Hello all.  It has been a few months since I published my last blog post.  Took the summer off to concentrate on, well, just taking it easy and figuring out content for this blog.  I trust you all had a wonderful summer – I know I did.  Now that I am back to writing this blog, I thought I would start out with something one of you asked me to write about – a time when I made a mistake as a cop and learned a valuable lesson from it.  This lesson has stuck with me since the incident happened in 1979 so here we go!

As most of you know, I was a Police Officer for a few years, in Oakland, California in the late 70’s prior to joining CIA.  The Oakland Police Department was a seminal experience in my life.  I had always wanted to become a Police Officer since I was a little boy.  I have pictures of myself at age 6 or 7, at one of my birthday parties, wearing a toy shoulder rig and a toy .38 caliber snub nose revolver.  Just like the ones I saw in all the detective and police shows I used to watch on TV.  Those old enough to remember “77 Sunset Strip,” “Hawaiian Eye” and “Peter Gunn” will know what I am talking about. Those who don’t, Bing these shows (have nothing against Google but I DID work for Microsoft for 16 years!)  Joining the Oakland Police Department (OPD) was my first real professional job and was a testing ground for me.  I loved being a cop and the city itself a tough one to work in.  We had a lot of crime including the usual cast of characters: pimps, prostitutes, armed robbers, burglars, thieves, murderers, rapists, juvenile delinquents, Hells Angels, etc.  We saw them all in Oakland.  But, we were well trained and I was blessed to work with some of the finest men and women I have ever worked with in my life, to include CIA and Microsoft.  I thrived in that environment.  I was the first one out of our academy (outside of two other officers who had previous law enforcement experience prior to coming to OPD) to be cut loose from field training and allowed to ride in my own patrol car working my own beat that was assigned to me. Pretty heady for a 21 year old!  I think I did my share of good there in my short time on the force.  More importantly, this was my first time, in a professional sense, seeing great leadership up close and personal.  Now let’s get to the mistake and what I mean about “Lessons Learned from Making Mistakes.”

I mentioned the prostitutes and pimps that we had in Oakland.  The beat that I worked in West Oakland had a lot of these folks working on one of the major streets in my area, San Pablo Avenue.  It used to be kind of a cat and mouse thing where prostitutes and pimps and sometimes their customers or “johns” would be on a corner on the street, see a police car, and dash into one of the many ratty “hotels” on the street where they would hide until we left the area, or until we chased them into the establishments to arrest them.  This is if they were completing a transaction where money was exchanged etc.  If they were just standing on the corner, there wasn’t much we could do other than park our cars in front of them, or get out and do a field interrogation, getting their  names and ID for future reference.  Notwithstanding the prostitution itself, there were a lot of bad crimes (robberies, drugs, shootings etc.) associated with this activity.

All of us carried large industrial sided briefcases which held our paperwork, flashlights as well as a copy of the California Penal Code.  In the Police Academy, we went through a rigorous curriculum in the California Penal Code since it was the basis of how we made arrests legally.  I was a student of the Penal Code and one day, was searching for a something in the code that would allow me to find another law to enforce this prostitution problem.  I found one code that I thought “aha! – I can use this one!”  It was California Penal Code 408 “Unlawful Assembly.”  It said that “two or more people assembling together for the purpose of a) doing something illegal or b) doing something legal but in a violent, boisterous or tumultuous manner.   In my simple rookie cop brain, I thought I had found a viable law to arrest these folks.  So, one day, I decided to test out my theory.  I found two prostitutes hanging on the street and after identifying them, I proceeded to arrest them on Penal Code 408.  I remember to this day, one of the suspects asking me what that was?  One thing I found out as a cop, most of your veteran criminals knew the penal code sections of the laws they were violating as much as you did.  When I told the two ladies “Penal Code 408” they both looked at each other and then to me and said “what is that!”  I proceeded to tell them what the code said and they looked quizzically at me but went with the flow, no problem.

I thought I had been quite inventive when about an hour later after the arrest and the suspects were booked into the city jail, I received a communication from my Sergeant, a great guy named Nishihara, to meet him at a nearby location.  (In those days, we were blessed with a Dept. of Justice grant that gave all of our patrol vehicles, early computers where you could run license plates and even send messages car-to-car.)  That is how I got the notification from Nishihara to meet him.  When I got to the location, Nishihara was outside of his vehicle with a slight frown on his face.  I thought “oh boy, what did I do?”  Nishihara asked me about the arrest I had just made and I proceeded to regale him with my knowledge of the Penal Code with regard to section 408.  Nishihara then proceeded to tell me that I had arrested the two prostitutes on what in essence was the “riot act.” He explained to me that the statute was meant to curb violent congregations of people, not for prostitutes loitering.  He said they had to cut the two ladies loose – no charges.

At that point, I felt pretty low.  I had made a mistake. One that meant that I had used a statute wrongly to arrest two people, and that they had to be cut loose.  It didn’t matter (and shouldn’t) that we all knew the two persons arrested and that they had been arrested numerous times before for a variety of offenses in the neighborhood.  Bottom line, I blew it. Now Nishihara could have done one of two things:  a) Read ME the riot act, or b) Make this a learning opportunity.  I have seen many so-called leaders over my decades of management, do the former and very few, the latter.  Nishihara did the latter.

He told me that he understood why I did what I did and that he knew I thought I was using the Penal Code correctly.  He admonished me to check with senior officers in the future if I felt inclined to be “innovative” with my use of the Penal Code.  But the bottom line is that he wanted me to learn from this.  He knew I wasn’t trying to abuse my authority and that in my rookie zeal, I was trying to find some lawful way to take these persons off the streets.  That said, he reminded me that I still had a lot to learn, to come to him as well if I needed guidance in future and to go forth and do no more harm – smile.

Nishihara was my first real boss in the working world.  The fact that I remember this incident over 40 years later tells you the impression this incident left on me.  If Nishihara had done the former course of action, criticizing me and making me feel stupid, I would have remembered that as well.  He knew what all good leaders know.  Your troops will make mistakes, guaranteed. Sometimes they will do it with the best of intentions.  How you, as a leader, react to these mistakes, and turn the mistakes into lessons learned, will make a profound difference on your employee, for the good, or for the bad.  Had he reacted in a negative way, berating me and making me feel guilty, maybe I would have never been inclined to take chances again in my professional career.  Good leaders must use these times to coach, mentor and build up your employees so they feel emboldened to continue to innovate and try new things without feeling like if they mess up, that is it for them.

I have never been perfect as a leader and am sure, in the course of my decades of leadership experience, I have gotten angry at an employee and have not made them feel good at all. But I have always tried to make amends, talk to the employee, forgive them, encourage them and help them move forward.  That is what I encourage all of you who are in leadership positions to remember.  Nishihara’s response to my mistake has reverberated with me, positively, for decades.  That is how profound your response is to one of your employees when he/she makes a mistake.  Remember this.  Thanks Sgt. Nishihara for being an awesome leader and for giving me the chance to learn from my mistake.

Until next time, keep on leading and please give me feedback on my blog and what things you may want me to cover in future posts.

 

 

 

 

My wife and I, along with some great friends from the Seattle area, recently took a trip to Napa, California for a weekend of wine tasting and fine dining.  We were blessed to have won an auction lot last year at the Auction of Washington Wines while still living in the Seattle area.  The auction supports great causes including Children’s Hospital of Seattle, so we felt good about bidding for this particular auction item which included this great trip to Napa.

But it is always interesting to me how, even in the midst of a fun-filled weekend in the Napa Valley, leadership lessons can crop up and inspire me to write another blog post.  This happened during this fine weekend a few weeks ago.  We were lucky enough to stay at a private estate, Estate 8, which is a private estate on the One Hope Winery property in the Napa Valley. 

The property was beautiful and our main contact during our group’s stay was the Estate and Operations Manager, Daniel Gora.  Daniel is a young man in his 20’s who recently took this role at the estate. His duties include overseeing everything having to do with the day-to-day activities of the estate.  He makes sure the guests are well fed, have plenty of good wine, and are well taken care of during their stay.  His oversight includes the housekeeping operations and in general, making sure the estate runs smoothly and the guests have a great time.

Upon arrival at the estate, we were greeted by Daniel with glasses of the Estate’s Fume Blanc. .  A nice touch I have to admit 🙂  What struck me about Daniel was his sincerity.  He didn’t just pretend to be happy to see us and greet us, he sincerely was pleasant and friendly.  We were automatically made to feel welcome.  Sincerity is one of the basic tenants of leadership.  You have to be sincere, warts and all. People can spot a phony a mile away. Daniel was far from being a phony.  He took delight in giving us a tour of the estate and we all definitely felt we could count on him to take care of us during our weekend there.

Another thing that struck me was that upon being given the keys to our rooms, Daniel pitched in to help us take our bags to the room. There are no traditional “bell hops” at the estate.  It is a two story structure and we had to go up a flight of stairs to get to our room on the second floor. Luckily, my wife and I, though being in our 60’s, can still traverse going upstairs with luggage without help.  Daniel, however, insisted on helping people with their luggage.  I doubt that this is in his job description in general but he gladly and cheerfully helped to take our luggage upstairs.  Daniel is a true gentleman.  He also displayed another leadership trait – no job is too beneath him.   He is the estate  Operations Manager.  He has a lot of moving parts to deal with daily.  But taking bags upstairs for guests is something he did because he is a leader.  Leaders provide help and support and can get in the weeds when they need to be.

On the Saturday morning of the weekend we were there at the estate, Daniel cooked a wonderful breakfast for all of the guests of the estate.  Eggs, bacon to die for, mimosas – the whole works were on the menu.  On top of that, Daniel, earlier in the morning before making breakfast, went to a local bakery to buy some English muffins that are Ophrah Winfrey’s favorites.  I normally don’t eat English muffins but I have to admit, these were to die for.  When we arrived for breakfast, Daniel was busy making breakfast, the coffee pots were full, and we wanted for nothing.  Now mind you, Daniel is having to do a lot of things to get breakfast on the table, not only for our group, but for other guests who were at the estate that weekend.

At one point, Daniel was assisted by another estate worker.  But somewhere in the process, after breakfast was over, my wife overheard a conversation between Daniel and this other worker. This other worker had some obligation/appointment to attend to and Daniel told her to go ahead and make her appointment.  My wife overheard Daniel saying “I will take care of everything here.”  Mind you, at that point after breakfast, the place was a mess of plates, glasses, food that needed to be disposed of etc.  Hard enough for two people, let alone one.  But Daniel, sensing that his colleague really needed to go, didn’t pull rank and say she had to stay to help him. He understood the importance of her engagement and said he would clean up the place on his own.  Which he did!! Leaders, true leaders, are devotees of Servant Leadership.  No task is beneath them and they think about their troops first.  They think about themselves second.  Daniel displayed true Servant Leadership in this instance.  I suspect he does this all the time!

When I heard of this, I immediately had my inspiration for another blog post.  I told Daniel that I thought he was an exceptional young leader and was impressed with what I saw. I told him that I was going to write a blog post on him.  You could tell he was genuinely embarrassed by this, but happy that I thought of him as a leader.  True leaders are humble. They don’t toot their own horns. We have too many so-called leaders in our world today who only know the word “me” and not “them.”  Daniel knows the value of a team and in my opinion, is a true leader.

On our way home after a marvelous weekend, I thought about Daniel and the leadership traits I observed from him during the course of our stay at the estate.  As far as I know, and I could be wrong on this, Daniel has no military experience or formal leadership training.  He truly is one of those people who know how to lead and how to treat people, at all levels.  He treated his colleague and those who worked for him, with the same respect he gave to us, the guests at the estate.

Oh, to have more leaders in business and government like Daniel! The world would certainly be a better place. Well done Daniel!  Keep it up!

Until next time, signing out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I write this, my wife and I are currently on a river cruise on the Rhine River. The ship is wonderful and as with most cruise ships, the rooms have access to satellite TV. The other day, I was fiddling with the remote control for the TV and found out that half the channels, all the news channels, were not accessible. This was a short lived glitch but it got me to thinking about the gist of this blog post. Here I am, on a cruise, and for a brief nanosecond, I got upset that I couldn’t have access to all the bad news in the world!

There is something I have been preaching for years when making speeches or being on panels on leadership. And that is how you, as a leader, need to know when to let go of work and relax. Simply put, when to be lazy and unwind.

I, like many of you reading this blog, are Type A personalities, many in very fast-paced, stressful and all encompassing careers. You were hired because you had the skills, knowledge and personality to work hard, get results, innovate and create positive results for your companies. Folks like us thrive in these environments. We often complain about having to deal with a myriad of problems when you are a leader e.g., Budget/HR/Personality issues on top of the daily issues you have to deal with in any given profession. Mine was (and still is to a certain extent) Security. Though most of us won’t admit it, we thrive when confronted with problems that we and our teams can eventually solve. After all, how do you test yourself, your resolve, your intellect and your imagination, if you don’t have problems to confront and overcome.

However, this way to live and work hard to overcome problems and further your career aspirations, is a double-edged sword. Because many leaders don’t know when to turn off their Type A jets and unwind and “be lazy.” Now I am not talking about being a sloth (though my wife finds sloths cute and wonderful creatures!) What I am talking about is learning to savor and use your down time wisely.

In my previous life as CSO at Microsoft, even on vacations, you had to make sure you were connected as invariably, some security incident would occur just as you were about to enjoy your first margarita (in my case, a Vesper) of the vacation. But that comes with the territory. Those are exigent circumstances.

What I am talking about is not routinely answering emails while on vacation or during your off hours. How many of you are guilty of not only responding to non-urgent emails when off duty, but pinging your direct reports on email, text etc., when you should be offline. I’ve been guilty of that and earlier in my career, was called on it by some of my directs who told me that I was on vacation and that I should stay off email – that they were taking care of the fort and that I should enjoy vacation. They were right!

Leaders need to learn the art of being lazy and relaxing when they can. You are no good to anyone if you are constantly frazzled, stressed out and up tight. Not only are you not doing yourself any good, you are not modeling good leadership to your troops. Leaders who constantly bombard their direct reports with non-critical email, texts etc., when your direct reports are on vacation or enjoying their weekends, will only emphasize to your directs that this is the proper way to behave, and it isn’t. They will feel like they too, have to be “on” and available to answer silly emails 24/7. They will then not only not be able to relax themselves, when they should be recharging their batteries, they will instill these same bad traits to their directs when they become people managers themselves. It is a vicious cycle.

It just amazes me that how many leaders don’t get this and sadly, never will. I’ve had leaders myself who would pester me on weekends and holidays over non-critical issues and would in effect, ruin my time off. That is being selfish. Just because you, as leaders, haven’t learned the discipline of taking your time off wisely, doesnt mean you have the right to impose that lack of discipline on your team and get them on edge.

Real leaders need to model this behavior. Yes, when emergencies happen, and they will, its all hands on deck, whether you are on vacation or not. That is a given. That is the job. But in non critical situations, I challenge managers who want to be real leaders, to really use your down time to unwind and recharge. And just as importantly, not to unduly affect your team’s down time by pinging them with unnecessary communications. Let them have their time off with their friends and families and leave them alone.

And for you non-people managers out there, the lesson is the same for you too.  Take your time off.  Don’t you also get in the trap of working when you should be taking time off.  I used to emphasize to mentees all the time that any entity, whether it be the CIA, or Microsoft, do not love you.  They give you wonderful careers, experiences, friends for life, health benefits etc.  But at the end of the day (and I would tap the wall of my office for emphasis) these entities don’t love you and will use as much of you as you allow them too. They don’t care if you work every weekend and on holidays.  And at the end of a 20-30 year career, you may look back on a successful career but one where you missed too many birthdays, anniversaries and special occasions due to your always “being on.”  You don’t get those days back. You never will.  

Life is short. Time is short. Work hard but learn to be lazy!

By the way, this is not work for me so I have the right to blog on this cruise. Now time for that Vesper!  😎

As I am writing this, my wife and I are in a hotel room in Amsterdam. We are starting a short vacation with some members of a wine club, taking a river cruise down the Rhine River. Writing about leadership right now should be the farthest thing from my so called mind. But I guess it is a default thing within me that when I see examples of leadership, both good and bad, I keep note of it to hopefully make myself a better leader.

 

We flew over on a Delta flight from Detroit (no direct flights from Las Vegas to Amsterdam.) As soon as we were seated, I observed the purser onboard the plane. A gentleman by the name of Don. One of the first things that struck me about Don was his smile, appearance and demeanor. Don was welcoming to all the passengers he was charged with taking care of. His clothing was impeccable and his manner was professional, yet very warm and inviting. This was a person who obviously took pride in his profession. I also observed him as he interfaced with his team of fellow flight attendants. My wife is a former flight attendant so I know how hard and demanding their jobs can be, especially with difficult passengers.

 

I observed two flight attendants, at the beginning of the flight, trying to set up the trays so they could come around with juice, champagne, water and Heineken (after all, we were headed to the Netherlands and you have to have Heineken onboard!) Unfortunately, one flight attendant must have dropped something while setting up the trays as I saw a commotion up front and the one flight attendant apologizing to the other one profusely. She kept saying “sorry, I’m sorry” to the other flight attendant and to Don. I thought I heard her say something to the effect of being tired or not having done this (working a flight I assume) for a while. Don could’ve gotten upset as whatever happened caused a small delay in getting the drinks out to the passengers. But I saw him tell the flight attendant in question that “it was okay.” He smiled, made light of the situation, and tried to take the burden off of the flight attendant. He didn’t berate her in front of her co-workers, something I have observed and have heard about many times over my years in business and government (the essence of lousy leadership!) What is interesting is that while we were in the gate area getting ready to board the plane, the gate agent scanning everyone’s tickets before we got onboard, must have made a mistake as her supervisor was chastising her, in front of passengers waiting to board the plane about something. I couldn’t hear what it was about but the poor gate agent was chagrined and then had to have her attention on her supervisor, while trying to process passengers on the plane. Don didn’t do anything like that. He understood, the way good leaders do, that people make mistakes. He uplifted her with his smile, with his reassurance that it was okay. Don understood that he needed her to be on her game and making her feel worse than she already did would do nothing but make things worse.   He was not only thinking of the flight attendant, but was also thinking about us!

 

When I was a cop, I made a boneheaded mistake one time as a rookie, and my Sergeant, who could’ve really gotten on my case, instead, met me in a quiet location on my beat, told me what I had done wrong, said he understood the rationale and told me i can use that incident as an example of what not to do and to continue to work on being a good cop. It was one of my first observations of leadership (I’ll talk more about this incident in a future blog post – can’t give everything away all at once!)

 

At the end of the flight, Don went to each and every passenger in his section. He told us how much he enjoyed having us on the flight and that he hoped we had a good experience. It wasn’t fake or phony at all. It was a sincere appreciation for all of us who were on the flight. He was genuine. Great leaders are genuine. Warts and all. Great leaders let their teams know, on a regular basis, how much they are appreciated. You have to verbalize it. You cannot “Vulcan Mind Meld” your gratitude to the troops, (all you Star Trek fans know what I mean by this) you have to tell them, personally and honestly.

 

Funny how one flight brought up some good examples of leadership. Don was caring, approachable, professional, uplifted his team, genuinely wanted to do the best job he could to take care of us, and took pride in his profession. I will probably never see Don again, but he is one fine leader from my observation. And he also gave us some good Ghirardelli chocolates at the end of the flight, which didn’t hurt my opinion of him either. From Amsterdam, signing off until next time.

 

Mike Howard