Tom Cooper

My team is just…stupid! Is yours?

August 13, 2013 by Tom Leave a Comment

This is the last in my series of blogs covering leadership lessons from Scout Camp. I had the opportunity to spend a few days with a fantastic group of young men who are growing up to learn how to be strong leaders and achievers. It’s a beautiful thing.

In Boy Scouts, the adult leaders establish safe boundaries and then let the boys run the activities. Our vision is to provide a place where boys can “fail safe” – that they can try out new skills, succeed, fail, learn, and try again – but not in a way that endangers them. The boys organize into smaller groups called patrols and the patrols work together to accomplish the goals for the entire troop.

As leaders, we provide a learning lab for them, and they run experiments in leadership, projects, collaboration, and skills development all while having a GREAT time. (Mostly.)

This mostly part leads me to the story of David. David is a young scout. He’s just getting started in learning about collaboration, compromise, and influence. He’s smart – perhaps too smart for his own good. He’s got a LOT to learn about how to influence others.

I can relate. As a boy I was a bit of an “old soul.” I got along better to adults than I did with my peers. My interests and vocabulary were different from boys my age. I was a very strong learner of facts. Unfortunately that knowledge didn’t come with wisdom. I wanted to let others know just how much I knew. I had a quick and sharp tongue. If that meant that you ended up looking less competent or more ignorant, well whose fault was that?

I see a lot of those same characteristics in David. He is capable, and does have a lot to offer. Unfortunately like many young men, he’s also pretty “me focused” and tends to overlook the impact his plans have on others. Which leads to great frustration and pain. Apparently it leads to “stupid” patrols, too!

In a moment of significant frustration with his peers, David came to the leaders and announced:

“My patrol is stupid.”

He was really upset with them. We looked into it and it turned out that David was insisting that everyone do it his way, or not at all. The other boys in the patrol were willing to work with him, but David refused every other idea. I think that what David was really saying was “I’m not getting what I want, and I don’t know what to do about it, so I’ll criticize the other guys.”

Let me ask you:

At work, do you deal with anyone who is “just…stupid”?
Is there someone on your team (or another team) who behaves in a way that makes no sense and makes your job harder?
Is there any way you can learn about their interests and needs?
Might there be a way you could compromise with them?

Getting back to David. He will get there. Sometimes the most valuable leadership lessons come from the toughest experiences. I’m confident he has a bright future, even if his current patrol is “stupid.” His leaders are on his side and will help him become the leader that we can see him become!

"You are the worst….ever!"

August 9, 2013 by Tom 2 Comments

I didn’t know it ahead of time, but I was in a “leadership development laboratory last week.” I spent time at Scout Camp with my oldest son. We had a blast. What surprised me was the set of leadership growth experiences I was able to participate in, and to observe.

One of the activities this week involved the rifle range. Boy Scouts provides a safe place to help boys understand the danger of firearms and how to use them safely and responsibly. On the range, boys take turns firing a set of rounds at small paper targets 50 feet away. They can do it from a seated or a prone position. To help with accurate shooting, shooters can stabilize their weapons on wooden blocks or on sandbags.

Which brings us to today’s story. One of the young scouts selected a wooden block to stabilize his rifle. Unfortunately he didn’t notice that the sandbag had fallen off the platform and was in the direct line of fire of his rifle.

The small .22 caliber bullet easily passed through the burlap and sand to head toward the target, but in its wake it destroyed the sandbag and covered the rifle and shooter in a mist of sand. Sand or dirt in a firearm is a dangerous thing, and that meant this rifle would have to be disassembled and cleaned before it could be used again.

The man in charge of the range (the range master) was furious. I think he was embarrassed that

He allowed the boy to do something unsafe,
He allowed the boy to unwittingly endanger others,
That rifle now needed another thorough cleaning, and
Everyone at the range could see what had happened.

In his embarrassment and anger he did something that I probably have done before. (OK I’ve done this far more than I want to admit.) He allowed his anger to boil over as he shouted at the boy.

“You did what? How could you do that?”
“You. Are. The. Worst. Shot. I. Have. Ever. Seen!”

Dale Carnegie said

“Give a dog a bad name, and you might as well hang him.”

Carnegie’s point is that once you tell yourself that a dog is a bad dog, you start to tell others, and the dog himself how bad he is. Once the dog thinks of himself as a bad dog, there’s no way you can have him be good for anything.

That’s true for people, too. I’m sure that the scout was embarrassed that he made a mistake, that he made a mess, that he created work for the range master and his crew, and that he had accidentally done something dangerous.

Maya Angelou said:

“People never forget how you make them feel.”

I can’t help but wonder how that boy felt when the authoritative range master called him out and gave him a bad name in front of everyone at the range. Will that boy ever go to the range without thinking about that mistake? Will he even go back to the range at all? If he goes back, will he be able to work without thinking that maybe he really is the word shot in the world?

People never forget how you make them feel. I can totally relate to being frustrated, embarrassed and angry. I can even identify with letting my anger boil over and yelling at someone. That doesn’t make it right, but I can easily see how it happens.

What are you letting yourself do?
How do your team members feel about it?
About you?
About themselves?
What is that doing to your team’s effectiveness?

How can you overlook errors and praise progress in your team?

What’s one thing that you can do differently based on this story?

Are you prejudiced? Are you making the same mistake I made?

August 7, 2013 by Tom Leave a Comment

I just got back from Scout Camp with my son. It was a great experience for us, and while Joel gained “mad skillz” in pioneering and first aid, I learned some things too.

One of the lessons had to do with my preconceived notions about what it means to be “experienced.”

One of the tenets of scouting is that the boys help each other achieve and learn leadership. Over the course of the week I watched as scouts repeatedly came to the troop scoutmaster asking for his help. Time and again Jon turned them away.

Why did he turn them away? Isn’t it the scoutmaster’s job to teach the boys?

Yes, it is his job to teach them (which he does exceedingly well) and it’s *also* his job to develop leadership skills in the boys.

One specific boy, Ted, was working on trying to build a fire. Jon had spent time with Ted teaching him about how to find good materials, and about the next steps in getting it to burn and stay burning. Jon taught Ted what he needed to know, and then pulled back and let Ted struggle with the process.

When Ted got frustrated, Jon didn’t jump in, but encouraged Ted to seek help from boys who had already mastered that skill.

I took a moment to ask Jon about his approach, and what he said surprised me. He said

“I don’t need to work with him now. There’s plenty of experience around this fire pit to get him those skills.”

“Plenty of experience around this fire pit“? Really? The fire pit was surrounded by a bunch of 12, 13, and 14 year olds. There’s “Plenty of experience” in a bunch of pre-pubescent boys?

Upon reflection, I realized two things:

Jon was right. Those boys around the fire pit DO have plenty of experience in that particular skill! Boys that age (and Assistant Scoutmasters, too) like to play with the fire, and have started lots of them. They are well equipped to share their experience with others.
I had some pretty strongly held prejudices about the boys – that they were such apprentices to life that they were not yet prepared to be respected leaders of anyone. I was wrong.

Which leads me to ask:

What is your prejudice about that team member that you don’t like?
What about that other department that doesn’t cooperate?
What story are you telling yourself about them? Are those stories serving you?

Back to the story: Ted didn’t become a master fire builder that trip, but a number of those “experienced” scouts used their fire building experience to help him get better. And that was a lesson for both Ted and to Tom.

But it's not my fault! Real life lessons from a friend's conflict

July 31, 2013 by Tom 3 Comments

[youtube=http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JFvujknrBuE]
There’s a classic scene in the movie “The Blues Brothers” where Jake Blues (played by the late John Belushi) has a nonstop flow of excuses about why he left Carrie Fisher’s character at the altar, and it ends with the plaintive cry “IT WASN’T MY FAULT!!!!”

Have you ever been in a situation where someone was mad about something you did, but it wasn’t fair because what they were mad about wasn’t your fault?

That’s what today’s story is all about.
My friend Andy called to tell me about an experience he had with a client. Andy had been working with John on a big proposal.

The fight: “You did WHAT?!?!?”

As a part of Andy’s normal proposal development process, Andy distributed an in-progress copy of the proposal to all members of the proposal team. This copy included critiques of all parts of the proposal and was sent to everyone contributing to the proposal, including subcontractors.

John was mortified that the team criticism of his portion of the proposal was sent to his subs. John had not done as great a job with his portion of the proposal as he would have liked, and he didn’t realize that the subcontractors would see his “dirty laundry.” He felt that the subcontractors seeing this would lessen his credibility and his leverage with them.

In John’s eyes, Andy had embarrased him, and undermined his credibility with the subcontractors. John felt that his authority and his negotiating strength were weakened, and he was VERY upset with Andy.

It wasn’t MY FAULT

John

John was embarrassed and upset, and thought that Andy had done the wrong thing. It clearly wasn’t HIS fault.

Andy

Andy, (a classic engineer at heart) was shocked that John was so upset. After all, proposal development is iterative – each iteration is an improvement over the last, and the process is designed to create the best possible document. Andy knew from years of proposal development that this method was effective and efficient. It works. It’s the right way to do it. John was simply wrong.

Based on his years of experience in successful proposal development, when Andy heard John’s complaints, he naturally began to defend the process.

Andy was certain that his process was the right one and that John was wrong to get so upset.

Each, sure of being right, dug in more firmly to their positions. The conflict escalated, and eventually John got so angry that he hung up on Andy.

The aftermath

That night, after cooling off from the angry call, Andy began to reflect on what had happened. Andy is a thoughtful guy, and he knew that this had completely gone off the rails. He also knew that something had to be done to fix the problem.

Here’s the hard part. Andy was right. His process was a good process, and John was wrong. In his gut, Andy knew that John was being unreasonable, so why should Andy cave? After all, he was clearly right!

Where it went wrong

As Andy shared the story with me, he said:

“I had been reading Dale Carnegie’s book How To Win Friends and Influence People. The night before this fight I had just gone over the sections talking about “Don’t Argue” and “Admit when you’re wrong.” Even having just read that, I still insisted on being right and telling the other guy how wrong he was. He demanded he was right, and that I was wrong. The conflict escalated.”

While Andy was convinced that his process was a good process, he realized that John was not really angry about the process – he was angry about the fact that he was embarrassed.

What could Andy do?

Even though his gut was screaming how right he was and how wrong John was – Andy decided to follow Dale Carnegie’s advice and do two things:

STOP ARGUING with John, and
Admit where he was wrong.

#1 was pretty easy – I mean, how hard does it really have to be to stop arguing? The challenge would be not getting sucked back into the argument vortex, but Andy was pretty sure that he could do that.

The really hard part was #2. After all “IT’S NOT MY FAULT” –

Andy wasn’t wrong…..was he?

In reflection, Andy realized that John was primarily upset because John had lost face.

What was Andy’s part in that?

After spending some time pondering his ownership of the problem, Andy realized he could have:

Understood John’s sensitivity to looking bad in front of the subcontractors,
Helped John make sure that his portions of the proposal were as good as they could be before distribution,
Helped John manage expectations and communication with subs about the proposal before the version with the critiques went out, and
Not argued with John when John was telling him how upset he was about what Andy had done.

None of those were directly related to problems with the process, but each of them was something that Andy could have done better.

What Andy did next

That night, Andy decided that he could apologize for those things. And even though his gut was telling him not to do it, he decided that he would apologize.

The next morning Andy called John to ask for a meeting. During the call, John was cold toward Andy, and only reluctantly agreed to meet with him. When Andy arrived, John kept him waiting an additional 45 minutes. Apparently John was still upset.

When invited in, Andy led with his intent. “John, I have two reasons for asking for this meeting. First and most importantly, I have come here to apologize, and secondly I am here to talk about specific next steps we can take to make this better.”

How did John respond? John was shocked. He said “Apologize? For what?”
Andy said “I’m sorry that you looked bad in front of your subcontractor. I should have worked with you to help make sure that didn’t happen. It was wrong of me, and I apologize.”
John said “You came all the way down here just to do that? You didn’t need to do that!”

What happened?

Andy quickly made amends for HIS PART of the conflict. He didn’t defend his position or argue. He didn’t say “I’m sorry if I offended you” or “I’m sorry you’re upset.” Each of those is a false apology – not really taking ownership of anything!

Andy’s sincere apology for something he could have done better deflated the conflict and allowed them to start to focus on next steps.

John’s attitude softened and he quickly aligned with Andy.

Interestingly in this scenario, John never took ownership of his part of the conflict, and at this point he has not apologized to Andy for anything. This is common. Don’t get hung up on that. Do you want to be right, or do you want to be effective?

John and Andy were able to restore their working relationship. In fact, I think that Andy’s willingness to approach John and take ownership of his part of the problem actually strengthened the relationship. My guess is that John is going to be a huge advocate for Andy in the future.

That’s the power of not arguing, and admitting when you’re wrong.

Have you ever gotten into a nasty argument like this one? How did you fix it?

What are some lessons you've learned the hard way?

July 24, 2013 by Tom Leave a Comment

I was leading a “Too Busy To Plan” program recently and I asked the group “What’s something that you’ve learned the hard way about planning?”

Here are some of their responses:

It’s never over
Life changes in an instant
If you embrace too much you accomplish little
You may need to change direction quickly
Fail fast, learn fast
There’s always someone worse off than me
Shortcuts lead to short term results
What are you measuring?
Say No to the good so you can say yes to the best

“It’s never over” – Planning doesn’t stop, and neither does achievement. There’s no perfect plan, and when you reach your goal, there will be others ahead.

“Life changes in an instant” – from the friend who was out walking with her husband and was in a literally bone-shattering tackle by a playful 130lb dog.

“If you embrace too much, you accomplish little.” – WOW – what a deep one there! Baby steps, slow and steady wins the race, not huge changes!

“You may need to change direction quickly.” Sometimes a well thought out plan has to be abandoned – the market changes – new challenges arise.

“Fail fast, learn fast” – We don’t like to fail, but if we choose to learn from the failure it can be a win!

“There’s always someone worse off than me” – Perspective. Nick Vujicic or Sean Stephenson or Jon Morrow may help with perspective.

“Shortcuts lead to short term results” – pay the price to become the person you need to become to reach the goals you’ve set.

“What are you measuring?” – What gets measured gets done. If you measure the wrong stuff……

“Say ‘No’ to the good to say ‘YES’ to the BEST!” – If we want to reach the highest heights, we have to learn to say no to many many good things. If our calendar is filled with good things, we won’t have time for the BEST. Discipline yourself to say no to the good so you can say yes to the best!

What are some lessons you’ve learned the hard way?

BrightHill Group is moving to Charlotte NC? Why? What will that mean to my clients?

July 22, 2013 by Tom 2 Comments

HUGE news! BrightHill Group is moving to Charlotte NC in August!

When I tell friends and clients that our family is moving to Charlotte NC they say two things:

“Congratulations!”
“Why are you moving?”

I agree that it is a great thing, and I’ll explain why in this post.

As a business owner I listen to the marketplace every day. I talk to business owners, executives and staff members all the time.

My goal is to listen, look for ways I can help, and offer ideas to help them grow. (Hopefully that includes my services.)

My message is resonating with executives looking for:

An outside ear and voice (a coach) to help them chart their path, with
Workshops to help their teams grow as teams, and
Training classes to help their team members become more skilled at “doing the work”

We’re doing something innovative – we are combining face to face live sessions with follow up calls with teams to help them IMPLEMENT the ideas we talk about during the events. Growth is process, not an event, and we are seeing growth happen by combining events with ongoing calls to keep people on track.

What does this have to do with BrightHill’s move?

As it happens, the way that this has been playing out, I’m able to help my clients solve business problems without having to be onsite all the time. In fact, over the last several months, I’ve landed deals with happy clients in several states outside the DC metro area. I’m finding myself making some short trips to meet client needs, and that is working for clients and for our family.

My kids are growing up, and for about five years my family has been thinking about having some more “elbow room,” a slower pace of life, and being closer to extended family.

Several months ago I caught up with some friends who relocated to Charlotte a few years ago. They could not stop raving about how nice a transition it has been for them. This year we have spent a significant amount of time looking around that area, and have “made the call” to relocate.

What does this mean to my clients?

That’s a great question. Over the last months I’ve experimented with a variety of tools to be “virtual” when I help clients. I’ve discovered that in many cases I can keep doing what I’ve been doing – whether I’m “here” or “there.”

Many of the programs I’m offering are already a combination of on site and remote work.

I’ll be happy to continue to serve you in DC – Charlotte to DC is a short plane hop away, and Charlotte NC has the 6th busiest airport in the US.
I’m already planning workshops in September and October in DC, and I’m finalizing details on a significant client program spanning multiple states including MD.
I’m NEVER too busy to talk about helping your team, and never too busy for a referral to a friend or colleague, either.
Please give me a call!

As of today we’re still in DC, but our house is for sale. You can see the virtual tour here, and the MLS listing here.

If you know someone looking for a beautiful single family home in Germantown, please pass this info along!

240-668-4799