Rule 6

I disagree.

Let’s be honest. There are only I’s in team. It’s a group of unique people, isn’t it?

The 21st Century corporate concept of a team of people working together to create something profitable has not managed to do what it may take committed yogis several incarnations to achieve – the defeat of the ego.

Once we’re honest about this, we can get to work on creating a brilliant and cohesive group, committed to success and to each other. And I can get to work on bringing the best “I” that I can into the group. Whether that group is family, work, community or sports based.

Let’s respect the “I”s and their different personalities and personal agendas, let’s let the “I”s discover and create very good reasons to bring their whole selves to the group, let’s involve the “I”s so that they are a part of shaping the group and its aims and the way it works and the plan of action to achieve success – let’s let the “I”s co-own it.

If we fail to do that, we may find that there really are no “I”s in our team –and then there can be no “we” in there either.

Over to you…

Jim.

I don’t like everyone. Everyone makes me nervous. I don’t want to get too close to everyone.

You know them!  They’re in meetings, they’re in lunch rooms, they’re in bars, they’re at the water cooler, they’re at family dinners.

They’re not generally investing time in encouraging others, they’re rarely found in dynamic teams with exciting projects to deliver, they’re don’t give much of themselves unless they are recruiting to their cause and they rarely plan weekend adventures to help their children grow in confidence.

They’re passionate about pointing out flaws in other people and in the ideas and plans of others, they delight in spotting the “hidden agenda” behind a perfectly honest attempt to create or to move things along, they “have good reason” to distrust all authority figures, they detest people with a sense of purpose and decry the successes of others – both are too threatening. They’re often big on being a victim and small on giving love and support.

Candlesnuffers! They’re not bad people. They’ve suffered their own traumas. “Hurt people hurt people”. They’ve been snuffed.

Try to turn them, support them, coach them, infect them, love them, excite them, encourage them, inspire them, unobtrusively and subtly demonstrate to them through personal action. But – and there is a but – if they are not responding to your attempts and they are in a position in your life where they are beginning to endanger your candle’s precious flame: Containing them or even losing them, after a fair and honest discussion or two, may be the correct and only method of self protection.

Jim

Click on the image to view the Rule 6 video

If you are a regular subscriber, you’ll know that I am giving a piece of the Taming Tigers jigsaw that cannot be explained during a presentation over four blogs. If you are new to the blog, you can find the previous installments here

The Ten Rules for Taming Tigers are divided into four groups.

·         The Integrity Rules (Rules 1-3)

·         The Leadership Rules (Rules 4-6)

·         The Change Rules (Rules 7-9)

·         The Esteem Rule (Rule 10)

Today it is the turn of the Leadership Rules to come into the spotlight.

The Leadership Rules

Rules 4-6  are called the Leadership Rules. We first begin to lead ourselves, take control of our own lives rather than being dictated to by our fears and those fears that we have made our own under  the influence of others (parents, teachers, spouses, bosses, etc). We also begin to interact with others in a different way. Being true to ourselves, we become able to inspire and lead them.

Rule 4 – It’s all in the mind – directs us to the chatter within our heads, the mad conversations between our “selves” and our “egos”. If we cannot lead our own heads, how can we lead others? We develop the self awareness to notice when the inane chatter is holding us back. This, in turn, allows us to make informed choices based on this information – to act as intelligent humans rather than accepting our initial reaction. To put our “selves” above our “ego” in moments of pressure and doubt.

Rule 5  - The tools for Taming Tigers are all around us -invites us to re-engage with the world as interdependent creatures, expressing our truths including our vulnerability, and allowing others to support, to fill gaps, to be inspired and get involved with us. It’s about “being real”, and authentic and builds upon the first four Rules. Dependence and independence begin to feel less important. We start to achieve together, to flow. We also begin to realize the mysterious truth that the person we needed most to move forward was sitting there waiting for us to ask, even if they had never heard of us before. We begin to realize that many of the skills and resources we need to act are already available within us. This result only seems to happen if we are following Rules 1-4.

 Rule 6 – There is no safety in numbers – invites us to consider following our own path. Not a path of independence but of spirituality (this is very different to religion). Our path of spirituality being the path that brings us purpose, meaning, integrity with our values, connection with others and the means to grow as a person. To fearlessly be the man or woman we wish to be rather than seeking approval or traditional securities.

Of course, as we lead ourselves, we naturally begin to be able to lead others.

Please feel free to post comments, thoughts and experiences.

Jim

Click on the image to view the Rule 4 video

Click on the image to view the Rule 5 video

Click on the image to view the Rule 6 video

A hardened criminal with a life of crime behind him tunneled out of jail. As he clambered out of the ground he saw that he had come up in the playground of a school and was surrounded by children. Despite the observers, he was unable to contain his excitement and cried out “I’m free, I’m free!”

“Derrrr, that’s nothing”, replied a small girl in the gathering crowd, “I’m four!”

There’s a joke about age in there.  And a truth about freedom.

Enjoy a Tiger free day.

Jim.

Click on the image to go to the Rule 6 Video.

Who should decide upon the leader’s direction? The leader, by definition.

Rule 6 – There is no safety in numbers. The second of the Leadership Rules in Taming Tigers.

Once upon a time, the trend was for leadership by principle and consideration of what the “right path” might be to achieve the grand vision. We voted for people we would trust to make the right call. Often they failed, for sure, but there was a direction and a “lead” provided to the country.

It then became apparent that if your plan was to “market” a party to the highest number of voters, rather than to risk “selling” your vision for the nation to those voters, then leadership by focus groups was a more effective strategy. Let the people tell you what they want to be sold, then sell that. The ideas may be ill-informed, but you’ll win. “Wikigovernment”. Not even Mrs Thatcher would have trusted “the market” in ideas to provide the direction.

In these desperate times, we see an even more philosophically barren level of “leadership by listening to popular opinion – (which has been conceived and gestated by the media pack and then in turn born into reality and reported as fact by the media) – and then responding because you need to be seen to respond”.

Yes, yes, I know it’s always been there – but not to this extent and now it’s getting dangerous – and also interesting learn from.

The government, a team of accomplished, professional vote-winners – is entrusted to run a number of businesses, UK plc being one such. Royal Bank of Scotland Group being another. You and I own shares in both of these – and we need both to flourish.

Now I run a business too and I am also employed by my business. I believe that (one element of) the right path is to reward effort and to reward achievement. If I fail to get that part right, my superstars may become your superstars and I don’t want that to happen. I’ll fight to stop it. Sorry.

Few people feel sympathy towards “fat cat bankers”. But that is not relevant to this post. Leadership and the quest for the right path is our puzzle here.

So in RBS Group there are, I am told, some very profitable divisions run by talented and dedicated people. Let us imagine that the foreign exchange dealing operation is making good money. This is good news for you and good news for me. We NEED to be behind RBS Group’s success, even if our media likes to sell doom to us and many like to consume it. It’s good for our economy and now it’s also good for the provision of government services like hospitals and schools. It’s good for our children’s rate of taxation and national debt.

Let us say that you are a forex dealer at RBS Group.

Let us say that you have lost your bonus for your hard, dedicated work and your achievements within a highly successful business unit and that you are in difficulty because your outgoings are calculated on the basis of your bonus being paid to reward you. Your family is in difficulty as a result. You want to end the difficulties, naturally.

Let us say that another bank, run by professional businesspeople wanting to impress shareholders and not professional vote-winners wanting to impress the media and “the people” is aware of your skills and gives you a call.

Let us say that this is happening today – at this moment – as you read this.

Let us say that you and I are losing our RBS stars to banks to which our children’s rates of personal taxation  are not inextricably linked.

Brains bigger than mine must decide if we need to regulate bounses (this must, of course, be a global regulation rather than UK or read the above suppositions again with the words “Wall Street” or “Frankfurt” inserted before the bank coming to lure away talent and acheivement – and the “global” part is impossible). That may or may not be the “right path”

But to act against one employer <em>in order to be seen to bow to “overwhelming public opinion”</em> is bad leadership. The Tiger is at work. The terror of doing the rational, commercially viable thing is trampled on by the need to please “the people”.

Rule 6. There is no safety in numbers. Sometimes we have to stand firm and do the right thing even when many people who are not responsible for the consequences – have nothing at stake other than pub talk and a column to fill – may criticise us. AP McCoy and Frankie Dettori know that truth and that risk when they take a bold, professional call to kick for home early on a horse against the safe, risk free alternative of running home with the field. That’s partly why they lead their game. It’s partly why it sometimes goes wrong, also.

The people running one of our biggest personal investments do not seem to know that. They are running with the media pack at the very time we need principle and consideration of what the right path may be to rule their actions.

Whether we are leaders of a family, a team, a business or a nation, we all face this same dilemma regularly. Who sets the leader’s direction? Once we have taken the advice, done the consulting, do we have the courage to make the best call we can in the face of criticism and stand by it?

Do we allow the children to feast daily on crisps, cola and satellite TV? Keep ‘em happy and get a new job before problems we created become apparent?

Or do we try to set the path we believe to be right?

I was up early this morning and had the radio for company. I started with Radio Four, the UK’s leading speech radio. After a while, that made me concerned for the future of my business – can anything or anybody survive a recession that’s certain to rival the great depression?

Then I turned to  commercial radio. Some music to brighten the morning. Within thirty minutes our own government had paid, with my cash, for me to listen to a child actress telling all of the nation’s children, busily preparing for school and the magic of Christmas, that their main worry should be that if she smokes, your mother could soon be dead. They then described to the children, and me, in anatomically precise detail the horrific internal injuries about to be suffered by a seemingly decent man not wearing his seat belt.

Enough radio. The Times had dropped through the letterbox. No respite. Later this week I will fly. At the airport the government has demanded that unemployed actors shout “any gels or liquids” loudly at me to remind me that there was once a suggestion that Colgate could be a threat to our nation and I will have to take my shoes off. Unless the man on the shoe machine wants a cup of tea. Then the security threat that my shoes pose lessens for twenty minutes, and the machine is closed.

MIND THE GAP. Fear sells newspapers. Fear allows politicians to re-assure and seem vital. There is a lot of hard work going into making you feel insecure at present. It is no longer a wild conspiracy theory to observe that this is very clearly intentional.

Sure we’re in a tricky economy and need to be smart. Sure we shouldn’t smoke and should wear a seatbelt. Sure there have been some dreadful terrorist attrocities, and we’ve carefully stirred that dangerous pot up further for the past six years. But most of us are lucky enough to be in fine health and financially surviving and not suffering in a cholera epidemic and, in the UK, far safer than we were during the IRA bombs of the 70′s. We’re not sending our children to fight in trenches. Let’s get a grip here!

Rule 6. There is no safety in numbers. Stand apart from the crowd. We’re very privileged. Don’t let “them” add to your Tiger’s roar today. Don’t let that roar come into your meeting rooms and conversations at work. Don’t buy your newspaper. Treat yourself to the Racing Post instead!

Enjoy it! Help others to enjoy it! Create a Rule 1 bold action and make something exciting happen today. Don’t let their Rule 2 Rulebook become yours without a curious and questioning mind as your filter.

Mind the Gap between what you hear and what you observe and relax a little.