4:36 PM Monday October 18, 2010
by John Baldoni Comments ( 7)
Everything in moderation. My late father, a physician, always emphasized that to his patients. While Dad was focusing more on what people ate or drank, he could easily have been talking about how people behave.
I was reminded of Dad's advice when I read Jonah Lehrer's fine essay in the Wall Street Journal discussing the "paradox of power," a syndrome that turns people in authority into dictators. Lehrer quotes Dr. Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, who says, "When you give people power, they basically start acting like fools."
Executives who engage in abusive or coercive behavior of their subordinates may be showing that Lord Acton's statement — "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" — is not just a maxim, but reality. Leaders can get into trouble by subconsciously thinking it they have no limits on their power, even though they'd never say such a thing out loud. Such thinking is all too often reinforced by direct reports who subordinate themselves in order to curry favor with their bosses.
So what is a well-intentioned leader to do? My advice is to regularly reflect on these three questions.
What good can I do with my power? The 17th century Jesuit philosopher Baltasar Gracianwrote "The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good." Executives can apply that adage to running the business wisely. As Lehrer notes in his essay, power can free executives to push the organization to innovate. It can also stimulate the leader to look over the horizon to envision new possibilities and act on such possibilities if it will help the business grow and prosper.
What harm can I cause with my power? Executives kid themselves if they avoid thinking of the dark side of power. It is real — and it is easy to employ. Just look at the number of executives who fell from power when they crossed the line by thinking themselves above scrutiny in matters of business etiquette, fiscal prudence or even sexual appropriateness. Face the topic, and think of how power can corrupt yourself and hurt others.
What can I do to stay humble? Leaders need to surround themselves with smart people who are not afraid to assert themselves even — or maybe especially — when it goes contrary to the leader's ideas. Executives fall into traps by relying on the same people for advice, and too often habits form that whatever the boss says goes. That is not what the leader deserves; he or she needs to be challenged.
"Power," wrote Woodrow Wilson, "consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation." To do so takes discipline and self-reflection. The questions above are a place to start, and should stimulate soul searching.
How do you keep yourself honest about how you wield power?
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Steve Jobs had a serious and embarrassing Wi-Fi problem to deal with. It was plain to the thousands in attendance and the tons more people watching online: On Monday at WWDC, Jobs was struggling with wireless connectivity while attempting to demonstrate the new features of Apple's iPhone 4.
"Our networks in here are always unpredictable, so...I have no idea what we're going to find," he said. "They are slow today."
What Jobs did next, according to Carmine Gallo, author of The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, was vintage Jobs (and a model for how presenters should deal with stage crises): He did not panic. He did not look hot under the collar of his trademark turtleneck. His hours of practice and intimate knowledge of every inch of every slide made him comfortable enough so that he could jump around to another part of the presentation (in this case, to look at photos).
Jobs "trouble shooted" his problem by asking the audience (and, presumably, his back-stage engineers) for a little networking assistance. "You know, you could help me out. If you're on Wi-Fi, if you could just get off," he pleaded, to roaring audience laughter. "I'd appreciate it. We're having a little problem here."
And he sprinkled in several more bits of humor to diffuse any audience insecurity. "I've got time," he joked, while waiting for the audience to "police each other."
"It was brilliantly done," Gallo says. "He's so well prepared that he knew what was coming next. He had a backup and went back to the photographs without missing a beat. And it didn't bring the whole presentation to a halt."
What every presenter needs to realize about this episode: It certainly wasn't the first time Jobs suffered a presentation-related mix up, and it probably won't be the last. High-tech gear has become intertwined in almost every presentation today, and technology, as we all know, is like child actors and animals: It can never be counted on to act predictably once up on stage.
So, what should you do if this type of a Jobsian situation happens to you? Here are expert tips for recovering from a presentation problem.
Have Backup Plans
The list of things that could go wrong during a presentation is horrifying and endless: You're using PowerPoint, and the application freezes. Network speeds plummet. Your handheld device crashes. An embedded video that is a key piece of your presentation just won't load. And then you start getting heckled, and your powers of comedic relief are inaccessible.
Cue the dreaded awkward silence.
First things first: Practice, practice, practice, implores Gallo. "Jobs knows every slide on that presentation, every font on that presentation," he says. "I can't tell you how many hours he put into that presentation, but guaranteed, he put in more rehearsal time than 99 percent of people ever will, because most people do not put in this time." (Gallo notes that those apps developer who shared the stage Jobs most likely "put in 100 hours of work for their two minutes.")
That preparedness can equal comfort up on stage when things go awry, because they always do, Gallo says.
"No matter how much time, work, energy and money you put into presentation, guess what: Something will probably not go according to plan," he says. "It's Murphy's Law: When something is supposed to work when you're introducing a new product or system, there's going to be a glitch."
What typically happens to those unprepared is this: The presentation comes to a screeching halt. "The speaker really doesn't know what to do next," Gallo says. "They stop talking. They start fiddling with the product, and you can see the brains and the wheels spinning as to: What am I going to do next?"
Gallo adds: "You need to ask yourself: What's my backup? On that one part of the presentation, when I have to go to something technical or go to a live link or demonstration: What's my backup if it fails?"
You Can Be Imperfect, But Be Entertaining
Sure, he's the CEO of the tech company with the highest market cap on the planet. But Jobs is well aware of the power of a self-deprecating joke or humorous story. Or a plea for help.
"People get a little too consumed into thinking: I'm the presenter. Everything has to be absolutely perfect," Gallo says. "And then when you're up on stage and something goes wrong, you're kind of naked. Then it becomes uncomfortable. But Steve Jobs is always comfortable."
Gallo says any presentation must do three things: 1. Inform. 2. Educate. 3 Entertain. "If you forget the entertainment part, that's when you're going to get caught up in yourself, and small glitches are going to turn into big problems," he says. "It's OK to entertain people and make jokes about what's happening."
Gallo recalls a presentation Jobs made a few years back when a presentation slide wouldn't advance. Calmly, Jobs announced that the slides weren't advancing—"so that his people would know there was an issue," Gallo says. "And he's troubleshooting as he's speaking: 'There's a slide problem and they're not advancing...oh well, someone will get that fixed.'" That led Jobs to bring up a fond and funny story about him and cofounder Steve Wozniak. While Jobs told the story (which the audience loved), the Apple team fixed the slide problem, and when Jobs ended the anecdote, he simply moved on.
"He never let that glitch set him off his game," Gallo says.
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
The ability to deal with glitches demonstrates the difference between a good presenter and a below average one.
"If it's a small enough glitch where nobody in the audience knows that something is supposed to happen, don't call attention to it," Gallo points out. "I've seen this happen all the time. People said: 'Oh, that slide is not supposed to be there.' Or: 'Oh, I don't want to show you that!' It makes you look bad, and it brings the whole presentation to a halt."
In addition, you shouldn't panic over a couple of seconds of silence as you gather yourself after a technical hiccup, such as a slow network connection. "When something like that happens, take your time, pause for a minute, and remember that it's OK to have some dead air," Gallo says. "People keep thinking they just have to keep talking, talking, talking through something because they are afraid of a vacuum of silence. Twenty seconds to you may seem like an eternity, but it's not too big a deal in the context of a presentation."
During Jobs's WWDC presentation, there were several instances where he took some quiet time to try to remedy his technical issues and figure out his next step. "He was not afraid of the pause," Gallo points out. His use of humor (and, admittedly, an adoring crowd) also helped to diffuse any audience discomfort.
Gallo's own "One more thing..." (e-mailed to me after our interview) is a useful analogy that he tells his clients to remember when they invariably have to deal with a presentation mistake: "When a figure skater falls, everyone is rooting for the person to get up and finish the performance," Gallo says. "Pull yourself up and get on with it. Enjoy the performance."
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
By Rick Nauert PhDSenior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on October 18, 2010
Emerging scientific research suggests coping with adverse life events improves our ability to adapt and handle future events.
The finding lends support to the old adage of what does not kill us, makes us stronger.
The new national multi-year longitudinal study of the effects of adverse life events on mental health discovered that the experiences appear to foster adaptability and resilience.
As such, an individual is able to handle future mental health issues and possess a strong sense of well-being.
The new study examined a national sample of people who reported their lifetime history of adverse experiences and several measures of current mental health and well-being.
Mark Seery, senior author of the study, says previous research indicates that exposure to adverse life events typically predicts negative effects on mental health and well-being, such that more adversity predicts worse outcomes.
But in this study of a national survey panel of 2,398 subjects assessed repeatedly from 2001 to 2004, Seery and co-researchers found those exposed to some adverse events reported better mental health and wellbeing outcomes than people with a high history of adversity or those with no history of adversity.
“We tested for quadratic relationships between lifetime adversity and a variety of longitudinal measures of mental health and wellbeing, including global distress, functional impairment, post-traumatic stress symptoms and life satisfaction,” Seery says.
“Consistent with prior research on the impact of adversity, linear effects emerged in our results, such that more lifetime adversity was associated with higher global distress, functional impairment and PTS symptoms, as well as lower life satisfaction.
“However,” says Seery, “our results also yielded quadratic, U-shaped patterns, demonstrating a critical qualification to the seemingly simple relationship between lifetime adversity and outcomes.
“Our findings revealed,” he says, “that a history of some lifetime adversity — relative to both no adversity or high adversity — predicted lower global distress, lower functional impairment, lower PTS symptoms and higher life satisfaction.”
The team also found that, across these same longitudinal outcome measures, people with a history of some lifetime adversity appeared less negatively affected by recent adverse events than other individuals.
Although these data cannot establish causation, Seery says the evidence is consistent with the proposition that in moderation, experiencing lifetime adversity can contribute to the development of resilience.
“Although we studied major lifetime adversity,” he says, “there is reason to believe that other relatively mundane experiences should also contribute to resilience.
“This suggests that carefully designed psychotherapeutic interventions may be able to do so, as well, although there is much work that still needs to be done to fully understand resilience and where it comes from.”
The study, “Whatever Does Not Kill Us: Cumulative Lifetime Adversity, Vulnerability and Resilience,” to be published in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
