Tag: Visible Leadership

Wanted! Leaders who can manage more than one marshmallow

I listened with fascination to Vanessa Feltz’s daytime radio programme on BBC London Radio. The subject being discussed was the marshmallow test. Whilst teaching at Stanford University in the 1960s, Walter Mischel carried out this now well known squidgy pink and white experiment.

A group of four-year-olds were given a marshmallow and promised another, only if they could wait 20 minutes before eating the first one. Some children could wait and others could not. The researchers then followed the progress of each child into adolescence and demonstrated that those with the ability to wait were better adjusted and more dependable (determined via surveys of their parents and teachers), and scored an average of 210 points higher on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

People were phoning the show getting excited about how little Timmy, who was off school sick that day, had just passed the test. Someone’s little Timmy had managed to go forty minutes on the promise of three marshmallows, praise be! I couldn’t help but wonder how easy I would find it to pass on the marshmallow if I was off sick. Forty minute Timmy must’ve been at death’s door.

I had to leave Vanessa and Timmy at this point, but I couldn’t get this pink and white dilemma out of my mind. In particular, I couldn’t stop wondering why, when so many children choose to pass this test, many business leaders don’t, or won’t, or can’t. I realise that a lot of short term thinking and acting is likely to be a result of the pressure for more profit, lower cost, and greater dividend yield.

Clearly whilst these things are necessary for businesses to sustain themselves in the long term, they aren’t all essential for the day to day leading of an organisation. If leaders were recruited for their leadership skills, and were trusted to lead, and in turn trusted those closer to the customer to manage, think, act and do, then maybe the profit, efficiencies and other benefits would flow more naturally.

What do you think? And have you got any examples of true leaders? Leaders who can rise above the noise and pressure to create a culture through which trust and autonomy can permeate. Leaders who can deploy real employee engagement to build sustainable, great experiences for their colleagues and customers?

Only those who can manage at least two marshmallows need apply.

We Do What We Say We Will

Would you arrange to meet friends at a restaurant and then not bother to show up?
Would you book a hotel room and then not bother to check in?
Would you agree to help a friend and then do nothing?

Absolutely not! I can hear the indignation in your reply. Me? Behave like that? No way, it’s just not cricket/acceptable/the right thing to do (choose your favourite outburst ending). Quite apart from anything else, if we were to behave like this then a) we’d soon have no friends and b) we’d be out of pocket to boot. Unless it was a real emergency, (in which case we would make every effort to at least inform our friends), we just wouldn’t do it.

That’s settled then. Oh, but hang on, wait a minute…

Would you accept an invite to a meeting or call and then not bother to show up?
Would you book a meeting room and then not bother to use it?
Would you take an action in a meeting and then not bother to follow it up?

Errrmm. Well….you see I had every intention of doing the right thing but….something more important came up. My boss gave me something urgent. And anyway, it’s not like it’s just me….is it? Well regrettably no, it’s not just you. We all know how difficult it can be to do something as simple as book a room for a meeting. There are never any rooms available. And yet, on the day, you can usually find space that’s been booked and just not used. If I were the booking system I’d feel very unloved. Trouble is you can’t plan your work around maybes. When we behave like this in big businesses what are the direct consequences…? I hear tumbleweed rolling by. So are we saying that if there are no consequences around failure to act that we just don’t feel the need? I think so – and yet there’s more to this.

If we look at my friend Ursula’s excellent definition of a customer we can see that the right behaviour is essential in developing a thriving business. Take it away, Ursula:

“The Dictionary definition is really boring! So I looked up the etymology for you and here it is… I love the etymology of words! (Incidentally, the etymology of etymology comes from “logo” – the Greek for “word” and “etymon” meaning “truth”! Ha!)

The word derives from “custom,” meaning “habit”; a customer was someone who frequented a particular shop, who made it a habit to purchase goods of the sort the shop sold there rather than elsewhere, and with whom the shopkeeper had to maintain a relationship to keep his or her “custom,” meaning expected purchases in the future. The word did not refer to those who purchased things at a fair or bazaar, or from a street vendor

So it’s all about maintaining a relationship rather than just selling something and bu66ering off!”

Aha, maintaining relationships – thanks Ursula!

It’s weird eh? I think most of us get the concept of reciprocity, the old saying of what goes around…and yet this kind of short term selfishness is not uncommon in my experience. Thinking back to the examples at the start of this short tale, I’m left wondering why people so rarely let friends down, and yet the same can’t always be said for colleagues.

Can you imagine what we could achieve if we kept our hearts and minds with us at work instead of checking them in at security as we enter the workplace?