Why Praising Character Is as Crucial as Praising Achievement

Bringing Balance to Personnel Reviews

The path to the top, in the opinion of most, is to be an achiever, a top performer. That view is drummed into us from childhood.

In elementary school, recognition and honors go to those whose achievement is superior. There are few awards, if any, for stellar character. The closest to it are good conduct awards, which are themselves more of a reward for performance than character.

And this pattern of rewards continues through our education and into our careers. Interestingly, periodic employee reviews have come to be called “performance reviews.” Have you ever heard of companies or organizations conducting periodic “character reviews”?

This suggests that our culture puts much more stock in a a person’s achievements than in his or her character. In fact, we tend to praise people almost exclusively on the basis of performance. But when we criticize them, we’re prone to ascribe their shortcoming to some flaw in character. It seems that serious conversations about character take place only when it breaks down.

I take up the ramification of these tendencies in this podcast. And I suggest an approach to evaluating employees that is a marked departure from how reviews are typically conducted.

A transcript of today’s program is available at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes.

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A Strategy for Rebuilding Accountability

This is the fifth and final episode in a series of programs on growing concerns about an emerging accountability crisis in America.

In this episode, I offer my thoughts on how leaders can strengthen accountability in their organization. The strategy aims at countering a situation which is increasingly common: workers who are capable and talented, but whose accountability is lackluster. For whatever reason, they entered adulthood without a mature commitment to being accountable.

What I suggest is not a quick-fix approach. Rather, I look at a three-part strategy which grows accountability gradually and incrementally.

Each part of the strategy centers on some aspect of tasking our people and reviewing their performance. At every stage, the strategy draws on motivational techniques which will profit leaders anywhere, even if their organization does not have accountability issues.

The strategy is easy to grasp, simple to implement, and straightforward maintain. But it does require long-term commitments from leaders to model the way and to conduct frequent informal conversations with those who report to them.

You can download a transcript of this program at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com/episodes/2308-rebuilding-accountability.htm.

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A Counteroffensive against Declining Accountability

Mark Twain is remembered for saying, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

For three episodes I have been talking about the erosion of personal accountability in our nation. With this fourth episode in the series, we start doing something about it.

I invite leaders to join a counteroffensive aimed at regaining the ground which accountability has lost. Not a wholesale, frontal assault, mind you. Something more akin to low-key guerilla warfare waged in the leader’s sphere of influence.

And our first priority as leaders in this effort is to serve as role models of responsive, responsible accountability. Most of the episode is devoted to showing why modeling the way must be a lead initiative if we are to restore a healthier degree of accountability.

I offer a practical personal exercise which provides a benchmark on how well our current conduct as a leader equips us to be a stellar role model of accountability. It helps us identify where we need to improve our own accountability so that we can serve as a stellar example. I then discuss essentials of using our personal example to maximum effectiveness.

A transcript of the episode is free for download at https://www.lUpsizeYourLeadership.com/episodes/2307-modeling-accountability.htm.

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Accountability Seems to Be in Retreat

In the previous two episodes, I’ve discussed a variety of factors which produced a broad-based perception that personal accountability is greatly diminished. In the last episode, I looked at three cultural trends which have aggravated this decline. These are:

• side-effects of family breakdown
• growth of a victim mentality
• massive urbanization

Today I examine three additional contributors.

• political polarization
• a lost ethical consensus derived from Judaeo-Christian ideals
• radically shortened business lifespans

Here’s a summary of how these three work against the interests of personal accountability.

Political polarization has produced the most pronounced social division in our history, with the sole exception of the Civil War. And the distrust which springs from deep polarization inevitably undermines our sense of accountability and responsibility toward those on the other side of the polarizing divide.

Simultaneously, a long-standing ethical consensus built on Judaeo-Christian ideals has weakened appreciably, shouldered aside by a broad embrace of moral relativism. American churches and synagogues historically promoted a vibrant message of individual responsibility and personal accountability. But having steadily lost influence and attendance of late, they have fewer opportunities to promote responsible, accountable living.

As for the third item on our list — radically shortened lifespans for businesses –its adverse impact on accountability may not be obvious. How could shorter business lifespans weaken accountability?

The impact is subtle, but powerful nonetheless. Compared with businesses historically, companies today are extremely short-lived. The average survival time of companies on the S&P500 is 18 years. Five decades ago it was 61 years. Employees have little assurance that their company will be around for them long-term. They therefore anticipate little benefit from being deeply loyal to the company. And without that loyalty, they may settle for compromised standards of accountability in their work performance.

In the next episode, I turn to strategies which leaders should pursue in response to declining accountability. Accountability may be in decline, but it’s by no means dead. It’s waiting to be rejuvenated by capable leaders.

A transcript of this episode can be downloaded at https://www.upsizeyourleadership.com by following the menu link to Episodes.

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Diminished Personal Accountability:

Contributing Factors to a Growing Issue

Everywhere I go, it seems, I hear people expressing dismay at what they see as a decaying sense of personal accountability in American culture.

Many factors contribute to the decline. This episode is the second in a multipart series which analyzes these factors from historical, sociological, and psychological standpoints.

This episode traces the adverse impact of three of these factors on personal accountability:

1. Structural breakdown of the American family — with 18 million children living in single-parent homes, the stability of marriage and family is clearly on shaky ground. Yet family is the very institution which has historically instilled a sense of personal responsibility and accountability in the upcoming generation.
2. Growth of a victim mindset — increasingly in recent years, aggrieved parties are quick to describe themselves as a victim. By its very nature, however, a victim mentality minimizes one’s sense of personal responsibility for what has befallen us. Someone else is to blame. But without a sense of responsibility, there is little sense of accountability.
3. Expansive urbanization — one by-product of urban sprawl is a feeling of anonymity, i.e., living as a nameless face in a massive crowd. Because anonymity fosters emotional detachment from those nearby, it likewise invites us to shirk our responsibility and accountability toward them.

Later episodes in this series will delve into leadership’s role and options in combating a rising tide of non-accountability. The initial programs, however, are examining root causes for our growing accountability crisis.

A printed transcript of this episode is available at https://www.UpsizeYourLeadership.com/episodes.

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Is Accountability in Dwindling Supply?

I overhear more and more conversations of late about accountability. Most of these are discussions of what people perceive as an increasing lack of personal accountability in our culture.

After listeners began urging me to speak to this issue, I decided to give the subject more than a single episode. Instead, I’m planning a series of programs on the topic.

This first installment touches on several issues.

• First is the importance of leaders making honest assessments of how well they serve as exemplars of personal accountability for their people.
• Second is the role that accountability plays in building trust within a community.
• Third is relationship between personal accountability and a personal sense of self-worth.
• And fourth, the role of families in establishing a strong sense of accountability and self-worth in their children.

This episode initiates a number of themes which will be explored more fully in later installments of this series.

A printed transcript of this inaugural episode can be downloaded at https://www.UpsizeYourLeadership.com/episodes.

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No nation has ever been as entrepreneurial as the United States. More people in the U.S. aspire to be entrepreneurs than anywhere else on earth.

Far more people take a stab at being an entrepreneur than succeed at it. The failure rate is staggering. And a primary reason for failure is the lack of an entrepreneurial mindset.

People are attracted to an entrepreneurial career because they see the attraction of it. And the life of successful entrepreneurs is especially attractive. Dazzled by the glamorous promise of entrepreneurial success, however, they often fail to see the demand which being an entrepreneur puts on those who seek that way of life.

About one person out of five who approaches me for coaching has an entrepreneurial ambition. What the majority of them lack, however, is an entrepreneurial mindset. The truth is, successful entrepreneurs think differently from other people. It’s this mindset, far more than the product or market or team that they choose, which will determine whether they achieve their dream.

In this episode, I examine five key characteristics of the entrepreneurial mindset. I look at how each characteristic is attractive and enticing. Then I examine lurking dangers which are not always apparent to the outside observer.

My purpose is not to discourage entrepreneurialism. Rather, my aim is to help people ask whether their entrepreneurial mindset is sufficient to help them weather those dangers when they arise.

A transcript of this episode is available at www.UpsizeYourLeadership/episodes

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Leadership and the Power of Trust

A (New) Best-Seller

Evidence is everywhere that trust is in low repair in our nation. Polarization is deep, and it touches almost every field of human endeavor and opinion.

For almost 20 years, Dr. Mike Armour has been addressing our world’s growing problem and how it impacts the world of business leadership. His 2006 book, Leadership and the Power of Trust, has been re-released in an updated and expanded second edition. And within weeks it became an Amazon best-seller in five fields of business and leadership.

In this episode he offers a summary of the book’s message about Trust-Centered Leadership. And he highlights the subtitle of the book, How to Build a High-Trust, Peak-Performance Organization. He then shows how one of Microsoft’s most pivotal teams used principles from the book to make stellar improvements in performance and effectiveness.

The final part of the podcast examines questions which reviewers have put to him recently about the book. He then shares the answers which he offered to these probing questions.

A transcript of the episode is available in a PDF format at https://www.UpsizeYourLeadership.com by clicking on the link to Download Scripts.

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The Vital Role of Second-Tier Leadership

Sometimes we call them the “number two” person in the organizations. Sometimes we jokingly refer to them as the “second banana.”

They are those people who are positioned just below the top leader on the organization chart. Often they are in that slot because they are being groomed for the top position some day.

A great many, however, like that post for an entirely different reason. They don’t desire the spotlight themselves. But they find great fulfillment in helping the person in the spotlight truly shine. They have no ambition to move further up the ladder. They are quite happy where they are.

Rarely do we celebrate such second-tier leaders. The gain so little recognition that to the outsider looking in, they may appear invisible. Yet top leaders often get credit for successes that were less due to their own effort and more due to what their second-tier leader contributed.

That certainly held true in my own career in top-of-the-organization positions. As I admit in this progress, I’m as guilty as anyone of not giving proper recognition to the second-tier leaders who made my success possible.

Many of them are dead now, which means that I can never make amends. But perhaps I can repay some of the debt I owe them by urging others to not duplicate my mistake. Find ways to recognize, honor, and celebrate those “second bananas” whose contributions have gone unheralded far too long.

As I say at the conclusion of this podcast, there’s nothing second class about second-tier leadership.

You can download a PDF transcript of this episode at https://www.UpsizeYourLeadership.com/episodes.

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A Stark Contrast in Leadership Styles

At the outset of the war in Ukraine, I produced two podcasts in which I forecast some things about the conflict which would surprise the world. I based my predictions on years of experience managing offices and distribution centers in both Russia and Ukraine. Since then, events have unfolded much along the lines of what I anticipated.

What no one foresaw, however, yours truly included, was how effectively the Ukrainians would mount a decisive counteroffensive. The rapid liberation of the Kharkiv oblast will serve as a case study in military academies and war colleges for decades to come. It is one of the most striking examples of strategic deception and operational security in history.

To pull off a feat like that requires leadership of the highest caliber. Therefore, at the request of several listeners, I’m using this episode to offer updated analysis of the war. And I’m focusing primarily on the total contrast between the two armies in terms of leadership styles. In addition, I examine the historical and cultural roots behind these contrasting styles.

For a transcript of this lesson, go to https://www.leaderperfect.com/podcast and click on the link to Download Scripts.

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