When I speak and write on this subject, I eventually come around to a particular point of “bad news,” as I call it, which is that the leader has to live out what the leader asks others to live out. It stands to reason, of course. The only problem is, we’re as fallible as the next fellow, yet the spotlight is aimed straight at us.

One of the things I watch for in leaders is their ability to admit error. Many leaders have a belief that the office they hold requires them to stay above this fray. “‘I’m sorry’ shows weakness,” a friend said to me once.

An example: Will the one in charge apologize when walking in to the staff meeting ten minutes late, or will he skip the nicety, his office excusing him somehow by virtue of his important duties. I know a leader who seldom arrives at his meetings less than 30 minutes late, and never gives an inch. It’s always straight to, “Let’s get started!” The inference is clear: I’m in charge here, you’re on a need-to-know basis as to why I’m late, and I deem that you don’t need to know.

I give this “small” example – the boorishness of a chronically tardy boss – because it represents the commonplace of values violation. We all know that there are big, ugly examples, and that not taking responsibility for being late is “small,” in the grand scheme of things. Being tardy is to keeping false books, as spray-painting graffiti is to committing an act of murder. Right? I’m giving a “small” example, and I could give some ginormous ones.

But let’s stick with our example. Promptness and timeliness is one of your company’s values – you give the customer what you promise when you promise it – yet, you (the leader) walk in late to a staff meeting with your direct reports. Is apologizing a good idea, or not? If you think this question is too obvious, then you haven’t met the folk who live by, “never let them see you sweat!” But, I’ve met them.

Great leaders admit their errors. The admission of error can be an extraordinary act of leadership. “I’m sorry” can reinforce your authority. “I was wrong” can anchor you in the seat of command. I suspect you noticed my use of the word “can.” The fact is that many leaders steer away from personal admission of mistakes because there are, indeed, some dangers here.

This being the case – great leaders admit error, and there are dangers in doing so –are there some simple rules to navigate this terrain? There are!

1. Don’t grovel. You’re in charge. You are responsible to call a spade a spade. You do this with your employees, so you correct your own misbehavior, too. “My tardiness this morning is inexcusable, ladies and gentlemen. Please accept my apology!” Give it a beat. Then get on with the meeting, cause there’s work to do!
2. Do your utmost to not do it again. As leader, you’re the standard bearer. Bearing the standard is not, first and foremost, being apologist-in-chief for continuously failing the standard. Life isn’t fair. The leader bears the standard, apologies when in error, and doubles down on bearing the standard.
3. Jump on the “small” failures. Better yet, ditch the idea that some infractions are “small.” Counterintuitive to the opinions of many New Yorkers, Mayer Rudy Giuliani made graffiti a big deal; he did so in a city that had decided to overlook graffiti in order to concentrate on their bigger criminal problems. Giuliani knew what all great leaders know; the fastest way to get more big problems is to overlook the little ones! Draw the line. Then hold the line.
4. Don’t grovel. Is this a repeat? No. In the first instance, I meant, “don’t give away your authority. You’re in charge, you made a mistake, you called it, and now you’re moving on.” In this instance, I mean, “show that there’s grace and dignity.” Good folk mess up. Your people will mess up, too. You don’t grovel when you mess up, and you won’t make them either. There’s grace for the fallen, room to learn, and dignity for all.

Hold the standard, admit your errors in humility, protect everyone’s dignity. Yours is a command of truth and grace, and “I’m sorry” are words that you can say. They’re words that you must say.

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We already understand a part of her claim, the part about the importance of putting into practice the things that we know. There is a famous “say-do gap,” meaning there’s a lot more “say” going on than there is “do.” My friend, Rick Wellock, says it this way: “What’s common sense isn’t necessarily common practice!” Sort of along those same lines, James the Apostle warned that, “Faith without works is dead.”

But Margie’s saying something more than that we must do a better job of putting our knowledge into practice, which, of course, we must do. She’s saying that our failure to put our knowledge into practice is actually a bigger problem than our failure to obtain the knowledge that we need. Now to be clear, it’s imperative that we obtain the knowledge that we need; Mrs. Blanchard is the first to encourage her people to gain all the knowledge that they can. What she’s saying is that application is where we must place our greatest focus.

Nowhere is this point more important than with regard to our values. To know our values, and to apply our values in daily discipline, are vastly different exercises. The first requires clarity of mind while the second requires both courage of heart and fortitude of will under adversity. “Knowing,” however important it is, can be pulled off by juveniles. “Doing” is the provenance of grown-ups.

As I engage extraordinary leaders from across the U.S., and also from China, I observe a shared discipline, which is both simple to name and profoundly hard to live out. Extraordinary leaders increasingly focus their attention on closing the know-do gap. As great leaders mature, they progressively shift more and more emphasis to systematically apply the things that they say they know, believe, and stand for. “Ideas of the month” los their luster for these men and women. “The principles we live by” become their guiding star.

What do you stand for? How can you translate your answer to this question into simple but certain applications, things you can begin to live out tomorrow? Answer that question, and then do it, and your leadership will never be the same!

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I have asked this question of groups many dozens of times, perhaps even a hundred times. Before I tell you what the answers always are, please allow me a small digression.

Great enterprises — whether private sector, social sector, or faith-based — are great because lots and lots of people show up every day intent upon doing great things that day on the job! The greatest organizations on earth are great precisely because they are filled with people who have dedicated themselves to do their utmost, whether or not the boss is looking, it’s on the job description, or there will be monetary reward. You want to lead a great venture? Fill it with great people who – here’s the all-important word – choose to do their very best at work.

Um, right, there is that small, nagging question that pops up right at this very spot: “How do you get people who are like that!?”

Enough with the digression! “What did the leader who had the biggest and most positive impact on you do that made such a difference?” Here are the answers I always get. He loved me. She believed in me. He trusted me. She knew that I could be more than I was. He pushed me to become excellent. She was there for me. He did what he promised. Her word was her bond. He did what was right. Her ‘say’ was her ‘do.’ He was a servant. She was humble. He held high standards, and lived up to them himself. She apologized when she made a mistake. He encouraged me rather than tear me down. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Our character as leader is determinative of our influence in the lives of people. We can be tyrannical, egotistical, self-centered, threatening, abusive, demanding, frightening, and thin-skinned – and get people scurrying hither and yon to do what they’re told and to avoid the next harangue. In a limited and pathetic sense, we can be characterless and immature, and produce “influence.”

But we can’t get greatness from people this way. We won’t get their courage, their integrity, their steadfastness under pressure, their deepest code of honor, or their excellence.

Great enterprise is great because lots of people show up intent upon contributing from their greatness. Who we are as the leader – who we are in our character – determines whether people will show up in this powerful way. As the famous malapropism goes, “this isn’t rocket surgery!”

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Henry Ford wrote those words, and they add up to just about the biggest little sentence I’ve read in a year. When I ask for a hammer, I more or less get the tool I had in mind. Same with a lot of the stuff businesses need and use. People, too, are tools, of course. In fact, we’re the best tool of all! But we’re more than a tool. Oh, boy, are we more!

My friend, Bill Hendricks (The Giftedness Center), says this: “I have found that most people are looking for something more from work than a paycheck. They’re looking for a payoff. They’re looking for rewards from their work that go way beyond the monetary. Something that holds their interest. Something that requires and inspires the best of their energy. Something that actually means something, that matters. In short, something that feeds their soul.”

What Henry Ford and Bill Hendricks are talking about is the so-called “soft side” of business (as opposed to the “hard side”), and sorry is the investor, the owner, the entrepreneur, or the manager who ignores it. People are the difference maker, and by “people,” I mean everything about them, including their morale, work ethic, sense of honor, drive, discernment. Can they laugh at themselves, dig deeper to persevere, share credit with others, tell the truth, do an unpopular thing that’s necessary and right, keep their head under pressure? If they can’t, then it absolutely doesn’t matter that they got their degree from Harvard or MIT.

The work we do with our clients – using The Serving Leader Development System – methodically addresses, one by one, the leadership capabilities and disciplines required in the “soft side” (the people work) of great business. The paradox of leadership is that, at the end of the day, it’s people who do the great work. I repeat myself: people are the difference maker. AND, it’s leadership that creates the conditions necessary for people to do their awesome stuff: leadership is the difference maker

Which is it? Is it People? Is it Leadership? Yes, it is!

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We all know what it’s like to spend a day hitting on all cylinders, the time flying by, as we move several small to medium-sized mountains. Likewise, we all know what it’s like to spend a workday in a wheelbarrow of molasses. There are evenings when I remark to my wife that I should have just gone to the movies.

Why do some people bring their A-Game to work? Another way to sate our question is: How do some people bring their A-Game to work? Literally, how do they do it?

The people who study employee motivation, engagement, and satisfaction know a great deal about this subject. They know that motivation comes from having a job that matters—a job that is making a difference. It comes from working for people you trust. It comes from seeing that there are future personal opportunities for growth that will be available from the job. And they know that worker motivation goes up when there’s a sense of friendship and caring on the job.

“I think that people behave around emotions,” says one CEO I work with. “Emotions shape behavior. Intellect certainly does as well, but I think that there’s a tremendous power in engaging emotionally with the work that you’re doing.” This CEO, like many others around the world who catalyze fervor within their teams, understands the power of human feeling. He makes sure his colleagues have a compelling human and emotional reason to care about their work—beyond an intellectual grasp of why their work matters.

“If an intellectual understanding of something were sufficient to catalyze human motivation,” the man adds, “there would be no doctors who smoke! We need to know why we should care!”

Indeed! In our training guides for Run to Great Purpose, we teach leaders how to do this, how to tie a line between the work that is done and the hearts of the workers who do it. Doing this—giving people a reason to care—is part of great leadership. We bring our A-Game because we care. We do, and the people who work for us will, too.

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While teaching a graduate leadership course in “leadership and motivation,” a student raised her hand and protested a point I had just made. “I manage a [roast beef express] restaurant!” Yes, I’ve deleted the restaurant’s identity to protect its mediocrity. This woman was steaming, and her first sentence was thrown at me with vehemence, as though she needed to say no more! “It’s minimum wage, fast food, and high school graduates! I can threaten them with losing their job, or I can promise them little prizes for better performance, but come off it! I can’t motivate them in this industry!”

I had been talking about “intrinsic motivation”—helping people gain drive for their work from the experience of the work itself, rather than through “extrinsic motivation,” like threats and rewards. I had just stated that we need to get beyond “carrots and sticks,” which is what had set her off.

I told this story in a blog a few months ago, and I shared in that blog about the contrast that can be seen in worker engagement between this roast beef fast food restaurant and Chick-fil-A, which is famous for young, intrinsically motivated workers. But in that earlier posting I left the next part of the story out.

“How in the world do they do it,” my graduate student asked incredulously. “How do they make fast food feel like meaningful work?” Her question hit the nail on the head. How did Chick-fil-A raise up purposefulness in the midst of an industry that many people see as too menial for full and satisfying human engagement.

Chick-fil-A founder, S. Truett Cathy (who is, by the way, 92 years old as I write!), has this to say about life’s purposefulness: “Nearly every moment of every day we have the opportunity to give something to someone else – our time, our love, our resources – and I have always found more joy in giving when I did not expect anything in return.” Elsewhere, Cathy remarked that he imagines that every encounter with another human being, however brief, holds within in the potential of changing the course of that person’s life forever.

Every encounter! However brief! “Fast food” creates the perfect circumstances to live out this high purpose, providing many, many encounters, each one holding an eternity of potentiality!

It takes great leadership to lift up this kind of purposefulness. Anybody who has bought anything at Chick-fil-A has experienced the impact of exactly this kind of great leadership. If you’re like me, you’ll drive out of your way to pick up one of their classic chicken sandwiches so you can drink in the soul-lifting words of a bright, attentive, young professional who tells you that it is his or her pleasure to serve you. And meaning it!

Do I sound like an adman for Chick-fil-A? I’m not. But just consider the power of infusing purposefulness into your enterprise!

One of the leadership and management practices we love to teach is, “Raise High the Vision.” This is a training module that is part of the Serving Leader Action called Run to Great Purpose. It takes imagination, yes, to see the purposefulness in our work—the true purposefulness, beyond earning our paycheck. But work—like leadership—is first of all about service. When we get that straight, the job of imagining the purposefulness of a particular business is mostly done.

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1. Fixating on success makes you fearful.
2. Fixating on success makes you measure something that you cannot control.

The reason people grow, and the reason companies and organizations grow, is that they stretch themselves. They try new things. They risk uncertainty. If success is your goal, then you cannot afford to be stretched. The very things that make an enterprise great are the things they did at the risk of failure.

Famous is the football or soccer team, or the golf player, who gains a lead, switches to a defensive posture (out of fear of losing their lead), and then loses their lead. If you want to make real gains (I am paraphrasing an ancient text here), it is necessary to risk losing everything. If we are only allowed to succeed, then we become afraid, defensive, controlling, small. Fixating on success makes you fearful.

The behaviors that can be controlled are things like punctuality, courteousness, diligence, calling everybody on the sales list, completing assignments excellently, doing what you promise, following up according to the best practices you were taught, always pressing yourself to do your uttermost, and so forth. In short, we can set a measurable goal to be excellent in all our activities, and we can control the behaviors that comprise excellence. That is to say, we can decide to do what excellence demands.

Famous is the winning sports franchise that knows how to build a lead, that keeps its eyes off the scoreboard, and that sticks to the fundamentals, play by play by play until the final bell sounds. Such teams know that getting ahead, and then starting to watch the scoreboard, is fatal. They banish their thoughts of score, and they stay grounded in fundamental disciplines. And they win.

In short, winning begins with the knowledge that you must do the things you are in control of, and that fixation on success is the first step to failure.

One of the leadership and management practices we love to teach is, “Allow mistakes and learning.” This is a training module that is part of the Serving Leader Action called Upend the Pyramid. It is such a paradox, but absolutely true: cultivating a culture in which we may fail (without being damned), and in which learning is prized more than perfection, is cultivating a culture that produces more wins than losses. Our people cannot afford to get better if we are intolerant of mistakes. Can you imagine a child ever learning to walk if she was never allowed to fall down?

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• “Let me show you how we do that job here!” Orientation was non-existent, the need for training was an indication of a hiring mistake, and “management” meant keeping an eye out for those who couldn’t swim so they could be swiftly fired.
• “Do you understand what I’m expecting you to do?” Assignments landed on our desks like mailbags thrown at us from the saddlebags of a pony express rider galloping full tilt. We caught the assignments, and then we figured them out. Or we didn’t.
• “Need anything?” If my boss had asked me this question, I’d have shoved a thermometer in his mouth. It went without saying that we didn’t need anything; we were the ones he had hired, weren’t we?
• “That was great work, and here’s why!” No coddling at that job, that’s for certain! Explaining what made a great job great was tantamount to handing over secrets to the enemy!

As ridiculous as this behavior sounds, it’s as common as dirt. While these particular examples may be slightly extreme, managers generally provide only a fraction of the guidance, training, support, and communication needed to accomplish great work and to gain truly charged up employees.

Within The Serving Leader Development System (SLDS), we provide a detailed 360° assessment that pinpoints specific management gaps that show managers where they are giving their workers what is needed, and where they are not. Several half- day training programs fix these gaps, providing application tools managers use to guide themselves in their responsibilities to grow, equip, support and encourage their employees. Small, positive shifts by managers toward their employees make a big difference in employee morale, engagement, and productivity.

My old boss did say a few things to me in those years. The thing he mostly said was, “Faster, faster, faster!” This is exactly, literally, what he said, usually passing by my door, or blurring by me in the hallway. “Faster, faster, faster!”

Whatever it was that he actually wanted out of me, I did know this one thing for sure. He wanted it faster. And I never disappointed him; my boss always noted that I was a man on a mission. In fact, I did quite a variety of things on that job, most of them self-concocted. I was endeavoring to contribute, after all, even if the only certain thing I knew was that my contribution needed to be faster.

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• Question 3: At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best?
• Question 6: Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
• Question 11: In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
• Question 12: In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?

Identifying an employee’s current strengths is key to assuring that they get “to do what they do best.” But this work does not replace the need for continuous growth and development. Research shows that productive employee development focuses on building on strengths and promoting the discovery of new strengths for development.

We do this work, primarily, by building new opportunities and challenges into our employee’s work plan. This requires some stretch effort on the part of the employee.  It can be work that the person has not performed in the past or additional responsibilities that require taking a strength to a higher level.  An example of this type of growth would be enlisting the person as a coach or teacher of others.

At first many people are reluctant to change—because of a fear of failure and of reprimand—but  with the right encouragement and support, the result of taking on and winning at a new challenge propels the person to new heights of performance and satisfaction. A less obvious benefit of continuous growth opportunities is seen in the longevity of employment enjoyed by organizations that do this well. Often, a star performer will leave an employer for a new assignment, not because they were unhappy with their employer or with their compensation, but because they wanted a new challenge.

“Promote Continuous Growth and Development” is the third of three parts taught in the Serving Leader Action called Build on Strength. Case stories and step-by-step exercises found in The Serving Leader Development System (SLDS) provide a road-map for leaders and managers to continuously grow their people. This module teaches leaders how to incorporate stretch assignments and growth goals into the ordinary annual work plan for each of their people.

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“This was all a real drag on Bob, and initially we thought that he just wasn’t management-level material. But, going through this strengths process, and rethinking the alignment of people onto teams, we found that Bob has a brilliant mind for software architecture, and an understanding of the macro market in terms of where the software should go and where the market is going.”

Freeing Bob up from one role on the team in order to better position him to serve the company resulted in what the company now refers to as the “5.0 Release” of their new software platform, a breakthrough that positions the company for a 10X growth in institutional customers.

Once the leader and the team members have identified each person’s strengths, they need to match people’s strengths with the work to be done.  At times, managers and executives think of this process as “too soft.” Work, after all, is work, and people should dig deep and get the job done! It’s true that work is work, and everybody needs to dig deep. But strengths are an asset that should not be wasted. Nowhere else in our disciplined operations would we jam misfit parts into our product. The small investment required to become expert at building on strengths repays the company and everybody involved many times over.

“Align Strengths With Team Responsibilities” is the second of three parts taught in the Serving Leader Action called Build on Strength. Case stories and step-by-step exercises found in the The Serving Leader Development System (SLDS) provide a road-map for leaders and managers to build teams based on the strengths of their people. This module teaches leaders how to put together teams, not by asking each person to be great at everything, but by positioning each person’s unique strengths into the service of the other team members, and all of them together in service to the goals and objectives they must achieve.

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