Category: Leadership Insights

Polish the headstone

On Christmas morning I’ll visit the grave of my maternal grandparents at Waikumete Cemetery. They won’t know I’ve been and actually, I hardly knew my grandfather who died when I was 5 years old. I have one only memory of him  – going up the escalators at Farmers – I think!. Christmas day as a boy felt like a very special day, in fact it felt so special that when we went out in the car to visit (usually Dad’s boss Huia Gilpin who lived in the Botanic Gardens in Christchurch), I would look at other people in their cars with some sort of reverence, almost amazement, that here we had arrived on this most special of days. Surely today we were a united community with clean cars, best clothes and only good things to say and do. And new stuff from under the tree. The whole world must be amazing today.

I re-live that feeling in part by listening to ridiculously cliche-ridden carols and cleaning the car (I only just realised that! ah the power of blogging). And by visiting Mum’s parents’ grave at Waikumete. Grandma was a pretty no-nonsense sort of person. I remember after a holiday in Auckland in January, all piling in the car to leave with her on the steps of her three-bedroom unit in Haverstock Road, Sandringham.  “Lovely to see you arrive, lovely to see you go” she declared. I was crushed. How could she say such a thing? How could the nine of us squeezed into her flat in Sandringham for three weeks with a week or so in the middle at Stanmore Bay, have been anything other than a joyous experience?

Later, when I boarded with her as a 21 year-old, she reprimanded me for inappropriate sarcasm to some door-to-door religious salesmen in white shirts and black name tags. No nonsense, but tolerant at the same time.

For some reason, time is the excuse, I haven’t put up a Christmas Tree this year. I might tonight. I might not. Somehow, it doesn’t seem important. The mind feels clear and at peace after a big year both professionally and personally and the tree seems not necessary for the experience of Christmas peace.

The man who lived 2000 years ago and was executed by the government of the day in a pretty routine method at that time, spoke, or at least had recorded about him, of tolerance. If he were around today, he’d be pretty shocked at the lack of tolerance by many of the establishments built up in his name. He’d be impressed by some, sure.

I feel very grateful that in my world there’s a lot of tolerance about race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age, ability, wants. But unlike the visit to the Botanic Gardens in the 70s I realise that much or even most of the world is not so fortunate. Some people can’t choose what they wear, or eat, or days they work, because of intolerance based supposedly on the words of men who spoke primarily of such a thing. Strange.

None of this is going to change anytime soon, but every step of Authenticity and Tolerance as leaders we make to our teams and communities, it’s a step that will, with many other steps, ripple eventually across the oceans to maybe some poor kid in Africa infected by AIDS at birth from her mother.

So when I polish up the headstone, I’ll remember Grandma’s tolerance, at least on that one day that I got told off. But I’ll continue to be intolerant of one thing though: Intolerance. Make a stand for it. You won’t just lead a great team. Take how we lead at work as authentic leaders into all of the world and don’t put up with intolerance. We could save more lives that way than ever before.

That’s a Christmas worth having. Same one as a boy I thought the world was having.

Marketing a Marathon

At 34 kilometres I stopped at Okahu Bay for three drinks and my last carbo squeezie. The ‘Why?’ question. It always comes up at some point on a marathon, and this time, having been prescribed steroids to get me through a throat infection and the run, it was later than I thought. People refer to it as the wall. It’s real and it hurts. But 34 soon becomes 37 and suddenly it’s 40 and I’m smok’n to the finish line. I remembered to tell a few people “Marathons hurt”.  To be honest, I’ve kinda forgotten already.

We’ve got our 4th Authentic Leadership Course coming up and we’re near the finish line – or is that the starting line? Feels a bit like the finish line as the intensive marketing comes to a close and we can get ready for the really good stuff.  It will have been a year almost to the day since our first course and each one is special. They are big weeks and the start of a journey for the participants.

I enjoy marketing strategy – aligning the products, the pricing, the promotion, our processes and so on with our authenticity. Selling I’m not so keen on, I prefer buying! Well someone buying anyway. I really enjoy meeting our clients on the way – I consider myself fortunate to get the rich texture of life from so many really neat people up and down the country. But sometimes promoting a course is hard.

Just like 34 ks on the Auckland Marathon.  Next year I’ll have my permanent unique number for having completed five Auckland marathons. I’ll have it for life. Not sure how many punters sign up for the first one thinking “now that’s one hell of a good incentive to start!”. Just like I’m not sure that all our clients start off on the Authentic Leadership Course thinking that a year down the track they will be noticing the impact. But they have and they do. We’ll have participants from the previous courses check in on this anniversary course and we’ll find out how their journey in authenticity is going.

Bet they’ve hit the wall occasionally, some even on the course. But they’ll have their permanent unique number.

Like we all do. Can’t be copied. You’ve got it for life. But you need to find it, your authenticiy.  And that can take work. Will you ask why? Maybe, but once you’re up and running again, you’ll never look back. Any hurt will be subsumed by delight.

Can you market that do you reckon?

Stephen

ps check out one of my photos on the promotional banner for our course on www.aut.ac.nz

New Court ruling: what you don’t know can’t hurt you

The government has decided to get tough on those who seek name suppression because it’s not fair on those that don’t and justice should be administered publicly and in a transparent manner. Seems sensible enough, though, and I’m no apologist for the rich and famous, most of the time it’s only the most serious of crimes that are reported, unless you’re rich and famous.

In my work with organisations, the biggest problems in change or crisis arise from lack of transparency. When leadership is transparent, whatever the message, it is better received and the grief associated with change is shorter and less intense. Confidence comes from transparency.

Which is why the complaints and investigations about Supreme Court Judge Wilson being publicly aired are very important for our confidence in the judiciary. This judiciary that will monitor and lead the government’s intentions on our behalf on name suppression.

I see today that the government has settled an arrangement with Judge Wilson that sees all action stopped and a payout to him of nearly $1 million. The reason given by “cause and effect thinker” Judith Collins is that “To proceed with this case would have caused incalculable damage to confidence in the judiciary”. What can that mean? That we will keep hearing about Wilson’s alleged inappropriate conduct? That it will remind us that there is a judge who it is alleged did not act appropriately? That we might find a judge guilty of a conflict of interest?

If the cause of this problem is the alleged lack of candor on the part of a judicial officer, then this drop it and hide it solution takes you straight back to the cause. It’s a lesson for us all on the perils of linear thinking, hiding to avoid the hard questions and in this case, hypocrisy.

We know Judge Wilson’s name, we know what it’s alleged he did, but those that lead him and us in a transparent justice system for all have suppressed for ever the ability for us to know whether or not something was sick in the courts. Or that’s what they intend.

Actually we can see now there is something very wrong. And it’s not just one Judge.

Unintended consequences. You gotta love ’em!

Stephen

ps I haven’t gone permanently political on my blogs! Sometimes things just hit you. Hard. I wrote about government transparency over a year ago too.

Time and Space

It just seems like the other day that I wrote my last blog here – it’s not that long ago – 14 days to be precise, but some of the content seems decidedly out-of-date. The joys of politics. One day it’s incredibly important, now we can’t even remember what it’s about or why it mattered. Soon we’ll have a new super-city mayor. Let’s call him Mr B. Mr B will be in a hurry. You can see him now rushing around the region, shaking hands, promising this and that, smiling at babies. Time will be of the essence.

Three years from now he’ll be giving it another shot so the first two years will seem important. Build this, make that work, fix that. Where will we be? Probably working, enjoying our families, working out. I’ll be running still, I hope and reading lots of books. I’ll enter my sixth decade (that’s a frightening way to say you’ll be 50!).  If you start now, you could finish an MBA or some undergraduate degrees. You could learn to play the piano, learn to fly (no, not that, an aeroplane) or train to run a marathon. If I keep up doing this, I should have about 200 blog entries under the belt.

Quite a few new humans will be born and most of them will be walking by the time comes for Mr B. to put himself up for re-election. A few less of us will die and be remembered, mostly for a relatively short period by a relatively few number of people.

When I look back over the last three years, they’ve been big. Huge even. Maybe I should have taken up the violin again and learned to play it again. I watched the movie The Concert on Tuesday and pondered the thought, and that I still own my violin from decades ago. If I’d started three years ago, then I might be not too bad. But there was never time – family, work, running, movies, my house blah blah. If I started now, then I could play a tune for Mr B. next time around. Or the other Mr B. Or both even.

So time, yesterday it was David Garrett, this morning it’s Paul Henry, this afternoon Chris Carter and tomorrow it’ll be Mr B. Time will drag us through space while stuff goes on around us. The time will pass whatever we do. Where we are now is millions of miles from where we will be in three years. Will it feel different? Possibly not, the universe has lots of space that we can fit in ,and not feel it’s any different than the last space. So if we don’t notice the space, will we notice the time?

I hope so. In the time it took to read this blog you’re in a different space, hurtling through the universe. Look back in what you did in that space. Well actually thanks for spending it here. What about the space over the next three years. Infinite. Time too. Enjoy.

Stephen