B-Brief
Presented by Ed Wooller - EMA Partners Atlanta – Summer 2009
King Knut and the Tide – 3 Leadership Lessons from the Beach
‘The tide is coming in. Do you think it will stop if I give the command?, the King asked as his throne was carried to the beach. He let the sea wet his feet to show that even Kings could not control the tide, and thus answered to a higher power. King Knut, also known as Canute, ruled England and Scandinavia in the 11th century, but this episode has lessons for today’s leaders.
• Some people deny reality: Know who on your team is like the courtier who said “Yes, Great King, only you can stop the tide”
• Leaders point out reality: Rather than lecture in the abstract, the King asked a direct question, and followed it with a practical demonstration
• There is more than one story: Church leaders who admired the King’s piety wrote that afterwards the King resigned his crown and withdrew to a religious life. However, some Vikings recounted that the courtier was buried up to his neck below the high tide line.
Employee Engagement – 3 Stages to Focus On
In “Tribal Leadership” Dave Logan and his co-authors suggest that a small company is a tribe, and a large company is a tribe of tribes. A tribe is a group of 20 to 150 people who know one another well enough to greet each other if they meet.
Culture makes some tribes more effective than others, the authors show. How tribe members speak reveals their culture, relationship structure and stage of performance at which they are likely to operate. Tribe memberships can also cross the boundaries of company structure.
• Stage 1 people tend to be alienated and hostile, expressing the view that “Life sucks”
• Stage 2 people tend to be separate and apathetic, believing that “My life sucks”
• Stage 3 people tend to be competitive ‘lone warriors’ saying “I’m great (and you’re not)”
• Stage 4 people tend to show tribal pride, expressing that “We’re great (and they’re not)”
• Stage 5 people tend to believe that “Life is great” and build ever-growing networks.
Leaders can lift the performance level of their organizations by helping people to progress to higher stages. However, Stage 5 is usually sustained only in special circumstances, so it is likely to regress back to Stage 4. Most leaders should therefore focus on how to move their people beyond stages 1, 2 and 3, by changing daily habits and attitudes.
Going Global: Language Translation in 3 Clicks
When faced with a word, message or website in a language that you’re not fluent in, there’s a convenient, web-based solution that quickly provides an automated, approximate translation.
• Go to www.google.com
• Look to the right of the box where you input search terms
• Click on Language Tools
• Select ‘translate text’ or ‘translate web page’ depending on what you need
• Select the languages you’re translating from and to, for example Portuguese > English
• Click the Translate box, then
• Wait for the translated passage to come up on your screen
Still True Today
’Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.’
(Seneca, Roman poet, 1st century BC, cited by Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture)
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