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Tales from a Total Solar Eclipse in Siberia
Two Very Funny Stories
I live just north of Dallas, so we are in the direct path of this month's complete solar eclipse. It's all the buzz around here.
I'm sure that the event will spin off lots of personal stories as people relate what happened around them during the eclipse. But I doubt that any of these stories will top two of mine from my last total eclipse. And they won't be nearly as funny.
The stories occurred in Siberia, where I was conducting a series of workshops along the Op River. I think about them often, because they revolved around two of the most humorous statements I've ever heard.
So, I'm taking a departure from my normal topics for this podcast to share them with you. I believe you'll get a good chuckle from them.
A PDF transcript of this program is available for download at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.
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War in Ukraine: What the Final Outcome May Look Like
Now that the spring thaw has begun in Ukraine, the year's most intense season of combat is about to start. How will this war end? It's almost anyone's guess.
But whatever the outcome, it will be shaped by the influence of the backstories which we've focused on in the last three podcasts. With this episode, we bring the series to a conclusion by examining the prospects for both Russia and Ukraine, however the war happens to conclude.
Putin believes that time is on his side, that he can persist in his efforts until he wears down Ukraine and exhausts the resolve of Ukraine's allies, so that he has the upper hand in dictating the terms which eventually bring the conflict to a close.
A host of practical questions will shape the contours of any final settlement. One of these is whether Ukraine, economically depleted and with a population millions smaller than when the war began, would have the manpower and wherewithal to defend its borders should they be restored to their prewar status.
And if Ukraine does not regain those border, the its future may well hinge on the answer to one question: how many of its ports can Ukraine reclaim through combat or peace negotiations.
With its economy centered on grain transport, and with only the port of Odessa still under its control, the resolution of this issue is pivotal to Ukraine's viability after the war. In this wrap-up episode, I explore a host of questions along this line.
A transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.
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Russian Perspectives on the War
The Historical Backdrop
This is the third program in a four-part series examining historical and cultural factors which shape the backdrop against which the war in Ukraine is playing out. Having devoted the first two programs to Ukrainian perspectives, in this one we shift to how Russia views both the war and Ukrainians themselves.
For reasons which I explain in this episode, there is a paranoia that is characteristic of the Russian people in general and its leaders in particular. They have long seen themselves as surrounded by enemies, both east and west.
Historically, they have built vast buffer zones of territory to protect their European centers from invading forces. Traversing those buffer zones exhausted Napoleon's men and supplies in 1812, then did the same to Hitler's armies in the Second World War.
The war with Ukraine stems in large measure from a resurgence of that paranoia. During the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact, controlled from Moscow, buffered against another invasion from Germany or France. Ukraine buffered against attack from the Mediterranean.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, with former Warsaw Pact nations joining NATO and Ukraine declaring its independence, these strategic buffers were lost. With Ukraine moving to join the European Union and perhaps NATO, the last semblance of a buffer zone disappeared.
Early on, as the Warsaw Pact fell apart, Russia could do little to counter its reversal of fortunes, because Russia itself was in such social turmoil and economic chaos. The calamitous fall of the Soviet Union was a sore blow to Russian nationalistic pride, even among those who were not particularly fond of the Communist regime.
Putin has been successful at merging that injured pride with the historic sense of paranoia to justify reclaiming Ukraine as Moscow's own vassal. Human nature becomes more determined when its pride is injured. And paranoia will motivate people to take irrational measures.
All that comes together in the way that Russia is prosecuting this war. And because of these factors, finding a workable peace settlement, short of Ukraine's complete annihilation, will do little to ease Russian paranoia. And being fought to a stalemate by a supposedly second-rate power will only add to Russia's injured pride. At best, therefore, any peace settlement promises to be a recess from hostilities, not the end of them.
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You can download a PDF transcript of this program at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.
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Ukraine's Newfound Patriotic Zeal
An Unintended Gift from Putin
It's clear that neither Vladimir Putin nor his war planners ever anticipated the strength and the tenacity of Ukraine's resistance to the Russian invasion.
A war which the Russians expected to last a few hours or days has now entered its third year, and Russian offensives have been stymied month after month.
What explains this Ukrainian determination to in the face of what would appear to be overwhelming odds? It stems in part from a sense of nationalism and patriotism which the Ukrainians have developed for the first time in their history.
Prior to the invasion, Ukrainians had a sense of pride in their country and their culture. But they had never been united around patriotic fervor. The war has changed all that.
In this episode I explain how this happened and what it implies for the future course of the war. I also explain why the Ukrainians are likely to fight on, even if their aid from the U.S. and western Europe dissipates entirely.
A PDF transcript of this episode can be downloaded at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.
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Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, I worked extensively in both Russia and Ukraine. I managed offices and staffs in both countries and interacted closely with everyone from the most common laborers to top government officials.
Not only that, my duties required me to travel widely in Russia and from corner to corner of Ukraine. I became intimately acquainted with how Ukrainians feel about Russia and how Russians feel about Ukraine.
In spite of their cultural, historical, and linguistic commonalities, I soon learned that Russians tended to view Ukrainians with disdain, and Ukrainians tended to view Russians with resentment.
Those deep-seated, historic feelings aggravate the challenge of finding a solution to the war now raging in Ukraine. Yet, most Americans -- even otherwise well-informed political commentators -- are either unaware of this attitudinal divide or disregard it in analyzing the conflict as it has unfolded.
With this episode, I undertake a series of podcast programs dealing with this attitudinal divide and other critical backstories which make resolution of this conflict highly complex and perhaps impossible. Even if one side triumphs militarily over the other, the tension -- and now, outright animosity -- will live on.
I give this first episode to the roots of Ukrainian resentment of Russian rule. I zero in on two events in the 20th century that permanently poisoned Ukrainian outlooks toward their huge neighbor to the north.
A PDF transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/.
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The Action Agenda for Every Leader
This is the fourth episode in a series examining the meaning of leadership. Previous programs explored the people-centric nature of leadership and the orchestrating role of purpose at the heart of the leader's endeavor.
This final episode in the series examines the three-part action agenda which every leader must carry out. First is to rally people around the purpose. Then motivate them to pursue it. And third is to mobilize them to achieve it.
I discuss the importance of each of these functions and why their success depends in large measure on the leader's personality and strengths. As a leader, where does your effectiveness lie? In rallying people to your cause? In motivating them to get behind it? Or mobilizing them to make it happen?
The first two of these functions are people-centered. The third -- mobilizing -- is process-centric. The most successful leaders move effortlessly from motivating and inspiring people to managing processes, and vice versa.
Others are not so versatile. They excel at engaging and inspiring people, but pay insufficient attention to the process side of leadership. And naturally, there are leaders for which the opposite is true. They are superb at managing processes, but weak at bringing out the best in their people.
You will find the analysis of these dynamics quite thought-provoking. You can download a transcript of the episode at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.
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How We Developed a Muddled Concept of Leadership
In my early 20s, when I began conducting trainings on leadership, few books on the subject existed. The business world was somewhat exclusive enthralled with management, and that was reflected in the inventory choices at the typical bookstore.
It would be another 20 years before Warren Bemis and others began publishing works which drew a sharp distinction between management and leadership. The popularity of their books touched off an steady outpouring of leadership books ever since.
The explosion of interest in leadership toward the end of the 20th century resulted from a striking change in the American labor force. At the outset of the century, workers were largely uneducated and somewhat limited in their skill sets.
By the end of the century, the workforce was highly educated and thoroughly advanced as skilled specialists. To bring out the highest performance of a worker community like this, companies had to adopt a more people-centric approach from those which had prevailed just two generations before. Leadership filled that bill.
But the way that corporations initially attempted to create a leadership culture had an unintended consequence. The concept of what it means to be a leader became somewhat muddled.
It In this episode I trace how that happened and elaborate on three questions which I developed to determine whether someone is indeed a leader or merely wears the title. This episode not only expands on those questions. It also explains the historical influences which made them important.
A PDF transcript of the episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/transcripts/2404-muddled-concepts-of-leadership.pdf.
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Implications of Viewing Leadership as Art
Last week we began parsing the definition of leadership which I developed 20 years ago: Leadership is the art of rallying people around a shared purpose, then motivating them and mobilizing them to achieve it..
In that episode, we examined the import of the terms "people" and "shared purpose." This week we take up a third term: "art."
Last week we examined two key terms from my definition of leadership. This week we take up a third term, "art." Leadership is far more akin to an art than a science.
And because it is, there are no objective measures by which to judge a leader's work, no more than there are objective measures by which to judge an artist's work. People either like it or they don't.
In fact, people might like the results a leader gets, but dislike the leader's style or personality. And since their judgment of the leader is entirely subjective, it is not easily refuted.
Leaders must therefore have a strong enough sense of self that they are not knocked off course by criticism that is uninformed, mean-spirited, or the product of personal prejudice.
A transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/2403-leadership-as-art.htm,
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Leadership: Anchored in People and Purpose
Any quick search on the internet will uncover dozens of definitions of leadership. Some are more appropriate to leadership at very high levels than they are to leadership in day-to-day life.
About 20 years ago, I developed a definition intended to capture the essence of leadership wherever its found: Leadership is the art of rallying people around a shared purpose, then motivating them and mobilizing them to achieve it.
At the heart of this definition are the words "people" and "shared purpose." Those two terms capture the essence of what leadership grounds itself in. It is ultimately about people -- rallying them around a cause, motivating them to lend their effort to it, and mobilizing them to carry it out -- and the cause itself, the purpose.
For leaders to be effective, they must never grow lax in either staying involved with their people and rivited to their purpose.
A transcript of this program is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/2402-leadership-anchor-points.pdf.
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Minimize the Adverse Impact of Unintended Consequences on Otherwise Good Decisions
In every arena of life, what once seemed like great decisions turned out, in hindsight, to have brought about unintended consequences. Often these consequences imperil the benefits which the decision was to provide.
As managers and leaders, finding solutions to problems is our daily task. But when a solution leads to adverse unintended consequences, at times (to quote an old adage) the cure is worse than the disease.
This episode explores a variety of scenarios in which otherwise good decisions led to negative consequences. Then it offers suggestions on how to minimize the frequency with which this development occurs.
No one can foresee every consequence which will flow from a decision. But careful application of these suggestions will reduce the number of unexpected problems which emerge once key decisions are implemented.
A transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.
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Don't Let Disruptive Interruptions Poison Your Attitude
In my management trainings, I often ask people to identify the things which have surprised them most about being a manager.
Toward the top of their list is often the problem of disruptions. They came into management unprepared for how many times a day their work on critical projects would be disrupted. At times they feel that they don't get one issue settled before three or four others are demanding immediate attention.
They can therefore go hours on end without spending more than a token amount of time on their primary responsibilities. The result is that their frustration builds steadily and they become increasingly impatient. They begin building resentment toward the party or parties responsible for the disruption. And the resentment spills over into their actions and their tone of voice.
In this episode, I share lessons which I've learned from letting disruptions frustrate me. It's certain that disruptions will never go away. But they don't have to aggravate us to the point of frustration and resentment.
A transcript of this program is available at https://www.usizeyourleadership/episodes.
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our Mistakes Companies Make in Defining and Casting Vision
Have you ever read a book on management or vision which did not include a section on the importance of vision? It's hard to think of one. Vision-casting is a standard topic anytime management and leadership skills are discussed.
As a C-Suite leadership coach and a business consultant, I've coached scores of clients through the process of articulating their vision and mission. I've worked alongside hundreds of others as they put a corporate vision into effect.
From that experience, I've noted a pattern of recurring mistakes which people tend to make in vision-casting. In this podcast, I look at four of the most common ones:
Failing to have clarity on the distinction between vision and mission
Choosing a vision statement which is not particularly "envisionable"
Reducing vision to little more than a slogan, motto, or tagline
Not being rigorous in communicating their vision repeatedly
Because corporate vision is so vital to success, putting it together well and communicating it properly is essential in any mission-driven organization.
A transcript of the program may be downloaded at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.
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It's that time of year again. Time to set goals for the year ahead. Soon everyone will be putting together their New Year's resolutions.
But by this time in 2024, how many of those resolutions will have become reality? Odds are, most of them will not. Many factors contribute to the failure. One of the most common, however, is inadequate focus on the goal itself.
Many factors contribute to this loss of focus. Life comes at us in torrents, engulfing us in countless distractions. A friend of mine describes it as "being nibbled to death by a duck." No one nibble takes much out of us. But collectively, they draw our attention away from the things which are truly important.
In this episode, I offer some guidance on implementing personal goals in a way that enhances their odds of success. In particular, I argue for limiting how many of goals which we set out to accomplish in any one-year period.
Further, I recommend sequencing the pursuit of those goals in such a way that, at any given moment, we are working on no more goals than we can focus on intently.
What I suggest is no panacea. It is, nonetheless, a simple and practical way to keep our most important personal goals in sharp focus at all times.
You can download a transcript of the podcast at https://www.UpsizeYourLeadership.com/episodes.
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Planning from a Different Viewpoint
Texts and courses on planning abound. And they all call for starting with a clear definition of the desired outcome. Once that eventual outcome is defined, they tend to use a methodology which calls for starting at the present and building systematically toward that goal.
In this episode I propose an alternate approach, one I've used for decades to great effect. It calls for beginning the planning process at the point at which the outcome is achieved, not at the present. Instead of building steps sequentially from the present to the future, this alternative approach starts at the end of the process. It then builds steps sequentially from the desired outcome back to the starting point. I call it "planning backward."
As conventional planning defines a step in the process, it asks, "What must happen next?" The approach which I'm suggesting takes an opposite tack. Once it defines a task, it asks, "Before this step can occur, what must be in place?"
In the podcast, I spell out the distinct benefits of this technique, especially when planning entails a large numbers of moving parts. With so many considerations to account for, planning forward from the present can easily fail to recognize and make provision for one or more critical components. Later, when these neglected elements are recognized, timetables for the plan are disrupted as accommodations are made to address them.
Planning backward minimizes that risk. This podcast explains why. A transcript of the program is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.
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Surprised by the Loneliness of Leadership
No One Warned Me About It
The old adage "lonely at the top" has more substance to it than most people imagine. Although many leaders never combat pronounced bouts of loneliness, many do. I have been one of them.
And when I began talking about my loneliness with other leaders, I was amazed at how many of them wrestled with it, too.Yet, having discussed the problem with upwards of a hundred senior executives, I'm yet to find a single one who was forewarned it before they entered senior management.
And I should add that, while loneliness is not isolated to the top tiers of management, it's particularly common at that level. Or so it seems from my personal experience and observations.
Why is that the case? Much of it has to do with the nature of the job. When lower and middle level managers run into thorny situations, they have managers above them who can serve as a sounding boards or advisors.
As we move up the management ladder, however, the number of managers above us grows steadily smaller, until at the C-Suite Level, we have only peers to draw on. Experienced peers, no doubt. But not necessarily any with proven experience in our specialized field. And if the problem we face centers on problematic relationships with other members of the C-Suite, we are genuinely on our own.
I use this episode to examine the dynamics and ramifications of contending with loneliness as a leader. A transcript of the program can be downloaded at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.
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Collaborative Decision-Making: The Positives and Pitfalls
For thousands of years, hierarchical management styles reigned unchallenged. Then, early in the 20th century, a literate and often highly-educated workforce emerged. They were no longer content with the top-down management of traditional organizational structures. They wanted a voice in decisions.
This led to the first experiments with collaborative management styles. Very quickly, this new approach created impressive results in engagement, creativity, motivation, and morale. As a result, collaborative management styles have grown steadily in popularity for more than a century.
Yet, for all of its benefits, making decisions collaboratively does hold the threat of some distinct pitfalls. This podcast identifies five of them and highlights what managers must do to avoid them.
A transcript of this episode can be downloaded at https://www.leaderperfect.com/episodes/2323-collaborative-decision-making.htm.
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Innovation Starts with the Right Culture
Genuine innovation unfolds through a process of trial and error. It takes time. It takes tireless effort. It takes money. In a word, it entails a lot of hard work.
The hard work begins, however, long before the trial-and-error process is underway. The initial hard work is creating a culture which is primed for innovation. Not all are.
Innovation always involves change. And to deserve the name "innovation," the change must be significant enough to disrupt the status quo -- either the status quo in general or the status quo within the organization which adopts the innovation. That was the theme of my previous episode.
However, not everyone is eager to embrace change. They prefer to keep things stable and predictable. When resistance to change is ensconced widely, it impedes or totally thwarts any effort at innovation.
Thus, for innovation to thrive, leaders must first cultivate the cultural soil. This episode identifies eight qualities which they should strive to embed in their corporate culture to make it a promising place for innovation to blossom.
A transcript of the episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.
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Innovation Has No Shortage of Imposters
We are constantly bombarded with marketing messages proclaiming some new product or service labeled as innovative. Being innovative has broad appeal.
Indeed, when companies outline their core values, innovation appears on the list more often than any other quality. It even outranks integrity and respect.
Yet, when we delve into what companies are calling innovation, it's soon evident that they often confuse innovation with mere ingenuity or inventiveness.
Ingenuity is often no more than a clever or imaginative solution to a pressing problem. Innovation is far more than that.
In this episode, I examine five criteria which must be met for something to be properly called an innovation. I do not take up this theme to be picky about word choices. Rather, it's to protect the true meaning of innovation in the popular mind.
Our world faces monstrous challenges. They beg for innovation. But if we debase the word "innovation" so that mere ingenuity and inventiveness pass for it, we lose the ability to talk about innovation in a meaningful way, because any improvement can pass as innovation.
It behooves all of us, therefore, to protect the integrity of the term "innovation." This first step in that direction is to gain clarity on what the word itself means. This episode strives for that goal.
A transcript of this episode can be downloaded at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.
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What Constitutes True Integrity?
I have a friend who has been known to say, "If you can fake integrity, you can fake anything."
Whenever he throws out that line, it gets a laugh. There's something comically nonsensical about combining the words "fake" and "integrity."
Integrity is the bedrock on which healthy societies are built. Yet, we seldom delve deeply into what the word means. We generally describe it in ways that make it almost synonymous with honesty and truthfulness. And indeed, a person of true integrity will be honest and truthful.
But integrity entails far more than being honest and truthful. In this episode, we examine the hallmarks of what constittues genuine integrity.
A transcript of this episode is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.
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Leadership Rises and Falls on Credibility
Both managers and leaders are charged with getting things done. How they get things done is one of the key contrasts between managing and leading.
Managers always occupy some slot in the organizational chart. As a result, they have what I call positional authority that allows them to compel compliance with what they want done.
Leaders, however, do not always have positional authority. It's common to find people within an organization who hold no managerial title, but whose judgment and expertise are so respected that a following gathers around them. They man be described in a variety of ways. As opinion leaders. As thought leaders. As subject matter experts.
Whatever our name for them, they have the ability to make a telling impact on how the organization functions and the kind of culture it spawns. And they exert this influence, not because they have any power to compel, but because they have telling influence.
The source of this influence is credibility. Without it, no one can lead. And credibility, in turn, rests on three considerations: the leader's character, the leader's competence, and the leader's ability to achieve desired concrete results.
This podcast takes up these three considerations and examines how they contribute to optimizing a leader's credibility.
A transcript of the program is available through the index at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.
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