Book Review: The Dynamic Path

/0 Comments/in , /by

I recently read executive search consultant James M. Citrin’s The Dynamic Path, which promises “access [to] the secrets of champions to achieve greatness through mental toughness, inspired leadership, and personal transformation.”  In brief, the book examines the paths taken by numerous sports champions to find the common thread that allowed them to progress through the four stages of success that Citrin has identified: individual, champion, leader, and legacy.  He asks what the individuals who managed to leave a legacy learned, what skills they possessed, and how those lessons may be applied in a business setting.

Citrin’s first lesson is as follows:

Talent and hard work are a good start. . . To achieve greatness requires something more, something subtle.  It demands the acquisition and application common to the most superior performers in sports, business, or any other endeavor: mental toughness and the ability to stay calm and collected at the big moments.

Citrin holds that an individual’s development in the champion, leader, and legacy stages of the Dynamic Path require skills that peak at certain points on that path: natural talent/intelligence, work ethic/dedication, and mental toughness/problem solving peak at the Champion level, for those at the height of their individual achievements.  People leadership, which has developed along the way, peaks at the Leader stage, along with developing moral/spiritual leadership, so that the individual seeks collective achievement for collective results — group excellence.  Moral/spiritual leadership continues to grow until it reaches its culmination in the Legacy phase, in which collective achievement creates enduring results that will have long-lasting impact.

Examples of those who have attained Legacy status include Bill Bradley, who has achieved numerous sports victories as well as intellectual success as a Rhodes Scholar, completed by the long-lasting accomplishments of his service as Senator.  Citrin also highlights Arnold Palmer (the golfer who has parlayed his individual success into establishing health care complexes, creating the PGA Tour, and developing the Golf Channel), Arthur Ashe (the tennis player who became the first African American man to win the US Open and to take a Grand Slam among numerous other titles, then cofounded the USA National Junior Tennis League and worked to eliminate racism and poverty before his early death from HIV contracted during a blood transfusion), and Lance Armstrong (the cancer survivor and 7-time winner of the Tour de France who now seeks to eradicate cancer).  Citrin provides stories of many other individuals, well-known and less so, that illustrate the path he describes.

I enjoyed reading this book because it separates out what makes a good leader — one for a season — from what allows a good leader to create a legacy — one for an age.  The book is an easy read, and it’s interesting (for this non-sports fan, anyway) to learn a bit more about what some sports figures have accomplished following their sports careers.  The book is an interesting, sometimes slightly jarring, mixture of personal sketches and attempts to teach how the sports lessons can translate to personal lessons.  Citrin inserts his own perspective into the book throughout, which at times read more as a journal than as a teaching book.

One conclusion that remains with me is that the rise of team sports for children, and especially for girls, is likely to be a significant benefit to rising generations of would-be leaders.  Citrin has made an excellent case for the lessons that sports can convey, and it’s a good reminder that all of those hours of soccer practice may just pay off in later years, though it would overstate the case to say that The Dynamic Path will provide a roadmap for transforming those lessons into business leadership skills.

What would your clients say?

/1 Comment/in , , /by

I’m out of town this week (as I have been most of the last month) and decided this morning to order room service for breakfast.  I ordered scrambled eggs and rye toast.  What I got was scrambled eggs (but no salt and pepper) and wheat toast.  Mildly annoying, right?  I noticed the error, of course, and I’ll remember if I order room service at this hotel again.  I may even remember if in the future I’m deciding whether to stay here again — though probably not the incident, only the lingering feeling that things weren’t quite right here.  But it’s just mildly annoying; I didn’t call room service to complain, I didn’t ask them to fix the error, and I’m certainly not going to pack my bag and check out because of this.  Wondering what this has to do with your clients?

Most of us assume that our clients are satisfied with our service unless they complain.  But, as my story indicates, that may not be the case.  A small error can often be corrected without much effort, but uncorrected it can grow into a negative perception (can’t these people do anything right?) that can endanger the relationship — and perhaps the lawyer would have no idea until matters had gone too far.

The simple fix?  Ask your clients how things are going.  Are they pleased?  Is there anything they’d like to run differently?  Perhaps they do/don’t want to be copied on correspondence, internal memoranda, etc.  Perhaps they do/don’t want to be notified by telephone when something of minor importance happens.  Perhaps they do/don’t want to meet with you face-to-face on a regular basis just to review what’s happening.  Guessing is not helpful, but asking is.  And consider how to pose your questions to encourage honest response.  In other words, “What could we do to work with you more effectively?” might lead to more useful responses than, “Are you happy with the work we’re doing?”�

Bad clients and bad news

/0 Comments/in , , /by

There is such a thing as a bad client…  Tom Kane’s Legal Marketing Blog inquires, Are Bad Clients Keeping You Up At Night?  If you have bad clients (or wonder whether you do), the answer is surely yes.  Tom draws from a post on the Bootstrapper blog to help identify bad client characteristics and to suggest how to fire them.  (And if you conclude that a client isn’t a bad client, but an unrealistic one instead, consider these ideas for managing the representation to decrease the chances that your unrealistic client will morph into a truly bad client.)

What would Churchill say?  Maybe instead of dealing with a bad client, it’s delivering bad news that’s keeping you up.  An article, by Arthur D. Burger of Jackson & Campbell, uses Churchill’s 1940 speech reporting that the Germans had defeated the French army to illustrate how lawyers might responsibly and effectively communicate bad news.  In short: be frank about the news (especially if the news is the result of an error the lawyer made) and offer a plan that addresses the next steps.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan…  This isn’t a political blog by any stretch of the imagination, but this story can’t go unnoticed.

Tuesday Shorts 11/6/07

/0 Comments/in , /by

Requesting an extension because of school vacation  Somehow, I missed this WSJ Law Blog post in early October, which reported that Weil Gotshal requested a delay in hearing dates in a bankruptcy case (set for December 18, 19, 20, and 27) on the grounds that “These dates are smack in the middle of our children’s winter breaks, which are sometimes the only times to be with our children.”  The response filed by Kirkland & Ellis called the reason “woefully inadequate” and noted that “The personal needs of a handful of professionals, unfortunately, must be balanced against the thousands of employees, creditors and other parties in interest . . . whose livelihoods and/or recoveries are dependent on (Calpine’s) successful emergence from Chapter 11.”  (The WSJ Law Blog post includes links to the actual pleadings.)  The WSJ blog The Juggle offered this commentary, which quotes Sylvia Ann Hewlett of the Center for Work-Life Policy as finding the request a “promising step” toward promoting work/life balance.

Confessions of a CEO  Fortune Magazine has published a fascinating article about Dominic Orr, a high-tech CEO whose workaholic habits nearly ruined his life. Events such as his decision to travel to a sales conference the day after his mother’s death, causing her funeral to be delayed by three days were the norm until he discovered that his goal was “to die a complete man.” Working with a therapist, now an executive coach, revealed that Orr’s life was missing hikari, which is the Japanese term for light and which Orr views as “speed to enlightenment,” and he resolved never to work again unless he could combine work with hikari.  He was able to do so, and the story of how he did is truly remarkable.

Office Politics: excluded from the group

/2 Comments/in , , /by

One of the enduring challenges for any professional is navigating office politics.  Regardless of the profession, office relationships can be extremely challenging and rewarding — sometimes even at the same time.  Challenges can come from a variety of sources: simple misunderstandings, failure to appreciate different skills and approaches, resentment about coworker’s work habits, etc.  Office conflict is a fairly common topic in a coaching engagement, and the good news is that it’s generally possible to resolve or at least minimize it.

Through the blogosphere, I was introduced to Franke James (pictured here), inventor of The Office-Politics® Game.  Franke has put together a marvelous board of advisers (including experts in the areas of executive coaching, leadership development, dispute resolution, employment law, PR and ethics) to answer letters.  Bob Sutton recently posted an Office-Politics.com letter and provided input on one of Franke’s responses.  I was delighted when Franke invited me to serve as a guest adviser and sent me a letter to review.  The letter began like this:

I am an attorney — specifically, a prosecutor. My problem is that there is a dominant clique in my workplace, and I have been regularly excluded (implicitly and expressly) from social events. I feel as though I’m in high school again, and my co-workers have formed an exclusionary clique comprised of only the “cool” kids.

It all began when another co-worker attorney — a temporary employee who I’ll call “Tad” — began making comments behind my back.

You can read the rest of the letter, in which this prosecutor describes how he and others in the office (all of whom are about 10-15 years older than the bulk of lawyers in the office) are excluded from group outings and my response here.  And don’t miss Franke’s response, which takes a different approach and adds some marvelous ideas.�