Today’s list is a single tip for leadership success. I don’t mean to mislead anyone–doing this one thing will not bring complete leadership success. What I am saying is it is an important enough practice that it deserves undivided attention, unencumbered by 4, 9, or 49 other tips that would distract you from remembering this one practice of truly great leaders. Here is the story of how I came to learn and appreciate this tip, for which I take no credit since I got it from someone else and proceeded to ignore it for most of my career.
Blaine Lee, now deceased, was a business consultant and author who worked with Stephen R. Covey. You’ve heard of Covey, of course, but probably not Lee. He wasn’t the most high profile member of Covey’s team. Far from prolific, he wrote only wrote one book, The Power Principle.
In 1994 I became friends with one of Lee’s sons. When, during a casual chat, I asked his son what his father did for a living, he responded “He works with businesses.” Until Lee’s book was published in 1998 that’s all I knew about my friend’s father. It was then realized my friend had been excessively humble about his father’s professional accomplishments. I bought the book and read it. It’s been 15 years, and while I don’t remember much else from the book I remember this one bit of advice for those wanting to have power or influence with others–make yourself accessible. That one point stuck in my head and has come back to me almost every single day since I started my business in 1999.
The reason I have been so constantly reminded of this point is because of how hard I have tried to ignore it. Like Poe’s tell tale heart, my attempts to make myself inaccessible have struck at my conscience, stabbing me with guilt each time I looked at a phone ringing and didn’t pick it up, marked an email for follow up, knowing I would never look at it again, or refused to engage people on Twitter. Whenever I avoided people instead of communicating with them, Blaine Lee would appear in my mind wagging his finger at me, telling me that as long as I refused to make myself accessible to people I was choosing to minimize my power and influence.
I had good reasons. When I started my business I was still a college student and newly married, so I was busy. I didn’t have time to answer every email. Most phone calls were from sales people trying to sell me things I didn’t want. The truth was I was avoiding issues I didn’t want to deal with and interpersonal situations where I would have felt uncomfortable. On my voicemail I invited people to send me an email, and then I never answered the phone. “If it’s important they can leave a voicemail or email me,” I would tell my wife when my cell phone rang. Then I would ignore half the emails I got as well, reading them quickly and marking them for follow up. Then they would get pushed below the fold and they were gone forever.
It shouldn’t be hard to see how this habit was damaging to my business. Over the years I saw relationships with clients, partners, and employees deteriorate due to a lack of communication. It culminated in early 2007 when I was forced to let all my employees go and shut down my office. For me that was my rock bottom. Granted, making myself inaccessible wasn’t the only reason my business was failing, but it was a big part of it.
For the next few years I retreated to a home office where I worked alone trying to pay off business debts and get my head around how to fix my business. I cut myself off more than ever and turned inward, focusing on myself. In some ways this was the right behavior at the time–I needed to sort myself out and get things under control. But in terms of being any sort of leader or serving others, it was a low point.
Thankfully I went through this in my early 30’s rather than my late 60’s. By the end of 2010 I had turned my life around, turned my business around, and was ready to try again. And instead of seeing Lee’s admonition to make myself accessible as a source of guilt, I now saw it as an opportunity.
In early 2011 I started inviting business associates and friends to lunch for no other reason than to chat. These interactions were not only personally rewarding, but led to many educational and profitable business experiences. Things continued to improve through 2011 and 2012 but it wasn’t until this year, 2013, that I became a true believe in the wisdom of Lee’s advice. Even until a few months ago I was still holding back, believing that if I made myself too accessible I would become overloaded and that people would take advantage of me. That all changed when I went through the life change of moving to Hong Kong where I’m opening a branch office of my business, and when read this article wherein I got a small piece of advice from Guy Kawasaki–default to “yes.”
Default to “yes?” It sounded crazy at first, but Kawasaki says “I’ve learned that the upside far exceeds the downside risk of being used.” I know Kawasaki lives what he preaches because while he doesn’t know me from any guy on the street, I’ve emailed him and received personal, non-automated responses. I decided to put his words and those of Lee to the test. Since coming to Hong Kong I’ve embraced making myself accessible and defaulting to “yes.” I’m not perfect at either, but I answer the phone a lot more. I return calls. I stay on top of email as best I can. I’ve even become active on Twitter. When people ask for assistance, I default to “yes” for the most part. Far from finding myself overloaded or being taken advantage of, the benefits have outweighed the negatives by a margin of 100 to 1.
If Lee were alive today I’d thank him for that one piece of advice. I’ve seen the downside of ignoring it, and the upside of applying it. I’m a believer now, and I’m not going back.
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