تفسیر درس

Character Leadership – Commentary

Hi, welcome to the Commentary for this month’s lesson, character leadership. It’s actually a challenging topic this month, because it’s never over really. There are certain things in life that can never be perfect, that you can never quite master and I think this is one of them. It’s always possible to get better and to do more with leadership and this kind of leadership.

For me that’s a good thing, because it keeps you interested and focused. There’s always some way to learn and grow and improve which is great. I think that’s better than being able to achieve some final result and then you’re done, because then you get bored and then you have to find something else to do. So that’s the good thing about character leadership it’s more challenging, in a way, but I think more rewarding and interesting in the long-term, both for you and your team.

In the main lesson we talked about this idea of both team and mission and how you need both. You need a team and then you need a purpose for that team, some mission, a deeper purpose, something that will keep you going. Choosing that over other priorities, over other goals can be quite difficult. It can be tough to choose your team and mission, instead of your own personal interests.

Let me give you an example from my own life. I was sitting in a meeting with three of my bosses in Thailand, Thammasat University, one of the top in the country. I was a teacher there in the past. These three bosses, one being my direct boss and then two others who were above him in the department and they were reviewing my work. They were not happy.

I had given too many good grades to my students. When I gave tests I didn’t grade the tests hard enough. I was too relaxed with my grading and they told me this was not acceptable. They told me that I must follow a mathematical formula for grades. Meaning, that I had to fail a certain number of my students, a certain percent of my students must get F’s and fail, and another small percent could get an A, but no more than that. The biggest number of students, I had to give them a C. This is called a Bell Curve, which is a curve shaped like a bell, where the middle is high and big and the ends left and right sides of the bell are short.

So, if you look at the Bell Curve left to right an F to an A, it means in the middle it’s very big and it means lots of people get a C grade, with very few getting A’s and F’s. They told me this was the policy of the university and I had to do this. It didn’t matter how good my class was or how bad, but I had to have this formula and that only certain numbers of students could get certain grades.

This was tough for me; because they told me if I did not do this, if I did not change the grades and my grading that I would be fired and would have to leave. I argued with

them that this didn’t serve my team, my students. I considered my students my team and I was there to lead them and serve them and to serve them, in my mind, meant to…

1. Encourage them to love English, so they would continue improving in English for their lives.

2. Serving them meant to build their confidence and make them more confident with English, especially the weaker students, those who had less English ability, who felt like they were not good at English, who had a history of bad grades and bad performance with English.

Those students in particular needed more confidence, so I felt it was my job to serve them to build up their confidence. So, I saw no benefit to giving a lot of F’s and D’s to students who were trying their best, coming to class everyday and were, in fact, improving their English. It wasn’t their fault that when they joined my class they had a low level of English. They actually, in many cases, made bigger improvements than the top students, because they started at a low level but they were making improvements and doing great. In my mind that meant they should get A’s or B’s.

So to serve the students meant I had to follow my own policy in order to help them, give them more confidence, encourage them to keep going and improving, but if I served that mission, my students my team, it meant I would lose my job. It would hurt my own personal interest, meaning my paycheck and in fact my whole life in Thailand, which I quite loved at the time.

It was tough, I went home and had to think about it quite a lot, this choice and I’m glad I made the choice to stick with my principles and to serve my team, my students first, so I went back and quit, instead of letting them fire me. I told them I wouldn’t change the grades, that the policy was bad, it sucks and I won’t do it, so if they wanted the grades changed they would have to do it I wouldn’t. I quit and then shortly thereafter I left Thailand.

I don’t regret the decision. It wasn’t easy for me because it was tough for me financially. It was difficult for many months after that for me. I had to move back to the states and find a job. I barely had any money to get by, but it was the right decision and I’m glad I did it. It led to greater successes for me in the long-term, I believe. It helped me develop my leadership ability and to really be committed to serving students, not serving some boss or organization or policy.

I believe long-term that helped with the success of Effortless English and where I am today, which is great. The point is that oftentimes when you’re in this leadership position and if you really care about having character and leading in that way that you will often be faced with these kinds of decisions where you must choose between the team and the mission on one hand and on the other your own personal security or interests.

Sometimes that decision will not be easy. Sometimes you will have to sacrifice your own interests in order to serve your team and your mission. You first need to know what your mission is. You need to have a personal mission and then you have one for your team or organization. It’s best when those two things are very similar, that way in your mission for your job or maybe your team is your family, whatever it is and when that mission is similar to your own personal life mission, when those two are the same or similar it’s a much stronger and happier position to be in, in life.

So the first thing you need to really do is to identify what that is for you. What is that deep mission for you? For me it’s teaching people, helping people become more confident and I do that through English and communication and travel, but I could actually do that in many other ways if I wanted to. So you need to find that too for yourself, what is that deep mission and purpose for you? How do you find that? It’s tough, you have to ask yourself again and again and identify and look back into your past in your life to find the patterns, the things that have repeatedly been important to you.

I did this myself many years ago, about five years, when my wife and I went on a long hike on the island of Shikoku, Japan. I was really tired of just being an English teacher at that point, focusing solely on vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. I wanted something deeper. I was struggling with this idea of what my deeper purpose was. It’s not just English because that’s not very inspiring, what is my deeper purpose? What is the deeper purpose of Effortless English?

I just kept asking myself this question again and again while we were on this one month hike, where we just walked. I had a lot of time to think and somehow by asking myself this question over and over, constantly thinking about it all the time, looking back on my life and what was important to me, I finally figured out this idea of bringing confidence to people, vitality and happiness. I realized that was the central thing for me, personally to keep growing and learning and also, in terms of helping others as well to keep growing, learning and developing confidence in themselves.

How do you do this? What are the practical ways to develop this character leadership and to guide you when you must face these difficult decisions, because you will?

1. The first step is to write down your mission and to figure out what your personal mission is as I just mentioned and write it down.

It needs to be written out and to be very specific and not too long, even one paragraph is fine with 4-5 sentences is the max. Keep it simple and focused.

2. Second is to adapt that mission to your team.

If you’re in a job situation than you need to adapt that mission so that it fits your job. I have my own personal mission to help people become confident and more happy and

all that, and then for Effortless English in my job, in my business then I have to adapt that so that I’m doing that while I teach English, because that’s what I do. I still have that deep mission and then I attach and connect it to my specific team and job. You need to do that as well.

Once you do that you write out your new version of the mission. Maybe it’s the same as your personal mission or maybe it’s different, but you get that mission for your team, maybe it’s your department at work or your family and you write it out and then you need to share it with your team. That’s the first step to becoming a leader so it’s not just you. Share this mission with your team. You might feel weird about it, but don’t be embarrassed just share it with them. You don’t have to tell it to them as if it’s a command.

Just say I’ve been thinking about what our deeper purpose is as a team, a family or whatever and this is what I think. Share it with them to see what they think. Get some feedback from them and say this is what I think our deeper purpose. Maybe they’ll help you make changes to it until you can all accept and agree on it. That’s a big first step because a team that has purpose and mission is usually more motivated, happier and works together better than one without a deeper purpose.

The third thing is…

3. Nurture your team.

You have to get the focus off of yourself and onto your team. So the team comes first not you and this is where it starts to get tough, because on one hand you have your own personal career goals, your life goals and you want to achieve certain things for yourself, but when you’re in this leadership role you have to put that to the side and make the team’s goals come first. The team’s mission must come before your own.

In that example I gave about Thammasat University, I had to choose the mission for my students over my own personal goals, because my own goals would have been better served at that time by changing the grades, staying in the job and maybe getting a raise or something like that, but I had to sacrifice that for my bigger purpose, even though it caused me to lose the job.

This is tough but it probably won’t be so dramatic that you have to lose your job, that was an extreme situation. It just means that there will be times when it will be inconvenient for you as an individual and you’ll have to do things to serve the team that you don’t feel like doing yourself, that aren’t beneficial to you personally. They will help you in the long run. If you have faith in that, I think you’ll eventually see that it does end up helping you in the long run, but in the short-term you’ll often feel like you’re sacrificing your own things, goals, desires, etc. for the team and sometimes you have to do that to be a great leader, especially to use a character style of leadership.

Once you have committed yourself to the team and the mission you need to…

4. Demand commitment to the mission from your team members.

By demand I don’t mean verbally demand saying, you must do this. I mean more emotionally, that you must expect that the other team members will also be committed to the team and the mission, not just to themselves. There will be times when individuals are not committed to the mission. There are certain people who will not be and my best advice is to get rid of them. If you have the authority you can fire them. If you don’t than try to find informal teams, other people to work with and avoid those people who are selfishly focused on themselves.

It can be tough, but sometimes you have to make that hard decision. Within Effortless English I do this even with members, even though my personal interests are better served by having lots of VIP members and getting money as well as helping the business grow, but I will not accept people who don’t accept our VIP mission and if someone doesn’t follow our code and mission than I end their membership. If they purchase a course I give them a refund for the course and wish them well and goodbye, because it’s better for our team.

5. Constantly communicate the mission.

It’s not enough just to write it and share it one time you have to be constantly talking about as a leader. You might be the official leader, meaning you’re the actual supervisor or manager or boss, or you might not be. Maybe you’re just a member of a team you’re not officially the leader, but you can still have a leadership role. You do this by constantly focusing people on the mission, constantly talking about it, constantly communicating it in emails, in writing and verbally, any way you can. Keep people focused on the mission all the time.

You need a lot of repetition so that it sinks in deeply to everyone.

6. Think long-term.

Character leadership is about long-term results and leadership, deep results. You will often have to sacrifice short-term gains in order to achieve your long-term mission. My Thammasat example was one example of that, but there may be many. Sometimes you have to accept the loss and sacrifice in the short-term so that long-term the overall mission, the deeper mission is served, the team is served.

What’s your focus this month then?

Identify your team.

What’s the team you want to work with? Is it your family? Is it a team at work or something else, maybe an organization you’re a member of?

Identify your mission Personal and then adapt that mission to your team

I want you to write this on our VIP social Ning site and tell us what your team is that you’re working with. What is the mission that you have for that team and for yourself?

Then, throughout this month, communicate that mission to your team members and commit yourself to serve your team rather than just yourself. I look forward to hearing about the results you get. Tell us, not only what your team and mission is but tell us the results you get and how it’s going.

Each week get onto the social site and write about how this is going. Write about the results you’re getting or about the problems you’re having, the struggles so we can all help each other get better and better as character leaders.

I’m excited to hear about this from you because this is a subject I’m very passionate about. It’s one I also try to live and am always working on. It’s one I want to see you, as a VIP member, focus and work on for your whole life.

Tell us how it’s going. I look forward to hearing about it.

Have a great month. Bye for now.