[Vnbiz] [vnbiz] Leadership -- Expanding on Core Elements: Compassion

[Tran Dinh Hoanh]

Dear CACC,

In this message I will  talk about another major element of compassion:
Listening.

Have you ever been in love?  If yes, probably you would agree that when you
are in love, your antenna is up to pick up any little signal from the one
you love.  When you're in love, you listen extremely well.

Also, you probably have experienced situations when you try to tell
something to someone hundreds of times, starting subtly, then increasing in
intensity, until you have to scream, and the person seems to never get what
you want to say?

Listening has a lot to do with our emotional state.  The more compassion we
have, the better we can listen.

But listening is very hard for a leader, for a number of reasons:

1.  For most of us humans, listening is much harder than talking.  Talking
is less tiring, everything is already in your head, you don't have to
process new information.  Listening requires that you constantly process the
new information from what you hear.

2.  For a egoistic leader, most people under him are less intelligent than
him and don't have much to offer.

3.  Most leaders are so busy, they don't even mean what they say, not
mentioning listening.  He may greet you "Good morning, how are you?"  and as
you say "I am very good today, how are you?" you realize that he has
already turned the corner, not so much as giving you a second glance, and
obviously oblivious that he has just asked you a question.

4.  Many leaders don't want to hear about unpleasant things, about things
that show their weaknesses, about things that are against their plan and
vision, about things they disagree upon.

So it usually ends up that leaders avoid things they dislike and people who
say things they dislike.  Consequentially, leaders usually hear only what
they want to hear.  Their lieutenants only tell them what they want to hear,
in many cases the lieutenants would go so far as to lie and submit false
reports just to please the leader.

So when you are in a leadership position, your ability to hear is naturally
limited by the nature of your position.  In addition, listening is an art
that needs to be practice.  How are you going to be so sensitive to your
people's voice that you can pick up a fleeting common within a sea of
noises, like a lover in love?  Here is where compassion comes into play. If
you are truly compassionate about your people, you will hear every cry so
clear.  Every drop of tear, every whimpering sob hurts and burns your
heart.  Your ability to pick up voices and information are a thousand
times higher than a leader that is not compassionate about his people.

*So if you are in a leadership position, 2 things you need to do all the
time*:

*1.  Make everyone feel comfortable about talking with you about unpleasant
things*.  This is easier talked than done.  How do you normally react to
such unpleasant talk will give you the reputation of "open and easy to talk
to" or "an egoistic narrow-minded SOB."

I usually train my people like this:  "Unpleasant information is always rare
to hear.  Most people in the world will not tell you  about unpleasant
things.   Most will tell you only things you want to hear.  That is human
nature.  Generally, no one likes to go out to make other people
unhappy.  Therefore, unpleasant information is rare to come by.  That
makes unpleasant information valuable.  When someone gives you a piece of
unpleasant info, be grateful to him, be happy, because whether you like it
or not, you have just got a piece of rare information."

"When a client complains, treat her like a great friend, because if she is
not good to you, she just stops doing business with you without ever saying
anything to you.  Then you don't even know that a have just lost a
customer."

I remember the chairman of Ritz Carton (an outstanding hotel chain.  I rank
the Ritz the best among the big chains) once said that "The information he
loves the most is customer complaint, because that is the surest channel for
him to know how his company is doing."

   *  If you're in business, every time your customer gives you some kind of
complaint, do something to make them happy.  Apologize, say thanks, fix
whatever she complains about, and give her a discount, even when you know
that they are wrong and you are right.  That is just a very small cost for
great PR.

(There will be a very rare time you need to take your stand for some reason,
say, a constantly abusive customer that really annoys other customers.  But
that is a very rare chance.  Even with abusive customers, you usually can
soft talk them into being nice).

    *  When people give you some kind of criticism, think about that
immediately as constructive criticism (even though the person may not be so
constructive to you.

   *  Watch your body language.  Your body says much more than you think.
Do you lean back with crossed arms in a challenging and defensive posture?
Or do you lean forward, with perked ears and wide-open eyes?

   *   What do you say and do so that person know that you really appreciate
his input (regardless whether you ultimately agree or not)?

2.  *Try to know your people personally and directly as much as you can, and
don't just rely on general reports.  *
**
The more you know about someone, the easier for you to have compassion for
that person, the better you can listen to him/her.  Normally a person you
only know the name from newspaper is not as close to you as a person you
know personally.

If you want to know your "people of Vietnam," do you ever take time to chat
to a shoe shining boy on the street?  Asking him about his street life, his
parents, his job, his dreams and wishes?

How about beggars, cyclo drivers, xe om drivers, farmers, etc.?  The more we
know people DIRECTLY (versus through books and newspapers), the more we
become compassionate to them, the more we are sensitive to their voice.

*  Same thing with your employees/subordinates.  How do you make your
employees feel welcome to talk to you about hard things?  Do you, as an
employee, feel comfortable talking to your boss about hard things?  Not
easy, isn't it?  How many times you and your coworkers talk about the
company and the boss, but none of you would say any of that to the boss
himself.  Talking to the boss is never easy.  Consequently, when you are the
boss, making your employees/subordinates  feel easy talking to you is indeed
very difficult job.

You need to keep some "professional distance" from your employees to be able
to do your "boss job," but you still have to be close enough for them to be
comfortable talking to you.  Not easy at all.  My solution is that I will
hang out with my employees once in a while, always show them that I care for
them individually, and whenever they say something, I will make great effort
to solicit them to go further into more details with me.   I try to know as
much as I can about my employees' family and life outside work, because
friends will know about things like that.  Knowing their personal issues
(just enough not to invade their privacy) helps me feel closer to them and
makes them closer to me.

But I still have to rely a lot from my lieutenants, who are closer to other
employees.  My lieutenants bridge the gap between me and my employees.  I
admit that I have not found the method to close the gap altogether.  I can
shorten the gap, but i cannot make it disappear.  The issue then is "Are my
lieutenants comfortable enough about telling me the truth they know?"

*But here is the highest level of listening--You simply SENSE things without
being told anything.  *When you are in love with someone, you simply sense
that she is happy, unhappy, annoyed, energetic, disturbed, etc. without her
ever saying anything to you.

I am so in love with Vietnam for so long that I have always been able to see
major Vietnam events long before they actually happen (like the lost of the
South, the post-1975 corruption epidemic, the opening up of the country and
the reform (I predicted these two things in May or June 1975 to a group of
friends in refugee camp, when I was 22), the ability of the VCP to
withstand the collapse of Soviet Union (I predicted this in 1989 to a group
of Vietnamse politicos), etc.

A part of it is from learning and experience--You mull over Vietnam issues
for so long, you can just see things before they happen.  But a major part
of it is that I am ultra-sensitive to Vietnam issues.  I just sense things
before they show themselves.

In June or July 1996, I visited with professor Phan Dinh Dieu in Hanoi and
he asked me how I felt the country was doing.  At that time, Vietnam was
doing every well, and all kinds of rosy reports from the government and
international institutions were flying high.  But I told anh Dieu: "I think
the country is getting into an economic crisis.  No one sees it now.  But
the most is one year from now, everyone will see it.  It could even be 6
months."  He asked, "How do you know?"  I said, "Two things.  By my
estimation, the reform measures that the VCP instituted have unleashed a lot
of people's energy.  But that energy will last only about 10 years.  After
10 years that energy will be exhausted, we will have an economic crisis, and
we will need another wave of reform to open more energy.  I think Doi Moi
really started (unofficially) in 1996, now is 2006, due time.

"The second thing is that last week I walked on Quang Trung streets and the
xe om folks worked very hard to get me to use them.  They worked much harder
than all the previous time when I was here.  Other street vendors are not so
clear as the xe om, but looks like they try harder to sell too.  It means,
economic life on the street has started to be hard already. That must be the
onset of the crisis I am waiting to happen."

Sure enough, in the early 1997 a serious crisis was seen in Vietnam, which
later prompted another major wave of reform.  (Incidentally, the
Asian financial crisis occurred during that time, probably middle 1997(?)
But I did not see the Asian crisis coming, because I was not as focused on
Asia as on Vietnam).

What I am trying to say by this example is that you can sense things very
well without anyone saying anything, without any kind of report,  You are so
sensitive to so many little things that you can just see things long before
they happen.  *Your sensitivity, and therefore your understanding,  comes
naturally from your compassion.*
**
Among all the communication skills that a leader needs, I think listening is
the most important communication skill.   You don't have to be an orator to
be a leader, but I don't think you can be a good leader if you are not a
good listener.  You simply cannot understand your people (the people you
lead) if you cannot listen very well.  And listening requires both an
attentive ear and a compassionate heart

Have a great day!

Hoanh

 On 7/25/07, Tran Dinh Hoanh <tdhoanh at gmail.com > wrote:
>
> Dear CACC,
>
> In the previous messages we have had an exercise of randomly mentioning
> the leadership qualities, and then concentrating them into a passion,
> manageable number of 4 core elements:  Vision, Compassion, Competence,
> Honesty.  And I have mentioned previously that in any study subject, the
> subject's core elements serves as the North Star, everything else flows from
> it.
>
> From this message, we will expand on these 4 core elements, to examine
> what flow out from them.  Today, I will examine Compassion.
>
> In management classes, compassion is also be known as "caring."  You have
> compassion for your people, or you love your people, or you care about your
> people, they all mean the same  thing in our current context.
>
> Your compassion comes into play in almost every act and decision you make
> every day concerning your clients or your employees. Compassion along with
> honesty determine the culture of your organization.
>
> Do you feel about your employees as "your employees" or as "your friends"
> or "comrades"?  That would make a lot of difference in your employee policy.
>
> Do you feel about your clients/customers as friends or simply as someone
> who may give you money?  That makes a lot of difference in how you (and your
> employees) treat your customers, and consequentially a lot of difference
> in whether or not you will be successful.
>
> Note:  In management school, they tend to teach "employment policy" and
> "customer policy" out of nowhere.  That is fine.  School is not equipped to
> teach matters deep in the heart.  Actually, most courses on leadership
> today cannot be called leadership courses, because they stick with easy
> things on the surface, like organizations, communication (written, oral)
> skills, managing your time, etc.
>
> Things that really matters, things deep in the heart that control
> our thinking and our actions, are not mentioned at all.  The result is that
> people have gone to courses after courses on "leadership," and still don't
> understand what leadership is, not mentioning mastering it.  I am sure that
> many of you have this experience.  Brother Thien mentioned that previously,
> himself.
>
> Leadership starts with you, your heart, your thinking, your behavior.
> So in practice, we need to realize that policy comes from our heart.  Say,
> if you copy a "great customer policy" from someone else, while in your heart
> you constantly feel that customers are just the fat cows for you to
> squeeze some milk, then that "great customer policy" will just be useless
> and will be ruined by you.  Policy is not just a document out there.
> Policy, both the policy language and its execution, comes from our heart.
>
> At this juncture, we should go over some of the compassion measures and
> Shane has mentioned previously.
>
> 1.  Never ask your followers to do things you are not willing to do
> yourself.  This is obvious. I often ask "Were Johnson, Nixon, etc. willing
> to go to Vietnam and fight the way they sent people's children there?  Was
> Bush willing to go to Iraq and fight himself?"
>
> It is easy to sit in an office and decree that many people go to their
> death.  But if we are truly compassionate to our people, we never ask them
> to do things that we are not willing to do ourselves.  (The opposite is true
> with mafia and other unethical leaders.   The leader would send an associate
> to do the crime so that the leader can keep his hands clean for the law).
>
> 2.  Be fair to all of your people. No favoritism.  It is practical.
> Because if you favor one group over other groups, you may split your
> organization in pieces some day.  This also means fair in reward and
> punishment.
>
> 3.  Taking care of the organization and preventing from being destroyed,
> even if you have to sacrifice a group of your people.  Anh Shane told the
> story of the ship captain deciding to seal of a compartment of the ship,
> killing 4 sailors inside, to prevent the fire spreading from that
> compartment to the entire ship.  This is great example of making hard
> heart-wrenching.  (My God!  I hope that I will never have to make a choice
> like that).
>
> Same thing with firing an employee or a group of employees.   It is always
> heart-wrenching and head-aching to fire an employee.  You are hurting
> someone's career and paycheck and, sometimes, life.  Except for some
> sadists, I don't think anyone of us enjoys firing people.  In addition, some
> other employees may even get upset when you fire someone.  But if you have
> to do that to prevent the organization from being damaged, then you just
> have to do what you have to do.
>
> But here is also the most abusive problem in leadership throughout
> history.  Many leaders have crucified one group of people in the country, in
> the name of saving the entire country.  In recent history, Hitler ruthlessly
> killed the Jews in the name of the Aryan nation.  The Communists are
> legendary in inflicting miseries on the merchants, the property owners, the
> capitalists, the bourgeois, in the name of making the entire people more
> equitable and more happy!   (Sorry for the Communist brothers/sisters.  I
> now that Communists today is not those of the old days.  But I just have to
> use recent history examples that everyone knows, to make my writing
> clearer).
>
> Harassing, jailing, torturing, killing millions of people in the name of
> "saving the nation," "saving the people," "moving the people and the nation
> forward" etc. have been the slogan of mass murderers throughout history.
>
> The problem is that many of these mass murders really believe that they
> were helping their nation and their people while cutting other people's
> throats!
>
> Why?
>
> Because many people do not know that their mind can deceive them into a
> monster.  Some dumb political theory, some extreme zeal to save the
> world, some self-aggrandizing allusion, or some sadistic impulse may easily
> turn some guys with unchecked power and without a solid foundation of
> ethics, i.e., humbleness and compassion, into a monster.
>
> Great virtues--compassion, humbleness, honesty, loyalty--always act as a
> solid foundation for us humans to stand on to keep our bearing at all time.
>
> How do we not fall into the mental trap of "serving the whole while
> destroying the part"?  This is a very tricky issue.  When a surgery to cut
> your arm is good for your body, when cutting the arm simply weakens your
> body without any benefit?
>
> My intuitive answer is:  Cutting the arm is never good for my body.  I
> don't want to cut my arm.  If you tell me I should cut my arm, I will ask
> for a second, a third, a fourth medical opinion, and try anything possible
> not to cut it, until I know that I have absolutely no choice.  (Of course,
> taking the time factor in consideration, such as the ship fire in anh
> Shane's example).
>
> In politics (or business) it is translated into "I will do anything I can
> to keep this group of 'trouble makers' with me, until I know that I have
> absolutely no choice but cutting them off."
>
> And I only have the strength and patience to work to keep them if I have
> true compassion for them.  *I care for each of them individually in my
> heart,* I care for them as I care for my own arm.  I don't treat them just
> as "a group of trouble makers" that I have to get rid of in order to "save
> the nation."  Each of my trouble makers is my citizen with a name (Xuan or
> Hoa or Thinh) and a face, s/he is my brother/sister, who has a life, a
> family, bills to pay, children to raise, job to keep.  Any misery I may
> inflict on any of them also hurts their spouses, parents, children,
> brothers/sisters and also hurts me in my heart.  So I will try to reduce
> misery for them as much as I can.  I will try my utmost to work with them,
> and bring them into the family.  I will NOT cut them off unless I am
> absolutely sure I have tried everything else and I have no other choice. And
> if I have to cut them off, I will try to reduce their miseries as much as I
> can.
>
> Only when we have the intense compassion toward each CONCRETE person
> individually, and not just compassion toward the ABSTRACT idea of "the
> entire people" or "the entire nation," we will have the mental clarity to
> keep us away from the trap of becoming a zealous mass torturer, and to do
> what is best for everyone under the circumstances.
>
> Compassion means compassion for each person walking the street.  Not
> compassion for the abstract "people" only.  "The People" is a concept that
> does not really exist.  What really exists is many concrete humans walking
> the street.
>
> I'd like to conclude this message by thank you and Shane for the great
> list and by reminding everyone about what great masters of old have said
> over and over again throughout history: Our mind is a monkey, very easy to
> get out of control.  A humble spirit, a true compassion for others will
> always act as the great mechanism to keep our mind calm and in check.
>
> Have a great day!
>
> Hoanh
>
>



-- 
Tran Dinh Hoanh, LLB, JD
Washington DC
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