Leader – Jeremiah Stanghini

On Judging a Book, er, Manager by its Cover

There’s been some news recently regarding the Toronto Maple Leafs that’s, well, that’s frankly, the very opposite of heart-warming. And hearing this news, put some other news in a different light for me. Before we get to that, let’s back up to the 2014 Olympics in Russia.

Heading into the ’14 Olympics, Canada returned its head coach for the men’s hockey team that had led them to victory in the 2010 Olympics held in Canada. As a good Canadian boy, I was super-excited to see Canada defend its Olympic gold medal. In watching the games, I remember thinking that it was like Team Canada was playing with some kind of ‘cheat code.’ Their style of play made it very difficult for teams to score on them — they allowed three goals the entire tournament. One of those was on the penalty kill in their first game of the tournament. They also held their opponents in the semi-finals and the gold medal game scoreless. Very well done, eh?

Fast-forward a year and the Toronto Maple Leafs announced that the coach that led Canada to gold medals in 2010 and 2014, Mike Babcock, would now be the head coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs (he led the Detroit Red Wings to a Stanley Cup victory in 2008). I was overjoyed. Overjoyed! The Leafs won the draft lottery to select first overall at the end of Babcock’s first season and with it, the opportunity to get a generational talent — Auston Matthews. Things were looking pretty good.

Fast-forward to the current season — things haven’t been going swimmingly for Babcock and the Leafs. Expectations were high after resigning some of their stars to expensive contracts. However, the proof very much wasn’t in the pudding. In the first quarter of the season, the Leafs didn’t play well enough and ultimately, the team decided to part ways with Babcock. When I first read the news, I was stunned. I knew that there had been talk of it, but it didn’t seem like the right call. Babcock was a coach with a record that preceded himself and I still had in my mind the images of how much better Team Canada at the ’14 Olympics looked in comparison to other teams. Hoo boy, was I wrong.

That brings us to this week. Earlier this week, there was a story that came out in the middle of the night about some, oh, shall we say, “poor motivational techniques” employed by Babcock with the players. Now, before I should go on, I should say that I’ve never played professional or organized hockey. I don’t know what it’s like in the “locker room” or on the “practice ice.” I have, however, played organized baseball, so I am familiar with some of the groupthink and harsh conditions that can be employed by coaches/managers for any number of reasons. OK, back to it.

Right, Babcock and poor motivational techniques. When I first heard this story, and it wasn’t coming from a “major publication,” I didn’t want to believe it. Instead, I told myself that it was an unsourced claim and that someone was trying to vindictive or hurtful in dragging Babcock’s name through the mud. Flat wrong. The next day, the beat reporters interviewed the player subjected to the poor motivational techniques and… well, as it happens, it did happen. Colour me surprised. Very surprised.

I had this image in my head of this great coach, this coach who had it together, who could command the locker room and motivate the players to do great things. I mean, just look at what he did with Team Canada in 2010 and 2014 — how could the guy who brought so much joy to Canada in these times be the same guy who would subject a player to abject humiliation in front of his teammates? Major cognitive dissonance for me.

And as quickly as I was having those thoughts, it was a stark reminder that you can’t judge a book by its cover. You can’t judge a coach from what you see in the 2+ hours during the 80+ games they play during the season. There’s so much more than meets the eye in sports. The coaches are with the players as part of their frickin’ job (!). They seem the daily for many stretches at a time. As fans and viewers, we go to work all-day. We spend time with our kids. We have other hobbies. There is so much behind the scenes in sports that we don’t see. Yes, we see the players/coaches give interviews, but that’s a very small snippet of their personality and it might even be some kind of a “show” that they’re putting on. Some famous examples: Bill Belichick and Gregg Popovich. There’s more than meets the eye.

In trying to pull out a more applicable lesson, I can’t help but thinking about leaders, managers, or senior management, in our day-to-day work as public servants. Yes, we see pockets or snippets from people who come from these groups, but that doesn’t mean that what we see is a true representation. In this case, counter to my example from above (in that I was thinking the best of Babcock, while it turns out there were some unsightly things going on), it’s common to associate negative action with “management” (i.e. they’re not doing enough, they don’t see me, they’re not responsive, etc.). While all of that might be true, let’s consider for a moment that maybe there’s something else going on there. Maybe management is doing a lot to try and make sure that they’re meeting needs. Or, maybe that senior leader in the meeting who seems like they’re not taking an interest in you, that senior leader who’s not recognizing you for who you are — maybe there’s more to their story. Maybe they’ve got things going on in their personal life. Maybe they’re in the middle of a messy divorce. Maybe they just heard that one of their parents has Alzheimer’s. Maybe their dog is sick. Who knows!

The point here is that, in all the circumstances that bring people together, all the times where we’re greeted by the faces of people near our orbit, we can never really be sure of the events that immediately preceded the stranger to be sitting across from you. So, take a moment, take a breath, take a beat and remember, there’s more to this person’s story.

Square Peg for a Square Hole Inside of a Square

Every couple of weeks or so, Ben Thompson from Stratechery and James Allworth from Harvard Business Review sit down to talk tech and society. On their most recent episode, I couldn’t help but think of some of the parallel applications to the public service. At around the 30-minute mark of the podcast, the two start talking about the different kinds of organizations (functional and divisional) and how certain leaders are better suited to lead from the different structures.

For instance, they use the example of Steve Jobs — who, most regard as a very successful leader. At the time that he was in charge of Apple, the organization operated, mostly, in a functional structure. The two referred to Jobs as the ultimate “product manager” — all decisions ran through him. As organizations grow, it’s natural for them to shed the functional structure for a divisional structure.

In listening to Ben and James talk about this, the thing that got me excited was that we could almost draw up a 2×2:

Functional Leader
Divisional Leader
Functional Org Structure
Divisional Org Structure

Naturally, you’ll want a functional leader operating within a functional org structure and a divisional leader within a divisional org structure. So, it could be that the person who looked like they had potential to be a good leader might be mismatched in the type of role they’ve found themselves in.

This episode also made me wonder if there needs to be more intentionality around, not only finding the right kind of leader suited for the org structure, but also being clearer about what kind org structure is best for the work being done in the organization. For instance, let’s say we’re in an area of a department that’s highly segmented for projects. OK — maybe that area should be setup in a ‘functional’ way. Or, maybe let’s say that we have a department where there are some clear delineations from one group to the next delivering on big programs. OK — maybe that area should be setup in a ‘divisional’ way.

Essentially, we want to make sure we put the square pegs in the square holes inside of squares and that we put the circular pegs in the circular holes inside of the circles.

When Will the United States Next Have a Transformational President on Domestic Policy?

I was catching up on some of the journal articles I’ve accumulated to read over the last year and I one caught my eye: “Transformational and transactional presidents,” by Joseph Nye, Jr. In the article, Nye makes the case that presidents didn’t matter (as much) to the US developing into a great power as we may have previously thought. Furthermore, Nye makes the case that our definitions of the two types of leadership aren’t clear and that the preference for transformational leaders is misplaced.

One of the parts that I enjoyed about this brief article was how Nye identified that presidents can be transformational and transactional at the same time. How? Because there are many different facets to a presidency and so while a president may be transformational in domestic policy, they might not be in foreign policy. Similarly, they can not be transformational in foreign policy early on in their term, but become transformational in response to external events.

Upon finishing the article, I was left wondering if (when?) the United States will again have a transformational president, with regard to domestic policy. Nye didn’t make this case in the article (but maybe he did in his book?), but based on his definition of transformational leaders, with regard to objectives [seeking major change], President Obama was certainly a transformational president. Obamacare is a sweeping change to the way that the US administers healthcare to its people. At the time, President Obama also enjoyed majorities in both the Senate and the House, so this kind of change was more possible (especially more possible than it is now. Can you imagine Pres. Obama trying to pass anything close to Obamacare with the GOP-controlled House and Senate?)

Given Hillary Clinton’s speech this past weekend, I’m inclined to think that she has ideas about domestic policy that would make her a transformational president. However, based on what’s been written about the likelihood of the GOP to continue to hold the majority in the House (redistricting, etc.), it doesn’t seem like there’s likely to be a Democratic-controlled House for the next few election cycles. It’s possible that the Senate flips back to the Democrats in 2016, but they’d need the House to also make a “big change.” So, it seems that, if there’s going to be a transformational president (on domestic policy), it’d have to come from the GOP.

I haven’t been following too closely the candidates from the GOP side, especially with regard to their domestic policy ideas, but is there a transformational president amongst them? There could be, but I suppose we’ll have to wait and see. If neither party is able to sweep the polls in 2016, we might be waiting for a transformational president on domestic policy in the US until at least the next decade.

Nye, J. (2013). Transformational and transactional presidents Leadership, 10 (1), 118-124 DOI: 10.1177/1742715013512049

Why Women are Better CEOs, Presidents, and Prime Ministers

New research shows that women are far better at handling stress than men. I suppose that’s not a newsflash as most people already think that’s true, but consider the way in which this study frames it [Emphasis added]:

We consistently found the same general response pattern: while stressed women showed higher self-other distinction than women in the non-stressful control condition, men showed the converse pattern. More specifically, stressed women showed reduced emotional egocentricity bias, enabling them to judge the emotions of the other person in a way that was less influenced by their own emotional state. Moreover, their response times in the cognitive perspective-taking task decreased under stress, documenting that they were able to regulate the mismatch between their own and the “director’s” perspective faster under stress. Finally, stressed women showed a reduction of automatic imitative tendencies in the imitation-inhibition task, indicating that they were able to overcome low-level social signals interfering with their own movement intentions. Note that the latter finding is crucial. It highlights that women did not simply show an increase in other-related responses under stress – as this would have resulted in increased interference from automatic imitation. Instead, they were able to flexibly increase either self- or other-related representations, depending on the task demands which either required overcoming egocentric biases, or overcoming social interference.

As the stereotype goes, women are more “emotional” than men, so it would be much better for an organization or unit if it were managed by a man. However, this research is telling us that, when under stress, it is men who are less able to distinguish their emotional state from the intentions of those around them. It is men who are more adversely affected by stress. For women, it’s the opposite. In fact, women tend to be more prosocial [behaviour intended to benefit others] when they’re stressed. Meaning, instead of retreating inward, women are actually more helpful when they’re stressed.

This research certainly makes one think about the way that many organizations and countries are run today. Most people would agree that being a CEO, President, or Prime Minister certainly comes with oodles of stress. Unfortunately, the number of women who hold these positions is far outweighed by their male counterparts. Of course, there are a number of reasons for that, which we won’t get into in this post, but consider for a moment if the numbers were flipped. That is, what if there were more women CEOs (or high-powered leaders)? Or, what even if it was 50/50! What if the number of high-powered leaders and CEOs was 50% women and 50% men? At that point, would it be easier for folks to see, understand, and digest that women are actually better leaders and better at handling the stress?

Maybe it’s the language we use.

A quick Google search showed mixed results for “women are better CEOs.” In fact, many of the results near the top indicated that women CEOs are more likely to be fired. However, when I keyed in “women are better leaders,” I got plenty of positive results. Posts on Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, and articles talking about academic research in newspapers like The Globe and Mail.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the world during my time in it, it’s that change (usually) happens gradually. Rarely is there a massive cultural shift overnight. So, here’s hoping that research like this contributes to the realization for some that when it comes to managers and leadership, women just might have an edge over men.

Tomova L, von Dawans B, Heinrichs M, Silani G, & Lamm C (2014). Is stress affecting our ability to tune into others? Evidence for gender differences in the effects of stress on self-other distinction. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 43, 95-104 PMID: 24703175

The Habits of Societies: The Power of Habit, Part 3a

In Part 1a, we had an introduction Duhigg’s book on habits. In Part 1b, we looked at some of the highlights and the key points from the first section (on individuals) of the book. In yesterday’s post, we looked some of the stories that Duhigg shared in the second section about Michael Phelps, Alcoa, Starbucks, and the Rhode Island Hospital. In today’s post, we’ll look at the last section of the book on societies.

Because of my sense that I’m meant to be a leader of a very large organization, I was particularly excited to get to the section on societies. It certainly did not disappoint. There were only two chapters in this section. The first chapter talked about movements: the civil rights movement in the 1960s and Rick Warren. With regard to the civil rights movement, Duhigg tells the story of how we came to know Rosa Parks. I was shocked to learn that Parks wasn’t the only (nor was she the first!) black person to take a stand (metaphorically) against the injustice in the South. In fact, there had been others like her who tried to remain in their seats on the bus, but no movements formed after their decision to remain steadfast.

Part of the reason that Parks created such a stir was because of how connected she was to her community. When people learned that Parks had been arrested, people wanted to help. Simply wanting to help wasn’t enough. As we learn, all of this willingness to help had to be funneled into a new activity: civil disobedience. There’s a particular powerful passage that I want to share. In my reading of the passage, it makes me think that this was one of the important turning points of civil rights movement:

As the bus boycott expanded from a few days into a week, and then a month, and then two months, the commitment of the Montgomery’s black community began to wane.

The police commissioner, citing an ordinance that required taxicabs to charge a minimum fare, threatened to arrest cabbies who drove blacks to work at a discount. The boycott’s leaders responded by signing up two hundred volunteers to participate in a carpool. Police started issuing tickets and harassing people at carpool meeting spots. Drivers began dropping out. “It became more and more difficult to catch a ride,” King later wrote. “Complaints began to rise. From early morning to late at night my telephone rang and my doorbell was seldom silent. I began to have doubts about the ability of the Negro community to continue the struggle.”

One night, while King was preaching at his church, an usher ran up with an urgent message. A bomb had exploded at King’s house while his wife and infant daughter were inside. King rushed home and was greeted by a crowd of several hundred blacks as well as the mayor and the chief of police. His family had not been injured, but the front windows of his home were shattered and there was a crater in his porch. If anyone had been in the front rooms of the house when the bomb went off, they could have been killed.

As King surveyed the damage, more and more blacks arrived. Policemen started telling the crowds to disperse. Someone shoved a cop. A bottle flew through the air. One of the policemen swung a baton. The police chief, who months earlier had publicly declared his support for the racist White Citizen’s Council, pulled King aside and asked him to do something — anything — to stop a riot from breaking out.

King walked to his porch.

“Don’t do anything panicky,” he shouted to the crowd. “Don’t get your weapons. He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword.”

The crowd grew still.

“We must love our white brothers, no matter what they do to us,” King said. “We must make them know that we love them. Jesus still cries out in words that echo across the centuries: ‘Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that despitefully use you.'”

…

“We must meet hate with love,” King [said].

Powerful.

The parts about Rick Warren were equally powerful, but when contrasted with the life/death matters of the civil rights movement, it’s hard to see it in the same light.

Because I’ve shared an excerpt from this book about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement, I thought it best to talk about the last chapter of the section in a different post. Look for it tomorrow.

Thirty Leaders and Two Followers: Can We All Be Leaders?

A few weeks ago, I was preparing to teach by re-reading the chapter for which the material we’d be covering in class. Part of the class session was going to be spent on leadership. Granted, this is an undergraduate textbook in organizational behavior, I was truly disappointed to find that of the 30+ pages on leadership, there were only two — 2 — pages spent talking about followers. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a successful leader without followers.

One of the broader issues here is math. Of all the people in the world, how many of them do you think will be leaders? Of all the people in the world, how many of them do you think will be followers? I’m not saying that people shouldn’t strive to be leaders or be the best they can be, but based on our current definition/understanding of leadership, not everyone will spend a great deal of their time being a leader. In fact, most people will spend the majority of their lives being followers — and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, many of the people that we think of as great leaders were — in fact — once followers. Some say you have to be a good follower before you can be a good leader, but I’m not really going to get into leadership philosophy right now.

Instead, I wanted to draw to your attention to the amount of time we spend thinking about, talking about, and teaching leadership and the absolute void with regard to following. For instance, a quick Google search returns over 450,000,000 results for leadership, but only 420,000 for followership. You might think that’s not a fair comparison, so what about how to be a good follower or how to be a good leader? Follower returns: 54,000,000 (though I think some of these might be returning religious results). Leader returns: 1,350,000.

While leadership is more revered, it certainly seems like there’s room in the popular literature for a few great books on followers and how to be a good one.