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The Twelve Steps of Business Relationships

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Rarely will you see someone fail in business who has thoroughly followed these simple suggestions. Those who do fail are typically people who are incapable of being honest – with their colleagues, their customers and their partners.

Other problems may temporarily deflect you, but the ability to be rigorously honest will prove immeasurably beneficial in all your business relationships.

Twelve Steps of Business Relationships

Step 1. Accept that you have no power over people, that all your attempts at control have failed. Trying to get other people to do what you want them to do is doomed to failure, no matter how good your intentions, how right your cause, or how much benefit it would bring the other.

People just wanna be free. Go with it.

Step 2. Recognize that by yourself, you can’t succeed. Your success will inevitably be tied up in the success of other people. Not only are you not driving the bus, you are just another passenger.

Step 3. Resolve that you’re going to stop trying to drive the bus, that you’ll start doing things to help other people, that you’ll focus on getting the group to succeed. When things don’t go your way, remember “your way” is what got you into this mess. Repeat steps 1 and 2.

Step 4. Make a list of all the stupid, controlling, selfish things you do to others. Be specific about whom you do them to, and what harm it does to them. Stop at ten people.

Now add to the list a few good things you do. You are, after all, worthwhile.

Step 5. Go share your list with someone you trust. Listen to what they have to say about it and learn from what they have to say. Don’t waste time arguing with them.

Step 6. Get yourself ready to stop behaving in those old ways. Think about it for a while. Make a list of the new things you’ll do. Envision yourself responding in new ways; rehearse new “lines.”

Hint: your list should probably include listening. Also, listening.

Step 7. Pick a time of your own choosing to begin the change. It could be right now, it could be next week, but not next summer. Write that date in your calendar. When it comes, step out of your old ways and start working the new.

Step 8. Think about the customers, co-workers, peers and partners you might have tried to control and what you did to them. Think of what you might have done better and plan to do better next time.

Step 9. Go back to the customers, co-workers and partners you’ve tried to control, and tell them you realize what you have done. Acknowledge your responsibility in those situations, and tell them specifically how you plan to behave differently in future.

Hint: Don’t do this if it causes upset or harm to the other person. And don’t confuse this with trying to get them to forgive you – see Step 1, above.

Step 10. At each day’s end, do a mental run-through of how you did in your new approach. Note where you fell short and what you could have done better.

Then let it go and get a good night’s sleep.

Step 11. Create a little mantra for yourself, to remind you that your job is to help others, not yourself. Get out of the instance, secure in the idea that better relationships will float all transaction boats.

Step 12. Having recognized how to apply these principles to your business affairs, give it a shot at home and in the rest of your life.  You saw that one coming, right?

 

There Are Two Kinds of People In This World…

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In a piece called Late Bloomers, Malcolm Gladwell describes writer Ben Fountain, who wandered for decades doing research before he became an overnight sensation.

By contrast, some writers (Melville, T. S. Eliot) instinctively knew their minds and needed no research beyond inspiration. The same is true of painters: think of Cezanne (the wanderer) vs. Picasso (the intuitive).

Reading Gladwell, I suddenly recalled Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western Clint Eastwood vehicle, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. In the film, Tuco (the Ugly –  Eli Wallach) and the the Man with No Name (the Good – Eastwood) exchange a meme – “There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend –” followed by parings like, “Those who have guns and those who do not.”

When Sergio Leone and Malcolm Gladwell agree, I submit, you can be confident you’re on to something. Which is, itself, an example of the thing – we humans have a passion for dichotomies.

Whether or not there really are two kinds of anything in this world – we insist on dividing them up that way. It’s a primary sense-making rule for us.

Famous Pairs

  • Men and women, black and white; up and down, day and night.
  • Debits and credits; assets and debts; good and evil; owns and lets.
  • Angels and devils; sound and sight; pens and swords; heavy and light.
  • Classic and modern, north and south, east and west, your ears not your mouth.
  • Innies and outies, type one and type two; comedy and tragedy, feeling up and feeling blue.
  • Eastern and Western, right handed and left, smooth and anarchic, clumsy and deft.
  • Cloudy and sunny, shiny and rusted, aggressive and passive, trusted and  distrusted.

And on it goes.

Reality isn’t binary; our view of it is.

The Primacy of Two

It’s not that we don’t love threes: witness 3-legged stools, the three musketeers, three strikes you’re out, thesis-antithesis-synthesis, the Holy Trinity, and the Three Stooges.

But after that things fall down. Consultants are in love with 2×2 matrices (see my “Rule of the Axes” in – wait for it – You Too Can Be a Strategy Consultant – Three Secret Tools).  But notice, the power of matrices rests in the combination of two binary lists.

When you get to five, forget it; that’s when you start needing mnemonic devices to remember (the SMART model, Every Good Boy Deserves Fun, SNAFU). Heck you might as well be doing Top Ten lists.

No, the upper limit of natural human organizational ability is three; and if we had our druthers, we’d really prefer to be dealing with twos.

The Good and the Bad

It helps greatly to dichotomize the world so efficiently. Think how easy our lives are made when we can label things hot or cold, stop or go, left or right.

Of course, some things in life don’t benefit from such a lack of nuance. Interpersonal relations, politics and trust come to mind. The trick is remembering when to dichotomize and when not to.

But wait – that’s another dichotomy, please forgive me. After all, to err is human; to forgive, divine.  (Damn, did it again).

Roses are red, violets are blue;

Some jokes rhyme–some don’t.

But at least that’s another two!

Don’t Manage My Expectations

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It’s received wisdom by now that you should manage expectations. How could you argue with that? Nobody likes to be surprised on the downside. But as with many platitudes, the devil is in the details. And there are a few devils lurking out there in expectations-management land.

Always Exceeding Expectations

Exhibit 1 is the mantra to always under-promise and over-deliver, perhaps as a way to achieve customer delight. The problem is, if you consistently under-promise and over-deliver, you are – in an important sense – lying. You are deliberately telling your customer (or whomever) one thing, and then doing another. How else to describe that form of managing expectations?

The downside is that, over time, it destroys your credibility. Whether it’s stock analysts looking at your quarterly guidance, or employees expecting you to top last year’s ‘surprise’ holiday bonus, once you say one thing and do another, the only expectation you’ve ‘managed’ is the expectation that your future behavior will resemble what it was – an under-promise – not what you said it would be.

And so the party you’re trying to influence makes their own mental adjustment to counter-balance your expected over-delivery– negating your attempt at ‘management.’ Except that another degree of uncertainty is added on each end.

Managing Attitudes

There’s no question that a good attitude helps with life. Measured optimism, a propensity to trust, a positive outlook – all these increase the odds of positive interactions with others. Whether you expect ill or good of another person, that’s probably what you’ll get.

But what if an entire generation is raised the Lake Wobegon way, believing they’re all above average? What if self-help affirmations are of dubious benefit because on some level we don’t believe what we’re trying to tell ourselves? What if corporate and political spin get so bad that they destroy our trust in the very institutions and people who are seeking to manage our expectations?

Attempts at managing attitude are utlmately seen as patronizing. Whether it’s “don’t get your hopes up,” or “you should feel really good about this,” we resent others doing our feeling for us. We want the right to determine our own reactions, therefore our own attitudes.

Managing Expectations the Right Way

It is true that bad surprises are not a good thing. It’s also true that expectations aligned with reality (or slightly more optimistic) are preferable to living in a fantasy world. The problem is not with the noun ‘expectations.’ It comes with the verb – it matters who does the ‘managing.’

I want to manage my own expectations. You can help me by telling me the truth. That means six things:

  1. Be transparent. Get way past just not lying to me. Tell me all the truth you have access to. Make it a policy to give me access to data-without-interpretation.
  2. Prove to me – over and over– that I can depend on you. Promise me lots of little deadlines and meet every one of them – precisely, on the money, not ‘over-performing.’ Do exactly what you said you would do.
  3. Trust me. Share things about yourself with me that I could misuse against you, take risks on me that allow me to over-perform. Because then I have a chance to prove to you how competent and trustworthy I am.
  4. Respect me. Give me the data and let me make up my own mind how I feel about it. Don’t spin me, don’t tell me how I should feel.
  5. Be straight with me. If you do see my expectations careening out of control, and you think I’m about to make a serious error, then pull me aside and tell me straight; don’t sugar-coat it.
  6. Hold me accountable. Call me on my bullshit; confront me when I fail to deliver on time; be forthright with me when I let you down. And let me know that you expect me to do the same.

The best way to manage my expectations is to treat me like an adult. That’s my truth anyway; what about you?

Why We Don’t Trust Politicians (Part II)

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In Part I, we said health care is a major cause of our declining trust in politicians. Our political inability to find a solution has led to massive economic costs, a subsidy-driven public sense of entitlement, and high-profit segments of industry hooked on maintaining the status quo. The situation is truly a mess.

We also promised a solution that might work – but with a challenge to politicians.

Context

America was built on free enterprise and an emphasis on individual achievement. We also have a long history of compassion for the least fortunate (based more on private charity than in some other countries). Both of those laudable goals have been elevated to near-constitutional status: the pursuit of liberty and the pursuit of life, if not of happiness.

The problem comes when the two collide: when some individuals can afford massively expensive healthcare but the collective society cannot.

If we focused solely on the ‘life’ side, we’d get a national health system that would limit choice and proscribe options for all.  That is anathema to the ‘give me liberty’ ethos.

But focusing on ‘liberty’ alone would create discrepancies in health care (imagine ambulances carting one victim of a car crash to hospital while leaving another on the pavement) widely perceived as unjust.

Most other countries have faced this problem.

The most obvious solution is a two-tier system: a public system providing basic and preventive care for all, and a private system paid for with after-tax dollars for those who can afford more. Similar systems exist in Canada and the UK, for example.

While most other countries accept this basic design – which treats healthcare as a universal right – in the gridlocked state of affairs in the present-day US, that solution feels like offending every special interest group in the country.

And so we watch, collectively, as our inability to act slowly freezes our remaining degrees of freedom. And still we don’t act.

The Solution

Any solution must face one certain fact: we cannot afford to give the best possible care to everyone at all times. Canada and Britain have found their version of addressing this simple fact. We need to find an American twist to gain acceptance from our peculiarly American sensibilities.

Let’s be clear: this means, of necessity, a means-tested public system that won’t buy you knee replacements to improve your tennis game, acne treatments to fix your complexion or motorized wheel chairs to get you around your home.  It won’t allow doctor choice or the right to sue.

Instead, it would be take a number and take your seat to see the doctor who, by the way, wants to work an eight-hour day for a modest salary and a regular schedule. It would be a system in which people of means could get more and better care – because they can afford it – and it would require a public ethos that accepts this disparity the same way it accepts Mercedes on public highways.

The private system could be employer-provided (taxable to the employee as compensation), or paid for personally with after-tax dollars. Those who choose not to insure and who don’t meet means-test requirements would be cared for by the public system but billed for services at full retail rates.

Care in the private system would be better in some ways (more time with patients), but worse in others (MRI machines and drugs would lack the cost-reducing scale they enjoy today).

Because people in the private system would pay for their healthcare and people in the public system will face waits and limited services, both will choose to use less of it – and devote more of their income to other goods. Lower utilization will drive down costs. Those in the private system will be more aware of costs. Those in the public system will get necessary care, but not everything they might want. There will be fewer hospitals with sophisticated equipment; fewer stand-alone surgery centers owned by doctors; less research to improve care and treatment; and less profit for the health care industry.

Getting to the Solution

Just as not everyone can be a millionaire, not everyone can have the very best healthcare. Just as some of us have better housing and more discretionary income – so some of us will have better health care.

What is ironic about this approach is that it ought to be easy for Americans. Given the twin ideological goals of equality and liberty, the US has always put more emphasis on liberty, compared to Europe and much of the world. The American answer to disparity has always been the ability to say, “That is today – but I can change this world for the better, for myself and my children.”

Where our politicians have truly let us down, and earned our distrust, is by betraying this American sense of the future. They have been peddling short-term solutions, promising everyone everything, here, now, today.

They are not alone in spreading this bad thinking – just look at banking and housing. But we’re talking about health-care here, and it’s politicians who must let go of promising the greatest possible healthcare to everyone all the time.

Americans know well how to offset inequality with hope. Maybe the ultimate reason we don’t trust our politicians is that they are being un-American, promising us the moon when we know all too well which planet we really live on.

The road to trust, for politicians, has got to go through Truth.

The 4-Minute Mile of Personal Change

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Most of us know that a life of resentment is a life wasted. But how fast can a human being recover from grief, betrayal, anger? Is there a four-minute mile barrier of recovery? What are the natural limits to human change?

Julie’s Story

I know Julie. She was estranged from her alcoholic father, reconciling only on his deathbed. A few years later, her mother, with whom she was very close, died as well. Julie was griefstricken, worn down with sadness at work and with her children; she was barely functioning on autopilot.

After a year, she visited a psychologist. “I spent the entire first meeting crying,” she told me. At the second meeting, the counsellor asked her, “What do you admire in both your parents that you’d wish to perpetuate?”

“I was dumbstruck,” she said. “I sat there for 3 full minutes, thinking about the implications for my life. Everything fell into place. I thanked the shrink profusely, left before my time was up, and never went back.”

That was five years ago. Julie is upbeat, strong, productive and a huge positive force for good in all those she meets.

Rachel’s Story

I know Rachel, an extremely successful woman. She told me her husband had cheated on her some years ago, but that they had reconciled and were now very happy.

“You look fine now,” I said, “but that must have been hard. How long did it take you to get over it?”

“It was awful,” she said. “It must have taken me a week.”

“A week?” I asked incredulously.

She explained that she had let work get in the way of their sex life, but that she enjoyed sex too and why let the past get in the way of a great and full life going forward?

“And if he cheated again?” I asked.

“Oh, it’d be all over,” she laughed. “You only get one second chance with me.”

Jill’s Story

I don’t know Jill Bolte Taylor, but she has given one of the more powerful TED talks of all time, as well as having written a powerful book. A brain scientist who had a stroke, she was uniquely qualified to observe what was happening to her – and, it turns out, to learn from the experience.

To over-simplify, she already knew the profoundly different perspectives of the right and left hemispheres of our brains. One is logical, cognitive, ego-protecting and fearful. The other is universal, joyful, connected and without fear.

But through her stroke, Jill discovered we have enormous control over which part of our brain we choose to live through. In her words:

“Before my stroke, I thought I was a product of my brain and had no idea that I had some say about how I responded to the emotions surging through me. On an intellectual level, I realized that I could monitor and shift my cognitive thoughts, but it never dawned on me that I had some say in how I perceived my emotions.

“No one told me that it only took 90 seconds for my biochemistry to capture, and then release me.”

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

How long does it take to achieve escape velocity from our responses? How long is the emotional 4-minute mile?

A brain scientist tells us: 90 seconds. We are slaves to our neuro-chemistry for 90 seconds.

After that – it’s all on you. If you stay there, it’s your own damn fault.

Making It Work

Jill Bolte’s recommendations are along the lines of meditation.

For others, the serenity prayer works powerfully.

And if sweetness and light is not your cup of tea, there’s the in-your-face-cold-shower-with-obscenities approach embodied in Julien Smith’s excellent new (free) eBook The Flinch.

I can’t tell you how – you must work with what you’ve got. But I can tell you – or rather, Julie, Rachel and Jill can tell you – that what you’re shooting for is 90 seconds.

Lying is to Trust as Kryptonite is to Superman

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That may sound self-evident. But lying isn’t the only way to kill trust. It’s useful to review the bidding, in order to realize just how potent lying is.

Then too, there are green kryptonite and red kryptonite forms of lying.

Read on.

Four Ways to Destroy Trust

Using the trust equation as a checklist suggests at least four generic ways to destroy someone’s trust in you:

  • Develop an erratic track record. That leads to a reputation for being flakey, undependable, that you can’t be counted on. Soon enough you’re losing the big jobs, then the little ones. All because you’re unreliable.
  • Abuse others’ confidences. Develop loose lips. Tell secrets. Make hay on inside information. Laugh at others’ misfortunes, or just be emotionally tone-deaf. The invitations will stop soon enough.
  • Use others for your own ends. Do unto others before they do unto you. Always be closing. Find the competitive advantage at every turn. Don’t let your guard down, and don’t be a chump. It’s better to receive than to give.
  • Put distance between yourself and the truth. There are white lies, bald-faced lies, lies of omission, half-truths, partial truths, packs of lies, and lies of convenience. They’re all kryptonite.

Which is the worst?  It’s hardly a walk-away, but I say the last one–lying.

Cold, Flat-Out, Straight-up Lies

Robert Whipple told me of the experience of being lied to, to his face, with full eye contact. That degree of trust destruction is strong enough to take effect instantly. Let’s examine why.

Obviously, if someone lies to you, you can’t believe what they’ve told you. Which means the next thing they tell you has to be suspect as well. Being lied to immediately ruins the speaker’s credibility.

But that’s just a start. Lying also infects reliability. Because if you tell me you’ll do something, but you’ve lied to me before, then I don’t know if I can trust you’ll do what you’ve said you’ll do.

Lying also affects intimacy and confidences. If you’ve lied to me, your motives are suspect. I’m not about to share confidential information with someone who’s been dishonest with me about their motives.

Finally, that same issue of motives makes me profoundly suspicious of your intentions. We do not assume people have lied to us for our own good, but rather for their good. And we do not like that.

Green and Red Kryptonite Lies

As is well known, krytponite of all forms is debilitating or lethal to Superman, but red kryptonite is more harmful. To extend the metaphor, which is more lethal to trust: a bald-faced lie, or a series of veiled, half-truths? I suggest that the latter is worse.

A flat out lie has two elements of truth: transparency and completeness. It’s all out there, right away. When Shaggy sings It Wasn’t Me, it’s such an in-your-face lie you have to laugh. The band-aid is ripped off the scab all at once. If you trust after that, it’s entirely your own fault. That’s green kryptonite.

Then there’s the really bad stuff – red kryptonite lying.

Red kryptonite lying consists of half-truths, incomplete truths, truths not told at the right time. It is often justified on the grounds that it isn’t green kryptonite: “I didn’t actually say anything that wasn’t true.”

Red kryptonite lying is riddled with layers of bad faith. It leaves the receiver with nagging doubt. Why did he not tell me the whole truth? Why did she not bring this to my attention earlier? What about all the other questions this raises?

One trouble with red kryptonite truth is the nagging doubt it leaves you with – the lack of resolution about the issue at hand.

But perhaps the worst nagging doubt is about the nature of the liar himself. Is the liar incompetent? Or is he dishonest? Does the liar even know the difference? Finally – does the liar even know he is lying?

It is sometimes said that the best salespeople are those who can first sell themselves. Indeed, some high-selling salespeople have that ability; but I wouldn’t trust them.

Why We Don’t Trust Politicians: the Case of Healthcare

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Stephen M.R. Covey, in his recent Trust Matters interview, notes that politicians rank lowest in trust among all professions. He identifies counterfeit behavior as the underlying cause.

He’s right; and of all the high-visibility disagreements today – wars, abortion, debt – none has inspired more flagrant counterfeit behavior than health care. It’s a polarizing issue in itself – and its abuse by politicians puts added stress on the social compact.

A Massive Inconvenient Truth

Never mind climate change. Here are a few far greater inconvenient truths that everyone knows, but no one will admit:

  • Only a very small portion of the US population could afford to pay for the health care they have come to expect
  • The health care system as it exists could not survive without massive government subsidies
  • Health care is an economic good – as with housing, food and consumer goods, what you get is what you can afford.

Our collective inability to admit these truths in a socially useful manner means that the cost of health care is killing jobs and crippling American competitiveness.  Like parasites choking their host, the politicians are too tied up with reality-as-we-like-to-pretend to speak the truth – even though we all know it.

Result: bad health care, bad economics – and bad social trust.

How We Got Here

Albeit with the best of motives, Medicare, ERISA, and subsequent regulations greatly expanded the proportion of the population who could seek health care. Health care usage exploded as people took advantage of a service seen as low cost and already paid-for. With that expansion, hospitals, insurance carriers, drug companies, device makers and health care providers were able to train doctors, fund research and invest in marketing programs; all paid for with government and employer dollars.

Laudable though the goals were, the legislation also forced mid-sized and large employers to devote an ever-increasing proportion of their compensation expense to employee benefits – with a resultant decline in real wages. Until the Affordable Care Act, small employers could avoid the non-discrimination rules through the purchase of insured health plans.

The inconvenient (again) truth is: this tangled web of intertwined interests has become so pervasive that the “private” health care industry would implode without the government.  Health care in the US has become an entitlement program for both individuals and for industry – and no longer perceived by most Americans as an economic good paid for with wages or profits.

Where We Stand Now

Health care contributes to both our slow job growth and our growing income inequality. When health care costs grow as a proportion of compensation, rising lower-wage employee costs begin to overwhelm the value they can add. Naturally, employers then shift to exempt part-timers and contractors. Small employers, once exempt from the rules, now simply avoid adding workers.

The experience of every other nation is that health care rationing is an essential element of any solution; we can’t outrun it. We have not faced up to that inconvenient (yet again) truth in the US.

Enter: the Politicians

Health care is a fault line around which our two primary political parties have entrenched themselves. The GOP has the problem in its sights – but can’t stomach the solution. Democrats misstate the problem – and thus propose ever more expensive solutions. Both are hostage to ideologies.

Republicans look knee-jerk to the private sector, touting doctor choice and the doctor/patient relationship as a panacea. Their inconvenient truth is that the system will fail without the government – and that most of their voters will be unable to afford coverage.

Democrats insist on universal coverage with equal benefits for all, and the right to sue if things don’t go well.  Their inconvenient truth is that the system is unsustainable – and that their children will have to disavow it.

Neither solution is viable.  We all know it, but bury our head in ideological sands.  And yet the same time – because we really do know the truth – we don’t trust our leaders because we know they are lying to us. They refuse to speak the truth.

Getting to the Solution

Our politicians give only the answers we want to hear.  We know they aren’t true, but we fear the other side’s answers more, so we cheer for the answers we fear less.  We don’t want to “lose.”  Which means we all don’t trust anyone – and we all lose.

The strongest force against trust is the willingness to leave the truth unspoken.

Is there any candidate, anywhere, willing to say simply that not everyone can have the same health care? Can any candidate achieve escape velocity from our debilitating ideological prison? And would the rest of us be willing to acknowledge the truth if someone had the courage to speak it?

In a following post, we’ll discuss one potential solution and why our politicians will give up our trust in order to avoid it.

Building Blocks of Trust

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My oldest son, a cabinet-maker, custom designed and built a cabinet for a customer, who is a contractor and also refers work to him. The customer gave guidance on the specifications. They agreed on a price and within a couple of weeks the item was built and delivered. Then came what often happens with construction.  The customer wasn’t happy. Discussions began.

Things Happen

In this case, drawers designed to open and close with specified slides were noisier than the customer wanted. He asked my son to install different (and more costly) slides to reduce the noise. My son thought the customer had specified this design and that the drawers were quiet already. So, he did not think any change was needed.

Has this ever happened to you? Think about fee disputes, for example.  Here are approaches some people take:

  • Ignore the issue, and let the relationship lag (“I don’t want to deal with it”)
  • Get angry and self-righteous (“It’s his fault, not mine”)
  • Give in, and make concessions (“I’ll just give him what he wants”)

Trust Principles in Action

My son agonized for more than a week over what to do. He did not want to spend the time or money replacing the slides because he thought he had done everything right.  Yet, he valued his relationship with the customer.

While he appeared to ignore the issue for a short time, he opted for a different approach, which looked a lot like applying the Trust Principles.

My son then suggested a way to compromise, sharing responsibility for the costs and time involved in fixing the problem.  After a brief discussion, they reached a resolution.

How many times do we choose to ignore, get angry or give in, rather than face the issue head on, using a principled approach? Which works better?

The Evolution of Trust-based Leadership

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In 2000, I co-wrote The Trusted Advisor, with David Maister and Rob Galford. At the time, it was aimed largely at external professional services advisors. The word “leadership” appeared exactly once in the book (I checked).

This month, Andrea Howe and I published The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook. The subtitle is, “A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust.” “Leadership” occurs 19 times, and the l-word itself appears many more times in its various forms.

What changed?

Trust Didn’t Change

The dynamics of trust are the same. I’ve developed the Trust Quotient and the Trust Principles since 2000, but the fundamentals are the same. The Trust Equation, the ELFEC process for creating trust, the dynamics between trustor and trustee are unchanged.

That’s hardly surprising. Trust is a fundamental human relationship that’s been around since well before the written word.

The World Changed

My Trusted Advisor co-author Rob Galford was more prescient than I; he wrote The Trusted Leader way back in 2003. Or, maybe he was ahead of his time. In any case, by 2011, the world looked radically different than it did in 2000.

In particular, the business world is:

  • Flatter – more horizontally linked, less vertically integrated
  • More inter-connected: think Linked-In, outsourcing, offshoring
  • More wired – Windows XP was then; the cloud and iPad are now
  • More independent – Boomers ruled then; millennials rule now
  • More collaborative ­– YourCo against the world is DeadCo
  • More transparent – Facebook, data scraping, digitized everything
  • More networked – a competitor in one line is a partner in another.

Leadership Changed

In 2000, “leadership” conjured up images of #1 leader Jack Welch pacing the floor in front of high-potential candidates at Crotonville, violating the chain of command with exhortations for “boundarylessness” – as long as it stayed within the boundaries of the corporation known as GE, that is.

Today, “high-potential” sounds not just elitist but out of whack with reality. Just as everyone today is a salesperson, everyone is in customer service – so too everyone is a leader.

That’s not corporate double-speak; it has meaning. The leadership skills of today are persuasion, influence, collaboration, the ability to create alliances, to join forces, to create environments that encourage collaboration, the ability to play nicely together in the sandbox, to forge agreements, and to play long-term win-win rather than screw-your-customer to jack up the quarterly numbers.

Leadership Skills are Trust Skills

Those skills are trust skills. We don’t need fierce competitors, we need fierce collaborators. We don’t need to ‘win one for the gipper,’ we need to win one for all of us. We don’t need vertical skills, we need horizontal skills.

Certain leadership skills are constant: the ability to inspire, to create and articulate visions and stories, for example. But others have been replaced. Being good at vicious infighting to gain the top job is – on balance, in most companies – a lot more dysfunctional these days than valuable. Making “tough decisions” isn’t the virtue it used to be; sometimes it just reflects a failure of imagination.

Today organizations are less about being led and more about cultures that foster leadership throughout.  Such cultures are driven by what we call Virtues and Values.

But that’s another story for another blogpost.

Dueling Book Reviews: Chris Brogan and Charlie Green Interview Each Other

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Andrea Howe and I, as you know, are celebrating this month’s publication of The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook.  As it happens, friend-in-trust, Chris Brogan has a book coming out very soon as well–Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything.

Like peanut butter goes with jelly, it was obvious we had to interview each other.  I do the honors here with Chris, and we obviously have far too much fun.  Not to mention subtitles and StarTac phones.

Enjoy the video.