Applying Yourself: A Question for a Generation

The other day a friend of mine was telling me about her son, GM. He is highly competitive in freestyle mogul skiing, an individual sport typically not supported in public schools. He’s also a top-notch student. He was recently offered an opportunity to attend an academy that would let him pursue high-level skiing and academic goals.

But before applying, GM had to come to terms with some serious obstacles. Attending an academy requires moving away from home and changing his life. He’d have to agree to a rigorous application and financial aid application process. This meant suddenly writing lots of essays about who he is, what he wants, how he’d make positive contributions to the community, and what is important to him --- all during a time when he was loaded with final exams, research papers, and end-of-year projects. Applications also come with a risk of rejection. And what if he is admitted and offered a financial aid scholarship? Accepting the challenge of pursuing an ultimate goal to your fullest potential comes with the risk of falling short of your own expectations.

Being a good leader comes with the responsibility of being a good follower. And that duty falls on us all. But what happens when there is a collective failure of that responsibility?

We are all living in that failure of followership, right now, in this very moment. It’s called the 2016 presidential race.

Common conventional wisdom says that there are leaders and there are followers. Or that leadership is a person, a high-ranking title, or comes from being in front of a room. Before you start nodding your head in agreement, here are two perspectives on the idea of followership to take into consideration.

(A Prelude to an Organization Observation Tool)

“Can we create organizations that are free from the pathologies that show up all too often in the workplace?”

This is the opening question in Frederic Laloux’s game-changing book Reinventing Organizations, a 350-page volume dense with historical observation, deep business acumen, and real world answers for modern organizational structure and behavior.

It’s a rhetorical question that’s emphasized throughout the book. The answer, of course, is yes … an outlook that I share with Laloux. Applying this question to your own organization starts by looking at the profiles of two hypothetical companies:

You did it. The “it,” of course, is your personal definition of success. You started the company. Got the salary. Landed the job. Grew the organization. Expanded the territory. Built the dream house. Ran the marathon. Traveled the world.

You did it. The “it,” of course, is your personal definition of success. You started the company. Got the salary. Landed the job. Grew the organization. Expanded the territory. Got married. Had children. Built the dream house. Ran the marathon. Traveled the world. Went skydiving.

Many people have asked me, “Why do you call yourself a guide and not a coach?” Those who know me, aren’t surprised when I reply with a question.

Reality has a number.

It’s 32.

That’s the number of years life expectancy has grown since the early 1900s. That means at around age 48 you’re just getting started for the next three decades. After all, fifty is the new thirty! Right?

A New Chapter

People commonly refer to this phenomenon as the third age. Scholars, however, call this gift of years the Third Act. There is a critical distinction between the two.

Standard business rhetoric is abundant. Step into any bookstore’s business aisle and you will be overwhelmed with shelves of how-to books, usually promising all the answers to leaders’ universal challenges. And yet, despite the volumes of instruction, the answers continue to remain an elusive mystery to many.

And yet the whispers of change are growing bold. Come enter a place where real companies are achieving the seemingly impossible: a responsive, thriving environment of life and work supported with a strong bottom line and fully engaged employees. How did these organizations get there?

Who doesn’t love a good lasagna? I’m reminded of this great Italian recipe by a previous post – noting that good leadership is not so much the ingredients of a great recipe, as it is the actions of a great cook. Anyone who knows their way around a kitchen will remember that every good cook has a different recipe for lasagna. This much sauce, that much ricotta, a stack of fat egg noodles – and each cook adds their own spices, to make their own dish.

And, even new cooks can create masterpieces.