The Leadership Playlist

Over the last decade we've had villainous leaders who have brought us "shock and awe," Axes of Evil, greed, corruption, fiscal mismanagement, soaring international debt, destructive political partisanship, Enron, Worldcom, and AIG. These stories are embedded in our public consciousness and over time they become our reality, a collective tale of the power of leadership at work in our lives -- for the worse.

We're in a cultural, as much as an economic, recession, and this narrative often includes themes like, "Others are to blame" or, "There's nothing I can do about it," or "That's just the way things are." The recession happened, and we're all victims.

But while powerful forces are at work in the world around us, we deceive ourselves if we fail to recognize that each of us plays a role in constructing this reality. We also deceive ourselves by thinking the current story of our world condition is the only possible scenario. If we simply preserve the status quo, we deserve to be vilified by our children.

Why become an effective storyteller? Yes, you can repair your reputation, deliver more effective messages and have a greater impact on your people. But, ultimately, storytelling also enables you to create a more powerful organization.

Narratives promote alignment, and a more cohesive culture yields greater performance and productivity. But alignment doesn't mean coercing others to agree with you. When people are encouraged to share the fundamental principles that are essential to their lives and work, they discover commonalities. An enduring bond forms, outlasting daily disagreements, pressures and stress. Over time, this organic approach can shape your new legacy and lift your company to a higher level of effectiveness.

Here are five ways to use storytelling to promote alignment in your organization.

The news that a terrorist came close to detonating a bomb on a flight in U.S. airspace was shocking, but perhaps more disturbing was news that information about the purported bomber was known to a number of national security agencies that did not act on this information.

As many experts pointed out, failure to transfer information among these agencies was eerily similar to the communication breakdowns that occurred in the months leading to September 2001. For years careers in government were built on information gained from one source but withheld from rival agencies or rivals within agencies. A key recommendation of the panel that investigated the 9/11 tragedy was to facilitate a freer flow of communications among agencies responsible for ensuring national security. Clearly there is more work to do.

Failure to ensure the free flow of information is not a communication problem; it is a failure of execution. Early reporting on the investigation into the attempted bombing indicates that employees closest to the information were passing it along to counterparts in other agencies. But somewhere in hand-offs among the State Department, FBI, CIA, NSA and Homeland Security information and momentum were lost.

Want your organization or department to be the very best it can be? This past year has been a tough one for many, but 2010 offers a fresh start. Here are seven resolutions to deepen and improve your leadership, not just for your own sake but for the sake of those you lead.

I was still in high school when my father was fired from the San Francisco Examiner. My dad loved the newspaper business and his job working with the newsboys who sold papers on street corners.

I will never forget that afternoon. I came home from school to find my father in the kitchen, bent over the kitchen sink with his head in his hands. My heart went out to him -- I knew he must be devastated. But then Dad straightened up, grinned, and said: "Now we're going to have some fun!" Turned out, my sister was dying his grey hair brown so he'd look younger when he went looking for a new job.

Witnessing this kind of resilience at a young age had a profound impact on me. My father -- who went on to operate several new businesses before he died on the job in his 80s -- made the vagaries of change seem like a great adventure. Same goes for my mother, who took up country-western dancing and remarried as a 70-year-old widow.

I don't remember my parents ever sharing slogans or advice about "managing change," but I do remember exactly how they handled the sometimes frightening changes life dealt them.

As leaders, this is how the people around you learn about managing change -- by watching what you do and sensing how you feel, not by simply listening to what you say. Here are five examples of leaders who "walk the talk" in their organizations:

1. "Valuing diversity" is a stated goal for many organizations. But at Bayer Corporation, CEO Greg Babe's genuine commitment to a diverse workplace is well known, and the company has a track record of hiring disabled workers. For five years Babe has been the executive sponsor of Bayer's Diversity Advisory Council, and he currently serves as Chairman of the Pittsburgh Disability Employment Project for Freedom. As he recently wrote in an op-ed for the local Pittsburgh paper, "Business leaders must move beyond myths... It is imperative to adapt hiring procedures and work environments to be inclusive for all workers, including those with disabilities."

2. Research shows that only about 13 percent of family businesses survive into the third generation. But at Bassett Mechanical, a mechanical engineering company, Kim Basett-Heitzmann, helped secure her position as president and COO the hard way. She worked as an employee -- not an observer or a figurehead -- for 10 years, gaining on-the-job experience in almost every department before taking over the top spot in 2007.

3. It's one thing to proclaim that communication is paramount to openness and collaboration, and another to have a leader who makes that proclamation a reality. At Cisco Systems, John Chambers constantly relies on visual technology to communicate with global stakeholders. He holds quarterly TelePresence meeting with customers, press, and analysts from around the world and runs a vlog where "On My Mind" and "On Your Mind" sessions allow him to interact personally with employees around the world. In 2007, Chambers hosted the first virtual company meeting, which brought people face-to-face in both "real" and virtual formats -- and changed the way company meetings were conducted at Cisco.

4. The Kaplan Thaler Group, an advertising agency, was founded with this simple but powerful philosophy: It pays to be nice. And its leaders, Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, are living proof that nice delivers! My favorite story from their best-selling book, The Power of Nice, happened when the agency was in tough competition for a certain client. KTG won the business, and the client explained why. The client had fully expected that agency employees would act nicely toward them; after all, they were the source of potential revenue. But what impressed them most was how genuinely nice everyone at KTG was to each other. The client knew that the agency wasn't going to be side-tracked by back-biting or office politics, but instead, would focus all of its energy on collaborating to come up with break-through creative ideas.

5. Some leaders walk the talk -- and others walk before they talk. This is the case with Paul Hogan who founded senior-care business Home Instead, Inc. Hogan spent 12 years caring for his own grandmother , an experience that convinced him of the need for non-medical care and elder companionship services to help seniors live independently at home. In 2008, Home Instead provided more than 40 million hours of care to seniors around the world. Hogan is now taking an public active role in advocating for the needs of seniors at both personal and policy levels. Hogan's book, "The Stages of Senior Care," guides readers through challenging care-related decisions. He has brought attention to aging-related issues at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, the Ambrosetti conference on Lake Como, and forums across the U.S.

So, in this season of presents and giving, I'd like to remind you that one of the greatest gifts you have to offer: Living out your values in a genuine, active way -- it may inspire others more than you know. Happy holidays!

This article is the third in a series on becoming a "Chief Story Teller": Previous columns were "Part one, the challenge", and "Mastering the three 'I's' of story-telling."

"Marley was dead: to begin with."

Dickens' dramatic opening to A Christmas Carol immediately grabs our attention. We must read on.

In creating your own story for employees and clients, you have to grab interest in a similarly dramatic way. I started this series saying now's the time for beleaguered CEOs to reframe how they're seen and what they want -- and powerful storytelling is one of the most effective ways of accomplishing this. Here are the essentials to riveting your audience.

Can a failing organization succeed if it embraces a new vision?

That is a question Clint Eastwood explores in his newest film, Invictus, which tells the story of the South African rugby team's quest for the World Cup. A new vision of post-apartheid South Africa intersects in the personas of Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) and Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) who, as president and rugby-team captain, work together for the team and, ultimately, to create a new form of nationhood founded on reconciliation and redemption.

This article continues the series begun last Thursday with "From CEO to chief story teller: Part one, the challenge."

You're on the road to becoming your company's Chief Story Teller. Let's begin with the good news: You're already better than you might think. Here, we'll explore three capabilities that will help you become a pro.

If CEO was ever a revered position, worthy of respect, that time is gone. In our collective consciousness, CEOs have become villains. The term itself now evokes Wall Street tycoons asking for government handouts, heartless downsizers, and those who reward themselves with perks despite the call for belt-tightening.

If you're a CEO yourself, you're probably bristling right now and saying, "That doesn't describe me." But the fact is, dear CEOs, even the innocent among us have work to do. In a time of economic hardship, we need to not only renew our business mission and inspire followers, but also redefine the very role of a CEO -- and that starts with storytelling.

Two senior citizens, one an artist, the other a businessman, are speaking out.

"[The U.S. is] becoming more juvenile as a nation. The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits." That's Clint Eastwood lamenting the state of our national psyche.

"It's time to get off our butts, cure ourselves of an aggravated case of short term-itis, and create a movement that makes it safe for our politicians to opt for the hard choices and unsafe for them to continue to do nothing--to deny the undeniable and pretend we can sustain the unsustainable." That's Pete Peterson, former Commerce Secretary and founder of the Blackstone Group.

Eastwood states what many Americans feel; Peterson offers a solution. You can boil down both comments to a cry for enlightened leadership, one that rises above partisanship to create solutions for an economy and a nation in deep trouble.

It is a leader's responsibility to provide direction. But sometimes leaders need to take direction. Case in point is the advice campaign manager David Plouffe gave to candidate Barack Obama during his senatorial campaign in 2004. "You just have to let go and trust" your people, Plouffe told Obama, as he recounts in his new book. To his credit, the candidate did learn to let go and allow others to manage the campaign while he focused on being the candidate.