A Confrontation

As you know by now I love to read. As my lawyer friend Mark once told me, "I read for a living." I have this strange compulsion about reading: if I start a book I feel guilty if I don't finish it. I can only remember 2 books I haven't finished. The most recent one is Infinite Jest - not sure I will ever get that one done.

The other one was The Seasons of a Man's Life. I never finished it. But, I have never forgotten when I stopped reading it either. I stopped when I read this sentence:

"If we are to be men of integrity, we must constantly confront our lack of integrity."

I never finished the book. But I haven't forgotten that lesson. It hit me between the eyes and became a lesson that I have taught frequently over the years. A lesson that I taught others over the years.

I have been thinking about this statement a lot lately and I decided that I needed to confront something in my own life.

What does it mean to confront? I found this definition particularly helpful: "to bring together for comparison."

What I am bringing together for comparison is this: For several years I have had an espoused mission statement of Intentionally Investing in the Lives of Others. Yet, if I am honest with myself, I haven't been living that out with the intensity that it deserves.

When I allow myself the discomfort of engaging these thoughts, I hear Coach Carter's voice telling me: "I can't hear what your saying because I am so distracted by what your doing."

(Have I ever told you that I think God's audible voice probably sounds like Coach Carter's? That thought does nothing to ease my discomfort.)

Given this gap between my espoused mission and my slacking effort to enact that mission, I am going to do something to reduce the gap in 2014. I am confronting my own hypocrisy and seeking to close the gap by launching The First Tuesday Project.

I cannot say that The First Tuesday Project is not about me. It is about me; but, its not just about me or only about me. With the help and encouragement of my friend Marc, we are launching The First Tuesday Project and inviting other men to join us in a process of discovering and living a life of intentional impact based on a new definition of leadership.

I am looking forward to what we will learn as we walk through this process together. And, I am confronting my own hypocrisy.

How's that for a New Year's Resolution?

 

Are You a Giver or a Taker?

“Shouldn't have took more than you gave; Then we wouldn't be in this mess today”

In his recent book, Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success,  Wharton professor Adam Grant explores the implications of our reciprocity style on success at work and relationships in general.

Every time we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can, or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?

People differ dramatically in their preferences for reciprocity – their desired mix of taking and giving.

Takers like to get more than they give. They tilt reciprocity in their own favor, putting their own interests ahead of others’ need. If you’re a taker you help others strategically, when the benefits to you outweigh the personal costs.

Givers are relatively rare. They tilt reciprocity in the other direction, preferring to give more than they get. Whereas takers tend to be self-focused, evaluating what other people can offer them, givers are other-focused, paying more attention to what others need from them. If you’re a giver you help whenever the benefits to others exceed the personal costs.

Matchers strive to preserve an equal balance of giving and getting. Matchers operate on the principle of fairness: when they help others, they protect themselves by seeking reciprocity. If you’re a matcher, you believe in tit for tat, and your relationships are governed be even exchanges of favors.

The vast majority of people develop a primary reciprocity style which captures how they approach most of the people most of the time. You can assess your reciprocity style by completing the self-assessment available on this site:

http://giveandtake.com/

 

Leading the Adaptive Challenge - Transition

There are times when some of the values and mindsets of people are no longer useful in addressing the challenges that beset the group or organization. This could be due to a shift in the dynamics of the larger environment or the emergence of a new threat or opportunity. To ensure the group is able to adapt and thrive in a changed environment, deal with the threat, or take advantage of the opportunity, the leadership work is to transition the group to a new state of operating and refashion the values, loyalties, and mind-sets of the people.

Transition, according to the dictionary, means the passage from one form, state, style, or place to another. In the context of real leadership, it is the process of shifting the people to a new set of norms, mindsets, and attitudes that are more appropriate for succeeding in a changed context. It is not a process of completely replacing values but of refashioning values.

Generally, transition challenges emerge when those in authority have a good sense of the direction the group should take, but members of the group have various reasons for dragging their feet.

The condition of the people facing a transition challenge: People in a transition challenge might see a need to transition themselves from one system of value to another, but they are anxious and afraid, as the process of transitioning can be overwhelming and disorienting.

The barrier that impedes progress includes the people’s understandable reluctance to give up their routine habits, practices, and priorities and replace them with another set. This process of change can be threatening to their identity, loyalties, and sense of competence.

The promise or aspiration (vision) on the other side of the barrier: The promise of a transition challenge is that if the group can renegotiate their loyalties and can sift through their prevailing values and practices to determine what they can carry forward and what must be left behind, then their lives (or the organization’s overall condition) might get better.

Leading the Adaptive Challenge - Maintenance

Not all leadership work is about change. Sometimes the challenge is to hold things together -to protect essential resources, maintain core values, and keep the enterprise from falling apart.

Maintenance leadership is needed to hold a group, community, organization, or country together when it is under threat.

The work for people in such a predicament is to face the reality that their survival is at stake and do what is required to reserve resources and maintain a level of energy that can allow the system to survive until the threat passes.

The condition of the people facing a Maintenance challenge: People in a maintenance challenge are generally in a state of trepidation and anxiety.

The barrier that impedes progress consists of the attitudes and practices of the people that lead them to further jeopardize the value and resources they have amassed.

The promise or aspiration (vision) on the other side of the barrier: The promise in a maintenance challenge is that the remaining value and resources of the people can be protected. The people will eventually weather the storm and survive if wise and prudent leadership can be provided.

 

Leading the Adaptive Challenge - Development

There are times when the people’s advancement is dependent on their capacity to develop their latent capabilities take advantage of opportunities. The development of those capabilities will allow the people, or their organization, to prosper at a higher-level than they would be able to otherwise.

The leadership task faced with the development challenge is to orchestrate a learning process design that cultivates the group’s latent capabilities.

The development challenge is the core challenge of all human endeavors. Without the appropriate development that allows people to take advantage of the amazing array of opportunities that are available today, groups and organizations will stagnate. Stagnation inevitably leads to decay, and decay leads to death. Leaders therefore must be vigilant in diagnosing the shifting terrain to discover emerging threats and opportunities.

A development challenge is when the group or organization must build new capabilities –competencies, practices, and processes –to ensure the survival and progress of the group or organization.

A development challenge requires complete dedication from the leadership team to support and steer the process.

It is a volatile activity as it involves willingness to experiment and considerable conflict and anxiety as people struggle to build new capacities, deal with threats, accommodate new realities, and take advantage of emerging opportunities. 

The condition of the people is that they are incompetent in regard to the requirements of responding to a changing context. The people must face their incompetence and develop what latent capabilities they have and grow new competencies to respond to the new context and deliver on the promise. The raw material is available in the people but needs to be developed.

The barrier that impedes progress is the lack of confidence of the people, their attachment to values and practices that have worked for them in the past, their unwillingness to take risks, and their reluctance to embrace new practices and priorities. The reality that people are avoiding is that the world around them is changing and adherence to old skills, habits, and practices will render them mediocre performers at best and obsolete at worse.

The promise or aspiration (vision) on the other side of the barrier:

If latent capabilities and new competencies can be developed, the group or organization will enjoy a more prosperous, satisfying, or rewarding future.

Leadership for development challenge is about orchestrating processes to enhance the capacity of the entire system in order to make it more resilient, responsive, and relevant. The process is much like evolution in the development consists of formulating new capacities through a lot of trial and error. These new capacities allow for a higher level of functioning in changing contexts such as dealing with the new predator competitors were taking advantage of a new terrain markets.

Unlike evolution, a development challenge is a more active, guided, and intentional process in which leadership tries to identify a new challenge early, and to intervene before the challenge becomes a threat of crisis.

A way to think about the function of leadership for development challenge is to think of it as a perturbing force. Borrowing from the idea of an ecosystem, it is helpful to consider an organization as a species that will generally remain stable until some drastic change in the environment challenges the ability of the species to cope. The drastic change exerts a perturbing force on the species, and unless it involves a successful adaptive response, it will die off. 

When the equilibrium of the system is punctuated by perturbing force, a new adaptive opportunity results. Whether or not the species adapts is dependent on many factors, but the opportunity is there. In response to the economic, social, and cultural pressures the, responsible leaders must themselves act as a perturbing force to energize a developmental process that enhances the health and performance of the people and the enterprise.

The point is that a healthy enterprise must think ahead to stock up on the resources it will need to survive, grow, and take advantage of the special opportunities that might emerge in the desert of hard times ahead.

 

Leading the Adaptive Challenge - Crisis

A crisis challenge is a perilous predicament in which the group is under attack from forces within or without. It is a sudden unpredictable event that jeopardizes the accrued value and resources of the group or enterprise.
 

The condition of the people facing a Crisis challenge: People in a crisis challenge are anxious and afraid. They are under threat, so naturally they worry what will become of themselves, their group, or their enterprise.

The barrier that impedes progress is primarily the “forces” that have generated the crisis condition and the emotional and psychological state of the people.

The promise or aspiration (vision) on the other side of the barrier is that if the group can get beyond the “fog” of the situation, they will discover a deeper underlying issue that must be addressed.

The leadership work in a period of grave danger must be to restore calm; protect the people or the enterprise from further threat or attack, and assist the people channeling their fear, anxiety, and aggression toward creative and workable solutions.
 

This necessitates managing the groups emotions, illusions, fears, and interpretations so that the people face the reality of what lies beneath the crisis and attend to the real issue that must be engaged in order for the situation to be brought to resolution. Therefore, those who seek to exercise real leadership in such circumstances must keep their own heads clear and remain cool under pressure as they work to diagnose the reality of the predicament and figure out where and how they should intervene.

During a crisis challenge, usually two challenges must be addressed concurrently: the volatility of the situation and the unresolved issue below the surface that is actually the reason for the volatility.

Many would-be leaders in a crisis chase false solutions that may make some people feel better but avoid the real problem. Given the pressure on the leader to do something, leaders might feel compelled to come up with a simple but palatable solution that brings temporary relief, such as finding a scapegoat for the crisis are redirecting the people's attention to some other issue and thereby bypassing the real underlying issue altogether. The work of genuine resolution is then, irresponsibly, left to others-even future generations.

 

Leading the Adaptive Challenge - Creative

A creative challenge necessitates doing something that has never been done before. It lies in bringing something into existence that can make a positive contribution to the organization. It is imaginative and inventive work requiring persistence, exploratory thinking, and constant experimentation.

A creative challenge emerges when a group faces a problem or opportunity that no current strategy or practice can successfully address, and an incremental approach based on developing latent values and resources appears to hold little promise.

In essence, the group must invent a solution; they must discover an answer to their predicament, or no progress will be possible. Unlike a development challenge, a creative challenge requires a significant break with the past and an unconstrained leap into the future.

The condition of the people facing a Creative challenge is that the people facing a creating challenge are stuck. They fill like they have hit a wall and are at a loss as to what they must do or how to proceed. The group does not possess in its current repertoire of knowledge a solution to their predicament.
 

The barriers that impede progress are the limitations and boundaries that contain and refrain the people’s thinking- their psychological state, the group culture, and the prevailing paradigm in which the problem occurs. Creative work stirs up an array of emotions in people: some get excited by the process, and some seek to squelch the process because it disrupts the world they know.

The promise or aspiration (vision ) on the other side of the barrier:

The promise available in a creative challenge is that if the people can accomplish something that has never been done before and produce a breakthrough in their thinking and collective efforts. They can function at a higher level of productivity or profitability, or have a better shot at success.

The leadership task is to generate a mood and orchestrate a process to get people to transcend their current thinking and discover a successful response or solution to their constraining predicament.

The essence of exercising leadership to address a creative challenge lies in helping foster the circumstances, attitudes, and processes that make such outcomes possible.

Leading the Adaptive Challenge: The Activist Challenge

Organizations get complacent just like we as individuals do. Routines become comfortable and the organization experiences inertia. You remember that concept from your high school science course: The tendency of a body at rest to remain at rest until acted upon by an outside force. The corollary is that a body/organization will continue along the same trajectory until some force changes that trajectory.

The force that changes the trajectory or overcomes the inertia is a catalyst. In the context of adaptive challenges the leader is the catalyst. And the first challenge of leadership is to get people to wake up to the fact that there is a problem. In his classic book, Leading Change, John Kotter says that the first step in any change initiative is to overcome the complacency - inertia - by creating a sense of urgency.  Bill Hybels says that we have to create a sense of "holy discontent" with the status quo.

Essentially, when an organization is facing an adaptive challenge, we have to shock the system to overcome the inertia of complacency to get the necessary change started.

When we do this we will encounter resistance. Often this comes in the form of a challenge about the costs or the risks associated with the change. Certainly there are risks associated with any change. But when we face an activist challenge the risk of not changing is greater than the risk of changing.

The key symptoms of an activist challenge are:

• Some endearing behaviors, values, and/or practices have become corrosive and dysfunctional-and serve to undermine the long-term integrity and survival of the group.
• An opportunity presents itself that can lead to great benefit in progress for the group, but no one is seriously considering it.
• Danger is looming due to an internal or external threat, and the group is not doing anything about it.

The condition of the people facing an activist challenge is:

• An unwillingness to change their values or thinking to accommodate some aspect of reality
• Denial, resistance, ignorance, or simply refuse to budge
• They are comfortable where they are. 

The barrier that impedes progress is the people’s resistance.

The promise or aspiration (vision) on the other side of the barrier:

• The promise in an activist challenge is that if people can face the problem and seriously consider the data they have neglected or denied, than a new opportunity for progress can open up.
• Fundamentally, the leader wants to get the people to learn about the problem, how their behavior contributes to the problem, and what can be done to solve the problem.

Leadership Intervention for an Activist Challenge

In an activist challenge, the person seeking to lead does not have the power or authority to make people listen and command change. Given the limitations of his or her power, the intervener must think of creative ways to get people's attention and highlight the contradiction and values. Fundamentally, the leader has to get the people to learn: to learn about the problem, how their own behavior contributes to the problem, and what can be done to solve the problem.

On Leading Change: Recommended Reading

By definition, leaders are agents of change. We are the catalysts that overcome the inertia of complacency, cast a bold vision, and change the trajectory of the organization.

 Here are some of the best books I have read on the subject of leading change. I highly recommend these books. In fact, I have used most of them in my graduate courses on Power, Influence and Leadership and Leading Change.

 Heifetz, Ronald. Leadership Without Easy Answers.  Cambridge:  Belknap Press, 1994.

Heifetz, Ronald and Martin Linsky. Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2002.

Kotter, John.  Leading Change.  Boston:  Harvard Business School Press, 1996.

Quinn, Robert E.  Deep Change:  Discovering the Leader Within. San Francisco:  Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996.

Quinn, Robert E. Building the Bridge as You Walk On It: A Guide for Leading Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2004.

Stanley, Andy.  Visioneering. Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 1999.

Willams, Dean. Real Leadership: Helping People and Organizations Face Their Toughest Challenges. San Francisco:  Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2005.

Six Adaptive Challenges

In my previous two posts I have been discussing the differences between adaptive challenges and technical problems. Here are some questions that will help you identify the various types of adaptive challenges:

1. Activist Challenge: Is the group, or a particular faction, refusing to face some aspect of reality?

2. Development Challenge: Is the group, lacking in capacity or resources to do the job or address future demands?

3. Transition Challenge: Does the culture of the group need to be shifted to accommodate new realities?

4. Maintenance Challenge: Does the group need to sustain its current values and practices because it is under threat?

5. Creative Challenge: Does the group need to invent new practices, processes, and procedures in order to do something that has never been done before?

6. Crisis Challenge: Is the group facing a potentially explosive situation, and is the value it has amassed in jeopardy?

Over the next several posts I will be drilling down on each of these challenges to provide you with some aditional details for leading in these situations.

How do you know whether the challenge is primarily technical or primarily adaptive?

You can never be certain, but there are some useful diagnostic clues. Anybody exercising leadership has to tell the difference between technical and adaptive situations because they require different responses.


First, you know you're dealing with something more than a technical issue when people's hearts and minds need to change, and not just their preferences or routine behaviors. In an adaptive challenge, people have to learn new ways and choose between what appear to be contradictory values.

Second, you can distinguish technical problems and adaptive challenges by process of exclusion. If you throw all the technical fixes you can imagine at the problem and the problem persists, it's a pretty clear signal that underlying adaptive challenge still needs to be addressed.

Third, the persistence of conflict usually indicates that people have not yet made the adjustments and accepted the losses that accompany adaptive change.

Fourth, crisis is a good indicator of adaptive issues that have festered. Crises represent danger because the stakes are high, time appears short, and the uncertainties are great.

Technical Problem or Adaptive Challenge?

Many of the problems faced in complex organizations are adaptive challenges that do not have ready-made, tried and true solutions. Adaptive challenges require a learning mindset to both understand and solve the challenge. Yet, many leaders have difficulty admitting that they don't have a solution ready for implementation and thus they treat any adaptive challenges as if they were actually technical problems.


When faced with an adaptive leaders must be willing to give the work back to the people who have the problem and facilitate the process of solving that problem. This requires a secure ego on the part of the leader. It also requires a maturity on the part of followers because they have to accept responsibility for solving the problem they are facing

How do I know if I am facing an adaptive challenge instead of a technical problem?
Here are the key characteristics and distinctions between technical problems and adaptive challenges.

Technical problems are clear and the solution to the problem is clear and understood. The locus of solution for these problems is the manager who knows what to do to fix the problem and tells the team what to do.

Adaptive challenges are different. Defining the problem requires learning and there is no known off-the-shelf solution. So solving the problem requires learning as well. Rather than a leader having the answer, the leader's job when facing an adaptive challenge is to facilitate the learning necessary to understand and solve the problem. In this sense, adaptive challenges require the leader to give the problem back to the people who have the problem.

This is not abdicating; it is facilitating. But this requires the humility that can only come from a an ego-in-check. The leader has to be willing to say, "I have never seen this before and I am not sure how we are going to deal with this. But, there are several really good people on this team and together I think we can figure this out."

Of course, when the ego is not in check, the leader cannot say that. Thus, when the organization is facing a true adaptive challenge they continue to treat it as a technical problem, and the problem never goes away.

Are you facing an adaptive challenge or a technical problem?

Will your ego allow you to call it for what it is?

Happy Re-Birth Day!

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

40 years ago this month I was born again.

There was this girl who happened to be a senior and a cheerleader who was interested in me. She invited me to attend a YoungLife meeting with her. I was skeptical about attending a religious event - I had probably been in a church less than 5 times my entire life.

But, I decided to go. And my life was eternally changed.

That night Guy Owen made a clear – and very entertaining! – presentation of the good news of the Gospel. Basically he told us that we were separated from God by our sin and that we couldn’t do anything to address that problem. However, God loved us so much that He sent Jesus to pay a debt He did not owe on our behalf.

After the meeting was over, I approached Guy to ask him about what it meant to become a Christian and what I needed to do. He explained that all I needed to do was simply receive the gift that God was offering. I didn’t need to do anything to earn it – as if I could! - and I didn’t deserve it. It was simply a gift.

I accepted the gift. And my life was eternally changed.

The first scriptures I learned in February 1973 were both in 2 Corinthians 5:

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

2 Corinthians 5: 21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Because of God’s initiative, Jesus became sin on my behalf and paid the penalty due for me. I accepted His finished work on my behalf and became a “new creature.” At that moment the old things passed away; behold, new things have come!

And I am celebrating a Happy Re-Birth Day!

She's Here!

On Monday Easton J. became a Big Brother!

Makena Noel is here!

Lessons from Lance

I watched with great interest the two part interview that Lance Armstrong did with Oprah this week.


I watched it through the lens of leadership and leadership derailment, even though as an athlete some have made into a hero, he isn’t technically a leader.

But he is a great athlete –even without enhancing his performance with banned drugs.

As I watched I was reminded of Tiger Woods, General Petraeus, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Joe Paterno. Is that the company you want to keep? But this is what I thought: Such talent, such achievement and accomplishment. But now it’s tarnished.

I was reminded – again - of Andy Stanley’s statement that

“Your talent and giftedness have the potential to take you further than your character can sustain you … and that ought to scare you!”

Lance Armstrong admitted his wrong. And he also admitted he was wrong in the aggressive bullying of those who called him out. He called them names, arrogantly defying them, and suing more people than he could remember in an effort to protect his name and cover up his deceit.

That part of Lance’s story reminded me of others who lash out at critiques, and accuse them of drinking “hater-aide.” When long-time inner circle associates try to discuss blindspots and reverse the derailment process unfolding right before them, they are immediately dismissed and threatened with law suits if they dare tell the truth of what is going on behind the scenes.

This weekend churches will be inundated with sermons using the Lance Armstrong story. Here’s what I would say if I were preaching this sermon:

What would Jesus say to us?

First, I think he would say “Let the one among you who has not sinned throw the first stone.” Let the one among you who never cheated on a test, copied someone else’s homework, fudged an expense report, or was less than fully honest when completing a tax return throw the first stone. Let the one among you who has never lied – even a little bit to keep from hurting someone’s feelings or to avoid going out with a couple you don’t really care for because you already had other plans. Don’t pull the magnitude card on me. I don’t see a sliding scale in the commands on honesty.

The second thing I think Jesus would say to us when we want to critically examine Lance Armstrong is: “get the log out of your own eye before you judge Lance.”

Now, let’s shift gears and ask: What would Jesus say to Lance?

In the interview with Oprah, Lance repeatedly referred to “the process” of healing he is going through. He talked about his need to get past being the arrogant bully who would win at all cost. I think Jesus would say to Lance, “Let me help you. You can’t do this in your own strength. I am the way, the truth, and the life. Follow Me.” Jesus would invite to Lance into a personal relationship that did not require cleaning up his act first. Jesus would extend the same unmerited favor – we call it grace - to Lance that He extended to me and makes available to all who ask. If Lance accepts that invitation He will immediately receive a divine counselor in the form of the Holy Spirit to help him work through the process.

In the interview Lance also discussed the advice his ex-wife has given him that "the truth will make you free." Let’s put that in its proper context (John 8: 31-32)


“ So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”


But, the real question is not what would Jesus say to Lance Armstrong? The real question is what would Jesus say to you?

Do you see yourself in Lance Armstrong’s story? Are you a Type-A high achiever that is driven to win at all costs? Are you an arrogant bully who tramples on anyone who stands in your way? Are you feedback resistant? Are you so caught up in yourself that you have become “comfortably numb” to your corner-cutting and abuse of others?

If so, Jesus is asking what does it profit you to gain the world – win the Tour de France, dominate the market, set the record for sales – if you lose your soul?

Jesus is saying Follow Me.

Leadership Lessons from Valley Ranch

Those who watch the Dallas Cowboys are no doubt frustrated again by their failure to make the NFL Playoffs. Evidently no one is more frustrated than their owner Jerry Jones who has promised to make things very uncomfortable at Valley Ranch over the next few weeks and months.


I don’t want to bash Jerry Jones, but his behavior as owner provides several examples of violations of some key leadership principles.

First, he violates the “Window and the Mirror” principle we learned from Jim Collins in his best-selling book Good to Great. According to Collins, all organizations that made the transition from good to great were led by what he called a Level 5 Leader. These leaders are characterized by a paradoxical blend of professional will and personal humility. No one doubts Jerry Jones professional will. He is passionate about the Cowboys and has invested huge sums of money to make them successful. Yet there is an amazing lack of personal humility which keeps him from being a Level 5 Leader. This lack of humility keeps Jerry from practicing the window in the mirror. According to this principle when things go well the leader looks out the window to see who he can give credit to. When things don't go well, Level 5 Leaders look in the mirror and ask themselves what they did to contribute to the problem or what they personally need to change to correct the situation. Jerry has consistently wanted to take the credit for the success and refused to look in the mirror to see how he himself contributes to the continuing mediocrity and failure of the organization.

The second principle violated by Jerry Jones is his failure to differentiate between responsibility and competence. Certainly as the owner he has responsibility for the entire organization. That does not mean however that he has competence in every area of the organization. He insists on retaining the position of general manager and not hiring a person with demonstrated competence in this area. The most effective leaders understand that they add the most value to their organization by leading from their strengths. One of my favorite leadership authors, Andy Stanley, states it this way: only do what only you can do. Jerry Jones is a businessman who by all accounts is a great marketing and value creator. He is not a qualified general manager. He needs to focus his efforts in the areas where he is strong, and delegate to others in those areas that are not his strength.

Of course doing this requires a deep personal humility that understands one's strengths and one's weaknesses. It also requires a secure ego that is not threatened by others who have a skill set that varies from yet complements your own.

It's easy to see these flaws in public leaders such as Jerry Jones. Can you see them in yourself?
Are you willing to admit your lack of competence and allow others to move in alongside you and complement you with skill sets they have that you lack?

Are you willing to look in the mirror?