I came across an interesting article by Geoffrey James that struck a chord. He wrote a brief column titled “8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses.” In it James summarizes key traits gleaned from interviews with well respected CEOs.

This topic — effective modern leadership — is interesting to me because I am usually eyeballs deep in challenges various clients wrestle with. This list resonated with me and I thought it was well worth sharing. Paraphrasing Geoffrey’s key points and adding some notes along the way, here we go.

1. Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield. Old school is confrontational; new school leaders create an organic environment that’s fluid to adaptation. This is a culture decision, coming from the top down. If the leadership team looks at everything as a war, its people are like to be crusty and combative internally and externally. When leadership teams look at the organization as somewhat symbiotic, where each part feeds the other, chances of success rise. This point is a textbook example of a major difference between old management models and progressive ones.
2. A company is a community, not a machine. People are not cogs, toothed together to mesh by manipulation of levers. Companies are better served when its culture respects the individual hopes and dreams of its contributors. Contributions to the success of others should be encouraged and applauded.
3. Management is service, not control. Weak managers like to boss people around; they want to exert positional power and have their workers do exactly as instructed. These bossy types are threatened by new ideas and innovative problem solving. They micromanage, guarding against insubordination by hovering with implied and expressed threats. Smart bosses provide latitude. They set goals and general direction, then challenge the team to figure out the smartest way to do the work. Bosses are engaged only when asked or when necessary. Otherwise they stay the heck out of the way. Smart bosses manage results, not activities. They laud and applaud great work.
4. Employees are peers, not children. The old patriarchal management approach looks down at employees like subordinate kids. Workers are seen as inferior and immature, not to be trusted with anything beyond specific execution. Smart bosses act in radically different ways. They treat everyone as if he or she is the most important person in the company. Muhammad Ali was the best I’ve ever seen at this. Muhammad always insisted on meeting the kitchen and hotel staff before meeting any big money, black tie bigshots. When asked why, Muhammad said, “Treat people like kings and kings like people and you’ll get along with everybody.” He was right. When you help people get what they need, be it tools or support, they will do their best to succeed in their roles. Great leaders also have no fear in pushing accountability and decision-making down. Great leaders do not force results. Great leaders inspire results.
5. Motivation feeds best from vision, not fear. Blah-blah bosses use fear (in many insidious forms) to “motivate” workers. These come in quite the toxic portfolio: threats of job loss, underwhelming performance appraisals, caustic remarks such as ridicule or belittling, suppression of career mobility, loss of privileges, etc. None of these “motivates” anyone. Although fear drives short term results, it also creates mid-term exodus because talent has options and talent will leave. The stayers will be the mediocre plodders with little hope of upward redeployment. Great bosses don’t operate this way; they inspire people. They paint a brighter future, with the worker a key component. Once a worker believes in a company’s goals and buys in, he or she will perform at maximum horsepower. Commitment drives everything in business. Once a talented team commits, it can move mountains.
6. Change is fun. Change means growth, not pain. People set in their ways fall behind, faster now than ever before. Because tradition only goes so far, innovation and relentless improvement drive companies further faster. Even if we look at staid American traditions such as The Masters golf tournament or the Kentucky Derby horse race, inside its competitive boundaries the product seems zealously protected and unchanged. But how these must-see events have been packaged, marketed, and delivered to the masses has changed radically. Where weak bosses see change as a threat, visionary leaders know change is an ally — assuming they respect it that way. Change blossoms innovation and improvement. Smarter and better is always fun.
7. Technology offers empowerment, not automation. IT-centric organizations tend to remain hierarchical because management can centralize control, which too often dehumanizes people and squashes creativity. Great bosses want their people wielding tools that free them to think, act, and create. The intellectual capital of the person is what matters; technology is there to serve their needs. Never vice-versa.
8. Work should be fun. It should not be “toil.” Ineffective bosses are all business, all the time. They are grumplepusses who treat work as a dark and serious obligation. There is no time or latitude in their world for enjoyable, fulfilling work that makes people happy. Smart bosses are way too wise to fall for this. They know that few things in leadership are more rewarding than watching good people deliver great, inspired results through talent, growth, and self-motivation.

Much of what Geoffrey James points out in these eight tips are things I frequently see, some quite recently.

It is vital for all aspiring leaders to remember that in the end, however you get there, the difference between a “manager” and a “leader” is really quite simple: A manager directs and inspects. A leader inspires results through others. Which do you want to be?

Manage the emotional experience of your people and they will do great work. Disrespect that emotional experience and they will leave. As Spike Lee likes to say, “Do the right thing.”

Back in the salad days of my youth, when German Shepherds and cocker spaniels outnumbered shih-tzus and chihuahuas, the magic of the day often arrived in an envelope, rescued from the mailbox and adorned with a hand-cancelled postage stamp.

Real letters, hand-scripted, occasionally by a fountain pen with cursive penmanship so perfect the envelope was carefully opened. The anticipation was great — what special, inscripted artwork would unfold from inside?

Times have changed. A magic letter is Sasquatch: rumored but never seen. My mail is bills and bulk junk. They do me no good but help the postman stay in shape. Straight to the trash, usually unopened, that stuff subsidizes a great but deeply troubled dependable service that 300 million Americans increasingly will not support.

Real mail was obsoleted by email. In its early days, email was exciting. But that has changed too, email having devolved into an electronic junk yard. Crawl through it long enough and perhaps you’ll stumble upon something salvagable. But fewer and fewer are caring to crawl.

Check out these stats from Pingdom, a data collection house that monitors digital trends. These numbers are relevant through 2010 and safely project forward.

Email by the numbers:

• 107 trillion. The number of emails sent in 2010 across the Internet.
• 294 billion. The average number of email messages per day. More than 2.8 million emails are sent every second of every hour of every day. No wonder their novelty is diluted!
• 25 billion Tweets. 25 billion tweets were sent out in 2010, with 100 million new accounts added. When Lady Gaga tweets, the world pays attention. Gaga is number one. When she sends out a message, 22.8 million followers receive it. Justin Bieber is second, with just over 20 million. And for those who simply must know … yes, Kim Kardashian does have more followers than the president of the United States: 14.4 million to 14.2).

Email users and their accounts, also by the numbers:

• 1.88 billion. The number of email users worldwide.
• 2.9 billion. The number of email accounts worldwide.
• 25%. Share of email accounts that are corporate.
• 480 million. New email users from 2009 to 2010. That’s right: nearly a half-billion more users — more than one million and every each day — hitchhike onto the system.

With the good follows the bad. Here’s the spam data:

• 89.1%. The share of emails that were spam. Nine of ten! “Holy cluttered mailbox, Batman!”
• 262 billion. The number of spam emails per day (assuming 89% are spam).

To frame the growth of email, compare recent email traffic to levels recorded from 2008-09: by the end of 2010 email usage had grown by 30 trillion messages. Spam, however, grew by 42 trillion. The trend is obvious: spam frequency is dramatically outstripping real email usage.

Also mushrooming are digital portals. The web is now home to more than 255 million websites. Roughly 21.4 million more are added each year. These sites cover the needs of 202 million domain names, a category which increases by seven percent annually.

The web is a global connector, with more than two billion people regularly accessing the internet. Asian users outnumber those in North America and Europe combined, 825.1 million to 741.3 million.

Because of global acceptance social media, such as Facebook, has exploded from its infancy and secondary purpose (and Internet novelty) to an Internet transforming powerhouse. Thirty billion pieces of user data are added to Facebook each month by more than 600 million users, most of whom reside outside the United States.

It is also worth pointing out that the old adage of “One picture is worth a thousand words” seems to be reaffirming that validity on the web too. Video content uploaded to and watched on the web is growing by exponential metrics. Quite often images minimize the need for words.

Two billion videos are watched each day on YouTube. The average Internet user watches 186 per month — 30 every day. Facebook is a video destination too. Twenty million video clips are uploaded to Facebook each month, resulting in over 2 billion monthly user watches.

It is not just videos that are transforming how content is changing on the web. Digital photography has enabled 5 billion still photos to be archived on Flickr. Five billion seems like a lot but is chump change compared to Facebook. Facebook hosts more than 3 billion photo uploads — more than 36 billion per year — seven times what Flickr houses.

Maintaining email effectiveness

For those of us who must use email in the course of business, here are three things to remember when trying to stand out in a crowded arena soiled by increasing abuse.

1. Plug a great bumper sticker into your Subject line. Grab the reader’s attention. Do that and he or she will read it. Don’t do that and he or she will trash it.
2. Keep the Body message short and to the point. Write it for the receiver and maximizes its relevance. Trends in digital communication are racing away from florid prose toward terse sound bites — no more Faulkner, much more Hemingway. Write tight.
3. Close with a specific call to action. Do not perfume the pig. Get to the point.

We cannot change the world nor slow down the relentless technology march that reshapes life as we know and live it. But we can take twenty minutes to hand-write a letter to someone we care about.

If it’s been too long since you’ve sent one, change that. A stamp these days costs forty-five cents, up from a nickel when I was a kid. Four handwritten pages for forty-five cents? A handwritten letter is still the biggest bargain in show business.

Write and send one and you will brighten three people’s day: yours, theirs, and the postman.

He’s got to be sick of junk mail, too.

Office Etiquette, part 3 of 3

Proper Behavior When You Are the Boss

The hardest job in any company is usually front-line manager. Depending on the organization and its promotion strategies, the people selected to man that front line of management are either a good fit or poor fit for the job.

Since bosses are like politics — everybody has an opinion — they go with the paycheck. Part of what we’re paid for is to deal with them.

The “old school” model of promoting top individual contributors often fails, especially in pro selling. There are many reasons but suffice it to say that regardless whether the manager has a good KSA (Knowledge, Skill, & Attribute) fit for the role or not, he or she still needs sufficient social decorum to interface effectively with the troops.

We’ve seen the reason why countless times in practice: People will do a whole lot more if they like and respect someone than they will if they don’t.

Here are ten tips on how to communicate more effectively with the troops when you are the one in charge:

1. Be gracious. Want respect? Give respect. The boss sets the tone. Lead by example.
   
2. Don’t be too assertive. People know you’re the boss, you do not need to keep proving it. Way back in 1901 when Theodore Roosevelt said, “Speak softly, and carry a big stick,” he explained the point perfectly: negotiate tactfully, act aggressively only if you must.
3. Try to be available on a regular, predictable basis. Keeping in touch is a great enabler for managers wanting to sustain a positive, self-motivated work culture. Good bosses help individuals learn self-motivation. They also create an inspirational climate that strengthens collective teams. Great managers coach groups — collections of individuals — to outstanding achievements. No one can do this in a vacuum. As part of your personal management brand, make sure you are approachable and available.
4. Listen smartly. Good bosses listen to their people for two things, content (what they say) and emotional resonance, which is the degree of importance the workers place on that information. Mediocre bosses miss the emotional clues. Great ones dial in.
5. When you delegate a responsibility, empower the person or term to succeed and make sure they know what success looks like. Provide latitude for invention and support if needed. Micromanagement is self-defeating but delegation is great — it lets people accept responsibility and grow. Dumping (“Here, hold this bag”) is disrespectful and demoralizing. Be a delegator, not a dumper or micromanager.
6. Respect your people as knowledgeable and/or skilled at what they do, and remain open to their opinions and ideas. Recognize their ideas and identify them with respect (i.e., colleagues, coworkers, associates, etc.). Park your ego, nurture your people. Make them feel good about caring and being heard. Doing so boosts their morale.
7. Don’t meddle. Trust your people to work out their personal and professional problems. Be available to coach, which means “teach,” but do not hover, butt in, or tell them what to do. If you are approachable and have a reputation for being a people-centric supporter, they will come to you when the time is right. Give them options. Discuss the options. Leave them to decide what’s best.
8. Build confidence individually and collectively by being sincere with praise, recognition, and enthusiastic support. A little sugar can go a very long way.
9. Manage the emotional experience of all your people, even the ones you do not feel close to. Great managers can matrix-manage effectively because they have deft people skills. Great leaders are even more powerful. They inspire a strong desire for the troops to go beyond mediocrity. First impressions are difficult to change. If we have a less than thrilling impression of one person, we have a choice: leave it that way or work to change it. Change it. Do not accept the status quo as eternal.
10. Above all, never forget that being respected is more important than being liked. Workers want to grow, they want to succeed, and they want to be part of a winning team. The boss sets the tone. When he or she works to high standards and leads by example, they have every right to expect their teams to do the same. Do not pander to the least common denominator, nor make management decisions based on popularity. Far too often employees act like little kids. They will get test you to see how much they can get away with. Too much tolerance and too little discipline causes way too many problems. Respect and likeability are not mutually exclusive — but the are two different things.

Like Roosevelt said, “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” Both of them come in handy throughout the course of a long managerial career.

Office Etiquette, part 2 of 3

Interacting with Your Boss

“Manage your manager” through consistently smart interactions. This demonstrates business maturity and helps with smart career positioning for those motivated to someday lead.

Part 2 of this 3-part series shares tips for effectively interacting with the boss, the person best positioned to make you — or break you.

What to do:

1. Try to sense your boss’s many needs without pandering. These needs encompass a variety of  things like expectations, time demands, strategic planning, tactical planning, personal priorities, business priorities, branding, fostering teamwork, and pursuing goals. Anticipate his or her needs and help.
2. Understand his or her personal quirks and habits. We all have them; learn and respect the boss’s.
3. Utilize the boss’s preferred means of communication. You should flex to him or her; you should not expect them to flex to you. If they prefer live conversation, make it happen. If they prefer email, use it. Use communication tactics that mirror their preferred channels.
4. Wait until a meeting is over before leaving. Unless the boss ordains your dismissal, do not leave early. Doing so is a sign of disrespect. Leaving early says that your time is more important than his or hers.
5. Be friendly with the boss … but not too friendly. “TMI” (Too Much Information), especially the intimate sort, can backfire. Keep a line of distinction between personal disclosure and business prudence.
6. Keep the boss in the loop with regard to what you’re doing. Do not operate in secret. Secrecy builds doubt or, worse yet, mistrust. Transparency is good. Bosses like to know what their people are doing, especially when asked by their bosses.
7. Execute with discipline. Once given an assignment, follow up. Do not procrastinate or require being reminded.
8. Never — EVER — embarrass an employer, especially in public. Facebook and social media are becoming an action battleground because employees use it to rant about the organization that pays them. This is stupid, but people by the tens of thousands do it. Stick to higher ground.
9. Never use assertiveness, arrogance, or threats — either direct or implied — when interfacing with the boss. Cocky gets you nowhere but cut down.
10. When being coached or the recipient of constructive criticism, take it like a pro. Don’t joke about it or act defensively, just embrace it for what it is: a new perspective on how to improve. Be gracious and listen.
11. Vent privately. There is a phrase commonly heard in business: “Disagree without being disagreeable.” Plan your discussion ahead of time and focus on issues, not people. The best way to package your message is “positive, negative, positive.” Say something nice, introduce the negative issue that’s bugging you, and finish with a positive statement. Focus on behaviors, not individuals. Focusing on individuals is an attack. Attacks are toxic. Seek a private audience, explain what bothers you, and why. Do not be surprised if you are better at this than the boss. Bosses sometimes hide behind titular power rather than practiced skills with difficult conversations.
12. Never complain about a problem unless you can offer at least one positive solution.
13. If compelled to ask for a raise, build your business case first. Calculate your value proposition and write it down. Present your case in private and ask the boss to support your argument and champion your request. Each of us has a direct — plus an implied — value proposition to our company. If you are easy to replace, your value prop is less than a rainmaker who outproduces all others. Money deserves a business case. Write it down, study it, and present it.
14. Be prompt. Bosses love punctual people and are annoyed by those who don’t respect others enough to be where they are supposed to be when they are due to be there. There is only one reason for being late: You didn’t leave early enough. Eliminate tardiness from your personal brand.
15. Show you care. Show you care about your work, your team, your boss, and your organization. Bosses really appreciate those who are engaged and proud of what they do.

What NOT to do:

1. Don’t whine. To a boss, a whiner sounds like fingernails on chalkboards.
2. Do not complain about co-workers. Have an issue with someone? Work it out! The boss is not a referee, nor is he or she a babysitter. They have a business to run.
3. Never build your case for a raise around why you need it: you bought a new car, want a nice vacation, joined a club or organization, etc. Why you need more money is unrelated to your value proposition at work. Your value is what benefits your bring to the company minus what it costs the organization to have you.
4. Eliminate the words “Can’t because” from your personal brand. Live in a world of “How can we?” Bosses do not need subordinates telling them why things can’t get done. What they need are subordinates with ideas on how they can get done. This, to me, is a signature difference between the generations. Gen Y and Gen X employees are much more likely to innovative new methods than older workers who operate in a reflexive loop of behavioral predictability.
5. Never tell the boss you’re hung over or too tired. He or she will (correctly) assume you cannot manage your behaviors to an acceptable professional standard. Big black mark here …  so don’t do it.
6. Avoid the champion CYA (Cover Your Arse) of all time: “But I emailed you on that last (pick one: Friday, week, month, etc.).” Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. If they need it, provide it.
7. Do not blame people or things. For Pete’s sake, take ownership! Blame is a buck-passing excuse. It gains no one anything at all. The stature of the blamer is diminished and the problem remains unchanged. Do not blame. Take ownership and focus on the fix!
8. Do not say things behind someone’s back that you would not say to his or her face. This cheapens your stock and causes the listener to draw an inescapable conclusion: If you talk about others behind their backs, they’ll talk about you behind yours. Bosses detest this because character assassinations boil team chemistry. Do not do it, and reprimand others who do.
9. If you don’t know the answer say, “I don’t know.” Bosses don’t want to hear stories, excuses, or gobbledygook. They want answers. When asked a direct question, answer it. “I don’t know” is a fine answer, if it is the correct answer.
10. Don’t slack. I coach organizations that workforce talent pools predictably fall in a bell curve. High performers are always great, year in, year out. Mediocre performers are parked in the middle of the bell curve by comfort and choice or because it’s temporary as they work with determination to improve. Ambition propels effort, expectations, results, and responsibility. Bosses love that. Good ones will help a motivated talent move onward and upward. Slackers are different. Slackers are hard to care about.

The first responsibility of every employee is to earn his or her paycheck. The second responsibility is to help the boss succeed.

The worst job in business is front-line manager. A few are great at it, some are good, but most are mediocre or worse; here again the performance bell curve comes into play.

Rather than argue or whine about the boss, help the boss. Do that … and everyone benefits.

Office Etiquette, part 1 of 3

Dealing with Peers

Smooth business etiquette showcases style and maturity. A lack of etiquette exposes shortfalls in maturity, manners, and education. All of us with career aspirations should respect the importance of situational behavioral management.

This 3-part series shares ideas on what to do — and not do — when interfacing with others at work.

Part 1: Dealing with Peers. Today we will focus on interacting with associates. Future columns will offer suggestions for managing up and down.

Part 2: Interacting with your boss.

Part 3: Proper behavior when you are boss.

Dealing with associates involves the navigation of a blizzard of behavioral decisions. We can make a good impression — which increases our likeability and enhances our perception among the work group — or we can negatively impact others and alienate ourselves from social acceptability. Want to get ahead? Do what you should and not what you shouldn’t.

Here is a list of twelve “do’s” and a dozen “don’ts.”

Dos

1. Use common sense to blend in with your office environment. Every office has an unwritten code of normalcy. This code deals with things like the formality of greetings, expected grooming and dress, lunchtime rules of engagement, plus seeking and granting privacy.
2. Be polite. Shake hands with every person you meet for the first time. Use a firm, professional handshake. Accompany that shake with a smile. Repeating someone’s first name aloud is always smart to do, too. He or she will appreciate it and it will help you remember it.
3. Follow protocol. In most offices it’s fine to use first names when interacting with associates and subordinates. If for any reason titles are preferred, use title.
4. When introducing two people, address the highest ranking person first. Use the senior’s name and title during the introduction. Introduce the junior with his or her name and title as well.
5. Always remain fair and polite. Happy and supportive helps, too.
6. Balance work relationships outside the office carefully. Too much socializing with a specific clique can typecast you, as can sharing too much personal information.
7. Freely give deserved credit. I have never understood why some people find this so hard to do. All of us like to be recognized for good work. Formal recognition is always nice. Informal recognition is just as valuable. Compliments are free; for Pete’s sake use them!
8. Be supportive. Offer considerate, confidential help to those who may need it.
9. Be open and honest. Honest does not mean “direct.” Open honesty has two components: what you think and why. Tact and diplomacy are fine delivery vehicles.
   
10. Be courteous to guests. Stand when they arrive in your office and escort them out as far as appropriate when it is time for them to leave.
11. Office music, if you must listen to it, should be soft and appropriate for business. Do not listen to talk radio.
12. Commit random acts of kindness. Little things can mean a whole lot when someone is dealing with a stressful situation. When kindness is your brand, you are awful hard not to like.

Don’ts

1. Try not to judge nor talk negatively about others. Walls have ears. Great ones.
2. Avoid gossip, implied or expressed threats, arrogance, and sarcasm. A friend of mine runs a company yet insists on using backhanded compliments. “Not as bad as I expected” does not sound as motivating as “Good work. Thank you.”
3. Don’t be taken advantage of. I worked with a guy years ago who was a master at getting me to do some of his work. He used flattery, which I fell for. When his performance rose and mine fell, guess who got rewarded and who was chastised?
4. Don’t talk too much. Talkers get a bad reputation as time-wasters.
5. Don’t listen to talkers too much. Push back on time wasters. Politely say, “I’m sorry but I’ve got a lot that needs to get done,” and get back to work. It won’t take more than a couple times before the talker goes and bugs someone else. Talkers need an audience. It you aren’t it, they will seek others to play the role.
6. Don’t be snarky to those you don’t get along with. Do not avoid people you should interact with just because you may not share a friendship. Avoid temptation; do not grovel in negativity. When you interact, be formally polite.
7. When dealing with complaints or interactive friction, do not air it out in the open. Insist on privacy. If you can’t get that privacy in the office, go to a neutral site like a coffee shop.
8. Do not open a closed door without permission to enter. Be respectful. Knock and wait for permission. Behavior label the reason for your arrival: “Can I ask you a question?” or “Got five minutes to critique my presentation?”
9. If you go into someone’s office, do not sit down until asked to do so.
10. Don’t bring pets or kids to the office for extended periods unless you must. If this occurs, make sure to properly control them at all times. We all love our pets and kids, but the office is a place of business. Be extra sensitive to the needs of others.
11. Don’t eat or snack in front of others. It’s rude. If you must do it, make sure your guests are snacking too.
12. Don’t flirt in the office. Ever! Nothing plummets your stock faster than sloppy romance. The walls not only have ears, they have eyes. And a great big mouth that’s dying to spread gossip. Your reputation is easy to tarnish and hard to restore. Do not risk it.

These tips should help when interacting with associates.

Coming up in Part 2: Proper Etiquette Between You and Your Boss.

I first saw Tim Tebow play football in Tallahassee, Florida in November, 2006. He was a freshman backup quarterback. A huge roar came up from the Florida Gators’ section when he entered the game against rival Florida State on third down with short yardage to go.

He kept the ball, bulldozed ahead, got the first down, and the Gator fans went nuts. And so I was introduced to the Tebow experience.

My family was a long way from home that day, visiting Tallahassee from Denver. FSU was a potential college landing spot for our daughter Gracie, who was graduating high school. I thought it would be fun to be on campus for a really big football game. Little did we realize we were watching an adolescent adventure in the growth of the Tim Tebow legend.

We toured several colleges throughout Florida during that week, including Tebow’s. That stop, the University of Florida campus in Gainesville, didn’t go so well. A diesel shuttle bus, groaning through the center of campus, black smoke belched us. Minutes later a nearby door opened and two policemen ushered a kid in handcuffs out of the student union. We turned to watch; our smiling hostess ignored the distraction and continued to chirp how wonderful the campus is. A student walking past yelled out, “The food plan sucks!” I do not like that word but got the message.

Even The Alligator, the campus newspaper, didn’t help. Its bold headline story shared the good news that two suspects had been arrested and charged with multiple on-campus sexual assaults.

All campus visits are different but that one was so bad it was comical. Everything that could possibly go wrong seemed to; and yet through it all our perky campus ambassador never wavered. I guess she loved Tebow, too. She was still beaming like a searchlight when we finished our tour at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, where the Gators play football. She wanted us to do the Gator cheer — that chomp thing — but we were not allowed to walk onto the field because we might, in her words, “damage the grass.”

We did not walk on the field, nor did we do the chomp. Gracie went to FSU.

For her first three football seasons as a Seminole — her freshman, sophomore, and junior year — each November Tebow drilled the Noles. He was a one-man gang, lifting his teammates to a level of performance those kids had no idea they were good enough to play. He was a leader, a winner, and one heck of a college football player.

No one was happier to see him graduate and leave UF than FSU’s Seminole family. We couldn’t have beaten that guy in thirty years. We knew it, he knew it, and so did Gator nation.

It never dawned on me that Tebow would begin his pro football career in Denver. Josh McDaniels, a cocky and immature young assistant coach hired from the New England Patriots to be a head coach wunderkind, traded up and drafted Tebow late in the first round. McDaniels was still in the honeymoon phase of his job; we didn’t yet realize he couldn’t coach peewee football, much less the NFL, or that his people skills were like nunchucks in the hands of a nervous klutz learning martial arts.

With Tebow arrived Tebowmania. Full blown. While Gracie was in college, I saw it from a distance. But when Tim showed up at Bronco headquarters four miles away, the difference was like watching footage of the Japanese tsunami on YouTube versus nearly drowning in it, dog paddling for your life, trying to survive.

Nothing I have witnessed in three decades connected to professional sports comes anywhere close to Tebowmania. It is a cyclops: a towering, powerful, mythical beast. Perhaps it’s the times, or maybe the pervasive blanketing of instant electronic media. Tebowmania stokes emotional reactions caused by the oddest of things — one nice guy who simply does what he is asked to do — show up and be, well, Tebow.

It took less than two years in the NFL for Tebow to become an established national celebrity. He is a one-name athlete like Jordan, Pele, and Ali. He is pro football’s first one-name star, which raises the question, “How in the world can a backup quarterback struggling to prove himself in a league of different-than-him personalities and talents explode into a social phenomenon?”

Five reasons:

1. Uniqueness.
2. Race.
3. Religion.
4. America’s instant-celebrity culture.
5. Jealousy.

Uniqueness. New and different personalities or products pique the interest of the masses. Rehashes don’t, but novelty does. Examples include Lady Gaga, Crocs, and Linsansity (Asian basketballer Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks). Pet rocks, Baby on Board window triangles, Mark “The Bird” Fidrych, and Fernandomania. You get the picture.

Tebow is a big, strong, handsome, lefthanded bulldozer playing football’s most glamorous position differently than others. He knows how to win but not drop back or throw. His unique skill set and approach make him ideal for debate. He fits no previous mold.

Race. Tebow is about as white as a white guy can be. The NFL is 78 percent black. Twenty-one percent of players on active NFL rosters have arrest records. Coming out of college, Michael Vick was the closest predecessor to Tebow’s skill set. Park Vick’s dog problems; Vick had glowing expectations and skill-set admiration coming into the NFL but was never given a scholarship of celebrity worship.

Religion. Twenty-two years ago the third pick in the 1990 NBA draft was LSU shooting guard Chris Jackson. Barely six-feet tall and afflicted by Tourette syndrome, Jackson was a scorer. He could shoot it like a video game. He scored 48 points in his third game. Two games later he rained down 53. Jackson was the first freshman to be named SEC Player of the Year. He was also a first-team All-American.

Turning pro, Jackson was drafted by the Denver Nuggets and soon changed his name to Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. In 1996, then with the Sacramento Kings, he refused to stand for the National Anthem. He saw the ritual as a conflict with his deep-seated religious beliefs.

Three decades after Cassius Clay confused and angered white America by becoming Muhammad Ali (en route to boxing his way to the mountaintop of global athletics), Americans still did not understand Islam, nor care enough about its practitioners or principles to even ask why Abdul-Rauf was conflicted. Instead they condemned him. He was immediately suspended, then reinstated, and then flattened beneath a public relations dog-pile. One of the world’s greatest pure shooters was drummed out of the NBA in his late-twenties.

Mainstream America, of course, is not Muslim. We are a Christian nation. Prior to 1990, Christianity represented a very big majority of religious market share. A full 87 percent of American adults identified themselves as Christians of some degree.

Over the last two decades the country has experienced a major change. For many reasons millions began to disaffiliate themselves from Christianity (and other organized religions). Four years ago the Christian percentage had slid from 87 to 76 percent — a rather precipitous fall.  While updated census data is unavailable, the religion’s popularity is believed to still be declining.

Tebow, then, represents to Christians a hero through reaffirmation. It is this reaffirmation identification that creates debate among football fans. Religious conviction — its strength or lack thereof — varies widely by degree, from devout to casual. Everyone — from the guy who goes to church because he must to the over-the-top lunatic fringe — watches Tebow’s expressive religious nature and, depending upon his or her prescription lens of conviction, sees it clearly or blurry.

Globally the Tebow effect would not happen. A big deal here, it wouldn’t be on other continents. Around the world, Christianity has two billion followers — a 32 percent share — but that share is dropping. Islam has 1.6 billion followers (22 percent) and is growing. Hinduism is third (950 million, 13 percent), and “no affiliation” is fourth — 775 million people representing 12 percent (but dropping). Those three added together are 50 percent larger than Christianity.

Tebow’s personality and performance generate a lot of positive discussion in the U.S.A. because his religion still constitutes the majority view. Minority religion (such as Islam) are dismissed as radical. Ali and Abdul-Rauf proved this to us decades apart.

Would Tebow be as popular here in American if he were not Christian? I do not think so.

America’s instant-celebrity culture. Tebow is Madison Avenue’s dream: telegenic, polite, well-spoken, charismatic, ultra-positive, and always happy. He is also young — a citizen of Generation Y — and Gen Y is the first generation that has been raised in an organically wired world. Digital tools, communication options, networking — all are natural tools.

As a result Tebow benefits from being a poster child for his sporting generation. Timing is everything, right? Tim’s is the perfect storm of personality, platform, and technology. His personality drives the platform, which technology immediately distributes.

Jealousy. Tebow is a role-model. Millions want to see him fall because no one is perfect and once the veneer is stripped away, media-made role models tend to crumble. History says that once the media termites bore deep enough, any man’s facade can be infested with negative contradictions. Tiger Woods, of course, is the all-time champion but legions of others have fallen before. If you don’t believe me, ask Pete Rose.

Tebow is the true All-American boy, a seemingly fictional character like Chip Hilton. But the jealousy comes in because Tebow truly exists. Imperfect people aren’t like him and know it. They aren’t admired like him and know it. They’d like to be but aren’t. They resent his success and popularity. Ergo jealousy.

People with damaged character want Tebow to fail, not succeed, and will not cheer him on. They hope he succumbs to temptation and lapses in judgment, just as they have.

The NFL, Tebow’s place of employment, hypes to the masses a growing multi-billion dollar business built around a very imperfect work force. The average franchise is worth a billion dollars and the league generated over $8.5 billion last year alone. When that kind of money is at stake, integrity is for rent. A perfect man skipping safely through an imperfect neighborhood is bound to spout jealousy.

When a man has integrity in spades, as Tebow does, he stands out like a tall poppy. And it is the tall poppy that is cut down first.

After six years of watching this guy, first from a distance and then up close, he seems an easy guy to like and a hard guy not to root for. His arc of destiny seems poised to soar way beyond football.

Which way and to what degree? Who knows. Whatever he does will be fun to watch.

That’s my take on Tebowmania. I’m curious to hear yours.

The best way to avoid hot water is to steer clear of things that turn up the heat. Here are ten tips to help you swim comfortably through the ins and outs of the company aquarium.

1. Take the initiative. If you can do the right thing without being told, you lift a huge burden off your boss’s shoulders. Do that and your stock rises. If you do not do this, your stock will fall. Which is the smarter move?

2. Complete your assignments with diligence and quality. When the boss trusts you to do something, the last thing he or she needs to be wondering is whether it will be done correctly.

3. Do not pass (or dump) onto the boss a problem that he or she suddenly is expected to solve. Bosses have other things to do. They also have very long memories when it comes to harboring negative impressions of buck-passers.

4. Efficiently do more than what is asked or expected. This trait alone will separate you from nearly everyone you work with. Your job is to help your employer succeed; and along with that goes the responsibility to find and create productive enablers even when no task is assigned.

In the unglamorous but straightforward words of the McDonald’s burger chain: “If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean!”

It’s smart to be proactive and even smarter to be efficient. The late Austrian-born American management legend Peter Drucker nailed it when he said, “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” Efficiency drives straightlined success. Make efficiency a cornerstone of your personal brand.

5. Minimize multitasking. Studies show that multitasking output tends to produce lesser quality than linear output. Substandard quality creates management doubts.

If you are certain that you are the exception to the statistical norm, at least be aware of the “Dunning-Kruger Effect.” This principle revolves around the cognitive bias in which the (relatively) unskilled worker suffers from illusory superiority.

In other words, he or she mistakenly rates their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to the unskilled’s metacognitive inability to recognize his or her mistakes. Whether you call it “ego” or “blind spots,” being unable to see your shortcomings is a cognitive limitation.

Those who are competent may also overestimate themselves by falsely assuming that others share an equivalent understanding.

As Justin Kruger and David Dunning like to say, “The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”

Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

1. tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
2. fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
3. fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
4. recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.

Multitasking is growing in today’s workforce due to the increased velocity of thought and dexterity execution among Gen Xers and Gen Y employees. These workers have grown up seamlessly using electronic tools as part of daily life.  They have, in essence, created a world of “organic” comfort and competence. These young workers have been raised doing several things simultaneously; and because of that they bring those tendencies into the workplace.

Although younger workers are used to multitasking and work at greater task velocity than older Boomer workers, jumping back and forth — no one can do two things at once — what is gained in expediency is lost in accuracy and execution.

If your boss is a Boomer, minimize multitasking and maximize linear efficiency.

6. FSO: Figure Stuff Out! There are eight behavioral categories of workers: Compliants, Independents, Silents, Discouraged Workers, Snipers, Heroes, Attention Seekers, and Anxious Dependents. Anxious Dependents rely on the boss for every little thing, which consequently drives the boss nuts.

It’s your job — and it’s your responsibility to figure out how to get things done. If you constantly boomerang back to the boss for step-by-step direction, sooner or later the boss will start thinking, “Why are you even necessary?”

7. Ask relevant questions. Questions should seek information, clarify what you’ve heard, or test your understanding. If your question isn’t important and easily placed into one of those three buckets, then it is not an essential ask. If it’s not an essential ask, don’t ask — figure it out.

8. Have an opinion when you are asked for one. Sometimes bosses care about the opinions of their people. Other times they don’t. Know the difference. If asked for yours, share it. Do not shoot your trap off at every random opportunity.

9. Relentlessly learn. Unless you want to risk being trampled by others with greater motivation, you must continually strengthen your knowledge base and skill set.

Smart bosses know an important part of good leadership is to groom their replacements. The reason is simple: Having a plug-and-play promotable groomed and ready to go is the smartest way for them to get promoted.

If you have career ambitions, learn your boss’s job. Dress for it and role-model appropriate behaviors.

If your goal is not to manage but rather to remain a sole contributor, keep investing in yourself. After all, knowledge and skills are critical to job security.

10. Be enthusiastic. Attitude matters. Being positive, happy, and enthusiastic can spackle over a lot of faults. Positive energy creates likeability and likeable people tend to last longer than negative ones.

Remember: Being a boss is a tough job. Do your best to help yours be a good one.

At the end of December 2011, Facebook had 845 million monthly active users. A whopping eighty percent were from outside the U.S. and Canada. More than half this staggering population — 483 million people — are loyal, active, daily users. Add it together and Facebook permeates the world every second of every day.

To frame that, Facebook trails only China (1.3 billion) and India (1.2 billion) in global population. Since there are seven billion people in the entire world, Facebook’s current (and growing) market penetration is staggering.

There is little doubt that Facebook’s inexorable march to the unfathomable magic number — one billion global users — will arrive sooner than anyone imagined.

Available now in more than 70 languages, Facebook continues to expand linguistic options. Since languages open new gateways, millions (if not billions) of brand new users loom on the Facebook horizon.

A second reason for sustained mushrooming membership is that the tentacles of Facebook’s mobile apps are dramatically evolving and expanding.

By the close of 2011, more than 425 million monthly active users — basically half of Facebook’s active user base — were using Facebook mobile products. This saturation underscores a dramatic marketplace power play: mini-portability strengthening, not weakening, business.

With technology innovation rocketing to wireless, the wireless industry is inventing growth vehicles to bring to Facebook’s front door and service options to expand its reach.

But the Facebook phenomenon is also creating free-form, end-user experiences that vary widely in purpose and utility. At the core of the Facebook community concept is friendship, which begs the question, “What exactly is a friend?”

By dictionary definition a friend is “somebody emotionally close; an acquaintance, ally, advocate of cause, or patron.”

Facebook relationships, of course, stretch this description like a rubber band. While childhood and high school friends sometimes search and reunite, other times Facebook “friends” suddenly appear from cyberspace as strangers with agendas.

Add in requests from people we ate lunch with decades ago but haven’t seen since, friends of friends, people we meet in passing, and others we barely know but give the benefit of the doubt, and voila: an instant colony with busy tunnels of different motivations.

Facebook friendship’s mercury-like fluidity is part of the tool’s attraction because memories and possibilities stream in and out. This is instrumental to the Facebook drug, since those two things — memories and possibilities — pique our curiosity.

But friendship creation — the decision to issue, accept, or deny a friendship request — also comes with evolutionary decision-making: who do you like more, who do you like less?

Increasing numbers of Facebook users are opting to “unfriend” sources of negative emotional impact.

Yesterday you were my friend. Today you are not. You are are longer worthy. You and your opinions are banished to the cyberswamp of irrelevance. Rather than tell the person to his or her face, a user simply checks a box; and just like that the irritating other is banished from future digital intrusion.

While ending a digital friendship is invisibly easy, emotions run high when people find out they’ve been dropped. Unfriending is easy to monitor, since new apps notify users when they have been dropped from someone elseʼs Facebook list. Many do not like it; they interpret being dropped as an insult.

Unfriending is a growing phenomenon. It now happens so frequently that recently the Oxford Dictionary named unfriending its “Word of the Year.”

Trends, of course, beg questions. In this case, why do people unfriend someone?

In a word: politics.

A recent article in the Washington Post touched on this growing social exile behavior, citing data from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Pew studied real time trends on social networking sites and drew a clear-cut statistical conclusion: Users who unfriend someone do so primarily because they do not agree with the other person’s political postings. The evolving presidential election is expect to increase the frequency of these actions and reactions.

According to Pew Research, we unfriend because:

• Someone posts too often about political subjects. One in ten Facebook users have blocked or hidden someone for this reason. (disclosure note: I am one of the ten percent).

• Someone posts something so disagreeable others find it offensive. One out of eleven Facebook users have done this.

• Of personal arguments about politics. One in twelve cited this reason, although last time I checked it takes two to have an argument.

• A post that may or does offend my friends. Five percent of people have taken action due to this.

• I disagree with your political posts. Disagreement in and of itself is not nearly as big a deal as repetitive political beat-downs. One in twenty-five would pull the friendship trigger due to this; ten percent will do it for political repetition.

Although to a large extent political tolerance is built into the Facebook culture, nearly two-of-five surveyed were surprised to learn their friendsʼ political beliefs were different than what they had assumed. Differences are not friendship-fatal; but having those differences jammed down your throat certainly can be.

American cultural writer Lee Siegel keeps his finger on the pulse of trends and drew similar conclusions.

“The very act of unfriending acknowledges that the Facebook definition of friend is different from the traditional,” said Siegel, author of Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob.

“Unfriending reflects the instrumentalization and commodifying of friendship on Facebook. Why unfriend someone at all? After all, in the real world, you donʼt just ignore an obnoxious relative.”

As much as I wince at photos of other people’s food, there is no emotion in meat loaf. Then again, perhaps my vegan friends are mortally wounded.

Support your friends, do not annoy them. Avoid religion, avoid politics, and strive to be positive in the lives of others.

After all, none of us has too many friends. And all of us would benefit from having more.

Dual career couples outnumber sole income providers in current family structures. This is especially true in work corridors such as the West Coast, New York, Baltimore-Washington, Chicago, and Denver.

While the pursuit of wealth is good, dual careers restrict mobility. Roughly 600,000 annual corporate relocations involve dual-career couples, many of which are necessary uprootings triggered by succession planning and logistics.

With these busy two-career relationships come challenges beyond scheduling and day care. So grab a pen and sheet of paper and let’s diagram the three catalysts of chaos.

They are:

1. The individual dynamic.
2. The dual dynamic.
3. The principle of absorption.

The individual dynamic. Draw three interlocking circles the size of a quarter, one above the other two. The three circles should resemble a pyramid with interlocking rings, like a mini Olympic logo.

Label the top circle “Self.” Identify the two circles below as “Work” and “Family.”

These three slightly shingled circles, somewhat intertwined but largely independent, represent the personal dynamics of the life Person #1 is living due to having a job. These three circles represent our work, family, and personal “universes” that intertwine and encompass our lives.

Having a job creates overlap among all circles: between self and work, work and family, family and self. These overlaps are connections; and because of the job all three relationships connect by varying degrees.

In the center of the three circles, in the spot where all three overlaps meet, draw a dime-sized circle. Label it “Person.”

Although each category — Self, Work, and Family — has some degree of overlap with the other, each also features a greater degree of non-overlapping independence. Independence is represented by the free areas outside the overlap.

Independence of Self, for example, represents our “personal space.”

Independence of Work is what we do that is largely an internalized experience.

Independence of Family is when we are engaged in family events and interactions outside our personal needs. We are not self-absorbed; we are involved in immediate and extended familial matters that feature, engage, and celebrate others.

This diagram, as you’ve now drawn it, represents a working person’s life.

The dual dynamic. The second working partner also has three overlapping circles, plus one extra twist: a Familial overlap connects his or her interactions with those of their partner.

Apart from that slight “Family/Family” overlap connection, the second partner’s set of overlapping circles is independent of their partner’s. Other than the familial overlap, their experiences are uniquely theirs.

Absorption. Absorption is the degree to which a worker is engaged and consumed by his or her work. Workforces typically have four “buckets” of workers: disengaged, somewhat disengaged, somewhat engaged, and fully engaged. Fully engaged workers are totally absorbed. Disengaged workers are not.

Absorption, therefore, ties to engagement. Attitudinally and behaviorally, both workers in the dual career lifestyle will range somewhere between Highly Absorbed (if “fully engaged”) and Not Absorbed (if totally “disengaged”).

Highly Absorbed workers are eyeballs-deep in the corporate pursuit, to the extent they neglect other areas of life and relationship. Time, energy, and effort are invested so greatly they are out of skew with what’s needed to maintain other areas of life balance.

There are four potential absorption combinations for a working couple: both can be Highly Absorbed, both can be Not Absorbed, or there are two combinations where one is Highly Absorbed (career-minded) while the other is Not Absorbed (job-minded, not career-minded).

Here are the ups and downs of each:

Dual Career pitfalls. Both partners are lost in their work, investing overt amounts of time, emotion, stress, and energy. Everything complicates — from the simplest of daily logistics to the basic tasks like dining and cleaning — and these complications can cause major friction in the relationship. Also at risk is who wins and who loses in the case of corporate relocations. Uprooting dual-career couples is very difficult. Money versus Someone is a real relationship-tester. In Dual Career couples, money often wins with the couple being the casualty.

One Career, One Job. These relationships are most common. One partner’s work is central, the other is considered supplementary. These career constructions create far less relationship stress than Dual Career couples. These workers also are easier to promote and relocate.

Two Jobs, Little Investment. Both partners have lives way beyond what they do to earn money and typically these relationships protect lifestyle and quality of life over work style. Both partners are less angst-ridden and identify less with a “career” than others who are driven by it. Consequently these couples are more flexible than others, which is often beneficial to employers.

4 Keys to Success Managing Two Career Households

Four things help maintain harmony. They are:

1. Agree to your partner’s right (or need) to pursue his or her own career. Never suppress someone’s desire to grow.
2. Commit to greater flexibility. At home or in the office, respect the need to be flexible. Do not argue about it: two jobs require flexibility.
3. Streamline and simplify logistics. Zone your work, zone your life. Zoning is paying strict attention to circle routes and expediency when running errands and completing necessary chores. Plan, use lists, and execute. Avoid zigzags and backtracking. Shop when needed, not by routine. Most importantly: Never make a big deal out of a little thing.
4. Develop career competencies. By continually investing in themselves, smart workers consistently build equity and value in their employability. Strong couples support and encourage their partner’s personal and professional growth. Doomed ones suppress or prevent it.

Dual careers often offer financial perks but those perks will come at a price if we are not careful about managing our lives and relationships smartly.

Support each other, be good to each other, and above all respect each other.

Teams find and enjoy greater success than isolated workers. Grow the team. You’ll never regret it.

“I beg your pardon. I did not do it on purpose.”

– Marie Antoinette

Marie’s last words, uttered moments before her execution, were to cheer up her executioner. Petite though she was, she had stepped on his foot. To the end, Marie felt it important to be polite.

Inspired on this glorious Monday morning by a list from my good friend Anonymous, here are one dozen reminders about what’s important in order to keep feeling good:

1.  The value of time. Everyone’s waking hours are spent one of four ways: the time is wasted, spent, invested, or cherished. Invest and cherish as much as possible and minimize the other two.

2. The success of perseverance. If something is worth starting, it is usually worth finishing. The radiant warmth from a well-earned payoff is nuclear.

3. The pleasure of working. Work is good. Being lazy is bad. Next time we grumble about the work we’re doing, let’s pause and recalibrate. Gratitude trumps grumps.

4. The dignity of simplicity. The more gadgets we invent to simplify our lives, the more complicated they become. Simple is not “stupid,” it is linear. Great dignity comes from flawless execution, which is easiest to accomplish (and replicate) with simple, clever solutions.

5. The worth of character. A daily battle for us all: in the heart, in the mind, and in the mirror. If character is what we do when others are not looking, remember: “The right thing and the easy thing aren’t always the same thing.”

6. The influence of example. We are never too old to learn and never too young to teach. Years ago I was taught a very valuable life lesson from a pre-schooler. Good examples teach good things, as she did for me. Bad examples breed bad things, as we all have seen too often. Own this one, especially as it relates to choice. While we judge ourselves by our intentions, others judge us by our actions. Those actions — regardless of intention — are the examples we set for others.

7. The power of kindness. There is a lot of rudeness out there. Offset it. Commit a random act of kindness every single day, two or three if possible. Not only will you make others feel good, you will feel better while doing so.

8. The obligation of duty. Some stuff in life we need to do for good of the collective whole. Rather than whine about it, step forward and do it without drama or complaint. Life, work, community, and family are all collaborative efforts. With each goes this “sense of duty.” Embrace it.

9. The wisdom of economy. Quasi-billionaire Sir Paul McCartney likes to say, “Money means nothing unless you don’t have any.” Ring the bell for the cute Beatle, as that would be correct. The bigger message is to live within our means. Until we’re happy with who we are, we’ll never be happy with what we have. Happiness, therefore, is not dependent upon reaching a materialistic threshold of  toys and trappings. Because happiness comes from the inside-out, once we are there — happy with who we are — the rest, we realize, is merely stuff.

10. The virtue of patience. Technology is driving short-tempered reflexive wants with immediate expectations, both of which burn the fuse of patience. If patience is not a current strength, commit to improvement. There are times to act with a great sense of urgency, and other times to balance impetuosity with a prudent willingness to wait. It is hard to coach or teach without patience but it is easy to be rude or hurtful.

11. The improvement of talent. If you are good at something, get better. If you want to get good at something, begin. Growing talent requires attention to three specific things: knowledge, skills, and attributes. Knowledge is what you know about a topic relative to what you need to know. Skills is defined as the demonstrated ability to achieve the desired results over time. Attributes are the magic traits that make each of us unique. Want to improve an existing or new talent? Methodically invest in those “KSAs.”

12. The joy of originating. Invention, and the gratifying satisfaction that comes from it, is extraordinary. Origination does not mean inventing a gadget or contraption. Each of us is empowered to originate, be it a private moment in the life of another, a book club that does not currently exist, a fantasy sports league to keep in touch with friends and family, or an after-school program for kids who will be forever grateful. Sitting on our butts is easy; getting off them and creating new things is fulfilling. Given a choice, let’s opt for fulfillment.

All up and in, these twelve reminders help us live richer, happier lives.

In honor of baseball spring training season in Florida and Arizona, have a great week — and don’t get caught in a rundown.