You Can’t Win if You Don’t Know How to Play
His real name was Harvard. But we called my wife’s grandfather Tampie. Don’t play checkers with Tampie. The outcome was foreordained.
He toyed with us whenever he convinced a sacrificial lamb to play. He let you think you were doing well. But in a flash, he jumped two or three of your pieces. When the dust settled, he chuckled, “Queen me.”
Winning:
You can’t win if you don’t know how to play. Playing checkers is a relatively simple game, but like everything else, there’s more to it than you think.
Fundamentals:
In the process of writing the HBR Leader’s Handbook, Ron Ashkenas and Brook Manville interviewed over forty successful leaders across different industries. They reviewed decades of articles from the Harvard Business Review to understand the recurring messages from academics and practitioners about what leaders should do.
They concluded there are six fundamental practices of leadership.
- Unite people around an aspirational vision.
- Decide what to do and what not to do to best achieve the vision. (Strategy)
- Attract and develop top talent to implement strategy.
- Focus on results in the context of the strategy.
- Innovate in ways that reinvent vision and strategy.
- Lead themselves. “… knowing and growing yourself so that you can most effectively lead others and carry out the above practices.”
(Adapted from: The Fundamentals of Leadership Still Haven’t Changed, HBR.)
What about encouragement?
In The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner list five fundamental practices of leadership.
- Model the way.
- Inspire shared vision.
- Challenge the process.
- Enable people to act.
- Encourage the heart.
Notice “encouragement” isn’t on the list from HBR.
It’s not surprising that top leaders don’t mention encouragement. They often feel they don’t need it. They don’t have time for such frivolity until someone’s at the end of their rope.
What might you do today to encourage a colleague or team member?
Dear Dan,
My submission.
Assign an individual responsibility with full
authority to fulfil a challenge! Make him feel that he is trusted and his contribution will go a long way in attaining the final goal.
Showing Trust and Confidence is the right way to ensure success from all members!
Thanks Dr. Asher. That seems so leaderly. We all love to be trusted. It lifts us when someone believes in us. Powerful!
Good and helpful lists. I appreciate the Kouzes and Posner work and resonate with it, in part because of the “encourage the heart” piece. Even they don’t emphasize listening as a primary leadership practice in the way you do, Dan. I so appreciate that in you.
Thanks Kenneth. You’re very kind. I must say that Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner exemplify the idea of being encouraging. Wonderful people.
Listening in itself is an encouraging act especially if you listen to understand(¬ just respond) ??
While encouragement was discussed in another recent post, it is good to see it brought to the forefront again. The impact of encouragement on practically every aspect of working with people is hard to overstate. “The Leadership Challenge” is certainly on my own top ten list, but about twenty years ago I read “Leadership by Encouragement” by Dinkmeyer and Eckstein, that focuses on the importance of encouragement in creating an effective leadership culture. The authors explain how to nurture encouragement as an essential value within the organization and create courageous people. They describes the “courageous person” as one who “is motivated, energized and involved; takes risks for meaningful reasons; says ‘yes’ to self; sees problems as challenges; and has self-esteem and self-acceptance.” “The book also introduced me to this quote: “We live by encouragement and we die without it, slowly, sadly, and angrily.” (Celeste Holm). Powerful thought!
Thanks Jim. So I did a search and I’m disappointed that the book seems to be out of print.
such a helpful comment. Glad you jumped in. Love the last quote!
Really enjoy the simplicity in how you laid out the six fundamental practices of leadership. Thank you as usual for sharing your insights.
That’s encouraging. 🙂 Thanks jseyler.
What might you do today to encourage a colleague or team member? Give them the opportunity to enhance themselves should they so desire, new challenges, change of pace type of option. Such as would you like to learn this ? I think you can excel based on my observations, etc.
I teach a several day leadership in a Staff and Command program for police and fire leaders. I use the The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner. It is a great tool for facilitating discussions of many kinds. Thank you for referencing it in the article today. I would recommend it as well. Those five sections are woven together well and provide participants a starting point from which to “sharpen the saw” as Covey would say.
Encourage a team member by demonstrating what a team can achieve better than an individual, so as not to feel lonely. I would remind a team with the original purpose of existence, walk through a few challenges the team has gone through and how the challenges are now history, with each member’s contribution. Time spent at rallying people and willingness to invest some time reflecting on what went right and/or wrong, and allow flexibility to do things better in own ways, is a worthy investment. 🙂
Amen! Like trying to win the Del Mac on a banana seat bicycle you got in 5th grade!