For better and for worse, I am an immoderate person, with an appetite for life that is at once passionate and gluttonous. Once I commit to something I’m “all-in” and have little use for moderation. In some areas of my life this has served me well, for example the nose-to-the-grindstone focus with which I pursued my graduate degree. But in other areas of my life my immoderation brought out the worst in me. For many years, especially during the time when I was on the U.S. High Diving Team, I drank way too much. Passion and gluttony, the bedfellows of immoderation, brought out the little devil in me.

The lifestyle I led as an extreme athlete was conveniently conducive to my immoderate ways.  For over 7 years I would hurl myself off a small platform over 100-feet in the air. I loved and lived for those potent self-generating drugs adrenaline and dopamine. Few high divers actually like doing the high dives, but every high diver loves the high that it produces. We seek it out…everywhere we can.

By day, during those raucous years, I was an All-American high diver. But at night I was a low-down barfly.  In the towns where my teammates and I performed, everyone seemed to want to buy us drinks. And we graciously drank what they poured. Over time, though, the balance between goodie-two-shoes athlete and falling-down drunk tilted off the barstool. I needed help.

Enter O.K.

Men, I think, need male mentors. Mine came in the form of a person named O.K. Even today I can’t tell you what O.K.’s initials stood for, but that’s okay with me. What matters more is what O.K. himself stood for; rigorous honesty, personal fidelity, and perpetual gratitude.  He role-modeled all of these characteristics, and in the process, I like to think, helped bring them out in me.

I met O.K. about 9 months after I entered a program to stop drinking. I liked the way he made me feel welcomed in a room full of strangers. He’d ask me how I was doing, and seemed genuinely interested in my well-being. So, I asked him to be my sponsor in the program. That was a wise choice. It turned out that O.K. was sponsoring about 40 other men just like me.

O.K. did what great mentors do; he helped me come to terms with who I am, warts and all. He helped me learn to hold myself accountable to the person I was destined to become, and to honor my dreams. He helped me develop a spiritual identity, and to take stock in all of the things for which I should be grateful. In short, O.K. helped me move away from my Peter Pan-like perpetual adolescence so that I could become a man.

O.K. was simply a great man. He was there for me in big ways and in small. Four years ago, for example, the night before I had prostate cancer surgery, it was O.K. who stayed with me and calmed my nerves. His own father had also had prostate cancer surgery, and at the same hospital, 4o years prior. He shared with me that the experience had become an opening to a much better relationship between him and his dad. Somehow hearing that story was comforting to me. That cancer could actually result in something good.

Yep, O.K. did what mentors do; they share their story and in the process help you develop and improve your own. Change, for most human beings, is seriously uncomfortable, and thus mostly avoided. But change we must if we are to evolve and grow. I am still an immoderate person. Today, though, because of O.K., I direct my immoderation towards healthy things like being a good dad, husband, and friend. And that’s a change for the better.

Yesterday, after some complications associated with a stent in his heart, O.K., my friend and mentor, passed away. Though deeply sad, I am filled with gratitude for having known such a beautiful human being. The best I can do is to honor his life by trying to be a mentor to others by sharing my story.

Bill Treasurer is the Chief Encouragement Officer at Giant Leap Consulting, a courage-building company that exists to help people and organizations live more courageously. Bill is the author of the new off-the-shelf training toolkit, Courageous Leadership: A Program for Using Courage to Build Workplace Courage. Bill is also the author of the internationally bestselling book, Courage Goes to Work. Bill’s first book, Right Risk, is about how to take smart risks, and draws on Treasurer’s experiences as both an organizational development professional and as a professional high diver. Bill has lead over 500 leadership and courage-building workshops for, among others, Accenture, NASA, PNC Bank, Spanx, US Forest Service, National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

Each year my company, Giant Leap Consulting, takes on a few pro bono projects, most often for worthy non-profit organizations that are serving the needs of those less fortunate than most of us. Recently Giant Leap started working with an organization that serves the “working poor”, by providing free daycare so the parents can work fulltime. The organization, which was founded by Catholic nuns, runs two sizable daycare centers, collectively serving about 600 children each day.

In cities throughout the country, there are charitable organizations serving the needs of the poor, elderly, disabled, homeless, and otherwise disenfranchised. And nearly all of them benefit from the charitable giving of wealthy people. Rich people, contrary to the contemporary notion, do indeed help poor people. Many do so with both humility and anonymity.

The reason Giant Leap is working with the daycare centers is because we were introduced to the organization though one of our multi-billion dollar clients. The founder of the company, himself a billionaire, has had a longstanding relationship with the daycare centers, including serving on its board. As a kid, he attended a parochial school run by nuns, giving him a deep appreciation for the importance of “giving back”.

In addition to making sizable financial contributions and serving on the board, he has also involved other members of his company to get involved, some of whom are also on the board now too.

It is popular these days to indict rich people just for being rich. Wealthism in this country is as real and prevalent as racism. The wealthy make easy targets, because they are “different” than “us”. They live in different houses, dress in different clothes, drive different cars, and attend different schools. “They” have what “we” don’t, and, we often assume, they must have acquired it through hand-me-down inheritance or in more nefarious and sinister ways. The rich, we seem to think, are inherently “bad”.

Having seen the good that so many rich people do, I think differently. In addition to supporting the two daycare centers, and a host of other charities, my billionaire client also employs thousands of people. The jobs his company provides allows workers to put their kids through college, pay their mortgages, and provide for a decent life.

A few years ago I attended the company picnic of another client, this one a $300 million dollar electric company. As the owner of the company and I stood watching families enjoy the carnival-like atmosphere, I asked him what it felt like to see the company community which he had helped build. He answered, “I’ll tell you Bill, it is days like this that make it all worthwhile for me. I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to these people. They afford me with a great life, and it’s my job to do the same for them in return.”

Like all Americans I get outraged when I see oversized payouts to ousted CEOs of money-losing corporations. Like many Americans I am also fed up with a political system that works in the best interests of the fewest people – namely corporate lobbyists. Like most Americans, I think our political system needs a dramatic overhaul, especially in the area of campaign finance. But as an American, I also believe in equality, striving toward economic achievement, and entrepreneurial spirit. Meritocracy is essential to a healthy democracy. Blaming rich people for being rich, or questioning their goodness, won’t make the blamer any richer or full of more goodness. “ism” is ism, whatever form it takes, and it is usually counterproductive.

I am an idealist. You have to be if the bulk of your business centers on developing leaders. Leadership development involves helping people close the gap between the leader that they are, and the leader that they want to be. “Leadership” is an aspirational concept that deals in the currency of ideals.

Though an idealist at heart, my idealism has become tempered with pragmatism over the years. Realistic ideals are more effective than unrealistic ones. Which brings me to the Occupy movement. If ever there were an unrealistic idealistic movement, this is it.

While the Occupy protests are colorful and stir the oh-so-American “stick it to the Man” inclinations, its overarching goal is utterly unrealistic. What is that goal? From what I can glean, it is simply “to stop greed.”
Really? Stop greed? That’s it? That’s your reason for squatting in “Liberty Square”, getting arrested by the hundreds, and storming the Senate building? Stopping greed?

What a monumental waste of time.

Greed isn’t some philosophical construct. It’s not a suit that you can wear or discard in a fiddle-de-de kind of way. It’s not some abhorrent Jim Crow law that you can legislate into oblivion. Greed is woven into one’s DNA, in the same way as the other deadly sins. Demanding that people stop being greedy is the same as asking them to stop lusting. Good luck with that. Maybe you can move on to gluttony after you’re done with greed and lust. One thing that we can all agree on is that, from Wall Street to Main Street, Americans could stand some belt-tightening.

Don’t get me wrong, I lean left. I am as disillusioned and exasperated as the next guy. It shocks me beyond belief that there hasn’t been one arrest or indictment as a result of the 2008 economic implosion and subsequent bank bailout. My head boils when I watch the political fanatics on both sides of the aisle turn Washington into a gridlocked nightmare that mostly makes decisions that are in the worst interests of the most people.

But stopping greed isn’t going to happen. It’s just not. And it isn’t the core of the issue anyway. Paraphrasing Cool Hand Luke, what we have here, in the good ol’ U-S-of-A today, is a failure to communicate. Neither side of the aisle talks to each other, reasons with each other, or supports each other. Communication, or lack thereof, is the problem, not greed. It would be more realistic for the Occupy squatters to lock John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid in a small room together until they all make friends.

It’s been said that the Occupy movement is a counterbalance to the Tea Party movement. That’s very likely the case. Both movements, at the far edges, are like giant Dali paintings of our surrealist political extremes. On the one hand, you have the government-is-the-enemy, god-fearing (and encroaching), smells-like-racism fanatics. On the other, you have the government-should-save-us, anti-rich, smells-like-hippy anarchists. Wrap those two hands around the country and what have you got? Gridlock, extremism, and wasted ideals.

God knows there must be more useful ways of putting our courage to work.

Australia is gigantic. Flying over the continent, as I did while traveling down from Singapore, one gets a sense of Australia?s vastness. For all its stunning beauty, you can fly hours and hours over Australia and view nothing but large barren spaces.

Australia was my last stop on the first phase of my Global Courage Tour. Before landing here, I had conducted Courageous Leadership workshops in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Other participants from Taiwan and Melbourne attended through video conference. All of the workshops were conducted on behalf of a global financial service company.

As I mentioned in earlier blog posts, though I lead courage-building workshops, the participants teach me as much about the subject as I am sure they learn from me. As a student of the subject, my ears always perk up when someone shares a story that captures the essence of courage. Such was the case today when after the workshop one of the participants, let’s call him Steve, stayed behind to share an example of courage from his career.

As the Steve explained, earlier in his career, when working for another company, he had been working on some financial reviews when it became evident that one of the executives was involved in financial shenanigans. As he followed the paper trail, he realized that the executive’s actions were putting the company at risk. So, in the company of his boss, he voiced his concerns to the CEO. Surprisingly, the CEO reacted sharply and poked his finger in Steve’s chest and, effectively, told him to stay focused on his own job and keep his nose out of other people’s business. The CEO got so upset that he was right up in Steve’s face.

And here’s when courage took over. Not Steve’s, but his boss’s. Just before things got physical between the CEO and Steve, Steve’s boss intervened, stepping directly between the CEO and Steve. His boss said, “Listen, Steve’s researching into this at my direction. And he’s not going to stop until I tell him so, and I’m not going to tell him so. You may be my boss, but I’m Steve’s boss. You may not trust his judgment, but I do. And you need to trust mine too.”

Imagine the courage it took for Steve’s boss to do that. Would you do that? Honestly, I doubt that I would. Most people, when faced with the intimidation of an authority figure, be it a CEO, a cop, or a priest, will quickly become submissive when staring down the barrel of authority’s power. Doing so is almost an instinctual response. It’s parental conditioning 101. You’re in a timeout mister! Don’t open your mouth until I tell you to speak. Becoming well-behaved and good little children requires us to submit to the authority of our parents. Sadly, we carry this posture deep in our soul and it takes very little triggering from authority figures, like Steve’s CEO, to bring out the child in us once again. But not Steve’s boss. Watching Steve be bullied was more than he could stand, especially when Steve was doing the right thing, protecting the firm. So he did something so few of us would do. He intervened.

It’s been years since Steve worked directly for his brave boss. Though his former boss is now retired, he remains a powerful career mentor to Steve. Someone Steve continues to look up to. For courage.

BT

Singapore is a wonderful country. It’s clean, safe, proud, prosperous, and community-oriented. The country takes pride in managing development with beautiful buildings that enhance the skyline. It’s a striking place!

Yesterday I led a Courageous Leadership workshop for a financial services company that has had a rough time of it as of late. The impact of the recession on workforce morale, because of massive layoffs, was decimating. The need for courage, for “survivors” is high.

At the start of the workshop, a senior-level executive introduced me to the 100 participants. The day before introducing me, the executive celebrated his 30-year anniversary with the firm. Clearly, he is widely admired and respected.

Most often, when a senior executive provides introductory “kick off” comments, they quickly scurry out the door and leave the “training” to the lower level folks. Truth be known, the 30-year executive had planned on doing so too. But, as the workshop went on, he decided that he too was benefitting from the experience.

I’m glad he stayed. It made a positive impression on everyone else. More importantly, at the tailend of the workshop, he stood up to offer closing perspectives too. And they were spot on. He talked acknowledged the hardship and pain that everyone, including himself, had experienced during the last two years. He talked about the need for allowing direct reports to have more latitude for making smart mistakes without fear of punishment. He talked about the need for leaders in particular, such as the attendees, to be better role models of courageous behavior. And he made a declaration that everyone could expect to see him lead with more courage too. After he spoke, he received a rousing applause. Well deserved, I might add.

As I mentioned in an earlier blogpost, I learn a lot from the participants who attend my Courageous Leadership workshops. I particularly enjoy learning from the company elder statesment, such as I did yesterday.

Greetings from Hong Kong:

So far, I’m learning that not all Asian countries are the same! Tokyo is neat, clean, and efficient. Hong Kong is hot, crowded, and loud. I like ‘em both, but for different reasons.

Like a lot of companies with whom Giant Leap works, the company I worked with today was hit hard by the recession. As a global financial services firm, the aftermath of the recession has brought about an increased regulatory environment. Consequently, the company has had to fill more and more compliance-related positions, to ensure compliance with increasingly complex regulatory restraints. As we discussed in our workshop today, the increase in the number of compliance-focused employees seems to have unintentionally diminished the company’s entrepreneurial spirit. When the jobs of more and more employees are solely focused on minimizing, mitigating, and controlling risk, who is left to take risk?

During the workshop, a lively discussion ensued about the proper role of compliance-related jobs. Too often people in legal, regulatory, or even HR jobs are there to tell others – like people in sales, marketing, or product development – what they cannot do. Compliance-related workers often focus on the “don’ts” – “Don’t do this or we’ll be at risk!” The people in our Hong Kong Courageous Leadership workshop, all senior leaders, felt that too much emphasis on the “don’ts” puts the organization in danger of deemphasizing the important “dos” that the company should be pursing. Too much emphasis on safety, as we discussed, can, ironically, be dangerous for business because it can thwart the company’s entrepreneurial spirit.

Ultimately, the problem is one of proportionality. The grand pendulum that swings between safety on one side and opportunity on the other, has swung too far to the safety side. When too many employees adopt a “play it safe” mentality, such as has occurred as a consequence of the global recession, entrepreneurialism wanes. Compliance and regulation serve companies best when they go beyond directing people away from danger, and provide necessary guardrails that keep the company safe as it travels toward steadily toward risk and opportunity. Said another way, compliance jobs need to be less about stoking fear and more about building courage. Less about “don’t do this” and more about “do it this way and we’ll be safe.”

This evening I fly to Singapore. Big day tomorrow. My day starts with a radio interview, followed by a TV interview (in my hotel room!), followed by a ½ day workshop, and capped off with a dinner presentation. Sure hope I get some sleep tonight!

Thanks!

BT

Greetings from Japan. After an unexpected stay in a UK immigration detention center, the Courage Tour is back on. UK and Zurich will no longer start the tour, and will instead pick up the caboose. Instead, Japan is the launch point.

Perhaps starting in Japan makes more sense anyway. No offense to the UK and Switzerland, but Japan has been demonstrating more courage recently, but with the recent earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. It seems fitting that a tour on courage would start where courage has been most demonstrated.

In my courage workshops, I always ask participants What is the most courageous thing you’ve done at work? Today one of the participants said, “I led my employees out of the building during the earthquake.”

I will remember that response forever.

One wonders what previous life or work experiences prepared him to draw on his courage resources when it mattered most. Did he, for example, ever disagree passionately with a boss? Did he ever inform a customer about a mistake? Did he ever take on a project where others had failed?

Or was the activation of his courage prompted by opposite forces? Had he backed down from exercising his courage on too many occasions? Had he gotten fed up with being a coward too often?

Or did the courage manifest itself in an almost otherwordly, unexplainable way. As if his greater angels had directed his impulses or actions.

We’ll never know.

But I do know this, that by exercising his courage, he made a lasting impression on me and others. It is possible, I suppose, that we will act more courageously in the future through the impression that his act left on us. Courage, as the title of my book suggests, Goes to Work. And when we see it working in others, we are more apt to put it to use too. 

What I love about my job is that under the guise of teaching courage, I get to learn so much about the topic from the people I teach.

Thank you Japan, for reminding me why I do what I do.  

Bill T., Tokyo

If you would like to donate to help the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, you can do so at this Red Cross link

https://american.redcross.org/site/Donation2?5052.donation=form1&df_id=5052&

Inside and outside of work, these are fearful times. Over the last few years, the world has suffered through an unusual amount of anxiety-provoking situations, including the economic meltdown, numerous wars, the toppling of governments, and multiple natural disasters. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to through in a radioactive nuclear disaster.

From a business perspective, leaders need to guard against fear-saturation among the workforce. Research shows that workers who are full of fear have higher instances of depression and sleep deprivation, both of which significantly hinder performance.

Simply put, fear is bad for business. Fear makes workers clam up, restricting the flow of feedback that is so necessary for keeping leaders from making bonehead decisions. Fear heightens workers suspicions of one another, undermining the trust that interpersonal relationships need to flourish. Fear causes workers to be unduly preoccupied with safety, strangling their willingness to take risks and extend their skills. Fear lowers morale, damages relationships, erodes trust, and builds resentment. Ultimately, fear lowers confidence, standards, and profits.

Given the debilitating impacts that fear has on productivity, performance, and morale, it is striking that so many leaders still resort to stoking people’s fears to get things done. Perhaps all this fear mongering explains why Human Resource Executive Magazine estimated that, on average, workers spend 20 hours a month complaining about their bosses. The cumulative impact of all that wasted time is estimated to be over $350 billion dollars a year.

One way to get some of that $350 billion back would be for leaders to focus on building confidence and courage among the rank and file. What follows are four steps a leader can take to build workplace courage.

Jump First: If you want workers to have more initiative, take on greater responsibility, embrace change, and assert ideas, you have to do so first. As a leader, you have to be the first one to climb up and off the high dive ladders that you are asking workers to climb. You must be the one to set the behavioral example that you want others to emulate. Ask yourself, “Where am I playing it too safe at work?” 

Show the Sunrise: As a leader, during fearful times especially, you need to provide hope and optimism. Here’s an overused phrase to stop using today: “What keeps me awake at night is…” Showcasing how worried you are bout the company only serves to heighten people’s anxiety. There are more effective ways of engaging and motivating people, such as inspiring them with a clear and hopeful vision for a better future. So instead of bragging about what keeps you awake at night, how about focusing on what gets you up in the morning? 

Create Safety: Workers will extend themselves beyond their comfort zones to the extent that you make it safe to do so. This works in reverse too. If workers think that you will bite their head off if they disagree with you, they’ll keep their mouth shut instead of providing you with close-to-the-action insights that could inform your decision-making. Make it safe for people to disagree with you. Be sure to coach them about how to disagree with you in a way that will cause you to be open to their pushback. 

Modulate Comfort: One danger that can emerge when workers experience fear over protracted periods is that they start to become comfortable with being afraid. They become comfeartable. As a leader, your job is to activate peoples’ courage to keep them from becoming disengaged and apathetic. When people are performing in a lackluster way, provide assignments that stretch and challenge them. Once achieved, let them settle into those assignments only long enough to gain confidence. When they do, it’s time to stretch them into discomfort again. 

Workers who are courage-led are more committed, optimistic, loyal, and change-embracing. Why wouldn’t they be? Imagine, for example, working for a leader was a positive role model of courageous behavior, and whose vision of the future was so bold that it actually excited you. Go a step further and imagine what the whole company might look like if all the leaders led by building peoples’ courage and reducing their fears. There would be a lot more honesty, and a lot less nail-biting. There would be a lot more personal accountability and a lot less apathy. And there would be a lot more confidence and a lot less anxiety. 

The bottom line is this: Who would you rather work for, a leader who stokes your fear or a leader who filled you with courage?