Joshua's lessons on leadership - Leaders Protect the Truth

In a series of posts, I want to discuss what we can learn about leadership from Joshua ben Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, which would become known as the most militaristic of the tribes of Israel through Joshua's campaigns.  If this is the first post in the series you have read, please do a quick review of the March 30, 2009 blog titled  “Joshua's lessons on leadership - Intro”; that post highlights why I am looking into Joshua’s life.

In the last entry, I discussed the need to remember “Leaders Eat Last”.  In this post, Joshua reminds us “Leaders Protect the Truth”.

I want to use a mechanism created under Joshua’s rule as a proxy for the level to which we need to seek out and protect the truth in the organizations we lead.  The back-story for this analogy is the concept of the Cities of Refuge.

In the Israelite society Joshua led, there was no police force to investigate crimes. If someone was killed, it was the moral responsibility of the family member who was closest to the victim to investigate and avenge the murder.  This person became the avenger of blood – the kinsman redeemer.

However, a human redeemer’s subjectivity, passion, and anger at the loss of their family member just might cloud their judgment.  They might end up avenging the death by killing someone who wasn't guilty of a capital crime.

Joshua, as the leader of his people had to set up a system to protect the innocent and provide time to sort out the truth of a situation.  The system was ‘Cities of Refuge’.  What we know from tradition is that any of the Israelites or any alien living among them who killed someone accidentally could flee to these designated cities and not be killed by the avenger of blood prior to standing trial before the assembly.

Here are some interesting facts about these Cities of Refuge:

• They were strategically located so there would be easy access to them for anybody seeking refuge.
• Highways were built to increase the ability for someone to get to these cities of refuge.
• These highways were maintained so that nobody was ever hindered in getting to these cities.
• Bridges were built across every ravine, so that the person running for refuge wouldn't have to waste time climbing to the bottom of the ravine and then up the other side.
• The highways were rebuilt every spring after the heavy winter rains so that the road surface would be smooth and easy to run on.
• At every crossroads or intersection on these highways, there were big, bold signs pointing the way with the word ‘Refuge’ in large letters.
• The gates of the cities of refuge were never locked.
• The city was well stocked to provide for any fugitives who came to stay for however long they might need to be there.
• The cities were designated for all the people of Israel, including the stranger.
• The same justice, the same protection and provision, were free to all.

How effectively are you setting up ‘Cities of Refuge’ in the organization you lead or are a part of?  Are you building and maintaining roads for the truth to get to you?  Are you building bridges?  Are there signposts in your organization with ‘Truth’ in large letters?  Are all people able to bring the truth or just a selected few of your favorites? Do you do anything unconsciously that locks out the truth?

I know people are not getting physically killed on our teams.  Yet conflict occurs all the time.  An error happens.  A mistake is made.  A deal is lost.  A customer gets mad.  A decision costs the organization time and money.  Then people start defending and justifying.  This sets off acts of accusation and retribution that get increasingly personal.  These acts disintegrate into permanently scarred team members, colleagues who become incapable of trusting each other.  Nine times out of ten, the event was less egregious and purposeful than assumed.  There is an innocent person involved that needs refuge.  There is a truth that needs to be protected.  When your folks see you reliably seek out the truth of a situation by taking the time to discover and understand all perspectives they will stop making personal accusations and trust will reign.

Look back at the effort that was necessary to insure safe passage of a person to a City of Refuge.  You and I must take a page from Joshua’s book and go through the same level of effort as Joshua creating routes for the truth to get to us, protecting, defending and highlighting those routes. 

Winston Churchill said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”  We have to give the truth a chance to get its pants on and pass all the fiction that gets created.  Or as it is written on the main tower of my alma mater, The University of Texas “Ye Shall Know the Truth, And the Truth Shall Make You Free.”

You are the guardian of the truth.  Leaders Protect the Truth.

Passion Part V - Style

In this series of posts, I write about passion as a force multiplier in an organization and the creation of passion through individuals who know their role, are convinced their role matters and see the good of their work.  I argue that leaders must focus on five elements to create this level of passion; vision, culture, principles, style and sacrifice.  The previous posts discussed vision, culture and principles, this post is about style and it starts with a question for you - are you an inspector or a coach?

Dr. Rob McKenna is a good friend of mine and Rob has a passion for studying leadership under pressure.  This passion led him to work with the Boeing Company on a project where they followed the careers of 120 executives to explore factors and experiences that had the greatest impact on leadership development (you can read about Rob's work in an excellent article titled "The Differentiated Leader - Specific Strategies for Handling Today's Adverse Situations" - Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp 292-306, 2004).

Through many conversations with Rob, I interpret his definition of pressure to include any or all of these factors; 

1. Driving change and dealing with the associated anxieties in an organization
2. Being on the edge of your performance or capability envelope in a public 
3. Having the possibility of a highly visible failure
4. Operating with other's outspoken disagreement of your decisions and/or direction
5. Assuming responsibility for the direction, success and well-being of other people

Close your eyes and imagine you have all of these factors working against you in a situation.  You are driving change, you do not know what you are doing, your position is visible, factions within the organization are disagreeing with you and many are dependent upon you for their livelihood.  Within the lovely confines of this imagined scenario, one of your folks pulls you aside and unloads a major mistake, issue, decision or option on you. This is not minor; this could significantly divert you and the rest of the team from your mission.

What is your reaction to this person? If you are like me, your antenna tingles; looking for every bit and piece of data about the situation and your brain starts formulating options.  You then proceed to lay out to your young Padawan in a high degree of detail exactly what must get done to accomplish the task.  If you are like me, you become intensely concerned with what they are doing.

It is in these moments that our style becomes evident.  The style we must have to create and sustain passion is coaching not inspection.  You usually get in a leadership role because you have a history of getting stuff done and you are highly motivated.  These two combinations cause collateral fear in others, fear that as soon as the goal is accomplished you will toss them aside.  You probably do not feel that way, but how do they know?  How do they know they are not just a means to an end for you?  Remember passion requires people to believe that their role really matters.  Their role matters when they matter.  You can show them that they matter by coaching, not inspecting.

I have come to realize that the only way to shift from inspection to coaching is to look at someone and genuinely be more concerned about who they are becoming vs. what they are doing.  There is a great story about a promising young executive at IBM in the 1960's.  He had just led IBM into a risky venture that lost $10 million for the company.  When Tom Watson Sr., the founder and CEO of IBM called the executive into his office, the executive arrived with his resignation letter already written.  Watson is reported to have said, "You cannot be serious, we have just spent $10 million dollars educating you!"  Tom Watson was clearly focused on who this executive was becoming.

We do need to get stuff done within our organizations, so this focus on who they are becoming vs. what they are doing cannot be an either/or activity.  We cannot solely focus on who they are becoming.  Instead, I would ask you to think of it as a numerical scale going from -10 to +10.  The -10 end-point is fully concerned with what they are doing and not concerned at all about who they are becoming.  The + 10 end-point is fully concerned with who they are becoming and not concerned at all about what they are doing.  For us to have an effective style of coaching vs. inspection we merely need to spend the majority of our time on the + side of the scale.  We need to have the self-awareness to drag ourselves just barely into the positive side when under duress and it will speak volumes to our team.  When people deeply believe you care about who they are becoming their work will have meaning and through that meaning their passion will increase.

In the late 60's and early 70's the UCLA men's basketball team won ten national championships, seven in consecutive years, back to back undefeated seasons, an 88 game winning streak and 38 straight NCAA tournament victories.  By the standards of this world, UCLA was clearly a winner.  John Wooden was their coach and when asked what was the highest compliment he could receive he said, "The finest thing a player could say about me after he left the team was that I cared every bit as much about him as an individual as I cared about him as an athlete.  It was important to me because I really did care about them.  I often told the player that, next to my own flesh and blood, they were the closest to me.  They were my extended family and I got wrapped up in them, their lives.  Their problems.  There was a great deal of love involved in my coaching.  That is what a team should be to a coach."

Do you care about who your people are becoming or what they are doing?