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Kevin Bowser

Leader -|- Follower -|- Guide

I am the husband of a beautiful and wonderful woman. I am the father of two of the greatest kids on the planet. I am a father-in-law to a great young woman. And I am Papa to three very special grandchildren. In my spare time I am an active blogger and writer. And if there is any time left over, I work with small non-profit organizations and churches on the topics of change management, crisis intervention and leadership development.

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Be Accountable

Leadership Basics

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Be Accountable

What do you do when something goes bad? Where are you when there is a failure or when a major deadline or deliverable is missed? Real leaders that folks want to follow understand that the “buck” really does stop with them.

Failure is inevitable. And failure does not have to be fatal to your leadership or your career. I recall working for a CIO many years ago. His mantra was; “If you aren’t failing, then you aren’t attempting big things.” Now, he wanted us to be calculating in our risks. But he wanted us to be taking risks. So often the greatest rewards come from the greatest risks. But you must still be accountable.

One of my greatest failures came from managing a project to restack most of the floors in a high-rise tower. We were reorganizing to increase our efficiency and foster greater collaboration among the business units. One of the major phases of the project was creating a call center on one of the floors. All of the construction work was done and the call center furniture was in place. All that was left was for my team to re-install all of the IT and communications equipment over the weekend. We finished about 2AM on the Monday morning that the call center was to “go live.” And we all went home for a few precious hours of sleep before coming back to work later in the morning.

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Don’t Confuse Loving With Following

Just because I love and admire you, doesn’t mean I will follow you.

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Don't Confuse Loving With Following

Feelings and emotions will deceive us. This is especially true when it comes to “love.” And it can be dangerous when it comes to how we view our leaders. What a shame. Especially when they can be so strong and so certain at the time. Emotions, such as the ones we experience in a loving relationship, that are unbridled can cause us to make some very poor decisions. Emotions are not bad. In fact, just look at some studies in the area of Emotional Intelligence and you will quickly see that emotions play a significant role in our personal and professional lives.

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Love is a wonderful thing. And love is a great filter through which we need to view the world. However, love can cause us to overlook or make excuses for failures and shortcomings when it comes to our leaders.

Many organizations have leaders who are beloved. I have witnessed this over the years many times. And it is very common in the non-profit world where I do a lot of coaching. In the nonprofit world, you will find leaders who are often in leadership roles for which they are not particularly suited or gifted.

These leaders are frequently appointed or even elected to their positions. As followers, we do this as a way of showing how much we love this particular person. What can possibly go wrong with that?

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Be Polite and Be Approachable

Leadership Basics

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Be Polite Be Approachable

Welcome to the second in a series of Leadership Basics that we all should reflect on now and again and that we should make sure are a part of our every day repertoire.

Be Polite

“It doesn’t cost anything to be nice.” Those words have been quoted by many and attributed to many. The one attribution that I am most fond of is the late great football coach — Paul “Bear” Bryant.

Coach Bryant is legendary. For the folks in some parts of Alabama, his stature is almost god-like. And for folks here in Texas, he is legendary as the coach who took Texas A&M from a 1-9 record his first year to winning the Southwest Conference Championship 2 years later.

He tells a story about one of his first recruiting trips after he became the head football coach at Alabama. I will not recount it here. But the short version of it is that he ultimately recruited a very talented young football player years later because of the kindness that he showed the boy’s grandfather on his first trip to that part of Alabama by stopping at his humble cinder block restaurant and fulfilling his promise to send the old man an autographed photo to hang on the wall of the restaurant.

Consider this quote as well before I move on to my next Leadership Basic:

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Be There and Be Punctual

Leadership Basics

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Be There Be Punctual

Today marks the first in a series that I am calling “Leadership Basics.” These will be short and quick tidbits that will help focus on some of the things that I believe are fundamental and basic to being a great leader.

Be there

This one is so obvious and simple. Be there. You could also say be present. and you could say be visible. But, whatever you do, be there. Leadership is not a remote control activity. As leaders, we must be present and we must be visibly on the scene whenever anything big is going down.

Too often we like to show up for the big event if it is going to be fun and celebratory. That doesn’t take leadership and guts. How about showing up when the activity is going to be tense and potentially contentious? Are you there? Or are you conspicuously absent?

Be punctual

I do not know anyone who doesn’t possess a cell phone or smart phone. These devices have had clocks, watches, and alarm functions almost since the very first ones came on the market and were mounted in your car! There is really no excuse for being late. Period. Full stop.

Will it happen from time to time? Of course. You can’t always plan for every potential delay that you will face as your move about. But, better to leave early and arrive early than to leave without enough contingent time built into your schedule to account for the occasional traffic accident or blinking traffic light.

Why does this matter?

I am currently blessed with an incredible mentor. He is teaching me

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Be A Lighthouse

Leadership Lessons from a Lighthouse in Maine

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Be A Lighthouse

Photography has always been a passion for me. And one of the things that I love to capture with my camera is a lighthouse on a clear day. Recently, my wife and I spent a week along the coast of Maine. This is a beautiful area of the country and if you have not visited this part of the country, you have missed some gorgeous scenery. And you have missed some spectacular lighthouses.

We all have an image in our mind of the quintessential lighthouse. It is likely the lighthouse at the tip of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. It is the tallest lighthouse structure in the U.S. One website that I consulted declared it as the tallest of the 437 lighthouses listed according to their height. It stands at a height of 210 feet. Many will recognize it because of that beautiful diagonal stripe painted on the tower that supports the light. I have not seen it yet, but I understand it is worth the trip.

The lighthouses that we saw last week were much shorter in height than the one on Cape Hatteras. My favorite lighthouse was the one at Cape Neddick Point. It is known as the Nubble. By contrast to the one at Cape Hatteras, the Nubble is only 41 feet tall.

Now wait a minute! Isn’t the height the central and most important feature of a lighthouse?

It was during this trip last week that it dawned on me that the central and most important feature of a lighthouse is its “light” and not its “height.” After all, it is called a lighthouse and not a heighthouse!

What is the leadership lesson from the Cape Neddick Lighthouse?

The leadership lesson from the Cape Neddick Lighthouse is that one of our primary functions as leaders is 

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Busy

Maybe too busy?

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Busy

When you look at your blog and realize that several weeks have gone by since your last post, you are too busy! Consider this passage.

“We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing. We heap up wealth for someone else to spend.” Psalm 39:6 NLT

Well, I don’t know about the wealth part of that sentence. But, I find myself rushing around a lot lately. Perhaps I should slow down and enjoy what God is doing around me right now.

So, that is a little bit of what my beloved and I are doing right now. We are stopping (albeit we chose to “stop” in Maine instead of where we live) and we are spending some time reconnecting with one another and talking about some important things that we don’t always find the time to talk over at home.

Recently she was in the same room and she listened to me while I was on the phone with a very dear friend and thought-leader that I often use to bounce ideas around and see if any of them stick. We were discussing a writing project that I have and he was asking some pointed questions. My wife has not heard me discuss this project much and that conversation that she was able to listen in on has provided a golden opportunity for us to slow down from our busy lives and actually talk about some things that are important to each of us.

What is the leadership lesson here?

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Kevin Bowser Finalizes Book Deal

Signing the Contract

Today was a great day for me and for Leadership Voices, LLC. This afternoon I completed the negotiation and finalized the contract to write a book with the help and support of all the great folks at Lucid Books.

I am humbled and honored to be a part of the great family of authors and writers that have been published by Lucid Books. Casey Cease has built an incredible team. They have been unbelievably helpful as I began the process of developing another writing project.  They have coached and encouraged me and they have also provided valuable insights and guidance as I am working my way through the process.

Kevin & Casey

If you have ever thought about writing a book, or you have a book idea in your head that you have not taken beyond the idea phase, please talk to the great team at Lucid Books and experience the joy of working with the great professionals that are there to help you get your idea out of your head and into a book.

Watch for more news to come as this book project takes shape.

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Details Matter

Leadership Lessons from Disney World

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Details-Matter

She was wiping off the trash can. Not only did she clean the outside of the trash can, she was actually cleaning the inside lip and edges of the opening where you throw the trash as you walk by the can.

Many companies care about the cleanliness of their environment. But very few take it to the level that you see at one of the Disney parks in Orlando, Florida. After all, no one really sees the inside edge of a trash can. And although you may not see it, your hands are very likely to encounter the edges of the openings to the trash cans. And Disney does NOT want your memories and experiences after you leave Disney to be sticky, stinky, and gross. That is why someone wipes down and cleans both the seen and the unseen areas of a trash can.

So, what is the leadership lesson from this observation?

The leadership lesson is

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