"Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty."
~ Frank Herbert, Dune Chronicles ~
"I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody."
~ Herbert B. Swope ~
Have you seen T-shirts that have the caption "No more Mr Nice Guy" on them?
They come with all sorts of pictures, mostly nasty. I wonder if you've got one or maybe a few of those? Well. Have you stopped to think about what the caption means? Seems to say that "I o-once...wa-as Nice....but no-ow....a-am not...., 'twas good bu-ut nas-ty now...". Think so? Are you in that place now, where you think you used to be nice but have to now be a lot "firmer" with people than you've been? Well, I used to think that way. I thought I used to be too nice to people and that I had to "get tough" with them in order to get things going. So I did. I got people to perform. I raised the bar on standards of performance and professionalism. I goaded people
with all the great misapplications of "If I can do it, so can you". Being more task-oriented by nature, I utterly neglected the personal development of those I was responsible for. Sure, I listened to them and lent a helping hand whenever I could, but it was always with a view to getting better performance overall, not helping them as PERSONS. Some months ago, I was surprised to get a message on Facebook from someone I didn't know. He introduced himself as someone with whom I had served in the same unit many years ago. He had recognized me from the photo on my profile. Well, we started chatting and he said this, "Sir, I used to be very afraid of approaching you, you were very fierce". I was a little surprised and said that I didn't think I was all that fierce, in fact, I thought I was rather friendly and approachable. To which he replied, "No Sir, you WERE very fierce. However, I knew that you were also very fair and you were always willing to help when help was needed. But I was still very afraid of you". I thought about that for a while. So many young people that I could have helped develop as mature human beings, and I missed the opportunities simply because I wanted to "get the job done". Now, I certainly helped them become professionally competent, I just didn't help them on the road to greater personal significance.
Enter "tough love" leadership. I need to use the term "tough love" because people in general do not know what love really is. Love is not just an emotion. It is a decision. It's about giving, not about "Gimme gimme gimme..." whatever it was the song was about. It is about choosing to serve the needs of others. It is about being a tough and effective leader because it is about giving people what they NEED, and not about asking "Tell me what you want, what you really, really want..." And what do people NEED? One of the first items on the list is discipline. The discipline to undergo the rigours of training, whether self-training or being
trained by others, to BECOME who they want to be. Guess who provides the impetus for such training? Yours truly, of course! You, my friend, need to be wary about being out of balance. About taking the truth that people need to be inspired more than they need to be pushed to the extreme. Very often, truth lies somewhere in between. I said very often, not always. Of course people ought to be inspired, and guess who gets to do that? Yours truly again! People also need a good kick up their derrier from time to time, and guess who gets to do that too? Yours truly again! People need to be calibrated, have their eyeballs cleaned and their ears de-waxed from time to time so they can be better focused on their life goals, which can and should be aligned with their business/ career goals. Many times, people need a reason to do something. When they have that reason, watch them go! And that, really is what "tough love" leadership is in a nutshell. A willingness to crack the whip, kick the butts, give them a reason and always focus them on ennobling goals for all. 80% of people fall into the "people-oriented" category, after all, so most people will be very happy to have you lead them in that manner. Remember that, at the end of the day, we would have achieved the acme of success when our people say "We did it ourselves!" and yet feel a warmth of gratitude and awe for you, but don't know why. You do. Discipline. Deciding NOT to please everybody. Deciding to be a "tough love" leader.
So, if you're still singing "I wanna know what love is...", drop me a line. You probably need to talk to me. Go well!
