Leadership Lessons with The Beatles

Actionable Tips and Tools for Becoming Better at Leading

Shantha Mohan

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000585957
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Leadership has gone through many changes in the last couple of decades. We have realized that outstanding leadership is not about being authoritarian and exercising control. It is not only about the intelligence quotient (IQ) but also about emotional intelligence. To be an exceptional leader, you need several essential skills, all of which you can learn. The skills are nuanced with emotional intelligence, which you can gain. This book is unique: the author weaves leadership ideas with the song titles of The Beatles, making this book fun, playful, thoughtful, and valuable. Each chapter is organized with the key message on a leadership attribute prompted by a Beatles' song title, tips on becoming better on the topic, a practice suggestion, questions to ask yourself to think about the message, and resources for more reading. The author begins each chapter with how and why she chose the song and includes fun facts. It's an engaging book that blends the words of perhaps the greatest rock band ever—The Beatles—with the basic principles for becoming a better leader.

1 LEADERSHIP ATTRIBUTES

Chapter 1 Getting Better

DOI: 10.4324/9781003267546-2

The song “Getting Better” makes me feel optimistic when I listen to it. Leaders encounter many roadblocks in achieving their goals, and optimism keeps them going despite the need to deal with them. It helps them view every obstacle as an opportunity. Some are born optimists. For others, there are strategies you can use to build it up. In this chapter, we will look at the benefits of optimism and methods to improve it.

About the Song

“Getting Better,” released in 1967, features in the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The song includes several instruments, including the Indian tambura played by George, piano by George Martin, and hand clapping by all The Beatles. Paul wrote most of it, with some added lyrics by John. Knowing how optimistic Paul is, you can guess who wrote which lines. The title is upbeat, but John’s lyrics in this song talk about his dark past. When I listen to this song, I hear only optimism. I don’t register the negativity, and I guess it is because I am an eternal optimist!

Getting Better—Optimism

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns. The pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.

—Khalil Gibran¹

As a leader, you encounter situations that test your abilities every day. A trusted colleague leaves the organization. A key customer stopped using your services. Revenue numbers don’t meet the expectations for the quarter. The board wants you to take an exit you don’t want to. A recruiting site reports a bad rating on your company’s leadership. All these unforeseen situations can bring your spirits down.

Founders’ Optimism

When my cofounders and I started Retail Solutions in 2003, we were going to harness the power of all the data generated by radio-frequency identification (RFID) and build a successful company. We called the company T3Ci (The Tag Tracking Company Inc.). That year, Walmart, a major retailer, required its suppliers to place RFID tags with electronic product codes on their products. We developed software that would read and understand RFID data, and retailers and their Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) suppliers used the analytical insights we produced to improve sales, promotions, and out-of-stock (OOS) metrics. The company received venture funding and expanded its operations. We processed the billionth RFID tag-read in 2007, and by the end of the year, we served over 30 customers, including four of the top five CPG manufacturers.

Then calamity struck. Walmart ended its mandate. We encountered a problem that seemed insurmountable. We might have closed our operations, and that would have been the end of our start-up. But we did not. We pivoted. We acted quickly and acquired the Retail Data Services business unit of VeriSign and formed Retail Solutions Inc. Instead of analyzing RFID tags, we now focused on point-of-sale (POS) data from retailers. We formed partnerships with major retailers and became leaders in CPG retail analytics domain.²

If we had given up, hundreds of our employees would have found themselves without jobs. Our investors would have suffered losses. Instead, we moved forward to find a solution to our problem. We recognized the positive aspects of T3Ci—our reputation, our dedication to service, and our customers who loved us and wanted us to succeed—and used those to our advantage. Our optimism helped us move past the obstacle.

Optimistic Leaders

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation publishes an annual letter. They addressed the 2017 letter³ to the investor and philanthropist, Warren Buffett, who inspires them. In this letter, they thanked Warren for his gift to the foundation. They talked about the activities undertaken and the progress they have seen in making life better for everyone worldwide. In the last 25 years, extreme poverty in the world has been cut in half. Yet, in a survey, 99% underestimated the achievement. Bill cites this and says the world needs more optimism. Melinda adds that we all need to have more optimism, but we cannot expect that things will be taken care of automatically. We need the drive and commitment to make things better and the conviction to succeed. She says this is something they find in Warren. His success is not the reason he is optimistic. Instead, his optimism made him successful.

Walt Disney, the founder of Disney animation movies and the Disney empire, was an optimistic leader. Do you know the story of the birth of the most adored animation character Mickey Mouse he created? After a failed business meeting in New York in 1928, Disney sent a telegram to his brother Roy, telling him not to worry, before boarding the train back to California. He said everything was okay and would provide the details in person. He didn’t tell Roy that he tried to promote his existing popular character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but lost his contract. The indomitable Disney sketched furiously on his three-day train journey back, and a brand-new character Mickey Mouse was born. The rest is history. Optimistic leaders don’t give up in the face of difficulties but persevere. They are not just hopeful but have the will to turn that hope into reality. The cliched sayings such as “if you get a lemon, make lemonade” or “instead of looking at the glass as half empty, see that it is half full” come to mind when describing their behavior. Such leaders are relentless in searching for new ideas and keeping an open mind about possibilities.

Optimism Benefits

A 2019 study⁴ of 69,744 women and 1429 men found that of those who took part, those with more optimism are likely to live longer than 85 years. All the participants completed surveys on several factors, such as levels of optimism, overall health, diets, and habits, such as smoking and drinking. The women took part in the survey for 10 years, and the men for 30 years. The study validated the results by considering age, level of education, illnesses, etc. On average, optimistic people have 11–15% longer life than those with lower levels of optimism, the study found. We are not sure why optimism helps people live longer. Perhaps they don’t give up and take care of themselves. They progress in their life journeys cheerfully, even when faced with setbacks.

Optimistic leaders are successful for many reasons. The stories of many outstanding leaders, such as Walt Disney, tell us they are problem-solvers. They work to overcome roadblocks. Failures don’t get them down, and they deal with them much better than those who are pessimistic. They take complete responsibility for their decisions and are not afraid to take risks. Optimists are hopeful about what the future might bring. As Melinda said, they not only have hope but work to make it a reality. Leaders with positive attitudes make their entire team optimistic. Their actions and communication convey the can-do-spirit to their teams and inspire them.

Building Optimism

Some are born optimists. I am one of them. If you are not, let’s look at some strategies to increase your optimism.

There are two theories of optimism. One of them, called dispositional theory (or trait theory), says it is a built-in characteristic. This trait drives everything that happens to the person, such as mental and physical well-being. The other one is the explanatory theory. Its foundation is based on how one mentally explains the events that happen to them. Martin Seligman⁵ is a proponent of the explanatory style theory of optimism. He says pessimists can change their ways to become optimists, based on his previous work on “learned helplessness.”⁶

It helps to understand the difference between pessimists and optimists in how they react to an adverse event. We can describe this on a spectrum of permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Optimist–pessimist continuum.

A pessimist treats a defeat as permanent, while an optimist thinks it is temporary. When encountered with setbacks, a pessimist perceives he is a total failure, but an optimist treats them as something specific to the setback. A pessimist personalizes setbacks by blaming herself. On the contrary, the optimist believes the environment is at fault.

Let’s review an example of a setback that two leaders experience. One of them is optimistic, and the other is pessimistic.

Imagine the setback as losing a customer. Consider how each of the leaders would react to this setback. The optimistic leader would consider it as a misfortune. She would not blame herself. The loss of the customer would make her analyze the problem, and she would come up with a plan of action to get the customer back and safeguard against other such failures. But the pessimistic leader would blame herself and consider the setback as permanent. She would feel dejected and not attempt to win the customer back. The feeling of failure would permeate everything she does.

Even extreme optimists may not react with utmost positive reactions under some setbacks. Yet, because they are optimists, they can overcome any temporary negative responses.

The ABCDE Method

For an aspiring leader, the challenge is to move from left to right on the above spectrum and build optimism. You can do so with the use of the ABCDE method.⁷ This was advocated initially by Ellis and Dryden and later refined by Seligman. The first element of this method identifies the setback or adverse event that starts our thinking or belief (A). How we feel about the setback, our belief (B), is the second element. How we respond to an event based on our view of the event is the consequence (C). Questioning the initial thought is the fourth element, the disputation (D). The last element is the outcome of trying to challenge our belief (E).

Let’s walk through an example.

Backdrop: An...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Introduction
• PART 1 LEADERSHIP ATTRIBUTES
• PART 2 LEADERSHIP SKILLS
• PART 3 LEADERSHIP MASTERY
• PART 4 CARE
• Index