Tara Rodden Robinson :: The Productivity Maven

Book Review: Tribal Leadership

Ever met someone with whom you connected immediately? It was like running into an old friend you’d never met before—instant, easy camaraderie, shared experience and values. You just “got” each other, right? Congratulations; you met a member of your tribe.

Humans as social animals group together with other people. The authors of Tribal Leadership say, “Birds flock, fish school, and people ‘tribe.’” We just naturally seek the company of people like ourselves. It’s a process as old as walking upright—probably even older. In their amazing book on organizational culture, Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright shed new light on what it means to form human groups and how those affect your work, career potential, and so much more. This is a paradigm shifting book that can change how you see your world and your place in it.

For starters, Tribal Leadership contends that there are five stages of cultures. They limit their generalizations to the workplace, but you’ll quickly start seeing examples of at least the first three stages all over the place: church, school, volunteer organizations, families, gangs. Any cohesive group of humans that numbers three or more will have its own cultural-tribal norms. See you if recognize some of these.

“Life sucks.” If you ask a stage one tribe member how things are going, this is the answer you’ll get. In work life, cultures in stage one are rare (only a 2% of workplaces according to the authors) but when you see a true stage one tribe, you’ll recognize it immediately. This is the ultimate toxic workplace where bickering, backbiting, gossip, and betrayal are a way of life. Think gangs, prisons, and post offices on the verge of a meltdown and you’ve got an example of stage one. People with substance addictions are living in stage one. The kid who ambles across the busy street with no sense of urgency, flipping off the passing drivers, is probably in stage one or close to it.

“My life sucks.” One step up from stage one is the tribe in which people realize that a better life is possible but perhaps not for them. If you watch the TV comedy “The Office,” or work in its real life equivalent, you know stage two very well. Although there is a sense that life can be better than it is, there is a wariness of optimism, hope, and efforts to improve. Stage two is the home of the jaded, the skeptical, the sarcastic, and the cynical. Roughly one-quarter of US workplaces are stage two cultures but I’m betting practically everyone has experience with stage two. It just sounds a little different (e.g., “My marriage sucks.”)

“I’m great.” True confession: I’m still living in stage three. Stage three is the place where a lot of people who work relentlessly to improve and get ahead live. It’s about distinguishing one’s self from others and the “I’m great” mantra has an unspoken correlate “…and you’re not.” Academia is hands-down a stage three culture but you’ve probably seen it on the sales floor and in your doctor’s office. Entrepreneurship is founded on “I’m great” and predicated on “and you’re not [great].” The “I” messages abound in the stage three tribe as members compete with each other and themselves. When the results of the competition start to seem empty, it’s time for stage four.

“We’re great.” In a stage three tribal land, it’s the norm to be the lone ranger slugging it out independently to reach the mountain top. Stage four is founded on the knowledge that the sum is much greater than the parts. Cooperative, collaborative, collegial, highly interconnected and interdependent, stage four tribes are rooted in their core values and their dedication to a bigger mission. They operate from a sense of oneness with the group and loyalty to the tribe as a whole. But as great as stage four looks and feels, there is still more rarified air to breathe.

“Life is great.” Not just a t-shirt slogan. In a stage five culture, a zen-like calm appears. It’s just the tribe and the mountain. The sense of competition is diminished in favor of fighting for a big goals like defeating cancer or wiping out poverty. Comfortable in its own skin, pragmatic, humble, powerful without being intimidating. That’s a stage five vibe.

Tribal Leadership does not read like a business book. It is written with an easy tone, packed with practical advice, and highly applicable to anyone who has to interact with other people. It changed the way I see my world and myself. I came to recognize that while I’m still in stage three, I can at least see stage four from where I am. I was humbled by the realization that in times of stress, I regress rapidly to the language and behavior of stage two. I’ve visited stage one in times of deep depression and pleased to report that I’m diligently working to create a stage four tribe with a small group of hand-picked, totally awesome collaborators.

This book has the power, depth, and broad applicability of some of the finest business books you know, like Good to Great. But don’t take my word for it—read it for yourself and prepare for a new point of view that may allow you to become a tribal leader of the finest caliber.

Back to School (or, What I did on my summer vacation)

It’s a gray Monday in the Pacific Northwest, one that looks suspiciously like fall. I’m back from my summer vacation (as many are, a bit of a working vacation but hey—it was Costa Rica!) and am working to caught up and get back in gear.

Lots of long flights meant lots of time for reading. One book that made a deep impression on me was Coaching the Artist Within. This highly readable, immensely practical book sets out to teach you a dozen essential skills. Skills that not only will help you to be more creative, but will get you up off your duff and into meaningful pursuits, no matter what the arena.

The first skill is becoming your own self-coach. Because I already am a coach, the first exercise of the book was particularly interesting and surprisingly rewarding for me. The idea is that you alternate roles in a dialog fashion. First, you are you, bringing forth the issue you wish to be coached on, just as you would with an actual, live coach. Then, you switch chairs (the author suggests you do this literally), and speak to yourself as your coach.

I dove into the self-coaching exercise with a nagging issue for me: finishing my novel. While I won’t go into details here, the upshot is that I have a solid story with a large gap in it. I’ve been stuck in incompletion for an embarrassingly long time. So I sat down with myself as coach as used my journal to capture the back and forth. After four pages (longhand), I had worked out some areas of wrong thinking and created a plan for how to get back to work. (And so far, I’m please to report, the plan seems to be working.)

The exercise does a great job of suggesting the entry point into the self-coaching dialog. However, from my own perspective as trained coach, there are some pieces missing. If you’d like to work as your own coach, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:

• Structure your conversation with yourself. This means putting the dialog into a specific order, beginning with a simple statement of what you want to work on and what outcome you want from the conversation. Every coaching conversation begins this way: What do you want to work on today? What would you like to walk away with? By being very specific here, at the beginning, you set your agenda.

• Hold your agenda. If you were working with someone else as your coach, she would keep you from wandering off on tangents. As your own coach, it’s your job to keep yourself on topic. Writing your dialog out will assist you in doing that, as you can read back over each statement and see where you’re starting to slip off topic.

• Be honest with your responses. Self-coaching is useless if you let yourself remain in denial about what you’re doing (or not doing) and the obstacles that are holding you back. Find out what you are pretending not to know; go for the heart of the matter.

• Ask yourself open-ended questions that begin with “what” and “how.” This, for me, was one of the most difficult coaching skills to master. But once you get in the groove with what and how questions, you can really make progress very rapidly. You'll notice I don't suggest asking “why?” I am not a fan of asking why because when someone doesn’t know why, they’ll come up with some answer and get stuck with it. Often, there is no good answer for why—so skip it. Instead, listen for a way to ask a question based on what or how. Here’s an example.

Me: “I’m not working on my novel. I’m stuck and I don’t know how to fix it.”

As self-coach: “Fix it? What about your novel is broken?”

Ultimately, the job of a coach is to use inquiry to allow the client to see themselves from a more objective viewpoint. By using the same skills that a coach would use, you can take yourself from stuck to starting and from angst to art.

For me, the breakthrough moment came when I wrote that I had to fall in love with the book all over again to work on it. As soon as I wrote that sentence, I recognized it as pure BS. The next coaching question was golden, “What do you have to do to work on it?” And the answer, of course, was blindingly simple: show up every day. Duh. But that’s what a good coach does—she gets you to take off the blinders and see what’s right in front of you, then provides accountability so you follow through.

Ready to give it a try? All you need is a few sheets of paper (longhand will slow you down so you can really see and hear your responses and think your questions out more carefully) and about 30 minutes of uninterrupted time. Here’s the first coaching question to get you started: What do you want to work on today?

Four Hour Work Week

Imagine that you could cut your work hours down to a mere four hours per week and make three times the amount you’re making now. Think of the things you could do with all that free time, the life you’d enjoy. Sound impossible? Not according to Tim Ferriss.

In his best selling, and provocatively titled, book The 4-Hour Work Week, Ferriss details how he has created tons of passive Tim-not-there income and freed up most of his time to create his amazing lifestyle of travel and adventure. He claims that anyone, no matter what their job, can duplicate what he’s done. There is a catch. Two, in fact. First, you have got to be extremely disciplined (you might even say selfish) and you’ve got to have a very healthy set of…courage.

Some of Ferriss’ methods are sound, though. Even if you only implement some of his suggestions on managing work flow (like screening interruptions and email) and put some of his outsourcing tools to work, you’ll find that you save tons of time. I’ve already starting exchanging emails with one of the virtual assistant firms he recommends. His chapters on how to automate your income were, to me, worth the price of the book.

The 4-Hour Work Week won’t appeal to everyone. Ferriss often comes across as flippant, shallow, cocky, and downright arrogant. You may not find everything he says he does believable. And maybe you like your work too much to cut down to only a few hours a week. As for me, I’m working on farming out tasks I don’t enjoy so I can spend more time doing what I love--coaching great people like you to get good things done!

Be a More Successful Manager

Ten Steps to Be a Successful Manager by Lisa Haneberg is a highly practical guide for anyone who wants to excel in their role of manager. Packed with practical advice and written in a clear, engaging style, Haneberg outlines an action plan for success.

Here are some of the features that make this book valuable:
::Tools. Many chapters have a “Tool” section. These range from a list of questions you can use to discover and clarify what’s expected of you to ways to spark collaboration by your reports.
::Pointers. These handy sidebars are sprinkled throughout the book and flag information you need to know.
::Worksheets. Lisa provides lots of handy worksheets to help you tackle everything from planning your week to determining which metrics to measure. As an aside, in Worksheet 3.1, the very first question is one that every manager should ask to prevent employee disengagement!
::Tune Up. Every chapter ends with a section called “Tune up and Realign.” This summary reminds the reader to focus on what’s most important to implement each step effectively.

All in all, this is a great, well written book. Lisa has a wonderful style which speaks with authority without being preachy. She comes across as a mentor who wants to see you succeed and knows exactly how to help you go about doing that.

It was a great honor and thrill to be selected as a back-cover endorser for this book! Thanks, Lisa!

Do you want to cross the dip?

First, intention; then enlightenment; then practice; then teaching--G. Norek, MD.

When the going gets tough, and it becomes evident that you might never succeed, you’ve hit “the dip.” The Dip, also the title of Seth Godin’s newest book, is that point which defines winners from losers and separates the best from everyone else. As an event, the dip happens when the going gets tough and it becomes very difficult to tell if success is even a possibility. What Seth argues is that you should learn how to discern a dip (which means success is available and you should amp up your effort) from a dead end (which indicates that no amount of effort will create success). (If you need help recognizing your dead end, try this simple test. If you have stopped making progress and find yourself hitting up against the same obstacle over and over, that’s a hint that you’re at a dead end.)

During the interview with Seth I sat in on yesterday, he argued that to cross the dip that you shouldn’t aim to be well-rounded. Instead, you should be rigorously singular. In other words, you should find your hedgehog concept and run with it. (The hedgehog concept was made famous by Jim Collins in Good to Great.) The mistake, or at least one of them, is to have too many goals, too many North Stars, too many ambitions. If you want to be a great neurosurgeon, Seth might argue, it doesn’t matter if you can also play good tennis or keep up with world affairs. The only thing that matters is that you have a relentless focus on becoming the best at your craft and nurturing it above all else.

Very few people cross the dip. A recent article about Tiger Woods in Sports Illustrated tells why. In the words of poet Kenji Miyazawa, “We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” Very few people are willing to embrace pain of any kind, much less leverage that pain to vault across the dip to access their best life, their true greatness. That is the reason why fierce animals like Tigers are rare.

Whereas Seth Godin is telling people when and how to quit, I want you to know that there are ways to cross the dip. Dip crossing is a skill. Skills are transferable knowledge; they can be learned. So here is dip-crossing skill number one: determine your single intention. The one thing you want that will allow you to be the very best, beyond all others in the world. (If you need some help, start reading 40-Days Forward.) If you know what your intention is and you know you can get there--even if you  don’t know how--I can teach you how to cross the dip. Tune in tomorrow for next dip crossing lesson.