Bear’s Tips for Would-Be Leaders

Image by Teak Sato

. . . because we are all leaders at times.

A teacher was sitting at her desk grading papers when her first grade class came back from lunch. One of her students informed her, “Robert has to go to the principal’s office.”

“I wonder why?” the teacher mused.

“Because he’s a following person,” the child replied.

“A what?” the teacher asked.

“It came over the loudspeaker: ‘The following persons are to go to the office.’”

If some people are following persons, then others must be leading persons. And actually, we are each followers and leaders at different times. Sometimes we drive the bus, sometimes we’re along for the ride or we help navigate. But if you are ever in a leading position, this advice from college football coaching legend “Bear” Bryant about how to get the best from those around you can be useful.

“I’m just a plow hand in Arkansas,” Bear said, “but I have learned how to hold a team together. How to lift some men up, how to calm down others, until finally they’ve got one heartbeat together, a team. There are just three things I’d ever say: ‘If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes real good, then you did it.’ That’s all it takes to get people to win football games for you.”

I think that is advice worth remembering, no matter who we are, but particularly for anyone who might find themselves in a leading role. Call them Bear’s tips for would-be leaders:

1. When you’re involved in any endeavor that doesn’t go well, assume appropriate responsibility for the outcome. No excuses. Nurse Florence Nightingale said, “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.” If you’re in charge and it doesn’t go well, let it be on you. Good leaders can take it.

2. When the outcome isn’t brilliant, but still okay, share the success with others. No leader achieves anything alone and everyone else can use the boost. Above all, never look for somebody to blame. We take credit for the good and bad together.

3. Finally, when things go especially well, give credit to others. Do you remember what T. S. Eliot said? “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.” Let go of a need for personal recognition. Heap kudos on others and they’ll perform even better next time. Leaders are only as good as those who follow them and followers are at their best when leaders are quick to give credit for successes.

There they are – Bear’s tips for would-be leaders. Follow them and you’ll find more success the next time you’re a leading person.

- Steve Goodier

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More Light and Less Noise

Image by Nathan Lounds

A great story from one of America's greatest story-tellers, Abraham Lincoln, was apparently related by the president during those anxious days of the American Civil War. A delegation of well-meaning patriots tried to impress upon the president the gravity of the war. They implied that his administration was neither as wise nor good as it ought to be. He listened carefully, then responded with a memorable anecdote.

He told them that he once had a neighbor who found himself in a tight situation. The neighbor was traveling home one dark and rainy night. There were few bridges in the country and he came to a stream that he would have to ford. But because of the darkness and the rain, he couldn't see well enough to know just where to cross.

Lightning flashed and he saw his way for the briefest moment. But the man was perplexed because there seemed to be more thunder than lightning. He was convinced that every lightning flash was followed by several loud peals of thunder. The poor man just stood at the edge of the stream in his confusion about how to proceed. He finally prayed, "O Lord, if it is just the same to you, give me more light and less noise."

The delegation clearly got the point that the president needed more solutions and less complaining – more light and less noise.

The world can use more light and less noise. More solvers and fewer blamers. More folks showing a better way and fewer folks complaining about how much better things used to be. More folks offering help and fewer folks wringing their hands about the problems. More hope bringers and fewer hope killers.

To use another image…the sun rises every morning and sheds light, vanquishing the night's darkness. The rooster also rises every morning only, unlike the sun, he simply makes noise. But the darkness of the night is dispelled by sunshine, not by the rooster's crowing. 

The world can use more light and less noise. Wherever I can, I want to be light.

-- Steve Goodier

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Losing the Desire to Judge

Image by Ahmed Al-Shukaili

“Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings,” says writer Margaret Halsey, “they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters.” That's funny, and more true than I care to admit. It must have been so with members of the US Congress in the early 20th Century. Many of them seemed less concerned with their own piddling shortcomings and preferred to wail about a staring defect in the senator from the state of Utah, Reed Smoot. So outraged were they, Smoot almost was not seated in the senate.

Reed Smoot was a leader in the Mormon (LDS) Church and, back in those days, his church was accused of secretly allowing the practice of plural marriages (polygamy). Although Smoot had only one wife, some of the more sanctimonious members of the senate argued that he should not be seated, given the beliefs of his church.

But the issue was settled when Senator Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania strode to the podium and looked directly at some of his colleagues who, though married, were known to “womanize.” He stated emphatically, “As for me, I would prefer to have seated beside me in the Senate a polygamist who doesn’t polyg than a monogamist who doesn’t monog.” End of matter.

I understand there are times we have to be discerning. But I don't want to be known as a judging person. There is good and bad in all of us and I have plenty to work on in my own life.
  
Besides, I think Mother Teresa got it right when she said: “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.  And, it should be added, if you love people, you have no desire to judge them. Substitute the word “love” with the words “understand” or “know,” and it works just as well. If you understand people, if you know them, truly know them, you have no desire to judge them.

Losing the desire to judge – now that can change a life.

– Steve Goodier 

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Resisting the Blame Game

Image courtesy of Kavitha Shivan

A mother heard the family cat yowl in pain. She knew where to look – she looked for her son, Mike. “Stop pulling the cat’s tail, Michael!” she chided.

“I’m not pulling his tail,” the boy retorted. “I’m just standing on it. He’s doing the pulling.”

He, of course, is no different than any of us. Often, our first impulse is to blame someone or something else for problems. It’s the cat’s fault. Or the school’s fault. Or my parents’ fault.

I once heard a story of a 40-year-old woman who was jogging in a U. S. state park when she was attacked and killed by a mountain lion. Her family immediately filed suit against the state because of its “failure to manage the mountain lion population” and because it didn’t “react to reports of cougar activity in the area by posting warning signs.”

But an interesting thing happened. Her distraught husband felt it was wrong to blame the state or anyone else for his wife’s death, even though he stood to possibly win a small fortune. Against her family’s wishes, he dropped the law suit. “Barbara and I have always taken responsibility for our own actions,” he explained. “Barbara chose to run in the wild and, on a very long shot, she did not come back. This is not the fault of the state, and people should take responsibility for themselves.”

I would like to meet that man. He no doubt believes that the Blame Game is a no-win in the long run. He seems like a person who would rather spend time fixing what’s broken than fixing the blame for it on someone else.

This isn’t about law suits – it’s more about whether we are essentially victims of life or whether we are powerful and responsible people. An important step in gaining mastery over your life is to resist the urge to make something or someone else responsible. Like novelist J. K. Rowling (of Harry Potter fame) said to graduating Harvard students, “There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.” Certainly background and circumstances have influenced who we are, but who is responsible for the person we become?

An important decision I made was to resist playing the Blame Game. The day I realized that I am in charge of how I will approach problems in my life, that things will turn out better or worse because of me and nobody else, that was the day I knew I would be a happier and healthier person. And that was the day I knew I could truly build a life that matters.

-- Steve Goodier


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