Do you remember the scene from the 1982 movie “E.T. : The Extraterrestrial”, when that adorable creature from another galaxy reminded young Elliot to “beeeee goooood”? I loved that movie. Still do. It occurs to me now how foreign (read: alien) a concept that is anymore. The novel idea that we can, and in fact we should, “be good”.

The last few months have included some difficult days in the Vittoria home. We have watched a dear friend pass away after a long illness, had a family member diagnosed with serious health issues, and over the 4^th of July weekend, I had an accident with my kids in the car. Thank goodness we’re all okay, and there is a message in here for all of us leaders, all of us human be-ings….

Be good.

This series of surprising and troubling events recently, and the people I have encountered along the way, have left me astounded. Amidst periods of sadness, confusion, frustration, and flat out anger lately, I have met some of the most caring, compassionate, sensitive, and kind people in my life. Good people.

Let me take a moment to tell you about just one of them. We’ll call him “Bill”. Everybody else does, because that’s his real name. And we can all take a page out of Bill’s playbook.

Bill is the owner of a car we smashed into this weekend. This was a freak accident, right out in front of our house, and while I’ll save you all of the details – major damage to Bill’s car, and just an unbelievable set of events that still has me shaking my head. A quick word to the parents of any teen drivers out there: don’t give your child their first driving lesson with anything of any significant value nearby. Well, unless you’re looking for a really weird way to meet your new neighbor.

So Bill comes out of his house after hearing all of the smashing and crashing, and after rubbing his bald head for about thirty seconds says: “Are you okay, and is the young lady alright?” Might have expected that right? Well, what has transpired since that moment on Saturday afternoon has renewed my faith in humanity. Bill is just a really good guy. He has reminded me about the importance, and the timeliness right now in this crazy, mixed-up world we live in; of doing what E.T. told Elliot to do almost thirty years ago – be good.

In the last three days, Bill has called my family and me three times, just to see how we are doing. Reality check – I had never met this man, and we totaled this guy’s brand new car twenty-four hours after he and his wife moved into their brand new home. Bill has told me not to worry, not to be concerned about all the insurance stuff and the repairs right now, and the hassle this might be causing him. Bill has told me, instructed me actually if you can believe this, to just take care of my family right now, and that this will all work out. He told me today on the phone: “David, you seem like a good person and I want to thank you for that. I needed to meet a good person this weekend. It had been a while”.

Are you kidding me?

When has this ever happened to any of us? When have you seen this in your workplace? When have you done this with someone you’re leading right now?

When is the last time that you lifted someone up, even after they messed up or hurt you, or threatened you in some way; and thanked them for the lesson they brought you?

When is the last time you did something for someone, and afterwards said to yourself: “Wow, that was a really good thing I just did” ?

My message to you in the post is brief, and it is pretty simple – be good. Be good today. Be good tomorrow. Be especially good at those times, in those situations, and with the people that you have been least likely in the past to display your true good-ness.

Just go be like Bill. That’s what I’m going to do.

And thanks for letting me share…I feel so much better

————————————————————————————
David Vittoria is the Founder & Chief Inspiration Officer at Ascendi – a professional training and coaching firm in Miami, Florida.
You can reach David anytime at david@ascendi.com.

Image Source: farm1.static.flickr.com

As leaders, we encounter many different types of questions, problems, and challenges during a typical day.

Often, we deal with them by doing what is commonly referred to as “gap analysis”: we take notice of where we are or what we don’t know, we visualize what we want to know or get to, and we map out a strategy to get us there.

This approach, however, is useful only in situations that have simple, independent answers. For example, “Who is the current chairman of the Federal Reserve” or “Which states in the U.S. don’t observe daylight savings time?” Each of these questions has a simple, independent response.

By one estimate, however, these types of questions or challenges account for only 5% of those encountered by leaders during a typical workday. The other 95% have complex or interdependent solutions.

For example: “What constitutes effective leadership?” or “How do we keep our employees engaged and happy?” We find the answers to these questions are not only complex but they also have components that depend on and even compete with each other. We often refer to these types of questions as dilemmas or paradoxes. Studies show that effective leaders display a marked level of ease and comfort when dealing with a paradox.

Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, describes the Stockdale paradox as it applies to business. Namely, “deal with the brutal facts of your current reality while maintaining absolute faith that you will prevail.” Similarly, Collins describes what he calls Level 5 Leaders as possessing deep personal humility with unwavering will and resolve. These apparent contradictions are found everywhere.

For example, consider the situations that require us to balance these seemingly contradictory elements:

• candor and diplomacy
• logic and creativity
• analysis vs. synthesis
• centralized vs. decentralized control

A breakthrough insight regarding paradox was articulated by Barry Johnson in his book Polarity Management. He postulates that situations having complex, interdependent solutions are not problems to be solved but polarities to be managed. For example, consider Jim Collin’s assertion that effective leadership combines personal humility with unwavering resolve. Each of these is a “pole” in Johnson’s polarity model. Clearly, either trait by itself is insufficient to achieve a desired state called “Effective Leadership.”

Instead, we have two apparently opposing conditions that depend on each other and therefore must be jointly managed.

Each pole or element in a paradox has both advantages and disadvantages. Experience shows that focusing exclusively on only one pole may generate its advantages for a short while, but its disadvantages quickly take over and the “system” falls apart.

However, the paradox-pair is sustainable and even strengthened when there is a natural flow or oscillation between each pole. The trick lies in maintaining the oscillations along the advantages of each pole, with minimal incursions into the disadvantages.

There are two important insights from the above discussion.

1. First, realize that roughly 95% of the challenges that you encounter during a typical day will follow the above polarity dynamic. Therefore, simply getting from point “A” (missed opportunities, lack of progress, losing money) to point “B” (producing results, overcoming adversity, being profitable) is insufficient. If you take a step back, you may notice a polarity at play. If so, then the task becomes one of managing the polarity vs. trying to get to an end state. Have you seen an organization that uses a centralized approach for a few years and then switches to a decentralized approach for a few more years, before switching back? That may be an example of an oscillation where the leaders don’t even realize that it’s taking place!
2. The second insight lies in adopting a paradox-pair as a personal mantra for our development as leaders. For instance, how would your leadership style evolve if you actively practiced and managed ruthless compassion, respectful irreverence, or being a peaceful warrior? What is the perfect paradox-pair that will forward your development?

One of my goals is to help people become more conscious and aware leaders. Is this one of yours? Do you consider yourself to be a consciously-connected and aware leader? Let us know how you do it!

————————————————————————————-
David Vittoria is the Founder & Chief Inspiration Officer at Ascendi – a professional training and coaching firm in Miami, Florida.
You can reach David anytime at david@ascendi.com.

Image Source: theworkoutclinic.com & wikimedia.org