Issue No. 580 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting dares to disrupt your comfortable biases! Read my review of a seriously contrarian book by a leadership coach that prioritizes “belonging” over purpose. Must-read! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 575 book reviews, and click here for the video review with Jerry Butler and David Schmdt of the book, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America.
Deutser, the consulting firm led by Brad Deutser, features boxing gloves in their Leadership Learning Lab. They ask leaders, "Who's your sparring partner?" He writes, "...we teach leaders how to spar constructively on topics of importance." (Visit Amazon for your boxing gloves!)
Who’s Your Sparring Partner?
Tired of books that over-promise and under-deliver?
• 17 Ways to Increase Your Productivity!
• 11 Best Practices for Bringing Your Best Self to Work!
• 27 Proven Hacks for Increasing Your Happiness!
Gulp. Who am I to critique others? I, too, have over-promised with 20 management buckets/core competencies!
But there’s good news. Occasionally, a book comes along that is the real deal. I urge you to read, or listen to, this new Wall Street Journal bestseller:
Please read this disclaimer. This contrarian book will mess with your head. I rarely do this, but I typed up 82 notes to organize my thoughts for this review. I was convicted that this book—this “squishy” topic—is too important for me to "wing it" in my review. It’s practically absurd that I could summarize this for you. I fear my inadequate ramblings might persuade you NOT to read this book. But…please read it. Your team members will be eternally grateful.
Deutser writes, “Most leaders think about belonging as yet another squishy, amorphous concept more easily relegated to Human Resources than as a function under the vision, direction, and responsibility of the C-suite. Our work and research in this space says emphatically ‘No!’”
Frankly, I wasn’t convinced. Would this be yet one more book with the cause de jour (DEI). Gratefully, no! I was hooked by page 3. Brad Deutser’s research for his firm’s Clarity Institute and Institute for Belonging surveyed more than 15,000 employees across varied industries and occupations. Their findings:
“Belonging predicts job satisfaction, engagement, and effort over and above employees’ perception of organizational culture or strategy.” And this: “…belonging has a greater impact on employee retention than does compensation.”
My Favorite Chapter: “Leader of You” (Chapter 6). Deutser notes that leaders “get stuck in the rut of everyday leadership,” but “great leaders perpetually search for something more.” He adds, “We have found the most powerful excursion a leader can take is rarely organizational and almost always personal.” (This reminded me of Steve Brown’s book, Leading Me.) My take-aways:
• The “Leadership Tether” exercise. The author’s two-page spread of his personal “leadership tether” documents his life experiences that contributed to his leadership competences. Starting with his early years (ages 4 to 19), he lists “Best Rester Award” in kindergarten! He also includes his 11 years on staff at Camp Greylock—a precursor for his work with athletes, including the Houston Texan’s “cultural transformation.”
• He was fired twice!
• His firm’s “Positivity Quotient”—an assessment that measures positivity across five dimensions. Their research concludes: “Positivity is the foundation of leadership.”
• The case study on the University of Arizona head football coach is jam-packed with useful ideas for any organization. Jedd Fisch arrived before the 2021 season, but the team had been winless for 763 days! Among other “belonging” innovations, he created the “5th Quarter,” the first-ever Leadership Learning Lab in the NCAA. You’ll steal this one-liner: “There are no rules, only values.” (Wildcat fans would want me to mention that they beat Washington State, 44 to 6, last Saturday!)
Note to consultants and facilitators: You will love this book! Deutser (the firm describes themselves as “Consultants & Creators”) literally gives away the store with dozens of personal and team exercises, charts, and fill-in-the-blanks reflection pages for leadership assessments and team-building growth.
Belonging Rules features five memorable rules (not 17, not 27, just five!):
RULE #1. TURN INTO THE POWER. Chapter 1 is titled “Becoming Comfortable with the Uncomfortable.” (This is my favorite rule!) Take-aways:
• Two symbols of belonging are emphasized in Deutser’s Leadership Learning Labs: railroad tracks and white picket fences. (You will not forget these metaphors—and the 13 fill-in-the-blanks questions on “Fences” are convicting.)
• Failed efforts at “DEI” are addressed with brutal honesty. Example: the hiring of a person of color over other qualified candidates because the CEO mandated it. (His bonus depended on it—if you can imagine.) The author lists three soul-probing questions, including “Why does this group lack diversity in the first place?
RULE #2. LISTEN WITHOUT LABELS. Chapter 2 is creatively titled, “_______, who is white.” (This is my favorite rule!) Take-aways:
• You’re the interim president of the University of Texas at Austin and several weeks after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, a group of student athletes presents a list of demands about “perceived issues of racism and a lack of a sense of belonging for students of color.” One of the demands: drop the alma mater, “The Eyes of Texas,” which had been sung since 1903. What would you do? The author facilitated a process involving more than 3,500 conversations over seven months. View the results here.
• How to listen without labels: 15 practices and approaches, including “Eliminate the ‘Why?’” Never start a question with why!
• Exercise: “Ten Ways People Label You.” (Whew! See the full-page list of 138 words used as labels.)
RULE #3. CHOOSE IDENTITY OVER PURPOSE. Chapter 3 is titled “It’s Not One Thing, It’s the Other.” (This is my favorite rule!) Take-aways:
• Whoa! Really? Purpose is not the most important? (Must-read chapter!)
• “Believing in the reason you are doing something is not the same as believing in the people you are doing it with.”
• “You can always hire a DEI coordinator but if belonging is not part of your value set, they will fail.”
• The author makes a very strong case for why focusing on purpose (and not on belonging) creates elitism among the zealots. (I’m still thinking about this—but it’s very compelling.)
• However, the “Ecosystem of Belonging” graphic does include purpose, vision, values, and more.
In the section, “Values That Inspire,” Deutser warns that “the go-to, one-word values do not work. Period. They lack meaning, they lack intention, they lack heart and soul—they lack connection. They also show the organization’s lack of commitment. They serve as a
on the forehead of the company.
They look silly and out of place.”
RULE #4. CHALLENGE EVERYTHING. Chapter 4, “Arming Today’s Leader,” is counter-intuitive and I love it! (This is my favorite rule!) Take-aways:
• “Today’s leader must be armed with tools that allow them to lead with courage.”
• The big idea: There’s rarely a single answer to complex leadership issues—so challenge everything. Keep exploring like many of the famous artists did.
• “’Good enough’ is a killer of people, ideas, and companies. Someone is working to pass you by—and at ‘good enough,’ there will always be someone shooting for something better. It is why settling when seeking answers is unacceptable.” (See also Necessary Endings.)
• In 1957, Pablo Picasso created a series of 58 variations of Diego Velázquez's famous painting, Las Meninas. “…he kept going back and digging deeper.”
• “This idea of mental sparring is why we have boxing bags and gloves in our Leadership Learning Labs, each adorned with graffiti that says, ‘Who’s your sparring partner?’”
• Note: This chapter reminded me of the tool I’ve used in strategic planning workshops, Thinkpak: A Brainstorming Card Deck. (Read my review.)
• Don’t skip the nine “Effective Challenge Steps” using the acronym C.H.A.L.L.E.N.G.E. (“G” is for “Get honest. Was anything left unsaid, and did I share 100% of my truth?”)
By the way (pun intended), Brad Deutser’s firm memorializes their team members’ behavioral expectations in their organization’s cultural guide, The Deutser Way. The University of Arizona’s football team lives out “The Wildcat Way.” And my favorite team, the Chicago Cubs (moment of silence please), fleshed out “The Cubs Way” enroute to their 2016 World Series win. What’s “your way?”
RULE #5. DEMAND 100% OF THE TRUTH. Chapter 5, “Leading the Moveable Middle,” notes that “100% of the truth is a foreign concept in a world that shuns and disincentivizes it.” (This is my favorite rule!) Take-aways:
• Timely! Read how the Holocaust Museum Houston reinvigorated their mission by integrating the ideas of three generations of museum stakeholders. “All three generations were saying very similar things to each other without hearing each other.” Their new messaging strategy was built around one line: “It is hard to hate up close.”
• Deutser is not a big fan of the “current HR construct.” He writes, “…ask regular employees (as we do, across thousands of companies) who in the office they don’t trust, and often they will say HR, because it is set up not to support the people it is supposed to serve, but to punish them and push policy onto them.”
• “We also cannot place the DEI function under HR and expect the organization to embrace it.” (This reminded me of Dennis Bakke’s belief in Joy at Work that people “are not our most important asset.” People are people, not assets, he writes.)
• “When it comes to belonging, we cannot settle for the majority opinion or the first idea.”
• Yikes! Don’t skip the narrative on Prime Communications (leveraging 100% of the truth). A smaller Muslim-owned company acquired a large, high-culture Mormon-led company. Deutser asked every leadership team member to submit five questions to address their merger fears. (Look for the facilitation genius here.) One of the 100 questions asked: “Why are Mormons intolerant of anyone different from them?”
• This chapter delivers nine insights on getting to 100% of the truth, including “Lead with facts and not emotion.”
• And this: “Think about the times we choose not to tell a colleague or employee about their poor performance.”
Oops! I think I noted “This is my favorite rule” for ALL FIVE RULES! (Actually, not a mistake. Belonging Rules is that good. I hope you’ll read it.)
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Belonging Rules: Five Crucial Actions That Build Unity and Foster Performance, by Brad Deutser. Listen on Libro (8 hours, 2 minutes). And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy.
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Chapter 7, “The Box of Belonging,” references the author’s early years with the circus and what he learned from the performances in the three rings. Brad Deutser writes, “We have observed that thinking outside the box creates greater confusion because on the outside there are no boundaries and too many variables.” Do you agree? Check out the four sides of the box: Personal, Social, Adaptable, and Intentional, and the 12 aligning competencies.
2) In the Leadership Learning Lab at Deutser, they engage leaders in the “art of the whole” exercise using kintsugi or “the art of the broken” to “put broken pieces together in a new way. This is true for the locker room, the schoolroom, and the boardroom.” What might be the value of engaging a creative consulting firm to help us “challenge everything” and “listen without labels” and “demand 100% of the truth” and more?
P.S. Pair this book with Connection Culture (read my review) and inspire your team members to discuss the importance of connection and belonging.
Mastering 100 Must-Read Books - Part 8: Five Business Classics
Book #50 of 100: The Speed of Trust
For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by spotlighting Book #509 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books.
The Speed of Trust:
The One Thing That Changes Everything
by Stephen M.R. Covey
Books #46 through #50 spotlight five memorable books I’ve labeled “Five Business Classics.” Stephen M.R. Covey (son of Stephen Covey) writes that you can “behave yourself out of a problem you’ve behaved yourself into…and often faster than you think!”
• Read my review.
• Order from Amazon: The Speed of Trust
• Listen on Libro (12 hours, 13 minutes)
• Download the 100 Must-Read Books list (from John and Jason Pearson).
Covey’s content is very deep (character isn’t enough, you must also pair it with competence). His four cores of credibility will preach (Integrity, Intent, Capabilities and Results). And his 13 behaviors that flesh out the core are stunning, important, memorable, and teachable. Examples: #1 Talk Straight, #3 Create Transparency, #4 Right Wrongs, #8 Confront Reality, #9 Clarify Expectations, and #11 Listen First.
Fire the job description! That's the advice in The Empathy Advantage: Leading the Empowered Workforce. Heather E. McGowan and Chris Shipley write, “…it’s time to end the practice of hiring people to fill jobs and begin the discipline of creating roles around outstanding people.” Read my review. And for more book reviews, visit the Pails in Comparison Blog.
The Team Bucket: Leverage Your Strengths!
Visit the Team Bucket for resources on leveraging your team's strengths with the CliftonStrengths assessment from Gallup. Read more in Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018).
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PEARPOD | TELLING YOUR STORY. Brad Deutser writes that “approximately 80,000 thoughts go through the mind of a leader every day.” Think about that! So…what are the odds that your story will be heard and remembered? We can help. Contact Jason Pearson at Pearpod (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).
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