The last time I saw her, I was struck by her frailness. My grandmother had worked at a maximum security prison for many years. She was a tough woman, the type of person who wouldn’t take any nonsense from anyone. She was stubborn as a mule when it came to taking care of herself.

To see that strength slipping away from her slowly over the final years of her life was a bit painful. I would visit her and see her putter around her kitchen slowly, preparing herself very simple meals. That spark of stubborn independence was still there, but it was softened.

When I think of my grandmother, I recall this period in her life, but it stands in stark contrast to the vibrant woman I knew throughout my childhood.

One thing I will remember about my grandmother’s final years, though, is how my mother stepped up to the plate to take care of her. She called her multiple times a day as she got weaker and stopped in daily to visit her. My uncle even moved in with my grandmother near the end of her life.

My mother and grandmother together showed me that the most valuable thing to have in the final years of your life is people who care about you.

This, of course, brings me around to my own parents.

I’ve seen them quite a lot lately, and the little signs of their decline have been difficult to ignore. They’re getting older. They’re nowhere near as fast as they once were and simple things that used to be normal to them wear them out.

My father used to have boundless energy for his various hobbies and side businesses. Over the past several years, his garden has become smaller and smaller and his commercial fishing exploits have come to rely on people he’s hired to assist him with it.

My mother is hobbled a bit with a knee that needs some surgical repair. She does an amazing job keeping up with her grandchildren, but it doesn’t take much observation to see a wince of pain here and there from her.

During my early adulthood, I was fully confident that my parents were fine. They had always been like rocks to me, completely able to take care of themselves.

Now, I’m beginning to see that changing, and I’m now realizing that my parents are going to need me in new and different ways in the coming years.

The thing is, it’s not money they really need. It’s time and attention and love.

They need someone who will call them up regularly and visit them.

They need someone who will help them connect with their grandchildren.

They need someone who will help them get their affairs in order.

More than anything, though, they need someone they can talk to who is actually listening to what they are saying and cares about it and takes action based on it instead of brushing them off as another duty to fulfill.

When I was a young child, my grandfather lived with us for a while near the end of his life. One evening after my grandfather had fallen asleep and I was working on a jigsaw puzzle with my father, he told me that when you’re young, the parent takes care of the child, but when you’re old, the child takes care of the parent.

That transition has been happening over the last several years. It’s been a slow one, but with every passing year, it becomes more and more real.

In a very real way, I am a part of my parents’ retirement plan. They invested so much in raising me, and now I can do a lot of things to help them in return.

If you know someone who is in the September or November of their years, give that person a visit or a call. Ask them if they need any help with anything. Drop by with a bag of groceries and make them a meal. You’ll be surprised at how much something relatively simple for you can mean a great deal to someone else.

If you’re worried about someone you know who is getting older, there is no better way to help them than with a little bit of time and attention and effort. You don’t have to give money to make an enormous difference.

The Simple Dollar

Robert Kelly, author of The Power of Followership, described the leader/follower dynamic in The Art of Followership, this way:

Star followers think for themselves, are very active, and have very positive energy. They do not accept the leader’s decision without their own independent evaluation of its soundness. If they agree with the leader, they give full support. If they disagree, they challenge the leader, offering constructive alternatives that will help the leader and organization get where they want to go. Some people view these people as really “leaders in disguise,” but this is basically because those people have a hard time accepting that followers can display such independence and positive behavior. Star followers are often referred to as “my right-person” or my “go-to person.”

The words “leader” and “follower” bring to mind a common script in which the leader is in charge, saying, “You do this, and you do that.” Meanwhile, followers are imagined as inferior beings in need of the leader’s direction, motivation, and protection. We need to rethink this outdated script.

Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog

Or something like that.

What is it really like to work at a company when it “goes public?” And what happens afterward? How will Mark Zuckerberg hold on to the people who make the company what it is, now that many of them will be independently wealthy — perhaps intoxicatingly so? How will he hold them together to make the company what it can be next? How will he align the “haves” and the future “have not so much” hires to pull on the same oar?

That’s what the new investors — the new owners — will depend upon. That’s what users will depend upon. And fortunately, there is something a leader can do at this junction. I’ve seen it happen once, and I hope Facebook’s incomparable visionary will make something like it happen again.

I had a front row seat to one of the most successful IPO’s of the dot-com boom. In July 1999, I left a law firm for a business development role at a startup with a strange name — Akamai Technologies. On day one, because we did not yet have a general counsel, the company told me — the only ex-lawyer then on staff — to manage the IPO. Because of the phenomenal technology, timing and team, the Akamai IPO became one of the most successful IPOs of that era.

So what actually happens inside a company on IPO day? Here’s what happened in my experience (which, granted, was over a decade ago). Several of the company leaders reappear, having spent the prior two weeks flying around Europe and the U.S. on private jets, spinning the company’s prospects to potential investors. Before that, there’s a lot of government-regulated preparation. Bankers and lawyers write a document that describes the business and the risks of investing in it to potential investors. They build a financial model of existing and expected revenues. They file it with regulators, wait for comments and respond to them. Then the company leaders start the roadshow, which hopefully creates enough excitement about the company among large investors that the bankers can line up buyers — if you’re lucky, stacks of buyers — for a chunk of the “book” of available shares. Then, in a seemingly unscientific frenzy in a paneled room on Wall Street, the bankers decide what price to place on the opening shares, and when to start selling them.

For the employees, the actual day of “going public” is very strange. At Akamai, in the early afternoon, we left our desks and met in a conference room to watch. There was not much to see. A large TV monitor sat above eye-level on a tall rack. Plates of cheese cubes and crackers covered a table. We squeezed in, shoulder to shoulder, heads tilted up to the screen. Most of our faces were unfamiliar to one another; the company had hired a lot of top people leading up to the IPO with the lure of pre-IPO options.

The screen flickered. Then, green numbers appeared. We cheered! AKAM stock was then available for purchase on the NASDAQ. Just like that. We watched the green numbers change — just simple rows of green numbers. Someone explained that the numbers represented the “bid” and the “ask” — what someone would pay for a share, and the price at which someone else would sell it. The bankers priced the shares at $ 26. They opened for trading at $ 114.50, and buyers chased it higher and higher until it settled down and finally closed at $ 145.19 at the end of the trading day.

As those green numbers changed on the screen, we cheered more, and ate cheese, while some colleagues had just become immeasurably wealthy — at least on paper. By law, vested employees were “locked up” and could not trade their vested shares until several months later. (Several months later, the boom would bust and much of that paper wealth would flutter away, but no one wanted to see that coming). Akamai was so young, and the boom so frothy, that most employees had not yet vested any shares. Facebook employees will be locked up for months too, but many employees have worked there long enough to have fully-vested their employee stock options.

Our co-founder and CTO, Danny Lewin, had suddenly turned from a struggling graduate student to a staggeringly wealthy man. His share of the company was worth over a billion dollars at the end of the day. It would have turned anyone’s head. But at 29, somehow Danny knew that the IPO — this moment of triumph — could also destroy his company. This was because, ironically, the collective efforts of his employees had created value that had made many of them independently wealthy. They did not need to be there anymore, even if the company still needed them.

That day, Danny did something remarkable. In the midst of the IPO celebration, Danny invited everyone to a conference room to discuss his grand vision of the company’s future. While green numbers still rose on the monitor, the party room emptied. The conference room filled. Danny, another young red head who wore faded jeans and white T-shirts, covered whiteboards with his vision. He spun us all up on the immense and powerfully exciting challenges ahead. The same big idea that made investors buy the company would make employees stay to build it.

With his compelling vision, Danny raised us above the distractions of wealth. He knew — and I hope Mark Zuckerberg will recognize the same — that the chance to achieve a big goal, alongside a compelling leader, is stickier than any stock promise could ever be. It is the grand vision — and only the grand vision — that will bind people, through distractions and unsettling change, to work together to reach the other side of possible.

Congratulations, Facebook! Thank you for what you have built. Enjoy the rocket ride, and still keep your eyes fixed above the horizon.

HBR.org

Daniel Goleman made a compelling and accurate case nearly two decades ago that Emotional Intelligence (EQ) was more important to leadership effectiveness and performance than IQ. But most attempts at increasing EQ have resulted only in temporary improvements. The reason is that a more foundational and core intelligence has been ignored, which is a pre-cursor to high EQ. In my lectures at Stanford University, I define this as Positive Intelligence (PQ). Without a solid PQ foundation, many of our attempts at improvements fizzle due to self-sabotage.

Your mind is your best friend, but it is also your worst enemy, involved in self-sabotage. To illustrate, when your mind tells you that you should prepare for tomorrow’s important meeting, it is acting as your friend, causing positive action. When it wakes you up at 3:00 a.m. anxious about the meeting and warning you for the hundredth time about the many consequences of failing, it is acting as your enemy; it is simply exhausting your mental resources without any redeeming value. No friend would do that.

Your PQ is the percentage of time your mind is serving you as opposed to sabotaging you. For example, a PQ of 75 means that your mind is serving you 75 percent of the time and sabotaging you about 25 percent of the time. Compelling evidence from a synthesis of research in psychology, neuroscience, and organizational science shows that with higher PQ teams and professionals ranging from leaders to salespeople perform 30-35 percent better on average. What’s more, they report being far happier and less stressed.

3 Strategies to increase PQ

I have coached hundreds of CEOs and their senior executive teams on the tools of Positive Intelligence. I take them to the frontlines of the unceasing battle raging in their minds. On one side of this battlefield are the well-disguised Saboteurs, who wreck any attempt at increasing either happiness or performance. On the other side is the Sage, who has access to one’s wisdom, insights, and often untapped mental powers. The Saboteurs and Sage are fueled by different regions of the brain. We are literally of two minds and two brains. This suggests three strategies to increasing your PQ:

Strategy 1. Weaken your Saboteurs:
The Saboteurs are the internal enemies. They are a set of automatic and habitual mind patterns, each with its own voice, beliefs, and assumptions that work against your best interest. They come in ten varieties, with names like the Judge, Controller, Victim, Stickler, Pleaser, and Avoider.

Saboteurs are a universal phenomenon. The question is not whether you have them, but which ones you have, and how strong they are. Of the executives participating in my Stanford lectures, nearly 95% conclude that they do have Saboteurs that cause “significant harm” to them reaching their full potential for success or happiness.

The great news is that you can significantly reduce the power of these mental foes. The key to weakening your Saboteurs is to identify which one you have and expose its key hidden beliefs, patterns, thoughts, and emotions. This, in effect, allows you to create a “mug shot” of your internal enemy. It allows you to identify the Saboteur the moment it shows up in your head. At that point, what you do is to just label that thought as Saboteur thought and let it go rather than pursue it seriously. To be sure, it will keep coming back, which means you will keep labeling it, and letting it go. This simple act of observing, labeling, and letting go has profound impact.

For example, notice the difference between saying “I believe I can’t succeed” and “My Judge says I can’t succeed.” The moment you label a Saboteur thought as such, it loses much of it credibility and power over you.

(Discover your top Saboteur with free online assessment at http://www.positiveintelligence.com/)

Strategy 2. Strengthen Your Sage:
Your Sage’s great wisdom and strength is rooted in its perspective: any problem you are facing is either already a gift and opportunity or could be actively turned into one. Your Saboteurs mock that perspective and cause you instead to feel anxious, frustrated, disappointed, stressed, or guilty over “bad” outcomes. Both the Sage and the Saboteur perspectives are self-fulfilling prophecies.

If you follow the Sage perspective, you get greater access to its five vastly untapped mental powers which can meet absolutely any work or life challenge without being worked up about it. There are simple and fun “power games” you can play in the back of your mind to facilitate this process.

Strategy 3. Strengthen PQ Brain muscles:
The PQ Brain gives rise to the Sage perspective its powers. Its focus is on thriving rather than surviving, which is the Saboteurs’ focus. It consists of three components: the middle prefrontal cortex, portions of the right brain, and what I call the empathy circuitry. The PQ Brain “muscles” are activated and strengthened when you command your mind to stop its busy mind chatter and direct its attention to any of your five physical sensations. An example might be to feel the weight of your body on your seat, or feet on the floor, or sensations of your breathing.

This might appear simplistic, but it is backed by a massive amount of research. Every time you attempt such a shift of attention for about 10 seconds, you have performed a “PQ rep,” strengthening the muscles of your PQ Brain. The goal is to do 100 PQ reps per day to build up and maintain strong PQ Brain muscles. This can be done while sitting in a meeting, driving, walking the dog, or taking a shower. It doesn’t need to take any extra time from your busy day. These muscles build up really fast.

Without a strong foundation of Positive Intelligence, attempts at improving performance or personal fulfillment are analogous to planting elaborate new gardens while leaving voracious snails free to roam. The wise investment is to raise Positive Intelligence first. The results are often reported to be gamechanging for the team, and lifechanging for the individual.

Try this out. Discover your top Saboteurs and PQ score with the free online assessments at http://www.positiveintelligence.com/

Bio:

Shirzad Chamine is author of New York Times bestseller Positive Intelligence. He is Chairman of CTI, the largest coach-training organization in the world. A preeminent C-suite advisor, Shirzad has coached hundreds of CEOs and their executive teams. His background includes PhD studies in neuroscience in addition to a BA in psychology, an MS in electrical engineering, and an MBA from Stanford, where he lectures.

Great Leadership

Not the easiest, but the quickest:

Don’t demand authority.

Eagerly take responsibility.

Relentlessly give credit.

Seth’s Blog