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Leadership is about influencing people to act. Leaders initiate change, sustain change and grow other leaders.

Next week I’m going to teach a class on creativity and innovation for the MBA class down at Longwood University.

I believe everyone plays a leadership role somewhere in their life; influencing someone. I also assume MBA students are pursuing their degree to prepare themselves to be better business leaders.

As such I intend to share tools I’ve acquired throughout my career and engage the students in exercises and activities to give them a feel for expanding their comfort zones as it relates to successful change.

I hope to leave them with three ideas: curiosity, passion and courage.

I’m curious about pretty much everything. Besides creativity and innovation in preparation for teaching the class, I’m currently reading about transportation, pre-Colombian America, Tarot Cards, branding, storytelling and the Theatre.

I’ve found something of interest in each of these books and been able to combine ideas I’ve found in each to enhance my understanding of the others and my cosmology as a whole.

As for passion, I care deeply about a lot of things. God, community and family loom large among my priorities. I want to leave the world a better place upon my leaving it. I wake every day feeling like the world is changing so fast and I must simultaneously hustle to stay abreast while taking time to pause, observe, appreciate and experience the here and now.

This passion for learning and my desire to find ways to apply what I learn for the betterment of one and all fuels my continued exploration.

The last idea I want to impart to the students is the need for courage. It would seem people would want the world to change for the better. But defining better is subjective. It seems that with every change someone loses something. Whether that loss is real or imagined is immaterial. People who perceive they’re going to lose something tend to fight harder to preserve the status quo than the people who stand to gain something.

Hence, suggesting change is dangerous.

As the saying goes, fore warned is fore armed.

I’m not suggesting NOT suggesting change, I’m simply acknowledging there are almost always opponents to change. Sometimes even the people who encourage you to find a solution to a problem are threatened by your proposed solution. In the end it takes courage to initiate and sustain a change.

My goal for the class besides enhancing the students’ ability to find creative solutions they can apply, is to fan their curiosity, passion and courage to initiate changes and follow them through to completion.

If nothing else, preparing for this class has given me the excuse, like I need one, to continue to explore.

Lately, I’ve run into a lot of people who are feeling like they’re failures. Not that they’ve just failed at accomplishing a task, but that they are themselves failures. The economy since 2004 has taken a serious toll on America’s workforce. Ironically, we as a nation are incredibly productive; generating greater gross domestic productivity with fewer people in the workforce.

The downside is that our leadership can’t think of things for our workforce to do.

So lots of folks are stuck on the sidelines. Talented, formerly hard-working people are idle; looking in the mirror and feeling like failures. This is extremely painful and many of these folks are sharing their pain with anyone who will listen. Sadly, it’s inappropriate and counter-productive.

I don’t mean sharing their pain; they need to get it out, but where they’re sharing their pain. The lament their having gotten the raw end of the stick at networking events, in information interviews and even in job interviews. Places where they want to present themselves as viable, attractive players, but they’re hurting so much they just can’t contain themselves.
A Few Suggestions That May Help Coping With Feelings of Failure
1. Find a safe, small group of people, no more than seven, in a similar situation and talk through what happened to you. Take turns going around the circle venting. Listen to yourself, listen to the others. Don’t offer criticism of each other’s comments, just acknowledge their contributions.

2. Next explore what role the overall economy played in each participant’s getting laid off, fired or quit. Don’t offer criticism of each other’s comments, just acknowledge their contributions.

3. Next, explore what role individuals at former employers played in each participant’s departure from their previous employer. The number one reason most people leave a job is their relationship with their direct supervisor. Don’t offer criticism of each other’s comments, just acknowledge their contributions.

4. Then, explore what role you played in your leaving. Once again, DO NOT offer criticism of each other’s comments, just acknowledge their contributions.

5. Considering the only thing you have any control over is your behavior, go around the circle and talk out loud about what you might start to do differently, as you move forward.

Once, you start to voice your pain (in a safe, appropriate place) you’ll start to mend. You’ll begin to move from under the rock to on top of the rock. I can still hear my daddy, “You’re only a loser, if you quit when you’re down.” Then, you can begin to interact with potential allies from a position of the positives you bring to the workplace.

I have failed to accomplish my goals many times in my life. I have upon occasion felt like a complete and total failure. Eventually, because healing takes time, I have gotten back up and tried again. Sometimes, I’ve failed again, but as another wise soul once said, “If you aren’t failing, you aren’t trying hard enough.”

Maya Angelou said, “What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain.”

I have no problem with your complaining, get it out, get it out loudly and then get on with doing something about it. Michael Jackson had a great song, The Man in the Mirror. Once you’ve wailed about the horrible injustice you’ve suffered, take a look in the mirror and decide what role you played in your downfall. Then decide what changes you’re going to make and get up and get back in the game. If you fail again, step back, adjust and try again.

I leave you with another of my daddy’s admonitions.
“Do something. I can fix wrong, I can’t fix nothing. And nine times out of ten, your something will be good enough until we try again tomorrow.”

I’m a trained facilitator. I understand the value of having someone in charge of not only keeping a meeting on topic and on time, but also, the value of capturing/harvesting the thoughts offered and presenting them in a manner that allows the the participants to all get/stay on the same page.

So, why the hell do I allow myself to sit in meetings where the facilitator sits and takes notes on a piece of paper instead of putting the information on a white board or flip chart for everyone to see?

The confusion that continues to arise when people try and keep a lot of information in their heads versus writing on the board for all to see is unnecessary and all the more frustrating when I know a better way.

Talking at cross purposes, saying the same things and hearing different things are so easily avoided when someone will step up and use the board.

Well, hope springs eternal. Next time, I hope I exhibit sufficient leadership skills to suggest to whoever is leading the meeting they step up and use the board.

My father frequently told me to “Do something. I can fix wrong, I can’t fix nothing.” The irony is deciding WHAT to do.

There are so many opportunities. I joke that I suffer from ADOS (Attention Deficit Oooh Shiny). Every day a new op distracts me from focusing my energies and doing first thing first.

Well, my #1 “to do” for today was to post a blog.

After finding numerous other things to do (worthy distractions all) I decided I’d write something and get on with the rest of my “To Do” list.

Hence, I leave you with a short story about Vietnam.

A young Army 2nd Lieutenant is Vietnam was asked by his griseled Sergeant when surrounded by the enemy which was the best direction to attack.

The shavetail responded, “Analyze the enemy’s position and when I’ve identified where they’re weakest spot that’s where we should attack.

The Sergeant said, “It’s better to immediately attack whatever is in front of you for the longer you delay the tighter the circle and the fewer options you have.”

So, I repeat the wisdom of the Sergeant and my daddy, the Boatswain’s Mate, “Do Something. Right Now. We’ll fix it later if necessary, but the odds are whatever you do now will be better than if you wait.”

John Kenneth Galbraith, the great Canadian-American Economist who passed away in 2006 at the age of 97, said the following:

“I am not quite sure what the advantage is in having a few more dollars to spend if the air is too dirty to breathe, the water too polluted to drink, the commuters are losing out in the struggle to get in and out of the city, the streets are filthy and the schools so bad the young perhaps wisely stay away,

and hoodlums roll citizens for some of the dollars they saved in the tax cut.”

I’m not quite sure I see the advantage, either.