Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable: be honest and frank anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

We all have a face we wear in public. Some philosophers and psychologists refer to this as an act or a façade because it’s meant to show people what you want them to see and hide some of your less likeable qualities.

The façade changes depending on the situation for most of us. We might be very friendly and try to look interested in the details of a fellow churchgoer’s recent experience. We might be focused on fun, joking and teasing with our teammates and opponents in the bowling league. We try to look knowledgeable and professional when we talk to clients.

But as leaders we feel a unique pressure to look competent and together and are often on guard against anyone seeing our weaknesses. This can dictate that we have the “leader façade” in every situation if we think there’s a slight chance one of our team members will be present – or even if a friend or family member of a team member might be present. Boy does it get tiring!?

The common misconception is that maintaining an appearance of being together and in charge will give us status and power. We have information available to us to see that isn’t true but we’re reluctant to use it. When we see a leader who always looks calm and competent we tend to think we’re seeing an act. When we have a leader in a social group, like a volunteer organization or a church, who is always pleasant and always competent, we feel distant.

We are all more inclined to follow someone when we connect with that person’s heart. We can’t easily connect with a heart when it’s hidden behind a well-heeled façade. We connect with someone when we identify with that person. We are inspired to follow someone when we see flaws and foibles plus strength and intention and character to rise above them. We are especially inspired to follow someone who has a powerful vision that flows from his or her heart and resonates with us. There is no resonating happening in a façade.

The true power of a leader comes from authenticity. It comes from being a full and complete person who knows himself or herself and is learning to be comfortable with all those facets. It comes from being comfortable with one’s own limitations and quirks, and from having the empathy to extend grace and acceptance and forgiveness to others for their limitations and quirks. It comes from sharing a real path of struggle and failure and success which others can emulate. It does not come from presenting an untrue picture of success and competence that denies human nature.

I can remember staff meetings with our child care and preschool teachers where we spoke from the heart about our vision for the center and what we wanted it to be for the children and their parents. When we were honest about our limitations, whether they were financial or based on a lack of information in a certain area or our inability to “do it all,” the magic happened. Our staff members who shared our vision wanted to be part of it. They looked at how they could get training or made suggestions for doing things on a tight budget and offered to give more of their time and effort.

When we admitted our limitations, we opened the door for them to become powerful.

And it will always be so. Other people will not have the opportunity to extend us grace or compassion or help or guidance until we admit our flaws and weaknesses. And most people are much more inclined to step up and improve a situation through their effort and involvement than they are to follow an unblemished façade of perfection.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

This isn’t really a revolutionary concept. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Marc Antony delivers the line in one of the most-memorized speeches in the English language:

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

Of course, his goal was to get people to remember good deeds, but the pattern he described is true. What, then, is the point of doing good?

There has been a shift in recent years in what people are being taught about networking, mentoring, and even marketing. Instead of quid pro quo relationships (You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours) people are encouraged to look for opportunities to help other people. It sounds like a noble, altruistic ideal.

But it’s presented with an idea like karma: if you do good things for other people, it will come back to you many times over. It will come as offers of help when you need them, an increase in your sales or client referrals, or new business opportunities. I think that’s pretty close to the old system: You scratch my back and “the universe” will make sure a lot of people scratch yours.

Is there a point in doing good simply because it’s good? I had an employee who was a single mother with three children, the youngest with birth defects. She was going through an organization to help her family get a house. They required her to move close to where the house would be built but keep her same job. That meant she was driving a long commute to work for us. I wrote a recommendation for her when she tried to change to a closer job, but that’s when the organization told her she would start over in the process if she changed jobs.

I called the case manager at the organization to discuss the situation. I explained that, although she had to be moved to part-time because her transportation was inconsistent and her disabled infant needed a lot of medical care, she was coming to work as often as she could. I explained that the medical care was near where she was living and near where the home was being built. I urged the case manager to allow her to change jobs but stay on track to get the house.

It was several weeks before the organization agreed she could switch jobs and not lose her place in line for the housing program. During that time she worked when she could, and we scheduled her for as many hours as she could work. This was not helpful in any way to me or to the other employees. It would have been much more convenient to hire a part-time person who could come in consistently when needed. In fact, after she moved to her new job, we hired a part-time employee who came on a regular schedule and things were much easier.

But it was wrong for the organization to have unreasonable requirements on a low-income single mother with a disabled child. It contradicted the mission and underlying purpose of the program, helping people who can’t otherwise qualify because of difficult life circumstances to have a house.

I did what I saw to be the right thing, to keep her as an employee as long as it took for the organization to approve her application, and to call the organization and advocate on her behalf. If I hadn’t written it here, nobody but a couple of people would even know. I’m not getting referrals from poor single mothers or from bureaucratic agency employees because of what I did. I’m not waiting around for the universe – which to me would mean God – to repay me.

I intended it as doing good simply for the sake of doing good. It was right to help that family reach their goal, and it was necessary for me to do what I did to make it happen. Sometimes the only payment for doing good is knowing that you have done good, even if everyone else forgets.

Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

I didn’t see this extreme response to success while I was a business co-owner. That might be because our level of financial success was a steady, comfortable income, but it didn’t bump us up a few tax brackets.

But the response came when, quite by accident, we looked like we were being elitist with our new address!

My wife and I lived in a starter home with less than 1,200 square feet for 13 years. Yes, we understand the idea of a starter home. But we had a longer-term vision than just buying a larger home every few years.

We wanted to live in a rural setting with some open land. Instead of moving into larger and more expensive homes, we found a plot of land with an old farmhouse and bought it. There were renters in the house, until it was too dilapidated to be livable, and their rent helped us make payments on the property. When we bought the property, the town was an old farming community with a few neighborhoods but mostly open land.

While we waited, and waited, and waited, we paid off our little house and started paying more on the property. After twelve years, we were finally at a point where we were ready to build our house. The renters had left a couple of years before and we had demolished the little house. We designed our home and had it built. By then, the little farm town had turned into an “exclusive, upscale” suburb. More and more open land was being bought up and turned into tract mansions. It was odd. People would say they loved the area because of the open land, but every addition seemed to have a large rock wall around it.

Our home, beautiful to us but modest and plain compared to the new homes being built, is still in a mostly rural part of town. But we are minutes away from elite shopping areas. This is how the Third Commandment reared its ugly head.

Before we moved, a woman we knew through soccer treated us warmly. She lived in another upscale suburb that also used to be farmland. But it was not as new and trendy as the neighborhoods being built in our suburb. When she found out where our new house was being built, she got very distant.

It got worse. When I told people where I lived it made an immediate impact. Some got a little sarcastic and expected I thought I was better than they were. Some acted like I had won a competition that I didn’t even know was going on. They were mostly people who lived in nice, but not as trendy, suburbs. Some lit up and said that we must be rich, that we must live in a huge house, and showed a lot of interest in where all the money came from. It was ridiculous!

I got to a point of not telling people the name of our town. I would say we lived near Grapevine, which is a very old city by Texas standards and has a mixture of communities and income levels. When I told them that, people treated me like just another person.

I think this comes from a strange tendency in the human race. In general, we want to be like other people, to fit in. More specifically, we usually want to be like and fit in with people in our own class. We want to be “just like everyone else” – only a little better. So there’s constant comparison.

Are you in my status level? Are you even with me? Boring!
Are you a little beneath me? Wonderful. I get to feel just a teeny bit superior!
Are you a little above me? Yuck! You arrogant pig!

We planned for a long time and paid down the loan on our land while we lived in a modest house. When we sold our little house we paid off the land and only owed the cost of building our new house. Over thirteen years we spent about half of what a lot of people are paying for homes around here by being patient. To me that’s success.

But to many people the fact that we live on the rural edge of an upscale neighborhood suggests huge financial success and a desire to flaunt our money. We don’t have expensive new cars and we don’t have an ornate home, but people assume we’re rolling in cash. And the way they treat us is based on their assumptions, good or bad, that we are financially successful in a huge way.

Some are friendly because we’re “good enough” or because they think we can add to their status. Others truly resent us. And their view of us is based on wrong assumptions about our success.

Succeed anyway. And do it on your own terms.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

Maybe it’s skepticism borne through experience that causes many employees to doubt their employer ever acts out of consideration or kindness.

Maybe it’s a sign of a pervasive entrepreneurial spirit that clients will tend to see improvements in your service as just a way to earn more money. Or maybe Kent Keith is right.

In the child care world, payroll is the biggest expense. You have to have enough teachers and caregivers to provide an interesting and fun day for the children and keep the group sizes reasonable. The expected pattern is to send people home when the number of children in attendance on any given days starts to drop. It’s a way to save money and increase profit, but it’s at the expense of low-wage people who need a predictable number of hours per week.

I didn’t like that. We only sent people home during low attendance times if they asked to leave. This was usually the days around major holidays. In fact, if I scheduled someone for a half-day because they asked to take the afternoon off, I would let them leave mid-morning if attendance was low. And I would pay them for the full time they had been scheduled to work. It seemed right to me. I regularly got confused looks when they looked at their paychecks and wondered – often sheepishly – if I forgot they left early.

Sometimes I confused my staff even more. During a period when someone was on vacation and another person would call in sick, or maybe when we transitioned from school year to summer and were waiting for part-time summer staff to be available, we had to rearrange schedules to cover all the groups. Some people came in earlier and took longer breaks, and some were willing to work a little overtime and help close at the end of the day.

After a pay period like that, I would look at actual payroll expense compared to my budget, based on every position being fully staffed. I took a portion of the payroll savings and paid it as bonus to the people who went out of their way to help us by adjusting their schedules and taking on extra responsibilities. Inevitably, staff who got bonuses were grateful, but they looked uncertain, like they were worried I made a mistake and might take the bonus away!

Our parent-clients and my friends would also be skeptical when we made improvements to the classrooms, equipment, playground, or programs. When we upgraded the playground, inevitably people assumed it was because that would help us get more clients. Actually, we stayed close to full with a waiting list in some groups at the time. We did it because we wanted the kids to have more fun and more variety.

When we added a music program, and when we instituted Spanish and art and drama classes for all the preschool groups, eyes would light up and people would suggest we were going to be able to charge more for having these “extras.” We explained that we were just offering things we were able to offer at a reasonable expense to us. We didn’t increase prices when we added those programs. We just improved the experience of the children in care.

Maybe it’s just an indication of my lack of entrepreneurial vision that I didn’t see the opportunity to save on staff costs as a way to make more money. I didn’t see a connection between adding new equipment and programs and hiking the rates, either. I was just trying to treat our employees well, and give the children in our care a warm, comfortable, safe, and happy place to be.

If you put quality and respect and consideration first and try to do good, people will assume you’re working some angle.

Do good anyway.

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

Words like these sound wonderful in an inspirational speech or a sermon. I close my eyes and smile and think, “What a wonderful world.” Then reality walks in wearing flesh and bones and a rude attitude!

Now don’t get me wrong. I actually have the capacity for a lot of empathy and compassion. I can forgive a bad attitude and some harsh comments if I know someone is having a hard time. I start “listening” with my intuition if someone is quiet or seems shut down.

But my capacity for kindness was overwhelmed by some situations. Sometimes an employee would come in on a Friday morning and say, “I need to be off next week.” Rarely was it a life crisis, like a parent’s or child’s illness. It was usually something like, “My mother’s taking her vacation time and driving to visit family and she wants me to go with her.” Or it might have been something like, “My husband’s work is closing down for a week and he wants to use the time to get things done around the house.”

I was a business owner responsible for scheduling well-trained, nurturing people to care for children on a stable and consistent basis. I couldn’t tell if that employee didn’t value her importance to the children in her group, or if she felt she was compelled to put her family’s wants (not needs) before her work responsibilities.

Either way, I thought my head would explode!

I had to back away from the situation and get some perspective. A lot of times it would come down to a family member having unreasonable expectations of my employee, and me having to deal with the unreasonable person indirectly. As the employer, I could act professionally and maturely and enforce rules and clarify boundaries and make my expectations obvious. But I would likely lose up against the coercion of the family member.

What worked? If I calmed down and talked to my employee we could usually resolves those crises. I would hear her point of view on the pressure from the family member. Did she want to do this or did she feel obligated? Then I would remind her of the children’s needs for continuity and the pressure her sudden absence would put on co-workers.

The employee would share her view and I would understand more. I would share my view and my employee would understand more. Then we would come up with a plan that respected each other’s needs and included reasonable compromises. We would even discuss ways for the employee to talk with mom or the husband to explain why a week off wouldn’t work.

Sometimes it seemed I had to compromise a lot, giving a couple of days off or shortening the schedule for a week. Some of the women working for us loved their jobs and loved working with the children, but they were just learning to value themselves.

Their job was where they were developing independence and self-esteem. They needed that, and I knew long-term they would become even better employees. So I was inclined to figure out what was in their long-term best interest and try to make that happen if I could.

This is a hard commandment. It demands a lot and it costs a lot of time and emotional energy.

Do it anyway.

Around the spring of 1993 I started having two careers. I maintained a part-time therapy practice, and I became co-owner of a child development center with my mother. My responsibilities early on were training and supervising staff specifically on ways to work well with children. Over time I agreed to take responsibility for directly supervising some of the staff on all areas of job performance. I was over my head!

But any new supervisor is, to some degree. I knew how to train and guide and evaluate our staff on their work directly with children, but the rest was challenging. What do you do when an employee comes in late or misses work nearly every Monday after payday?

I had to dig into my values and overall vision for the business to help me navigate some of these challenges. Fortunately for me, I came across a magazine that had Kent Keith’s Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership. I made a photocopy and held on to it. Eventually I framed the photocopy and hung it over my desk.

I didn’t follow them perfectly, and sometimes I’m sure I went for weeks without adhering to a single one. After all, I’m not nice!

But I believe the values expressed in the Commandments. They speak to character and connectedness. They speak to a higher purpose.

This year, The Mentorship Approach With Teams & Groups will go through the Commandments one at a time. I want to talk about ways I’ve used them, ways I failed to use them, and ways they will make your experience as a trainer, supervisor, boss, team leader, committee chair—any role of Mentor—more meaningful.

There is a risk involved in helping your team members grow and develop. They can grow beyond their position. They can grow beyond your business or organization. I experienced this personally as co-owner of a child development center.

I had employees who wanted to improve their skills working with children. They took college courses and ultimately got degrees in education or child development. With their degrees it wasn’t long before they were looking for next-step opportunities on paths that moved them away from our center.

I had other employees who aspired to business ownership and wanted to learn about business management. As they worked in the front office and gained skills, they reached a point where they wanted a greater challenge. Some left to work in a larger business. Some took steps towards starting their own business that often meant leaving to work in a different career field.

It was sad when people moved on, especially when I had enjoyed knowing them and working with them on a regular basis, watching their skills develop and their enthusiasm grown. It was also very frustrating to see the more enthusiastic and qualified employees moving on, knowing the people who replaced them would not be as skillful or as involved with their work.

But over time I realized that the enthusiastic and skillful people who moved on did not start out as talented as they were when they left. And the new people would not stay novices and their interest would increase if they connected their work to their future development. Of course for some it was just another job, but for those who really got involved it was much more.

I realized I got many months, often a few years, of creative involvement and committed effort from people who saw their job as a path to growth. Those dedicated to early or elementary education were thrilled to be able to work with children and observe the developmental progress and curriculum and activity planning they were learning in theory. Those who wanted to learn about business management could do so in a friendly environment where the business decisions were mostly straightforward and less challenging than a more complex organization.

Those employees were getting a lot out of their work experience that was moving them towards long-term goals. The energy and dedication they focused on their goals produced energetic, dedicated team members. They were natural leaders, they were inclined to be helpful, and they were the people most connected with the overall mission of our center.

I was often thinking months ahead to the point when an employee would resign and move on. It was a challenge to find qualified people to replace my experienced team members. But the synergy they brought to our programs, and the significant benefit they had in the lives of the children in our care, made it worth the challenge.

The Mentorship Approach With Teams & Groups

Getting your team on board with a new program or project can be a challenge. When it comes to motivation, there isn’t one answer. What works best for you, or even for most people, won’t work for everyone. Get familiar with your team members and the things that encourage their best performance.

Money: It’s true that many people are motivated by money, and we all pretty much need money. But be careful. Many people are generally motivated by money, but not by bonuses and incentives. In sales, performance and money are aligned, so it’s easy to think all workers will do whatever it takes to earn a bonus. They won’t! If you discover that your team member is motivated by money, find ways to offer bonuses for deadlines, volume, customer satisfaction—anything you want to improve. Emphasize the earning potential with each new project or program you introduce.

Recognition: Some people will do much more for public acknowledgement than they ever will for bonus pay. If Debra likes to be recognized and had the big idea that made the project work, or put in lots of extra hours, let everyone know. And don’t think that a private acknowledgement will be the same. Don’t “spare” other team members’ feelings at the expense of Debra’s. And don’t try to get her to accept another reward in exchange for giving up her recognition!

Responsibility: Do you know people who like to be in charge? They want to show what they’re capable of doing, and handing them a larger responsibility after successfully completing a task is like candy to them—or ice cream! If your team member is motivated this way, pay attention when a project ends. Make sure he has more opportunities to be in charge and be successful.

Personal Improvement: It might sound like a fable, but it’s true. There are people who seek out new and different kinds of work just to challenge themselves and learn new things. This sort of team member might take on a project just because it’s intimidating. Or she might like coordinating with the graphics team just so she’ll learn about graphics. Make sure you offer her variety or she’ll be bored.

Flexible Schedule: We all want more time off and freedom to do things we enjoy. But for a team member who values balance in his life, this can be the key motivator. He might not be willing to put in six weeks of extra-long days for a bonus or recognition, but he will do it in exchange for flex-time to be with his family or enjoy his hobbies. He won’t consistently work extra hours for bonuses or overtime, like the money-motivated members. But he’ll give his best when he commits.

Prizes: This motivator is pretty similar to good old-fashioned money, but there’s a difference. A woman might work much harder for a nice company car than for a car allowance because she has something to show off. A man might work towards a possible ten thousand dollar bonus, thinking the money will pay off a loan or go towards a home improvement project. But offer him the exact same value as a trip for the family to Hawaii and you might see amazing effort. The prize is exciting and it’s shared, so the family gets into the enthusiasm. By the way, you’ll be able to tell the difference immediately. The money-motivated will grouse and ask, “Can’t I just get the cash?”

The Cause: You’ll find this motivator in many fields, not just with volunteers or non-profit employees. Shauna volunteers another hour each week because there’s a waiting list of children in the reading program. Ted puts in weeks of long hours to be sure the agency gets the grant that will serve the elderly. Janet goes above and beyond on the marketing campaign because she wants her company’s shoe sales to beat their top competitor for the first time in history. The big warning—The motivation has to be built-in. Otherwise, people say “yes” out of guilt and then burn out.

What makes a community? This is the question my friend Sarah Sharp used to begin a telecourse called Cultivating Community we co-presented at the beginning of the month.

Our participants suggested that community is defined by many things. These included:

• Having similar interests
• Being a supportive environment
• Accepting other people
• Encouraging members to grow through their involvement and become more than they were

Next we asked, What other qualities do communities have?

They said communities usually have:

• Mutual goals
• A specific culture with values that define it
• Strong ethics

We agreed communities need:

• A commitment to personal growth
• Sharing
• Compassion
• Justice
• Heart values

One participant provided a metaphor from the story of stone soup, where one stranger helps all the group members share what little they have to create a wonderful meal of abundance when they otherwise think they are poor.

People come together in community by focusing on the group’s shared goals. This helps them let go of their individual agendas and helps create a spirit of cooperation. Decisions are made jointly, through consensus. In a genuine community differences are respected and even seen as valuable.

Conflicts are resolved openly and with honesty, but with enough care and respect that individuals feel comfortable to express their feelings and opinions. At the highest level of connection—a very rare thing—a community can be a place of great personal safety, where individuals can disclose thoughts and feelings and past experiences they normally keep private. The group’s empathy and acceptance can bring healing and transformation.

Each of us can take steps to cultivate community in groups we are in. We can take courageous steps to model honesty and openness. We can go out of our way to see things from someone else’s perspective. We can encourage discussions that help the group discover its goals, and we can help the group stay focused on them.