Main Squeeze sent me this a few days ago; said it reminded her of me. You see I don’t enjoy organizational politics at all (who does?) and I’ve never been much good at kow-towing. I shared it with my friend and business partner, who wondered if “wolves”, being great at “lone”, might then not be…
Successful communication is an essential leadership and life skill. Engaging well with others depends on it. Here’s Julian Treasure with a 10-minute TedX talk on “How to speak so that people want to listen” that’s very worthwhile, with one caveat about his take on “judging” (more on that in a bit). In summary: If you…
This TED talk is worth watching repeatedly, until you get it all the way through to your soul. If that made sense, these might too: I = Choice You Are Your Will
PEOPLE TALK ABOUT having “principles”, but few seem to be guided by their principles consistently, because it’s just too easy to make exceptions. The thing is, if you don’t follow your principles in every case, they’re not principles. Understood and accepted as non-violable, your principles become your “rock” – a steadfast guide to action even…
NEXT time something doesn’t go the way you planned, no matter the scale, (a business failure, a disagreement, a poor restaurant experience, a trip over the curb, an interaction with an employee or colleague), don’t beat up on yourself. Instead, stop and ask yourself two questions: 1. What went wrong? 2. What could I have…
THE best leaders are self made. They strive to be the best they can be. One of my favorite organizational leaders, John Allison, worked his way up from rank & file employee to CEO of BB&T. In each position he held, he committed himself to being the best possible exemplar of that role. He made…
LEADERSHIP means making decisions. There are a lot of theories on decision-making and many suggested methods for making better ones. We’ll look at some of them in future posts. Before we consider the how-to though, we should consider the why. Decision-making is not just for titled leaders of course; we all face a multitude of…
WHILE doing some research on motivation, I’ve learned a little more about Abraham Maslow, whom you probably know from his development of the “Hierarchy of Needs”. Later in his life he studied people whom he deemed to be “Self-actualized”, and realized that they shared some fundamental personality traits.
IF you have an hour, this is well worth your time. John Allison is one of the best business leaders around and this talk covers the “Moral Compass” of good leadership – Values. John’s southern twang and pretty fast speaking might make this a bit hard to follow for non-english speakers (and Australians), and he’s…
Conventional wisdom exhorts us not to judge. “Everyone’s human”, “we all make mistakes”, “nobody’s perfect” go the bromides. Some put it more succinctly: “Judge not, lest ye be judged”. This is plain wrong. Taken literally, the instruction not to make judgments is a recipe for failure and unhappiness. You. Must. Judge. You must be actively…
