At the movies and on television, we all love heroes. As chaos reigns, the hero swoops in to save the day and restore order. Their heroics make for great entertainment, but heroics are lousy business. Any leader worth the name knows that heroics are bad news in the real world. The appearance of a hero always means that something has gone wrong. The degree of the heroics is often in direct proposition to the mess needing to be cleaned up. While we celebrate the work (and often the courage) of heroes, we know that their actions shouldn’t have been necessary.
So what? That’s the question I’ve heard this week from several of my executive coaching clients when we spoke about Diana Nyad’s swim from Cuba to Key West. She became the first person to do the swim (a distance of over 100 miles through shark infested waters) without the protection of a shark cage. To be frank, my first reaction was similar. “So what?“ With all that is happening in the world, chemical weapons in Syria, wildfires in the west, relations with Russia reminiscent of the Cold War, why should anyone care? That is what the cynic sitting on my shoulder was saying.
What do Scottish kilts, machine gun ammunition, cement mixers, graves, and Queen Elizabeth II’s wedding dress all have in common? They are all purported to be tied to the origins of the expression “the whole nine yards.” I have heard and read emphatic declarations that the real origin is . . . you fill in the blank. According to the New York Times, which ran a story on this topic on December 26, there is no clear answer. (I guess it was a slow news day.) They went on to quote language expert Ben Zimmer, “The phrase is interesting because it’s so mysterious.” Whatever its origin, most people who are fluent in English know what it means. Since its meaning is clear and its origin is so muddled, it is probably a safe.
Every year in observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, I read Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech. It always moves me and forces me to think about life and leadership in a new way. Earlier today as I finished reading it, I began to contemplate my dreams for my life and career. Things have changed so much for me in the past five years, and so have my dreams. Having transformed myself from a corporate executive to an entrepreneur, I dream about how to better serve my clients and grow my business. As an executive coach, writer and speaker, I dream about changing the way people think about leadership. As the father of teenagers, I have begun to dream about my children as adults. These are some of my dreams. They are tightly coupled with my values and principles, and they serve me well. They help me keep my eye on the ball, but how well do they serve those I lead?
“How do we build a culture of accountability in our company?” That was a question one of my executive leadership coaching clients asked me recently. When I asked him what he meant by accountability, he had difficulty fully articulating what accountability meant to him. Finally, he said he wanted people to take ownership of their work and the results they produced. After we spent most of an hour exploring what was missing and what real accountability would look like, he made a bold statement. “The first thing I need to do to build more accountability is to stop talking about what we should do. I need to decide what I am going to do to be more accountable and promote accountability within my team.” It was as if a light came on for him. He realized that while we all want to foster accountability, we can’t. I can. He can. You can. Accountability happens when individuals take ownership, and that starts with individual leaders deciding to make it happen. Although my client had had a major breakthrough, he still had a big question to answer in the coming weeks, “How do I get started?”