8 Ways to Make People Feel Like a Million Bucks

Ranking among the greatest Christmas movie classics, It’s a Wonderful Life tells a beautiful story about the priceless value of relationships.

The story follows the life of George Bailey, a man who sacrifices his dreams to travel the world, instead choosing to stay in his hometown and run the family-owned business after the sudden death of his father.

Throughout the movie, George’s humanity draws us into his life. As we watch him grow from a child to a young man, and then to a husband, father, and business owner, we see how George continually places the well-being of others ahead of his own interests. Yet, we can sense his frustration at being pent up in a small town, working long hours, earning a modest salary, and living in an old, renovated house.

When life’s circumstances push George’s business to the brink of bankruptcy, his frustrations boil over, and he contemplates taking his own life. At this crucial moment, a guardian angel is sent from heaven to prevent George from committing suicide. Through a series of supernatural events, the angel convinces George of the beauty of his life—even with his present troubles. With a renewed sense of gratefulness, George goes back to his home.

Upon his return, George’s family and friends rally around him in an overwhelming outpouring of support and generosity. In a show of goodwill, they take up a collection and donate it to George. With his business secure and his financial situation saved, George uncovers a note left by his guardian angel:

Remember George: no man is a failure who has friends.

WINNING WITH PEOPLE

Like George Bailey, most people can trace their successes and failures to the relationships in their lives. As a leader, you can’t be a loner. Your success is tied to inspiring a shared vision. In this edition of Leadership Wired, we’ll explore 8 practices whereby you can win with others.

1. Let People Know You Need Them

When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help. Inspire others to join in the dream by letting them know they are needed. Every person has a longing to be significant; to make a contribution; to be a part of something noble and purposeful. Invite people into a vision, allow them to participate in making the vision a reality, and show them how their efforts are part of making a dream come true.

2. Create a Memory and Visit It Often

“Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.”
~ Cicero

Instead of accepting life’s lot, take responsibility for pursuing dreams worthy of memory. Exercise creativity to push for memorable achievements even when times are tough. Commemorate defining moments through mementos, and use the mementos as symbols to celebrate accomplishments and perpetuate memories.

3. Give Others a Reputation to Uphold

“Treat a man as he appears to be and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already were what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.”
~ Goethe

Form a high opinion of people and back that opinion by equipping and empowering those around you for critical assignments. When interacting with your people, don’t allow them to be distracted by past failure; instead, steer them toward a promising future. Paint a picture of the potential you see inside of a person, lead them toward the realization of that potential, and hold them accountable to be their best.

4. Share a Secret with Someone

“Conceal a secret from your friend and you deserve to lose him.”
-Portuguese Proverb

A Sicilian proverb says, “Only the spoon knows what is stirring in the pot.” When you allow another person to know what is stirring within you, giving them a “taste” of a plan or idea, you instantly make a meaningful connection with them. Sharing a secret with someone includes that person in your journey and enriches your own experiences.

5. Do for Others What They Can't Do for Themselves

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”
~ John Bunyan

As a leader, you have the precious responsibility of taking your people to places they could never reach on their own. You can do this in three ways: connection, invitation, and impartation. First, take the time to connect your people into strategic relationships they would never otherwise form. Next, you’ll be able to offer opportunities for people to join a team which will achieve more as a unit than any of its members could individually. Finally, share your ideas, and by doing so, you’ll impart knowledge that others do not possess on their own.

6. Find the Keys to Their Heart

“Coaches who can outline plays on a blackboard are a dime a dozen. The ones who succeed are those who get inside their players and motivate them.”
~ Vince Lombardi

Uncover the passions inside those you lead by asking questions about each person’s dreams, values, and strengths. Accept and appreciate the fact that every individual is different, but constantly search for common ground to serve as a point of connection.

7. Practice the 30-Second Rule

Within the first 30 seconds of a conversation, look to say something encouraging to the person you’re speaking with. By doing so, you’ll give others the Triple “A” treatment: attention, affirmation, and appreciation. When you add to others, they’ll be drawn to you.

8. Write Notes of Encouragement

Encouraging notes have a personal touch and represent an investment by the writer. Such notes are remembered by the recipient long after the writer has forgotten them.

Nineteenth century writer Walt Whitman struggled for years to get anyone interested in his poetry. In the midst of his discouragement, Whitman received a life-changing letter from an admirer of his work. The note read: “Dear sir, I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of Leaves of Grass. I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” It was signed by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

If you want to reach the top, don’t run over others. Likely, the only way you’ll reach the top is to be carried there by others.

Preserving Innovative Leadership

As Napoleon Bonaparte sized up potential conquests, he was troubled by the fatality rate of his army. For every soldier lost in combat, four were dying from diseases. Most of the sicknesses were caused by spoiled food or malnutrition.

Like any great leader, Napoleon knew his goals rested upon the well-being of the men who fought for him on the front lines. Weak, starving, and fatigued soldiers would be worthless on the battlefield. “An army marches on its stomach,” Napoleon concluded. An army must be fed well to fight well.

To make sure his soldiers didn’t starve, Napoleon needed innovation. He had to find a new way of thinking designed to work around the constraints of usual military rations. Napoleon assumed that if he could preserve food for longer stretches, then his army could sustain itself farther from home and for greater lengths of time.

To spark inventive applications of his idea, Napoleon put up a 12,000-franc prize for anyone able to improve the means for keeping food fresh for the French army. Inspired by the award money, a French chef, Nicholas Appert, captured the prize. Appert’s innovative preservation method involved placing hermetically sealed jars in boiling water. The seal protected the food from outside contamination, and heating the jar sterilized any bacteria inside.

Napoleon quickly implemented Appert’s invention, giving his men more durable and long-lasting food supplies than their battlefield adversaries. The innovation gave him a competitive advantage on military campaigns.

Napoleon’s dilemma mirrors the challenges faced by leaders in today’s market. Limitations prevent the realization of dreams and undercut the success of organizations. In article adapted from Making the Invisible Visible: The Human Principles for Sustaining Innovation by Robert B. Rosenfeld, The Center for Creative Leadership shows how leaders, like Napoleon, can overcome the problems they face by embracing five principles for sustained innovation.

1. Innovation starts when people convert problems to ideas.

For Napoleon, innovation began when he identified the problem of rampant malnutrition among his military and generated an idea that could alleviate the problem.

2. Innovation needs a system.

Napoleon built a formal, top-down system in which he targeted the need and dedicated national resources to the solution (prize money from the national treasury).

3. Passion is the fuel, and pain is the hidden ingredient.

Appert’s passion for wealth and success motivated him throughout 15 years of painful trial and error before he finally arrived upon an innovative method of preservation.

4. Physical proximity drives effective exchange.

Appert published his findings for other scientists, allowing for the swift proliferation and implementation of his discovery across Europe.

5. Differences should be leveraged.

As fellow scientists adopted and improved upon Appert’s discovery, they leveraged his ideas for to suit their goals of commercial rather than military success. Eventually, Appert’s ideas would spawn the canning industry.

To read the complete text of the “The Essence of Innovation: 5 Principles,” visit the Center for Creative Leadership at http://www.ccl.org/leadership/enewsletter/2006/OCTinnovation.aspx?pageId=1792

GARAGE INGENUITY

Garage (noun) 1. A dimly lit cave for cars 2. A haven for tools, trash bags, and unused sports equipment 3. A dingy and unkempt domain of bicycles and lawn mowers 4. A hotbed of creativity and invention

In addition to sheltering automobiles, garages have housed some of the greatest technological inventions of the modern era and have birthed an assortment of widely popular rock ‘n’ roll bands.

If you’re sitting at a computer, you’ve bumped into the products of garage-inspired genius. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak constructed the first Apple computer in a garage. HP can trace its corporate history back to a garage where Bill Hewlett and David Packard designed the oscillator. Google founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page took to the garage when building their search engine. You Tube can claim the garage as its place of origin, too.

Before performing in sold-out auditoriums, rock groups Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Nirvana, and Metallica jammed out in junk-filled garages. So many musical artists began their careers in garages that “garage rock” has become a recognized genre. Apple has even developed a software suite named GarageBand to help amateur musicians produce their work.

Do exhaust fumes fuel creativity and ingenuity or can lessons be learned from garage success stories? Featured on CIO.com, John Baldoni’s article “Where’s Your Garage?” encourages leaders to make space for invention with the following suggestions:

Build your own garage. Clear out space to exercise your creativity. Construct an area to spark original thinking and sound out your ideas. It may be a home office, the corner table of a local coffee shop, or an out-of-the-way conference room. The location isn’t as important as long as you’re able to carve out the intellectual space to look at your work from a fresh angle. As Baldoni writes, “The point is to focus your energy on thinking creatively about your business. What occurs may be an idea for a breakthrough product, or it may be a simple improvement that saves customers time and money.” Building your garage may not spark an epic invention, but time in the garage can expose flaws in established patterns of thought, yield insights for systems enhancements, or generate original ideas for meeting complex challenges.

Allow risk in your garage. Dare to dream in the garage. Question long-held assumptions, and experiment with alternate ways of solving-problems. Take comfort in the value of discarded ideas. Remember, the words of Thomas Edison: “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” When you enter the garage, feel the freedom to explore new terrain in your thinking.

Invite your boss into the garage. When you’ve landed upon a great idea and given shape to it, the next step is to share it with others. Introduce your concepts by inviting friends and family to your garage. Once you’ve had their feedback, revise or touch up the idea. Then, you’ll be ready to bring your boss to the garage. Give your boss the opportunity to wrap his or her hands around your invention. Going the extra mile to familiarize your boss with your work will increase the likelihood of its application.

Bring your customer into the garage. “Customers can be your allies in innovation,” writes John Baldoni. Invite them into your creative sphere and allow them to interact with your ideas. Why not have your end users pilot a new concept before developing it? Better to abort an innovation in the garage than to sink energy and costs into an unwanted product or service.
To read the complete text of John Baldoni’s “Where's Your Garage?” visit: http://www.cio.com/leadership/leadership/baldoni/column.html?ID=26323

Yes or no? Buy or sell? Stay or go? Decisions come in all shapes and sizes, and a leader’s success is defined by his or her decision-making ability.

In The Go Point, Michael Useem, professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, dissects the process of arriving at difficult decisions, or “go points.” Useem describes a go point as, “that decisive moment when the essential information has been gathered, the pros and cons weighed, and the time has come to get off the fence.” His book is dedicated to preparing the reader for go points by helping them to create and apply solid decision-making templates.

To build his case for the magnitude of the go point moment, Useem draws upon stories collected over the course of 100+ interviews. The leaders he interviewed have such diverse backgrounds as an astronaut, bishop, military colonel, publisher, mountaineer, surgeon, teacher, and business executives. By probing the pivotal decisions made by each leader, Useem is able to identify common decision-making errors and sound decision-making practices.

In the first four chapters, Useem places the reader on the cusp of life-or-death, history-making decisions to demonstrate the monumental consequences of good or bad decision-making. Based on 50 days of on-site study, Useem re-creates the decision-making cauldron at the turning point of the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg. He retraces the choices made by smokejumpers in the moments prior to the Storm King Mountain tragedy of 1994—a forest fire which took the lives of 14 firefighters. Useem also recounts the courageous decisions which enabled 14 survivors of a plane crash atop the Andes to stay alive for ten weeks prior to rescue.

The stories and situations are gripping and drive home the importance of knowing what to do when reaching a go point. Useem expertly breaks down each narrative to identify the decisions that contributed to the situation’s outcome. After each story, he summarizes important lessons by pulling principles and tools from each key illustration. The format makes for an easy way to learn—read the story, review the story, draw lessons from the story.

Chapter 5 is Useem’s attempt to have the reader apply “go point” principles. In it, Useem presents simulations and scenarios that challenge the reader to put into practice their own decision-making templates. For the LW reader fond of interactive learning, the exercises on pages 148 and 154 will be enjoyable.

In Chapters 6 and 7, Useem appears to lose a little steam. While he manages to bring in several more examples, they are not as poignant or fully developed as the stories earlier in the book. Regardless, the decision-making tools offered are still worth an overview.

In summary, The Go Point is a strongly recommended resource for leaders wanting to grow into more adept decision-makers. The book, in particular the first half, is entertaining and laced with wisdom. By mining sensational stories for decision-making insights, Useem creates an engaging way to absorb lessons of “go point” preparation.

GENOROSITY

“Giving frees us from the familiar territory of our own needs by opening our mind to the unexplained worlds occupied by the needs of others.”
~ Barbara Bush

“You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.”
~ Winston Churchill

“What I gave I have, what I spent I had; and what I left I lost.”
~ Robert of Doncaste

Leadership Wired is written by Dr. John C. Maxwell and is available via e-mail on a free subscription basis. You can subscribe by clicking here.

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