Archive for category: Christopher Kiely

Leadership

This week, our guest writer Christopher Kiely writes about the ways in which Leadership can become more effective when it comes to people.

$366 billion dollars. If you spent $366 billion dollars on training only to obtain negligible to non-existent results you might start thinking you were wasting money, or at least most people would. Not corporations though. In 2019 an article by Chris Westfall for Forbes magazine¹ put the yearly global Leadership training expenditures at $366 Billion, yep Billion with a B. You can use your Doctor Evil voice, it is appropriate. $166 billion of that is apparently spent in the USA alone. The article goes on to claim most of that training does not work and then cites another article from Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board² that says 94% of corporations “plan to increase or maintain their current investment in leadership development.” Wow!

Let’s recap, $366 Billion spent, mostly on ineffective training, but the vast majority of corporations plan to continue spending on the ineffective training. This is a condemnation of leadership training in and of itself. Who has the gumption to point out the emperor has no clothes (a leadership trait BTW) when it comes to leadership training? Apparently, almost none of the people that had $366 billion spent on them.

If you Google “effective leadership” you will be presented with lists upon lists of “characteristics” and “qualities”, those seem to be the two prevalent terms used, some lists will be 6, some 10, others 12. There seems to be variation in how many qualities are required. Just as there is variation in what those qualities are, but a few do stand out. Listening, empathy and being “authentic” come up a lot. Not sure how you train those things to adults and apparently after billions spent neither do leadership trainers. 

I have been in the communication courses where we learned what designated colour or shape everyone was and how their colour or shape changes how we communicate with them, I was a blue square, for what that is worth. I have taken the course where we all learned each other’s Meyers-Briggs personalities and how to effectively work and lead different personality types. I have taken part in different forms of empathy training and team building initiatives. None of them changed anything, the next day we all went back to being ourselves and doing as we do… which is what people do, because it is what people want. They want to be themselves, warts and all. 

If you Google “define leadership” you get “the action of leading a group of people or an organization”. A not infrequent case where a form of the word being defined (i.e., leading) is being used to define the word (i.e., leadership). A leader leads. Ahhh… got it, thanks for that Google. 

What even is a leader? How does one become someone that takes part in the “action of leading a group”? Most people are simply designated leaders. Paying big bucks for some MBA or other C-suite qualifying degree from some fancy business school makes you a “leader” apparently, then you move up the leadership ladder chosen not by those you will lead but those that designate you to be the leader. Seems dubious to me. 

Some people are leaders, and some are not and most of what is learned about the basics of leadership characteristics is learned young. Most the “characteristics and qualities” used to define effective leadership are developed during youth or they are not developed or even developable at all. If billions down the drain with little to no positive results proves anything it is that training adults to be leaders doesn’t really work. Sure, you can perhaps blame some bad training, or cliche training programs with more sizzle than steak and even a leadership development industry that is more about personal branding and making money than developing leaders. There are plenty of all three.

But a follow up article³ to the initial Forbes article was written by Kevin Kruse a year later, in it he gives 6 reasons for why the money was wasted. He begins to get to the heart of the matter with “Reason #2: Training Too Late”. If you are seeing the need to train adults how to “listen” have “empathy” and be “genuine” (i.e., don’t only think and listen to yourself and try not to be a phoney). It seems to me you don’t have a training problem as much as you have a narcissist problem. Leadership training is full of these sorts of nuggets. Harvard Business School online⁴ adds “Integrity and Accountability” with “…’high moral standards’ as the most important leadership competency.” I’m not sure “morals” are a “competency”. If you are planning to train morals into a bunch of 30-something C-suiters, good luck to you.

What has happened to create a corporate culture where hating one’s boss is common, where the phrase “people don’t quit their job, they quit their boss” becomes cliché? When it is already becoming difficult to attract young talent can we really persist with known issues of decades past? There needs to be a fundamental shift in the notion of corporate leadership. You may begin to notice I like the “fundamental” changes; we’re swinging for the fences over here folks, I need to make it worth the price of the ticket for you.

That same Harvard Business School online post that talked about needing morals had “Ability to Influence Others” as the number one characteristic of being an effective leader, stating: 

“…influence is “the ability to produce effects on other people’s behavior.” Influencing others requires building a strong sense of trust with your colleagues. “This means [you] need to understand the types of resources people value when it comes to achieving safety and self-esteem,” says Harvard Business School Professor Julie Battilana.”

Uhm??? Not tell Harvard what-is-what, but that is kind of messed up. Leaders should not be seeking to “produce effects” on their employee’s behaviors by manipulating their “safety or self-esteem”, that is Machiavellian nonsense. Do we wonder why we have a narcissist problem? Do we really wonder why people hate their boss if this is what the elite schools are telling the C-Suiters? Enough with the designated top-down “leaders” and the billions wasted trying to turn adults in to caring empathizers with morals that then apparently will seek to “produce effects” on people’s behaviors by manipulating their self-esteem. What a colossal mess this whole corporate “leadership” notion has become.

I played a lot of youth sports when I was young. You know youth, when you learn empathy and morals. The best most effective team I ever played on was barely coached, it had no top-down leadership at all. We had a head coach that was always busy and a few dads that supervised us. We lost one game in two years of competitive rep-football. That team was successful because even at 12-15 years of age it had strong natural leaders, no billions needed. And they mentored a culture of caring and accountability. Where each and everyone of us knew the other had their back and would perform at the expected level and if we didn’t, we would call each other out on it, but only in the huddle and only ever that once. And if you needed help blocking the giant from the other team, you got it. All that leadership pre-Harvard business school. Wow, almost like you don’t teach that stuff…

I have spent 20 years now training various corporation’s employees all over the world. If you have been a mechanic’s trainer you know a lot of venting goes on in training sessions, perhaps this is unique to mechanics, but I don’t think so. When people are removed from their daily work environment they tend to talk, probably where the slang “talking out of class/shop” came from. They say as a trainer you learn more from the class than they do from you, it is often true. I have learned most people do indeed hate some of their bosses (there are layers) and often for good reason. I have learned some people are leaders and some are not, and some are active (in the moment) leaders, the doers, and some are passive (after the fact) leaders, the listeners. The main lesson on leadership I learned is that it is naturally occurring in almost all groups, a lesson I originally learned on the football field when I was 12. 

What most corporations fail to do is recognize, legitimize and foster it and you don’t really do that by designating anyone “the leader” or by bringing in “leaders” with big degrees from outside the group, unless you have some serious problems with current group dynamics. You foster internal groups with a sense of accountability and caring that have people that are the natural leaders of the group acting as mentors, not designated top-down authorities. If done right, you are selecting the people the group wants in those positions, no authority is required. No one needs to be “in-charge” and these types of working groups if structured right will often self-regulate to ensure no one considers themselves such. If the quarterback of a football team suddenly starts thinking he is the main man-in-charge, the offensive line quickly reminds him otherwise. If the people who are natural leaders lack the business acumen or skills to be entirely successful in the designated rolls than corporations should be training those competencies and skills, not trying to train “listening, empathy and morals” to the tune of $366 billion a year, that is a lot of college MBA degrees.

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2019/06/20/leadership-development-why-most-programs-dont-work/?sh=636f883b61de
2. https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/03/21/follow-the-leadership-spending/
3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2020/01/07/top-6-reasons-your-leadership-development-program-is-failing/?sh=764f7eea74fc
4. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/characteristics-of-an-effective-leader

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The Year That Was

Guest writer Christopher Kiely takes on the important task of the review of 2022 with his blog post: “The Year That Was.”

I was asked to write a “year in review” type reflection piece for the end of the year. As you can tell it is now past the end of 2022 and no such piece was produced. Instead, I pondered and wondered and debated and did all the usual writer’s block prolonging techniques that I have perfected over the years. If there was a market for such knowledge, I could write a book! 

The problem is, I take this lesson to heart, elucidated by many but perhaps most succinctly by Buddha:

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

2022 was a challenging year for me and many of my friends and acquaintances, and unfortunately for many people I know 2023 is continuing to provide challenges even in its nascent state. Sitting around pondering the past and predicting the future are intrinsically intwined human behaviours and this time of year when our calendar flip urges us to reflect and consider past and future there is no shortage of such behaviour. There is also no shortage of depression and anxiety surrounding this time of year. 

As Lao Tzu pointed out:

“If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.”

That is some of our oldest written human wisdom right there, often repeated throughout millennia. Yet we persist in our mind-wanderings into fictional futures and misrepresented pasts, ignoring the reality of the present for the dream images of the past or the imaginative dilemmas of invented futures. We have become consumed with such things in our culture. Tearing down symbols of our past while making plans and predictions about our future based on ill-conceived computational models. We spend remarkably little time in the present. Perhaps if we did, we would solve our more “present problems” such as homelessness and poverty rather than trying to right past injustices (a fool’s errand) or get to Mars in an EV spaceship (a fool’s goal).

Time is a glittering light for most of us. A shiny beacon we can hardly take our eyes off or shift our mind from. It is all around us, on our phones, on our wrists, on our walls, glowing from billboards and signalled at quarter hours by bells and cuckoos. Yet we don’t even really know what it is. We can explain it chronologically, “time is the continued sequence of existence… blahblahblah”. But where does it go when we sleep, when we no longer perceive it and its best-friend space? It becomes an illusion. 

As my best-friend I never met Alan Watts points out:

“We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between a causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality.”

“Out of touch with reality” is how more and more of us are beginning to see the world we live in. At least those of us that have broken away from the institutional propaganda we have been conditioned to accept as our past, present and future. These are the people I write for. Those of us that have deeply felt the absurdity of it all. This is not something you can explain or convince someone of, much like faith, proselytizing to the nonbelievers is typically futile and it requires the same “knowing as a feeling” as opposed to rational thinking, in a world where rational thought is governed by that which you perceive as part and parcel of the absurdity.

So, I don’t spend too much time recalling the past or gazing toward an uncertain future, a terrible person to ask to write a “year in review” piece. But not the worst person to provide some trite rehashed “New Year’s Wisdom” you can discard with your new gym membership in a few months? Perhaps. We’re going to give ’er a go regardless.

Living purely in the moment is a nice notion, suitable for monks and bong-smoking couch dwellers. One can disappear into such existence if one chooses a devoutly ascetic life. Most of us are not conditioned to such a lifestyle however and, illusion or not, must actively participate in time. Appointments are made, meetings scheduled, future KPIs, goals and objectives are set. We are flooded with past data, asked to recall and recollect, urged to review past earnings and performance. It is easy to lose that “infinitesimal hairline” of reality when one actively participates in the absurdity. But actively participate we should and often must! 

Where then do we find the time for the present, for the moment, for the now?  Remember in school when you were told not to daydream? They lied to you. 

As our good friend Albert Camus counters:

“Imagination offers people consolation for what they cannot be and humor for what they actually are.”

Imagination allows us to escape Lao Tzu’s “anxiety” and “depression” of time. It places us in the creative now and, contrary again to what we have been taught, creativity requires no great technique beyond the ability to daydream. The institutional ideas and standards for creativity are housed in systems and techniques (music, photography, oil painting, sculpture, etc.…) that one must train and develop. To connect to the present moment, many people and organizations preach the need for meditation or “mindfulness” never confessing the difficulty or even discord some may find in the practice, especially initially. But the pay off for creativity needs no marble statue or voluminous published works, one can be the crafter of epic works in their mind, the benefit of the imagination, of the exercising of creativity is the same, regardless of tactile outcomes. And connecting to the present moment does not require the quiet undisturbed still-mindedness of a Zen master. 

The mind can be allowed to wander, to question and create on its own, the need to silence it is overstated. Discovering the mind is just like your lungs, and one can actively think as they actively breath or leave both the breathing and thinking to natural impulses we don’t directly control, or understand, is the real secret to “mindfulness”. By understanding your thinking is not you and letting it flow rather than trying to cling to thoughts, one can develop a contemplative imaginative creativity that has no technique beyond the manifestations of one’s own mind and use that to manifest profound change in their lives. Getting lost in imagination, creating in your mind the things you want to see, hear, do, be; whether they are works that have associated technique or not, (this is your imagination after all and no systems or techniques are required), is a powerful place to be. In that place, a place all of us knew the directions to when we were young, lies the current moment, and as close as we get to “reality”. Love and peace are only found in this moment, there is no past or future love and peace that is real, only the love and peace of the “now” is felt. This is why they condition imagination out of us and attempt to place it behind a wall of institutionally approved techniques.

This year I hope you are all able to shift your focus and avoid the depression of misremembered pasts and anxiety of speculative futures to find that “infinitesimal hairline” and spend some time there each day, whether in mindfulness or imagination. The more time you spend there, and one of the reasons you were encouraged not to, the more likely you are to find that other “knowing as a feeling” that lingers around in the inner quiet creative moments of the here and now, what Charles Bukowski knew and felt when writing The Laughing Heart, and what I will share as my “rehashed wisdom” and wish for you in this New Year:

The Laughing Heart

 

your life is your life

don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is a light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you can’t beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

and the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvelous

the gods wait to delight

in you.

 

Charles Bukowski – The Laughing Heart

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