peer advantage – Page 16

Peer Advantage – An Obvious Choice

Will peer advantage gain traction? Can it be as common to the business lexicon someday as Emotional Intelligence is today? The short answer is “yes.” Why? Because CEOs need peer advantage every bit as much as the cavemen needed the wheel. In a recent conversation with Miguel Dias, Founder and CEO of CEO World, he reminded me of the cartoon of the cavemen ignoring their peer’s offer to make their lives easier. While this cartoon is a “slightly altered” version of the original, it illustrates an important point.

It’s what every CEO peer advisory group leader must feel like when he or she reaches out to a CEO with a solution to a problem that too many CEOs don’t realize they have. And if most CEOs took just a minute from being “too busy,” they could be reminded that who you surround yourself with matters and, because it matters, CEOs and business leaders can help each other in ways they just won’t find anywhere else. In this fast-changing, complex world of ours, none of us should try to go it alone.

In the book, The Power of Peers: How the Company You Keep Drives Leadership, Growth & Success, Vistage Chair Bob Dabic said that participating openly in a peer advisory group involves fighting off a caveman mentality and its 10,000 years of human conditioning. Today, too few people avail themselves of the myriad benefits of enlisting the support of their peers. Fortunately, the wheel became an everyday part of our lives. Sooner rather than later, so will peer advantage.

Taking Peer Advantage On The Road

When I discovered this image of the hitchhiker, I saw it as a metaphor for my new venture to take peer advantage on the road. It’s a twist on the African proverb, I guess: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, you’ll get there faster if someone gives you a ride.” None of us does it alone, and unless we all give each other a lift from time to time, we’re not likely to get very far and we certainly won’t get there fast.

Peer advantage is what CEOs and business leaders experience when they are more selective, strategic, and structured about how they engage their peers. It works because who you surround yourself with matters and, because of this, CEOs and business leaders can help each other in ways they just won’t find anywhere else. Despite how well it works though, not nearly enough of them engage their peers effectively. In a 2013 study at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, the data revealed that nearly two-thirds of CEOs don’t receive outside leadership advice. It also says that nearly all want it. So let’s show them how to get it!

On August 7th, I announced the expansion of the thought leadership initiative I started during my six-year tenure at Vistage Worldwide. My plan is to share “the boundless benefits of peer advantage” with business leaders across the globe. Why? Because of the difference I’ve seen it make in the lives of countless CEOs and business owners and, in turn, how they have helped their employees, families, and communities in the process. I simply want to call attention to what is undeniably effective and share it with the millions of leaders who are currently going it alone.

To do that, I’m going to need lots of rides along the way, and I’ll need you to give others a lift as well so we can spread the word together and reap the rewards peer advantage affords our society. Thanks to all of you who have hired me as a speaker, read my blog posts, listened to my podcasts, and shared the power of peer advantage on social media. There’s much more work to do. If you get a moment, have a look at the complete announcement and let me know what you think! As always, thanks for reading. Ideas welcome!

*Image from Huffingtonpost.com

The Learning Leadership Ensemble

Back on May 8th, I posted a review of Jim Kouzes’ and Barry Posner’s new book, Learning Leadership. I not only highly recommend the book for anyone who is a student of leadership (which is most of us I imagine), but also because I appreciate the bright light the authors shined on the value of engaging the support of others. This is where peer advantage meets learning leadership.

It’s been my experience that there’s no silver bullet to becoming a great leader nor to achieving greatness at anything for that matter. It typically involves an ensemble of activities and the generous support of others. The authors’ ensemble for learning leadership involves believing in yourself, aspiring to excel, challenging yourself, engaging support and practicing deliberately. Engaging support is where they see life as a team sport, stating that no one who has ever been great at anything achieved it alone. Here’s how Kouzes and Posner opened Part V of their book Learning Leadership:

“You can’t learn to become the best leader all by yourself. The top performers in every endeavor, including leaders, all seek out support, advice, and the counsel of others. That has a lot do with why they turn out to be the most successful.”

Kouzes and Posner also go so far as to suggest that you form your own personal board of directors – 4 to 7 people who have diverse skills sets – who care about your success, provide you the advice you need, and help you meet the tough challenges and achieve the lofty goals you’ve identified for yourself and your organization. Based on personal experience, this is a winning strategy that is both easy and effective, yet too few people do it.

The Power of Peers: How the Company You Keep Drives Leadership, Growth & Success, which I coauthored with Leon Shapiro, explores the value of engaging the support of others, while recognizing that it’s just one instrument in the learning leadership ensemble. Since writing the book, I’ve been speaking throughout the U.S. and abroad, playing my small part by touting the value of engaging the support of others. I invite you to join Kouzes and Posner in their lifelong quest to develop more and better leaders throughout the world – only together will we be successful.

*Photo from http://alvinband.squarespace.com/overview-1-1-2/

Are Kids and Seniors Peers?

You may be asking yourself: What kind of question is that? As I see it, you can make the case for it. Peers can be peers for a whole host of reasons. It may involve age, gender, profession, race, common interest, or in the case of kids and seniors, it’s the way in which they see the world.

The natural connection between them is undeniable. We’ve all seen it. For my money, it’s because they are two sides of the same coin who speak a common language. One is informed by innocence, while the other is guided by wisdom gleaned from a lifetime of experiences. The very young and very old see the world with a level of clarity that we as “grownups” only deign to see. They understand what matters in life in ways we cannot and, because of this, they share a special understanding and an extraordinary bond.

Ever wonder what happens to us during all those years in the middle? How do we go from being wide-eyed innocents to cynics to being wise (again)? Why do we make life so complicated during the in-between years? Why do we work so hard to learn so much only to realize that we know so little? It’s what e.e. cummings described in his poem, “all ignorance toboggans into know.” Here, cummings tells us that we actually strive to achieve ignorance, only to toboggan down the hill to wisdom again. It seems there should be a way to avoid this senseless journey.

Now that said, we know people who are exceptions to the rule. The very best leaders I’ve ever met, for example, certainly fall into this category. I’m not sure if they’re tapping into their inner child or just wise beyond their years, but they enjoy a special quality that most people don’t possess. They can extract clarity from complexity with astounding ease and connect the dots in ways most of us just can’t.

Tell us about a person you know who’s older than 10 and younger than 70 who is managing to avoid the roller-coaster ride from innocence to wisdom. Better yet, ask them how they did it and share their secret with everyone!

Where One23 Meets Peer Advantage

We all have a story, but few people can leverage its narrative as Rahfeal Gordon has done so brilliantly in the 2^nd edition of his riveting book One23. In it, Rahfeal reveals a chronicle of hardship that delivers a promise of hope. After sharing his deeply personal story, he also gives back to us, as others gave to him, by sharing 23 powerful strategies and a daily approach for how we can all find value in ourselves no matter where we came from. Among them is enlisting the help of others.

As you’ll discover in the book, Rahfeal understood that everyone had something to teach him. He received active and passive lessons from people from all walks of life. By always paying attention, he apprehended the good from the good, and the good from the bad, and used what he learned to create personal clarity about the kind of man he wanted to be.

I’ve had the distinct pleasure of spending time with Rahfeal, and I will tell you that the man matches the narrative. He’s every bit as thoughtful, positive, curious, inspiring, and generous as the account of his life reveals. What’s most obvious is that Rahfeal understands the importance of surrounding himself with good people – people who lift him up, people who he can learn from, and people who hold him accountable to his lofty goals and his dream of making the world better than he found it.

Rahfeal does this by seeing the emptiness in the glass half-full as opportunity. It’s a little like the story of the two shoe salesmen, who upon their return from a business trip to a village in India, each shared their assessment of the market potential. The first salesman concluded, “Bad news. No one was wearing shoes there.” The second exclaimed, “Great news! No one was wearing shoes there!”

While it’s easy to chuckle at the first salesman’s perspective, it’s far more common than you think. Earlier in my PR career, one of my clients was a 75+ year-old regional engineering firm. Everyone in the firm openly thought of themselves, and the company as a whole, as stodgy and resistant to change. (They practically wore it as a badge of honor). My task was to update the messaging the leadership was using to communicate to the marketplace, which essentially reflected how they saw themselves. This meant that my initial task was to convince the leaders to see themselves differently first.

In reading a book on the history of the firm, I discovered one story after the next where the company faced seemingly insurmountable odds only to reinvent itself, no matter what the market threw in its way. The firm always figured out how to change its business to stay in business. The history didn’t say stodginess, it screamed agility! Only after the leadership saw it this way could they communicate their new message convincingly to the market.

You want to learn how to take your story (no matter how tough it’s been) and change the narrative? To use your past to create a new foundation for a brighter future? Read Rahfeal’s book and surround yourself with the kind of people who will help you see in you, what you may not see in yourself, and keep them close by. It’s where One23 meets peer advantage.

To learn more about Rahfeal Gordon and read more of his books, visit his website at rahgor.com

Your Journey to Global Greatness

When was the last time you engaged in a dialogue about global greatness? Surround yourself with the right people and these are the kind of conversations you’re inclined to have. A big thanks to Ryan Foland, host of KUCI’s (88.9 FM) Get Notified, for inviting me, Rahfeal Gordon, and Miguel Dias to join him on his show. Before any of us finished our first cup of coffee, we found ourselves taking a deep dive into the stages of attaining global greatness – live on the radio! Pretty heady stuff at any time of day. (Let me also offer a shout out to Erin and Angie for offering a student perspective and live tweeting during the program).

Using the three major stages of the journey from Rahfeal’s 2015 book Skyscraper, we enjoyed a rich conversation about Chaos, Ruin and Transformation, and the difference people can make in our lives at each juncture on our journey to greatness. To learn more about embarking on your own journey and how to enlist the help of others to achieve greatness in your own life, here’s the podcast for review. As Rahfeal says, “Your location is not your destination!” Enjoy!

http://www.ryanfoland.com/?powerpress_pinw=1068-podcast

Shaping the Odds!

Karen Floyd, SymmetryPR, suggested I take a look at a thoughtful piece she wrote about peer advantage from a recent talk I gave at the ANJE Conference (pictured above). Even more importantly from my perspective, she asked me to explore a new peer-to-peer community called Shaping the Odds. At her request, I joined the community and look forward to working with my peers in this forum over the coming months.

Karen briefly described Shaping the Odds as a place that provides a warmer user experience than LinkedIn, while overcoming what some entrepreneurs believe to be the often too personal bent of Facebook. (I was immediately intrigued). At first glance. it delivers a perfect balance for entrepreneurs who believe in paying it forward and who wish to participate in a peer-to-peer community where expertise, mentorship, contacts, etc. can be shared among business leaders at all levels. Over time, I can see it providing a wellspring of business and personal stories that will be invaluable for entrepreneurs and company leaders alike.

For more information on Shaping the Odds vision, check out what its founder, André Eidskrem has to say! A community is only as strong as its members. Shape the odds in your favor and theirs by giving it a try!

Want to go far? Go together.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” It’s among my favorite quotes, and the one we used to open our new book, The Power of Peers: How the Company You Keep Drives Leadership, Growth & Success. Turns out, I actually experienced this phenomenon firsthand on my recent trip to Porto, Portugal. Let me explain.

Miguel Dias, CEO of CEO World was kind enough invite me to deliver a master class and participate as a mentor and as a member of a peer group at the ANJE Conference last month. Prior to my leaving for the trip, Miguel asked me if I wanted to join him and a few of the other speakers for a morning run in Porto. I thought, “What a great idea!” Later, I learned that the other speakers accepted Miguel’s invitation with equal enthusiasm. We all met in the hotel lobby early on Wednesday morning, well before the heat of the day would have made our run even more challenging. Next thing you know, we were off and running – literally.

Now you may be asking yourself the question we should have asked before we embarked on this self-propelled excursion. How far are we going? Since none of us asked, we just kept running – from the Crowne Plaza hotel, through a lovely park which led us to the ocean, and then south along the ocean – a scenic tour of a beautiful section of Porto. (And a run that up to this point was predominantly downhill). It was at this time (about 7k or nearly 4.5 miles in), where we stopped for a quick selfie (pictured above left to right): Ryan Foland, Rahfeal Gordon, Miguel Dias, and yours truly (the older guy at the end looking more exhausted than the other three).

As we were collecting ourselves, we learned two things: 1) We had to run back the same way we came (no shortcut to the hotel) and 2) because what goes down must come up, the remainder of our run would be primarily uphill. Together, we ran to the hotel balancing a positive attitude with the familiar peer-to peer axiom “misery loves company.”

While you may regard this story as pretty unremarkable, consider this: Miguel invited us to run with him without knowing any of our running backgrounds or current fitness levels. If he had, Miguel would have known that it’s been at least five years since either me, Ryan or Rahfeal have run anywhere close to that distance.

In talking with Ryan and Rahfeal upon our return to the hotel, we compared notes and agreed on three important points: 1) We all assumed (with a capital A) that it was unlikely that we would run any farther than 5-8 kilometers or 3-5 miles. 2) If we had been told that we were heading out for a run nearly twice that distance, we wouldn’t have even attempted it. 3) We ran farther than we could have ever predicted and much farther than any of us would have gone if left to our own devices.

It’s a fitting metaphor for the power of the group, whether you happen to be on a running tour or you’re running a company. It offers all the proof I need that if you want to go far, you need the kind of people around you who will help you make that possible. Who you surround yourself with matters, and on that summer morning in Porto, I could not have been surrounded by a finer group of people.

By the way, the quote we used to end the book, another African proverb, was “I am because you are.”

Class Clowns and Peer Advantage

During a recent appearance on Real Talk San Diego 1700 AM ESPN, I spoke with hosts Chase Peckham and Brian Blackburn about a range of subjects related to the power of peers and what I call peer advantage, particularly when it comes to high-performing sports teams – most notably The University of Connecticut Women’s Basketball team.

We also touched on how early it all starts. In this clip, we discussed class clowns and why the power of maintaining order in the classroom does not rest solely with the teacher; it actually rests with the group. Here’s a brief video segment. If you’d like to listen to the interview in its entirety, please do and let me know what you think!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahKgr5tQFzk?list=FLYD3gKMbB6ptG2KEx9zOYog]

Inspiration Behind The Power of Peers

When organizational agility expert Mike Richardson asked me about the inspiration behind the book and the concept of peer advantage, the answer was simple. In addition to what I offered in this short video, consider also that there are thousands of books about leadership, hundreds more on followership, yet far too few titles in the business and education arenas that speak to the value of those who stand beside us. Who we surround ourselves with matters. By being more selective, strategic and structured about how we engage our peers, we can transform the garden-variety peer influence we experience every day into something much more powerful – what we call peer advantage. Watch and offer your thoughts!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoJ-_tGC7uQ?rel=0&w=640&h=360]