Cowell and Candor

American Idol judge Simon Cowell is thought to be mean-spirited for saying things like:

"You have just invented a new form of torture."

"Shave off your beard and wear a dress. You would make a great female impersonator."

Simon also gives plenty of pats on the back ...

"I don't say this lightly, what I'm about to say. That performance was on a par with Whitney Houston ... Celine Dion ... seriously."

"At five seasons, you are the best male vocalist we've ever had."

... but hardly anyone notices, or thinks of him as nice.

Why? His candor - especially when he is being brutally honest - is so out of step with the current conventions of social discourse that it stands out like a sore thumb. Simon understands this ...

"I think you have to judge everything based on your personal taste. And, if that means being critical, so be it. I hate political correctness. I absolutely loathe it."

... but there's a method to his madness:

"I haven't done anything particularly harsh. Harshness to me is giving somebody false hopes and not following through. That's harsh. Telling some guy or some girl who's got zero talent that he or she has zero talent actually is a kindness."

Maybe this is why he says:

"I am poor, misunderstood Simon. I'm really the nice one and no one gets it yet. But, they will."

Whether you agree or not, it's worth examining his premise more thoroughly.

There is a show in the U.K. similar to American Idol. It's called Britain's Got Talent. Simon is a judge there as well. Watch the following clip from the show. Here is what you'll see. A six year old girl steps onstage to perform. She is vying for a spot in the finals. She sings. The first two judges sing her praises. Simon is last to speak. Pay close attention to his words and - more importantly - how he frames them.

Here's Connie:

There are at least two things worth noting. The first is to recognize Simon's credibility as a judge. Little Connie, her parents, the audience and the other judges were all holding their breath as they waited for Simon's assessment. This is because they knew - based on his previous behavior - that he could be trusted to give her the rating he thought she had earned - nothing more and nothing less. And, they were afraid that he might not have liked her performance all that much.

The second is more subtle. When he said "Connie, I'm going to talk with you like an adult because I think it is important," he was deliberately making it clear he was going to hold her to the same standard as everyone else in the competition. If he hadn't framed it that way - and simply told her she was terrific - she might have thought he was just being nice to her because she was only six years old. As a matter of fact, odds are great that most of the feedback Connie had gotten up to that point in her life had been qualified as in "She's really good ... for someone who's only six." Instead, Simon gave her a true gift: feedback she could take to heart. It didn't matter that she was only six, she was good ... period.

But would he have been straight with her - or mean in the mind of most - had her performance been poor? In all likelihood, yes. It's also likely he would've taken her age into account and cushioned the blow as best he could. In other words, he would've tried to balance courage with consideration.

As a leader or manager or coach or mentor or teacher or spouse or parent or friend or neighbor or whatever, you should feel obligated to give the folks who wander in and around your life any feedback you think would - or even just might - be helpful to them. There are times, of course, when it is easier - and correct - to say nothing, or color the truth in some small way, to avoid hurting someone's feelings or getting into an argument. But, don't be too tempted to take the easy way out. Be like Simon. Care for people instead of taking care of them. There's a big difference.

Morris Schectman lays out the difference in his book Working Without a Net:

"Caretaking is when you bother me a little bit, and I do just enough. I feel better because I think I took care of you. That is not any good to you at all. You may be in fact an alcoholic and I just gave you the money to buy the bottle that kills you. But, I feel better and go home."

"Caring is actually stopping and dealing with the human being, trying to understand enough about them to genuinely make sure you improve their life, even if you have to start with a conversation like, 'If you will quit drinking, I will help you get a job.' This is a lot harder than saying, 'Here's a buck or 5 bucks. I hope it helps.'"

Conversation:

• How do you tend to have either a caretaking nature or a caring nature?
• Can you think of a situation(s) in which you were a caretaker? What did you do? What was the short-term result? Long-term? How was what you did either fair or unfair to the other person involved?
• Can you think of a situation(s) in which you were caring? What did you do? What was the short-term result? Long-term? How was what you did either fair or unfair to the other person?

Afterwords:

"He who praises everybody, praises nobody." - James Boswell

"Speech devoted to truth should be straightforward and plain." - Seneca

"The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names." - Confucius

"Beware how you take away hope from another human being." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

When Good IS Great

Dov Seidman - founder and CEO of LRN and the author of HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything . . . in Business (and in Life) - appeared at the Masters Forum in March, 2008, to share his notion that success in our highly connected and near completely transparent world is mainly dependent on our ability to out-behave our competitors. He also left us with an impression as sticky as his ideas: he is at his core the genuinely good person his behavior suggests.

Dov's work was noted not so long ago in a New York Times column by Thomas Friedman who used it to help build the case that inspirational leadership at the very highest levels of government is one of the things needed to get the U.S. economy rolling again. Friedman said:

"President Obama missed a huge teaching opportunity with A.I.G. Those bonuses were an outrage. The public’s anger was justified. But rather than fanning those flames and letting Congress run riot, the president should have said: 'I’ll handle this.'

"He should have gone on national TV and had the fireside chat with the country that is long overdue. That’s a talk where he lays out exactly how deep the crisis we are in is, exactly how much sacrifice we’re all going to have to make to get out of it, and then calls on those A.I.G. brokers - and everyone else who, in our rush to heal our banking system, may have gotten bonuses they did not deserve - and tells them that their president is asking them to return their bonuses 'for the sake of the country.'

"Had Mr. Obama given A.I.G.’s American brokers a reputation to live up to, a great national mission to join, I’d bet anything we’d have gotten most of our money back voluntarily. Inspiring conduct has so much more of an impact than coercing it. And it would have elevated the president to where he belongs - above the angry gaggle in Congress."

At that point, he quoted Dov:

"There is nothing more powerful than inspirational leadership that unleashes principled behavior for a great cause. What makes a company or a government sustainable is not when it adds more coercive rules and regulations to control behaviors. It is when its employees or citizens are propelled by values and principles to do the right things, no matter how difficult the situation. Laws tell you what you can do. Values inspire in you what you should do. It’s a leader’s job to inspire in us those values."

Dov's work is both rich and relevant, and I often find myself connecting it with other important ideas. For example:

Dov says that great ethical leadership is not grounded in a skill set, nor is it the offspring of a magic hat we don on the way to work and remove on the way home. It flows instead from a deep commitment of the heart and mind to a particular way of being. Robert Fritz, another of the real geniuses who's graced the stage at the Masters Forum, says when we enter into that kind of commitment, we are making a fundamental life choice:

"There are many people who have chosen the religious path (primary choice), without making the fundamental choice to live in accordance with their highest spiritual truths. There are many people who have chosen to be married (primary choice), without making the fundamental choice to live from within a committed relationship. Fundamental choices are not subject to changes in internal or external circumstances. If you make the fundamental choice to be true to yourself, then you will act in ways that are true to yourself whether you feel inspired or depressed, whether you feel fulfilled or frustrated, whether you are at home, at work, with your friends, or with your enemies. If, on the other hand, one day you decide that it is all right not to be true to yourself because it is inconvenient or might make you feel uncomfortable in a particular situation, you have probably never made the fundamental choice to be true to yourself to begin with. You are basing your commitment on the conditions or the circumstances in which you happen to find yourself at any particular time. When you make a fundamental choice, convenience and comfort are not ever an issue, for you always take action based on what is consistent with your fundamental choice."

Dov says that leaders who ask us to do what's right, honest, and good in the service of our organization, concurrently ask us to do what's best for our soul. Dr. Abraham Maslow pointed to this notion a little over forty years ago:

"The serious thing for each person to recognize vividly and poignantly, each for himself, is that every falling away from species-virtue, every crime against one’s own nature, every evil act, every one without exception records itself in our unconscious and makes us despise ourselves. Karen Horney had a good word to describe this unconscious perceiving and remembering; she said it 'registers.' If we do something we are ashamed of, it 'registers' to our discredit, and if we do something honest or fine or good, it 'registers' to our credit. The net results ultimately are either one or the other - either we respect and accept ourselves or we despise ourselves and feel contemptible, worthless, and unlovable. Theologians used to use the word 'accidie' to describe the sin of failing to do with one’s life all that one knows one could do."

Dov admits there are certain risks involved in making the choices he urges us to make, but he says there are far greater risks associated with not making them. Morris Schectman, another former Masters Forum presenter, shares that perspective:

"If you embrace the behaviors and attitudes of the high risk individual, you need to understand your decision within the context of stress and distress. Low risk people exchange short-term stress for long term distress. High risk people are constantly under short-term stress and rarely experience long-term distress. When you strike a low risk posture, you may avoid day-to-day stress, but you accumulate unmade decisions that ultimately cause you much unhappiness. High risk people, on the other hand, constantly make decisions and face change-related stress, but they never look back on their lives with regret. High risk people regularly pay a price for being successful in this culture, whereas low risk people avoid paying until a big amount is due at some point down the road. It’s the difference between making fixed payments on a loan and a gigantic balloon payment after a period of time. In a high risk culture, no one can afford to accumulate such a huge debt and expect to be happy or successful."

Conversation:

• What are the fundamental choices you have made for your life? Are there any choices you know you need to make but haven't yet made them? What is holding you back?
  
• What are some things you've done that have "registered" to your credit? Discredit? What is the credit/discredit balance at this point in your life? Are there changes you can see you need to make?
• Do you have the tendency to defer decisions to avoid short-term stress? How have you paid the price for this in the past? Are there any gigantic balloon payments looming in your future? Is there a way you can overcome this habit as you move forward in your life?
  

Afterwords:

"A schism in the body social will not be resolved by any scheme of a return to the good old days, or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal projected future, or even by the most realistic, hardheaded work to weld together again the deteriorating elements. Only birth can conquer death - the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new." - Joseph Campbell, Hero With A Thousand Faces

Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
- Rabindranath Tagore

"It is immensely moving when a mature man – no matter whether old or young in years – is aware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility and somewhere he reaches the point where he says: 'Here I stand; I can do no other.'" - Max Weber, speaking at Munich University at the end of WWI

"Google’s a strange place. When I met Eric Schmidt, he said, 'If you are kind to everybody, then you will make good decisions because people will give you good information, and if you are truthful to everybody, they will be truthful to you.' That’s what’s different about Google. They screw up and make mistakes, but they genuinely mean the good stuff about 'don’t be evil.' - Larry Brilliant - Wired: Feeling Lucky