that first step and follow it up with every other step toward the right direction.

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?

 

 

 

 

 

What Quintessential Leadership Looks Like: Engagement With Others

Posted: July 2, 2015 in Examples and Analyses of Quintessential Leadership, General Things about Quintessential Leadership
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Quintessential leaders engage and stay engaged with other people

One thing that separates quintessential leaders from everyone else is that they initiate engagement with other people – at a relationship level – and they work very hard at being engaged and staying engaged with people at the relationship level, no matter what else they have on their plates.

While many people in leadership positions today talk about the importance of engagement with other people at the relationship level and purport themselves to be examples of that, the reality is that very little of that talk translates into sustained action.

Talk is cheap. Actions speak volumes.

And it is precisely through actions that we can discern whether we are quintessential leaders in the area of engagement with other people. Read the rest of this entry »

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