This question stimulated a lot of people to think and share their opinions. Here’s an interesting conversation I had with Mike Pettit, an executive from Lancaster, Ohio. Mike advises young workers to live with integrity:

If you live with integrity, you will have the self esteem to Cultivate, Create, and Fail. Without integrity, you will not dare to learn and challenge and if you do and fail, it will be difficult to get back to the level you should in order to be all that you can be.

I was a non-typical college student and put myself through two degrees while I had a family. During one class (Classic Literature) I wrote a paper on my experiences as a manager during a buyout and compared the experience to Dante’s Inferno. It was a great comparison about the various levels of Hell as compared to the levels of back biting and brown nosing of colleagues.

Those who did not hold to a high degree of integrity lived with their actions the rest of their lives. I have since used that message to various friends who found themselves in similar situations and I gave the advice to stay above it and focus on their job without bringing others down.

I asked Mike to further clarify in his mind the differences between honesty and integrity. Mike replied:

First thought, honesty is living within the laws and boundaries of society while integrity includes being honest, being humble, putting others first, living a life that others aspire to. You can be an honorable person, but to live with integrity… is much more difficult.

I replied that I thought honesty is being true in what you say, while integrity is being true in what you do. Honesty is giving your word, integrity is keeping it. What do you think?

Here is the rest of the story…

To be able to keep your word, you first have to give it. That is where most of us let down.

The one word we use most to avoid giving our word is try. There is no try…we can only do. So when we say we are going to try to do something, what does that even mean? It is like striving…what is someone doing when they are striving? You are either in the act of doing or not.

For instance, if I invited you over to dinner on Saturday night at 6, and you said you would try to be there, would I buy the steaks? Of course not. It isn’t a commitment.

Yet we use try all of the time to avoid committing while giving the impression we are committing.

More food for thought…

I think it starts with answering the same question for yourself. What do you need to be doing to create more meaning and value in the work that you do? I don’t think there are any easy answers.

Most of the successful executives I work with as an executive coach are already doing amazingly well, especially when you look at the stress and pressures they work under. They can’t do “more things faster.” But can they do better? Can they do the things that truly matter? Are they building value that will last rather than meeting short term performance metrics?

An excellent post over on Harvard Business Review blog writes about Mastering the Art of Living Meaningful. The author, Umair Haque, ponders three ways young people can focus their energies to build more value into their careers:

1. Cultivate (your better self) — develop your higher sensibilities, expand your education
2. Create (something dangerous) — challenge the status quo
3. Forgive (and fail) — mistakes are the beginning of wisdom

For myself, starting out in my career, I was fortunate to have had mentors who guided me towards becoming my better self instead of being focused on just money and numbers.  My basic nature always led me to challenge the status quo, but sometimes that didn’t always work out well! But I always learned from it.

As for the third suggestion, if I hadn’t been able to forgive myself I’d never have been able to pick up the pieces to get to where I am today. Failing is a valuable part of life because it makes us better. Failing is not a noun.  You are not a failure when you fail.  If you’re in your twenties or thirties, you will experience failures along the way, unless you’re totally disengaged and striving for mediocrity. And that’s worse than failing.

What do you think about these three suggestions — not just for Gen Y — for anyone who wants to live a truly meaningful life and career? What would you add to the list? What was most helpful to you in your early career?

Tony Schwartz asks this question over on a Harvard Business Blog in a post called, Why Appreciation Matters So Much. There’s plenty of research that touts the benefits of a positive attitude at work:

1. The single highest driver of engagement, according to a worldwide study conducted by Towers Watson, is whether or not workers feel their managers are genuinely interested in their well being. Less than 40 percent of workers felt so engaged.
2. In one well-known study, workers who felt unfairly criticized by a boss or felt they had a boss who didn’t listen to their concerns had a 30 percent higher rate of coronary disease than those who felt treated fairly and with care.
3. In the workplace itself, researcher Marcial Losada has found that among high-performing teams, the expression of positive feedback outweighs that of negative feedback by a ratio of 5.6 to 1. By contrast, low-performing teams have a ratio of .36 to 1.

Nobody disagrees that appreciation and positivity creates better work conditions, performance, motivation and creativity. But to quote from our Gen Y, when it comes to giving frequent positive feedback to each other, “We suck!”

We could blame it on our brains, which are predisposed to hunt for threats in the environment. We are predisposed to a negativity bias. Our trigger-happy emotional centers don’t care if they pick up on a threat from a tiger or from the boss.

The impact of negative emotions — and more specifically the feeling of being devalued — is incredibly toxic. As Daniel Goleman has written, “Threats to our standing in the eyes of others are almost as powerful as those to our very survival.”

We know that positive feedback creates a snowball effect. When a sports coach focuses more on what an athlete is doing right instead of what’s lacking, he boosts performance.

But knowing this to be true doesn’t change our natural habits. And blaming the brain doesn’t work — there is also a positivity offset that helps us see things in a positive light, especially when it comes to ourselves. No, the challenge is truly in the domain of expression of appreciation:

How can you verbalize appreciation to your fellow humans in a way that is real? I challenge you to simply state the obviously positive. Go ahead and say it, even if you might think it sounds lame, or feels uncomfortable. Tell your colleague, team member, boss, or whoever how much you appreciate what they did or said. I dare you.

I asked this question over on LinkedIn Answers and got some great suggestions for books and blogs. I share some of the best with you here.

Priscilla Meckley-Archuleta:

Book: FYI – For Your Improvement. This book and the associated cards have provided a good way for me to assess my skills and outlined ways to improve those skills where I could improve.

Ryan Davies:

Actually mine came from Mike Tomlin, Head Coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. On a Monday Night Football game last year, he was asked the question before kickoff “What do you have to do differently in order to beat the Baltimore Ravens tonight whom you lost to earlier in the year?” Tomlin responded with “Nothing! We have the right plan and strategy in place. We just have to execute at a higher level!”

That quote always stood out to me when the “going gets rough”. I have to trust that I have the right plan and strategy in place and challenge myself to execute at a higher level. Too many people jump ship and try to change their strategy when they aren’t seeing immediate results. If they just gave it a little more time and effort, they would see the fruits of their labor!

David Kasprzak:

Blog: www.evolvingexcellence.com
Books:
Work Sucks, Ressler & Thompson
Start With Why, Spinek

Mark Leisen:

The World’s Most Powerful Leadership Principle, by James Hunter has been around for some time but is a great book on how to be a Servant Leader for you people at work or home. My book is worn and marked up with highlights and sticky notes on key areas for my development as a leader of people. The reinforcement each year keeps me working on the key skills needed to improve. Very easy read; you just have to be honest with yourself and want to improved. Great book to share with your team or friends. Good luck! Mark

Lee Silverstein:

Chip, Excellent question. I’m an avid reader of both books and blogs. When I’m not reading for pleasure then I’m reading to learn. My goals when I “read to learn” are twofold; to better myself and to share what I learn to better others. Here are the books and blogs that have had the biggest impact on me:

Books:

“Never Eat Alone” – Keith Ferrazzi
“Crush It” – Gary Vaynerchuk
“Getting Things Done” – David Allen

Blogs:

GaryVaynerchuk.com
ChrisBrogan.com
Shankman.com
SocialTriggers.com
PersonalBrandingBlog.com
TanveerNaseer.com

Kenneth Larson:

New York Times columnist David Brooks has released a new book: The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement.

Per the Kansas City Star:

“Brooks concludes that the unconscious has an image problem – rather than a deep dark place where even therapists fear to tread, the unconscious is our ablest ally on the battlefield of life.”

I highly recommend the book which has an unusual presentation in that is is based on extraordinary research but is written in character form around the lives of 2 fictional individuals with enormously different backgrounds; highly entertaining and intriguing reading.

After reading the above work, I conclude that the subconscious drives much more than either the heart or the brain.

Priscilla Dancy:

Books by one of my top authors – Patrick Lencioni
Blogs/Updates from – Kirk Weisler
Reading for pleasure and to learn new things is something I strive to continually do.

Young children do not appear to experience self-criticism. As we mature, however, we learn to over-think. We judge, compare, worry, blame, and obsess about faults. We want what we don’t have, and we forget to appreciate what we do have.

We lose patience with ourselves and others, and don’t accept things as they are. As we lose self-compassion, we also lose our compassion for others.

According to Wikipedia, self-compassion is compassion to ourselves in moments of perceived inadequacy, failure, or suffering. Self-compassion is composed of three components – self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.

• Self-kindness: Self-compassion entails being warm towards oneself when encountering pain and personal shortcomings, rather than ignoring them or hurting oneself with self-criticism.
• Common humanity: Self-compassion also involves recognizing that suffering and personal failure is part of the shared human experience.
• Mindfulness: Self-compassion requires taking a balanced approach to one’s negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. Negative thoughts and emotions are observed with openness, so that they are held in mindful awareness. Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which individuals observe their thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them. Conversely, mindfulness requires that one not be “over-identified” with mental or emotional phenomena, so that one suffers aversive reactions

What I see is that when someone applies a negative eye to themselves, it erodes their sense of intrinsic value and self worth. Unreasonable negative thoughts intrude into the mind like a snowball effect. It grows and forms background chatter that drowns out appreciation and enjoyment.

Conversely, when you are kind and understanding with yourself, you expand that same capacity for others. The best leaders I know are ones who have compassion for themselves and others while still holding a strong belief in quality performance. In fact, I believe compassion is a key strength in outstanding leaders.

And maybe that’s the problem or challenge with it. Maybe we get afraid that if we’re too kind and forgiving, we’ll have to drop our standards and accept mediocre. The real challenge is to demand the best of ourselves and others, and still find compassion.

What do you think about this?

Having confidence is a huge advantage in careers, life, and relationships. It’s the key to attracting the right job, the right people, the right decisions from others, and getting what one wants. I would venture to say that it’s key to personal leadership as it has everything to do with influencing others.

And yet, hardly anyone wants to admit they have self-doubts. In fact, with some of my clients you’d never guess they ever doubted themselves. They pour a lot of energy into covering up their self-confidence deficits. And often, this doesn’t work. Instead of coming across as authentic and real, they end up on the side of over-bearing and smug.

Like money, everyone wants more confidence. Some people naturally seem to have it; perhaps they were lucky and had the right kind of parenting. But most of us can point out parents, siblings, teachers and bullies who put chinks in our self-confidence armor. So what can you do if you want to improve self-confidence and ensure that you can tap into its power?

Like happiness, it seems everyone has a baseline of confidence. Some people have unshakable confidence built upon strong foundations; others find their confidence level gets a bit shaky when faced with mistakes, criticisms and failures.

Confidence is closely tied with our sense of self-esteem. A healthy self-esteem enables us to experience ourselves not only accurately but gladly. It’s a realistic, appreciative opinion; we are able to be honest about our strengths, weaknesses and everything in between, and still feel good about who we are.

There is a difference between the outer appearance of confidence and deeply felt intrinsic self-worth. True self esteem is steady; it doesn’t lead to complacency or overconfidence, but instead is a strong motivator to work hard. It also allows us to fail and make mistakes yet bounce back to do even greater things.

One of the better books about building self-esteem is written by psychologist Glenn R. Schiraldi, Ph.D, 10 Simple Solutions for Building Self-Esteem.

According to Dr. Schiraldi, self-esteem is built from three factors: unconditional worth, unconditional love and growth. I’ll follow up this post with some tips from his book in my next post.

In reading up about what helps people change, I ran across some research from two years ago about why CEOs get fired. At first it seemed unrelated, but it’s not. Even if you’re not a CEO this study reveals a lot about human nature and how people fail in their jobs. Here’s an excerpt from the press release published by LeadershipIQ:

It’s a commonly held belief that CEOs get fired (or forced to resign or retire under pressure) because of “current financial performance.” But that’s wrong, according to a new study by LeadershipIQ.com.

It found that:

• 31% of CEOs get fired for mismanaging change
• 28% for ignoring customers
• 27% for tolerating low performers
• 23% for denying reality
• 22% for too much talk and not enough action

The four-year study reported these results after interviewing 1,087 board members from 286 public, private, business and healthcare organizations that fired, or otherwise forced out, their chief executive.

I’m not sure how scientifically valid this study is, since the numbers add up to more than 100%, and “denying reality” is a bit vague, but I have no doubt “mismanaging change” is a major concern.

The key to personal leadership is to adapt yourself to meet the demands of current reality. Your personal leadership may be a natural strength for you, but you’ll still have to keep it strong. I think these make good questions for anybody working anywhere at any level:

1. How am I adapting to change in my work, my life, my personal growth?
2. How do I ignore or minimize customers? Colleagues? Family?
3. In what ways do I tolerate low performance (either my own or colleagues?)
4. In what ways do I deny reality (either to excuse myself or someone else?) In what ways do I blame external factors?
5. Am I all talk and little action? Do I talk a good game rather than win it? Do I put into action the values I put forth?

You may not get fired for your mismanagement of personal change, but it won’t bring you your best year yet, for sure. What other questions should you be asking yourself? I’d love to hear from you.

The responses seem to add up to the statement:  “We need to change, you go first!” My observation of people, institutions and things has been to the contrary.  Change begins with one’s self.  You may brand me as cynical for this, but I believe you can’t really change anything or anybody else without changing yourself first.  Other people and situations change as we change our thoughts about them. Everything else is fantasy and wishful thinking.

Let me give you a for instance.  I hear this phrase several times a day from several sources.  It is usually brought up to describe how well someone is doing. What is said is that they are doing pretty good  “in this economy.” In this economy? Really? I was just in Scottsdale in an iPic theater.  It is a movie theater with lounge chairs, pillows and blankets.  The tickets are $28 to sit all snuggled up with “free” popcorn and watch a movie. There were lines out of most of the restaurants, and the stores were doing a pretty brisk (for January) business.

We have been brainwashed into thinking that most things are outside of our ability to control.  Hence the phrase, “in this economy”.  It couldn’t be us, could it? See, what most politicians and the media don’t want you to know is that the economy is pretty much what it has been for a long time.

There are those people who make things happen, those who let things happen, and those who ask “What happened?!” Fix the economy? Why not fix yourself rather than blame other people, places and things for your lot in life.  MAKE THINGS HAPPEN!!!

I don’t buy into the typical statement “in this economy.” The hidden statement that most politicians and media pundits don’t want you to know? This isn’t a bad economy, it’s just different. It isn’t what most of us experienced for the last 10 years, but it is very similar to what the boomers experienced when they graduated from high school.

The defining feature of the last 10 years was the real estate bubble. Looking for people or institutions to blame (again, it is all external) won’t solve the problem.  It has already happened.  And during the boom, we were lulled into a state of nirvana by skyrocketing property values and a boom mentality.  What I find interesting is where the real pain is in the economy:

• If you don’t have a high school diploma, the unemployment rate is about 14%.
• If you do, with but not a college degree, it is about 9%.
• If you are a college graduate over the age of 25 in the civilian population the unemployment rate is 4.0% as of December. **From the Bureau of Labor Statistics

If you have an education, the economy is darned good.  Sure, you may not have the choices to move employment like you did, but you are working, if you are worth a damn. Perhaps even if you aren’t. The pain in the economy is the several million workers that went into construction or supported the residential real estate market from 1999 to 2008.  They made a lot of money for several years, bought houses based on that earnings level, then saw it all go away in 2007 and 2008.

When we say “in this economy” we settle the blame for things outside of ourselves.  And the real case is that we all have control of what we think about and how we think about it. What you find is that there are always opportunities for those who are willing to work and apply themselves. So… while I hope that things are broadly better in 2012, that doesn’t imply that things are bad. Things may not be “on a roll,” but good times never last, nor do bad ones. There have always been ups and downs, that’s a fact of life in a free market economy.

I love the quote by Charles Darwin, “It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, it’s the most adaptable.” How are you adapting and changing to meet current reality?

Off of my soapbox for now…

What happens when we come face to face with our own inconsistencies? It happens when broken New Year’s resolutions become far too apparent to ignore.

Or, it hits us when we say one thing to our kids, and an inner voice reminds us that we aren’t walking our talk. Or at work, we make a bold statement to our peers and feel that sharp twinge of guilty conscience and hypocrisy inside!

Most of the time we kid ourselves with a system of delusions and denial. We say we are one kind of person, while doing things that are contrary to our desired image.  We don’t do what we say.

Psychologists call it “cognitive dissonance,” a state of discomfort when we say one thing but do another. We go to great lengths to avoid that feeling, hence we construct an elaborate system of delusions, denial, and some behaviors we don’t even notice.

To face the fact that we aren’t acting like the person we believe we should be is painful and unpleasant. So we tell ourselves we don’t have time for all that introspection anyway. Negative emotions only get in the way of being productive. Instead, we need to focus on the tasks and goals at hand.

We live with our incongruities and denial, and our battling inner selves seem to be just part of who we are. We find a way to excuse ourselves. We are forgiving of our inconsistencies. We’re only human, after all.

That’s why it’s not wise to be your own coach. When you put yourself in charge of making changes, you’re also in charge of making excuses. Self-coaching is like the blind leading the blind. If you’re like any of my coaching clients, you already know how to make excuses and forgive yourself for your inconsistencies. In fact, you probably have a list of reasons you avoid working with an executive coach. (Read my post about that here!)

Here’s what I mean by that: if you’re focused on what you need from the other person, and what you need them to understand. then you’re really not focused on what they need or what they’re saying. You’re not listening to them. You’re more interested in what you have to say. And that applies to both family situations and work. (Photo by Danilo Rizzuti)

In fact, when Marshall Goldsmith wrote his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, he made a list of 20 faulty habits that leaders engage in. About three-quarters of them contribute to or directly cause bad listening. Think about this: the best bosses are really good listeners. They “hear” what you have to say.

This is what I meant by “walking the leadership tightrope,” in a previous post. You can’t lead well if you’re a know-it-all, and don’t ask your people a lot of questions (and listen to the answers!)

The worst bosses don’t listen. They expound. They talk. A lot. Last week I got a Harvard Business Review tip about how to become a better listener. It’s a perfect example of a technical solution to solving the problem of listening. I’ll share it with you here, then tell you why I think the listening problem requires more than this, i.e., an adaptive solution – a change in mindset, not just a change in behavior.

The tip is titled Listen without Reacting:

Listening is harder than speaking. Even the best listeners sometimes have to bite their tongues to stop from reacting, interrupting, or trying to console the person talking. Here are three ways you can truly listen:

• Avoid distractions. This doesn’t just mean putting down the Blackberry or closing your web browser. Try not to think about what you’re going to say next. Simply focus on what the other person says.
• Repeat back. This sometimes feels silly, but repeating back what you heard shows the other person that you’re listening.

Ask thoughtful questions. Ask open-ended questions that help you see the issue more clearly and allow your conversation partner to go deeper into what he cares about.

While these are good tips, the real problem lies in why people don’t listen in the first place. Unless you change your mindset, you will forget these handy tips and continue to interrupt or change the topic to your own agenda as soon as the opportunity comes up. This is a good example of a technical solution applied to an adaptive problem.

Since so many of my coaching clients want to work on becoming a better listener, I used the grid for competing commitments from the Kegan and Lahey book Immunity to Change. I’ll share it with you here, as an example of how someone could explore the problem of listening on a deeper level to get the heart of what needs to change. All comments welcome, of course! What do you think about the “listening problem?”