Hi "Joe"

Thanks very much for sharing your experience. It's a familiar story.

The horse psychology exercise is a great example of highly questionable approaches to leadership development. Way too many trainers and consultants use approaches like you've described that may be entertaining, but are often pointless and impractical. Maybe yours was a case of horse-on-the-table!

The problem you've outlined with senior management not planning effectively and/or clearly communicating their plans is way too common. Stock analysts and organization effectiveness experts are paying more attention to the impact of senior leaders' pivotal role in organizational performance. For example, Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood have linked "leadership brand" with a company's results. Find out more about some of their work and new Leadership Brand book at www.rbl.net.

Recently a Breaking Through the Bull workshop participant blurted out, "shouldn't senior management be addressing the moose issues and providing the leadership you've been discussing." My answer was of course they should. But many don't.

So that leaves everyone else with three choices; 1. Live with the status quo (too often while criticizing, condemning, and complaining); 2. Quit; or 3. Provide strong leadership within your own team or area while practicing upward leadership. Way too many managers and professionals working under ineffective senior managers stay in their unhappy situations, don't strengthen their own leadership, and choose to become a victim of ineffective senior leaders. You can read my article on upward leadership or managing your boss at
http://www.clemmer.net/articles/Learn_How_to_Manage_Your_Manager.aspx.

Many of the characters and scenarios in my book Moose on the Table come from people and situations I've encountered in my work. Truth often is stranger than fiction.

Since you've decided to stay, you really need to work at "navigating above the line" and not riding the Bitter Bus to Pity City. You can get ideas for doing that from "Choosing to be a Navigator, Survivor, or Victim" in the April 2008 issue). Martin Seligman's research and practical tips around "authentic happiness" could be quite useful to you as well - especially his suggestions for increasing your focus on gratitude and your strengths. Go to www.authentichappiness.com to check it out.

Keep navigating and leading!

A print journalist asked me if there was any one incident that led me to write Moose on the Table: A Novel Approach to Communications @ Work. It was a great question that caused me to step back and reflect on how my experiences came together to weave the book's storyline and core themes.

Moose on the Table was a convergence of three streams. One was the way the metaphor was resonating with audiences and helping to open up difficult conversations by using a playful or humorous approach that created a bit of a safer environment to raise issues or problems.

Another stream was the number of managers I encountered who didn't seem to have much of a clue on how their aggressive or domineering style was limiting the effectiveness of people on their team. A particularly bad example of that happened during a workshop of about fifty supervisors and managers in a large company. I asked the General Manager of this group whether he'd like to do some "moose hunting" to identify and remove barriers to the organization working more effectively together. He agreed that this would be useful. After we went through an exercise to provide anonymous input and voting on the top issues to be addressed, the GM was very surprised by the very clear and strong feedback he got from participants - that his management group was not behaving as a team.

According to the feedback, management contradicted each other, waged petty turf battles, and reinforced departmental silos. At the end of the workshop exercise, his response to the group was fairly defensive and even a bit hostile.

I was getting a bad feeling.

I met with the GM a week later to review the day's learnings and put implementation plans in place. As we looked at the list of moose issues and other action ideas generated at the meeting he told me he'd already taken care of the number one ranked problem of his own team not working together effectively. The day after our large group meeting he told me he got them together and "read them the riot act." He reported that he told them they'd better start working together as a team or he'd replace them with managers who could! Things went downhill from there. We weren't able to do more work with that GM, as his style was to deny input that didn't agree with his perceptions and try to push people into seeing things his way. He was eventually moved aside (a clear sign of their avoidance culture is that he's still there today.)

A third stream that led to the book and its story line are the number of supervisors and middle managers who disempower themselves. The scenarios described throughout Moose on the Table (and especially in Chapters Two and Three) are based on numerous experiences I've had with supervisors or managers who agree that people in their organization should take more initiative, be more positive, and focus on what they can do to improve their situations. Mostly these are people who are frustrated with what they see as victim behavior by others in their teams/organizations. Often you'll hear these same folks bitterly complain about their own bosses, denounce the bureaucracy, and make cynical comments that they are powerless to do anything about their team or organization's major problems or issues. Just like the POETS Society - Pee-On-Everything-Til-Sunrise - did at Rocky and Bullwinkle's bar in Chapter Three.

I had a vivid example of this very scenario play out recently with a large energy company, as I had lunch with three supervisors who'd all but given up trying to deal with moose issues. Yet many of their peers in that same session were pressing forward with making changes and addressing issues in a much more positive way. The more effective supervisors recognized that they could focus on what they could control or influence, or focus on what was out of their control and bitterly complain about that. The difference between being a Navigator/Leader or a Victim is as simple as choosing to concentrate on what can be done as opposed to what can't.

While my major media tour may be over, the video dubs are still arriving in the mail. So if you haven't seen me on HelpTV, Breakfast Television or other local media in your area, I'm reposting some of the best of the best on my media page.

The Tatham Group is a Toronto-based company that teaches executives how to leverage a systematic method to obtain fast and measurable results for their company. The approach leverages knowledge already in the organization and uses employees as the engines of change. In May, Marianne Arnaudon, reviewed Moose on the Table. Here's part of her review:

"Although Michael J. Tatham, founder & CEO of The Tatham Group has been talking about Jim Clemmer's book Moose on the Table for months, it wasn't until I finally read it, cover-to-cover, that I could share his excitement about Clemmer's approach.

Moose on the Table is a fun and entertaining read. Not only does it provide a story to which many of us can relate, but it also highlights some of the most common mistakes managers make, and offers simple ways for managers to open up communication and improve the culture of their workplace. And who doesn't want to read a book about hunting down the moose that are slowing you down, in order to make your company better...eh?"

Throughout the course of a month I visit hundreds of great web sites and blogs. These resources are great ways to keep yourself on top of the latest thinking in leadership and management.

This new Site Seeing section highlights some of the interesting places I visited over the last month.

http://www.howtohaveabullyfreeworkplace.com/
Valerie Cade is a fellow author/speaker out of Calgary. She's found a great niche dealing with the very moose-on-the-table issue of bullying in the workplace. You can also visit her main site. http://www.performancecurve.com/

You can even sign-up for a weekly tip at:
http://www.howtohaveabullyfreeworkplace.com/weekly-tip.html


http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com/
Marshall Goldsmith is a world authority in helping successful leaders get even better - by achieving positive, lasting change in behavior: for themselves, their people and their teams. His site contains hundreds of free articles and a very interesting blog.

Improvement Points is a free service providing a key thought or quotation from one of my articles, provided three times per week, directly to your e-mail inbox. Each complimentary Improvement Point links directly into the full article on our web site that spawned it. If you'd like to read more about that day's Improvement Point, you can choose to click through to the short article for a quick five-minute read. This is your opportunity for a short pause that refreshes, is an inspirational vitamin, or a quick performance boost. You can circulate especially relevant or timely articles or Improvement Points to your team, Clients, or colleagues for further discussion or action.

Here are the three most popular Improvement Points we sent out in May:

I am always delighted to hear from readers of The Leader Letter with feedback, reflections, suggestions, or differing points of view. Nobody is ever identified in The Leader Letter without their permission.

I am also happy to explore customized, in-house adaptations of any of my material for your team or organization. Drop me an e-mail at [email protected].

Keep learning, laughing, loving, and leading -- living life just for the L of it!!

Jim