Shame is the fear of disconnection. 

In order to live happy, healthy, and productive lives we all need to experience authentic connection with those with whom we need to interact.

Shame resilience is the ability to practice authenticity when we experience shame, to move through the experience without sacrificing our values, and to come out on the other side of the shame experience with more courage, compassion, and connection than we had going into it (Brene Brown, Author and Internationally acclaimed shame researcher).

Empathy is considered to be the only antidote to shame. So, another way of looking at shame resilience is the ability to move from shame to empathy. But, for most people that is hard, because empathy requires being vulnerable and taking off our armor.

Brown ensures that when talking about shame, she emphasizes:

• Shame is universal and one of the most primitive human emotions that we experience. We all have it. The only people who don’t experience shame are those who lack the capacity for empathy and human connection.
• We’re all afraid to talk about shame. Just the word is uncomfortable.
• The less we talk about shame, the more control it has over our lives.

This is a very important, but deep subject, which unfortunately most people do not want to deal with. Not dealing with it won’t make it go away, but usually results in a higher incidence of unproductive behaviors, which take more time and effort to resolve than establishing a shame resilient culture in the first place.

The good news is that shame resilience is possible, teachable, and accessible for leaders and their teams. 

The following resources from Brene Brown provide insights into courage, shame, vulnerability, and empathy:

Dare to Lead

Braving The Wilderness

Rising Strong

Daring Greatly

The Gifts of Imperfection

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.

What is GRIT?

A word that seems not widely understood nor used in speech, but packs a punch for leaders and other achievers.

GRIT comes down to a combination of passion and perseverance [and resilience]. Pursuing a dream, goal, or vision with uncommon commitment and stamina.

GRIT is less about talent and more about the amount of effort put into pursuing something believed in while overcoming obstacles and setbacks.

GRIT has been found to be one of the best predictors of who will succeed and who won’t—not only in business, but in the military, and in our schools.

Angela Duckworth did some of the most widely acclaimed research and found that two traits seem to predict achievement: grit and self-control. 

Duckworth states that, Grit is the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals (Duckworth et al., 2007). Self-control is the voluntary regulation of impulses in the presence of momentarily gratifying temptations (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005; Duckworth & Steinberg, 2015). On average, individuals who are gritty are more self-controlled, but the correlation between these two traits is not perfect: Some individuals are paragons of grit but not self-control, and some exceptionally well-regulated individuals are not especially gritty (Duckworth & Gross, 2014).

A study done of 11,258 cadets at West Point over a 10 year period (Duckworth and Matthews) found that grit provided the best predictor of which cadets would succeed or fail at the challenging academy. Click to read more: Inc.

Deliberate practice, operationally defined as studying and memorizing words while alone, better predicted performance in the National Spelling Bee than being quizzed by others or reading for pleasure. 

Deliberate practice mediated the prediction of final performance by the personality trait of grit, suggesting that perseverance and passion for long-term goals enable spellers to persist with practice activities that are less intrinsically rewarding—but more effective—than other types of preparation. Click to read more: Why Grittier Competitors Triumph at the National Spelling Bee.

Duckworth also researched the role of talent and found that effort played as big a role in a person’s achievement as did their inherent talent. She explains it in her book, GRIT: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, as follows: 

Duckworth asserts, “Where talent counts once, effort counts twice. Consistency of effort, through time, is the key ingredient to success.

Some of the best [and considered to be the most talented] achieving athletes in the world, like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Tiger Woods are also known to some of the hardest working.

Put another way, the success formula is described, as follows:

Click to read the article: Grit…The Official Formula for Success.

What does this mean for leaders? I believe it suggests two things:

• To become a great leader, add effort and perseverance to passion and talent.
• To assemble a high performing team, look for people who display great GRIT.

You cannot change the talent you have been born with, but you can surely increase your effort!

Show more GRIT and watch what happens.

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.

Stride consists of long decisive steps in a specified direction. Effective execution consists of overcoming hurdles without breaking stride.

If you have followed my work you will recognize the following graphic, which depicts a simplistic journey. Rare does a journey not have hurdles that need to be overcome. Unfortunately, many people allow hurdles to become insurmountable obstacles, which not only impede their progress, but divert them from their destination, or cause them to stop.

Standing still does not negate the reality you are on a journey, it just represents a lack of progress. 

Great leaders learn to take whatever hurdles life throws at them while maintaining stride. They do that by:

• Developing a good stride before hurdles present themselves
• Recognizing the difference between real and perceived hurdles
• Not shying away from hurdles when they come, but seeing them as a challenge or opportunity to become even better
• Refining their stride with smaller hurdles as they come
• Continuing to run hard regardless of the hurdles

Your role as a leader is to invite others on a journey and develop stride so that you can effectively navigate the path as a team, regardless of the hurdles that present along the way, to get to your destination together.

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.

Brene Brown brings a great twist on kindness, in her book Dare To Lead, when she suggests that, “clear is kind and unclear is unkind.” In other words, as a leader it is not only our responsibility, but an act of kindness, to provide our team with clarity.

There’s no question providing clarity can be difficult at times. We may think we are making others feel good by sparing them details, but the truth is, more times than not, we are trying to make ourselves feel better by [wussing out] only giving half truths and/or feeding BS and in the process Brown suggests we are being unkind.

It can also require courage to clearly lay-out expectations with people up-front and deal with things head-on. Withholding clarity of expectations, yet holding people accountable to or blaming them for not achieving expected outcomes is unkind.

Talking behind peoples’ backs is unkind, while addressing people directly is kind.

Leadership requires courage to speak the truth and provide clarity regardless of how difficult it may be to do so. To withhold clarity is not only unkind, but causes us to withdraw from the very people we need to stay close with.

Great leaders are kind by courageously providing clarity.

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.

In life there are incidents and there are trends. 

Reputation is like a trend. If you are consistent you will earn an accurate reputation.

No individual is perfectly consistent, whether that behavior is positive or negative. We all behave in ways that don’t represent our true selves. We all suffer negative incidences, which should not define us provided there are enough positive incidences to establish a positive trend.

The good scientist knows it takes more than one data point to establish a trend. Further to good scientist takes all the data from their research, plots it on a graph, and then draws a line through the data points in order to determine the trend.

In the same manner great leaders look at all of the behaviors and decisions of others as data points to asses the ultimate value and contribution of an individual.

I am reminded of a story that took place at IBM many years ago under the leadership of founder Tom Watson, Sr. in which a young aspiring executive made a decision that cost the company $10 million. 

When Mr. Watson heard of the error he called the young executive to his office. Upon arriving at Mr. Watson’s office the young executive promptly apologized for the error and offered his resignation. To the young executive’s surprise Mr. Watson exclaimed, “Why would I want your resignation when we just spent $10 million educating you?”

Mr. Watson looked at the trend of this young executive’s career and would not allow that one incident to define the young man.

When things go wrong a great leader applies three principles:

1. There is no failure, just learning [resulting in an ever increasing trend]
2. Is there more than one incident from which to extrapolate a trend?
3. Is the current failure an incident, and opportunity for learning, or sign of a poor trend [inability to learn from one’s mistakes]?

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.

“It’s not what happens to you, it’s how you react to it that matters,” said Epictetus, one of Rome’s greatest philosophers some 2,000 years ago.

In the same way, Admiral James B. Stockdale—a student of ancient philosophers, including Epictetus—lived the wisdom as well. It is reported that Stockdale mused to himself as he parachuted from his mortally wounded plane [over Vietnam in 1965], “I’m leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.”

Admiral Stockdale was a prisoner of war for more than seven years, lived in a 3-foot-wide solitary confinement cell for four years, and was tortured more than 19 times, amongst other things. Yet he survived the horrific event by maintaining an uncommon perspective that has become known as the Stockdale Paradox. 

The paradox, which consists of simultaneously maintaining two seemingly contradictory ideas was leveraged by Stockdale to great advantage for the sake of himself and his men during their dire ordeal. 

On the one hand, Stockdale stated, “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.” In other words, Stockdale held the faith that he would not only survive, but would eventually thrive, despite obstacles and hardships.

On the other hand, Stockdale also talked about the necessity of “the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” 

According to Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t,” and others who interviewed Stockdale years after imprisonment, the Admiral insisted that those who didn’t make it out of those tragic, horrific prisoner-of-war camps were the optimists. More than holding a generally positive view, the optimists Stockdale referred to were the “blind” optimists—those who hoped that rescue was right around the corner, ignoring the harsh current realities of their circumstances. Such wishful thinking, according to Stockdale, not only did not serve survival, it actually short-circuited it.

Stockdale asserted that, “you must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

Stockdale talked about how the optimists suggested their stay at the Hanoi Hilton would be short-lived and that they would be rescued by Thanksgiving. When Thanksgiving came and went without a rescue they talked about being rescued by Christmas. But Christmas came and went as well. Then it was Easter, but it also came and went. The optimists hoped on the future and did not make the best of their current situation and eventually got so discouraged with disappointment that they lost all hope.

Instead those that not only survived, but emerged from the ordeal mentally stronger, were those that confronted the brutal reality with a positive perspective and made the best of their dire situation.

Jim Collins found evidence of the Stockdale Paradox amongst the executives of the Good-to-Great companies they studied.

So, the question all great leaders need to ask is what perspective am I going to embrace and hold on to during challenging times, let alone a crisis?

Remember, as a leader, others depend on you for their survival, development, and enriching.

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.

I like to define ferocious resolve as conviction combined with determined persistence.

FEROCIOUS RESOLVE = CONVICTION + DETERMINED PERSISTENCE

It is all about understanding what you really believe and aligning all of your actions around bringing that reality to life.

Without ferocious resolve many people give up during hardships, challenges, and obstacles before achieving their dreams.

Ferocious resolve is like a hunger that cannot be satisfied without achieving dreams, goals, and outcomes.

Jim Collins, author of Good To Great, discovered that the good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results. 

Collins wrote that, “It is very important to grasp that Level 5 leadership is not just about humility and modesty. It is equally about ferocious resolve, an almost stoic determination to do whatever needs to be done to make the company great.”

Which comes first, great leadership or ferocious resolve?

I believe it is ferocious resolve which transforms normal people into great leaders.

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.

During times of difficulty and danger we are all faced with a choice…to run towards the danger or away from it?

Leaders are typically motivated by one of two things: rewards or service. During tough times the former often shy away from difficulty and danger, opting for self-preservation, while the latter think of others first and run toward the danger.

Great leaders like first responders and other patriots are refined and defined during times of stress, uncertainty, difficulty, and danger. They are usually found to be the ones running towards a challenging situation with courage in spite of any fear or inferiority they may be feeling. 

Goldsmiths have known the secret to refining pure gold for a long time…simply expose it to a blazing fire and the impurities naturally separate from the gold. In a similar manner, difficult situations, like blazing fires, have a way of refining leaders.

When the danger passes the kind of leader we are will be evident to all. Our actions during times of danger will refine us and the impact of our future actions will be forever affected, either positively or negatively.

Leadership is a choice. How will you respond during difficult situations? Will you be frozen by fear or run away to protect yourself? Or, will you rise to the occasion and run towards the danger and be forever changed by it?

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.

Are you leading for the right reasons?

Why are you in, or aspiring to be in, a leadership position? What is your motive [motivation]? Do you know? Are you willing to acknowledge it?

Many people strive to become ‘leaders’ for the accolades and rewards that come with the position, but abdicate the responsibilities that also come with the position.

What makes for a great leader is somebody who is not only clear why they want to lead, but when their motive for leading is to enrich the lives of others before enriching their own.

Patrick Lencioni’s latest book, The Motive, helps current and aspiring leaders to wrestle with the question of why they want to lead. And once they are clear about their motive they can make better choices, including whether a leadership role is truly what is best for them and the people they lead.

Lencioni suggests that at the most fundamental level, there are only two motives that drive people to become leaders. First, they want to serve others, to do whatever is necessary to bring about something good for the people they lead. Second—the all-too-common but invalid one—is that they want to be rewarded. They see leadership as the prize for years of hard work and are drawn by its trappings: attention, status, power, and money.

Lencioni stresses that when leaders are motivated by personal reward, they will avoid the unpleasant situations and activities that leadership requires. Reward-centered leaders operate under the assumption that their role should be convenient and enjoyable—so they delegate, abdicate, or ignore situations that only the leader can address, leaving a painful and destructive vacuum.

On the other hand, responsibility-centered leaders believe that being a leader is a responsibility; therefore, the experience of leading should be difficult and challenging (though certainly not without elements of personal gratification and fulfillment).

In The Motive Lencioni suggests that the omission of one or all of the following responsibilities of leaders may be an indication of an improper motive for leading:

1. Developing the Leadership Team
2. Managing Subordinates (and Making Them Manage Theirs)
3. Having Difficult and Uncomfortable Conversations
4. Running Great Team Meetings
5. Communicating Constantly and Repetitively to Employees.

I encourage you to read The Motive before reading any other book on leadership. Until you are clear and resolved around your motive for leading it will be difficult, if not impossible, to become a great leader!

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.

Adapted from Courtney E. Ackerman’s article about flourishing on PositivePsychology.com

Flourishing is one of the most important and promising topics studied in positive psychology. Not only does it relate to many other positive concepts, it holds the key to improving the quality of life for people around the world. Discovering the pieces to the flourishing puzzle and learning how to effectively apply research findings to real life has tremendous implications for the way we live, love, and relate to one another.

Flourishing moves beyond the confines of simple happiness or well-being; it encompasses a wide range of positive psychological constructs and offers a more holistic perspective on what it means to feel well and happy.

Great leaders are intentional about providing the following nourishments to foster an environment in which their teams are better able to flourish:

• Expand and enhance social support systems. They help team members make new friends and deepen existing relationships within the team.
• Provide opportunities to experience the good in life. Plan fun, exciting, meaningful, and fulfilling events for your team. Set goals for reaching milestones and savor the experience when you achieve those milestones.
• Focus on having more fun! Schedule opportunities to simply enjoy life’s pleasures once in a while. Plan a trip, go out for a nice dinner, or book a fun activity for the team. Do whatever it takes to smile more, laugh more, and enjoy each other more.
• Enhance a sense of purpose and meaning in life. Agree on what you value most and commit to keeping these values in focus as you work, learn, love, and live. Do things that are fulfilling. Make sure you are living a life that is authentic to your values.

In addition, there are five general qualities that great leaders are diligent to develop in the work environment of their teams:

• The ability to direct and re-direct attention.

Just as we must carefully manage our time and our financial resources, we should also carefully manage our attention. Attention that is focused towards worrying, fretting, anger, revenge, and sadness is generally wasted attention; instead, focus your attention on analysis, imagination, investigation, compassion, and growth.

• The ability to shape time with intention and for impact.

We all have to deal with constraints and barriers due to lack of time, but we don’t have to throw our hands into the air and admit defeat; instead, we can consciously choose to apply our time wisely and avoid wasting it on activities that do not bring us joy or move us closer to our goals.

• The practice of constant improvement.

Those who flourish do so not because they are “natural flourishers” but because they are constantly finding ways to improve, develop, and grow. They do not settle for the status quo; they find out what they need to know and what they need to do to and work hard to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to get them where they want to go.

• The ability to communicate and listen to others.

Soliciting feedback from others is vital to just about every human endeavor, and flourishing is no different. It’s tough to evaluate ourselves, so we should consider ourselves lucky for every single person who is willing to provide honest information on ourselves and our efforts. Those who flourish do so, in part, because they are willing to listen to others, learn from them, and take advice.

• The commitment to positive experiences.

If we want to flourish, we must open ourselves up to experiencing all the good that life has to offer. We must commit to experiencing joy and delight, to finding meaning and purpose, and to offering ourselves what we need to remain healthy and happy. 

The great thing about creating a nourishing environment is that it not only allows the team to flourish, but the leader as well.

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.