The Softer Side of Leadership

 

Issue No. 385 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (May 16, 2018) highlights the “softer side” of leadership—and this challenge: if you actually read some of the sections to your spouse (or a colleague), you are in the right lane. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies).   "Hello Marylou!" Ken Blanchard suggests you read fewer books, but—get this—read a book four times because “…the gap between knowing and doing is probably wider than the gap between ignorance and knowledge.” Today, I’m halfway through my second read of Eugene B. Habecker’s powerful new book, The Softer Side of Leadership: Essential Soft Skills That Transform Leaders and the People They Lead. First read: insightful and helpful. Second read: transformational. (I may run out of adjectives for the third and fourth read!) Remember the toe-tapping Ricky Nelson classic, “Hello Mary Lou?” Click here to listen, but this warning: if you skip this two-minute break—read Chapter 4 first, “Stay Connected to the Heart,” or Chapter 6, “Cultivate Creativity.” Why the "Mary Lou" reference? Gene Habecker invites his wife, Marylou, into several chapters—and Gene’s transparency is so, so refreshing. Example: Reflecting on Frederick Buechner’s insights on how life batters leaders—prompting us to bury our true selves then “live out all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather…”—Habecker writes: “…I can remember a very specific situation in which I was so bruised and battered by a particular leadership issue that I had functionally abdicated my presidential leadership assignment to an outside consultant. I remember walking around the block, complaining all the while about this to Marylou. Finally, she looked at me and simply said, ‘You need to go back upstairs and be the president.'” Hello Marylou! Blind spots? Habecker says all leaders have blind spots. The problem: we’re blind to our own blind spots—and that creates frightening situations. He quotes Henri Nouwen in the important chapter, “Welcome Self-Discovery Learning.” Nouwen: “…the house I had finally found had no floors…. It seemed as if a door to my interior life had been opened, a door that had remained locked during my youth and most of my adult life… The interruption…forced me to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there.” So Habecker reflects on one blind spot: busyness. “When Marylou and I were on our last sabbatical, she threatened to give me an ‘F’ in Sabbatical because I found it was very hard to detach from work in the way Nouwen describes…” Hello Marylou! Now here’s a gut check for you (no pun intended). One of the essential soft skills of leaders is addressed in the chapter, “Practice Consistent Fitness Renewal.” The dilemma: so much to do, so little time. Who has time for fitness renewal? Gene and Marylou were discussing John 17:4, “I have brought glory to you here on earth by doing everything you gave me to do.” Habecker notes, “I focused on ‘doing everything,’ and eagerly launched into my speech about needing to be better organized, more productive, and more effective so I could get more done. Frankly, my ‘to-do’ list was already becoming unmanageable. Marylou patiently listened, then she quietly, but importantly, reminded me that I had missed one part of the main teachings of the verse. “She focused on the words, ‘you gave me to do.’ As she explained it, based on this verse and others, our priority work ought to be focused not on everything that could be done, but rather on what God has specifically given or called us to do. And that is the agenda that becomes our priority. Not my agenda, but His agenda.” Hello Marylou! In addition to the “Hello Marylou” interludes, you will deeply appreciate this one-of-a-kind Leadership 401 grad school course on the softer side of leadership (never taught and rarely caught). Habecker’s diligent work is easy-to-read on a challenging-to-live topic:    • Each chapter includes a summary page, “The Chapter Idea.”    • Each chapter concludes with “Putting the Idea to Work.”    • A final “To Summarize” paragraph nails the big ideas. Certain themes will resonate with certain leaders. Some of us are blessed with “Marylou’s” in our lives (thanks, Joanne!) which helps. Maybe a test of your leadership will be if you read the most convicting paragraphs to your spouse or a colleague. Yikes. My favorite think-about topics (during my second read): two questions from Patrick Lencioni; five questions from the HBR article, “Being a Strategic Leader Is About Asking the Right Questions;” charismatic listeners; what the 9/11 Museum missed; self-abandonment vs. self-fulfillment; and this from Simone Weil: “There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.” Habecker’s footnotes invite leaders into a treasury of deep thought about the softer side of leadership from not-so-softies. His quotes from The Seeking Heart, by Fenelon, prompted me to pull out my unread copy and add it to my summer reading list. On difficult circumstances, Fenelon inspires: “The events of life are like a furnace for the heart. All your impurities are melted and your old ways are lost…” Finally, Gene’s chapter on creativity is a whack-on-the-side-of-the-head. Convicting, but inspiring! I’m a big fan of creativity—but it challenged me in new and fun ways. Read about his reluctant visit to the Crayola Experience (now in four cities) when guess who admonished him, “Why are you just standing there watching and observing? Grab some paper, crayons, and start coloring something—anything—and don’t be afraid to color outside the lines.” Hello Marylou! To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Softer Side of Leadership: Essential Soft Skills That Transform Leaders and the People They Lead, by Eugene B. Habecker with Marylou Habecke. (And…thanks to Gene for the advance review copy. The book will be released on May 17, 2018. See the 2024 edition here. Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:  1) In his chapter, “Stay Connected to the Heart,” Habecker writes, “As heart work is done, focus more on asking ‘what’ questions, not just ‘why’ questions. Rather than asking, ‘Why did that happen to me?’ focus more on questions such as, ‘So what can I learn from this situation? How can I grow?’” Share two more “what” questions with us. 2) In the chapter, “Protect Sacred Space and Enable Deep Thinking,” he notes, “If what people experience on the outside, however, is not grounded by some kind of transcendent or spiritual depth on the inside, the leadership persona or façade will be eviscerated the first time an organizational storm is experienced.” What patterns do you have in your life to ensure the presence of sacred space?  Five-Finger Feedback Insights from ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson (2019) Order from Amazon “Five-Finger Feedback” is one of the 22 tools and templates I’ve used regularly. At the end of any meeting, ask each participant to rate the effectiveness of the meeting on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 is high), by holding up one to five fingers. You can also survey each participant twice: Question 1: My engagement in this meeting was a _____. Question 2: The overall effectiveness of this meeting was a _____. The workbook includes access to all 22 downloadable templates including: the “Prime Responsibility Chart” (one-page), the “Board’s Annual Self-Assessment Survey,” the “CEO Monthly Dashboard Report,” and the "Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan Placemat" and more. When you use all 22 of these time-saving solutions, you'll wonder why you didn't discover them sooner.  For more resources, visit the Board Bucket webpage, one of 20 buckets in Mastering the Management Buckets. MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations         LESSONS FROM THE NONPROFIT BOARDROOM Dan Busby and John Pearson are authors of the new book, Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom. Order from Amazon and follow the "40 Blogs. 40 Wednesdays."  guest bloggers each week here.  "Do I Still Have Fire in My Belly?" is the eighth in a series of blogs on succession planning, from John Pearson, on the ECFA Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations blog. Read it here. NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

Destiny of the Republic - Garfield

 

Issue No. 683 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (June 17, 2026) suggests two books to read this summer or give as gifts for Father's Day. Both are page-turners! Plus, click here for back issues posted at the new location for John Pearson’s Buckets Blog, including my recent review of Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools.  SUMMER READING PICKS! Here’s your monthly edition of “Summer Shorts” with two page-turning books for the beach or the mountains, thanks to bestselling author Candice Millard. (Graphic: ChatGPT)   SUMMER SHORTS: 2 books for Father’s Day or Your Summer Beach Read Looking for a Father’s Day gift? I have two books your dad will love. Looking for a beach read? I have two books you’ll love. (That was easy!) This is the first of three “Summer Shorts” issues this summer and I can’t say enough about my two picks today.  OPTION #1: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard (Sept. 20, 2011). Honest—I read half the book to my wife, Joanne, and now we’re watching videos and documentaries about President James Garfield. OPTION #2: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard (Oct. 18, 2005). I read this one in February and I couldn’t put it down. And Joanne even told friends to read it and watch the fascinating online interviews of the author. But first…thanks to our friend, Sharon Gullickson, for sending us the Garfield book—and also recommending the Teddy Roosevelt book. I couldn’t resist either book. SPOILER ALERT! From your high school U.S. history classes, you’ll remember that President James A. Garfield, our 20th president, died on September 19, 1881, at age 49—serving just 200 days in office. He survived an assassination attempt—but do you know the rest of the story? He died of a massive infection 80 days after being shot.  (Let’s just mention here that the medical profession back then should have listened to Dr. Joseph Lister preach about the revolutionary antiseptic techniques that were largely disregarded by American doctors. What? Wash our hands and sterilize our instruments?) Candice Millard’s thrilling page-turning book is the perfect read-at-the-beach. We learn more about the wacko, but persuasive assassin, Charles Guiteau. “He had failed at everything he tried, and he had tried nearly everything, from law to ministry to even a free-love commune.” (He even self-published his own book—and skipped town before paying the bill for 1,000 copies!) Millard, a New York Times bestselling author (four bestsellers!), guides us through the hubbub of the Republican convention’s 1880 nominating fiasco in Chicago and explains why—after the 36th ballot—Garfield won the nomination even though he had not been a candidate, nor did he want to be! You’ll read this for fun, but if you have any measure of leadership and management bones in your body—that stuff will jump off the pages.    • President James Garfield, per tradition, endured up to 100 visitors each weekday from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. His response: “Four years of this kind of intellectual dissipation may cripple me for the remainder of my life.” (Did I mention that Garfield was a college president at age 26?)    • When dating, James and Lucretia should have read Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages. “Their courtship was long, awkward, and far more analytical than passionate.” (However, they were blessed with seven children.)    • The author creatively inserts Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) into the story and his remarkable life-saving inventions and attempts to save the President’s life. (Reminder: no Internet back then.) You’ll love the back stories about the invention of the telephone and the letter to his wife, “I am sick of the Telephone.”    • And this scene: Guiteau tracks President Garfield to the church the President attended most Sundays—but chose not to take the shot, and instead shouted out in frustration to the pastor, “What think ye of Christ?” (The President remembered that outburst and wrote in his diary that night that it was “a very stupid sermon on a very great subject.”) OH, MY. Perhaps, for me, the most memorable character in this marathon of presidential pain and patience, was Garfield’s 23-year-old secretary, Joseph Stanley Brown. Loyal. Perceptive. Efficient. Effective. Gatekeeper. Trusted friend of the President. This reminded me of the wisdom I just read last week in the new book, Two Extra Steps: The Unfair Edge Anyone Can Use. Bill Faeth discusses “The single biggest decision in your business. Period.” Brilliant! (Read my review of Two Extra Steps.) So...Father's Day gift? Summer reading list? Both? (I'd go with both.) TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, click on the title for Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard (Sept. 20, 2011). Listen on Libro (9 hours, 47 minutes).   250 YEARS! With apologies to my Southern Hemisphere readers, I realize it’s not summer there and you may have little interest in two books about U.S. history. So you’ll forgive me if I add one more note: On July 4, 2026, the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary. This milestone—officially known as the Semiquincentennial—is being commemorated over several years. Maybe—to do your fair share of celebrating—you should read at least one book about a U.S. president? (See my “250 Years” collection of books over at the Pails in Comparison Blog.) OPTION #2: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard (Oct. 18, 2005). My recommendation—don’t pick between these two powerful books. Read them both! Option #2, another New York Times bestseller, spotlights President Teddy Roosevelt’s adventurous side—after he lost the election running for a third term in 1912. (After serving two terms, from 1901 to 1909, previously serving six months as vice president under William McKinley, Roosevelt became president after McKinley's assassination in 1901.) After those eight years, Roosevelt watched from the sidelines for four years and was extremely disappointed in President Taft's tenure (1909-1913). So he ran for a third term (it was constitutional then), but was deeply humiliated when he lost to Woodrow Wilson. So—it was time to get out of Dodge and go somewhere…but where? Teddy Roosevelt “set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon in Brazil." (You read that right.) Yikes! You will not believe this incredible journey: preparation (or lack of it), organization, team recruitment, food (or lack of it), hardships and danger (plenty)...but, no more spoiler alerts. I couldn’t resist—trekking along with Teddy (well, figuratively), I noted dozens of leadership and management axioms aligned with my 20 management buckets system. Read my full review over at the Pails in Comparsion blog. Plus—if you’re joining me on the “250 Years” marathon—see my list of books about U.S. presidents, chief-of-staff gatekeepers, and more. TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, click on the title for The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard (Oct. 18, 2005). Listen on Libro (12 hours, 20 minutes). Read my review.   YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) Each chapter in the Garfield book begins with an insightful quotation from our 20th U.S. president. Example: “I have sometimes thought that we cannot know any man thoroughly well while he is in perfect health. As the ebb-tide discloses the real lines of the shore and the bed of the sea, so feebleness, sickness, and pain bring out the real character of a man.” QUESTION: Do you agree? 2) What’s your favorite book—and why—on U.S. presidents or U.S. history (or your home country’s history)? P.S. Need to “cool off” this summer? Here’s another great read: In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, by Hampton Sides. (Recommended by Jim West.)       SECOND READS: Fresh Solutions From Classic Books You have changed—and your problems have changed—since you read this the first time! Book #51 of 99: The Treasure Principle For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by featuring Book #51 of 99 in our series, “Second Reads.” The big idea: REREAD TO LEAD! Discover how your favorite books (and articles) still have more to teach you and the people you’re coaching and mentoring. The Treasure Principle:  Unlocking the Secret of Joyful Giving by Randy Alcorn (Oct. 9, 2001)   Some ill-informed nonprofit leaders assume the right direct mail technique or heart-tugging project will move non-donors into the donor circle. But there’s a key spiritual principle at play that is often ignored: generous giving flows when a person truly understands how money affects his or her own heart. Randy Alcorn writes, “God prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving.”    • Read my review (Issue No. 26, Feb. 26, 2007)     • Order from Amazon (revised and updated).    • Management Bucket #11 of 20: The Donor Bucket Imagine! This book has sold more than two million copies. (Read why one church distributed 14,000 copies to attenders!) Randy Alcorn doesn’t hold back. See Question #31 in his book: “Five minutes after I die, what will I wish I had given away while I still had the chance?”  Oh, my! View this poignant Instagram reel of Randy Alcorn sharing what his wife said to him prior to her entering Heaven's gates.   CLICK HERE FOR BOOKS BY JOHN      For more on inspiring givers, read Chapter 14, “The Board Bucket,” in Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook, and also read Mistake #3, “Recruiting Unqualified Board Members & Not Dating Board Prospects Before Proposing Marriage,” in The 8 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board. NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon. Stoppage Time! Watching the 2026 World Cup reminded me about “stoppage time” and this crazy idea I posted during the 2018 World Cup games. What if your board chair instituted stoppage time at your next board meeting? Read more at ECFA’s “Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations” blog.  MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations “The Single Biggest Decision in Your Business. Period.”  In this new book, entrepreneur Bill Faeth describes the mistakes he made before landing on the “single biggest decision” you must make in your business or organization. Read my review of Two Extra Steps: The Unfair Edge Anyone Can Use. See more book reviews at the the Pails in Comparison Blog.

Emotional Intelligence 2.0

 

Issue No. 420 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Dec. 4, 2019) highlights a WSJ bestseller that says you can improve your emotional intelligence. Buy the book and take the EQ test! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for previous reviews, including the HBR article, “Why Your Meetings Stink—and What to Do About It.” You Can Improve Your Emotional Intelligence Really, Pearson? You celebrated 50 years of marriage in 2019 and—just now—you decide to read Emotional Intelligence 2.0? Really? OK...I confess. But does it count that the book has been on my “to-read-and-review” shelf since 2012? And I do agree—I should have read the book in 2012, not five months ago. Taking the online emotional intelligence test would also have been a good idea years ago! Why now? It keeps popping up on The Wall Street Journal’s business best-seller list (#7 last Saturday). This will get your attention: “CEOs, on average, have the lowest EQ scores in the workplace.” Authors Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves add, “Considering the mountain of literature about EQ, you’d think corporate executives would be pretty smart about it.”  By 2009, the authors had already measured EQ in half a million senior executives. Their Harvard Business Review article, “Heartless Bosses,” notes: “For each respondent, we measured self-awareness, social-awareness, self-management, and relationship-management skills to yield a cumulative EQ (or “emotional intelligence quotient”) score on a 100-point scale.” Their findings: “EQ scores rise as executives climb the ladder, peaking at the manager level, falling off thereafter, and bottoming out, alarmingly, at the CEO level.” Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is a fascinating read—and each book includes (like StrengthsFinder 2.0), a passcode for one person to take the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal® test. (More on my test results below!) EQ is part of understanding the “whole person,” say the authors. Think a Venn diagram of IQ, EQ, and Personality. “Your IQ…is fixed from birth. You don’t get smarter by learning new facts or information. Intelligence is your ability to learn, and it’s the same at age 15 as it is at age 50.” “EQ, on the other hand, is a flexible skill that can be learned. While it is true that some people are naturally more emotionally intelligent than others, a high EQ can be developed even if you aren’t born with it.” The authors define EQ as “your ability to recognize and understand emotions in others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships.” So the bad news: you, your spouse, and team members are pretty much stuck with your current IQ. The good news: “No matter whether people measure high or low in EQ, they can work to improve it, and those who score low can actually catch up to their coworkers.” More good news: • “The link between EQ and earnings is so direct that every point increase in EQ adds $1,300 to an annual salary.” • “EQ is so critical to success that it accounts for 58 percent of performance in all types of jobs.” (See also Marshall Goldsmith’s wisdom on blind spots and this: “The higher you go [in your career], the more your problems are behavioral.”) • “Of all the people we’ve studied at work, we have found that 90 percent of high performers are also high in EQ.” Like any good book, the authors usually get to the meat and potatoes (and a summary chart) by page 25. (See these page 25 phenomena in my reviews of Nonprofit Sustainability and Stewardship as a Lifestyle.) These co-authors are really good—their chart is on page 24! EQ includes four skills: PERSONAL COMPETENCE • Self-Awareness (what I see) • Self-Management (what I do) SOCIAL COMPETENCE • Social Awareness (what I see) • Relationship Management (what I do) “People high in self-awareness are remarkably clear in their understanding of what they do well, what motivates and satisfies them, and which people and situations push their buttons.” (Think triggers.) “Self-management is what happens when you act—or do not act. It is dependent on your self-awareness and is the second major part of personal competence.” (For example, note their feedback for a regional sales director: “Mei has a hard time congratulating staff for their accomplishments, and it comes across as jealousy.” “Social awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on with them.” (Example: “Maya has an uncanny ability to spot and address the elephant in the room.”) “Relationship management [which taps into the first three EQ skills] is your ability to use your awareness of your own emotions and those of others to manage interactions successfully.” (Example: “He knows when to approach an issue sensitively, and knows when to give praise and encouragement.”) In the chapter, “Get Mad on Purpose,” the authors quote Aristotle: “Anyone can become angry—that is easy.  But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree,  at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, this is not easy.” Chapter 14, “Make Your Feedback Direct and Constructive,” begins with this memory jogger: “Think about the best feedback you’ve ever received.” That was easy for me. I’d been a CEO for 17 years with minimal, if any feedback. Then a colleague, Don Cousins, gifted me with some honest insights that changed my game. I was grateful. And that gave me courage to give more effective feedback to others.  ONLINE RESULTS. After completing the online test in August, I received access to my results in a 16-page “Emotional Intelligence Appraisal” customized report—the first phase of a free customized learning program based on my EQ scores. The promise: “This program will teach you about emotional intelligence…reveal what your current skill levels are, and tell you what you can do to improve.” The appraisal delivers a score for each of the four skills (“based on a comparison to the general population”) and an overall EQ score.  • 90-100…………..A strength to capitalize on • 80-89…………….A strength to build on • 70-79…………….With a little improvement, this could be a strength • 60-69…………….Something you should work on • 59 and Below…..A concern you must address My scores? Let’s just say there’s room for improvement—and the customized report gave me three specific improvement strategies (referencing specific pages in the book), and where I should start. Brilliant and helpful. (Reminder: “EQ…is a flexible skill that can be learned.”) You’re encouraged to retest again—after working on the customized lessons—and you can also schedule a retest reminder date. Helpful! I’ve long been a cheerleader for what I call “The 3 Powerful S’s: Strengths, Social Styles, and Spiritual Gifts.” But today I’m updating my PowerPoints to read: “The 4 Powerful S’s,” with the addition of a fourth S (Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management.). You can teach an old dog new tricks! To order from Amazon, click on the title for Emotional Intelligence 2.0 (The World’s Most Popular Emotional Intelligence Test), by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves.   Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) According to the EQ gurus, one self-management strategy is to make your goals public. (A university prof “pays his colleagues $100 anytime he misses a deadline on a research article.”) Name a goal you have that needs to go public. 2) How’s this for counter-intuitive? One of the self-awareness strategies (#5) in EQ is “Don’t Take Notes at Meetings.” One reason: the head-in-tablet syndrome diminishes active listening. What’s your learning style? What’s your listening style? Avoid “Management-by-Bestseller Syndrome” Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook  One of the big ideas in the Book Bucket, Chapter 5, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is to align your reading—and your team’s reading—with complementary books. Avoid “Management-by-Bestseller Syndrome,” says Scott Vandeventer. Thus—one of the factors that caught my eye about Emotional Intelligence 2.0 was that I had already reviewed books by six of the endorsers, including Patrick Lencioni who wrote the foreword. (He urges us to read the EQ book twice!) Other endorsers included Stephen R. Covey, Ken Blanchard, Marshall Goldsmith, Captain D. Michael Abrashoff, and Brian Tracy. Caution: “Management gimmick-of-the-month whiplash can be fatal!” So drink deeply and discerningly from the Book Bucket.                     JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the extraordinary power of visual media to inspire your members, clients, or customers? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video). And watch for John’s review of the new book by Doug Fields and Jason Pearson, This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love.   ECFA TOOLS AND TEMPLATES Click here to order the new book, ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance. MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations ECFA Tools and Templates Blog Click here to read John's new blog series on 22 downloadable tools and templates for effective board governance. NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

Managing Your Boss

 

Issue No. 201 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Nov. 8, 2010) asks you how much time you’ve invested in becoming a student of your boss? And this reminder, check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.

According to the HBR article, "Managing Your Boss," he or she is either a reader or a listener. Are you communicating in your leader's preferred style?






Boss Talk

One hundred percent of the time in my workshops and consulting, I have hallway conversations with really smart people who say something like, “I just don’t get my boss (or board chair). We’re rarely on the same page. Help!”

So I go down the boss talk path: “How many hours have you worked so far this year? How many hours have you invested in studying and understanding your boss this year?”

“Is your boss a reader or a listener? What are your boss’s Top-5 strengths on the Gallup StrengthsFinder system? What is your boss’s social style (driver, analytical, amiable or expressive)?  If your boss is a Christ-follower, do you know his or her spiritual gifts (leadership, mercy, teaching, etc.)?”

I explain that everyone must be a student of their boss and I urge them to read the Harvard Business Review classic article, “Managing Your Boss.”  In addition to leading your direct reports, you must own and navigate the relationship with your boss—not in a manipulative way—but in a mutual respect way.

Authors John J. Gabarro and John P. Kotter write, “At a minimum, you need to appreciate your boss’s goals and pressures, his or her strengths and weaknesses. What are you boss’s organizational and personal objectives, and what are his or her pressures, especially from his or her own boss and others at the same level? What are your boss’s long suits and blind spots?

"What is the preferred style of working? Does your boss like to get information through memos, formal meetings, or phone calls? Does he or she thrive on conflict or try to minimize it? Without this information, a manager is flying blind when dealing with the boss, and unnecessary conflicts, misunderstandings, and problems are inevitable.”

In addition to a 12-point “Checklist for Managing Your Boss,” the article addresses that critical question: “Is my boss a reader or a listener?”

“Subordinates can adjust their styles in response to their bosses’ preferred method for receiving information. Peter Drucker divides bosses into ‘listeners’ and ‘readers.' Some bosses like to get information in report form so they can read and study it. Others work better with information and reports presented in person so they can ask questions. As Drucker points out, the implications are obvious. If your boss is a listener, you brief him or her in person, then follow it up with a memo. If your boss is a reader, you cover important items or proposals in a memo or report, then discuss them.”

ARTICLE. No surprise. This HBR article is a classic because the boss challenge is a classic. If your key people have given little thought to managing up, invest a few bucks and download the article, "Managing Your Boss," from the Harvard Business Review (this 1980 article was reprinted in the January 2005 magazine).

BOOK. Or…read the expanded treatment of this subject (from Harvard Business Review Press, 2008). To order the 55-page book from Amazon, click on the title for Managing Your Boss, by John J. Gabarro and John P. Kotter 

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:

1) Is your boss (or board chair) a reader or a listener?  Do you communicate in his or her preferred style?

2) What are your boss’s Top-5 “S.M.A.R.T. Goals” for the year? S.M.A.R.T. goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-related.

Drucker Centennial (2009-2010)
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Drucker Bucket, Chapter 4, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to become disciplined students of the great management thinkers, especially Peter Drucker, the father of modern management. He was born in Vienna on Nov. 19, 1909, and so The Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, Calif., has been celebrating the Drucker Centennial this year.

According to the school’s website, “The Drucker Centennial is a time of commemoration, celebration, and renewal, which was crowned by a week of special events at Claremont Graduate University in November 2009 and supplemented by other activities from Fall 2008-2010. It marks the 100th birthday of Peter F. Drucker, the father of modern management; author of 39 books on organizational behavior, innovation, economy, and society; and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

To get a taste of Drucker’s savvy insight, download “Peter Drucker on Goal Alignment” from the Results Buckets on my website.  Along with 29 other CEOs, I heard Drucker tell this classic story at a week-long retreat in the Colorado mountains. 

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• BLOG: Pails in Comparison
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 NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

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Talking to Strangers

 

Issue No. 426 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Jan. 11, 2020) features the latest Wall Street Journal bestseller by Malcolm Gladwell—but be warned. It’s depressing! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my Top-10 books of 2019 and my Book-of-the-Year pick. Don’t Read This Depressing Review! If you’re looking for an upbeat you-can-be-anything-you-wanna-be positive-thinking, inspirational page-turner for Year 2020—THEN QUICK!—delete this eNews. This book is depressing. Malcolm Gladwell’s new bestseller, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know, is mistitled. Had the publisher asked me, I would have suggested these titles: • We Are Rotten at Spotting Liars and Deceivers! • The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things and Desperately Wicked! • Why Neville Chamberlain Should Have Skipped the Meeting With Hitler! • The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth: LOL! • Dishonesty and Stupidity Are Everywhere: Don’t Trust Large Organizations or Bernie Madoff! I could go on. But if you insist on reading my review of Talking to Strangers (and even worse—reading the book), please remember that I warned you. This will be short—because it’s too depressing to write a long review. THE BIG IDEA: Really smart people (the CIA, military intelligence, regulators, university officials with Ph.D.’s, the list goes on…) are not that smart when discerning if people we don’t know well are hoodwinking us (think spies, double agents, Ponzi schemers, football coaches, job applicants, the list goes on…). So…what chance is there for the rest of us with average intelligence? Gladwell: not much! The author elaborates on two puzzlers: PUZZLE #1: “Why can’t we tell when the stranger in front of us is lying to our face?” PUZZLE #2: “How is it that meeting a stranger can sometimes make us worse at making sense of that person than not meeting them?” EXAMPLE: The brazenness of a female employee of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (a Cuban spy), who won honors from the CIA and then was chosen for a stint in Cuba as a CIA distinguished intelligence analyst. Shocking! (Did I mention “shocking”?) BEST QUOTE: “The issue with spies is not that there is something brilliant about them. It is that there is something wrong with us.” What’s wrong? We’re rotten at spotting liars. Citing numerous studies, Gladwell notes: “What [the researcher] discovered is what psychologists always find in these cases, which is that most of us aren’t good at lie detection. On average, judges correctly identify liars 54 percent of the time—just slightly better than chance.” He adds, “This is true no matter who does the judging. Students are terrible. FBI agents are terrible. CIA officers are terrible. Lawyers are terrible.” In typical Gladwellian fashion (to be clear—I love his books), the author paints page-turning narratives with both familiar and unfamiliar accounts: Chamberlain and Hitler, Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Cox (fascinating), the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State University, and the never-should-have-happened death of Sandra Bland (the result of a routine traffic stop). There’s more (and caution—some of the verbatim courtroom accounts are raw and R-rated). AHA! MOMENT: There are many, but I was particularly intrigued with Gladwell’s focus on “location” and why local police tend to misunderstand criminal data about location—or just ignore it. I found just a modicum of hope to mitigate the depression: Discussing the “Law of Crime Concentration,” the author writes, “Like suicide, crime is tied to very specific places and contexts. Weisburd’s experiences in the 72nd Precinct and in Minneapolis are not idiosyncratic. They capture something close to a fundamental truth about human behavior. And that means that when you confront the stranger, you have to ask yourself where and when you’re confronting the stranger—because those two things powerfully influence your interpretation of who the stranger is.” FINAL THOUGHT: The book is depressing, but you should read it—or delegate your reading to someone on your team. To order from Amazon, click on the title for Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know, by Malcolm Gladwell. And special thanks to Dave Barton for recommending this depressing book! To listen to the audio version (8 hours, 42 minutes), visit Libro.fm YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) Malcolm Gladwell said the reason we’re so bad at spotting liars is because “we’re truth-biased” and “…we nearly always miss the crucial clues in the moment…” Yikes! So…who would like to read and report on this book BEFORE we interview our next job applicant? 2) In a footnote about training U.S. military personnel who might some day be water boarded and/or tortured (page 244), Gladwell contrasted two schools of thought. "The Navy wanted to show their trainees how bad things could get. The Air Force felt their trainees were better off not knowing that.” How would you approach this subject—wanting the best for the people you’re training?   Outliers: 1 of My Top-100 Books Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook  One of the big ideas in the Book Bucket, Chapter 5, in Mastering the Management Buckets, is is to create your Top-100 book list. This week, I posted three updated lists on my Book Bucket webpage (click here): BOOKS REVIEWED BY JOHN PEARSON: • List #1: Books by Management Buckets Categories • List #2: Chronological List of 425 Issues of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (400+ books) • List #3: John Pearson's Top-100 Book List (updated every 2 years) One of my Top-100 book picks is by Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success. (Click here to read my 2008 review.) Here’s a snippet: You will insist that Gladwell’s conclusions cannot possibly be true. Are they? You’ll sense sadness at how we fail to understand culture—and the incredible harm of wasted years and lives—all preventable, claims the author. He makes a compelling case about luck, timing—and the extraordinary power of the 10,000-hour rule and how it contributed to the success of Bill Gates and the Beatles. Read Outliers and then host a team discussion on the vast implications for your organization, such as what to consider when recruiting new team members and how professional development programs might need to change based on a person’s ethnicity. For example, Greeks and Guatemalans are in the top five of the “uncertainty avoidance” countries (high reliance on rules), while Swedes and Jamaicans represent the top-five cultures best able to tolerate ambiguity. (Did I mention I’m Swedish?) P.S. To read my 2013 review of Gladwell’s excellent book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, click here.                    JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you leveraging the extraordinary power of visual media to inspire your members, clients, or customers? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video), including the new book by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields, THIS. 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love.    MORE LESSONS: Effectiveness, Excellence, Elephants! Click here to order More Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom, by Dan Busby and John Pearson. Click here to follow the new blog with 40 guest bloggers.  NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon. ECFA Tools and Templates Blog Click here to read John's new blog series on 22 downloadable tools and templates for effective board governance, including why you must include "heavy lifting" on your agenda. See "Tool #12: Quarterly Board Meeting Agenda and Recommendations." MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE:  Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations