Lead Like Santa: 6 Immutable Principles

Santa’s mission is simple: Spread good cheer and make people happy. 

Simple enough, right? Oh, if it were only so…

Upon reflection, the problem with this over-simplified mission statement is that Santa’s job is not simple at all! It is very complex and fraught with unimaginable difficulties.

Santa’s Mission

The mission that Santa is on is daunting:

• Multiple time zones
• A narrow window of execution
• Extreme weather conditions
• Dealing with Reindeer and Elves (little people)
• Personalized merchandise
• A most finicky clientele (ever-changing demographics of absolute believers, skeptics, form-believers and naysayers.)
• Oh, and this: “Failure is not an option!“

Only an adroit and seasoned leader of exceptional capacity can deliver the goods (goodies) year after year.

So what is Santa’s secret? Read on!

Lead Like Santa

While participating in a recent Air War College-sponsored Reindeer and Claus Studies (RCS) trip to the North Pole, students from the Air War College experienced a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to tour Santa’s World Headquarters.

Santa was busy–he is always busy–but he made time to sit down with our group. After sharing a generous offering of milk and cookies, he offered some insights into his success as a leader.

He did not look like any leader I know, but when he began to speak, I noticed a twinkle in his eye and redness in his cheeks.

He was authentic. He was in his element. His message, albeit simple, was direct and to the point.

I did my best to capture every word, but my hands were freezing. Sage advice straight from the big guy’s mouth:

Santa’s Six Immutable Principles of Leadership

1. Be Steady and Consistent

Santa cannot have a bad day. He maintains a “Ho-Ho-Ho” attitude in all he does. It is infectious. His steady demeanor underpins a healthy work environment for his Elves.

Santa uniquely balances the need to be jolly with a focused determination to get the job done.

He message is consistent: “the right toy, to the right child, in the nick of time, every time.” Everyone shares the vision, everyone is on the team.

2. Lead by Example

Santa is a mentor for want-to-be ‘helpers’ all over the world. He works hard to maintain his unfitness; no child wants to sit on a skinny Santa’s lap.

He never asks his Elves to do anything that he has not done himself a thousand times before.

Moreover, he walks the walk of a leader by assuming personal risk to deliver those presents to deserving boys and girls. He sets the pace, he sets the example, and he leads from the front.

3. Reward Good Performance

Santa knows his reindeer and he knows who is naughty and nice. He rewards good performance. Results matter, they matter a lot. At the North Pole good performance is rewarded, good performance is the standard.

4. Have a Personal Touch

Santa reads every letter written by every child. He chooses the right toy and delivers that toy personally. Santa might delegate authority to get things done, but the responsibility is his alone.

5. Never Quit

Santa never gives up. One year he had to think ‘out of the box’ when confronted with a thick fog that blinded his veteran reindeer team. Santa, in a moment of genius, put Rudolph, an upstart, at the front of his sleigh, making it possible to navigate from the iridescent glow radiating from the young reindeer’s nose.

Santa, in his typical manner, gave all the credit to Rudolph. Enough said.

6. Check everything twice

Not one to micromanage, yet nothing is left to chance. Imagine a good child being left off of Santa’s list, or worse yet, a bad child receiving an undeserved present.

Santa leads with a light touch, but he knows how to ask the right questions, and when to get involved.

Believe and Achieve

The long flight back to Maxwell Air Force Base allowed time to ruminate over Santa’s message. His leadership style is not flashy (except for his red clothes, red sleigh and reindeer team) but grounded in centuries of experience overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Santa is the leader we all strive to become. 

His principles work; one must simply believe.

Merry Christmas!

Why Smart People Make Lousy Teams

It happens all too often: Put a bunch of really smart people in a room, tell them to solve a problem, and watch as they dissolve into blathering idiocy.

Okay, maybe it's not all that bad. But we've all seen groups of supposedly smart people who just can't work well together. That's because, according to recent research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon, and Union College, raw smarts doesn't have much to do with team performance.

The researchers placed nearly 700 people into groups of between two and five, then gave them problems to solve, such as visual puzzles, games, negotiations, and logical analysis. Here's what they found:

• Individual smarts doesn't affect performance. The average intelligence of team members wasn't related to team performance. So if you've got a team that's struggling, putting a couple of really smart people on it isn't going to help.
• EQ--emotional intelligence-- is more important than IQ. Good communication and good coordination make teams function well. To get that, you need people who are good at reading and responding to other peoples' emotions. Teams that included even one person with superior skills in this regard had better performance.
• A 'strong' personality hurts performance. Groups where one person dominated the conversation or the decision-making, or where people didn't do as well taking turns, had worse performance. This correlates well with other research that shows 'stronger' leaders are often less effective than those who perceive themselves to be less powerful.

The Key to Creating "Emotionally Intelligent" Teams

The researchers found one fairly simple answer: Add women.

Women are often perceived to be more socially sensitive, and more communally-minded, than men. To the extent that's true, it's easy to see how it could be helpful in a team context. And in the experiments, the researchers found that teams that included women were more socially-sensitive, and better performing, than then all-male teams. (No word on the performance of all-female teams. I've reached out to the researchers about that, and will update if I hear back.)

In business, it's not always easy to change the composition of a team, and just because a team is all-male shouldn't give it license to be socially inept. Writing for Psychology Today, Heidi Grant Halvorson suggests a number of ways any team can become more socially aware, and therefore, higher performing:

Create opportunities for team members to express their feelings, and for others to respond to them. Encourage face-time whenever possible (emotions are difficult to read on the phone, and nearly impossible over email). Cultivating a work environment where team members' experiences are acknowledged and understood will create teams that are smarter, happier, and far more successful.

I don't know how the 'express your feelings' bit would have gone over at some of the places I've worked--although if "creating opportunities to express feelings" simply means putting an end to some of the macho teasing I've seen, I'm all for it. But as the researchers found, you don't have to break out the hankies to reap the benefits of social sensitivity. Just try taking turns.

What do you think makes teams function well? Or not?

Is a Co-Worker Undermining Your Work? Blame the Boss, Study Says

Why does a seemingly 'normal' employee sabotage the work of his or her co-workers? New research from the University of Minnesota, the University of British Columbia, Clemson University and Georgia State University suggests that managers have a bigger role to play in getting everyone to 'play nice' than you might expect. The researchers found that envy alone isn't enough to get one employee to undermine another. Instead, it's a combination of envy and a sense of being 'out of the loop' that does the trick--and managers can surely do something about the latter.

The researchers conducted two studies to figure out when employees were most likely to sabotage each other.

Bad behavior in hospitals and on campus
In the first experiment, researchers conducted two surveys of 160 workers at an American hospital. The first survey asked about the workers' perceptions of envy, their connections with their colleagues, and their comfort level with acts that might be considered subversive. The second survey, taken eight months later, asked about specific things the workers might have done to make life more difficult for their colleagues. The results:

• Envy isn't enough. Connections matter. People who felt envious were significantly more likely to act on those feelings when their relationships with their co-workers were weak.
• Strong connections reduce sabotage. Those who felt envious but who had strong relationships with their co-workers were less likely to undermine other employees.

The second experiment was similar, but used 247 business school students as participants. The students are divided into work groups for the year, and these workgroups often become quite close. During a single semester, they answered a series of surveys designed to determine how close they were to the other students in their workgroup, how envious they were of others, and if they had done anything to sabotage other students in their group. The results:

• Workplace culture is important. The researchers found that some workgroups were relatively tolerant of students who sabotaged others, while others didn't permit it. Not surprisingly, those workgroups that seemed to sanction sabotage saw a whole lot more of it. But someone who didn't feel any envy was extremely unlikely to sabotage someone else, even if they were disconnected from the group and the group turned a blind eye to bad behavior.

Karl Aquino, one of the study's co-authors and a professor at UBC Sauder School of Business, says that weak connections with one's co-workers can easily foster so-called 'moral disengagement:'

We often hear that people who feel envious of their colleagues try to bring them down by spreading negative rumors, withholding useful information, or secretly sabotaging their work... The match is not struck unless employees experience what psychologists call 'moral disengagement'-a way of thinking that allows people to rationalize or justify harming others.

The paper, titled A Social Context Model of Envy and Social Undermining, will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Academy of Management Journal.

Has a co-worker ever sabotaged or undermined your work? To what extent do you think your boss or your company's culture was played a role?

Questions You Should Never Ask Your Girlfriend

Let’s face it, women have the ability to read much more into a question than is meant.

For instance, a guy asks what the time is, and she hears, “I’m bored, I want to leave, I wonder if this relationship is working for me, I think I may be able to escape in the next few minutes, I wonder what I am doing here?” He wanted to know what the time was, because he needs to take his tablet an hour after supper.

So what do the following questions mean to women?

Are you going to be much longer?

She hears : Here I am sitting on my backside waiting in the car, while you are packing the baby’s bag, sorting out the dog, wrapping the birthday present, dealing with YOUR mother’s phonecall, setting the alarm and locking the house. What is taking you so long?

Why does this question irritate women?
This question merely reveals your husband/boyfriend’s complete lack of understanding about what it takes to get ready to go on the road. And this is what makes women angry. Leave it to the man in your life, and you will arrive at the party without a present, without clean nappies for the baby, and to top it all, a call from the alarm company, saying the armed response says the dog is trotting around inside the house and they hope that is what set off the alarm.

Don’t you think you should start running again?

She hears : You are getting fat and I think it is because you are not getting enough exercise. Pick up two more kilo’s and I am out of here.

Why does this question irritate women?
It makes them feel that they are being prescribed to in how they should look, what they should wear in order to be found acceptable. Men just don’t understand that many women deal with baby blues or the difficult boss by eating a second slice of chocolate cake, followed by a cream caramel delight, rum ‘n raisin ice cream and rounded off with a sweetie pie.

What’s for supper?

She hears: Your place is in the kitchen. I don’t care if your work a full day like I do, supper is your responsibility and I am hungry.

Why does this question irritate women?
It makes them feel as if the bulk of the household responsibilities is still theirs, even if they work fulltime or earn more than their husbands. Especially if they shopped for the food, cooked yesterday and put three loads of washing through the machine in the last 24 hours.

What was your previous boyfriend like?

She hears: I don’t like the thought of your being with anyone else, even if I didn’t know you then. I really want to hear that he was a right royal jerk, useless in bed, couldn’t hold down a job and generally disliked by all your family and friends.

Why does this question irritate women?
It makes them feel cornered – previous boyfriends are actually private territory and have nothing to do with present relationships. When women are hesitant to discuss previous relationships, men often react as if they are somehow being excluded and as if the woman has something to hide. We all have secrets and private things about which we don’t talk to anyone.

Who was that you were talking to?

She hears: I don’t trust you. I don’t like you talking to other men. You’re mine, mine, mine and don’t you forget it. How much did that smile really mean?

Why does this question irritate women?
 It makes them feel as if they are being treated like possessions and not human beings. Everyone needs friends and women certainly do not want to sleep with every man they smile at. Heavens, that would include the 72-year-old butcher on the corner.

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