Asleep at the Wheel?
Leading by stepping back (drawing by Sydney Smith)
“The bad leader is hated and feared.
The good leader is loved and praised.
The great leader, when their work is done,
The people say, “We did this ourselves.”“
(Lao Tzu)
I too aspire to be the leader that Lao Tzu describes, to make my leadership not about me. But generous leadership, selfless leadership, is hard to give. I crave love and praise as much as the next guy. And I often find that in the pressure of the moment, in the rush to get things done or under the weight of my responsibility, I fall back into the small, fearful, controlling view of making it all about me. But when I succeed in leading generously, the results always exceed my expectations.
On one 10-day voyage with the Nova Scotia Sea School, a young woman was my assistant instructor, and there were also two senior crew, Read more…
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
The Generosity of Learning
We usually accept that teaching others can be a generous thing to do. Being willing to learn from others can also be generous, and a powerful way to engage the best in them.
What do your people know that you don’t? Have you made an effort to find out? Have you created a culture in which people expect to learn from each other up and across the organizational chart as well as down?
It may feel a bit unsettling to encourage people under you to show that they know more than you do, but people are always going to know things you don’t know. None of us are omniscient. An excellent way to engage people is to ask them to teach something, and then make the effort to actually learn it and make use of it.
Curiosity practice – If you are not naturally inclined to seek out what you can learn from your team members, you can start with safe territory. For instance, Read more…
(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...The Joy of Self-Engagement
Mary Jane at work
I owe my sailing career to Mary Jane. My first job on a sailing ship was as Chief Mate, second in command. First job? And I was Mate? What sense does that make? I think I managed to get hired as Chief Mate because they were short for crew that year and I already had a captain’s license. Never mind that it was the lowest grade motorboat license you could get, limited to lakes and harbours, or that I had not yet used it professionally, or even set foot on a large sailing ship before. I had a license, so I was Chief Mate.
But my ignorance was mortifying, and the captain was appalled that I had been hired. The rest of the crew consisted of two college kids who didn’t know up, an amateur naval historian who thought he knew everything, a revolving lineup of cooks aspiring to be sailors, none of whom lasted very long, and Mary Jane, age 54, who had retired early from her job to fulfill her dream of going to sea. Read more…
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...The CEO and the chairs
Michael Scott was for many years CEO of Precision BioLogic, a medium-sized medical products company rated one of the Top Ten Best Places to Work in Canada. He’s now Executive Chair.
For a few years now Michael has been pushing the chairs back against the boardroom table whenever he sees that they’re out of place. He makes sure the chairs are evenly spaced and neat. He’ll do this at the end of any meeting he’s in, after people have left or as he’s talking to someone who stayed behind. If he walks by the open door to the room and sees another group has left the chairs in disarray, he’ll go in and arrange them, and whoever might be walking with him has to follow him in.
His employees began by thinking this was odd, Read more…
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...A Doorknob Practice for Self-Engagement
Do you ever feel psyched out, stuck in worried preoccupation, or just completely disengaged and wanting to be somewhere else? What do you do when you’re caught up in an unproductive state of mind and you’re having trouble getting out of it? Do you have practices that help you ground yourself again, so you can proceed at your best?
Here’s a technique that works for me when I need to re-engage myself; when I need to change my mind, in the moment, on the spot. I feel these kinds of things are good to remind myself of at the start of a new year.
These techniques have to be simple and readily available. This one’s called Doorknob Practice.
A doorknob has a shape, a texture, a temperature, a quality of movement, a sound as it operates. It has a feel in your hand. It has a feel in your mind.
When you handle a doorknob, you can use that moment as a small but complete self-engagement practice for yourself. First, let the doorknob hold your attention. Let it hold the participation of all your senses for the moment you touch it. Read more…
(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Mackinac in the Dark
Pride of Baltimore II
Captain Jan Miles has been captain of the PRIDE OF BALTIMORE II for over 25 years, and I sailed with him on PRIDE as one of the Mates on a nine-month voyage from Baltimore up the Atlantic coast into the Great Lakes and back. The PRIDE is a Tall Ship, a 157’ square-topsail schooner carrying over 9,000 square feet of sail, and she sails all over the world as goodwill ambassador for Baltimore and the State of Maryland.
On our way back from Chicago we were approaching Mackinac Island at the northern tip of Michigan. It was late evening, getting dark, with a moderate breeze from the northwest. Mackinac harbour is formed by rock breakwaters, and the widest part inside where PRIDE could anchor is only about eight times the length of the ship. Cruising boats at anchor are scattered throughout, and a lane has to be left open for the ferry. For a ship the size of PRIDE, it’s a crowded spot. Read more…
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Engaging Leadership
The CORWITH CRAMER
I once sailed with a young woman named Stephanie on the brigantine CORWITH CRAMER. We sailed from Key West on a two-month voyage to the Dominican Republic, the Cayman Islands and back to Key West, taking a somewhat circuitous route to collect scientific marine samples.
The CRAMER is a modern steel sailing research vessel that takes students to sea for semesters of oceanographic science and seamanship training. We were looking for the extent and condition of Sargasso seaweed (the Sargasso Sea is vanishing), the distribution of plastic debris and so on. We anchored on Silver Bank, seventy miles off the north coast of the Dominican Republic but only sixty feet deep. It’s where the humpback whales come to breed. We lowered a hydrophone over the side with a speaker on deck and listened to the songs of the whales all night. In the morning one of the whales followed close behind the ship for several miles as we sailed away. Read more…
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Being Close to the World
The Gift of Closeness
On a clear, windy day in the protected waters of Mahone Bay, the Sea School’s boat, ELIZABETH HALL, sails dancingly through the waves, her side only a few inches above the water. I lean down on the edge, my elbow splashed now and then, watching the elegant curve of her planks arcing steadily through the lapping and gurgling of the waves. I am as close to the water and to the graceful strength of the boat as I can be, and the intimate vividness of it makes me laugh with delight.
This is my favourite memory of leading a 7-day coastal voyage recently with a crew of twelve in this 30′ open boat. On the voyage, the thirteen of us are also as close to each other as we can be. There’s barely room for us all to stretch out on the oars at night and sleep. This is claustrophobic and frustrating, but like the closeness of the water, it’s very real. Read more…
(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5) Loading ...The Stillness of the Heron
The Stillness of the Heron
I’ve just returned from sailing the South Shore of Nova Scotia for ten days. Of all the teachers that live along the coast, the most profound for me may be the Great Blue Heron. The Heron understands the interplay of stillness and action, and I learn a little more about that every time I see one.
As Alan Watts wrote, “A heron stands stock-still at the edge of a pool, gazing into the water. It does not seem to be looking for fish, and yet the moment a fish moves it dives. [The way to see nature] is simply to observe silently, openly, and without seeking any particular result.”
It’s usually my habit to bring activity and intention with me wherever I go. Even when I’ve anchored for the night in a quiet cove and the stillness of the evening gathers around me, I’m likely to jump down into the cabin to fix this or that, or at least sit planning how I’ll fix those things or make some other improvement on the boat. It takes some discipline to experience the stillness all around, and actually see what’s there. When I manage to do this, I see all kinds of things I was missing, out in the world, and inside my head.
Much of my work is training of various kinds, and whenever possible I make use of boats, the water, and the natural world, which are the most powerful teachers I know. But I have to remember to give those things space to teach. Read more…
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Leadership is not about the leader
Leadership is not about the leader. Management is not about the manager. If we think the people we’re working with need to learn a lesson from us, that’s a sure sign that we haven’t yet understood enough about what’s going on with them.
Here’s a cautionary tale.
At a conference on experiential education in the corporate sector, a participant named Sandra asked the working group I was part of if she could present to us one of her intervention techniques that she thought we could all learn something from. We said okay.
Sandra asked us to find something of ours that we cared about; jewelry, journal, photo or the like, though she advised us not to choose something too fragile. Read more…
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...
