OUTSIDE THE VELVET CAGE

Looking forward to my own Death

Don't take this the wrong way. I love my life, and intend to stick around for a ton more. In fact, when I say, "I'm looking forward to my own death," I mean it in a good way. 

One of the many good thoughts that fuels the effort of a day for me is that one good day, it will finally be over. When I get weary, or bogged down, I think of my own death, smile, and I take another step toward the day I can finally go home. 

Today was one of those days. Not for any particular reason. Perhaps for many particular reasons. I awoke to my first thought which was, "What am I going to use to motivate getting up and going through another day?" Then I thought, "If I get up and go through the day, I'll be able to come back here and continue this sleeping." That made me happy, and so I got up.

And so I thought. Life is like this. At times. We fear death, or resist it, just like a child who doesn't want to go to bed. But today, when I felt weary and burdened, and each step seemed a bit heavier than the one before, and a minor hesitation stalled me into paralysis, I thought, "this isn't forever, and one day I'll die." A smile crept up the corners of my determined lips, and I took another step.

"And when I say I search for you, I mean I search for peace. I search for hope, I search for love, and one day for release." –– Mason Jennings

Why MEN should work harder to help WOMEN break the glass ceiling!

Men, it's time to get selfish and fight the good fight to help women break the glass ceiling. That's right, think selfishly and do the selfless thing.

"Hmmm. First, I don't get what your saying, Dean, and second... well, I guess I just don't get what you're saying."

Even now... No! Especially now, when jobs are scarce, and times are tough, it's important to the real future of men to do our part and dull the edge of the good-old-boy's network, the frat boy insider channels, and the Bobby Jones swinging, golf-course business deals that make it "who you know" and not "what you are" that makes the world go around.

For years, I've been devoted to helping everyone I meet, men or women, become more comfortable in their own skin, and bring more to the daily performance of whatever work they do, on whatever stage their "life is a stage" happens to be. And throughout this time, I've had a keen eye on building the professional woman, who represents about 65% of the clientele of SagePresence. 

The initial reason for that is that women really click with our training because it's emotion-based. And I have another motive, in addition to the personal charge I get helping people elevate their potential. And that is, I think it's life or death for men to embrace helping women. 

We now live in an America that has its first black president, which is only important in how it proves that race finally isn't important. I know racial equality is a process (not an outcome), but I believe Obama got elected because America wanted to elect him. And now we finally know that our country really had been evolving before this moment (beyond just talking about it). This is just the proof. 

Now we have to get there with the professional woman -- another process that's also not an outcome. The problem I see is that men don't understand why it's so important to them to help women really get there. And I want to tell you why it is so critical. And I'm going to make it very simple.

There are as many different kinds of men as their are types of trees in a forest. And being out there, throughout America, in different industries, at different strata, I see that there are many men, with diverse offerings, unique value, and not all of them have their voice in the community, industry, or global universe. 

Like women, who work so hard, offer so much value, but typically can't ever quite find the sliding glass door in the immovable glass ceiling, many men can't rise up either, and for similar reasons. There are many men who also push their faces against the glass as they try to climb the ladder. 

And if they didn't fraternize their way in during college, or on the golf course, or in any of a hundred versions of those tired good-old-boy examples, they won't see the top. Their ship won't come in. Their dog won't hunt. Their job won't go career!

I know a man who I've therapized (sorry, I think making up words is fun) over many a lunch meeting, who did make it to a partner level in a firm, but still feels himself an outcast of sorts. He was more the long-distance runner type. He liked the solitude of his rollerblades where others preferred the golf-course. Getting there was really painful and lonely for him. And it's not the sport. It's the "in crowd" mentality that keeps some people "out."  

More. I know a company where the Monday-Night football gatherings are the real place where the business gets done and the alliances are built. And I know a man who's just not into football, and feels at a huge disadvantage in getting to leadership. You'd think he could just suck it up and watch the damn game. But that's not really what it's about. 

If you like the game, and you grew up (if you can call high-school and college growing up) hanging with the guys doing the football night thang, then you can be one of the guys and have the kind of fun and achieve the loose-osity that makes the relationships genuine. This man, an executive, couldn't feel authentic in the crowd that was so unlike him, and even when he tried, the relationships didn't take.

Then there's me. Dean. I've never fit in anywhere (yet oddly, I fit in anywhere, and don't feel like I resemble anything around me). I've done pretty well for myself, but even building (and selling) an interactive media company, making a feature film that got distributed, and starting a professional speaking career, I don't find myself "in" any of the elite networks that represent much of the power that makes things go! 

And the associates I know, who do business on the golf course, have a Lambda Chi Alpha or a Greeks rolodex, or otherwise manage to elite-ize, get access to the power.

Clarity: I don't really literally mean anything about golfing, belonging to a fraternity, or being in good with the people with power. I'm using this sort of thing to exemplify the way clicks form around some certain kind of homogeny, to keep everything different out.

I care so much because I see cut-and-dry cases where a company, populated by men and women, different races and different religions, is run by grey-haired white men. In those cases, it's obvious. Yet I don't think a white business man with grey hair should not be able to get high up in a company. I think that it's just one sign that a certain type of person became the kind of person that represents a business click, and even when they try, that group has a heck of a time letting anyone else in.

And, I'm saying that it's not a male/female thing. It's a "club" thing. There are many men who don't ever rise up into that power circle, who want to! Like the Indian man who's been in a company for a very long time, and is not even on the list of those getting fast-tracked for partnership. He's not too different from the women, who are leaving in droves from professional life, because "where's the payoff?"

So here's where we get to the point... the point that men need to get involved in the professional woman getting her voice, her footing, and her payoff. 

If a man, like one of the men I mentioned, who has a ton to offer, but just doesn't meet the specifications of whatever good-old-whichever group that controls the power... finally makes it in, and rises to power despite his lack of good-old-boy-ness, how would you even know? The moment he gets there, he appears to be one of them, and now has access to them. 

The only barometer of true integration that we could easily see, an integration that represents a dis-integration of the walls of homogeny, is women breaking the glass ceiling. 

Just like Obama, a visible indicator that our country has progressed in disintegrating the racial barriers, when the glass ceiling that holds back women is finally and visibly eroded, then men... the men who don't currently fit the standard mold of the old-school business in-crowd, can finally know that their time has come as well.

So I hope you'll join me, for the greater good of more minds, more variety, more diverse offerings, different skills and value, and get behind our most visible sign of the changing times, and become part of the force that helps professional women build themselves solidly throughout our companies. By doing that, we will help ourselves too, and when they are truly there, many more of us men will also be able to rise, and no longer be held back by the glass ceiling we didn't even realize was holding us back as well.

CHARISMA: We Can Drive It Home, With One Headlight

 

We all know charisma when we see it, but what is it? Some try to fake it... you know, act cool, tough, bad, suave, etc. But what really is charisma? You don't know, but you know it when you see it.

I find that annoying, so I set out to define it... just yesterday, when a client asked me how to build it. He was afraid he didn't have charisma, and he knew he needed it. 

I felt like Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade as I stepped off the cliff and trusted that somehow, the answer would be there. "You can't get there with one headlight," I said.

Pause: I have this weird knack for getting a flash of insight (like "you're driving with only one headlight") and trusting that the analogy is going to solve the problem... and it usually does.

Secretly, we'd been video-taping this client, and as we had talked with him, he clearly had charisma at certain points. Those points were points where he showed passion. So what is passion?

We watched the tape over and over, and whenever the client showed passion, he had charisma. And while it was simple enough (and true enough) to say: "Charisma = feeling your passion," we noticed something else. Most of the time that he had the truly charisma state, he had two emotions visible at the same time. He looked a little happy, and he looked a little mad... at the same time. That's when the glimmer appeared. The twinkle. He was like a calm "sports coach." Happy, with a touch of mad.

"How do I get out of this darkness?" my client asked. "Well," I said. Drive with both headlights on. One headlight is happy, and the other is mad. Happy and mad. If you feel those two emotions, at the same time, you glimmer with passion. Happy gives us the experience of opportunity,  and the mad gives us the drive.

Try it. Pick a sentence. Say it while feeling happy. Then take the same sentence and say it while feeling mad. Then say it a third time and feel them both at the same time... like a sports coach psyching up a team. Driven, committed, and feeling the opportunity. 

Charisma. You can't get there with one headlight. You need them both. One is happy and the other is mad. Feel those feelings as you pitch an idea, introduce yourself, or walk silently through a networking meeting, and you'll have charisma and people will react to you as if you're somebody.

Dear Dean: How do I stay POSITIVE as a leader with a person who always wants fixate on the NEGATIVE – Seattle

After an emotional intelligence presentation to the United Way in Seattle, a woman who leads a team, voiced her concern that she knows she tries to keep a positive attitude as a leader, holding to her belief in "glass-half-full-ness," but there is someone on her team who as a "negative addict" who drags down the mood, the energy, the tone, and the effectiveness of every discussion. This person always complains, and turns all positives back into problems.

Seattle asks, "what should I do? How can I leverage emotional intelligence to keep forward going forward?"

My answer is simple: This is a person who's sort of trapped in the NOT SO HAPPY BEGINNING of their own story. You, leader, are someone who wants to take a negative beginning and spot the opportunity to move to a better place... the HAPPY ENDING. But John (we'll call him) wants to stay in the negative. Lots of people are like this. That's okay.

First, be glad you're not one of those people. It's bleak there. But there is a way to work with John, using basic SagePresence and emotional intelligence. Here's how: Use a simple Appreciate, Empathize, Voice Their Perspective, Appreciate, Advance. (What would that be? AEVPAA – "Eve-Pah?)

The reason this is important is that you need to recognize the negative starting situation he's stuck at. He needs to know you get it, and you'll only show him that by feeling it along with him. You want to try to "elevate" him by pointing out the positive, but he's not ready for that until he gets you to the negative space where he is. It's like the development hierarchy, where you have to meet one need before you can go onto the next. If you can meet him where he is, he might become ready to move ahead.

Now don't be afraid. You can walk right into the dark, and then just walk right out again. Don't be afraid to go where he is. It's not like he's dragging you down from your positive attitude – because you're not going to stay there. It's just for a moment. 

Here's the process: 

1) Appreciate him, for the feelings he has. Don't feel them too yet. Don't feel the opposite. Just appreciate a man who's frustrated and angry. Appreciate him for the way he really is, and appreciate him for voicing it. Make direct eye-contact as you appreciate him. Appreciation is important whenever you enter someone's situation from your own. If someone's frustrated or angry, appreciation is critical because it demonstrates care and respect, so they know your frustration is not directed at them.

2) Empathize with him, and let's take a moment to define empathy. My definition of empathy is "opening up yourself to feel what the other person is feeling, at the same time and to a similar degree, as they are." Empathy can also be a intellectual thing, such as "I recognize your sadness, and I would feel sad too if I were you." But I'm not saying that. I'm saying, "You're angry, and I'm angry right along with you." Also important, understand that I'm not saying you voice that (although you may). I'm instructing you to FEEL ANGRY right alongside this person. By feeling angry with John, you will inherently allow him to feel empathized with. 

3) Once you're feeling what he's feeling (you'll probably feel it just a little less than he does), then Voice His Perspective. Clearly, and from the feeling, state his exact concern as closely as possible to the way he would. Make sure, in the head/heart way, you capture his negative situation.

4) Appreciate, again, drifting out of feeling what he's feeling, and then back into appreciation. Appreciation is needed whenever you're leaving someone's situation back to your own. It shows that you're not abandoning them, but that you still respect them and care. 

5) You may now Advance, by returning to where you were before – positive. You can return to feeling the hope and excitement for the fix, and share it as a possibility that you're excited about. You should feel it and speak to it (head/heart). For example: "Given the very real frustrations you've pointed out, I'm excited to describe the positive situation I see, that we can move toward so nobody has to feel the way you do right now. Here's what really excites me about this challenge... " This is your vision for the Happy Ending.

In review, the AEVAA process is: Enter his frustrated starting point on appreciation, then allow yourself to feel what he feels. Then express his position while feeling his feeling. Then appreciate him again as you shift over to your own perspective (positive), and begin feeling the optimism and hope you want to feel. Then describe what you see, hopping from where he is now. 

This creates a Head-Heart Story that starts in the negative (with appreciation and warmth), and builds to a positive situation. And it acknowledges John's reality while giving him recognition and empathy. It's the best way to lead him to the place you are.

Over time, if you repeat this process, John will begin to feel recognized and heard, so he can release his desire to chain you to the not so happy beginning, and join you in moving toward your happier ending.

Best to Seattle!

Dean

Christmas Wishes for the Holiday

It's only the 21st, but tonight was our family Christmas. It's kind of a family holiday as opposed to a religious one, but we're religious about family, if that makes any sense. 

Today was a wonderful Christmas. It was ghost white and dead cold. We have a ton of snow, very few people are out on the roads and it was below zero with a -40º windchill. Yikes! 

Which gets me to my own personal Christmas wish, which was quite small, and huge at the same time. See, I live downtown in a city condo. But I miss the bird-feeder full of birds, as I'm used to from my previous woodsy home on the river, and the home I grew up in. 

But my family decided to give it a try –– a bird feeder that is -- even though the only thing we see is pigeons. We put it up in October, and it sat there untouched for a couple of months, but then one day, shortly after the first snowfall, we found the only 2 non-pigeons in St. Paul. It was a pair of house-finches (I think), which we saw sitting in the trees just off our stoop. 

For a while, they weren't eating the seeds, or at least we weren't sure. Then suddenly there were little piles of cracked seed casings on the ground. It was a couple of weeks before we actually saw them at the feeder, but it's become a regular spectacle for the family to watch our two birds, who flutter around the trees outside our window every day. Always two, a female and a male, and never more.

As I'd said, last night was cold. Nearly fifty below with windchill. You could feel it in the walls. Cold. In the morning, today, I found myself wondering where the little birds went to stay warm on a night like that. I looked out the window, and there was only one bird. Just the female. At first I didn't think much of it, but by noon I worried if the male had possibly succumbed to the cold. The thought weighed heavy on me. 

Today was our family Christmas. There was great food, and presents by our fire. But I couldn't get the little bird out of my head. I kept glancing out the window, to see only the one bird puffed out for warmth, sitting on the branch where they've always been together. 

I thought about how happy I was with my wonderful family. How grateful I was for my older son's health (he comes with a rare genetic condition that brings many questions and worries, so I have much to be grateful about with that one). How thrilled I am with my own health (having had a cancer scare this summer which turned out to be okay). How filled with joy between my two kids and loving wife,all of us healthy, not to mention the freedom I enjoy owning my own film business and professional speaking business which allow me to control my own life, more or less, as I live loudly outside the velvet cage I used to live within.

But this year, my only Christmas wish seemed to be that the male bird return and that my two little finches would sit again together on their branch by our feeder. It's all I wanted. 

I wished... or prayed... or manifested... whatever you prefer. I imagined looking out and seeing the two together, cracking seeds against the cherry wood. I felt a grateful feeling in my heart and I tried to trust that it would come to pass.

Still, I checked every 5 minutes for the next 3 hours. Always the one. Never the two. 

My wife needed to run to the store, so I drove her. She was making a mexican dinner, so I drove her down to Concord and Robert, where a little Mexican village hubs at a very local market called El Burrito Mercado, where very little English is spoken, and Kim and I would likely be the only non-hispanic people there. I wanted to surprise Kim with her favorite desert, so I bought it and got in line while Kim was still busy in the isles. 

As I stood in line, this beautiful little girl, maybe 7 years old or so, started speaking to me in Spanish and I had no idea what she was saying. I say beautiful not in the "heartbreaker" sort of way when you see some young child who's destined to be a future knockout. I mean it in a different way, that this girl was so full of pure joy that she was possibly the most beautiful thing I think I've ever seen. It wouldn't have mattered who it was, what age or what gender. If only more people could embody the kind of innocent joy this girl showed. If only the world could all be that beautiful, in specifically that way! 

I noticed that the little hispanic girl was holding the very same cake that I had, and I figured out what she was talking about. "Tres Leche," I said with a smile... one of the five or so things I can say in Spanish. "Si! Tres Leche," she said, and we laughed.

We exchanged a few words, and neither of us understood, yet both of us completely understood. She was soon joined with her mom who hugged her with as much joy as the little girl showed. A loving family. No surprise. As I paid for my cake, I spotted a small vase of flowers and bought a rose along with my cake and gave it to the little girl (with permission from her mom, which I acquired non-verbally). 

"Felice Navidad!" I said kindly as I handed the little girl the flower. She took the flower with the biggest, roundest eyes I'd ever seen. She smiled so big I never would have believed it given how joyful she already was on her own. Her mom hugged her again as she smiled at me, after whispering something in the little girl's ear in Spanish. "Thank you," the little girl said, in English, and we parted.

I left the marcado feeling so warm inside and grinning ear to ear. As Kim and I ate our "three milk" cake, I couldn't wait to get home and finish Christmas with my boys. And I couldn't help but notice that I was as happy about having added joy to this random little girl's afternoon as I was happy about spending this wonderful holiday with my own loving family. I thought, "My family... some immigrant family. What's the difference? My kids joy opening their gifts... some little girl's joy receiving a flower at the market... what's the difference?" I think there is none.

We arrived back into the condo parking ramp and returned to our home. It was nearly dark and the kids were itching to get to present opening. I told them to get ready and I'd be right there. I had to take one more quick look outside my window.

To my joy, there were my two little finches, sitting together as they had for weeks. The male had returned! I closed the blinds and told the kids I was ready for gifts. 

My younger son asked me if I was excited to open presents, and I told him, "Yes! Of course I am. It's always fun to open gifts, but I only had one wish this Christmas, and it already came true."

Dear Abby Singer: How can I point out a mistake without pointing fingers?

Filmmaker Dean Hyers Tackles Life Questions:

Minneapolis Business Owner asks: "Dean, sometimes I point out a mistake someone on my team made and they get angry and defensive. How can I avoid this?"

Good question, and one that most people get wrong. As leaders, we're typically tipped off to an improvement needed because a problem rears its ugly head. We react by pointing out the problem via a case example.

"Just last week you ______ (insert mistake here), and then what happened was ______ (insert negative outcome here)." People are often confused because if they don't use a specific example, how will you understand, but politics and hurt feelings seem to swirl around anyone pointing out the errors of another.

There are some simple rules about what NOT to do when pointing out someone else's mistake, but first let's understand the reason for the sensitivities and the resulting politics.

At the same time, face it, one of the reasons we point out the errors of others is to release our own emotional pressure-cooker by dragging the "offender" through what they did to us. We are all wired to seek some degree of public acknowledgment of our pain and hold offenders accountable.

That's only human, and it's often a part of a healthy "bio-feedback" loop in our social ecosystem. However, as leaders in life and work, we can be more strategic and less reactive, and recognize our sagely responsibility to strive for the win-win.

Being singled out in public for a mistake (whether we're talking peers, superiors, or reportees) tends to be experienced in a threatening way. Human beings inherently pursue blending in to feel safe, but whenever someone points out a mistake made, we feel "smoked out" and exposed, and fear the possibility of evidence levied against us.

Rational or otherwise, the warning lights go off in our mind and we respond through the filter of a fight or flight reaction as we brace for reprimand, tighter restrictions, some sort of probation, increased observation, reduced freedom, and the possibility that we may have to face change. On some level, these are natural fear reactions to having our dirty laundry aired in public.

Why? We must return again to our overused but versatile helicopter.

It's an emotional fact: talk about sad things in general (say, losing a pet) and we can intellectually explore the subject and not emotionally experience it. That would be "helicopter high." But talk about a specific sad thing (say when you were 7 and a specific pet died) and you are vulnerable to potentially go through the emotional experience. That would be "helicopter low."

The more "play-by-play" is contained within your approach – in other words, the more detailed or experiential you describe something, the more likely you are to create an emotional experience of the subject you're discussing.

That can be good or bad, depending upon your goals. Last week in my company, SagePresence, a team member was speaking in general about a problem we all have universally, but then the team member voicing the problem decided to sight one of us who made the mistake the week before, and that person got upset. It would have been easy to not use the example. It would have also been easy for the one voicing the problem to site a time when he himself made the mistake, or he could have asked us to voice our own examples.

If you feel someone will require an emotional experience in order to be motivated to change, then you may need to fly the helicopter low. If you think the person's sensitivities warrant an objective exploration of the problem, then you should keep the helicopter high and provide an intellectual experience. You might also fly the helicopter in the middle, using some examples, but in a safer, "group-focused" sort of way – say by sighting specifics without naming names.

The question was, "How do I talk about a mistake without pushing buttons?" The solution is simple:

1) Before outing someone on their mistake, ask yourself: "Is the example necessary?" Is it really important to drag someone through the experience of being "caught?" Or is it better to let the offending individual off the hook emotionally and correct the problem without bruising egos. Or am I somewhere in the middle?

(Hint: If you don't know, err on the side of flying higher rather than putting people on the spot)

If YES, then caringly fly the helicopter low and understand that sighting someone on a specific will cause them to feel the heat (emotions). "Judy, last week when the client call came in, I saw you ________, and that created a problem for me, which was ______."

If NO, then fly the helicopter high and speak to the problem in general, leaving examples out. "Team, we have ongoing procedural errors with _________, and I want to make sure everyone understands ______."

2) Minimizing the "on-the-spot" feeling the offender is undoubtedly going to experience is done by:

a – sighting a personal example of a time when you made the mistake yourself. "Here's how I learned the importance of this procedure... "

b – describing the issue in principle and asking the team to voluntarily share examples. (Don't bully the examples out, and allow people to stay quiet if they prefer. A trusting environment is a must!)

c – convert an actual example into a general example, saying, "Here's what typically happens in our department... "

d – describe an example but leave out individual details. "Several times this year, I've seen this happen with one of our team members... "

3) If you suspect a strong defensive reaction is likely to occur when sighting a specific example of an error made in your team, and you still want to fly the helicopter low, or park it right on the pavement and go step-by-step experientially through the offending incident, then consider having a private conversation with the individual so their emotional bruising is not public.

Hope this helps, and remember: This isn't the answer. It's the answer before the answer. The real answer has to come from you in the moment. Good luck with this one, and keep a lookout for times to make this easier on someone else!

Dean

LEADERSHIP ON THE SET

Essence Leadership Turns Man Power Into Brain Power

I stood before the wall of script pages, storyboards, location photos, and an org chart outlaying the hierarchy of a production crew that was going to make its first feature with it's first-time director. I wondered, "Will I do okay? Can I do that job? Will I direct well and be a good leader?" It was late. It was dark. I stood there alone, generally afraid. Then a calm out of nowhere and I knew it was time to work.

Directing Bill's Gun Shop was the biggest challenge of my leadership career to date, and it was that way because of one main factor – it was important to me. Very important.

It was on the set of my first feature that I established a personal understanding of leadership – what I wanted, what I wanted it to be, and how I was going to accomplish it. It was my style, and it was part procedure, part code and part self-protection.

What I didn't quite realize is that it was smart. It was good leadership and I lead that way today.

The year was 2000. I had already run a successful company which got acquired by a big advertising agency. I'd already directed several other films, first as a teen filmmaker, then with my brother as an independent making commercials and corporate film, then as a creative director in interactive media. Now, back to feature film, but this time with a very modest yet still substantial a budget.

I didn't know how to lead. I'd just done what came naturally, which was a bumpy ride at best, but somewhere in the recesses of my mind, probably mostly subconsciously, I was doing the secret work on my own leadership and forming my own answers.

The answer came to me in a phrase: Essence Leadership

As a film director, you're bombarded with questions. Literally hundreds, many at one time, as Wardrobe, Art Department, Cinematographer, Producers, Financiers, Writers, Set-Design, Actors, Sound, Crew, and even Craft Services (food) want to know what this should look like, how you plan to accomplish a scene, and who wants what for breakfast.

It was an overwhelming task to direct that show, but at the same time it's no different from any other leadership. You have to make a choice – whether leadership is figuring everything out yourself or if it's finding a way to delegate without compromising your vision.

How can delegating be an extension of your vision? That answer is Essence Leadership.

What is Essence Leadership?

I discovered when I was filming that whatever I told someone to do, they would do. "It's good to be King," said Mickey Freeman, my Director of Photography. In a way, how can you not like that. On some level, I didn't.

A few years back, I was making an interactive entertainment product called Virtual Cop, and I noticed the same thing there. Its memory reminded me of why dutiful followership bugged me. Again, I like the loyalty, but my Assistant Director (AD) back then really captured it for me.

A props person asked me how I wanted some prop to be and I began describing what I was going for. I'd hoped for their input on how to answer the challenge so I wanted them to know my thinking. My AD said, "Dean, they don't want to figure it out. They want you to tell them what you want so they can do it."

It bugged me that with complicated problems, with brain power all around, you'd have just one person making all the decisions and have everyone else serve as automatons. Great for the ego-head, but dumb. How can you maximize the brainpower and have a unified, thinking crew?

There were so many decisions to be made, I would have plenty of "do this" and "do that" to keep my ego satisfied.

So I began leading by essence. A great example was a car we needed for a bounty hunter character to drive. We were in a pinch and the car options we were working on fell through and I needed to get the right car quickly. I really didn't have much time to invest in the hunt because we were preparing to shoot a complicated scene in a gun range using real and fake ammo and I needed this one off my plate. So I said, "You pick the make, you pick the color. I'd like it to be an older car, but I'm trying to sell 'motor-head' and macho. He's a bounty-hunter so he's going to want some speed but not a lot of flash to draw attention. Find the car that sells motor-head, power, but low flash."

The folks on the car hunt said, "Ahh. I get what you want," and they were off to solve the problem. I was told that they were excited and engaged to over-deliver for me. Why? Because I engaged them. They came back to me with polaroid photos of 3 options. I picked from that and they felt they'd contributed, yet I still picked the final car.

Later on, the Lead Man on Swing (swing gang is the set-dressing crew) came to me about how to set up the bad guy hideaway, which was a trailer. They initially came to me with questions that were really detailed. Like if you imagine a helicopter (which could fly high or low), their questions were on the pavement. "How do you want the room laid out? Would there be a TV? What kind of couch? How much of this? How many of those?" I didn't have time for that.

I took five minutes and talked about the essence of what I was going for. I kept my helicopter up pretty high and told them strategically what the scene was, what success was, what I was trying to sell visually, and handed them the scene to read. I told them I trusted their ideas and gave them creative license to interpret my requests. "I can see you know what I'm going for. You make the call! I trust your creativity," I would say.

I remember these guys kind of glowing with a combination of excitement and fear. I'd given them responsibility. They were honored and they rose to the challenge. Again, I heard from their Art Department head that I had so much commitment from the swing gang. They wanted to come through for me and they seriously over-delivered.

Essence Leadership is simple. It's all about giving away leadership to get more authority and loyalty to the cause. It's not a total answer, but it is a value-well that will never run dry.

The principles are simple (if you need the nemonic, I guess it spells Eezze so it's eezze to remember):

#1: Essence: Share the essence of what you want and let them figure out the details.
#2: Engagement: Relinquish authority to your followers and let them initiate the labor.
#3: Zone of No Compromise: Establish what you will not compromise on – the essence you're going for.
#4: Zone of Flexibility: Establish what details you will be flexible on – hopefully all as long as #3 is achieved.
#5: Expression of Trust: Dialogue until you feel you're on the same page, and then express your trust in their creativity and find a way to accomplish the task.

Leaving the set at the end of this shoot was a two-step process. First, I had to battle an endless line of goodbye hugs with everyone from actors to crew, producers, production assistants, and volunteer interns, nearly each one of whom told me in one way or another that this had been the experience they'd gotten into film to have.

Over an hour later, having achieved the ten feet of distance to my car, I returned to the dark production office, which was much like it was the night before shooting began. I found myself standing in the exact same spot and could feel my nervous energy from four or five weeks prior. I stood there with the pride of having commanded in a way that didn't feel like commanding at all. I sacrificed no level of vision, nor did I compromise my own authority. I simply benefited from a thinking team, all engaged loyally to me because we were all equal servants to a vision I let them help me visualize it. It began in my head, was shared and owned by the team, and today it exists in reality with a little "WB" on the box!

My own thoughts echoed in my head like a voice, asking, "Will I do okay? Can I do that job? Will I direct well and be a good leader?" I replied out loud, "You do fine," and I finally understood the calm that had come over me when I had stood there worrying before the shoot.

My thoughts spoke out to me again, from some part of my brain that must have been still holding onto the fear and self-doubt. First there was a sigh, and then a statement in my own voice, saying, "Thanks. That's all I needed to know."

IT'S CHANGING MEN, HALLELUJAH!

Interest In Emotional Balance on the Upswing for Male Audiences

For years now, my travels around the country have given me glimpses of different companies, cultures, industries, various people, and various struggles. One constant in my purview has been women changing or trying to change by reaching across the gender barriers to find ways to expand themselves and "fit in" (and do so authentically). Another constant is men staying pretty much the same, or at least not changing in that one way, looking anywhere but across the gender barriers, not expanding themselves, and not altering themselves in any way either to fit in better with women or help women fit in better with them.

For the record, I'm not saying men aren't trying. I'm saying they haven't been looking at changing themselves as a means to find any sort of new balance in corporate culture.

As a professional speaker who speaks mostly about emotions in leadership, presence, and presentation, I'm a rare male preacher of the soft skills, usually playing from the Yin playbook in a business universe of Yang strategy. I've met with literally hundreds of men who will hear about it, but honestly don't want to hear about it. By "it" I mean the "e" word – emotions.

Therefore, it was a surprise to stand before an audience of hundreds of Utility Workers in the Midwest Energy Association's (MEA) annual conference in Aimes Iowa at eight in the morning one day this past August, to find that something seems to be changing in the very fabric of manliness.

The situation was this. SagePresence was hired to do two back-to-back presentations to the MEA annual conference in Aimes Iowa, speaking on Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Presence. I expected a full house on Leadership Presence, but I was fully prepared to drive all day and rehearse all night to rise and shine with a pot-full of hotel coffee and present to a mass audience of 5 people, who would probably have been the team-spirited organizers of the event.

My first surprise is that the coffee was pretty good. But that was nothing compared to what was coming next. At 7:55, two brave men walked in and sat down (well, one of them left, but not right away). Then after farting around with the powerpoint, I looked up to see well over a hundred people filling the seats in the small auditorium.

Two things about these "people." First, they weren't just "people" – these people were men! Secondly, they weren't just men, they were "manly" men. These were energy and utility worker types. I saw flannel, and steel-toe boots, and I could just visualize hard-hats and utility belts. Some were more administrative and leaderly. But there was something about the collective as a whole that screamed of the "traditional man" category.

There were only two women in the audience, and I felt for them, suspecting them to be women who've had to learn to function as anomalies in their male-dominated industry.

So far, this is what I expected as an audience, only there were about a hundred more than I would expect at an 8:00 am presentation on emotions. And don't get me wrong, I'm not judging the audience, only noting the attendance as compared to expectation. And then it happened.

I was curious enough to ask the question point blank in my intro: "What in the world are 100 plus men in the utility area doing in an 8:00 am presentation about emotional intelligence? What brought you here?"

A man raises his hand. He was sturdy, kind, and blue-collar in presence, dress and dialect. "I'm trying to find a better emotional balance between my work life and my home life," the man said. I am seldom at a loss of words, but I chose to smile and look for another hand.

"I view emotions as the foundation and fabric of all my relationships, and I'm looking for anything I can get to gain a better understanding of how to build stronger emotional bonds with my teams and my clients," says the next.

I'm used to responses like this in women's conventions, but here? Again, I take another response, and I get, "I've noticed that the emotional state of my team has a huge amount to do with how well they interact with others, and how safe my team is on the field. One emotional swing can lead to a compromise in safety procedure and I want to learn how I can be more proactive about managing emotions on my team."

A forth: "I've realized when I meet people that the first relationship I form is on the emotion, then I get to know about the person second. The emotion side has a lot to say about how the conversation goes." This and flannel – I'm beside myself!

In ten years of presenting on emotions and leadership, I've never had a single man ask a question like that without some serious leading on my part. Was I in some sort of emotional Twilight Zone? Could the Energy Industry Workers be the next leaders of social change?

For many years I've seen women reaching across the gender barrier to learn what men had to offer them. After that presentation, I've found myself running through my mental logs of trainings and presentations to answer the question: "Are men evolving?"

I think the answer is "yes, they are" – socially, intuitively, business-wise and in their dealings with professional women. Don't get me wrong. We still have much distance to go, but we are actually going... somewhere!

I've spent a month talking about this very question with my partners. And I'm seeing it more and more, but I just hadn't had as big a sign to believe it. Men are finally joining women in looking across the gender gap and asking the question, "what can I learn from them that would give me an edge and help me expand myself?"

More and more men are satisfied enough with what they know about "Yang" and are looking for a deeper meaning by exploring their "Yin" side. It took me a couple presentations at the MEA to recognize that this subtle shift is turning the "women in a man's world" paradigm on it's back, and into "men and women crossing over to become complete together."

Expect updates on this phenomenon in the future, as I check my impression with more audiences. Either the energy industry is where our most advanced male attitudes lie, or it's just a sign of the times – that men are finally evolving to recognize what women recognized many years ago – we're not so different, women and men, but we're different enough to offer something worth sharing and similar enough to grow closer together by looking for it.

I can here the musical in my head. The man sings: "We can feel anything better than you can, we can feel anything better than you!" Woman: "No you can't!" Man: "Yes we can!" Woman: "No you can't!" Man: "Yes we can! Yes I can, yes I can, yes I can!"

This Collaboration is Killing Me: Part II: A New Process

I've been thinking about my 5 rules of collaboration, and I've discovered a process to further smooth collaboration for your consideration.

As with other processes I like (ala SagePresence philosophy) this process is simple, and is based on something you already do naturally. Once you recognize it, you'll be able to use it more intentionally.

The issue it addresses relates to a very positive collaboration I had last Thursday on a video project. My two partners and I shared ideas and tried to reach conclusions on a video training project we're shooting this coming week, and our meeting was about five hours long.

Both my partners have excellent ideas, and playing on that field looks a little bit like professional soccer – one team has the ball and it's working toward their goal, then upset, and suddenly the opposing team is heading with the ball in the opposite direction! But this isn't just a two-sided field. This field has three players and each player has numerous ideas (or goals), so it's like soccer on a three-sided field with numerous goals on each side.

Even more complicated, there's numerous balls and any player can add any number of balls at any time. So just when you have the ball, and a clear shot on your goal, another ball comes into play and draws the game in a whole new direction. All this from three smart team-players with desirable ideas!

Specifically, what came up for the group was a sort of agonizing stress that built because every time one person had an idea, the other two would have input, and each volley took a long time. Worse, each volley had the potential to divert the conversation in a particular direction. Worse yet, any two of the three of us could essentially form a temporary alliance and squash the other – and this was a good collaboration.

I found myself feeling threatened, as I'd discussed in my last entry on the subject, but this time I knew what the threat was caused by. It was the threat of either losing control, or of having a good idea shot down when it shouldn't be shot down.

Specifically, for me, it was that deep inside I knew that if I didn't have to contend with two of them at once, I had the ability to get one other person to walk the distance it would take to see my perspective. However the capability of any two of us to squelch any one of us was so apparent to me that I directly tied my collaborative stress to the fear of being overpowered.

Even though I knew I could convince either of them, my confidence that I would actually convince both of them was very low.

Additionally, when I found myself in the middle of the other two (when they were heated over a topic), I noticed I would either mediate, or join one of them, depending on how much time-pressure I felt and which point or perspective I believed in more.

So here's what I think goes on when three people collaborate:
– Three collaborators creates a time-anxiety.
– Three collaborators creates the potential for any two to overpower any individual.
– The potential to be overpowered puts all collaborators in a perpetual stress.
– When you're in the middle, you have to pick a side or mediate.

So the natural process remedy became clear to me:

COLLABORATIVE PROCESS FOR WORKING WITH THREE COLLABORATORS:

1) When three people have to collaborate, you should ideally "keep the helicopter very high," establishing the high-level goals, strategy, logistical considerations and challenges.

2) Once the lay of the land is understood, the group should select two of the three collaborators to meet as a subcommittee and do a one-on-one collaboration to figure out the details, "flying the helicopter lower and lower" until you can lick the pavement with your tongue! (That means, figure out the whole thing you're collaborating about.)

3) Once the subcommittee has a plan, they delegate one of the two of them to be the representative of the collaboration, and present one-on-one to the other team-member. If that leads to a consensus, you're done. If it does not, move to Step 4.

4) If the delegate of the subcommittee does not convince the third collaborator, then those two individuals are immediately the new subcommittee, and they collaborate until they reach an agreement.

They then select a representative (who in most cases should be the third collaborator who didn't accept the recommendation of the other two), who goes back to the other member of the subcommittee to present the recommendation of the new collaboration.

This process (three to define goals, two to collaborate, one of the two to present to the third, and those two to collaborate if unanimous agreement is not achieved) keeps all mid to low level collaboration in a one-to-one collaboration, yet all parties have equal say in the process.

This avoids feelings of being ganged up on, and it avoids the delicate mediator position for the one stuck in the middle. With that out of the way, there is far less potential that someone's going to feel betrayed and lose trust in the team.

I propose that we do this naturally. We often can sense one issue to be more volatile than another, and decide to take this one up one-on-one. Why not make a process out of it and avoid the frustration in the first place?

Dear Abby Singer: Two Heads are Better Than One, But This Collaboration is Killing Me!

Filmmaker Dean Hyers Tackles Life and Work Questions:
Dear Dean, collaboration is killing me. How can I work better with my partners?

A very good question: Is collaboration working together, or against, your creative partners? When it works, are they really working together at all, or is it nothing more than a segmentation of responsibility where people work independently on items that link together in the end?

Can people actually work and create together? Can a true collaboration without egos exist?

Right now, I've been proudly enduring a grueling summer of successfully frustrating collaborations. Successful because they're working to achieve a higher result, but frustrating because hurt-feelings, bruised egos, defensiveness, and territorialism weigh into the experience about as much as the thrill of the better result.

Today, the results are impressive, yet my batteries are weak because of the amount of energy that's required to collaborate. This issue is affecting SagePresence, my speaking career, my training efforts, and my film projects. I love my partners, but fear my ability to endure.

So I guess I'm writing myself this time. It's me with the question, and I'm going to hold myself to having my own answer. So here goes:

Dear Dean, don't worry. Your feelings are normal, and so are the frustrations your partners are feeling. But you said it yourself – "The results are impressive." Is that not half your answer right there? I hope so, because the tradeoff going the other way is disappointing.

Here's the rest of your answer, and please write me again if this doesn't do it.

The Five Laws of Successful Collaboration:

1) Respect Always: you must actively respect any partners in a collaboration. This means not only that you "theoretically" respect, but that you actively choose to feel the respect in the moment and embody it. If you say you respect, but you harbor resentment and frustration in the process, it won't work.

2) Zones of Responsibility and Input Everywhere Else: My hope in collaboration is that it can really become working together (beyond simply working solo on different aspects of the same project). But zones of higher authority must be established so that team-members are not in competition with each other. If we know our zones, we can have some measure of peace knowing that we have some measure of control, yet we can allow open input on the project as a whole.

3) Listen and Acknowledge First, then Fight the Good Fight Second: What I've observed blowing the lid off the can of collaborative whoop-ass is the launch into the battle before it's time for fighting. Hear your partners out completely, and restate their input, before doing battle with it. Actively understanding first needs to be a pattern. If it's not, the team member least prone to do battle will adopt a prevailing tendency to yield, and their frustrations will build up and explode above and beyond the call of duty.

4) Defend Each Collaborator's Right to Be Heard: In collaboration, you don't have the right to get your way, but you have the right to be heard and understood before you get shot down. Many amazing ideas never materialize because they weren't explored long enough to find their hidden value. Half the time, the contributor hasn't baked the idea long enough to be able to defend it fully, but that doesn't mean the idea won't prove valuable if fully baked.

Each collaborator should police that process and defend the underdog – be constantly on the lookout for a voice being squelched and defend it even if it isn't a perspective you like. You should do that because you believe in the process, but if the high road isn't calling you, do it selfishly – do it because fighting for others' fair consideration will translate into others defending you and your right for fair consideration.

5) Stay True to Yourself: Don't give in to group-think, which doesn't mean you always fight for your way. Collaboration is full of compromise, but so is life, and so is going solo. That said, don't squelch your own voice under peer pressure. Voice your decision to go with the group over yourself on this item, but be honest about your own perspective.

Decide what hill is worth dying on and fight for those items. Never compromise your own voice by pretending to agree when you don't – that will eat you up from the inside. Be honest, voice your truth, and then decide if you will stand your ground or fall in line – it's a choice. It's yours to make and once you make it you have to get behind it even if it is your choice to yield.

Remember: collaboration is a struggle to juggle between the group process you believe in and the mind that does the believing.

The right pattern of being heard and treated respectfully as a contributor will help each individual handle the pressure of collaborating. Even if you're shot down in the end, you will feel part of the process and be able to learn from your collaborative competitors.

Collaboration can exists and be sustained if the we respect, define zones, and listen first.

I have one more piece of wisdom on collaborating: when it gets difficult, there's usually an emotionally charged element of fear or a sense of threat. If it just isn't working, see if you can discuss who feels threatened and why. What is the nature of the threat and what does the person fear will happen if the threat is carried out? You might just be able to resolve or diminish the underlying issue that's causing the tension.

Best,

Abby