RLL 21: 'Pups Under the Bed: Consistency is Key'

'Pups Under the Bed: Consistency Is Key'

Last night, we had a pretty giant rainstorm. The noise of the rain woke both my wife and me in the dark hours of the early morning. The other noise that woke us, though, was of one of our dogs whining outside our bedroom door. This is not entirely unusual, because our newer dog (Bruiser) has a habit of waking us in the night to let him outside to go to the bathroom. However, when we heard the noise of the rain, we realized that 'outside' is the very last place this dog wanted to go right now. He wanted in our bedroom, where we were, because he was afraid of the storm.

The pups love getting to be on the couch at their grandparents' house!

Our other dog, Butterscotch, is also very afraid of storms: the noise, the lightning, all of it causes her to shudder and whine and find a place where she can bunker down until the weather improves. We don't know if our dogs are afraid of storms just as a part of their natural make-up--I know lots of pet owners have dogs with similar feelings about bad weather--or if it is more due to their background. What we do know is this: when there is bad weather, the dogs absolutely want to be wherever we are.

So when Bruiser woke us in the middle of the night, my wife got up and let Bruiser into our bedroom. Most nights he sleeps in my recliner in the den, in part because he likes it and in part because Bruiser is a bit of a loud sleeper most of the time: he's part bulldog and thus makes that snuffly-snoring noise a lot. But last night, after being allowed to come into our room, he was as quiet as a mouse. When I woke up this morning, both dogs came crawling out from under our bed (that's Butterscotch's usual sleep spot at night), ready to begin the day.

In that moment, I was struck by the dogs and how they operate like clockwork: when there is bad weather, they find us. They need to know that they are going to be protected and safe and dry. They need consistency, and they need to be reassured about it on a regular basis. And I find this is true in our positions of leadership as well. We need to provide models of consistency and stability for our audiences: our children, our employees, our players, whatever it may be.

They also love getting into the recliner whenever anyone sits down! 

This principle is true throughout life: we may not always like or agree with whatever the rules are, but as long as they are being enforced consistently we can live with them. On the other side of the coin, when there is a situation that needs to be reconciled, we appreciate knowing that whoever is in charge will take care of it, and that provides us with stability and confidence in our leaders. This is the type of leadership we should strive to exercise: consistent and stable.

When we are inconsistent with our leadership, when we only enforce the rules occasionally, there will almost always be problems. This is true in a home when a child never really knows the boundaries because the parents are permissive one day and ultra-strict the next (for more on this, read any of the amazing books by Dr. Kevin Leman). This is true in a town when the laws are applied unfairly, even seemingly small things such as who gets pulled over in a speed trap. This is true in a company when certain employees are allowed to get away with shirking their duties while others have to pick up the slack. Inconsistency always leads to confusion, and this almost inevitably turns into frustration and anger.

Remember how frustrating it was as a child when your sibling got away with something that you got in trouble for? Or as a student when some classmates got away with the same behavior that got you reprimanded? Or even as an adult when we see injustice in the news or in our own towns? These issues are all due to inconsistency in leadership, and it is up to us, the leaders, to provide the consistency and stability that can solve these problems.

So today, let's commit to being consistent leaders, leaders who can be depended upon for stability in our organizations. Let us provide our audiences with confidence, because they know that whatever happens, we will be there to help sort it out. This will require wisdom, and it will require humility, so also be sure to ask a few trusted advisers to point out to you any areas of inconsistency that they see, in order that you can improve in these areas.

Action Step: Look for areas of inconsistency in your life and leadership, and decide on one way in which you can address the issue and provide more consistency for those in your charge.

RLL 20--Church Camp and Yellow Card: Difficult Conversations and Leadership

Church Camp and Yellow Card:

Difficult Conversations

This past weekend was a busy one in the Hawbaker household: one daughter had a Friday night soccer game followed by a weekend-long church camp. The other daughter had a basketball tournament all day Saturday, and my wife’s family was celebrating Chinese New Year (her brother’s family adopted a young girl from China a couple years ago, and so this has become a new family tradition). In addition to all of those things, my soccer team had a tournament as well, and so I was busy coaching most of the weekend.

After the rush ended this morning, I was reflecting on the various events, and in doing so I was struck by one common theme that came up for me which has a direct bearing on leadership: difficult conversations and why they are necessary. For me, there were three such talks that particularly stood out this weekend: one conversation with my daughter, one with a referee, and one with an opposing coach. What they all had in common was that they were focused on topics that make me uneasy, or which required me to accept responsibility for things I had done poorly. But, after having engaged in all three of them I also came away realizing that each situation was better because of having had those conversations.

The first conversation was with my daughter on Friday afternoon, and it was admittedly the least difficult of the three. She is almost fourteen years old, and the topic of the conversation was about friends and boys and young teenage relationships in general. I have never been a fan of my daughters growing up, mostly because I remember being a teenage boy and thus am familiar with how they think. I also know that, no matter what I do, the girls will grow up; and so, I know the best thing is to continue having these difficult conversations, even when they make me uncomfortable.

Hanging out with the daughters on a fun afternoon

Thankfully, my older daughter is very open with me when we talk: she tells me about the boy she likes, and she tells me how her friends tease her about it. She tells me about how the other boys in her group of friends give her a hard time and make her face turn red. And she tells me how excited she gets when she sees the particular boy that she likes. All of these things make me varying degrees of uncomfortable, for different reasons: it’s hard that she’s growing up, and I want to protect her from teasing and from heartache, and yet I know that those are situations that she mostly will have to learn to navigate on her own.

Thus, as her father, the best thing I can do is to try to provide guidance so that when she is faced with various situations she is as prepared as possible to make good decisions. As a leader, this is what we must do in our various contexts, whether at home at work or in a volunteer position. When there is a difficult issue, I know that many times the easiest option is to ignore it and hope that it works itself out, but I also know from experience that that rarely occurs. Thus it becomes necessary to have these conversations in order to facilitate a better environment or culture for the group. In this case, the goal of having these talks with my older daughter is to help her make decisions that are good for her in both the short term and the long term.

The other two conversations revolved around my soccer tournament this weekend. During our Friday night game, the play was very physical and rather heated, and I became concerned that players might get hurt. In my frustration I purposely yelled in such a way as to force the referee to issue me a yellow card, which (for those who are unfamiliar with soccer terminology) is an official warning and type of rebuke. If a coach or player receives two in the same game, he or she is ejected and cannot return. In addition to that, while things were still heated, I had a verbal exchange with the opposing coach, which almost never goes well. He responded in kind, and both of us came across looking rather immature and setting a poor example for our players. Those mistakes were actually the easier parts of the situation.

The hard part was that when the game ended Friday night, I felt unsettled about the whole situation. I knew I had behaved poorly and that I needed to attempt to reconcile those situations. So I went to the referee and I apologized for yelling the way I had. I still didn’t agree with her decisions, nor did I appreciate how she approached the situation. However, the truth of the matter is that, as the referee, her decisions are the ones that matter; my opinion is merely my opinion, and it makes no difference in her decision-making. As I told my team afterward, I had treated her merely as a referee, and in doing so I failed to treat her as a person who is refereeing.

The same thing was true in my exchange with the opposing coach. I unconsciously ceased to view him as a person, instead viewing him as just an opponent, and when I did that I allowed my frustration to get the better of me. However, I also knew that after the game I was still not in a great frame of mind to try to apologize, and so I waited and then went and found him in between games on Saturday. We talked, we both apologized and shook hands, and I believe we both went away from the exchange feeling better. He admitted that he hadn’t taken my words personally, that he knew it was all in the heat of competition, and I appreciated his honesty. We still didn’t agree about the game or some of the calls, but now we were disagreeing cordially, as opposed to disagreeing angrily. And the difference there is crucial to leadership.

Disagreements that become personal often become elevated very quickly, and then the disagreement often morphs into personal attacks rather than just a disagreement about an external situation. We also observe this in family life, when what started as a disagreement over what television channel to watch turns into a name-calling fest where feelings and relationships are damaged.

In sports, as in life, it’s very easy to forget that people are people, and so we often treat workers as workers rather than as people who are working at a particular job. Think of the hotel clerks, waiters, or cashiers that we have all seen mistreated by irritable customers (and remember that sometimes we are those irritable customers). In family situations we often allow our emotions to get the best of us and we resort to personal attacks, using hurtful names or bringing up often irrelevant past wrongs simply for the sake of ‘winning’ an argument. (Does that ever really happen? There’s a chapter about that topic in my book coming out this summer!)

But when we remember that people are people, and we try to treat them with the respect that all humans deserve, it makes us more humble. When I’m angry about a referee’s call, I need to be reminded that the referee’s decision matters more than mine; that’s not always fun or even fair, but it’s still true. And how often do we say that sort of things to children and young people? “Life’s not fair.” It’s true for adults, too, though we often tend to forget it in our pride. As leaders, we cannot afford to let our pride cause us to dehumanize people, though this will happen to all of us. And when others dehumanize us and attack us, we must have the maturity and humility not to respond on kind. On the occasions when we have failed at both of those, as we inevitably will, may God grant us the humility and grace to go back and apologize and seek forgiveness, in the name of restoring good relationships.

Action Step: What difficult conversation do you need to have with someone in your circle? Ask yourself why you have been avoiding having it, and then decide if it’s worth it to continue putting it off.

RLL 19: Listening as Leadership

Real Life Leading #19:

Listening as Leadership

My older daughter and I goofing off when we're supposed to be doing a photo session.

One night this past week, I received an amazing compliment from my teenage daughter. I had tucked her in at bedtime (I’ll keep doing this as long as she lets me), and then she and I had started talking. After ten minutes, I realized she really did need to go to sleep because she had school the next morning. I mentioned this to her, and she responded with something that brought tears to my eyes. She said, “But Dad, I don’t want to go to sleep yet.” When I asked her why not, she replied, “Because I like talking to you.”

A day earlier I had an amazing conversation with my younger daughter as well, and as I reflected on those two conversations, I realized that I hadn’t actually said much during either one. Perhaps that’s why the girls enjoyed those particular exchanges so much; and isn’t that true of all of us? Many of us love to talk with people, to share stories, to make people laugh or feel whatever we felt in the moment we’re reliving through the stories. If you're at all like me, though, what we're less good at and what we often enjoy less is being a good listener to other people’s stories, especially when we have stories of our own that we want to share.

Today, I want to encourage you to consciously apply yourself to becoming a  better listener for two reasons: one, everyone needs a good listener in their lives, and if we can be that for people, so much the better; and two, being a good listener is crucial to being a good leader. It is through listening that we discover the chinks in our organization’s armor. It is through listening that we discover what problems need to be solved and who may have unexpected skill sets that can help to solve them. It is through listening that we learn, and if you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’ll know how big I am on learning as a leader.

Three quick thoughts on why listening is so crucial to great leadership:

1) Listening forces us to focus on other people, not just on ourselves.

My younger daughter and I on another photo adventure!

When I was talking with my younger daughter, I had to force myself to not do my typical parent move of “Here’s the problem; here’s the solution, now let’s move on.” Instead, my wife has encouraged me to really just listen sometimes. As I’ve gotten better at that, I’ve discovered that many people aren’t looking for solutions. They’re simply looking for someone to listen to them as they share whatever is on their heart. If we’re going to listen well then we have to actively pay attention. This means putting our phone or other device away, looking people in the eye, and really focusing on what they are saying and feeling. And that goes a long way toward relationship building.

 

2) Listening helps us empathize with what others are going through.

Have you ever told someone a story about a huge event in your life, only to hear your ‘listener’ utter a noncommittal grunt at the end? I know I have been the ‘grunter’ more often than I care to admit, and that happens when I wasn’t really as interested in listening as I should have been. When we truly listen, we connect emotionally with the story-teller, and that allows us to empathize with them as they recount their tale. I have found this is extremely important when talking with my wife and my daughters, especially as they have gotten older. Bullies at school, successes in the classroom, problems with friends, joy at some award; whatever the story is about, if they feel something, I want to feel it with them so they know that I care. I’m very blessed at work to have bosses who listen this way, and it makes me a more committed employee because I know that when I’m dealing with something, they get it, and it matters to them too.

 

3) Listening lets us learn.

Family selfie! 

This one may seem a bit self-evident, but it’s worth saying anyway. When we listen well, we learn: we learn history, we learn economics, we learn about other people’s personality and preferences. At soccer practice the other day, my assistant coach (whose father started our program ten years ago) began telling the current players about how different things were then and contrasting where we are now. This was done in an effort to help the current group appreciate the work done by previous players, and it opened their eyes to how blessed we all are now. Listening helps us learn, and that learning also teaches us humility. I know that when I listen to my daughters I'm often surprised at some of the things they tell me; sometimes it's because they're so different than I was, and sometimes it's because I've forgotten what it was like to be an adolescent. Whatever the reason, I'm always amazed at what I learn when I actively listen to them.

When we listen, we are purposely focusing on other people. This helps us be more empathetic, and it also helps us to learn about other people as well as ourselves. How much can this transform culture in the workplace? Tremendously so. Imagine an organization of people who lead from a place of understanding because they’ve been actively listening to each other: collaboration increases, productivity increases, morale increases. Imagine a family where the parents listen to the children as they recount their days, and as the children listen as their parents share the wisdom of their years. As a teacher and coach, I’ve found that one of the best things I can do to build great relationships with my students and players is simply to listen. As an employee, manager, owner, or entrepreneur, if you listen, you’ll be amazed at how it can transform your world too.

Action Step: this week, make it a priority to resist the urge to interrupt when someone is telling you a story. Instead, follow up a story with at least two questions, to show the storyteller that you were listening and interested. Then email me and let me know how it went.

Have a great week!