The Canvas Strategy

I’m making my way through the Tim Ferris' book Tools of Titans. It’s well over 600 pages but it has a lot of useful, interesting advice, though I'll admit some of it is a bit out there. He breaks the book up into three areas; Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise. The book is really just a summary of podcasts done over the years with some other advice added in.

One piece of advice I appreciated is what he called the canvas strategy. The idea really came from Ryan Holiday. The name refers back to when apprenticeships were common; a budding  painter learns his craft by serving under a master and doing such things as preparing his canvas. 

In today’s terms it’s about serving the people you work for…sounds like servant-leadership! Some examples he gives includes ideas such as giving your boss an idea you came up with and not looking for credit or finding out the job no one else wants to do and taking it on yourself.

This strategy will accomplish a number of things. It will keep your ego from getting to big.  As you make those around you successful, you will also become more successful; the adage "a rising tide lifts all boats." Finally, if you're feeding ideas to your boss, or coworkers, then you will start steering the direction they are going.

A Dog and a Polar Bear

I recently started reading the book the five keys to mindful communication by Susan Gillis Chapman. In the beginning, she tells the story that goes with the pictures that you can find here. As she tells it, Churchill the dog was tied to a stake outside a cabin somewhere in the Arctic. The owner (National Geographic photographer Norbert Rosing) spotted a polar bear coming towards his dog. The owner knew he was already to late to do anything, so he grabbed his camera. What came next surprised him. Churchill didn't get defensive; he started wagging his tail playfully as the bear approached. The bear didn't act aggressively either, he responded to Churchill's behavior and started playing with him. As the story goes, the bear came back on several occasions to play with Churchill. 

This story is a great lesson for how we communicate. If we get defensive, putting up a wall, our conversation will be different than if we are open and engaging when someone approaches us. Early in the book, Chapman talks about how we need to pay attention to how we respond and have an open mind. She talks about moving away from "Me-First" to "We-First" in our relationships.

This last idea started me thinking about Servant-Leadership. A project manager that practices Servant-Leadership thinks in terms of how they can help the team before they think about themselves. They are aware of their team's needs and they listen.

So next time you are in a conversation, stop and be aware of how you are communicating. Are you really paying attention to what the other person is saying or are you going on the defensive and preparing your next response? 

More on Servant Leadership

I had an article published in the PMI Community Post last Friday on Servant Leadership. You can read it here. I've had a lot of feedback on the article and wanted to expand on what I said in the article.

Is Servant Leadership the only leadership style that a project manager should follow? The answer is no. Just like any other tool, this leadership style has its place. However, this style of leadership is part of the bigger picture. To be effective as a servant leader requires honesty, openness, willingness to listen, and compassion. Skills required of a servant leader, but of a good leader in general.

A project manager will be called on to perform other tasks that don't fit into the servant-leader model. For example, there may be a conflict on the team that the project manager has to step in to resolve. There's more management specific tasks like assigning resources or managing the budget.

So the project manager has to recognize when they should put on the servant leader hat. Following an agile project management approach leaves plenty of opportunities for acting as servant. The team is self-organizing, so they decide how to complete the work. The product owner is the one that decides on the scope of the project. The role of the project manager is to see that the process is followed and that obstacles are removed.

That's not to say that a project manager has to be following agile to be a servant leader. Really, any leader can follow the servant leader model. They just need to be aware of opportunities where they can serve the team in order to further to goals and vision of the team. In the words of Lao Tzu, "The greatest leader forgets himself and tends to the needs of others."