SECTION IV LEAD-ACROSS PRINCIPLE 6

Lead-Across Principle #6

LET THE BEST IDEA WIN

Imagine that you’re getting ready to go into an important project meeting that will be attended by your boss and several people who are on the same level as you in the organization. Let’s say that you were picked from among your peers by your boss to lead the meeting, and you see this time as your chance to shine. You’ve done your homework and then some. You’ve spent countless hours thinking through the project, brainstorming, planning, and endeavoring to foresee any obstacles that could be ahead. Based on your preliminary discussions with your staff and your peers, you feel that your ideas are better than anything you’ve heard from anyone else.
So you begin the meeting with great confidence. But before long, the agenda is not proceeding the way you expected or planned. Your boss makes a comment and sends the flow of the discussion in an entirely new direction. At first you think, That’s okay. I can salvage this. My ideas will still work; I just need to steer everyone back around to them.
And then one of your peers launches in with an idea. You don’t think much of it, but everyone else seems to think it’s wonderful. A couple of other people in the room springboard off of that initial idea and begin to build on it. You can feel the energy in the room starting to build. Ideas are sparking. And everyone is clearly moving away from everything you’ve spent weeks planning—the idea that was your “baby.”
What do you do?
For most people in those circumstances, their natural instinct would be to fight for their ideas. After all, by then they would have made quite an investment in them, such as the following:

• The Intellectual Investment—it takes hours of thinking, planning, and problem solving spent to gather, create, and refine an idea.

• The Physical Investment—getting ready for an important meeting or presentation usually takes a lot of time, effort, and resources.

• The Emotional Investment—when people come up with something they see as a good idea, it’s hard to keep themselves from thinking about not only what the idea could do for the company but also what it could do for them and their careers.

By this time, they become pretty attached to their ideas, and it becomes difficult to let those ideas die, especially when someone else who didn’t do any work may come in and get all the credit.
IDEAS: THE LIFEBLOOD OF AN ORGANIZATION
If you desire to become a 360-Degree Leader, then you need to resist the temptation to fight for your idea when it’s not the best idea.

If you desire to become a 360-Degree Leader, then you need to resist the temptation to fight for your idea when it’s not the best idea. Why? Because good ideas are too important to the organization. Harvey Firestone, founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, said, “Capital isn’t so important in business. Experience isn’t so important. You can get both of these. What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn’t any limit to what you can do with your business and your life. They are any man’s greatest asset—ideas.”
Great organizations possess leaders throughout the organization who produce great ideas. That is how they become great. The progress they make and the innovations they create don’t come down from on high. Their creative sessions are not dominated by top-down leaders. Nor does every meeting become a kind of wrestling match to see who can dominate everyone else. People come together as teams, peers work together, and they make progress because they want the best idea to win.
“Capital isn’t so important in business. Experience isn’t so important. You can get both of these. What is important is ideas.”
—HARVEY FIRESTONE

Leaders in the middle of the organization who help to surface good ideas are creating what an organization needs most. They do that by producing synergy among their peers. And they will develop influence with their peers because when they are present, they make the whole team better.
WHAT LEADS TO THE BEST IDEAS?
To let the best idea win, you must first generate good ideas. And then you must work to make them even better. How do 360-Degree Leaders do that? How do they help the team find the best ideas? I believe 360-Degree Leaders follow this pattern:
1. 360-DEGREE LEADERS LISTEN TO ALL IDEAS
Finding good ideas begins with an open-minded willingness to listen to all ideas. Mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, “Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.” During the brainstorming process, shutting down any ideas might prevent you from discovering the good ones.
In Thinking for a Change, one of the eleven thinking skills I recommend people learn is shared thinking. It is faster than solo thinking, is more innovative, and has greater value. Most important, I believe, is the fact that great thinking comes when good thoughts are shared in a collaborative environment where people contribute to them, shape them, and take them to the next level. A 360-Degree Leader helps to create such an environment.
“Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.”
—ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD

2. 360-DEGREE LEADERS NEVER SETTLE FOR JUST ONE IDEA
I think many times leaders are too quick to settle on one idea and run with it. That is because leaders are so action oriented. They want to go. They want to make something happen. They want to take the hill! The problem is that they sometimes fight their way to the top of the hill only to find that it’s not the right one.
One idea is never enough. Many ideas make us stronger. I once heard an analyst say he thought that was the reason the communist bloc fell at the end of the twentieth century. Communism created a system based primarily on only one idea. If anyone tried to do things a different way, they were knocked down or shipped out.
In contrast, democracy is a system based on a multitude of ideas. If people want to try something different, they have the chance to float their idea and see what happens. If it catches on, it moves forward. If not, it is replaced by another idea. Because of that freedom, in democratic countries creativity is high, opportunities are unlimited, and the potential for growth is astounding. The democratic system can be messy, but that is also true of any endeavor that’s creative and collaborative.
The same kind of free-market mentality that drives the largest economy in the world can also drive organizations. If people are open to ideas and options, they can keep growing, innovating, and improving.
3. 360-DEGREE LEADERS LOOK IN UNUSUAL PLACES FOR IDEAS
Good leaders are attentive to ideas; they are always searching for them. And they cultivate that attentiveness and practice it as a regular discipline. As they read the newspaper, watch a movie, listen to their colleagues, or enjoy a leisure activity, they are always on the lookout for ideas or practices they can use to improve their work and their leadership.
If you desire to find good ideas, you have to search for them. Rarely does a good idea come looking for you.
4. 360-DEGREE LEADERS DON’T LET PERSONALITY OVERSHADOW PURPOSE
When someone you don’t like or respect suggests something, what is your first reaction? I bet it’s to dismiss it. You’ve heard the phrase, “Consider the source.” That’s not a bad thing to do, but if you’re not careful, you may very likely throw out the good with the bad.
Don’t let the personality of someone you work with cause you to lose sight of the greater purpose, which is to add value to the team and advance the organization. If that means listening to the ideas of people with whom you have no chemistry, or worse, a difficult history, so be it. Set aside your pride and listen. And in cases where you must reject the ideas of others, make sure you reject only the idea and not the person.
5. 360-DEGREE LEADERS PROTECT CREATIVE PEOPLE AND THEIR IDEAS
Ideas are such fragile things, especially when they first come to light. Advertising executive Charlie Brower said, “A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.”
If you desire the best idea to win, then become a champion of creative people and their contributions to your organization. When you discover peers who are creative, promote them, encourage them, and protect them. Pragmatic people often shoot down the ideas of creative people. 360-Degree Leaders who value creativity can help the creative people around them to thrive and keep generating ideas that benefit the organization.
6. 360-DEGREE LEADERS DON’T TAKE REJECTION PERSONALLY
When your ideas are not received well by others, do your best not to take it personally. When someone in a meeting does that, it can kill the creative process, because at that point the discussion is no longer about the ideas or helping the organization; it becomes about the person whose feelings are hurt. In those moments if you can stop competing and focus your energy on creating, you will open the way for the people around you to take their creativity to the next level.
When I give this advice, I’m not just offering up platitudes. I’ve had to adopt the right attitude when it comes to ideas, and I can give you an example of where I’ve had to set aside my own wants and desires and accept the creativity of others. If you don’t have any personal experience in the publishing world, then I’m guessing that you believe authors always select the titles of their books. While that may be the way it works for some authors, it has not been the case for me. I’ve written more than forty books, yet I think I’ve selected the titles for about a dozen of them. Following is a list of the last nine trade books I’ve written. Of those, I’ve selected the title of only one.
The 360-Degree Leader I wanted to call it Leading from the Middle of the Pack.
25 Ways to Win with People Les Parrott came up with the concept and title.
Winning with People Charlie Wetzel came up with that title.
Today Matters I wanted to call it The Secret of Your Success.
Thinking for a Change I wanted to call it Thinking Your Way to the Top.
The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player The team at Thomas Nelson picked that title.
The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork I got to pick the title of this book!
The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader The concept and title were developed in a joint marketing meeting.
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership The concept and title came from Victor Oliver, my editor.
A book is a pretty personal thing for an author. Why would I allow someone else to pick the title? Because I know my ideas aren’t always the best ideas. I often think they are, but when everyone in the room has a different opinion, it pays to listen. That’s why I’ve adopted the attitude that the company owner doesn’t need to win—the best idea does.
Mel Newhoff is executive vice president of Bozell Worldwide, a top advertising agency. In his industry, ideas are everything. Newhoff has some good advice about the big picture concerning ideas and how to approach your interaction with others in relation to them:
Be passionate about your work and have the integrity to stand up for your ideas. But also know when to compromise.
Without passion you will not be taken seriously. If you don’t defend your ideas, no one else will either. When principle is involved, don’t budge.
But there is another side to this also. There are very few real “absolutes” in life. Most matters involve taste or opinion, not principle. In these areas recognize that you can compromise. If you become someone who can never compromise, you will forfeit opportunities to those who can.
Being a 360-Degree Leader and leading across is not about getting your own way. It’s not about winning at all costs. It’s about winning respect and influence with your peers so that you can help the whole team win. Should you be passionate and determined, believing in yourself and your ability to contribute? Definitely. Should you hold on to your deeply held values and stand on principle when those are in jeopardy? Absolutely. But never forget that having a collaborative spirit helps the organization. When you think in terms of our idea instead of my idea or her idea, you’re probably on track to helping the team win. That should be your motivation, not just trying to win friends and influence people. But I think you’ll find that if you let the best idea win, you will win friends and influence people.