it takes all types to succeed

McChrystal quotes the leader of a counterterrorism force for whom he worked in the '90s: "Your importance to the mission is not determined by your proximity to the objective." What that means, he explains, is that commandos who go out on a mission do so on the backs of procurement, logistics, HR, and many other functions. Good leaders, he says, point constantly to the contributions that all employees--even at the lowest levels--make to the organization and, by extension, to the leader's success.

Leigh Buchanan
General Stanley McChrystal: Why the Toughest Bosses Have the Most Devoted Employees Inc.com. 23 Oct 2018

the most important skill for interacting with people

Very few people are compassionate and considerate. … There are people in your life that haven’t been thanked for all of their efforts in far too long.

“When you meet someone, treat them as if they were in serious trouble:

… and you will be right more than half the time.”—Henry Eyring

Every person you meet, no matter how happy they appear on the outside, is dealing with serious challenges in their life.

Life is freaking hard.

Some of the people you meet are going through bitter and bone-chilling challenges. And for the most part, you have no clue. You just pass them at work, in the grocery store, or even at family gatherings.

In the book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Stephen Covey tells the story of being on a train one day. While on the train, there were two very noisy kids causing a disturbance to everyone around them. Covey noticed that the father was doing nothing about it, and after a period of restraint he approached the father. Here’s Covey’s account of the situation:

“Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more?”

The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a consciousness of the situation for the first time and said softly,

“Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think, and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either.”

Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly I saw things differently, I felt differently, I behaved differently. My irritation vanished. I didn’t have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior; my heart was filled with the man’s pain. Feelings of sympathy and compassion flowed freely. Everything changed in an instant.

Living more compassionately

If you treat every person you meet like they are dealing with a serious challenge, you’ll be right more than half the time. If you entreat people with love, kindness, empathy, and discernment, they will appreciate you so much.

Sharing a few kind words to our loved ones make refreshes them like cool water in the middle of the desert. Small gestures can bring hope and motivation.

Even better, ask people how they are really doing in their life. Tell them that you know they are going through a lot right now, and that it’s probably really tough.

How do you think they’ll respond?

You might just see some tears.

Very few people are compassionate and considerate. For instance, my mom works like an absolute workhorse in her job. She is one of the most caring and loving and hardworking people I know. Yet, day in-and-out, she takes constantly crap from people who don’t appreciate what she does.

It’s crazy how a small and thoughtful compliment can put her in tears. She works so hard.

There are people in your life that haven’t been thanked for all of efforts in far too long.

Conclusion

Harriet Beecher Stowe once said, “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”

You have no idea what the people in your world are currently dealing with. If you treat them like they are going through a crises, you’ll be right more often than not. But even more importantly, you can be a balm of peace and understanding for them.

A few words can be a release-valve for pent-up pain and sadness.

You could change someone’s life today. You could potentially save someone’s life today. You could also indirectly change countless other lives through the ripple effects of making just one person felt heard and seen.

Send the text to a friend.

Make that call to a loved one.

Apologize to a co-worker or employee.

Send a loving note of appreciation to your spouse/lover.

Say “I love you” more.

Wrote William Shakespeare, “They do not love that do not show their love.

The Most Important Skill for Interacting with People

Benjamin P. Hardy

theladders.com

5 Oct. 2018

are you undercommunicating?

Transformation is impossible unless hundreds or thousands of people are willing to help, often to the point of making short-term sacrifices. Employees will not make sacrifices, even if they are unhappy with the status quo, unless they believe that useful change is possible. Without credible communication, and a lot of it, the hearts and minds of the troops are never captured....

Executives who communicate well incorporate messages into their hour-by-hour activities. In a routine discussion about a business problem, they talk about how proposed solutions fit (or don’t fit) into the bigger picture. In a regular performance appraisal, they talk about how the employee’s behavior helps or undermines the vision. In a review of a division’s quarterly performance, they talk not only about the numbers but also about how the division’s executives are contributing to the transformation. In a routine Q&A with employees at a company facility, they tie their answers back to renewal goals.

In more successful transformation efforts, executives use all existing communication channels to broadcast the vision. They turn boring and unread company newsletters into lively articles about the vision. They take ritualistic and tedious quarterly management meetings and turn them into exciting discussions of the transformation. They throw out much of the company’s generic management education and replace it with courses that focus on business problems and the new vision. The guiding principle is simple: use every possible channel, especially those that are being wasted on nonessential information.

Perhaps even more important, most of the executives I have known in successful cases of major change learn to “walk the talk.” They consciously attempt to become a living symbol of the new corporate culture. This is often not easy. A 60-year-old plant manager who has spent precious little time over 40 years thinking about customers will not suddenly behave in a customer-oriented way. But I have witnessed just such a person change, and change a great deal. In that case, a high level of urgency helped. The fact that the man was a part of the guiding coalition and the vision-creation team also helped. So did all the communication, which kept reminding him of the desired behavior, and all the feedback from his peers and subordinates, which helped him see when he was not engaging in that behavior.

Communication comes in both words and deeds, and the latter are often the most powerful form. Nothing undermines change more than behavior by important individuals that is inconsistent with their words.

John P. Kotter

"Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail" Harvard Business Review. May-June 1995

provide a vision

In every successful transformation effort that I have seen, the guiding coalition develops a picture of the future that is relatively easy to communicate and appeals to customers, stockholders, and employees. A vision always goes beyond the numbers that are typically found in five-year plans. A vision says something that helps clarify the direction in which an organization needs to move.... A useful rule of thumb: if you can’t communicate the vision to someone in five minutes or less and get a reaction that signifies both understanding and interest, you are not yet done with this phase of the transformation process.

John P. Kotter

"Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail" Harvard Business Review. May-June 1995

a sense of urgency

Most successful change efforts begin when some individuals or some groups start to look hard at a company’s competitive situation, market position, technological trends, and financial performance. They focus on the potential revenue drop when an important patent expires, the five-year trend in declining margins in a core business, or an emerging market that everyone seems to be ignoring. They then find ways to communicate this information broadly and dramatically, especially with respect to crises, potential crises, or great opportunities that are very timely. This first step is essential because just getting a transformation program started requires the aggressive cooperation of many individuals. Without motivation, people won’t help and the effort goes nowhere....

A paralyzed senior management often comes from having too many managers and not enough leaders. Management’s mandate is to minimize risk and to keep the current system operating. Change, by definition, requires creating a new system, which in turn always demands leadership. Phase one in a renewal process typically goes nowhere until enough real leaders are promoted or hired into senior-level jobs....

In a few of the most successful cases, a group has manufactured a crisis. One CEO deliberately engineered the largest accounting loss in the company’s history, creating huge pressures from Wall Street in the process. One division president commissioned first-ever customer-satisfaction surveys, knowing full well that the results would be terrible. He then made these findings public. On the surface, such moves can look unduly risky. But there is also risk in playing it too safe: when the urgency rate is not pumped up enough, the transformation process cannot succeed and the long-term future of the organization is put in jeopardy.

When is the urgency rate high enough? From what I have seen, the answer is when about 75% of a company’s management is honestly convinced that business-as-usual is totally unacceptable. Anything less can produce very serious problems later on in the process.

John P. Kotter

"Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail" Harvard Business Review. May-June 1995