Leadership in the Story of a Rock Song

Joseph Rost wrote a very influential book years ago entitled "Leadership for the Twenty-First Century." For anyone interested in the progression of leadership thought and study over the years, this book was a masterwork. Rost, through his extensive research and powerful tone, made perhaps the most convincing argument to date that leadership was not a top-down proposition. Rather, Rost's definition says that leadership is an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes. Defining leadership as a relationship means that both leaders and followers are doing leadership. This flies against the typical paradigm of of leadership being projected only from a leader to a follower. The arrow can go both ways, according to Rost.

Now consider the rock group Pearl Jam, one of the most successful musical groups in modern times. In their profile on the VH1 show "Storytellers," frontman Eddie Vedder told a story about Pearl Jam's most popular hit song - "Alive." In his story, Vedder essentially describes Rost's definition of leadership. Vedder tells about how the audience for Pearl Jam's live shows, through their collective influence, forever changed for him the interpretation of the song. The band on the stage, and the audience in the stadiums, were practicing leadership with each other. The story is powerful, and worth a few minutes of your time:



I doubt Rost and Vedder ever encountered each other or each other's work. Rost might have found a Pearl Jam song to be a strange place for his ideas - but leadership is often found in the strangest places!

By the way, if you are not familiar with the song, here is a video with both the story above and their performance of the song.

Where Do Our Limits Come From?

A man once found an eagle's egg and put it in the nest
of a barnyard hen. The eagle hatched and grew up with the
rest of the brood of chicks and thought he didn't look all the same.
He scratched the earth for worms and bugs and played the chickens' games.

The eagle clucked and cackled, he made a chicken's sound;
He thrashed his wings, but only flew some two feet off the ground.
That's high as chickens fly, the eagle has been told.
The year's passed and one day when the eagle was quite old

He saw something magnificent flying very high
and making great majestic circles up there in the sky,
He'd never seen the likes of it. "What's that?" he asked in awe,
While he watched in wonder at the grace and power he saw.

"Why that's an eagle," someone said, "He belongs up there, its clear.
Just as we, since we are chickens, belong earthbound down here."
The old eagle just accepted that, most everybody does.
And he lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he was.


Charles Osgood - The Osgood File - April 21, 1992

Imagine Leadership

My friend Corey White found this video. I love the messages and the way in which the visuals tell the story. Here is the video's description from YouTube:

Nitin Nohria and Amanda Pepper of Harvard Business School's Leadership Initiative collaborated with XPLANE to create this video in order to generate a discussion of the value and importance of leadership to address some of societys most pressing problems.

"It is my desire to inspire people of all ages and social demographics to think about leadership on a broad level, contemplate what it means to them and what individual impact they can have when it comes to leading," says Nohria.

Enjoy!

Poetic Leadership: May Sarton

Now I Become Myself

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

May Sarton

Seeing What Others May Miss

I am always in awe of people who see something ordinary, and imagine something spectacular. In the process of leadership, freeing our minds can lead to unexpected outcomes.

Sivers/Vonnegut: Drama and Leadership

I read a great piece by blogger Derek Sivers, who recalled a Kurt Vonnegut lecture he attended. The talk focused on why people often need and seek out more drama in their lives. Vonnegut's premise is fascinating in that he links that need for drama with the familiar arc of stories we hear in all types of places. Sivers recreates some charts that Vonnegut used to make his point, including this one:

















Vonnegut contrasted a common story like this with what happens in real life, which has far fewer dramatic ups and downs.















His point is that people often actively try to make that line move up or down so as to mirror the heroic and uplifting stories they have been exposed to. Thus, we frequently create (often only in our minds) our own dramatic moments, with the intention of a fairy-tale ending.

When it comes to leadership, I think this can be true as well. Especially in regards to heroic leadership. The stories of leaders we grow up learning about often follow familiar themes:

Leader is born, greatness is evident early -> leader faces some hardship in life -> with guts and determination, the leader emerges stronger than before -> the leader has a pinnacle moment (typically a rousing speech) that inspires others -> leader achieves good for mankind and is regarded a hero.

These stories of leadership can be what limits some from even engaging in leadership. Some may go on to do great things because of the inspiration of these stories, but others may find to great of a disconnect with their own experiences. If I haven't had some unusual life experience, or I cannot give a stirring speech, then what can I offer?

If we pulled back the curtain on some of these stories, we might see things that are far more common. Great leaders often have family or friends that help build their self-confidence and position them for great moments. Thus, hardly anyone does it alone. Many leaders come from privileged backgrounds - or relatively mundane ones. The achievements of most effective leaders are due to the hard work we never see - not the breathtaking speeches we do. Lastly, leaders often find themselves in "moments of greatness" by sheer accident. The heroic pilot who landed the plane in the Hudson River certainly didn't plan for greatness!

I reflect back on Martin Luther King, Jr. and his story. It's a wonderful story that needs to be told over and over again. But the story of those who stood alongside him - who led from the background - are the stories we need to hear more of. Those are the heroes most of us can connect with.

Kudos to Derek Sivers for a thought-provoking piece!

Eight Years Ago

Breaking Decorum

The internet and media have been buzzing with outrage about U.S. Representative Joe Wilson's outburst at President Obama's speech last night.

For instance, Rochelle Riley of the Detroit Free Press: "Joe Wilson didn’t insult the president. He insulted America. And every one of us deserves an apology, too."

First of all, count me among those who are surprised that breaking decorum in the halls of congress is such a hot-button issue. But, I'm aware of the ultra-political environment we're in and Mr. Wilson is going to get plenty of flack for what he did.

This got me thinking about the whole idea of "decorum." Decorum is the norm, the standard, the way things are supposed to be. It's one of those things that society determines collectively, based on past traditions and well-regarded practices. Most of the time, decorum is linked with things that are polite or civil.

This is all well and good, and I welcome decorum in my life. Although I must admit that I resist the term, since it makes me think boring, stuffy, and ordinary (imagine the town elders from Footloose). Mr. Wilson's outburst certainly broke decorum, as defined above. My read is that his emotions truly did get the best of him. I find it hard to despise someone like that, especially if they recognize it and apologize for it - which he did.

This post isn't about Joe Wilson. His act just got me thinking more broadly about decorum and leadership.

The leadership question is, when and how often should we break decorum? In other words, when is it appropriate to challenge the status quo, break away from convention, and go with our gut instincts about what's right?

I wonder if our regard for decorum sets us up for groupthink or the avoidance of conflict. We push against those who break decorum with our sighs, nasty looks, rolled eyes, and laughter. We isolate them, talk about them behind their backs, and give them few chances to respect decorum again. Why do we gasp when someone breaks decorum? What are we afraid of?

Many of our most treasured heroes became that way because they found the right time to break decorum. In your practice of leadership, when was the last time you did?

Those organizations that struggle might be bound too much by decorum. It can inhibit creativity. People may be more willing to hide emotions and opinions in such an environment. Maybe we're just too polite with each other.

I'm probably making too much out of this, but I just can't help it sometimes. I appreciate decorum, and it serves us well. I just wonder if more often than we realize, a well-intentioned person who breaks decorum, serves us better.

Leadership in Film: The Wrestler

I saw The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke a week ago, and really enjoyed the story and the acting. As with most things, I had my leadership lens on, and the scene below is one that really stood out to me. As I watched it, I thought about the connection between vulnerability and leadership. In order to build trust, group members need to be vulnerable with each other (this is one of the main points from Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team). In the scene below, Rourke's character is trying to reconnect with his daughter - who previously wanted nothing to do with him. Notice how well the actors portray vulnerability and how it builds a link between stubborn individuals. I connected with this as a parent as well.

This is another reminder of how we should try harder to be forthcoming and honest about our limitations, instead of trying to always be perfect. This can be a frightening prospect, since we've been conditioned to view leaders as infallible. If you are a command/control type of leader, vulnerability is your enemy. If you are anything else, it can be your friend. Enjoy the scene:

Small Wins and Health Care Reform

Karl Weick, author of "Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems," an article that appeared in the January 1984 edition of American Psychologist, wrote:

"The massive scale on which social problems are conceived often precludes innovative action because the limits of bounded rationality are exceeded...People often define social problems in ways that overwhelm their ability to do anything about them."

In order to solve social problems, Weick argues that we define them as a series of smaller problems that can then be affected by small wins. He refers to small wins as a "series of concrete, complete outcomes of moderate importance [that] build a pattern that attracts allies and deters opponents."

Whenever I teach leadership to college students, especially those in fraternities or sororities, I introduce Weick's concepts and they are almost universally accepted. It makes sense to take a huge problem and break it down into manageable chunks.

And now, our nation is having a fevered debate on reforming health care and health insurance. Can Weick's ideas apply? From my view, they explain everything.

The President and congressional Democrats have been struggling in recent weeks, largely because the solution that has been proposed shows up as a 1000-page bill that tries to do everything at once. The problem is daunting, and the proposed solution has become equally so. If people cannot get a firm grasp of the problem and an even firmer grasp of the proposed solutions, they are much less likely to support the leader's proposals.

I am not a health-care expert, or a politician, but I wonder if the reform measures that are being lumped all together in once giant piece of legislation had instead been approached one step at a time, would this debate be different? What if congress first passed tort reform, then lifted the ban that disallows individuals from buying insurance out-of-state, then develop nonprofit co-0ps that strive to provide a low-cost alternative, and so on. Each step along the way, the effects on cost and coverage are evaluated. We can then see the plans work in pieces (or not work) and subsequently make better, more informed, decisions.

Perhaps health care reform is the latest example of what can happen when we ignore the power of small wins.

Football Coaches, Politics, and Leadership

Here is an interesting article on football coaches and their political leanings. I paid particular attention to this quote:

"Others point out that Republicans tend to revere strong, singular executive leaders—a pretty good description of a coach."

It's interesting because I think many Republicans do like singular leadership, but the nature of conservatism also tends to make Republicans distrust those in power. I think a greater examination of political ideology and leadership views is called for (I'll get to work on that). In the meantime, enjoy the article.

Mali (and Roberts) on Speaking with Conviction

One of my mentors, Denny Roberts, who writes a blog entitled "Pursuing Leadership," introduced me to the Taylor Mali video below. Denny's brief reactions are insightful (as usual). You can read his post here.

Here is the video: