Become an Agile Learner

 

Learn... to be successful

What’s the most important skill you need to succeed in today’s work world? It’s not technical proficiency or leadership competency—it’s the ability to learn.  

In today’s ever-evolving workplaces, continuous learning is a must for remaining competitive and providing ongoing value.

Why?

“The half-life of skills is getting shorter.”— Joanna Daly, Vice President of Talent

Without a concerted effort to continually refresh and renew your skills, you run the risk of falling behind.

But it’s one thing to talk about the importance of learning and another to actually do it.

As children, we spend much of our time in school learning how to learn. As adults, we often get out of the habit.

Think about playing a sport or mastering an instrument. Practice, repetition, reflection, and feedback are all key to success. The same is true of learning new job skills. 

You don’t need to wait for guidance from your manager to build new skills. But you do need to be sure you’re focusing your learning in the right areas:

• Consider what’s valuable to your organization
• Research the skills companies in your industry are looking for
• Set up opportunities to develop skills where you have gaps
• Enlist people to provide you with feedback as you try out new skills

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The Water Will Come

Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World

      

About the Author

Rolling Stone editor and award-winning author Jeff Goodell writes on modern environmental and energy issues. His other books include How to Cool the Planet, Sunnyvale and Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future.

Summary

Imagine a Future Apocalypse

Consider this scenario of a possible future catastrophe: In a hurricane, a 20-foot [6-meter] storm surge engulfs most of Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach. Sea levels, up more than a foot since the early 2000s, make South Florida susceptible to such surges. Hundreds die – some in the panic after the false news of a reactor breach at the Turkey Point nuclear power station. Miami’s lackluster sea defenses fail quickly. The waters rise, swamping buildings and bringing crocodiles into the dying city. Miami becomes a popular place to go diving – a modern real-life Atlantis.

“Sea-level rise…will reshape our world in ways most of us can only dimly imagine.”

Sea-Level Rise

The science of climate change – global warming, melting ice sheets, rising seas – says this fictional future scenario is possible. Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans and Hurricane Sandy’s 2012 pounding of New York foreshadow such disasters. Rising sea levels will exacerbate storms’ effects. At a posh event about sea-level rise hosted by the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce, one broker complained of a “fear-fest” when University of Miami geologist Hal Wanless talked of catastrophic sea rise levels of 15 feet by 2100. Predictions vary: US National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) scientist James Hansen, the “godfather of climate change science,” estimated 10 feet [3 meters] of rise by 2100 if people keep burning fossil fuel at the current rate. Scientists update the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast every six years. Its 2013 prediction of a roughly three-foot sea rise by 2100 didn’t take account of rapid ice-sheet melt, which may push the rise to more than six feet, swamping coastal and low-lying land. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) reported in 2017 that sea rise could range from one foot to more than eight feet by 2100.

“To minimize the impact of sea-level rise…stop burning fossil fuels and move to higher ground.”

The 20th century saw a six-inch [15-centimeter] rise in sea-level; the rate of rise will accelerate in the 21st. To halt it, people must stop burning fossil fuel. Existing CO₂ will linger in the atmosphere for millennia, and that will keep temperatures artificially high. Banning fossil fuels would limit the temperature rise to about 3oF [1.7°C] above preindustrial levels. Continuing to burn them would cause a catastrophic 8oF [4.4°C] rise and cause a sea level rise up to 13 feet over time. Burning existing fossil fuel reserves would eventually cause the drowning of most coastal cities.

“Mobile barriers are to sea-level rise as condoms are to sex: a device you use to protect yourself in a heated moment.”

Some 14,500 years ago, during the so-called Meltwater Pulse, North America’s Laurentide ice sheet and Antarctica’s glaciers melted. Sea levels rose dramatically. The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is older than the biblical story of Noah, refers to a flood, perhaps at a time around 5600 BC, when the rising Mediterranean broke through into the Black Sea. Over the eons, sea levels have fluctuated hundreds of feet due to changes in Earth’s orbit causing ice ages to come and go. At the end of the last ice age, seas rose 13 feet in a century. Then, land bridges connected Britain to Europe, Scotland to Sweden, Thailand to Indonesia, and Asia to North America. Now, instead of Earth’s orbit being at fault in ice melting, human activity that warms the planet is causing a premature thaw and rapid melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

“When the oil and gas barons of Russia and Brazil make money, they have been sinking it into Miami, a city that is literally drowning [from] combustion of the fossil fuels that made them rich.”

Florida, USA

Pearly grains called “ooids” dissolved to form the porous limestone of South Florida’s once-submerged Atlantic Coastal Ridge; now five million people live on it. South Florida’s native Calusa people were adept at “engineering with water.” For millennia, they lived in harmony with the rising sea until they died of European sailors’ smallpox in the 1700s.

In 1890, the City of Miami’s founder, railroad lobbyist Julia Tuttle, built a house on the ridge. Early settlers drained lower areas of the Everglades to get arable land for free. The 1909 dredging of the Miami Canal preceded the draining of the Everglades. Mosquitoes infested the sandbar of Miami, but promoter Carl Fisher saw its potential. In exchange for land, he funded John Collins to complete a bridge across Biscayne Bay. Hacked clear by poor black laborers, dredged up as muddy sand, and reinforced with rock and mulch, Miami Beach rose from the slime. Spurred by “boosterism,” greed and lax regulation, real estate boomed – until a Category 4 hurricane’s 10-foot storm surge in 1926 left 113 people dead. The market collapsed. Eventually, Florida’s hopeful development dreams resurfaced.

“Of all the hard decisions people who live on vulnerable coasts will have to face, the most difficult one is the idea of retreat.”

Nobody takes ownership of the risk of sea-level rise, while Miami homeowners play financial and emotional “real estate roulette” in calculating when to sell. Politicians fear crashing Miami’s economy by frightening away foreign condo investors. The mismanaged US National Flood Insurance Program effectively subsidizes at-risk property and tempts civic leaders to tamper with flood-zone designations. There looms the difficulty of what Miami artist Xavier Cortada calls a “graceful retreat” from the coast for people whose only equity is their threatened homes.

“Can I get a few more years out of this place, or should I dump my condo on the beach now? Virtually everyone… in Miami makes this calculation.”

The Melting Ice

American climatologist Jason Box studies changes in Greenland’s ice sheets, where massive glaciers are melting much faster than expected and opening up a “new climate land” of untrodden ground. Box predicted the rapid 2012 Greenland melt, partly by factoring in the effects of soot from US wildfires and China’s coal-burning settling on the ice and lowering its albedo – or, reflectivity – thus allowing the sun to melt glaciers more quickly. Antarctica holds seven times more ice than Greenland, but melt proceeds at a quicker – and even accelerating – pace in Greenland. With warming affecting the temperatures of the Arctic air and the Antarctic sea, melting ice itself causes climatic “feedback loops,” leading to heat waves and faster melting. The Earth has a fixed quantity of water. Its mean level relative to land fluctuates as ice ages lock it up or release it. Land levels change due to “glacial rebound.” Undersea currents like the Gulf Stream plus expansion stemming from warming both inexorably affect sea levels. Alaska’s economy relies on fossil fuels. Temperatures are rising twice as fast there as in the rest of America. Security implications loom, with Russia and China among the nations eyeing the Arctic’s trillion-dollar oil, gas, and minerals. Russia sends fighter jets to Alaska’s edge, test-fires missiles off Greenland and, in 2007, planted its flag 10,000 feet down in the seabed under the North Pole.

“The difference between three feet and six feet is the difference between a manageable coastal crisis and a decades-long refugee disaster.”

Barriers Against the Sea

In Venice, Italy, water collects and pools in the Piazza San Marco before high tide. After a storm surge swamped the fifth-century city in 1966, engineers pondered solutions. In 1994, they suggested the high-tech, $6 billion MOSE barrier. The acronym, which stands for “Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico,” was deliberately designed to invoke Moses, the Bible’s great “parter of the waves.” Plagued by corruption scandals and spiraling costs, the barrier was only partially complete by 2016. Wageningen University climatologist Pier Vellinga called the ambitious project “a Ferrari on the seafloor.” MOSE likely will fail to protect the city. Fancy barriers only buy time – and not much of it.

“Most of the water that will drown… coastal cities will come from…Antarctica and Greenland.”

In Rotterdam, Holland, the massive infrastructure project called the Maeslant Barrier stands ready to hold back storm surges – like the killer one of 1953 – coming up the Rhine from the North Sea. The modern city’s public squares – known as “water parks” – act as basins for surging waters. Social attitudes in Rotterdam tend toward living with water instead of fighting it. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded more than 88,000 New York buildings and killed 44 people. Sandy focused minds on protecting the city. Construction on the first stage of a 10-foot-high reinforced concrete barrier should begin in 2019. The barricade is part of a proposed “Big U” that may eventually gird Lower Manhattan and shield wealth-generating areas like Wall Street. New York’s low ground – with its subways and electrified infrastructure – remains vulnerable to Hudson River estuary flooding, which rising sea levels only exacerbate.

For “low-lying nations…climate negotiations were not about economic competitiveness or a global power play. They were about life and death.”

Nature pays little heed to barriers which failed tragically during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and in the 30-foot tsunami that overtook Kamaishi, Japan. Measures like the US federally-funded Living Breakwaters project provide more innovative approaches to absorbing wave energy and filtering water. Yet, relying on vast, slow-to-build ramparts may breed complacency and delay thoughts of leaving the coast or learning to live with the oncoming ocean.

Greenhouse Gas

Attendees at the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 rejoiced as nearly every nation committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to reduce warming. The foreign minister of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Tony de Brum, influenced many leaders. Still suffering after effects of nuclear testing between 1946 and 1958, his low-lying Pacific nation of more than 1,000 tiny coral atolls now faces erasure by rising seas as its crops die due to salinization. Subsidies from the US military haven’t improved the infrastructure and leave sea defenses crumbling. In return for letting the US military use the Islands’ atolls, the Marshallese get to live and work in the United States.

“Geoengineering puts faith in the magic of technology.”

In 2015, at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, then-Secretary of State John Kerry heard that sea-level rise threatens to leave the vast base inoperable in as few as 20 years. But the Republican Virginia legislature “effectively banned the discussion of climate change,” and blamed “recurrent flooding.” Driven by gas-funded ideology, Congress hushes Pentagon concerns about at least 704 coastal military bases. A 2003 Department of Defense report called climate change a bigger threat to US security than terrorism. Kerry calls it a “weapon of mass destruction.”

Drought catalyzed unrest in Syria and drove up food prices in Egypt, leading to the Arab Spring uprising. While rich nations refuse liability for emission-caused loss, the number of climate refugees is growing, maybe to 200 million by 2050, says the International Organization for Migration.

“The United States… elected a president [Donald Trump] who believed climate change was a hoax and would soon fill his cabinet with climate change deniers of every stripe.”

West Africa

Throughout West Africa, coastlines erode, soils become salt saturated and clean, fresh water dwindles. Lagos, Nigeria, a rapidly growing megacity of up to 21 million people, is divided sharply between rich and poor. Most of Lagos is about five feet above the sea. The condos of the new city of Eko Atlantic – built by alleged corruption kingpin Gilbert Chagoury’s company – will cosset the wealthy. Built on dredged-up seabed, the new city – with its own security force, schools, power plant and water supply – will shelter behind a 25-foot concrete seawall. In an example of “climate apartheid,” extended families in Lagos’s water slums, like Makoko, live in stilt-built shacks. By 2050, three million to eight million Africans may flee the drowning city.

“Human beings have become a geological force on the planet, with the power to reshape the boundaries of the world in ways we didn’t intend and don’t entirely understand.”

The Pump Option

Partly due to developers Scott Robins and Philip Levine, expensive residences fill Sunset Harbour on the low side of Miami Beach. After Levine became mayor in 2013, he charged chief city engineer Bruce Mowry with mitigating the impact of sea-level rise. Mowry installed large pumps to serve low-lying areas plus one-way valves to limit seawater backing up through the sewers. The system worked well in 2014 for so-called “king tides,” unusually high spring tides, but Hurricane Matthew’s 2016 surge overwhelmed it. Other measures underway involve raising entire streets. Samples of floodwater pumped into Biscayne Bay show levels of fecal bacteria hundreds of times higher than state limits. Germs, viruses and algal blooms flourish in cracked sewer pipes and saturated septic tanks. In extreme flooding, septic tanks and coffins float out of the ground. While creative Miami architects design schemes to “work with nature,” the nuclear industry seems to ignore the risk. Despite concerns about the vulnerability of its cooling apparatus to sea level rise, Florida’s Turkey Point nuclear power station recently received approval for two more reactors.

“I got a very nice view of two 40-year-old reactors perched on the edge of a rising sea with millions of people living within a few miles of the plant. It was as clear a picture of the insanity of modern life as I’ve ever seen.”

Toms River, New Jersey

After Sandy’s storm surge battered Toms River, New Jersey, stakeholders rebuilt the town exactly as before. In some flood-hit places, the state or federal government will buy out the residents. In Summer Haven, Florida, for example, wealthy residents sued the county and forced it to maintain their flood-damaged road. People must apply evolved human intelligence to avoid catastrophe and mitigate the worst effects of climate change. They may find it hard to believe in the coming inundation, but, inevitably, coastal cities will drown.

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Value-Added Selling

How to Sell More Profitably, Confidently, and Professionally by Competing on Value―Not Price

              


About the Authors
Tom Reilly, the author of 16 books, is a columnist for multiple business publications and a professional speaker.

Paul Reilly is president of Tom Reilly Training, which trains sales organizations.

_Summary

Value-Added Selling

For many buyers, value translates as “cheap.” Successful salespeople must get buyers to shift their thinking. Buyers need to understand that they gain value across the long term when they buy quality products or services. Value does not reside in purchase price. Instead, value is a relatively simple. It’s what the seller “gives up” and what the buyer “gets in return.” Salespeople may be glad to know that research indicates that “only one-in-six shoppers is a true price shopper — someone who considers only price.” This means that 83% of shoppers are willing to consider a value-added pitch.

“The strong appeal of value-added selling has always been and remains its connection to foundational values and virtues like equity, honesty, synergy, excellence and humility.”

Your job as a salesperson is to convince this 83% of buyers that your offerings provide their best value and that your merchandise is the ideal solution to their problems. Salespeople must communicate value to buyers persuasively by using “Value-Added Selling,” a philosophy that rests on “equity, honesty” and “excellence.”

In value-added selling, you deliver maximum value to your customers and receive maximum value from them. Value-added selling is a win-win for customers and salespeople. In value-added selling, the salesperson always offers three things for sale: the product or service, the company, and the salesperson himself or herself. These are the “three dimensions of value.”

“Buyers who obsess on price must be educated to think in terms of return on investment.”

Value-added salespeople “promise a lot and deliver more.” They “sell to the customer’s needs, not against the competition.” Value-added sellers serve their buyers, fix their problems and satisfy their needs. One of value-added selling’s most basic principles is that when you establish and sell value according to your customers’ perspective, those customers will pay more. By contrast, when you establish and sell value according to the sellers’ perspective, you may end up with steep discounts on what you’re selling.
This creates a devilish problem for salespeople: If you start discounting your offerings, buyers will expect – and soon demand – even more discounts. Once discounting begins, it never ends. Just ask any automobile dealer

“Salespeople who expect price resistance generally find it. If you begin the sales call by anticipating a price objection, you unwittingly create one.”

Traditional Selling

Value selling sharply contrasts with traditional selling. There, the focus is on getting as many potential sales in the pipeline and closing as much of this business as possible. In traditional selling, salespeople and their needs count most. Value-added selling is a completely different “dynamic philosophy.” Its essential precept is that a company’s ultimate purpose is not to employ people or build products or earn profits; it is to deliver value to buyers.

Traditional salespeople are in the business of constantly building new business. Value-added salespeople see a much wider vista: They want to build new business and provide current customers with “satisfaction, logistics support, applications, expediting, disposal, transitions…training,” and more.

“A culture of cheapness exacerbates price pressure.”

Salespeople need to understand that buyers assign notable value to what individual salespeople bring to the table. Buyers attribute 25% of their decision to buy products or services to salespeople. This compares to 57% weight for the product or service, and 18% that attaches to companies. The value-added salesperson starts out as a diagnostician, becomes an influencer, moves to expediter and finishes up as “customer satisfaction specialist.”

“Critical Buying Path”

Every buyer in the market for a product or service journeys down the critical buying path (CBP). Buyers take this series of steps to move from “need to satisfaction”:

1. “Presale planning” – Buyers become aware of their need for a particular product or service. The salesperson discovers this need and takes action to affect the buyer’s decision-making process. The salesperson operates in an “offensive-selling mode” and works overtime to secure new business. The buyer’s primary need is reliable information. The salesperson must supply it.

“Your time is limited by the buyer’s attention span. Be tight with your presentation.”

2.  “Acquisition/transition” – Buyers prepare to use the product or service and make their purchase. The salesperson’s goal is to ensure the buyer’s easy and effortless transition. The salesperson operates in a “defensive-selling mode” and focuses on retaining the customer.

3. “Post-sale usage” – Buyers use the product or service. Two factors matter at this stage: “performance and economy.” The salesperson operates in a “defensive-selling mode”.

To journey productively down their own critical sales path, value-added salespeople must figure out each buyer’s path and add value at every juncture. For value-added selling to work, salespeople must develop a comprehensive understanding of what matters to their buyers – what customers want and need. With this knowledge, a salesperson can move beyond value-added to the customer to “value received” by the customer. Traditional selling rests on chasing new leads. Value-added selling relies on guaranteeing a smooth transition after the sale and on making sure buyers feel satisfied with their purchases. Only then can salespeople leverage their relationships with buyers.

“Buyers value their time...Successful people use time effectively. Your...efficient use of time communicates the image that you respect this valuable resource.”

It’s not enough for salespeople to adopt a value-added orientation; their firms must do so as well. The value-added philosophy must become integral to the company’s corporate culture so it can become a “Value-Added Organization.” All employees must buy into this philosophy. This is particularly true for the departments that back up salespeople, including operations, customer service, technical support, maintenance, and so on.

“Approximately three in-four customers feel that salespeople do not understand their needs or buying process...only one-in-five salespeople truly understand the customer’s needs.”

“Small-Wins Selling”

The selling process often becomes lengthy and complex. This can overwhelm many salespeople. To manage any complex undertakings, break the process down into a series of small components. In sales, those components are small wins. Psychologist Karl Weick described them in his American Psychologist article “Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems.” He wrote that a small win is a “concrete, completed outcome of moderate importance.” Examples of small wins in sales include concluding a meeting with a manager of operations, having the firm’s engineers agree to give your product a trial, or persuading the head engineer to write your product solution into a primary specification. A small win is “outcome-based, not effort-based.” Requesting a meeting with an important decision maker isn’t a small win. The small win is actually meeting with that decision maker.

“Value-Added Selling Tactics”

Value-added selling involves “offensive and defensive selling strategies.” Combining them distinguishes value-added selling from traditional selling. The critical sales path outlines the steps to take to implement these 11 strategies:

1.   “High-value target account selection” – In The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker states that it’s not enough to know “what to do.” You must “know what not to do.” Salespeople must be discerning about the best prospects to pursue. Ask this strategy question: “Am I chasing the right business?”

2.   “Target account penetration” – Move in early to learn what buyers need and to influence their specs, move in deep to “create pull for your ideas” and move in high to secure proper funding. Ask this strategy question: “Am I talking to all the right people?”

3.   “Customer-izing” – Learn everything you can about your buyers. Try to think as they think. Ask this strategy question: “Do I understand my customer’s needs, wants and fears?”Amazon dominates online sales because of the remarkable degree of attention it pays to every customer. Learn from its impressive example. Close and personal relationships with your buyers will enable you to outperform Amazon when it comes to value-added services.

4. “Positioning” – Persuasion is a process, not a discrete, time-limited activity. Persuade in everything you say and do. Ask this strategy question: “Am I projecting the image of a value-added supplier?”

5. “Differentiating” – Buyers need to understand how your firm differs from the competition in “definable and defendable” ways. Ask this lead strategy question: “Have I differentiated our status as a value-added supplier?”

6. “Presenting” – The more personal and personable your presentations are, the more successful they (and you) will be. Ask this strategy question: “How compelling is my argument for our solution?”

7. “Supporting” – At this point in the selling process, move “from offensive to defensive selling.” Ask this strategy question: “How painless have we made it for the customer to implement our solution?”

8. “Relationship building” – Buyers love brands, but they’re loyal to people. Develop strong relationships with your buyers. Ask this strategy question: “How is my personal and professional relationship with the customer?”

9. “Tinkering” – Your customers are viable prospects for your competitors. Keep creating new value for buyers after the initial sale. This is tinkering. Ask: “Are we working as hard to keep the business as we did to secure the business?”

10.“Value reinforcement” – You successfully sold your buyers and they use your offering to positive effect. Now, secure credit for your good work. “Brag…every chance you get.” Ask this strategy question: “Are we getting credit for all of our value added?”

11.“Leveraging” – Don’t try to secure new business only from new customers. Work also to secure new business from old customers. Ask this strategy question: “Are we maximizing our value?”

An Aerial View

Implement 11 individual strategies that, combined, provide an “aerial view of the sales process.” To put them into action, use these value-added sales tactics:

1.    “Filling your pipeline” – “Existing customers and referrals” are your best bet.

2.    “Precall planning” – Ninety-five percent of top sales producers “plan their sales calls.”

3.    “Opening the sales call” – First impressions count in sales. Always look good, particularly during sales calls.

4.    “The needs-analysis stage” – Top sales producers devote 60% of their available time to listening to customers. That’s how they learn what buyers want and need.

5.    “The presentation stage” – Make your presentation compelling, convincing and direct.

6.    “Closing” – Never attempt to close until the “buyer is ready to buy.” Ask for an opinion about your proposal. If it’s positive, ask for a commitment.

7.    “Handling objections” – Have rebuttals ready. Memorize your rebuttals. Practice them in advance.

8.    “Postcall activities” – Buyers regard seller follow-up as important. Always ask permission to follow up after sales.

9.    “Managing multiple decision makers” – To sell to multiple decision makers, figure out the dynamics of the group – how much members feel they must conform and whether they are unified or divided. When you ascertain individual needs among the members, discuss them in private.

10.“Value-added inside sales” – Encourage members of your inside-sales team to ask buyers sufficient questions to learn their particular wants and needs. Develop special new sales opportunities to pursue.

As you sell, remain aware of the three basic principles of value-added selling:

1.    “Life is bigger than I am” – To deliver for customers, put buyers ahead of yourself. Focus on your buyers and what they need.

2.    “My mission is to add value, not cost” – This is the essence of value-added selling.

“Price shoppers demonstrate predictable attitudes” – Price shoppers think short term. Value-added sellers must help them reorient their thinking toward the “total solution” that the right products or services make possible.

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What Are Your Blind Spots?

Conquering the 5 Misconceptions that Hold Leaders Back

                                                By This Book:
     

About the Authors
Jim Haudan is a co-founder of Root Inc., an organizational change and development consultancy, where Rich Berens is CEO and “Chief Client Fanatic.”

Summary

You Can See Clearly Now

High employee engagement equals high performance. For engagement, leaders must treat those they lead with consideration and respect – and earn their respect in return. Start by avoiding the “blind spots” that impede your leadership and block your vision.

Carefully consider the five blind spots and 13 lessons below. When you put these lessons to work inside your organization, you can radically transform it for the better and engage more meaningfully with your employees. With today’s rampant employee disengagement, cynicism and apathy, you must foment change. As a leader, you know that cultural change begins with you.

“With only 30% of professionals being engaged, the vast majority of human talent is not showing up at work to innovate, create, build, change and find better ways of doing things.”

Bloodletting

In mid-December 1799, George Washington, the recently retired first president of the United States, turned slightly ill. At 67, Washington suffered a cold and a sore throat. This was nothing unusual for the dead of winter in Virginia, the site of Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. The weather had been chilly with snow, hail and rain – perfect weather for colds. As the master of his sprawling property, Washington had been spending considerable time outside in the inclement weather.
When Washington also developed shortness of breath, his wife Martha and his personal secretary, Colonel Tobias Lear, summoned physicians. While waiting for their arrival, Washington asked George Rawlins, Mount Vernon’s overseer, to perform a bloodletting – opening a vein and letting the blood flow freely into a container. Rawlins quickly removed at least 12 ounces of Washington’s blood.

“If you can’t find a way to your employees’ hearts, their minds won’t follow.”

Bloodletting was a common medical procedure in Washington’s time. It traced back to the ancient Greeks, who believed “blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile” dominate the body and saw illness as a sign that these elements are out of balance. Bloodletting supposedly puts the elements back in balance. Obviously, this is utter nonsense.

Washington’s doctors conducted four more bloodlettings. By the time his doctors finished opening his veins, Washington had lost nearly half of his body’s entire blood supply in a single day. Not surprisingly, he died shortly thereafter. Washington was bright and knowledgeable. The men who treated him were qualified medical professionals. How could these intelligent men think that draining a person’s life’s blood would magically cure his illnesses?

This illustrates an eternal, basic human truth: People routinely subscribe to the craziest ideas. That was true in ancient Greece and colonial America, and it remains true today.

“The dignity that people feel when their ideas and perspectives are valued, and the power that is unleashed when their discretionary effort is freely contributed, is an unparalleled competitive advantage.”

Avoiding Leadership Blind Spots

Think of such faulty ideas in management practices as blind spots: mistaken concepts that send people down blind alleys. Leaders’ blind spots can derail companies and generate employee cynicism and apathy. Leaders are subject to five primary blind spots that can be hugely destructive:

1. Purpose

The belief behind this blind spot is: “Purpose matters, but it doesn’t drive our numbers.” Profit matters more. The reality is that today’s employees want to work for firms whose purpose they respect and support. Leaders must make purpose vital to their companies. Unfortunately, while many leaders tout their devotion to purpose, research indicates that up to 90% of employees don’t think the stated mission really drives their organization. This disparity can turn your employees into embittered cynics.

To cure this blind spot, executives must ask themselves: Do my daily words and actions support my organization’s declared purpose? If all you talk about is boosting the numbers, take a step back and rethink your message. Remember that an admirable purpose and impressive profits are not mutually exclusive objectives; organizations can readily achieve both. In his noteworthy TED Talk, author Simon Sinek clarifies that purpose doesn’t concern what you do. It concerns “why you do what you do.”

“Connecting your strategy and decisions in a meaningful way to [your] employees is crucial to bringing your strategy to life.”

“Beliefs and approaches that now seem absurd were not only embraced by many people, they were actually promoted and endorsed by the leading

companies and experts of the time.”

2. Story

This blind spot says, “We have a compelling story to tell that our people care about.” In fact, most firms’ backstories are boring banalities that turn employees off and never inspire them. Most organizations don’t do a good job of developing strong stories about their origins, activities, intentions and future plans. Most executives think their companies’ stories deliver the necessary messages, but most employees would disagree.

Leaders must take off their blinkers, recognize their platitudes as tedious, and replace them with compelling stories that inspire employees and stakeholders. Your stories should touch your people’s hearts. To achieve this goal, tell stories about how your employees’ contributions help make your company special.

“Leadership weakness often doesn’t fully show up until an organization is hit with a crisis or is in need of radical change.”

3. Engagement

This blind spot is the belief that “rational…presentations engage the hearts and minds of people.” The reality is that you can’t win people over with logic – or with fact-packed, data-driven reports.

You win people over when you engage with them in meaningful dialogue, appeal to their emotions. Leaders must put away their PowerPoint slides and discussion points and start to talk with their employees in a relevant, respectful and ongoing exchange.
You engage employees when you speak to their emotions. Author Alan Deutschman advises leaders to move away from standard heavy-handed refrains commonly repeated in communications to employees. These include “force” (we’d better change), “facts” (the need for change is obvious) and “fear” (without change, we’re in big trouble). Instead, structure your communications around hope. Evoking optimism and faith in the future requires “authentic conversations,” not “well-scripted presentations.”

“While the quest for… shareholder value as the sole true north has created efficient, agile and focused organizations, it has also created companies without a soul.”

4. Trust

This blind spot rests on believing that “people will not do the right thing unless you tell them what to do and hold themselves accountable to do it.” In reality, if you force your employees to stick to rigid scripts, you severely limit what they can accomplish as individuals with singular talents and capabilities. Instead, trust your employees and let them become their best selves. This is where greatness lies – for employees and organizations.

Without rules and regulations, organizations can fall apart. The challenge – and it’s a tough one – is to walk the fine line between controlling employees and trusting them to use their wise judgment at work. To meet this challenge: 1) Establish clear priorities, 2) provide context for why these priorities are important and 3) invite employees to leverage their strengths whenever that makes sense.

“The right use of visualization is one of the most effective ways to…achieve shared meaning.”

5. Truth

This blind spot comes from thinking, “My people feel safe telling me what they really think and feel.” The reality: In many organizations, no truth-telling exists, whether in formal meetings or during discussions among employees and executives. Employees fear that if they speak candidly their boss will demote them, fire them or push them aside.

This insidious fear can cripple positive relationships among employees and their leaders and poison the work environment. Leaders must find practical ways to unlink worry, fear and danger from basic truth-telling by employees, managers and executives.

“Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to the story, content and the experience of the audience.” (Yale professor emeritus Edward R. Tufte)

Thirteen Leadership Lessons

Use these leadership lessons as antidotes to counteract the five blind spots:

1.  “Make purpose personal” – People want to work for organizations they admire. They want to be part of companies with a solid reputation. They want to be able to look up to their leaders. To meet these expectations, leaders’ words and actions must always support their organizations’ purpose. This helps establish leaders’ authenticity. Leaders must be strong communicators who can connect in a genuine way with employees.

2. “Be passionate about your purpose, not your numbers” – In “purpose-driven” organizations, the numbers only measure progress. Never state your purpose in terms of numbers. Purpose inspires employees; numbers do not.

3.  “Proactively close the gap between what we say and what we mean” – Telling employees to be “innovative,” “productive” and “more efficient” is pointless. People hear these words constantly. After a while, they become background noise, like birds chirping in trees. Communicate meaningfully; do what you say you will do.

4. Tell great stories – Compelling stories are memorable. “Data, slides and bullets” never are. Yet many leaders rely on dry data and statistics to make their points. They should tell engaging stories. You may have the best strategic plan, but if you can’t communicate it effectively – with a powerful story everyone will remember – no one will want to be part of it. Use stories to get your points across with employees and with everyone else.

         “Just as great success stories have fueled purpose, so have stories highlighting the failure of organizations that did not have a clear purpose at                their core.”

5. “Don’t place foolish emphasis on WIIFM” – “What’s in it for me?” offers a powerful

inducement, but you can use better motivators, such as “adventure and possibilities of what can be.” For most employees, these factors inspire more than self-interest. People like a challenge. They like to make a difference and find new ways to move ahead.

6.  “Focus on the emotional versus the rational” – Many organizations handle change badly. Before implementing a change program, these organizations muster relevant facts, communicate their plans to employees and wait for change to occur. It usually doesn’t. Senior executives then think, “Our people don’t get it.” Next time, instead of focusing on facts, focus on feelings – specifically, on your staff members’ thoughts and emotions. If you can’t get employees on your side in tackling a change initiative, it will never get off the ground. Connect with them, and they’ll make sure it does.

Employees “must believe it’s their store, their hotel, their office, their factory or their hospital.”

7.  “Use dialogue to reach the hearts and minds of your people” – Employees want to believe they matter to their organization. To demonstrate that you hold your staff members in high regard, talk to them regularly about important issues affecting your firm. Dialogue transcends standard conversations. It involves “caring, listening, questioning, refining new ideas and finding better solutions.” Through dialogue, you tap into the “collective intelligence” of your team. Such intelligence has great power. Leverage it for the benefit of your organization.

8.  “Flip the switch for your people” – Often, when senior leaders engage in heartfelt dialogue with their employees, they end up amazed at the “untapped intelligence” they uncover. Keep your employees up to speed about the company’s latest challenges so you can gain meaningful input and learn from them. This is a much better plan than always instructing them. Show that you know you can learn from them.

9.  “Embrace human variability” – Leaders generally want things to go according to plan. They aren’t fans of human variability, which, in fact, they should celebrate. Without it, you lose the individual high performances that make your firm special.

“We will look back at how we run organizations today and shake our heads at how unenlightened some of our practices and beliefs were.”

10. “Clarify hard lines, guidelines and no lines to make the complex simple” – “Control and trust” are essential for organizations. Leaders must ask when they should exercise a firm rule, and when they should let employees use their own good judgment. Balance the ideas of hard lines (how the organization always handles things), guidelines (guardrails as needed) and no lines (employees figure things out for themselves).

11. “Use humor: It’s not just funny, it’s breakthrough” – For decades the cast members of Saturday Night Live have used humor to communicate basic truths. Organizations can use humor for the same purpose. Humor makes the work environment a safe space. When employees laugh with one another, they’re more inclined to speak freely.

“Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.” (Steve Jobs)

12. “Create a truth-telling culture” – Employees who can’t speak honestly about their companies often develop a  victim mentality. Reach for “co-accountability” instead – a culture in which employees can tell each other the      truth about the organization they work for and what they do.

13. “To thyself be true and others will follow” – Put aside your ego. Understand that everything at work doesn’t         center around you. Instead of focusing on yourself, focus on the employees you lead. To engage your staff                 members, put them first.

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