By now, pretty much everyone has heard of the elevator speech.  You know the drill, describe what you’re working on, why it matters and what the other person can do to help in 60 seconds or less.  I’ve read lately that the Tweet is the new elevator speech.  Can you describe what you’re working and why it’s important in 140 characters or less?  It’s all about the idea behind the famous line from T.S. Eliot, “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”  It takes time and effort to boil down the essence of what you’re trying to do to a short and memorable idea.

Regular readers of this blog and anyone who’s heard me deliver a presentation lately  know that I am a huge fan of Tiger Woods.  His level of focus and commitment to continuous improvement are great examples for leaders.  So, I was mildly bummed when Tiger wasn’t able to overcome an 11 shot deficit and ended up finishing four shots behind the winner of the U.S. Open this past weekend.

You’re not tuning into this blog for a sports report, however, so it’s fair to ask, “What’s the point on leadership?”  Well, sometimes we can learn as much from less than perfect examples as we can from the perfect ones.  Tiger provided us with a couple of those at Bethpage Black last weekend.

My goal this morning is to leave you with some food for thought over the next few days.  This has been a week when I’ve had the opportunity to coach leaders in a number of different situations and settings.  I’ve been impressed and humbled in each instance by the conscious nature of leadership that I’ve seen.  My main contribution has been to frame up some questions and create some space for the leaders to observe themselves and determine what their next moves should be.  I thought I’d share some of those questions with you today.

A couple of days ago, I put out a question to my LinkedIn network on the best conferences for plugging in to fresh thinking on innovation and leadership.  The answers are still coming in, but so far the overwhelming favorite is the series of conferences known as TED. If you’re not familiar with TED, the good news is that the organizers have a very robust web site with dozens of videos of their best speakers online.

I’ve been spending some time browsing the site and one of my favorites is a four and a half minute clip of advertising exec and expert rock climber Matthew Childs talking about nine lessons he’s learned from rock climbing.  I’m not a rock climber myself (although I’m very proud of the fact that I’ve scaled the 40 foot high rock climbing wall at a local sporting goods store.  Kind of like staying at a Holiday Inn Express last night.), but I appreciated the applicability of Childs’ lessons to leadership in general.

Here are five of my favorites from Childs’ TED talk:

Sunday’s Washington Post ran a front page feature article reviewing the first two years of Michelle Rhee’s tenure as the chancellor of Washington, D.C.’s public school system.  Thanks in part to extensive national coverage like the Time magazine cover to the right, Rhee has become the face of education reform in the United States.  As the article notes, what’s playing well nationally isn’t playing so well at home.  In fact, it begins by recounting the story of D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray asking Rhee when the Time cover came out, "Michelle, why would you agree to be photographed with a broom on the cover of Time magazine?" He had a couple of follow up questions for her including "What does it get you, to constantly bash those you're trying to get to help you?" and "Why did you let the picture be taken in the first place?”

Those are some pretty good questions the Chairman asked. Rhee herself acknowledges that she has made some missteps in her first two years in the job and that the grade for the DC public school system thus far is an incomplete at best. Reporter Bill Turque does a nice job of summarizing Rhee’s lessons learned thus far as:

Lesson 1: Fame Can Backfire – Rhee’s national celebrity has alienated some of her key constituencies like DC teachers and parents.

Lesson 2: Money Doesn't Always Talk – A potential 61% increase in base pay for teachers won’t get you very far if they don’t trust you.

Lesson 3: Politics Matters – As Willy Loman’s wife, Linda, said in Death of a Salesman, “Attention must be paid.”  If you’re working in a political environment as Rhee is, you have to pay attention to the politicians.

Lesson 4: Beware Unintended Consequences – It’s called a school system for a reason.  As is the case with any system, when you change one variable (e.g. closing schools, reducing central staff, adjusting pay plans), the entire system changes, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Being a smart and talented person,  Rhee has adjusted her approach in some ways perhaps most notably in paying more attention to the City Council and teachers’ unions. Still, in reading between the lines of Turque’s article, I think I see some indicators of potential future trouble for Rhee.  These add up to caveats for any leader charged with securing radically different results. Not that she’s asked, but here’s my advice for Rhee and leaders in comparable situations:

Years ago, when I was a corporate executive myself, I read and re-read Kevin Cashman’s Leadership from the Inside Out.  (A second edition has recently been released which I encourage you to buy.)  With its emphasis on the leader as a whole person, Kevin’s book really helped me get up on the balcony and look at the bigger picture of what I was trying to do, what really mattered and how I need to show up to make all of that more likely.  The time I spent with Leadership from the Inside Out had a lot to do with why I became an executive coach eight and a half years ago.  As Kevin would say, coaching is my “sweet spot.”

So, being such a fan of Kevin’s work, you can imagine how happy I was to hear him deliver the keynote presentation last week at the annual meeting of the Washington, DC chapter of the International Coach Federation.  He did not disappoint.  In his talk, Kevin shared 11 things he’s learned in 30 years of coaching leaders.  It was all good, but here are a few of his points that hit home with me that I want to share with you:

My friend, Dan McCarthy of the Great Leadership Blog (Dan just gives, gives, gives and never takes.), is hosting his monthly Leadership Carnival with the wit and/or wisdom of more than 30 leadership bloggers including yours truly.

Last week I was coaching a group of high-potential leaders moving up to the executive level. Our topic was “organizational presence,” which was on point since many of these folks are working on expanding their networks beyond their immediate areas of responsibility. 

When I lead a group coaching session, I like to have everyone share examples of what they’re doing to improve their leadership skills in “real life.”  It was striking to hear the results that several leaders were getting by being intentional about asking more questions in meetings. There were two big tips in the stories. Here they are along with a “bonus tip” I shared with the group.

The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor has sparked an interesting public discussion on the place of empathy in the justice system.  As usual, there are people lining up on the left and the right to argue for or against empathy playing a role in forming the opinions of a judge.

When people are engaged in a debate on a word, I think it’s usually a good idea to first look up the definition of that word. 

If you skew a little bit “old school,” you probably remember a series of TV ads for Dunkin’ Donuts that featured a shop manager who wearily woke up at 3:00 am every day with the mordant refrain, “Time to make the donuts.”  My wife recently saw a bumper sticker with the (edited here for public consumption) phrase, “Freakin’ Donuts.”  If you’re old enough to remember, then you’re in on the joke.  Sometimes life can feel like it’s just one more day of making the donuts.

I find this happens when you get overly focused on the tasks that stack up in front of you.  All those donuts can cause you to lose sight of the bigger purpose and picture.  Leaders (and I definitely include myself here), need to pull the lens back on a regular basis and ask themselves, “What really matters to me?”  Getting clear on your answers to that question can help you clarify your priorities and even come up with some innovative ways to address them.

So, how did I come up with this point and why am I bringing it up now?  Well, it so happens that I’m married to a really excellent coach named Diane who asked me last night to make a list of the things that matter to me.  Once we covered the basics (e.g. strong marriage, healthy kids, food and shelter), I moved on to other things that matter to me.  Since I’m a leadership coach, one of the obvious answers is leadership.  But, if you think about it, good leadership is a means to an end.  So, Diane kept asking, “What else matters to you?”  Here’s my list:

As an executive coach and someone who spends a lot of my time trying to figure out how leaders can be more effective, you can imagine how excited I was to learn that there is all kinds of new data out on employee satisfaction in the federal government. The Partnership for Public Service has released the results of its biannual Best Places to Work in the Federal Government report. Being the total leadership geek that I am, it’s been a lot of fun for me to get online and sort through the 74 employee survey questions that the study is based upon. What’s even more fun for me is the direct comparison between the public and private sectors on 13 benchmark questions from the Best Places to Work studies.

(I know what you’re thinking.  “Wow, he needs to find a hobby or something.”  You may be right, but hang with me as I’m getting to the really good stuff.)

The level of public discourse and obvious self interest on the part of people in leadership positions can be pretty discouraging. Oftentimes, it seems like the first instinct of leaders under pressure is to call names, deny responsibility and look out only for their self interest. It literally seems childish.

On the other hand, we sometimes have the privilege of seeing leaders in action who demonstrate maturity through reasoned, principled responses and generally acting like grown-ups should act. Over the past week, I’ve noticed three public sector leaders who have done that. There are some basic principles these leaders demonstrated that I think all leaders should strive to emulate.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are coming to DC tonight.  Unfortunately, I don’t have tickets but I do have an iPod full of the Boss’s music and great memories of a Springsteen show I saw a few years ago.  What is it about Springsteen and the band that inspires such loyalty among their legions of followers?  Apart from drifting on rock and roll fantasies, what can leaders learn from the Boss and the heart stopping, house rocking, earth shaking, legendary E Street Band?

In a brief interview with the Washington Post's J. Freedom du Lac (how’s that for a very cool name?), E Street guitarist Nils Lofgren provides some insights on the Boss for leaders who want to rock the house.

Last Saturday, I took my mom, dad and son into D.C. to see the Newseum, the Freedom Forum’s monument to journalism and free speech.  It’s a beautiful new building situated on Pennsylvania Avenue with an amazing view of the U.S. Capitol.  It also feels like a mausoleum to something that’s almost dead.  Literally the first thing you see before you even enter the building is a long row of display cases on the sidewalk with the daily front pages of newspapers from all 50 states.  One of the next things you see is a wall inside the building with more of the day’s front pages of newspapers from all 50 states and a few foreign countries.  After that, you can walk through a large room with pull out display cases of newspapers from 400 years of history through the present.  Leaving that room, you come upon a tribute to the journalism of 9/11.  What draws your eye is a large wall of reproductions of newspaper front pages covering the attack on the World Trade Center.

Do you sense a theme here?  Newspapers are at the heart of the Newseum.  Sure, there are exhibits on television and radio journalism.  There’s a bit on internet based journalism, but those exhibits feel like they were grudgingly bolted on by the curators.  It’s clear that when the Newseum was designed and built over the last several years that it was primarily about newspapers.  I think what it has turned out to be is a reminder of what happens when leaders become so wedded to a delivery channel or a process that they ignore what’s changing in the world around them.

Readers in the Washington, DC area are probably familiar with the annual White House Correspondents Dinner.  The latest edition took place over the weekend.  Often described as DC’s version of the senior prom, the dinner is an opportunity for journalists and politicians to dress up, make jokes at each other’s expense and to gawk at all of the celebrity guests that are invited by different media organizations. In addition to the biggest celebrity, the President, the guest list included Eva Longoria Parker, Sting, Natalie Portman, Steven Spielberg and Jon Bon Jovi. 

No doubt, there were some interesting conversations going on and, as you can see on this You Tube clip, the president delivered a pretty funny stand-up comedy routine.

What do newly suspended slugger Manny Ramirez and newly less-senior U.S.  Senator Arlen Specter have in common?  Nothing you say?  Au contraire.  I’d suggest that until very recently, perhaps, they both considered themselves to be bigger than the game they played.

In his latest New Yorker article, “How David Beats Goliath,”  Malcolm Gladwell tells stories of how outmatched underdogs beat their much larger, more experienced competitors. He begins with the story of an inexperienced 12 year old girls basketball team that went all the way to the national championship game by running a relentless full court press every game.  He moves onto the story of David slaying Goliath and cites some fascinating research by Harvard political scientist Ivan Arreguin-Toft who studied every war fought in the last 200 years that pitted strong and weak opponents against each other.  On the whole, the underdogs won 28% of the time. When they recognized their weaknesses and adapted their strategies to compensate for them they won 64% of the time.

Pretty stunning, huh?  Gladwell’s article got me thinking about what leaders need to learn from underdogs.  Over the past seven months, as the Federal government has taken a much more active role in stimulating the economy, reviving the financial services sector and restructuring the auto industry, we’ve been regularly reminded of Richard Nixon’s observation in 1971 (and Milton Friedman’s before that) that, “We are all Keynesians now.”  As we move through the downturn and into recovery, perhaps leaders need to adopt the mindset of, “We are all underdogs now.”  With that in mind, here are three success rules of underdogs that can help leaders facing long odds.

The latest Leadership Lessons podcast features the insights of Kimball Hall, a terrific young executive at Amgen, a Fortune 500 leader in biotechnology based human therapeutics.  Kimball is the site manager for the 1,000 employee Amgen facility in Providence, RI where her team manufactures Enbrel, a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.

In our conversation, Kimball talks about what she’s learned in making the transition from an individual contributor focused on microbiology to an executive with responsibility for a 24x7 operation manufacturing a critical product. In addition to her role within Amgen, Kimball serves on the boards of a number of statewide organizations supporting the economic development of Rhode Island.    In our talk, she reflects on how her internal and external roles have shaped her as a leader.

Everyone’s talking about President Obama’s first 100 days and how he’s doing so far.  Since Obama is the ultimate case of a leader moving up to the next level, I thought I’d add my assessment by offering a report card on his performance as measured against the Next Level model of executive presence.  As outlined in my book, The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success, and summarized in the table below, executive leadership presence can be broken down into nine behavioral distinctions that leaders need to either pick up or let go of.  And those nine distinctions match up with three big categories of executive leadership behaviors: personal presence, team presence and organizational presence.

So, how is the President doing after his first 100 days of leading at the next level?  Read on for a point by point breakdown and an overall GPA.

One of the basics in the senior leader’s communications repertoire is the town hall meeting.  Sometimes (oftentimes?), these meetings can really run off the rails.  When they do, it’s usually because the leader comes in without the answers that people care most about.  Another classic mistake is to come in with the desired information but to deliver it in a way that shows no connection whatsoever with the people in the audience.

Fortunately for all of us, there aren’t many town hall meetings on the subject of what leaders are doing  to prevent a global pandemic of influenza.  But, that’s exactly what three senior leaders took on in front of the White House press corps that Sunday afternoon.  To share what the government is doing to deal with the rapidly developing outbreak of a new strain of swine flu, homeland security advisor John Brennan, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control Richard Besser and Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano took to the airwaves.  By chance, I watched it on CNN as it happened and I have to say it was a best practice example of how to conduct a town hall meeting.  (If you missed the briefing, you can watch it here. If you want more information on swine flu and how to stay healthy, visit the CDC website here. In about 20 minutes, these government leaders showed how it should be done when it comes to the what and how of conducting a successful town hall meeting.

Here’s what I saw in their briefing and what leaders can learn from their example.

In just about every presentation I’ve given to leaders since last fall, I’ve recommended that everyone order their own personal copy of Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change by William Bridges. I’ll make the same recommendation to you. If you’re a leader and you don’t have a copy of this book, you need it. After you’re done reading this post, get on Amazon and buy it.

Bridges’ book is a manual (it even includes checklists) for dealing with the biggest challenge facing leaders today which is moving everyone towards a new reality. One of my favorite lines when I was a manager and remains so today as a coach is that it’s important to understand the difference between what should be and what is.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort these days to find examples of people that are stuck on what “should be” rather than what is.

Last week, I had the honor of keynoting the annual Executive Fire Officer Program graduate symposium sponsored by the U.S. Fire Administration.  One of the things I sometimes do is ask members of my audience what they think about an important question and then share their answers with you.

Looking for some clear lessons in productive ways to receive feedback?  Or, conversely, some excellent examples of how not to receive feedback?  Well, if you are, there’s this TV show that runs on Tuesday nights that is full of examples on both sides of the equation.  You may have heard of it.  It’s something I like to call American Idol.

OK, before you bail on me and think I’ve become a total pop culture bubblehead, let me explain myself.  Yes, I will acknowledge that Idol is one of my guilty pleasures. (After all, man cannot live by the Harvard Business Review alone. )  That said, if you watch it with a bit of a leadership development lens on, you can actually learn a lot about what talented people do or don’t do with constructive feedback.

I’ve identified at least six models for receiving feedback from watching the show.  Two of them are worth emulating and four need to be avoided at all cost.  Interested in which one might apply to you or some of the people on your team?  Read on.

In my line of work as an executive coach, one of the most frequent opportunities I see for smart and talented leaders to be even better is to improve their listening skills.  What is often the case with really bright people is that they have so many ideas and so much energy  they end up dominating conversations and creating a disconnect with everyone else in the room. You’ve probably seen this.  It happens all the time.

One of my clients is a newly promoted executive in his firm.  He fits the profile I’m talking about.  He is an extremely intelligent guy and an innovator in a very technical and fast moving field.  He is full of ideas and enthusiasm and can’t wait to share his ideas with you.  It’s all really charming in a way.  The problem is that his colleagues and the more senior executives in the firm have complained that he sucks the air out of a conversation by not leaving space for others to contribute.  Not a great situation for long term career development, right?

With my client’s permission, I want to share with you the technique he’s used to listen more and talk less over the past three months. I know from talking with his colleagues that it’s working and that they’re a lot happier with him now than they were at the beginning of the year. 

So, what’s the magic answer to his rapid improvement? It’s simple really. He’s keeping score. Here’s how he’s doing it and what he’s learned in the process.

One thing is for sure about living in 2009. You don’t have to look very hard to find examples of what happens when people lose their grip on the boundaries that previously brought order to their lives.  Let’s take a look at a few examples that range from the seemingly ridiculous to the very serious to see what the common denominator lessons might be.