The point I want to make today is to cherish and celebrate wonderful times when you can get together with your family and loved ones. And if you can build some traditions like we have built at our lake house, that’s a wonderful thing too, where people always come back for a period of time in the summer. It makes it really special. So cherish it, but also celebrate it and recognize that life is good after you spend time together. Life is good every day if you have the right attitude. Go around and hug people who are important in your life; tell them you love them. Tell them you care about them. Because you know what?  It will make them feel good, and you, too. Because when all is said and done, all we have in life is who we love and who loves us.

You know, not long ago I woke up and I had a little "pity party." I was kind of feeling bad.  I had been traveling a lot, and that day I was flying out of state to do something I had agreed to do over a year earlier. And I was thinking, "Wow, I’ve had enough of travel." I’d just as soon have stayed home with Margie and our dog Joy and gone up to the office and hugged everybody. So I was having a pretty good pity party. And then I just kind of backed off. I read my mission statement and my obituary and my values—and I realized that there must be some reason I was going there. Maybe somebody really needed the message I was going to bring; maybe somebody really needed something I could help them with. You know, if you’re going to make the word a better place, you do it by the moment-to-moment decisions you make as you interact with other people. So I just kind of pumped myself up and said, "Okay, Blanchard, you’re here to make the world a little bit better, so stop with the pity party. You’ve just got another new audience—a new group of people." And maybe, just maybe, I did make a little bit of a difference in someone’s life. So if you ever have those feelings, you know—"Monday, oh my God. I’ve got to go back to work," or whatever—the reality is that we’re really wonderfully blessed. We have to keep on reminding ourselves when we get into our pity party to just get up. Because somebody always has it worse than we have it. Somebody has some problems and maybe we can help—whether it be a customer or coworker, family member, or friend. So no more pity parties. Although it is good to recognize that we can all fall into that mood, the way out, especially this week, is positive thinking, giving thanks for what you do have,  and realizing that we are really here to make a difference.

You know, one of the things that bugs me is how much the press goes too far in trying to catch people doing things wrong and find out where they stumbled, where they’ve made mistakes. It seems to be relevant now with the Tiger Woods saga, but this "gotcha" mentality is something that has been going on for a long time. It doesn’t matter what position, what office, what they’re trying to do. They love to make sure they can dig somebody a hole and try to push them into it. I heard a great quote the other day that originally came from Teddy Roosevelt. He said, "It is not the critic who counts; not the person who points out how strong people stumble, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is no effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." So it’s really tough. Like I say, if you’ve never made a mistake in your life or done anything stupid, then you probably lie about other things, too. The important thing is not doing a stupid thing, but realize when you’ve done it and own up to it, give an apology, and move on. I think it would be really good if we could spend more time catching people doing things right rather than wrong. So take care of yourselves. You might make a mistake, but give it your best. I’ve always enjoyed and promoted the concept of "Catching People Doing Things Right," and over at LeaderChat.org they are running a new Twitter contest… Starting on Tuesday and lasting for 72-hours, The Ken Blanchard Companies will give you a chance to "catch someone doing things right" by entering that person in a drawing for a copy of one of my latest books. The book will contain a personalized inscription congratulating the winner on being caught doing things right.  The contest ends on Friday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time and you can enter as many people as you would like.  Here’s how to participate: 1.    Go to www.Twitter.com and post the name of the person you would like to catch doing things right along with a very short description of why. Include the following code in your message @leaderchat For example: Nick Peterson—for doing an outstanding job all year and helping to make this our best year ever!  #@leaderchat 2.    Push the UPDATE button! It’s as simple as that.  Every day between now and Friday we’ll randomly choose one lucky person among those entered to receive one of the personalized books.  Each day’s winner will be posted at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time at www.leaderchat.org Don’t miss this chance to say "thank you" to someone who really deserves it.  Participating is a fun, low-cost, and very thoughtful way to let someone know that you appreciate them! PS: If you don’t have a Twitter account yet, you can sign up at Twitter when you get there.  Just follow the instructions and you’ll be online in minutes.

Listen to this definition of excellence: Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical, and expecting more than others think is possible. I just think that is a really interesting thing  -  think about yourself and how you are doing in a caring scale, how you are doing in the risking scale, how you are doing in the dreaming scale, and how you are doing on the expecting scale.  I really think that’s a wonderful definition of excellence. Be excellent today - care, risk, and dream and expect big. Speaking of excellence… At the University of San Diego, my wife Margie and I teach a course as part of the Master of Science in Executive Leadership program. Our course is "Determining Your Leadership Point of View." Your leadership point of view is really figuring out who you are as a leader, and sharing it. There are seven aspects of it: Who are the role models you had early in life that impacted your belief about leadership? Most people don’t talk about bosses; they talk about their mother or father, uncle or cousin, teacher or coach—what we call "lifelong leaders." What’s your mission in life? What are you trying to accomplish? What are your values - what’s going to guide your behavior? Based on those three things, what’s your leadership point of view—what are your beliefs about leading and motivating people? What are your expectations of others? What do your people expect of you? How are you going to walk your talk? How are you going to model what you say you stand for? It’s a fascinating process. We discuss this in Chapter 15 of Leading at a Higher Level. So if you want to find out more about that, get a copy of that book and read that chapter. If any of you haven’t developed a leadership point of view, I would like to challenge you to develop it. Then sometime, maybe in the first part of next year, sit down with your people and share your leadership point of view with them. Because it really does clarify expectations and who you are. It’s not about weakness; it’s about sharing who you are so other people can share who they are with you. It’s a wonderful process. And remember, it’s not just supervisors that should have a leadership point of view—all of you are leaders in some aspect of your life. You’re a leader as a spouse, as a father or mother, or as a volunteer. Anytime you try to influence the behavior of someone else, you’re engaging in leadership. Where did you get your image of leadership? I challenge everybody to develop and be able to share their leadership point of view.

Whenever two people quarrel, inevitably they focus on who is right and who is wrong.  Playing the "I’m right, you’re not" game is a sure way for people to push away from each other even further. If there is a history of disagreements, this mindset will cause even the slightest spat to become a rehash of past conflicts. Knowing how to handle conflict is an important skill for anyone.  I find that three very simple questions can help minimize conflict. 1. "What would make the other person’s position right?" The first question is from Mary Parker Follett, a professor of organizational behavior in the early 20th century.  She was one of the first people to point out that conflict was often the result of rational, well-intentioned people who simply saw the world differently and thus focused on different problems. To best resolve a disagreement, Follett advocated not to dwell on who was right, but rather to try to better understand why the other person sees the situation as he or she does.  That is, ask yourself, "For the other person to be correct, what views would that person have to hold about the situation of life in general?"  This simple technique can help you see beyond the problem at hand and focus on a more general understanding of the situation. For instance, I once got upset when I felt that someone in my company did not treat a customer well.  But by asking, "How could this person allow this to happen?" I learned that the other person simply didn’t realized the importance I have always placed on customer service.  As a result, we achieved clarity about this issue. After you have a good understanding of how the other person sees things, you can more objectively discuss with him or her the basis for the specific perception.  It is easier to discuss how the person arrived at the perception and what might change his or her viewpoint than it is to force someone else to change a position he or she is locked on. 2. "What do we have in common?" This question comes from Peter Drucker, one of the foremost management thinkers of our day.  He believed that sometimes the best approach to deal with conflict is simply to try to make it more bearable for those involved.  Instead of criticizing each other when you disagree, Drucker advocated finding what you have in common with the other person.  Finding a common ground can then typically be parlayed into other areas of agreement.  Although the conflict may not ever be fully resolved, focusing on areas of agreement will help minimize the conflict and make it more manageable. To take a simple example, suppose a man who works with you is constantly late for meetings, and this bothers you.  You may interpret his behavior as unprofessional and disrespectful and you are apt to get increasingly annoyed. The other person, however, is likely not to see it the same way.  He may instead feel that being on time in life is simply not that important in the overall scheme of things.  He may feel instead, for example, that it is more important to get the job done. He may be willing to work long and hard—maybe even staying overtime—to complete any given assignment.  Both of you place a different value on timeliness for different reasons which are valid to each of you individually. Instead of focusing on being "right" when the colleague is late, it would be much more productive for you to explore how you both see the subject of timeliness and what you each might do to minimize the potential conflict that results when he is late. You might get the person to agree to call you if he expects to be late, or you may need to emphasize in advance to him when it is crucial for you to have him be on time. These agreed upon "rules" will help to minimize potential friction in the future between you both. 3. "If we were to agree in the future, what would it look like?" I learned this last technique from my wife, Margie, who convinced me that looking ahead to the future and imagining a harmonious relationship makes it easier to get to that point. As an example, let’s say you are discussing the future direction of your company with your management team and there is disagreement. Instead of getting caught up in escalating emotions about some aspect of the company’s vision that you feel strongly about, just slow down and imagine what your company would ideally be like in five or ten years. This technique allows people to focus together on a positive future vision that can serve as an anchor in your interactions today.  Again, areas of disagreement tend to become secondary. Resolving conflict is not always an easy thing to do. Yet, if you take a moment to use these techniques, you may find your anger and frustration slipping away as you take a giant step toward achieving more harmonious working relationships.

At The Ken Blanchard Companies, most of our work in the past focused on leader behavior and how to improve leadership style and methods. We attempted to change leaders from the outside. But through the years we have become convinced that effective leadership starts with self perception—it’s an inside job. It is a question of the heart. It’s all about leadership character and intention. Why are you leading? Is it to serve or be served? Answering this question in a truthful way is so important, because you can’t fake being a servant leader. We believe that if leaders don’t get the heart part right, they simply won’t ever become servant leaders. The most persistent barrier to being a servant leader is a heart motivated by self interest that looks at the world as a "give a little, take a lot" proposition. Leaders with hearts motivated by self interest put their own agenda, safety, status, and gratification ahead of others who are affected by their thoughts and actions. In a sense, developing a "servant’s heart" is a lifelong journey. It is my belief that you finally become an adult when you realize that life is about what you give rather than what you get. The shift from self-serving leadership to leadership that serves others is motivated by a change in heart. Servant leadership is not just another management technique. It is a way of life for those with servant’s hearts. When some people hear the phrase servant leadership, they associate it with "soft management"—they think you can’t lead and serve at the same time. Yet you can, if you understand that there are two kinds of leadership involved in servant leadership: strategic leadership and operational leadership. Strategic leadership has to do with vision and direction. This is the leadership aspect of servant leadership. The responsibility for this visionary role falls to the hierarchical leadership. Kids look to their parents, players look to their coaches, and people look to their organizational leaders for direction. Once people are clear on where they are going, the leader’s role shifts to a service mindset for the operational leadership task, which is all about implementation—the servant aspect of servant leadership. How do you make your vision happen?  In a traditional organization, all the energy in the organization moves up the hierarchical pyramid as people try to be responsive to their bosses instead of focusing their energy on meeting the needs of their customers. Bureaucracy rules, and policies and procedures carry the day. This creates unprepared and uncommitted customer contact people who are trying to protect themselves and it leaves customers uncared for at the bottom of the hierarchy. This scenario doesn’t do much to move the organization in the desired direction toward accomplishing a clear vision. Servant leaders, on the other hand, feel their role is to help people achieve their goals. To do that, the traditional hierarchical pyramid is theoretically turned upside down so that the frontline people, who are closest to the customers, are at the top. Now the frontline people are responsible—able to respond—to the needs of the customers. In this scenario, leaders serve and are responsive to their people’s needs, training and developing them to accomplish established goals and live according to the vision. Servant leadership is not soft management; it is management that not only gets great results but also generates great human satisfaction. If you are interested in learning more about Servant Leadership, I will be speaking at the Servant Leadership Institute Winter Conference on February 1st-3rd in San Diego. For more information, or to buy tickets, please visit their website at http://sli2011winterconference.eventbrite.com/. See you there!

As part of a new series, I’m introducing today’s leadership concept via a segment extracted from my latest book, Lead with LUV, coauthored by former Southwest Airlines president Colleen Barrett.   Understanding Servant Leadership For those of you who may not be clear on the concept of servant leadership, read this excerpt from Lead with LUV where Colleen and I discuss why servant leadership is the very best way to lead. Colleen: Ken, it makes me sad when people hear the term servant leadership and, as you have said, they think you’re talking about la-la land where the inmates are running the prison or trying to please everyone. Ken: The problem is that they don’t understand leadership or, more importantly, servant leadership. They think you can’t lead and serve at the same time. Yet you can, if you understand that there are two kinds of leadership involved in servant leadership: strategic leadership and operational leadership. Strategic leadership has to do with vision/direction. It’s the leadership part of servant leadership. The focus for strategic leadership is the "what" that ensures everyone is going in the same direction. This is all important because: Leadership is about going somewhere— If you and your people don’t know where you are going, Your leadership doesn’t matter Alice learned this lesson in Alice in Wonderland when she was searching for a way out of Wonderland and came to a fork in the road. "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" she asked the Cheshire Cat. "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," the cat said. Alice replied that she really did not much care. The smiling cat told her in no uncertain terms, "Then it doesn’t matter which way you go." Colleen: At Southwest, we’ve always tried to make sure everyone knows where we are heading. Then, of course, we had to make it all happen. Ken: In essence, that’s what operational leadership is about:  implementation—the "how" of the organization. This is the servant part of servant leadership. It’s what leaders focus on after everyone is clear on where they are going. It includes policies, procedures, systems, and leader behaviors that cascade from senior management to frontline employees and make it possible for the organization to live according to its vision and values and accomplish short-term goals and initiatives. These management practices create the environment that employees and customers interact with and respond to on a daily basis. I hope you all believe, as I do, that effective leadership starts on the inside. Servant leadership is not just another management technique. It is a way of life for those with a servant’s heart.  The byproducts are better leadership, better service, a higher performing organization, and more success and significance. Stop and think about this:  Are you a servant leader?

During tough economic times, I’m often asked how to build trust within an organization. People seem to be really down and don’t trust their leaders. I got the best advice about this from my friend Ichak Adizes, who used to be a professor at UCLA—a brilliant guy. He said, "You can’t talk about trust until you talk about respect." There’s a nonverbal and verbal aspect of each of those. If I respect you, I face you, because I want to hear your opinion. If I don’t respect you, I turn my back on you, because I couldn’t care less what you think. But this it interesting—if I trust you, I’m willing to turn my back on you because I know you mean me no harm. If I don’t trust you, I face you because I need to watch your every move. So these two things work together. You can’t talk about building trust until you show respect. I’ve seen a lot of leaders who will go behind closed doors and start making decisions about other people’s lives. And the people outside the door don’t trust the intentions of the leaders inside; they think they’re in there to serve themselves. One of the things we do to show respect for people in our company is to share our balance sheet with them so they know how the company is doing. We even brought in someone from Colorado to teach people how to read a balance sheet! We share this because we want everyone to always know where we stand as an organization. We have a gain-sharing program where we share a percentage of our profits with our people. We also have a "give back" program where we take a percentage of our profit and give it to our employees so they can each give money to a charity that is important to them. We want them involved—we show them respect and they trust us in return.  I think it’s so powerful and so necessary to understand how those two things go together. If you don’t treat people with respect, they won’t trust you. Trust and respect go together.