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Scott Eblin offers his take on lessons in the news and his advice on your pressing leadership questions.
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Leave the Drama Outside

Melissa, the young woman who cuts my hair, is wise beyond her years. She’s 26 years old and got into town 7 or 8 months ago. Within a week of getting here, she had three job offers from different salons and was promoted to assistant manager in the one she selected about three months after she started.

Once a month we have an hour long conversation about music, favorite vacation spots, working out and business while she cuts my hair.

Yesterday, I asked Melissa how, as a manager, she deals with the drama that can come up when you lead a team. She said that there really isn’t much drama in her shop because everyone follows the rule.

What’s the rule?

The rule is that when you walk in the door, you leave whatever’s going on that looks like drama out on the sidewalk. You’re welcome to pick it back up again on your way out, but it can’t come inside with you.

“The people who are successful in this industry, Melissa told me, are the ones who are motivated by making other people feel good about themselves.  The prima donnas and the drama ...

Should Leaders Ever Lie?

News stories don’t get much bigger than this week’s revelation that government contractor Edward Snowden revealed classified information to The Guardian and the Washington Post that the National Security Agency has a program that collects and analyzes the phone records of millions of Americans.

This post isn’t a commentary on the NSA program or what Snowden did (although I agree with Jeffrey Toobin’s argument on why he should be prosecuted).

Rather, it’s about the question, should leaders ever lie? The question comes to mind because the Snowden case demonstrates that leaders of intelligence agency leaders have been less than forthcoming with the full truth when asked in Congressional hearings about systematized surveillance of Americans.

For example, as reported in the New York Times, in a March open hearing, Senator Ron Wyden asked the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, “Does the N.S.A. collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper’s answer was “No, sir.  Not wittingly.” As further reported in the Times, “in an interview (last) Sunday with NBC News, Mr. Clapper acknowledged that his answer had been problematic, calling it  ‘the least untruthful ...

3 Reasons to Consider Dialing It Back a Bit

A lot of leaders end up in the roles they’re in because their Type A people who don’t settle. They have high expectations of themselves and others and give everything 100 percent. That’s a good thing until it’s no longer a good thing. In the interest of mindful leadership, I want to raise the question of whether or not you should consider dialing it back a bit.

As an executive coach, I work with a lot of Type A leaders who always have the dial set to 10. When I run 360 degree feedback surveys for them, they tend to score low on behaviors like pacing themselves by building in breaks from work and differentiating between efforts that require perfection and those for which “good enough” is sufficient.

It’s easy for me to connect and empathize with this type of leader because I’m in recovery from the same syndrome of keeping the dial set all the way to the right. Like most recovery programs, it’s a process. Some days are better than others.

I’ve been paying more attention to where my clients and I have been setting our energy and intensity dials ...

3 Lessons From Obama on Building Relationships With Other Leaders

This weekend, President Obama will host the new president of China, Xi Jinping, for two days at a resort called Sunnyvale in Rancho Mirage, California. As reported in the New York Times and other outlets, the two leaders will spend a lot of time in relaxed and unscripted conversations with the goal of getting to know each other better.

While there are risks involved in such an approach, they seem to be outweighed by the potential rewards of the leaders of the world’s two biggest superpowers better understanding each other. Their approach holds a lesson for leaders in all walks of life who, like Obama and Xi, find themselves simultaneously collaborating and competing with their peers.

When people rely on each other without really knowing each other an information vacuum is created. Nature abhors a vacuum and, when it comes to leaders who depend on each other without knowing each other, that vacuum is often filled with assumptions, misperceptions and stories that the parties make up about each other.

I see this happen all the time in my executive coaching work with leaders. The most effective ones recognize the dynamic and take steps to counteract it. The more they ...

3 Questions to Manage Your Own Performance

I often tell leaders it's important to check yourself out. You may be asking, “What on earth does checking yourself out have to do with effective leadership?”  Fair question.  If, by checking yourself out, we’re talking about sneaking in an admiring glance as you walk by a mirror or a storefront window, the answer is not much.

If, on the other hand, we’re talking about the modern day version of what Socrates meant when he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” then the answer is a lot.

I’d make the case that mindful leaders spend regular time checking themselves out.   They question their assumptions.  They check their motives.  They figure out what pushes their buttons.

Interested in spending some time checking yourself out?  Here’s a simple way to get started.

Just about everyone has topics, situations or people that push their buttons.  Those are external factors that are always going to exist.  The big opportunity is to work on your internal response to those external factors.  As I wrote in a post a few years ago calledQuestions for Conscious Leaders, the opportunity is summed up by the great leadership coach, Tim Gallwey ...