leadership lessons from the martial arts · - leadership lessons from the martial arts: chapter one...

Leadership LessonsFrom the Martial Arts

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Copyright © Marty Marzolf, 2012. All rights reserved. This book and its properties may not be reused or reproduced in any form without express written consent from the publisher and author, in the form of a written letter.

ISBN-13: 978-1470035273

ISBN-10: 1470035278

Title ID: 3791503

Published by MartialArtsLeader.com

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Email: [email protected]

Printed in the United States of America

Leadership Lessons from the Martial Arts

Designed by Jami McNamara, [email protected]

This book is available for bulk sales and with special discounts to corporations, organizations, non-profits, martial arts organizations, and others. Please visit martialartsleader.com or email [email protected] for more information and details.

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Leadership LessonsFrom the Martial Arts

By Marty Marzolf, M.A Human DevelopmentThird-Degree Black Belt, Shuri-te Karate

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“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once,

but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

-Bruce Lee

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Table of ContentsAcknowledgements

Prologue: How to Win Without Fighting

Chapter 1: How it All Started

Chapter 2: Having a Good Stance

Chapter 3: Awareness

Chapter 4: Taking Advantage of Change

Chapter 5: Commitment

Chapter 6: Discipline

Chapter 7: Courage

Chapter 8: Tools

Chapter 9: Preparation

Chapter 10: Patience

Chapter 11: Balance

Chapter 12: Strong and Gentle

Chapter 13: Success

Chapter 14: What’s Next?

The Coaching Process

A Success Story

Epilogue

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– Acknowledgements –If you end up enjoying my story, help me in saying thanks

to a mother who never gave up on me; a wife who saw more in me than I saw in myself; children who enjoyed my sto-ries and encouraged me to tell more; a men’s group who has given me more support than any friend has a right to expect; Bob Ray, who offered me his friendship and coun-sel in developing the outline and proofing the manuscript; Tom, who provided the thought provoking questions at the end of each chapter along with his enthusiastic support; my brother, Wayne, whose thoughtful comments and solid ad-vice strengthened the manuscript; Priscilla, a special thanks for her friendship and for guiding me through a master’s program; my son, Adam, for providing both great technical help and moral support; my daughter, Jessica, who offered sage advice and excellent editing assistance; and Jami Mc-Namara, whose design expertise brought this whole project together. Lastly, I extend my deep appreciation to Bob, Bill, and Dean- and to Chris who left us too soon- four wonderful instructors who guided my development as a martial artist and as a human being. Without these people, there would be no story...

- Leadership Lessons from the Martial Arts: Acknowledgements

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– Prologue –“How to win witHout FigHting”

“To win without fighting is best,” exclaimed Sun Tzu in his masterpiece The Art of War. It is good counsel. To win with-out fighting is considered the ultimate victory in the martial arts. Initially, a young martial artist is introduced to self de-fense tools, such as kicking, punching or blocking. Hours of training can hone these into automatic responses to be used if one’s life, or the lives of others, is threatened. But so far we are talking about training the body.

One of the many benefits of martial arts training is that it is also training the mind. One piece of training engages the student in thinking about ways to avoid dangerous situations, or how to defuse potentially explosive situations. In the face of impending danger, the training challenges a person to think quickly and creatively to achieve the ultimate victory: to have won without fighting.

One of my favorite examples of this resulted from some reading I did early in my martial arts training. It was a story about a Karate Master in Okinawa. His skill was highly rec-ognized. As the story is told, he was walking home late one night and was about to cross a bridge when three men jumped out from behind some bushes. They demanded his money. He refused to give it to them and they threatened him with harm if he did not. He asked them if there was no way that he might just peacefully pass. They said no. To that he said, “I will not give you my money and you have left me with no choice but to fight you. But first I would like to warm up.” With their mouths agape, the Karate Master stepped back out of range and performed a high-level form of movements (called a Kata), which he had practiced countless times. The moves, combined with his high degree of skill, were designed to administer immediate and painful results. Before the mas-

- Leadership Lessons from the Martial Arts: Prologue

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- Leadership Lessons from the Martial Arts: Prologue

ter completed his form, the robbers had melted into the night and our Karate master proceeded home.

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- Leadership Lessons from the Martial Arts: Chapter One -

– chAPter one –

How It All Started“Great is the art of beginning,

but greater is the art of ending” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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For a number of years I was a manager for a Fortune 500 company. During that time I attended any number of training sessions where I walked away feeling dissatisfied. While I did not find fault with the trainers, per se, I found fault with the method. Here is how a typical scenario would work out for me: I would get a call, or notification, from HR to attend a two day workshop- on communication skills, for example. I would cancel my meetings, go to our regional office in Chi-cago, spend two days in training, get a nice three ring binder and then return to my office. There I would find myself with a stack of phone calls to return, reports to be finished and a line of people wanting to talk to me. The three ring binder, along with my good intentions, sat on my desk. Three weeks later, still with good intentions, the three ring binder was now up on a shelf.

What I was experiencing is what I was to find would be the experience of many, and it was to later become my thesis work in a graduate program. That is, training is appropriate for some subject matter, but in the areas of management, team, or leadership development, the typical training methods fall short. The reasons include too much material in too short a time without such necessary learning components like prac-tice, feedback and follow up. Simply put, in the typical sce-nario the participant is not given the opportunity to integrate the material.

One of the theories I explored during my graduate work was the idea of offering one on one coaching to executives as a part of their leadership development. At the time, executive coaching was essentially unheard of. Eventually, I would test adding other learning components, such as combining team development and leadership development. The idea was to find a variety of ways of using a team’s or executive’s real environment as, what might be called, the “learning lab.”

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Also during this time, I started to see the correlation be-tween the best practices in leadership development and the principles I was being introduced to in my martial arts training. The earliest of this training came from being in the Army’s Military Police. As a military police trainee, I was introduced to what is called jujitsu. It was one of a variety of martial art styles that was gradually being introduced within the U.S., largely from military personnel who had been sta-tioned in Asia. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the martial arts, in brief the term is a generic one referring to any systematized style of fighting. For example, tae kwon do, aikido and tai chi, are all martial arts styles. The increas-ing popularity of the martial arts in this country speaks, I believe, to the value of the principles I will be introducing in this book.

During my twenty-five years as a leadership coach and orga-nizational consultant, I had the honor to work with a number of fine executives and their organizations who adopted the mar-tial arts principles you will be reading about. In talking about some of these principles, such as focus, discipline, best use of energy and taking advantage of change, executives generally found it an easy leap to their world of managing or leading organizations. Gradually, I realized that the metaphor had the power to convert complexity into simplicity, to distill volumes of books into easily understood concepts, and to provide a ba-sic framework for the executive to use in either their own, or their organizations development.

So, what were the principles and how did executives use them or find them helpful? They are not limited to, but will include the following:

•Having a Strong Stance•Awareness

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•Taking Advantage of Change•Commitment•Discipline•Courage•Tools•Preparation•Patience•Balance•Strong and Gentle

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- Leadership Lessons from the Martial Arts: Chapter Two -

– chAPter two –

Having A Strong Stance

“Character is made by what you stand for;reputation is what you fall for”

-Alexander Wollcott

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One of the first things I was taught in karate was the impor-tance of a good stance. Not unlike laying a good foundation before building a house, acquiring a strong stance was critical to the “house” the martial artist was building. In the style I studied, the feet are placed so that roughly 70% of the weight is on the hind leg. The legs are slightly bent as a way to lower the center of gravity. The intent in developing this stance is to provide strength, balance, and stability should the student find themselves in a threatening situation. The importance of stance applies to leadership; where you stand and what you stand for are critical to a leader’s (and his/her organizations) success. Let me give you an example.

Early in my career I had taken a marketing position with an insurance company in the upper Midwest. Shortly after I had started work, the company hired a new marketing V.P. He had a reputation for being a “hot shot” marketing guy, someone who could get things done quickly.

Not long after he had taken the position, he (let’s call him Dennis) organized a three day “offsite” for all the market-ing people that were reporting to him. Early in the afternoon of the first day, Dennis came up to me and invited me to join him for dinner. Being the new guy, I was somewhat sur-prised, but quickly accepted. At some point later during the dinner, Dennis suddenly posed the following question to me: “Marty, what is the biggest strength you bring to this work?” Although not anticipating anything like this from him, I found myself saying “honesty.” He looked at me, tilted his head a bit like a rooster and said, “Marty, I think you will find that does not have much to do with this kind of work!”

Well, Dennis went on to launch an ill-fated marketing campaign that nearly took the company into bankruptcy. He was ultimately fired. Dennis, you see, was not solidly an-

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chored—or did not have a strong stance. Instead, he moved along on shaky legs that were only there to support his huge self-interests. His motivations were basically self-serving, based on short term interests and void of any meaningful values.

Let me now offer you a contrast and in doing so introduce you to the main character of the story you are about to read. The story is about Paul; of all the leaders I worked with, he best exemplifies what I will call a “black belt leader.”

I first met Paul at one of my workshops. He was intrigued by the martial arts metaphor, could see its leadership applica-tion, and invited me to introduce the principles to his team. At the time he was a vice-president of a rather large manu-facturing products company. At one of the first meetings we were doing a values exercise; the intent was to have the team determine the things that would be critical to their success. Paul, the team leader, asked them to include one value: that being honesty. Here’s how he explained his request.

He told a story about a former vice-president of their major division. The division produced extremely sophisticated de-vices. As it turns out, the former vice-president had become aware of a flaw in one of the devices, but rather than stopping production, or calling out the error, he tried to cover it up. You probably know the rest of the story: the error was discovered by government inspectors and the company was heavily fined and suffered a blow to its reputation, which had been sterling up to that point. Our vice-president quickly ended up being a “former vice-president.”

At this point, Paul said very simply, “in this organization we always tell the truth.” It was a lesson hard learned, but Paul was letting the team know not only where he stood,

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but where the company stood. He was demonstrating a solid stance, one that he wanted his team to adopt.

Paul’s solid stance, along with other strong leadership traits, ultimately led to his promotion to CEO.

So, let’s follow this black belt leader and see how he uses mar-tial arts principles to guide his organization through some very difficult waters.

Note: I have included a set of questions and reflections at the end of each chapter. They are offered as an opportunity to “deep-en” the material for you and can easily be used as leadership discussion material with a team or organization.

Pause and Reflect:

1. How are values part of a leader’s stance? What values form the foundation of your career?

2. How would you answer Dennis’ question: “What is the big-gest strength that you bring to your workplace?”

3. Offer an example or story of a leader who you know who worked from a values-based power stance.

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