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(21160, 377, '2015-01-15 06:55:13', '2015-01-15 11:55:13', 'I recently attended a reunion in Texas with former colleagues from my early days in economic development.\n\nThough many of us had not seen each other in almost 20-years, all of us picked up seamlessly where we once left off, spending hours into the evening catching up on old times.\n\nAs I reminisced on times past, I could recall with great clarity both the good times and the bad. Perhaps because I was young and optimistic.\n\nPerhaps because my insatiable drive was not impeded by the weight of excess baggage or the inflexibility of scar tissue that can toughen us over time.\n\nPerhaps because my glasses had a rosy hue that enabled me to see possibility instead of limitation - progress instead of liabilities.\n\nIt was a special time in my life when all things felt possible. A time when despite moments that severed my youthful naivety, most, if not all of us were having fun.\n\nFun in those days did not mean fewer hours or days of total ease. It did not mean there were no problems or personalities I\'d rather avoid, but that my sense of deep purpose and the joy with which I pursued my work exceeded whatever pain points might arise.\n\nIt was a time when relationships mattered more than the problems of the day. A time when trust and collaboration trumped and transparency did not threaten my undoing. Significantly, it was a time when I took the job very seriously, but not myself.\n\n<strong>Values and culture matter. People matter. Fun matters.</strong>\n\nWhen these things stop mattering - when a culture of fear, complacency or corruption takes over, when we begin to take ourselves so seriously that we can no longer laugh at life or ourselves, a course correction is in order. No, it doesn\'t begin <em>out there</em>. It begins in <em>here</em in our reflections and our projections of what we put out into the world.\n\nIf we want a better experience, we need to better our attitude. If we want to find values alignment with others, we must first find it within ourselves. If we want a little more levity in our lives, we must first learn to lighten up and laugh out loud.\n\nWhen was the last time you thought of work as fun? When was the last time your core values and purpose aligned with your work in the world?\n\nWhen was the last time you stopped counting hours and filled your thoughts and time with creative contribution instead?\n\nWhen was the last time you laughed out loud not <em>at</em> others, but <em>with</em> others, or perhaps even at yourself?', 'Are You Having Fun Yet?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'are-you-having-fun-yet', '', '', '2015-01-15 06:55:13', '2015-01-15 11:55:13', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21160', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(21165, 244, '2014-10-31 06:34:54', '2014-10-31 10:34:54', '\n\nWhat is a leader\'s most important role? Kristin Mackey suggests it\'s <a href=\"http://www.kristinmackey.com/the-most-important-role-of-leadership/\">to be the example</a>.\n\nShe goes on to say: \"Leaders influence the direction of the team by their thoughts and behaviors. The very language a leader chooses to use can make or break the level of talent that surfaces.\"\n\nSandra Martinez, Ph.D suggests a leader\'s most important role is <a href=\"http://www.fenixleadershipconsulting.com/2011/03/in-search-of-the-most-important-role-for-leaders-today/\">acting collectively</a> in the present to shape the future.\n<div>\n\n<blockquote>\"This means having the capacity to build trust among diverse groups of people to advance toward a shared goal. It means exerting influence to harness collective intelligence and mobilizing new and alternative resources to prototype change. It also implies creating a space for a ‘shift in perspective’ that frees people individually and collectively to view the world in a different way thus creating momentum to act in significantly different and more constructive ways.\"</blockquote>\n\n<h3>Here\'s My Answer...</h3>\n\nA leader\'s most important role is to bring people to choice. As John Maxwell says, \"Leadership is influence.\"\n\nOne way to know how you have influenced someone is to observe their choices. Or even better, consider that to influence someone is to bring them face to face with a choice that will either move them and/or a desired future forward or not.\n\nIt is in the moment that someone must make a choice that they have the opportunity to express their true commitments and intentions. In doing so, they access their power, and you get the best of what they have to contribute.\n\n<a href=\"http://ctt.ec/iZnb_\">Choice is the ultimate source of empowerment. <em>(click to tweet)</em></a>\n\nChoose for them and you will get compliance at best. Empower people to choose for themselves and you cultivate both ownership and leadership.', 'What Is A Leader&#039;s Most Important Role?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'what-is-a-leaders-most-important-role', '', '', '2014-10-31 06:34:54', '2014-10-31 10:34:54', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21165', 0, 'post', '', 6),
(21181, 318, '2014-11-06 06:59:51', '2014-11-06 11:59:51', 'John\'s voice shook as he shared his latest third party encounter with his bosses\' <a href=\"http://imperfectboss.letsgrowleaders.com/\">boss.</a>\n\n\"Apparently I was caught yawning during her presentation. I didn\'t even realize I had. The irony is that I was really into what she was saying. This had nothing to do with her. But apparently she gave my boss quite an earful about my behavior.\n\nShe didn\'t even tell me directly so I could explain. How can I let her know this is not about her? I feel just awful. It\'s just that I\'ve been travelling so much for work, and I haven\'t been feeling well.\"\n\n\"Get some rest, keep doing a great job, and let it go.\" I replied. This is not about you.\n\nA <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/authenticity-transparency-trust/confident-humility/\">confident, humble leader </a>would have a different response to a yawning audience. Sadly such a reaction likely stems from insecurity and other inept behavior.\n<h3>Effective Versus Inept Leaders</h3>\nStephen Covey has written about <a href=\"https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit6.php\">7 Habits Of Highly Effective People</a>. Today I share 7 habits of highly inept leaders:\n<ol>\n	<li><strong>Be Reactive</strong> - Respond to the biggest fires first with full on urgency. Pull as many people into the mix as you can. When you\'re stressed, make sure your team is <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/communication-listening/trickle_down_intimidation/\">stressed</a> right along with you.</li>\n	<li><strong>Begin With What Will Buy You The Most Political Capital</strong> - Scratch the right backs and don\'t worry about everyone else. Be at the right place at the politically correct time, your team can get work done.</li>\n	<li><strong>Put Yourself First</strong> - Your career matters, make sure you always look out for number one.</li>\n	<li><strong>Think Win At All Costs</strong> - So you step on a few toes, or cut a few corners. What matters is making your numbers.</li>\n	<li><strong>Seek First To Cover Your Butt</strong> - Don\'t leave a trail of ineptitude. Cover your tracks.</li>\n	<li><strong>Micromanage</strong> - Don\'t leave anything to chance. Your team is likely more inept than you. Watch their <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/energy-engagement/the-insiders-guide-to-micromanagement/\">every move</a>.</li>\n	<li><strong>Sharpen Your Knife</strong> - No time for sharpening your saw. Be prepared to go on the offense with naysayers. A little backstabbing never hurt anyone.</li>\n</ol>', '7 Habits Of Highly Inept Leaders', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', '7-habits-of-highly-inept-leaders', '', '', '2014-11-06 06:59:51', '2014-11-06 11:59:51', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21181', 0, 'post', '', 10),
(21190, 360, '2014-11-03 09:14:01', '2014-11-03 14:14:01', 'One of the most common frustrations of leaders is expectations not being met. Leaders are busy folks and as a result we assume a lot in the process of doing our jobs.\n\nOne of the common assumptions and therefore a source of frustration is that our people know what we expect of them.\n\nIf you left your desk or picked up the phone right now and asked one of your team members, “Do you know what is expected of you?” what answer would you get?\n\nIf you have even the slightest doubt that they would answer those questions accurately, it’s time to upgrade the conversations you are having with those you lead.\n<h3>4 Questions To Guide Your Conversations About Expectations</h3>\n<ol>\n	<li><strong>What Do You Expect?</strong> - This is where it all begins. Even before you can communicate to an employee or team members what you expect, you must be clear on what you expect from them. I can’t tell you how many times a leader has said to me, \"My people know what I expect.\"Really? Maybe they do and maybe they don’t. My first question to them is usually, \"Do you know what you expect?\" Clearly define in your own mind and on paper what you expect and then have a conversation with those you lead to tell them. Focus on exactly what you want from them and what their focus should be.</li>\n	<li><strong>What Do They Think You Expect?</strong> - It takes one to tell and two to understand, so this question is critical to ensure that the expectations you have set are actually what they heard. Make sure to ask them what they heard and what they understood. This is your opportunity to intently listen and ensure alignment between what you expect and what they think you expect.This is a question to return to again in future conversations where you are giving feedback. Every feedback conversation should begin with the question, “What do you think was expected?” Many long and frustrating conversations can be avoided if you learn up front that they didn\'t understand your expectations to begin with.</li>\n	<li><strong>How Do They Think They Are Doing?</strong> - If expectations are aligned after the previous question, this is the very next question you should ask in a feedback conversation before giving any feedback. The answer to this question will give you loads of great information about the perspective of the person and what they need from their leader.You are also providing the person an opportunity to give account for the work they\'ve been doing. They get to tell their story and everyone wants to give their side of the story. This gives the message that they have a stake in the work beyond just doing it and that you care about what they think.</li>\n	<li><strong>How Are They Doing?</strong> - This is where you get to talk and you have a treasure trove of information to provide targeted, useful feedback on the job they did or are doing.When preparing for this conversation, ask yourself: How do they best receive feedback? What progress can we celebrate? What was the impact of their performance on others?</li>\n</ol>\nMake expectation conversation a regular part of your leadership. You’ll be less frustrated and your people will trust you more.', 'Solve One Of The Most Common Leadership Frustrations', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'solve-one-of-the-most-common-leadership-frustrations', '', '', '2014-11-03 09:14:01', '2014-11-03 14:14:01', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21190', 0, 'post', '', 5),
(21207, 322, '2014-11-14 05:56:01', '2014-11-14 10:56:01', 'If there is one thing that you can always count on when leading people, it’s that they know how and what motivates them.\n\nThe most common motivational factors are family, financial, recognition or career progression, but sometimes it can be something out of the norm. However one thing holds true, everyone has something that intrinsically motivates them.\n\nGreat leaders and businesses understand the science behind intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.\n\n<strong>Intrinsic motivation</strong> is where someone is motivated internally. Internal motivation is the most powerful type of motivation and develops an environment for long term sustainable performance.\n\n<strong>Extrinsic motivation</strong> is where a specific task or behavior is incentivized based on the outcome. External motivation is only good for short term gains, however the downfall to this type of motivation is that it hurts long-term sustainable behaviors.\n\nI had the honor of leading an employee who had been one of the most consistent and successful performers year after year for over 10 years. He won the elite trips and made a lot of money. He wasn\'t pushing himself outside of his comfort zone to reach his full potential and past what seemed to be his limits.\n\nIt was really hard figuring out what his intrinsic motivation was since it wasn\'t any of the most common motivation factors, until one day we were talking and he showed me a video of a professional football player leading a pregame huddle.\n\nNow let me set this up for you. This gentleman was very timid and reserved. It took me 3 months to get him to have a complete conversation with me. He was not a person who was outspoken, full of energy or passionate. He came in, he got his job done and he went home.\n\nHe showed me this video and I was desperate to find something to push him. I had the great idea to ask him if he wanted to lead our huddles since we had one for the openers and closers every day. Now I didn\'t think he would say yes and I pretty much asked sarcastically. To my amazement he said, “Yeah, I would love too.”\n\nI still didn\'t know what was going to happen during this huddle, but I did know that I had to let him lead it. The day came for him to lead the huddle and I have never seen so much passion and inspiration come from an individual as I did that day. His face was blood red, he was screaming at the top of his lungs and everyone on the team was ready to run through a wall.\n\nI was in shock, but it was a really good kind of shock. Since that day he has got a lot of recognition for his huddle, he pushed himself outside of his comfort zone and above his perceived limits. He was intrinsically motivated and he had a huge part in the team’s success.\n\nSuccessful leaders and businesses get to know their people and their motivational factors. Leaders use those motivational factors to intrinsically motivate their people every day by incorporating it into their communication and coaching. Businesses set up their incentives and recognition structure to intrinsically motivate their people.\n<h3>Ideas To Successfully Motivate Your People</h3>\n<strong>Work/Life Integration</strong> - Allow them to have or do the things that are important to them in their personal life at work\n\n<strong>Monthly Face-To-Face Meetings</strong> - Nothing is more impactful than spending some time every month in a 1x1 setting. Have them bring topics that they would like to discuss, find out how their family and personal life are going, and see if there is anything that you can do to help them.\n\n<strong>Meaningful Work</strong> - Allow your employees to do meaningful work that motivates them. If that is not in their normal scope of job responsibilities, then give them the ability to choose something that they would like to work on.\n\n<strong>Constant Incentives</strong> - Create recognition and incentive programs that never stop. Keep your people motivated beyond just their regular salary, bonuses, raises, etc. Change them up often in order to keep them fresh and exciting.', 'The Unknown Motivational Factor', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'the-unknown-motivational-factor', '', '', '2014-11-14 05:56:01', '2014-11-14 10:56:01', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21207', 0, 'post', '', 0),
(21227, 372, '2014-11-04 06:40:12', '2014-11-04 11:40:12', 'How do leaders build credibility with team members? I believe credibility happens when leaders act on their primary responsibility to serve team members.\n\nServant leadership is not easy to do in today\'s dog-eat-dog, me-first business environment.\n\nYet we\'ve all had great bosses that embraced their role to help team members succeed, to feel good about their contributions, and to feel trusted and respected in their workplace.\n\nIn fact, when working for a boss that cares and serves, employees\' engagement increases, production increases, and service to customers increases.\n\nHow can leaders get themselves into a servant leadership space, day in and day out? By formalizing their personal constitution.\n\nA leader\'s personal constitution is a formal statement that specifies their personal purpose, their values and aligned behaviors, and their leadership or influencing philosophy.\n\nLet\'s look at these elements more closely.\n\nA life purpose statement must clearly and succinctly describe what talents you offer, to serve whom, and to what desirable end you are working.\n\nHere is my current life purpose statement:\n\n<blockquote>\"To use my expertise and passion to inspire and encourage leaders to clarify their personal values and create workplace dignity.\"</blockquote>\n\nYour life values and behaviors specify the principles you believe in and that motivate you daily. These are values that you strive to demonstrate daily and that you\'d like to be known for. Each value needs a crisp definition that expresses exactly what you mean by this value.\n\nHere is a value and definition from one of my clients. The value is respect, which my client defines as:\n\n<blockquote>\"I admire the people I live with, work with, and play with. I actively honor their qualities, values, skills, and hopes.\"</blockquote>\n\nNext, you must specify the behaviors you will model to live each value. Behaviors make your personal values observable, tangible, and measurable.\n\nThe behaviors my client noted for her respect value include:\n\n<ul>\n<li>I treat others, at all times, with dignity and honor.</li>\n<li>I do not blame. I look for ways to solve problems and learn so we don\'t make the same mistakes again.</li>\n<li>I do not use crude language, act rudely, or discount anyone in my life - family, friends, work colleagues, or customers.</li>\n</ul>\n\nThe last element of one\'s personal constitution is their leadership or influencing philosophy. We are all leaders, no matter our role. We act to rally others towards meaningful effort and accomplishments - or we act to do something less.\n\nA leadership philosophy is a values-aligned statement that helps you inspire consistent effort, performance, and authentic positive relationships with those you interact with daily. Your philosophy statement describes your beliefs about leadership and what people can expect of you as you act on these beliefs.\n\n<a href=\"http://www.triuneleadershipservices.com/about-us/about-mark-deterding/\" target=\"_blank\">Mark Deterding</a> is a friend, a proven business executive, successful leadership coach, and experienced consultant. Here is his leadership philosophy:\n\n<blockquote>\"I believe in being a humble servant leader who is absolutely persistent on driving improvement. I ensure clarity of purpose and vision and then create an environment that allows for that vision to be effectively carried out. I do this by clear communication, and empowering and developing people to allow them to succeed. I value relationships as well as results, and work to embody my values in all decisions and actions.\n\nPeople can expect the following from me:\n<ul>\n<li>A listening ear to understand the dreams and desires of the people I work with.</li>\n<li>A clear picture of where we are going.</li>\n<li>A structure that provides for challenging yet achievable goals and objectives.</li>\n<li>Direction and involvement based on a person\'s level of knowledge and commitment to the task.</li>\n<li>An environment that fosters worthwhile work, allows people to be in control of the goal, and positive recognition.</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n\nBy being very specific about your personal life purpose, values and behaviors, and leadership philosophy, your chosen service path will be very clear.\n\nStaying on your path is the fun part. Share these elements with the people you interact with. Ask for their help in staying on your defined path. Ask for their feedback regularly. Listen and refine your behaviors to model your personal constitution.\n\nYou just might find a team of engaged, talented team members working right beside you.', 'Leader, Know Yourself', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'leader-know-yourself', '', '', '2014-11-04 06:40:12', '2014-11-04 11:40:12', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21227', 0, 'post', '', 6),
(21249, 378, '2014-11-17 06:13:55', '2014-11-17 11:13:55', 'In the October 30th edition of <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/when-internal-dissatisfaction-goes-external/\">Chip Shots</a>, Leading Voices addressed the question of when internal dissatisfaction goes external.\n\nAfter reading that post, one of our Lead Change Group members shared a time when the only recourse seemed to be taking an issue public within the organization after multiple attempts to bring the issue to management\'s attention more privately had failed.\n\n<strong>She shares:</strong>\n<blockquote>I was on an information systems project team responsible for implementing new software. The consultant from the software company was uncooperative with me, and coincidentally all of the other women on the team.\n\nMy project leader didn\'t want to hear it. I asked to get someone to replace this consultant as I could not do my job without a helpful representative from the software company. He said he could not feed that back to the software company and impact this man\'s career based on something he did not see or observe.\n\nWhat he implied, without saying it aloud, was willingness to let me flounder and allow my performance to suffer. It seemed to me that my career and well-being as a fellow employee should be put as a higher priority.\n\nIt culminated with my project manager saying, \"if you and Bridgett and Kathy and Joanna would just give him a chance...\"\n\nI said, \"You mean, us women?\"\n\nHe said, \"You said it, I didn\'t.\"\n\nHe didn\'t even realize his own words supported that the consultant may have a problem with women. That was the last time I spoke with him about it.\n\nI spoke with my boss about this, on more than one occasion, even before this last exchange with my project manager. He told me that maybe it would help me to learn how to deal with this type of situation in the future.\n\nI also spoke with my boss\'s boss. He told me more than once to tell him when I was up to here with this and he would do something. I told him at least twice that I was up to here and he did nothing.\n\nI was losing sleep. I would stay up nights brainstorming what I could do differently to get my job done in spite of the lack of support I was getting from all of the people who conceivably should have helped.</blockquote>\n<strong>What are some possible reasons the project leader, boss, and boss\'s boss were so unresponsive?</strong>\n\nInstigator <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/instigators/angela-bisignano/\">Angela Bisignano</a> suggests that the leaders were having their own difficulty asking for help, leaving them ill-equipped to help their employee. She explores that idea in her article <a href=\"http://www.drangelabisignano.com/blog/leaders-vunerability/\">Leaders &amp; Vulnerability</a>.\n\nInstigator <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/instigators/bill-benoist/\">Bill Benoist</a> suggests that they were closed to unfiltered feedback, leaving them devoid of the information they need to resolve the situation. For more on this leadership dynamic, visit this article on <a href=\"http://www.leadershipheartcoaching.com/bold-innovative-leadership/\">Leadership Heart Coaching</a>.\n<h3>When The Issue Came To A Head</h3>\n<strong>Our Lead Change Group member continues...</strong>\n<blockquote>We had a division-wide diversity workshop. People were encouraged to share stories of how they felt they were not being supported, particularly based on race or gender. I spilled my story in front of 50-60 co-workers. My boss\'s boss - who already knew the story - came to me afterward and asked me why I didn\'t tell him it was this bad.\n\nI found it amazing that he only heard me after everyone knew. It made a lot of men related to the project really uncomfortable with me, and afraid I would \"out\" them for something they were unaware that they did.\n\nI\'m not saying I used the best judgment. I was young in my career. I thought I had gone through all the right channels. The facilitators in the workshop encouraged this type of story-telling. HR got involved after that and only made it worse.\n\nPersonal relationships were mended through our own initiative, but I\'m not sure anything changed in the organization when the dysfunction that led to my revelation was brought out in the open.</blockquote>\n<strong>Once the mistrust has led to anonymous complaints or complaints in public forums, how does an organization heal?</strong>\n\nIn addition to the recommendations made by <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/david-dye/\">David Dye</a> and <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/jon-mertz/\">Jon Mertz</a> in the most recent Chip Shots:\n\n<em>Care</em> for the employee presenting the issue, and the employee dynamics behind the situation. Instigator <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/instigators/julie-winkle-giulioni/\">Julie Winkle-Giulioni</a> points out that the first four letters of the phrase <em>Career Development</em> spells <em>Care</em>. In <a href=\"http://www.juliewinklegiulioni.com/blog/career-matters/career-development-begins-with-care/\">Career Development Begins With Care</a>, Julie points out that care is at the very core of authentic and effective development.\n\nKnow what your people need. As Instigator <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/instigators/paul-larue/\">Paul LaRue</a> says in his article <a href=\"http://upwardsleader.com/2014/09/24/why-leaders-should-build-the-castle-first/\">Why Leaders Should Build The Castle First</a>, that knowing what your people need and meeting that need will make you a more effective leader.\n<h3>Epilogue</h3>\n<strong>Our member says:</strong>\n<blockquote>\"Ultimately, I left that project and that location as quickly as possible and tried to put it behind me. This happened over 20 years ago and it was the longest 18 months of my life.\"</blockquote>', 'When The Right Channels Lead to Dead Ends', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'when-the-right-channels-lead-to-dead-ends', '', '', '2014-11-17 06:13:55', '2014-11-17 11:13:55', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21249', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(21256, 243, '2014-11-05 06:26:13', '2014-11-05 11:26:13', 'How do you connect the dots between your daily actions and your greatest calling or purpose? Do your daily actions and responsibilities force you to be something you are not? Or do they line up with your purpose?\n\nIn the late months of 2008, it became obvious that the company I was working for was going to be sold and the prospects for my job continuing as it had were coming to an end. Vicky and I agreed that I would not just take another job.\n\nInstead, my goal would be to pursue my highest calling. I would pursue making my life’s purpose my source of income.\n\nThe pursuit of meaning from my career spawned the Lead Change Group, a global community of people instigating a character-based leadership revolution. That community had a face-to-face meeting, created this blog, wrote a book, created a number of webinars and articles and mobilized a global community of character-based leaders. I hope you’ve been energized and mobilized by being a part of this community too.\n\nThen, in 2012, for a number of reasons, I had to reorient my life a bit and go back into full-time employment. Today, I enjoy the work I’m doing and because of the commitments I’ve made to that enterprise, my best energy every day goes into my job and the people I work with.\n\nMy purpose has not changed. Through my efforts with the Lead Change Group, I learned my passion and my mission: Elevate Purpose; Mobilize People. I focus my best energy every day elevating purpose and mobilizing the 12 people on my team and the 300 in my organization. At the end of my days, there is little energy left for writing blog posts, or books or speeches, or connecting on Twitter or LinkedIn. My efforts have had to become more focused, but they haven’t changed.\n\nPurpose propels us into the future. Purpose challenges us to change and awakens energy in us to do things we would not otherwise do. Our purpose determines our trajectory of life and our destiny. If we choose a low, small, selfish purpose, we will achieve little, one-person outcomes. But, if we choose an elevated purpose, we’ll find the energy to learn things we’ve never known, do things we never thought we could do. Purpose brings life and energy.\n\nHave you ever noticed the best purposes always seem to involve others? When we do something for someone other than ourselves, it elevates. If we are the only beneficiary of our efforts, it just seems flat. When we include others in our purpose, we inflate the purpose and it pulls us up. Alone, we\'re flat, but when we include others, we inflate.\n\nOur best purpose, our highest calling, inflates or inspires us to rise to new heights and achieve great things. In my current position, my focus is on elevating the purpose of my team and my coworkers. That’s the reason I’ve become less engaged. But my heart remains energized by the idea of elevating purpose and mobilizing people, regardless of location.\n\nI’m still with the Lead Change Group, but busy on a side project for a while. So I hope you’ll forgive my lack of consistent involvement and join Becky and all the other instigators as they move Lead Change into its next great phase.\n\nThe actions of one individual makes a difference. What’s your purpose? Are you spending your best energy on your best purpose?', 'Change Your Circumstances, But Not Your Calling', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'change-your-circumstances-but-not-your-calling', '', '', '2014-11-05 06:26:13', '2014-11-05 11:26:13', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21256', 0, 'post', '', 6),
(21265, 329, '2014-11-12 06:33:38', '2014-11-12 11:33:38', 'Samuel Taylor Coleridge was always my friend. Oh, I did not actually know Sam personally. \n\nBut, his poetry made me feel like I was in a conversation with an old friend. I first met Sam when I had to memorize lines from his famous poem, <em>The Rime of the Ancient Mariner</em>.\n\nOne of his poems that stuck with me forever was his poem <em>What If You Slept</em>. While the poem had a decidedly religious overtone, the challenge presented by his poem is universal for all leaders eager to be excellent.\n\n<strong>Here is his poem:</strong>\n\n<blockquote>What if you slept\nAnd what if\nIn your sleep you dreamed\nAnd what if\nIn your dream you went to heaven\nAnd there plucked a strange and beautiful flower\nAnd what if\nWhen you awoke\nYou had that flower in you hand\nAh, what then?</blockquote>\n\nWe were all taught in Supervision 101 that managers are directors of stuff—policies, materials, numbers, and systems; while leaders are influencers of people. People have hearts and souls rather than programs and sums; people are emotional, not just logical. And, that is where the dream part comes in.\n\n“All successful people - men and women - are big dreamers,” wrote author <strong>Brian Tracey</strong>. “They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.” \n\nGreat leaders are superb dreamers. Thomas Edison was not in pursuit of improving the candle. Rosa Parks was not just claiming a seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Virgin Galactic founder and CEO Sir Richard Branson is not seeking to just build a faster passenger aircraft.\n\n<h3>Dream-Driven Leaders Tell Stories</h3>\n\nWhen <strong>Dr. Martin Luther King</strong> stood before a quarter-million people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August, 1963 and delivered a speech practically every fifth grader knows, it did not solely present a dream of beautiful future, where “this nation would rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: that all men are created equal.” \n\nHe put a flower in the hands of everyone within earshot. He spoke of a day when sons of former slaves and sons of former slave owners would sit down together at the table of brotherhood. He painted a poignant and powerful picture of a time when his own four little children would live in a nation where they would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.\n\nOne of the most powerful tools dream-driven leaders use in order to sincerely communicate a clear, compelling purpose is storytelling. Stories are memorable and rich in their capacity to convey meaning. Stories also stir inquisitiveness. It is that trait— the inquisitive pursuit of a dream—that inspires and cultivates front line employees to strive for what is beyond, not just what is.\n\n“If the Bible were a list of rules,” says information design guru <strong>Richard Wurman</strong>, “it would have been out of print centuries ago.”\n\nIt is the stories that create legends out of organizational heroes, parables out of organizational errors, and folklore out of organizational beliefs. And, it is the anecdotal style that invites connection, identification and discovery.\n\nStories telegraph a set of norms or values unique to the organization. When Southwest Airlines employees tell the story of retired CEO <strong>Herb Kelleher</strong> hiding in the luggage bin to scare passengers as they entered the plane, they are <em>really</em> saying, “We are supposed to have fun.”\n\nWhen Aflac managers tell the story of how CEO <strong>Dan Amos</strong> took a major risk with his approval of a duck as the company spokesperson, it was <em>really</em> saying, “Be willing to be different.” One senior leader said of the infamous meeting to introduce the duck idea, “We thought he had lost his mind. But, today that duck is one of the most recognizable, brand-enhancing corporate symbols on the planet.”\n\n“Without a dream,” wrote famed author <strong>Zig Ziglar</strong>, “there would be no dream come true.”\n\n<h3>Dream-Driven Leaders Act Congruent With Their Dreams</h3>\n\n“Like Desperadoes Waiting For A Train” is a song made famous by the Highwaymen, a singing group made up of country music giants Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and the late Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. It perfectly captures the sense of eagerness dream-driven leaders help create. Watch such leaders in action and there is always a sense of anticipation, like something special is just around the corner. More importantly, they fan the flame of impatience and expectancy by their low tolerance for anything that creates temperance, moderation or restraint.\n\nIt is not that these leaders are shoot-from-the-hip, impulsive types. Their decisions are grounded in substance and bordered by solid information. It is more a restless recognition that being in the moment is required for greatness. They speak about the journey ahead with excitement. They evaluate input filtered through an interest in tomorrow, not an anchor to yesterday. They show more fascination with what they can be than anxiety with what they are.\n\n<strong>Larry Kurzweil</strong>, President of Universal Studios Hollywood, requested the theme park to turn up the volume on the street music and to make it peppy, walking-somewhere music. His leadership style communicates that same upbeat, animated, idea-a-minute persona. When people are around him his infectious forward pushing energy makes them ready to push the go button and make stuff happen. The result? Universal Studios Hollywood enjoys a repeat visit rate among their guests that is considerable higher than Disneyland and other theme parks in the area.\n\nDreams lived are dreams retold. <strong>President John F. Kennedy</strong> did not paint a picture of going to the moon solely in his 1961 inaugural speech. He repeated the dream in word and deed. It remained on the top of his presidential to-do list. The dream found its way into many of his speeches and conversations after taking office. He used every opportunity to buttonhole people of influence to clear away the obstacles for the realization of his space dream.\n\nIf dreams are shared with consistency, conviction, and clarity, they are heard. If dreams are followed by aligned actions and obvious accountability, they are believed. If dreams are repeated by those not the subject of the tale, they are remembered. And, sooner or later, with persistence and passion, followers will awake from the dream and find a flower in their hand.', 'Great Leaders Are Dreamers', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'great-leaders-are-dreamers', '', '', '2014-11-12 06:33:38', '2014-11-12 11:33:38', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21265', 0, 'post', '', 1),
(21268, 343, '2014-11-11 06:42:28', '2014-11-11 11:42:28', 'If you ask leaders across the board what alignment means in their organization, most likely they\'ll give you one of two definitions.\n\nEither, <em>our core values and mission are aligned with our goals\"</em> or <em>\"our people understand our values and are aligned with our vision</em>.\n\nWithin these answers, no doubt a great deal of effort has been done. Your company probably has hosted many strategic planning sessions to identify your values and derive it\'s goals. Many hiring interviews with potential candidates were held to screen those out who did not match your company values.\n\nWhile those steps are a necessary foundation for alignment, they are just a starting point for true transformation. There are a great many more aspects to bring together the entire company that will build upon this foundation of values and people. Unfortunately, this is where many leaders end and thus fail to follow-through with the process.\n\nProper organizational alignment is to ensure that every aspect of your organization is congruent to your company mission. As a leader, you\'ll need to recognize that challenge and fold it into your company\'s culture.\n\nHow is every area aligned within your organization? Here are some ideas:\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Systems</strong> - Are the work processes and flowcharts tied into your mission? For example, if your company wants to give the best customer experience, is every customer interaction streamlined, or are they bogged down with layers of checks and balances that hinder this goal? Check each and every system constantly to ensure they work together as a well-oiled machine.</li>\n<li><strong>Training & Development</strong> - This is an area that if not fully congruent, can derail the best strategic alignment plan. Do all the touch points of training - hiring, on-boarding, training, leadership development, continuing education - enable your company to fully achieve your goals? Are there areas where this is shortchanged? Will the full execution of your training plan realize your company mission?</li>\n<li><strong>Policies</strong> - While necessary guidelines (or guardrails) for conduct, your company policies may impede the internal and external effectiveness of the organization. Do they take away from the customer experience? Slow down hiring processes? Communicate trust throughout your company? You may have to do some fact-finding to find the original germ of each policy and why they were instituted. Have a team scrutinize them to see their impact from many angles and ensure they support your mission instead of detracting from it.</li>\n<li><strong>Communication</strong> - Does the flow of both personal and digital communication move freely throughout, promoting the vision? Or does need-to-know govern the talking points? Do you use <a href=\"http://www.skipprichard.com/avoid-the-nightmare-of-the-email-blind-carbon-copy-bcc/\">BCC fields</a> in emails that <a href=\"http://upwardsleader.com/2014/08/19/a-simple-way-to-build-trust/\">betray the trust</a> you promote to foster? Does your company have town hall meetings? What is being communicated to your customers? If people feel like they have the needed information, they will more likely help communicate along the company lines. If not, they will fill in the gaps and spread as much misinformation as the leaders who did not communicate.</li>\n<li><strong>Financial Systems</strong> - Alignment also transcends into your company\'s financial stewardship as well. If training is a top value, does your training budget reflect this? Does your business model allow the core operations to drive profits without derailing your mission in pursuit of smaller, less profitable niches or strategies? If your company handles their financial matters ineffectively, the pressure will quickly mount to shortcut everything else to reign in the bottom line.</li>\n</ul>\nRemember this, cars run best when all four wheels are aligned. If even one is off slightly, it will create more problems than just uneven tire wear. Alignment, done holistically, will create a streamlined organization that will stand out above the rest.', 'Aligned Your People? It&#039;s A Start...', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'aligned-your-people-its-a-start', '', '', '2014-11-11 06:42:28', '2014-11-11 11:42:28', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21268', 0, 'post', '', 0),
(21282, 330, '2014-11-13 06:45:26', '2014-11-13 11:45:26', 'Over time, I’ve learned that one of the most important things you can do to advance your own life is to become comfortable with discomfort. <em>Dis</em>comfort is essential to personal progress, growth, and development.\n\nSo important is discomfort to personal development, that there’s even an educational term for that uncomfortable place where learning happens: the zone of <em>proximal development</em>.\n\nEducators describe it as the difference between what a learner can do without help and what she can do with help.\n\nIn my first book, <a href=\"http://amzn.to/17qjf8k\">Courage Goes To Work</a>, I included a chapter titled <em>Modulating Comfort</em> which explained the importance of modulating between comfort and discomfort as a way to inspire performance improvement.\n\nFor example, think back to when you were a kid. Before you jumped off the intimidating high diving board, you likely jumped off the low board hundreds of time. Once you mastered the low board it was no longer thrilling. Maybe it had even become boring. The more boring it got, the more the scary high diving board started to become the focus of your attention. It represented a new and scary challenge.\n\nThe best way to overcome the boredom that had set in on the low board was to scale up the high board ladder. As you edged out toward the end of the board, you became more and more uncomfortable, culminating with you hurling yourself off the high dive.\n\nThere’s another area where the importance of discomfort applies: <em>communication</em>.\n\nIn her terrific new book, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K5WB6LA\">The Discomfort Zone</a>, Marcia Reynolds masterfully coaches the reader about how to have conversations that disrupt people’s thinking so they can embrace discomfort and think in more imaginative ways.\n\nShe writes, “For true shifts in thinking and behavior to occur, you must be willing to challenge a person’s beliefs, interrupt his patterns, and short-circuit the conviction to his logic even when it feels uncomfortable. This is a Discomfort Zone conversation.”\n\nIn reading <em>The Discomfort Zone</em>, I was reminded of a wonderful quote attributed to Gandhi: “The truth only hurts if it should.”\n\nReynolds explains that uncomfortable conversations often result in discoveries that are at first startling and disruptive. The truths expressed in <em>The Discomfort Zone</em> can disrupt a person’s sense of identity, or dislodge a conviction, or upset a belief. But the temporary pain gives way to new clarity, insight, and growth.\n\nVirginia “Ginni” Rometty, the CEO of IBM, captured the importance of embracing discomfort when she said, “Growth and comfort do not coexist.” If you want to grow, progress, and evolve, you’ve got to be willing to embrace discomfort.\n\nBill Treasurer\'s latest book, <a href=\"http://www.leadersopendoors.com/\">Leaders Open Doors</a> (ASTD Press, 2014), focuses on how leaders create growth through opportunity and includes a chapter titled <em>Purposeful Discomfort</em>. Read more of Bill’s take on purposeful discomfort in his article <a href=\"http://bit.ly/ViZfUd\">How Leaders Encourage Growth Through Discomfort</a>.\n\n&nbsp;', 'Embrace Discomfort', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'embrace-discomfort', '', '', '2014-11-13 06:45:26', '2014-11-13 11:45:26', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21282', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(21316, 251, '2014-11-10 05:25:56', '2014-11-10 10:25:56', 'Hubby returned home from running errands and excitedly told me about the new screens that had been installed on the gas pumps - screens that played music and TV shows.\n\n\"What a great concept,\" he gushed. \"Now I don\'t have to just stand there anymore.\"\n\nHad hubby participated in the University of Virginia <a href=\"http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6192/75\" target=\"_blank\">time alone study</a>, I know he would have been in the 58% of participants who said being alone with their thoughts was difficult.\n\nI am doubtful that he would have been in the two-thirds of male participants who self-administered an average of seven electrical shocks instead of sitting quietly.\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">In 11 studies, we found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more, and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts. </div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Timothy Wilson</div>\n</blockquote>\n\nPeople jumped on the study results, anxious to explore the why behind the findings. The implication was that something was wrong with wanting to be entertained - that there were mental control issues.\n\n<h3>Why The Insistence On Making Stuff Like This Matter?</h3>\n\nSome people like to be alone with their thoughts, others don\'t. The preferences aren\'t right or wrong, just different.\n\nThe beauty of what most of us have in common is our differences. Red states, blue states. Baseball, football. Reading a book the old-fashioned way, viewing it on a Kindle. Ice cream for dessert, no dessert. The deity we worship. Half full, half empty.\n\nWouldn\'t it be more fun and productive to respect and celebrate these differences instead of positioning them as divisive and wrong?\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">In the end we are all separate. Our stories, no matter how similar, come to a fork and diverge. We are drawn to each other because of our similarities, but it is our differences we must learn to respect.</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Goethe</div>\n</blockquote>\n\nSameness can be easier - no conflicts to manage or middle ground to be carved out. But, there\'s little opportunity for exploration and growth when there\'s sameness everywhere.\n\nI\'ve learned the most from people whose view was 180 degrees from mine and who gracefully played angel\'s advocate with my thought processes.\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentiality, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place. </div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Margaret Mead</div>\n</blockquote>\n\nI love being alone with my thoughts and think the gas pump TV screen is intrusive. I also love being with hubby and other friends who abhor reflection time. They\'re the vanilla to my chocolate; the outward activity to my internal musings. I\'m richer for the diversity and love it that way.', 'Why Insist This Stuff Matters?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'why-insist-this-stuff-matters', '', '', '2014-11-10 05:25:56', '2014-11-10 10:25:56', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21316', 0, 'post', '', 2);
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(21328, 252, '2014-11-07 06:21:09', '2014-11-07 11:21:09', 'You may have seen my recent post <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/boss-its-just-not-your-job/\" target=\"_blank\">Boss, It’s Just Not Your Job.</a>.\n\nSoon after, fellow instigator Paul LaRue published a great piece, How to Kill \'It’s Not My Job\'.\n\nThese two topics may seem at odds with each other, but together they raise an interesting point.\n\nIn my post, I advise bosses to not do work that is really your employees\' work. This can deny them the opportunity to develop their own resourcefulness.\n\nPaul comes from a similar place in emphasizing to employees that saying, “It’s not my job,” is not an excuse. He reminds leaders this works best when you role model taking on a task even when \"it’s not your job.\"\n\nSo what’s a leader to do? Where’s the line? What’s enough to set an example, but not too much -- so much that your employees don’t stretch?\n\n<h3>The Birth Of A Monster</h3>\n\nI distinctly remember sitting in a colleague’s office. He was behind his desk. I remember the sun through his windows. He was a manager, and I was not yet. I was ranting about some injustice. He was listening. The only thing I remember him saying was, “If you don’t vote, don’t complain.”\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">\"I said, \'Somebody should do something about that.\' Then I realized I am somebody.”</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Lily Tomlin</div>\n</blockquote>\n\nThat day changed my life and career. I grew up on a farm. I already knew that if I saw something that needed to be done, I needed to do it and not leave it to someone else. My colleague’s words brought this to another level for me.\n\nI became more active in working to change things that didn’t make sense for me. It’s one reason I got into HR. I knew that employees, when given a reputation to live up to (Thank you, Dale Carnegie.), will often rise to the occasion. Yes, this required effort on my part, but it also made me more collaborative and effective.\n\n<h3>Be Aware Of The Hole You May Be Digging</h3>\n\nI also remember days sitting in my office crying because I worked <em>so hard</em> at making things different and nothing seemed to stick.\n\nThere were times I felt like I followed people around cleaning up their messes. One boss suggested that if I always fixed<img class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-21332\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/good-men-quotation-Burke-300x249.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"249\" /> things for people and didn’t allow them to take the consequences of their mistakes, they would never learn. True.\n\nJust as important, an attitude of <em>I’m that somebody who can do something about that</em> taken too far, can lead to burnout. For me, at one point it culminated in taking two weeks off from work at my manager’s behest. I had exhausted myself with my “the buck stops here” approach.\n\nI still have to work at <em>not</em> overdoing. The staff at the coffee shop I visit tell me I should be on payroll for all the tables I clear and trash I pick up. Those comments clue me in to noticing how much I’m doing that\'s not my job.\n\nThere is a point where doing something that\'s <em>not your job</em> is <a href=\"http://www.reimaginework.com/leadership-summer-farm-kids/#beneath\" target=\"_blank\">deliberate and important.</a> But, what’s the right amount? Under what circumstances is this okay?\n\nI don’t think the fate of the world lies in trash left on a table in my coffee shop, but I still believe in taking action when I see something that needs to be done. I am still working out what level of service and action is healthy for me.\n\n&nbsp;', 'Avoid The Dark Side Of Being A Role Model', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'avoid-the-dark-side-of-being-a-role-model', '', '', '2014-11-07 06:21:09', '2014-11-07 11:21:09', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21328', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(21397, 244, '2015-01-26 06:00:36', '2015-01-26 11:00:36', 'The Brighton School of Business shared the following infographic with me and I thought to share it here as a catalyst for conversation in the Lead Change Group.\n\nSo take a look and post your answers to one or more of the following questions. \n\nOr perhaps even ask a question of your own:\n\n<ul>\n<li>Do any of the assertions below, current or predictions about the future, surprise you? If so, which ones and why?</li>\n<li>Today\'s top CEO\'s are not active in social media? Do you think that will change in the future? Does it need to change?</li>\n<li>If the predictions about the CEO of the future are accurate, then what are the implications for all leaders at every level for the future - how will we/they need to change, too?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/infographic.jpg\" />\n\nSince this is a pretty long graphic here are the questions again.And please do feel free to pose your own in the comments.\n<ul>\n<li>If the predictions about the CEO of the future are accurate, then what are the implications for all leaders at every level for the future - how will we/they need to change, too?</li>\n<li>Do any of the assertions below, current or predictions about the future, surprise you? If so, which ones and why?</li>\n<li>Today\'s top CEO\'s are not active in social media? Do you think that will change in the future? Does it need to change?</li>\n</ul>\n', 'How Will CEO&#039;s Of The Future Be Different From CEO&#039;s Of Today?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'how-will-ceos-of-the-future-be-different-from-ceos-of-today', '', '', '2015-01-26 06:00:36', '2015-01-26 11:00:36', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21397', 0, 'post', '', 1),
(21453, 282, '2014-11-21 05:54:07', '2014-11-21 10:54:07', '<em>Deference</em> is defined as \"respectful submission or yielding to the judgment, opinion, or will of another\".\n\nAlso consider the phrase <em>to make a difference</em>, meaning \"to cause a change in one\'s situation, circumstances or course of action.\"\n\nIs one better than the other? More right? More noble? Of course one is a better choice than the other. Which one you ask? This answer is <em>both</em>.\n\nBeing a dynamic and successful leader doesn\'t mean you are always right, nor does it mean you always get your way. The wise leader understands that there are times when he or she needs to walk their own ideas back in deference to the ideas or input of their team.\n\n<ul>\n<li>It may be because their team member\'s idea is obviously the best one on the table.</li>\n<li>Maybe it\'s necessary to let a team member run with their idea to see if they will succeed.</li>\n<li>More importantly, maybe the leader needs to see how will their team member will react if they fail.</li>\n<li>The leader who understands which battles are worth fighting and defers in the ones that are not will more than likely succeed in the most important challenges.</li>\n<li>Leaders increase buy in of their team members when the team sees a leader willing to allow the team to help shape the direction and the mission of the team.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<em>What would you add as a good reason or result of showing deference?</em>\n\nThere are other times when a leader simply needs to make a difference. Not every decision or every action deserves a democratic vote or the full support of the team. Real leaders understand that sometimes authentic leadership can be a lonely and difficult task. Leaders who always defer to the political or social winds of change do an injustice to their organization and their cause.\n\n<ul>\n<li>Making a difference requires looking at the consequences and course for everyone. Groups tend to focus on the immediate, here-and-now aspects of decisions, and tend to focus primarily on how the decision will affect their group.</li>\n<li>The successful leader is passionate about making a difference as it relates to core values. Sometimes this is difficult, even costly for an organization. Leaders understand the payoff comes eventually, and are willing to pay the short term costs to hold true to the core values.</li>\n<li>Leaders don\'t just lead, they produce other leaders. As a mentor/leader, it\'s critical that they model courage for those they are leading. Leaders push through the waves of discontent of the larger group with passion and fierce determination.</li>\n<li>Timing isn\'t everything, but timing affects everything. Leaders who seek input or show deference may miss a window of opportunity for growth, change or success</li>\n</ul>\n\n<em>What would you add as a good reason to make a difference by leading, even if it\'s against the feeling of the group?</em>\n\nThe bottom line is simple...there is no bottom line. There is no standard answer. The mark of authentic leadership simply means knowing in each moment whether it\'s time to <em>lead by deference</em>or <em>lead by making a difference</em>.', 'Show Deference or Make a Difference?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'show-deference-or-make-a-difference', '', '', '2014-11-21 05:54:07', '2014-11-21 10:54:07', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21453', 0, 'post', '', 6),
(21459, 375, '2014-11-18 06:13:08', '2014-11-18 11:13:08', 'If you live for money, it’s time to get a life. The truth is, money can’t buy everything.\n\nFor example, money can’t buy peace of mind, good friends, a close-knit family, work-life balance, a worry-free day, good karma, time to relax, good health, a golden anniversary, quality time with your kids, a new beginning, natural beauty, happy memories, to name just a few.\n\nMany people are actually poor because the only thing they have is money. Are you in it just for the money?\n\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Are you willing to sacrifice your dreams for more money?</strong> Some folks justify continuing in a miserable job situation by acknowledging that they’re well compensated. People who live a life of purpose wake up each morning excited to pursue their dreams and make a difference. Money can’t guarantee that.</li>\n\n<li><strong>Are you willing to compromise your honor for more money?</strong>\n\nEverything has a price, but not everything should be for sale. Some folks make money by being ruthless or doing unscrupulous things. People with a clear conscience have core beliefs and values that influence their decisions, shape their day-to-day actions, and determine their short- and long-term priorities. The result is that they spend more time listening to their inner voice. Chances are, they sleep well at night.</li>\n\n<li><strong>Are you willing to squander your </strong><strong>happiness for more money?</strong> Some people don’t understand the meaning of enough. They think the grass is always greener on their neighbor’s side of the fence. Others understand the difference between wanting and needing. As the Yiddish proverb says: “The <em>truly</em>rich are those who enjoy what they have.” Nowhere in the proverb is the word money mentioned.</li>\n\n<li><strong>Are you willing to </strong><strong>forgo relationships for more money?</strong> Think about <em>the takers</em>. You know them. They measure every action by how much they will personally benefit, while <em>the givers</em> do things without expectation of personal gain. Which are you?</li>\n\n<li><strong>Are you willing to compromise quality of life for more money?</strong> Some people eye a prize without considering the sacrifices required to achieve it. Success has its own tradeoffs. It may demand long hours, time away from family or a significant financial commitment. The key is to understand the requirements for success before embarking on your journey. Choose wisely.</li>\n\n<li><strong>Are you willing to forgo peace of mind for more money?</strong> There are those who feel that happiness lies in having more. So they never have enough. As a consequence, they set very high expectations and are constantly worried and stressed out. Do you call that happiness?</li>\n\n<li><strong>Are you willing to miss out on life for more money? </strong> Some people don’t take time to smell the roses. It’s hard to calculate the value of memories, such as a clean bill of health, a first kiss, grandchildren, passing the driver’s test, an acceptance letter, a visit from the tooth fairy, cheers from the crowd, retirement, “Mama . . . Dada,” bedtime stories, potty training, and “I love you, too.” It’s important to focus on the journey as well the destination. There’s no dress rehearsal in life.</li>\n\n<li><strong>Are you willing to cash in your personal dignity for more money?</strong> Some people are consumed with seeking the approval of others. The most important person to satisfy, however, is you. It’s your life. So do your best. Be your own person. And remember, you’re not finished until you do yourself proud. As the author John Mason said, “You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.” It’s time to be the real you.</li>\n</ol>\n\nThis is an excerpt from Frank’s new book <a href=\"http://amzn.to/1pw2lNn\">Follow Your Conscience</a>, released November 2014.', '8 Reasons Why Money&#039;s Not Worth What You Think', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', '8-reasons-why-moneys-not-worth-what-you-think', '', '', '2014-11-18 06:13:08', '2014-11-18 11:13:08', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21459', 0, 'post', '', 0),
(21465, 268, '2014-11-20 05:50:23', '2014-11-20 10:50:23', 'That’s what I wanted to say to several hundred people in Florida last week. They had paid to enjoy Universal Orlando, but their eyes were glued to tiny screens.\n\nSome visitors even had both hands occupied — tablet in one and <a href=\"http://www.cnet.com/news/selfie-sticks-have-they-gone-too-far/\">selfie stick</a> in the other.\n\nThey posed in front of various attractions, held up the selfie stick, clicked, studied the tablet screen, and moved on. They never even turned around to look at the attraction thoroughly. The best details were behind them.\n\nTo me, the selfie stick is a metaphor for Corporate America’s creativity dilemma. Organizations seek ways to boost creativity. But myopia is an enemy of creativity, and what is more myopic than a selfie and a tiny screen?\n\nThink of the details you miss. Your eyes give you a panoramic view of the big picture and the smallest details. The camera lens gives you only subset – and even a smaller subset if your self-portrait is featured prominently in the foreground.\n\nWhat you see in that subset depends on the quality of your photography and size of your monitor. The end result? You are only getting a fraction of the available visual input. And your self-portrait quite possibly keeps you from noticing the surrounding details.\n\n<h3>Look Up. Look Out. Be Curious.</h3>\n\nWhile the phone clan was posting Facebook updates, I was reveling in Universal’s attention to detail. What creative process do they use to envision and actualize their themed areas? How do they get from the big picture concept to the tiniest implementation details, such as size and label for the Essence of Dittany apothecary bottle?\n\nWhat leads a college graduate to apply for hourly work managing the queue of Ollivander’s Wand Shop?\n\nHow do the marketing folks attract mammoth crowds on a weekday in early November? How are visitors from the United Kingdom flying here so inexpensively when I can’t find an affordable fare to Heathrow?\n\nQuestions lead to conversations lead to more questions and eventually to insights.\n\n<h3>Observe. Absorb. Create.</h3>\n\nFeeling stuck in a creative rut? Try these steps:\n\n<ol>\n<li>Turn your phone off. Better yet, leave it behind so you are not tempted to check it. Visit someplace new - either in your own city or elsewhere. Be completely present in your surroundings. Notice everything. Listen carefully. Pay attention to your feelings throughout the day.</li>\n<li>At the end of the day, ask yourself: “What did I notice today that I do not typically pay attention to? What keeps me from seeing details like these on a day-to-day basis?”</li>\n<li>Also ask: “What new questions do I have as a result of my day trip that I would like to explore? How will I explore these questions?” Commit to one follow-up action.</li>\n<li>Start a conversation with someone new - perhaps someone on the bus or while waiting in line. You may learn something; you may not. But you are adding data from which to draw during future problem-solving efforts.</li>\n</ol>\nPeople laugh at me. I go on vacation and end up with random information on commercial pool/spa management, the day-to-day work of a CDC epidemiologist, being a U.S. expat in Japan, crime scene investigation techniques, shopping habits based on currency exchange rates, and continuing education options in Manitoba.\n\nWhy do I care? Years ago, I read that an idea is two or more known pieces of information assembled in a new way. The more information I absorb, the more contexts I explore, the more fodder I have for idea generation.\n\nIf my eyes are glued to a phone, I’m missing out.', 'Put Your Phone Away And Look Up', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'put-your-phone-away-and-look-up', '', '', '2014-11-20 05:50:23', '2014-11-20 10:50:23', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21465', 0, 'post', '', 5),
(21469, 268, '2014-12-22 06:00:13', '2014-12-22 11:00:13', 'Do you think you are open-minded, unbiased, and free of racism? Let me challenge you. It is human nature to categorize people.\n\nThis person is like me; that person is different from me. Committed to the job, not committed. High potential, less potential. Smart, not smart. Fit, not in shape. Beautiful, plain, ugly. Cultured, not cultured. Groomed well, not so well.\n\nFrom a top school, from a lesser school. Rich, middle class, poor. Young, old. Childish, mature. Black, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, Caucasian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, mixed, can’t tell. The list of distinctions is infinite.\n\nHow do our classifications play out in the workplace?\n\n<strong>Here are a few examples:</strong>\n\n<ul>\n<li>She’s available for travel. Give the project to her.</li>\n<li>We need a “J” for this role. I will never hire a “P” again.</li>\n<li>He’s in accounting. I wouldn’t put anyone from that department in a trade show booth.</li>\n<li>She’s too young for this opportunity. Give it to someone more seasoned.</li>\n<li>He’s black. I think he’ll do better in the Southside sales territory than he will up here where the clients are mostly white.</li>\n<li>She just had a baby. I don’t think she’s the right person for a big project like this.</li>\n<li>This account needs to be handled by someone in the office, not a telecommuter.</li>\n</ul>\n\nIn the example above, the speaker assumes certain differences between in-office and remote workers—stereotypes. Then these perceived differences influence which employee is considered for the account.\n\nAn About.com article on <a href=\"http://psychology.about.com/od/socialpsychology/a/person-perception.htm\">social psychology</a> says we have:\n\n<blockquote>\"A collection of beliefs and assumptions about how certain traits are linked to other characteristics and behaviors. For example, if you learn that a new co-worker is very happy, you might immediately assume that she is also friendly, kind, and generous. These assumptions help people make judgments quickly, but they can also contribute to stereotyping and errors.\"</blockquote>\n\nNext time you are making a people management decision, stop and take a critical look at how biases may be informing your choices.\n\nWhat errors are you making? How are you limiting yourself, your company, and your employees with your categorizations? Have you denied an opportunity to a person because of color, parenting status, appearance, educational background or other factors, due to unconscious assumptions about capability, availability, or commitment?', 'The Biased Manager', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'the-biased-manager', '', '', '2014-12-22 06:00:13', '2014-12-22 11:00:13', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21469', 0, 'post', '', 9),
(21482, 310, '2014-11-24 05:14:48', '2014-11-24 10:14:48', 'Life can bring a series of missteps, turbulence, miseries or chaotic times. But it can be all-good.\n\nSometimes there’s a reason for these dynamics, tied to our purpose. And we may discover it later on our journey—when the lessons return to renew, correct and remind.\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">\"A life without cause is a life without effect.\"</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Barbarella, from the  1960’s science fiction film</div>\n</blockquote>\n\nA frequent expression I remember my grandmother using when she couldn\'t recall a particular word or way of doing something right at that particular moment was, \"Don\'t worry, it\'ll come back to me.\" She knew what she needed to say or do for that situation, but the know-how had temporarily left her thoughts.\n\nFor my grandmother Pearl, a woman with a fourth grade education, this information was rooted in generational pass-downs that helped her make a way out of no way. And return it would, for my grandmother’s leadership purpose as wife and family matriarch sent out her search beams to be correct just in time.\n\nWikipedia defines resilience as “a capacity to anticipate disruptions, adapt to events, and create lasting value.\" This definition is applicable to individuals, families, organizations or society. And the more purposeful our focus is, in spite of the situation, the better the potential for a valuable comeback.\n\nFor example, members of the military find purpose in ‘supporting and defending’ this country. However, service comes with a cost. The experience of combat, where the outcomes could go a variety of ways, is the ultimate price.\n\nFor those service members who return, recovering from this intense and ugly scene can be difficult. Trying to get back on their life track, along with their families, takes time. A return to a new normal is not always easy. The military leadership recognizes this need and has setup resiliency centers to help the transition to coming back.\n\nCommunities in crisis have done the same, reigniting purpose after violence and upheaval have disrupted the fabric of citizen’s lives, such as in the Newtown Connecticut Sandy Hook school shooting.\n\nSome of the parents have now become first responders to support the families in other locales experiencing this tragedy of the spirit. Misery redirected to rebound from a setback. A role for leadership is to recognize and step in on this issue of resilience.\n\n“So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide and our doubts serve to reassure us,” stated by Jean-Pierre de Caussade, a 17<sup>th</sup> century French Jesuit priest, a message on effect, purpose and cause. Leaders to can find answers in rebounding from mistakes to triumph!\n\nOur various journeys require us to start, pause, stop, redirect and restart. Very few of us remain on the same trail indefinitely. Focus, determination, spirit, will, belief—all keep us coming back strong.\n\nThe ability to go from zero to fifty miles an hour, from despair to delight is what it means to be resilient. As a nine year cancer survivor, this concept too has been a critical a part of finding cause in my existence.\n\nSo remember, the route is clear for your comeback after all of the setbacks.\n\nExcerpted from my motivational autobiography, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008FQDPYE\" rel=\"nofollow\">Navigating Life’s Roadways: Stories Of Insight from My Odyssey & Inspiration for Your Journey</a>, available in print and Kindle eBook.', 'Be Resilient - Finding Purpose For Your Comeback', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'be-resilient-finding-purpose-for-your-comeback', '', '', '2014-11-24 05:14:48', '2014-11-24 10:14:48', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21482', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(21491, 307, '2014-11-19 05:57:06', '2014-11-19 10:57:06', 'Last week, I traveled to San Francisco to speak at a conference. I took an extra day to visit the famous California Coast Redwoods.\n\nI’d read about them and seen many pictures, but the reality of standing beside the tallest living things on the planet was astounding.\n\nIf you\'ve never been and you have the chance, you don’t want to miss these giants, some of which are thousands of years old.\n\n<h3>How You Grow Tall</h3>\n\nThe tallest tree was the height of a 36 story building with a trunk that would take ten or twelve people to encircle. Wow! When I got back to my hotel that night, I read some more about these trees. In particular, I wanted to know about their roots. How do these 300+ feet trees anchor themselves to the ground?\n\nWhat I found surprised me. I expected the redwoods to have deep root systems, but they don’t. Their roots only go down five or six feet but they extend outward 100 feet. In fact, the roots of nearby trees entangle, connect, and even fuse with one another. Together, the trees anchor one another through thousands of years of storms, wind, and floods.\n\nThink about that for a moment. The tallest living things on earth don’t get tall on their own. They do it together. As a leader, your trajectory and success also depend on your connections. There are three connections I\'ve found that propel every great leader in their career.\n\n<h3>Your Team</h3>\n\nThe first connection is with your team. It’s true that as a leader you are there to serve your team. But a funny thing happens when you do this. You will find your team also serves you. You don’t have to problem solve on your own. You can rely on them. Where you need to grow, they’ll challenge you. When your team trusts you, they’ll do amazing work with you. When you lead well, your team makes you stronger.\n\n<h3 class=\"p1\">Your Community</h3>\n\nThe second connection to propel your career is with a community of peers. Leadership is challenging work. It’s not easy and it doesn’t always feel good. It can be difficult, but extremely rewarding to find a good group of colleagues who will encourage you and help you problem solve. If you haven’t found one, consider starting one. (Hint: The Lead Change Group is an awesome community of supportive and encouraging leaders.) In addition to mutual encouragement and problem solving, you also benefit from time spent with people outside the bubble of your organization. You’ll see your own situations with fresh eyes and better perspective.\n\n<h3>Your Mentors and Coaches</h3>\n\n<p>The third connection that propels great leaders is a mentor or coach. In fact, many leaders have a series of mentors and coaches over their lifetime…but it’s your responsibility to find them. Recently, I saw an aspiring leader sit back on a social media forum and post something like,: “Hey, I really wish you’d mentor me.”\n\nIt was a generic comment that felt needy and like the person was a victim. Most mentors won’t respond to that sort of energy. You want to find people who are farther down the road, who are doing what you want to do or have the kind of influence you want to have, and then approach them with a specific and actionable request.\n\nYou might say: “I\'ve noticed you are very effective at cross-departmental relationships and problem solving. I\'ve been challenged in this area and have some specific questions I think you could help with. Would you be willing to mentor me in this? You’ll find that I take your suggestions seriously and put them into practice as soon as possible.”\n\nAccept their answer. If they say yes and have a particular time or way they want to work, go with it and follow through. If they say no, honor that too. The chemistry must be there for mentoring relationships to work.\n\nThere are also times you’ll want to rely on a coach. Coaches can provide targeted, objective feedback and skill-training to shorten your learning curve and help you make rapid progress with your leadership challenges.\n\nJust like redwoods, great leaders become great based on the strength of their connections to their team, to a community of colleagues, and with mentors and coaches.', '3 Connections That Propel Every Great Leader', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', '3-connections-that-propel-every-great-leader', '', '', '2014-11-19 05:57:06', '2014-11-19 10:57:06', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21491', 0, 'post', '', 4),
(21497, 360, '2014-11-25 06:04:52', '2014-11-25 11:04:52', 'Nothing can animate the future quite like a question. For leaders, living in questions instead of giving answers or having something to say is a powerful place to be.\n\nQuestions makes us learners, open ourselves and those we’re leading to possibilities and creates a more safe, level playing field between you and your team. \n\nI have a number of favorite questions in my leadership that animate the future for those I ask, but the most powerful leadership questions are those I ask myself.\n\nEffective leadership starts on the inside. Before we can hope to possibly lead anybody else, we first have to lead ourselves. We self-lead to shift our focus from <em>what about me</em> to a perspective that is outwardly focused on serving and leading others with character and intention.\n\nThe most powerful self-leadership question you can ask yourself is: What is life like for those I’m leading? Let’s look more closely at this question to fully understand the scope and implications of asking the question.\n\n<strong>Life</strong> – We tend to compartmentalize life into work, family, faith and any number of other sub-divisions that might classify as having a <em>life</em> of their own. When we think of leadership we tend to only think of that part of <em>life</em> where we’re associated with the person.\n\nHowever, the <em>life</em> that you impact is inclusive of all aspects of life, not just the eight to ten hours you\'re together. The life referred to in this question is spiritual, emotional, family, work, physical and any other part of their human experience. \n\nYou may not be able to impact each one of these areas, but considering them all when you ask the question gives you a full view of the entire person you’re leading.\n\n<strong>Like</strong> – One dictionary definition of this work is: similar, comparable to, resembling. Using these words, the question could read: what does life resemble or is similar to for those you lead?\n\nWhat’s the experience they are having? Is it <em>like</em> a nightmare? Is it <em>like</em> a trip to the dentist? Is it <em>like</em> something they could live without?\n\nWe forget sometimes that work is more than just fulfillment of duties but part of a person’s human experience.\n\n<strong>Those I’m Leading</strong> – The answer to this may seem very obvious to some. You are a director or manager and the org chart says that a certain six people work for you. \n\nHowever, since leadership is about influence and not an organization chart, your leadership extends to anyone who you have influence on whether they are a direct report or not.\n\nOn certain projects, you’re influencing your boss, your peers and the vendors supplying services and on others, you’re influencing the team on the factory floor and your clients.\n\nAll of this isn’t even to mention your leadership (i.e. influence) of your spouse and kids.\n\nEstablish a routine to ask this question: What is life like for those I’m leading? Ask it every day, do something about it, and watch your future be powerfully animated.', 'The Most Powerful Leadership Question', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'the-most-powerful-leadership-question', '', '', '2014-11-25 06:04:52', '2014-11-25 11:04:52', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21497', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(21525, 379, '2014-12-03 05:15:48', '2014-12-03 10:15:48', 'Asked to define what a great leader is, many people might say something like <em>great leaders have integrity</em> or <em>great leaders inspire people</em> or <em>great leaders lead by service and setting the right example</em>.\n\nAnd each one of those answers is correct in its way. At its root, leadership is a collection of competencies.\n\nThis list outlines the most central of those competencies. Read through and ask yourself how you measure up.\n\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Great Leaders Create Vision & Inspiration</strong> - They clearly see where they want to take their organization, and they inspire others to share in the journey.</li>\n<li><strong> Great Leaders Provide Support & Motivation</strong> - They help people believe in themselves and the work they are doing, instilling in their team a sense of confidence and shared mission.</li>\n<li><strong>Great Leaders Supply Strategy & Clarity</strong> - They work hard to understand the big picture and help others see their team’s role, and their individual role as part of the team, within that context.</li>\n<li><strong>Great Leaders Are Tactical & Flexible</strong> - They thrive on facts, figures and numbers - whether it’s ROI, ROE, or EBIDTA. But when conditions change or obstacles emerge, they are agile enough to generate and evaluate new solutions on the fly.</li>\n<li><strong>Great Leaders Build Collaborative Communities</strong> - They bring together the powerful forces of empowerment, accountability, and communication to build the foundation for a healthy culture of collaboration.</li>\n<li><strong>Great Leaders Leverage Diversity & Appreciate Talent</strong> - They actively seek out and leverage diversity of every type. The more perspectives at the table, the more creative, strong, well-developed ideas are likely to emerge.</li>\n<li><strong>Great Leaders Develop Others & Encourage Them To Be More</strong> - They are committed to providing the ongoing feedback and opportunities to learn—formally or informally—that help a team and its members stay functioning at their best.</li>\n<li><strong>Great Leaders Are Focused & Responsible</strong> - Whatever the task at hand, they define leadership with their example of attention to detail and personal accountability for outcomes.</li>\n<li><strong>Great Leaders Are Ethical & Trustworthy</strong> - They live by the qualities that are at the heart of leadership—honesty, integrity, fairness, consistency—and set the standard for their team.</li>\n<li><strong>Great Leaders Are Masters & Lifelong Learners</strong> - They invest the study, work, and time to master their field. And whether they’re reaching for depth or breadth, they never ever ever stop learning.</li>\n<li><strong>Great Leaders Are Committed</strong> - They follow through and persist through obstacles and opposition, uncertainty and risk, pressure and adversity. They are dedicated and optimistic.</li>\n<li><strong>Great Leaders Are Accountable & Decisive</strong> - They hold themselves responsible for providing measurable, timely, cost-effective high-quality results. Toward that end, they move with purpose and speed when it’s time to set a priority, choose a direction, or delegate a task</li>\n</ol>\n\n<h3>Lead From Within</h3>\n\nAt the end of the day, leadership means being the one person who manages people; who fosters vision and change; who facilitates collaboration and communication; who brings together critical thinking, organizational knowledge, and strategic acumen; and who concentrates on getting results.\n\nThe heart of leadership is where you can manage all that lies within you in conjunction with all that you manage externally. With the right balance of internal and external leadership, you will be truly grounded in the core of leading.', '12 Core Competencies For Great Leadership', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', '12-core-competencies-for-great-leadership', '', '', '2014-12-03 05:15:48', '2014-12-03 10:15:48', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21525', 0, 'post', '', 4),
(21549, 374, '2015-01-13 06:00:04', '2015-01-13 11:00:04', 'Here at Lead Change Group, we know that problems are most effectively solved when individuals come together to meld ideas, energies, and approaches.\n\nTo use a golf analogy, not every shot is a long drive. Many times, golfers have to take a <strong>chip shot</strong> to move the ball along for a short distance, with incisive accuracy.\n\nIf you are new to the Chip Shots green, welcome. In our Chip Shots feature, our Leading Voices are invited to provide brief insights into a leadership dilemma. Our first Chip Shots post can be viewed <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/chip-shots-from-our-leading-voices/\">here</a>.\n\n<h3>Today\'s Question</h3>\n\n<em>A large state university in Florida recently confirmed a new president (a high-profile politician), after a tumultuous search process marked by allegations of favoritism toward that candidate and vocally oppositional faculty members and students. Have you ever been in a position as a manager to facilitate a team through the on-boarding of a leader to whom they had expressed opposition? What tips would you give for restoring order and morale?</em>\n\nFive of our Leading Voices took a shot at this question. This is what they said:\n\n<h4>This Is Not The First Time A New Leader Has Been Opposed</h4>\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/chip-bell/\">Chip Bell</a> reminds us: the relationship between college president and politician is not a new one. Woodrow Wilson was President of Princeton; Dwight Eisenhower was president of Columbia. Although the new president clearly has challenges ahead, universities are not like countries; you do not have to go to one specific university.\n\nWillingly and openly meet with the opposition. Promise to be respectful of their concerns. Leadership is not about being the pawn of a certain constituency; it is about following core principles and values in carrying out the mission you were charged with implementing. While it is always important to be open to the views of those you represent, leadership is not about being a rubber stamp. Otherwise you could make all decisions based solely on a popularity poll. For that type of role you could honestly hire a clerk to be in charge.\n\n<h4>Listen Intensely</h4>\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/david-dye/\">David Dye</a> looks back on the two times he has been in this situation and advises: In both scenarios the best thing I did was intense listening. When people are angry about a leadership decision, the most important thing for both you and the new leader is to build or re-establish healthy relationships.\n\nEncourage the new leader to go on their own listening tour and to ask two questions. What does this team do that makes you proud to be a part of it? And, what do you think it would look like if this team really nailed it? This helps the leader build their own relationships with the team by seeking their input first, celebrating what they do well, and hearing their ideas for the future.\n\n<h4>Lay Out An Inspiring Vision</h4>\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/karin-hurt/\">Karin Hurt</a> says: \"I’ve  been that leader.\" I was selected to lead a large retail sales team of 2000+ employees with no Retail or sales background. I had a strong track record of success in human resources and call centers, but my highly experienced team was skeptical. It was all about building transparency, constructing real connection, and laying out an inspiring vision for the future. Read more here. http://letsgrowleaders.com/authenticity-transparency-trust/7-ways-to-build-trust/\n\n<h4>Craft A 100-Day Plan</h4>\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/will-lukang/\">Will Lukang</a> suggests looking ahead to the 100 day mark and planning to follow up to ensure engagement and progress. He offers these additional tips for restoring morale and order:\n<ol>\n	<li>Before the new manager starts, engage the team, describe the hiring process, and encourage them to collaborate with the new manager to achieve the department\'s goal.</li>\n	<li>Ensure that the new manager is briefed in order to be prepared.</li>\n	<li>Make an introduction as soon as the manager starts.</li>\n	<li>Encourage the manager to spend time with the new team and engage them.</li>\n</ol>\n<h4>Participate With Integrity</h4>\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/jon-mertz/\">Jon Mertz</a> notes times when he has been in this situation as situations that \"caused a stir\" and created \"a big distraction.\" To minimize these challenges, he recommends to set the right example.\n\nThe essential daily work needs to continue. Customers don\'t expect a disruption. Other stakeholders don\'t anticipate a disruption. In fact, more than ever, any disruption in service or expectation will create a higher degree of uncertainty than before. So it is essential to continue to do the work required and stay focused.\n\nOpposition begins to disappear when some normalcy returns. Opposition also recedes when the new leaders bring them into the process. This will be the new leader\'s challenge and responsibility, to be ready to participate with integrity.', 'Chip Shots - When The Leader You Got Is Not The Leader You Wanted', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'chip-shots-when-the-leader-you-got-is-not-the-leader-you-wanted', '', '', '2015-01-13 06:00:04', '2015-01-13 11:00:04', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21549', 0, 'post', '', 0),
(21561, 273, '2014-12-16 06:00:31', '2014-12-16 11:00:31', 'We recently published an <a href=\"http://www.ahaamplifier.com\">Aha Amplifier</a> social media enabled eBook called <a href=\"http://bit.ly/BehindTheBrand-AhaAmp\">Bryan Kramer & Leadtail On The Influencers Behind The Brands We Love</a> that we\'re very excited about.\n\nThe eBook is based on a study that <a href=\"http://www.purematter.com\">PureMatter</a> and <a href=\"http://www.leadtail.com\">Leadtail</a> collaborated on. In  <a href=\"http://offers.leadtail.com/brand-marketers-social-insights-2014/\">Behind The Brand: 30 Influencers That Drive Social Media For The Brands We Love</a>, the companies analyzed the behavioral data of 30 successful influencers on social media such as digital executives who influence digital and social programs for brands every day.\n\nThese influencers are people that work daily on strategy and execution for their brands; the study looks past lists and rankings and strives to view the influencers behind their brands as real human beings.\n\nIt focuses on answering some simple questions: Who are these people? How do they engage on social media as humans? Who and what influences them, and what can others learn from them? What can we learn from these top digital marketers, and how do we engage and influence them?\n\nBryan Kramer identified the 30 influencers and Leadtail analyzed over 20,000 of their public tweets, which included 9,413 links, 3,554 unique hashtags, 8,070 mentions/replies, and 2,589 retweets. In studying the Twitter behavior of the digital influencers, three distinct engagement styles emerged.\n\nThey identified them as:\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Conversationalists</strong> - Most likely to mention others and focused on engagement.\n<ul>\n<li>Almost every tweet published mentions someone.</li>\n<li>Regularly shares links.</li>\n<li>Asks questions, makes comments, finds areas of common interest with others.</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li><strong>Amplifiers</strong> - Most likely to share links and retweets andfocused on topics.\n<ul>\n<li>Shares links and/or retweets others\' content at a higher rate than conversationalists and brand champions.</li>\n<li>Centers around one or two core themes; shares content and perspectives that builds personal brand.</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li><strong>Brand Champions</strong> - Most likely to share multimedia and focused on brand.\n<ul>\n<li>Tone and content are consistently in strong alignment with brand.</li>\n<li>Cross-posts from multiple networks through Twitter.</li>\n<li>Shares more types of content (e.g., location check-ins, photos, videos).</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n</ol>\nHere are the influencers that were studied in the #BehindTheBrand report:\n<h3><strong>Conversationalists</strong></h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Tami Cannizzaro (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/tamicann\">@tamicann</a>), Vice President, Marketing, IBM</li>\n<li>Frank Eliason (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/FrankEliason\">@FrankEliason</a>), Director, Global Social Media, CITI</li>\n<li>Jeanette Gibson (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/JeanetteG\">@JeanetteG</a>), VP Customer Experience &amp; Community, Hootsuite</li>\n<li>Lorena Hathaway (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/lorenahathaway\">@lorenahathaway</a>), Director, Global Product Management, Location Intelligence, Pitney Bowes Software</li>\n<li>Eliot Johnson (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/eliotjohnson\">@eliotjohnson</a>), Senior Manager, Global Social Media, KPMG</li>\n<li>Karen Lee (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/karenlee\">@karenlee</a>), Social Web Strategist, Stanford Graduate School of Business</li>\n<li>Josh Martin (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/Jmart730\">@Jmart730</a>), Director, Digital &amp; Social Media, Arby\'s</li>\n<li>Maria Poveromo (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/mariapoveromo\">@mariapoveromo</a>), Senior Director, AR, PR &amp; Social Media, Adobe</li>\n<li>Julia Quinn (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/JuliaAQuinn\">@JuliaAQuinn</a>), Director, Social Media, Amtrak</li>\n<li>MichelaStribling (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/mstribling\">@mstribling</a>), Social Business Program Director, IBM</li>\n<li>Padmasree Warrior (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/Padmasree\">@Padmasree</a>), Chief Technology &amp; Strategy Officer, Cisco</li>\n</ul>\n<h3><strong>Amplifiers</strong></h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Susan Beebe (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/susanbeebe\">@susanbeebe</a>), Global Social Media &amp; Online Communities, Tyson Foods</li>\n<li>Pete Blackshaw (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/pblackshaw\">@pblackshaw</a>), Global Head of Social Media &amp; Digital Media, Nestle</li>\n<li>Andrew Bowins (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/MasterCardAndy\">@MasterCardAndy</a>), SVP, Corporate &amp; Digital Communications, MasterCard</li>\n<li>LaSandra Brill (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/LaSandraBrill\">@LaSandraBrill</a>), Senior Director, Paid &amp; Earned Media, Symantec</li>\n<li>Dan Bulmer (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/dbulmer\">@dbulmer</a>), Vice President, Communication Strategy, Shell</li>\n<li>Dan Gingiss (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/dgingiss\">@dgingiss</a>), Director, Digital Customer Experience &amp; Social Media, Discover Financial Services</li>\n<li>Kevin Hunt (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/kevin_hunt\">@kevin_hunt</a>), Social Media Manager, General Mills</li>\n<li>Erich Marx (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/emarxe\">@emarxe</a>), Director, Interactive &amp; Social Media / Public Relations, Nissan North America</li>\n<li>Kaitlyn Wilkins (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/KaitlynWilkins\">@KaitlynWilkins</a>), Global Director, Social Media, Burberry</li>\n<li>Todd Wilms (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/toddmwilms\">@toddmwilms</a>), (former) Head of Social Business Strategy, SAP</li>\n</ul>\n<h3><strong>Brand Champions</strong></h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Jamie Coomber (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/Jamiec\">@Jamiec</a>), Global Director, Digital Brand Marketing and Communications, Converse</li>\n<li>Jay Cooney (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/HalftimeJay\">@HalftimeJay</a>), E-commerce Social Media Manager, OMNI Hotels</li>\n<li>Abigail Cusick (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/cusick\">@cusick</a>), Senior Manager, Social Media, BravoTV</li>\n<li>Bill Johnston (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/billjohnston\">@billjohnston</a>), Director, Online Community and Customer Experience, Autodesk</li>\n<li>Chad Parizman (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/Cparizman\">@Cparizman</a>), Director, Convergent Media, Scripps Networks Interactive</li>\n<li>Marty St. George (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/martysg\">@martysg</a>), Senior Vice President – Commercial, JetBlue</li>\n<li>Caroline Watson (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/SweetCaroline83\">@SweetCaroline83</a>), Social Media Manager, H&amp;M</li>\n<li>Farryn Weiner (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/jetsetfarryn\">@jetsetfarryn</a>), Senior Director, Global Creative and Digital Communications, Michael Kors</li>\n<li>Lisa Weser (<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/LisaWeser\">@LisaWeser</a>), Senior Director, Marketing Communications, U.S. Brands, Anheuser-Busch</li>\n</ul>\n<h3>Key Questions To Ponder </h3>\n<ul>\n<li>What type of influencer are you?</li>\n<li>What types of influencers are most common at your company?</li>\n<li>What type of influencer is <em>right</em> for your company?</li>\n</ul>', '30 Influencers Behind the Brands We Love', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', '30-influencers-behind-the-brands-we-love', '', '', '2014-12-16 06:00:31', '2014-12-16 11:00:31', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21561', 0, 'post', '', 1);
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(21579, 243, '2014-11-26 05:35:49', '2014-11-26 10:35:49', 'Have you ever considered how silly gratitude is? In a world where you must climb your way to the top and look out for yourself, gratitude is a waste of energy, or a dangerous weakness.\n\nYou must stay on your toes, constantly vigilant to take advantage of every opportunity. Each chance for gain must be grasped. You must make your breaks and get all you can every chance you get.\n\nEverything you get and many things you don’t get, you deserved. You worked hard. You did what it took. It was all you.\n\nWhen I was in college, and often in my life since, I’ve found myself trying to be the biggest person in the (or my) world. I wanted people to admire me and like me. I wanted them to consider me important. I was the center of my world. My goal in life, and my job as a leader was trying to get you to join my world, with me, its biggest person, smack in the center.\n\nBut a world with me (or you) in the center is not very big. I found the hard way that people don’t follow you into your world. If you’re in the center of your world, everyone else will abandon you and create a world with themselves at the center. Your world becomes exposed for the really small place it is and the world becomes a lonely place.\n\nGratitude makes your world (and the world) bigger. Gratitude acknowledges our dependence on others. Consider for example how far you would have gone in this world had no one fed you or clothed you or taught you to speak or read for the first several years of your life. Consider from whom you got your character and your strengths. Consider how your environment taught you to know the things you know and do the things you do.\n\nGratitude inspires acts of kindness. Acts of kindness and putting others ahead of yourself are other ways we make the world bigger. I say acts of kindness because we have a tendency to judge ourselves by our intentions rather than our results. Intending to be kind doesn\'t make any difference in the world, but action changes things.\n\nGratitude reminds us we are not as responsible for our success or influence or position as we might like to think. Gratitude frees us to give our lives away, knowing that our life was given to us. Gratitude begins the process of enlarging our world.\n\nI hope you enlarge your world. We need people who inspire great, big worlds. Often the only way to enlarge the world is to make yourself smaller, express gratitude, execute acts of kindness. Rather than trying to be the biggest person in your world, try to create the biggest world possible. It’s a subtle change, but one that starts change everywhere.\n\nGratitude inspires enlarging, elevating change. Don’t simply exercise gratitude this one day each year, but rather embrace gratitude as the strategy for making your world the biggest and best it can be.', 'Gratitude Enlarges Your World', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'gratitude-enlarges-your-world', '', '', '2014-11-26 05:35:49', '2014-11-26 10:35:49', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21579', 0, 'post', '', 0),
(21591, 343, '2014-12-02 05:34:03', '2014-12-02 10:34:03', 'It\'s an age old question that gets asked repeatedly every year. Are leaders born or made?\n\nIt\'s a legitimate question as one works to find out what makes, and separates, leaders of varying achievements and skills.\n\nThis question has been studied from so many angles, both in layman and academic views, with scientific and inspirational models.\n\nThere are thousands of arguments and proofs from both sides of the debate, and depending on your worldview you may tend to gravitate to one camp or the other.\n\nSo, in observing this question from a different vantage point, let\'s answer it this way:\n\n<h3>Leaders Are Made To Be Born</h3>\n\nLet\'s start at the beginning. Everyone is birthed with a unique blend of talents and gifts that are displayed at various times of their lives. It\'s the discovery of one\'s latent abilities that starts them on the road to develop those traits. As the experiences of their life shape them, their ability to lead grows.\n\nEach person is made over time through differing processes - experience, vision, failures, environment, support to name a few - ever growing and becoming ready for that time that comes in which they are birthed again, this time as a leader.\n\nThen that crucial event in each person\'s life arrives when it\'s evident that they must step up and put their leadership skills into play. At that moment, they are born as a leader, and their life and the lives of those around them are forever changed.\n\nHistory is replete with instances of people emerging from nowhere to lead at a given moment - a crisis, a vacancy, a market need. For example, when the computer industry started to ripen in the 1970s, two young leaders popped out with differing visions and leadership abilities that changed - and continue to change - the tech industry.\n\nFor every Bill Gates and Steve Jobs that were born from peaceful endeavors, there is a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_C._York\">Sergeant Alvin York</a> or a group of Tuskeegee Airmen that rise to the occasion to protect their country, families and freedoms.\n\nFrom Clara Barton\'s efforts on the battlefield to mend wounded soldiers to the bravery and survival of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irena_Sendler\">Irena Sendler</a> during World War II, these everyday people were thrust into a larger vision beyond themselves to aid those in dire needs.\n\nSome leaders are born from emergencies, such as <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesley_Sullenberger\">Capt. Chesley Sullenberger\'s</a> masterful landing of a troubled flight in the Hudson River in 2013,  or the daring rescue by 12-year old <a href=\"http://listverse.com/2013/12/09/10-amazing-child-heroes/\">Kamal Nepali</a> to save a girl\'s life who fell into a deep gorge.\n\nThere is the first grader who becomes a leader by standing up to the playground bully. The single mother whose husband died and now must work two jobs and raise her kids and prepare them for their lives as they grow older.\n\nLeaders from all walks of life are being born everyday, in roles we may never see or take for granted. And as many leaders that are birthed into these roles, they also continue to be remade and reborn into greater or newer roles. Their previous skills have been honed and are being readied for that next great need to be met.\n\nWinston Churchill was reborn in World War II from a major British political figure to a world leader and champion of freedom. Abraham Lincoln\'s failures in elections and business gave him the necessary character needed to be birthed into a most critical role as President of a nation on the verge of a civil war.\n\nWhether leaders are famous or unsung, such as Rick Rescorla saving the employees of his company Morgan Stanley during the Sept. 11 attacks, or Alice Catherine Evans using her science pedigree to champion the pasteurization of milk, we are all being prepared for that time that we are to step into our role as leaders.\n\nRegardless if these roles are a brief word of wisdom that makes a town more unified, or a vision that radically transforms the way an industry does business, leaders are being made every day, with a fateful event in their future that will determine if they can rise to the occasion.\n\nWe all have talents and gifts. We choose everyday whether to strengthen them or to not. We choose whether to step up at the appropriate time or passively let it slide by in the hopes that someone else will jump in. We all have a choice. We are being made every hour for what awaits us in the future.\n\nIn what ways are you being made into a leader? You already have the skills, just believe in yourself.', 'Leaders Are Made To Be Born', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'leaders-are-made-to-be-born', '', '', '2014-12-02 05:34:03', '2014-12-02 10:34:03', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21591', 0, 'post', '', 6),
(21593, 376, '2014-11-28 05:20:32', '2014-11-28 10:20:32', 'Thanksgiving in the United States is now a memory. Yesterday, for many people, was a day of tradition, ample food, safe and warm housing, and the comfort of family gathered together.\n\nAt our Christian church, we joined with groups from other faiths, including Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim to share the food of our traditions and assemble baskets for families who otherwise might not be able to share in the Thanksgiving feast. We hosted, as we often do, people and families who needed a safe place to pray, talk, and sleep.\n\nOn a more personal level, much time and a few coins were spent preparing more food than we ate, as we engaged in excited discussion of the holiday season yet to come and our plans for continued celebration and joy.\n\nHowever, recent events in our area remind me that everyone does not enjoy the comfort and peace that I have in my life. You have probably seen the video and heard the reports. The closer you live to St. Louis or the more ties you have to our region, the more attention you have probably paid, but the disruptions are now at a level to claim everyone\'s attention.\n\nLives have been disrupted, workplaces destroyed, jobs lost, and deep divisions between neighbors and fellow citizens revealed for all to see. The ineffectiveness of our social structures and governmental organizations has shaken my belief in our traditional values of fairness, equality, justice, and freedom. The anger, fear, and despair of many of our fellow human beings is raw and real.\n\nAs a reaction, too many people want to do three things that simply do not fit into any transformational leadership model I know:\n\n1) Hunker down and wait for things to get back to normal, especially when <em>normal</em> translates to “I don\'t have to worry about this anymore”.\n\n2) Cling to our memories (and we all know how unreliable memories are as objective truth or record of history) of seemingly kinder and gentler times past.\n\n3) Pick a side and stubbornly dig in, which benefits the news media tremendously, but offers no real value toward peaceful or effective resolution of issues.\n\n<img src=\"http://strategiclearner.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/boston-tea-party-by-w-d-cooper-in-the-history-of-north-america-london-e-newberry-1789-wikipedia_small11.jpg\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"border: 0;\" />These are common behaviors during times of tumultuous change. \n\nI have an image right now of someone on a cold December night just before the Christmas of 1773 somewhere in the Colonies saying:\n<div class=\"clear\"></div>\n<blockquote>“Why couldn\'t they just write a letter or something? Did they have to act like pirates, use force, and destroy all that tea? That was someone\'s property, after all. I hope everyone knows I had no part in that act of rebellion.”</blockquote>\n\nHowever, as leaders of change, we have to resist the impulses above. Leadership challenges come in many forms and our rich holiday traditions in the United States offer ample opportunities to be instruments of transformative and positive change , but not by blindly clinging to tradition and trying to restore “The Good Old Days”, which probably were not all that good.\n\nAs leaders and agents of transformational change, maybe we are called to something different:\n\n1) Create a <em>new normal</em> which works more effectively for everyone.\n\n2) Appropriately treasure the past, but always remember we live into the future.\n\n3) Avoid choosing sides and instead support and be part of positive actions and solutions.\n\nHow each of us will do these things will be a bit different, because we all have different situations and environments, but participate we must, if we are truly to be leaders of change.\n\nSo take a few minutes this holiday weekend, since you probably had too much to eat and are feeling lethargic anyway, to evaluate your own beliefs, values, and behaviors to see how well-prepared you are to live forward, rather than backward.\n\nThen change what you need to, and then take action to make a difference.\n\nNote, upon reflection, I feel my words to be weak when applied to the complex problems that face our area and our country. However, I do know that engaging in self-reflection is an essential first step, before we begin to work with others to change our society.\n\nMy thoughts above are based on numerous discussions with people across the spectrum of thought, some who are on the streets of Ferguson in and out of uniform, and others trying to live their lives both in proximity and in remoteness from the events unfolding here, along with an addictive consumption of articles and essays which address this social change from many aspects.\n\nI honestly welcome and desire any and all comments on the above.', 'Three Things To Avoid The Day After', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'three-things-to-avoid-the-day-after', '', '', '2014-11-28 05:20:32', '2014-11-28 10:20:32', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21593', 0, 'post', '', 1),
(21614, 372, '2014-12-04 05:28:46', '2014-12-04 10:28:46', 'What does your work environment nurture? Does it enable trust, respect, and dignity for every player and every customer, in every interaction? Or does it nurture something less?\n\nIt doesn\'t matter what\'s happening in organizations around the globe. It doesn\'t matter what the <em>norm</em> is in companies in your industry or of a similar size as yours.\n\nWhat matters is what\'s happening in <em>your</em> team, department, or company, <em>right now</em>.\n\nIf any interactions in your organization are less than civil, it costs you performance, service, and engagement.\n\nHere are three proven steps that will help you create a more civil work environment in your team, department, or company.\n\n<h3>Observe What\'s happening Daily</h3>\n\nLeaders must pay as much attention to how well their team is <em>operating</em> as they do on how well their team is <em>performing</em>. That will require different behaviors and habits from you. To really learn how your team treats each other, you must watch carefully, listen intently, and engage frequently. Expand your network internally; connect with front line leaders and players to learn their perceptions about how people are treated.\n\nCreate multiple channels for input and feedback. You can learn a great deal by hosting a small team of random players for lunch each week, by conducting regular employee surveys, or gathering input through an anonymous suggestion inbox.\n\nOnce you learn what\'s happening, thank people for their feedback, and set out and communicate plans for addressing issues. And, solve those issues. Making plans alone won\'t fix un-civil behaviors.\n\nWhat you may learn about your work environment is that interactions and treatment aren\'t always civil. When the Miami Dolphins <a href=\"http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303775504579394940420440458\" target=\"_blank\">bullying scandal</a> was revealed last year, the head coach said he had no idea there was any bullying going on in his team. He took responsibility - but the reality is he was disconnected from how his team was operating.\n\n<h3>Formalize Values Expectations</h3>\n\nMake values expectations as clear as performance expectations. Define your desired values in behavioral terms, so that they are observable, tangible, and measurable. During a recent interview, I was asked, \"Don\'t employees come into their organizations with their values already in place?\"\n\nThey do, but they may not be values that you <em>want</em> acted upon in your team. It is also likely that people will define values terms differently. Ask 10 people in your organization what integrity means - you will likely get five or more different definitions.\n\nYou must create absolute clarity about <em>what</em> your team must deliver (goals) as well as <em>how</em> your team must behave and interact to accomplish those goals. If you define integrity as <em>I do what I say I will do</em> and <em>I keep my promises and commitments</em>, you will remove any doubt about exactly how you want leaders and team members to interact daily.\n\n<h3>Measure & Monitor The Quality Of Your Workplace Culture</h3>\n\nJust as you have dashboards to carefully track results, you need to create ways to measure how well people are modeling your desired values and behaviors. Continuing your observation practices (from step one above) helps you keep track of how well the culture is operating - how kindly people interact with each other. And, you need hard values data. Yes, there is such a thing. The best avenue for that is a custom values survey that every employee completes at least twice a year.\n\nThe custom values survey will provide undeniable data for each leader on the degree to which they model your formalized valued behaviors. Praise the leaders that are seen as living your values. Redirect - closely and consistently - any leaders that are seen as values mis-aligned. Repeat daily.\n\nCreate consistent civility with clear values expectations as well as clear performance expectations. Model your valued behaviors in every interaction and guide your leaders and team members to do the same. Civility is a great foundation for <a href=\"http://drivingresultsthroughculture.com/skyrocket-performance-with-work-place-inspiration/\" target=\"_blank\">#WorkPlaceInspiration</a>.', 'The Civility Standard', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'the-civility-standard', '', '', '2014-12-04 05:28:46', '2014-12-04 10:28:46', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21614', 0, 'post', '', 3),
(21624, 354, '2014-12-11 06:00:58', '2014-12-11 11:00:58', 'I grew up in a home full of reminders of the brevity of time. My father, a collector and restorer of antique timepieces, filled the walls with clocks of every shape and size.\n\nAs a child, I quickly learned the meaning of <em>tempus fugit</em>. As a leader, I embrace the awareness of its reality in every moment.\n\nTime is a non-renewable resource; a fixed asset. If you’re diligent, you can earn more money—but time, once it’s spent—is gone.\n\nEach of us is allotted the exact same amount every day. We either pass through it, or it flows around us—and how we choose to interact with it determines the impact we have.\n\nWhich brings me to the point of investing time in work that matters.\n\nEcclesiastes speaks of a “time for everything under the sun.”\n\nWe must invest our time in these four dimensions of leadership:\n<h3>Invest In Time To Be Strategic</h3>\nAs a leader your vision for the future is what enables you to plan for the success of your endeavors. The Book of Proverbs reminds us to “<em>Know the state of your flocks, and put your heart into caring for your herd</em>.” Even if you’re not a shepherd or rancher, you can take this to heart and be keenly aware of the intentional choices that guide you to your goals in business and in life.\n<h3>Take Time To Inspire &amp; Be Inspired</h3>\nIt is easy to get into the routine of activity, to the neglect of our heart, mind and souls. We pass up opportunities to be reflective with an eye toward guiding those whom we lead.\n\nThe heart of leadership is inspiration and influence; the words and actions that flow from our values express our character and motivation. Take time to nurture your heart and mind, so that when the opportunity to act and lead arrives, you’re prepared.\n\nIdentify key opportunities during your day to lead by example. Intentional, day-to-day experiences are the source of stories that will help you amplify your influence as you remember the lessons you’ve learned, and share them with others.\n<h3>Make Time To Nurture Relationships</h3>\nDon’t network— build relationships. Invest in your team; spend meaningful time with your clients. Be intentional with serving your clients and leading your team with excellence.\n\nBe transparent and trustworthy in every interaction; and take responsibility for managing the expectations of yourself, your team, and your clients. Follow through on your intentions with action.\n\nThe trust you place in your team amplifies your leadership, and enables you to lead well. When you lead your team well, you make it possible for <em>them</em> to manage your client’s expectations.\n<h3>Know When It Is Time For Action</h3>\nWell-formed strategic choices, inspirational and influential leadership, and meaningful relationships are validated in the crucible of life.\n\nOnce again, Proverbs 24:10 has a lesson: “<em>If you fail under pressure, your strength is too small</em>.”\n\nIn a deadline-driven environment, there is pressure to act, often with little time for consideration of all possible outcomes. Time creates pressure; unknown expectations and ambiguity create open loop scenarios where we are paralyzed by possibilities of direction.\n\nWhen we are unclear of our direction and the path to take, we can fall victim to cranial interlock: the inability of our mind to make a decision; to take the next step; of which path to follow.\n\nPlan with an eye for clarity: know when it’s time to act, and when it’s time to reflect and reconsider your options. The leader who masters these principles perceives the pressure of time as a challenge rather than an opportunity for failure.\n\nTempus fugit. <em>Time flies</em>. Where you invest your time is evidence of what matters to you. Where are you going to spend it for the greatest impact and return?', 'Making Time For Time', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'making-time-for-time', '', '', '2014-12-11 06:00:58', '2014-12-11 11:00:58', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21624', 0, 'post', '', 6),
(21629, 290, '2014-12-01 05:25:42', '2014-12-01 10:25:42', 'Change this. Change that. Don’t change this. Don’t change that. Have you ever been in workplaces where change <em>changes</em> every day?\n\nWhat makes it worse is when the constant changing directions comes from the same person. One day, they are driving Change A. The next day, they are driving Change B. Wake-up again, and we are back to Change A.\n\nWorkplace whiplash happens, and no one benefits. Besides this, the direction remains unset and the problem unsolved.\n\nCultures that embrace circular changes are unhealthy. Some may argue that this is the world we live in. <em>Change is constant.</em> Although there is truth here, real change can only happen when you <a href=\"http://www.thindifference.com/2014/05/21/vuca-times-call-durt-leaders/\" target=\"_blank\">select a direction</a> or solution and then give it time to develop. Shifting positions constantly does not address marketplace or industry changes.\n\n<h3>To Drive Real Change, Develop A Change Thesis</h3>\n\nA change thesis is a statement on what the key working assumptions are based on significant facts. Given the key assumptions, the change thesis states the required direction and plans to achieve success. The change thesis must be agreed to by key leaders within a business or organization.\n\nA change thesis should not be complex or long. An elegant change thesis is simple in facts and powerful in resulting direction. In other words, when read, people nod their heads in agreement. The change thesis passes a common sense test.\n\n<h3>A Solid Change Thesis Is Thoughtful, Concise, Clear, Timely & Actionable</h3>\n\n<strong>Thoughtful</strong> - Some research and analysis needs to be done in order to understand why the change needs to occur and what change needs to happen. There has to be a solid foundation for the change. We can have opinions about what the change should be, but we cannot just base our opinions purely on past experience or gut-feel. At some point a decision is required. However, there needs to be a solid, well thought-out basis for it. This isn’t over-analysis. This isn’t getting stuck. This is about thinking through a situation or scenario and ensuring you have made the most informed decision possible about what change to make.\n\n<strong>Concise</strong> - Keep it short and meaningful.\n\n<strong>Clear</strong> - Concise and clear go hand-in-hand. You can be concise yet unclear. Do both. Clarity rallies others to understand the purpose of the change. With clarity, team members can identify ways to change their work and habits to pursue the new direction. To be clear, use words to define and declare. A visual image of what the change looks like can help too.\n\n<strong>Timely</strong> - Better late than never is never a really good answer. You can be late for the necessary change but you may be too late, losing all credibility or squandering your market position. A change thesis needs to have a strong element of timeliness. Timeliness makes the change relevant and serves as a rallying point.\n\n<strong>Actionable</strong> - All words and no action get you nowhere. All words and no action on your part snowballs into others doing the same. A static culture happens. A declining business happens. The change thesis must be actionable. A change thesis needs to be tangible so teams can grasp what they could or need to do next. Most of all, the change needs to inspire action and create a <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/drive-change-towards-your-desired-culture/\">cohesive culture</a> ready to perform.\n\n<h3>Change Is Not An Excuse For Poor Plans, Change Requires A Thesis</h3>\n\nChange is all around. Grab on to the <a href=\"http://www.thindifference.com/2014/06/11/title-experience-dont-matter-just-ask/\" target=\"_blank\">relevant changes</a> and develop a thesis on what is important and how to navigate it. Change is too important to waste. Make your change meaningful and successful.', 'What Is Your Change Thesis?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'what-is-your-change-thesis', '', '', '2014-12-01 05:25:42', '2014-12-01 10:25:42', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21629', 0, 'post', '', 4),
(21641, 380, '2015-01-06 06:00:40', '2015-01-06 11:00:40', 'Ask just about any coach, regardless of sport, and they will likely admit that one of the major weaknesses on their teams in recent years has been locker-room leadership.\n\nToo many athletes are not willing to have uncomfortable conversations with their teammates. Even when they know a behavior or attitude is damaging the team, players bite their tongue. But that silence is assumed to be consent.\n\nWhen you don’t speak up, people assume you agree with whatever they are saying or doing. If it is only the coach saying it, and your teammate shrugs it off as you stand there quietly, then you are part of the problem.\n\nIn most cases, that quiet acceptance leads their team on a very destructive path. Following the leader is fine, but only if the leader is doing the right thing and going in the right direction.\n\nIn 1916 the French Naturalist, Jean-Henri Fabre, conducted an experiment with processionary caterpillars which move together in a long, single-file line, feeding on pine needles. They get their name from their habit of following a lead caterpillar, and follow the caterpillar ahead of them with their eyes half closed.\n\nFabre placed a group of these caterpillars on a flower pot, and got the lead caterpillar to connect up with the last one, creating a complete circle, which moved around the rim of the pot in a never ending procession.\n\nHe placed food in the middle, and thought that after a few circles of the pot, the caterpillars would realize the situation or get tired and move off in another direction. But the force of habit was too strong, and the caterpillars kept moving around the pot at the same pace for seven straight days. On the 7th day, they just gave out from exhaustion.\n\nThey quietly accepted and followed the path of the caterpillars ahead of them – doing what was customary or popular instead of what would’ve been productive.\n\nPeople say that silence is golden; but when it comes to teams, silence is dangerous. The loudest team normally wins. No team ever lost because they communicated too well.\n\nGreat teammates are willing to speak up. Even though it might be uncomfortable, it is far better to have a little discomfort in the short term and say what needs to be said than to bite your tongue and suffer through the slower, but more devastating long term effects of allowing bad attitudes or behaviors to continue. \n\nAccept the short term discomfort of difficult conversations instead of suffering long term with regret. Great leaders care enough about the team goals to have uncomfortable conversations.\n\nMaybe part of the problem is in how people view confrontation. Confrontation isn\'t supposed to be negative. Great teams are the result of productive and positive confrontations.\n\nParents discipline their children because they want them to be better people. And you should confront the people <em>you care about</em> if their behavior is sabotaging their success.\n\nIt says in Matthew 18:15, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained a brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.\"\n\nSo when you decide to break the silence, and you are willing to confront the person face to face, there are 3 things you will need to share: acknowledgement, awareness, and assurance.\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>First</strong> – Acknowledge their contributions and that you care about them</li>\n<li><strong>Second</strong> – Make them aware of the behavior that needs to change and why… attack the problem behavior, though, not the person.</li>\n<li><strong>Third</strong> – Get their assurance that the behavior will change, and perhaps even agree on a consequence that is appropriate if there is a slip up in the future.</li>\n</ul>\n\nRemember that it is your honest concern about them and the impact that their behavior is having on the team’s ability to reach its goals that you are communicating.\n\nMaybe it will take getting other teammates to join you in a second meeting if the behavior continues. That’s the next step, but the main thing is that you have the <strong>courage and integrity to speak up</strong> about the things that are important to you.\n\nDon’t think that quitting, or avoiding the person, or gossiping about them, or that dropping hints is going to change anything. If you bite your tongue and keep going along, you’ll be just like those caterpillars… exhausted by lots of frustrating activity without enjoying any real progress.\n\nEdmund Burke said: “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”\n\nDon’t look back and regret being a quiet caterpillar. Great organizations thrive on collaborative conversations and accountability. If your team isn’t talking, perhaps a fun <a href=\"http://greatresultsteambuilding.net/teambuilding-events-3/\">business team building event</a> could be a powerful catalyst to strengthen relationships and build a more engaged and connected team.\n\nRegardless of your industry, silence isn\'t golden - it’s dangerous.', 'Why Silence is Dangerous to Your Team', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'why-silence-is-dangerous-to-your-team', '', '', '2015-01-06 06:00:40', '2015-01-06 11:00:40', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21641', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(21646, 381, '2014-12-12 06:00:44', '2014-12-12 11:00:44', 'Driving down the road along Main Street I read this quote on a marquee in front of a local church: <em>\"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others\"</em> (Jonathan Swift).\n\nThat’s it! That’s why describing our vision is so difficult. What we see in the future is invisible to everyone else.\n\nWhen I was in elementary school, my parents were good friends with an evangelist who used chalk talks to explain Biblical principles. I was captivated as the stories came alive in full color landscapes, furniture, clothing and even food of the period.\n\nOne afternoon I tagged along with the artist while she prepared the canvas and laid out the chalk for her next story. As I approached the easel, I noticed a distinctly off white rectangle over one area of the canvas. I was curious because it appeared to be a mistake that was covered over with thick chalk.\n\nWhy not just take the vacuum and clean it up like the artist did after every other chalk talk? I didn\'t recognize it then, but that was my first introduction to what it means to have a vision.\n\nThat night, I sat mesmerized as the artist told the story of the 10 lepers and how only one came back to express thankfulness at being healed. As the lights over the easel turned from bright to black, that one lone person running to Jesus to say thank you, was revealed in the exact area of that white <em>mistake</em> on the canvas.\n\nMany years later I learned the technique for using black light technology. The artist can see perfectly what they want to appear at the pinnacle of their presentation. Before the event, the artist goes into a type of design session where the final scene is planned out.\n\nTo assure the effectiveness of their presentation, the artist surrounds the working environment with a curtain, angles the lights circumspectly, and arranges the pieces of chalk. Chalk that illuminates under a black light is white, regardless of its actual color. With a perfect vision of their final scene, the artist first chalks the surface of the canvas with a neutral color.\n\nThen they draw with precision, using black light chalk. Behind the curtain with the black lights shining down, the artist draws and shades the pictorial image of their vision. They can see so clearly the rendering of the future. The black lights are then turned off, the curtain drawn back, and only a patch of creamy chalk remains.\n\nThe artist approaches the easel, colored chalk laid out on the tray and begins to draw the sky, mountains, trees, tents, and people, all the while telling the story we\'ve heard a hundred times before. The canvas is now in full color with no hint of the mistake detected earlier in the day.\n\nAs she gets to the end of the story, the artist moves to the side of the easel where, as if by magic, her vision emerges. At this point the audience is fully engaged. There, on the canvas, is the picture that was in the artist’s mind all along, her perfectly articulated vision in full view of all looking on.\n\nI remember the first time I heard the word vision used in a sentence that didn\'t involve a sleepwalking child and bad dreams. I was in a corporate gathering pragmatically dubbed <em>Town Hall Meeting</em> to suggest inclusion and involvement of all employees. The leaders of the organization were trying to articulate their vision for the next big thing despite the dreadful economic outlook.\n\nAttrition wasn\'t vacating enough positions to stop the bleeding of weekly layoffs, but the executive team knew this was not the time to put down the paintbrush and fold up the canvas. This was the time to bring paint in 50 gallon drums, roll out a canvas the size of Texas, and put brushes in the hands of innovative designers.\n\nUsing this as their premier presentation forum, these executives mapped out in stories and pictures staged changes that would be made over the course of a few years to keep the company solvent, productive, and <em>thriving, not just surviving</em>.\n\nIt wasn\'t the mesmerizing essence of magic like the chalk talk in the analogy described here, but there was renewed hope because employees were invited to peer into the future, share the vision and understand that there was a distinct plan.\n\nIf you remember the eras of 1987 or 2001-2002 or 2007-2008 your experience might be similar. The devastating effects of the economy sent many companies to the brink of disaster and some went over the edge. Each of those times, I was fortunate enough to be working for an organization whose staunch belief in its corporate vision was unwavering. In tough times those leaders held tight to their resolve, formulating communications, talking about the future and articulating their vision - their united, singular, intentional vision.\n\nJesse Lyn Stoner, in her article <a href=\"http://seapointcenter.com/driving-vision/\">Characteristics Of An Effective Vision</a> defines vision in these two ways:\n\n<em>“Vision is knowing who you are, where you’re going, and what will guide the journey\"</em> and <em>“a vision is a clearly-articulated, results-oriented picture of a future you intend to create. It is a dream with direction.”</em>\n\nThere is no substitute for a clear vision when leading a team, an organization, or a family. Mark Deterding, founder and principal of <a href=\"http://www.triuneleadershipservices.com/\">Triune Leadership Services</a> says:\n\n<em>\"As a senior leader, you can’t delegate vision. You must be intentional about setting the vision of your organization. The leader must paint the picture of the future.\"</em>\n\nA clearly defined, well-articulated shared vision can provide the following for an organization:\n<ul>\n	<li>Helps the team grasp what is compelling about the destination</li>\n	<li>Provides specific direction for the development of the strategy that will be required</li>\n	<li>Generates passion versus obligatory compliance</li>\n	<li>Enlists enthusiastic engagement in the strategy and required goals to achieve the vision</li>\n	<li>Provides a reason for enlistment versus deflection when the journey gets tough</li>\n	<li>Provides a context to rationalize all decisions\"</li>\n</ul>\nLeading requires discipline, laser focus and the ability to see the future. It also requires that you articulate your vision so well, that those you lead can see it too.\n\nCan you see what I see? If you\'ve painted the picture effectively, the answer will be: “<em>Yes, I see it and I’m with you all the way!”</em>', 'Can You See What I See?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'can-you-see-what-i-see', '', '', '2014-12-12 06:00:44', '2014-12-12 11:00:44', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21646', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(21663, 343, '2015-02-05 06:00:37', '2015-02-05 11:00:37', 'It\'s safe to assume that most leaders are quite conscious of how they communicate. Because of this, there are usually methods they\'re working on to improve this vital area of their lives.\n\nWhether a focus on personal interaction, written mediums, or even public speaking, there are many methods and techniques you can use to greatly enhance your effectiveness in communication. Nonverbals, posture, voice inflection - so many techniques to communicate at a higher level.\n\nYet sometimes, just a look at the fundamentals can reap some remarkable results that we may otherwise forget or neglect. Here are some thoughts and examples from my life, to bring out these principles and help us all remember a solid foundation for better communication:\n\n<h3>Shop Talk & Industry Jargon</h3>\n\nOur CEO, who had come from retail, was new to the food industry. It took him about 2 years to understand the term <em>fold it in</em>. It\'s simply the process of taking a recipe and adding an ingredient to it by pouring and stirring it in, like blueberries being added to a muffin mix) In our work it was adding another item to the list, or another feature to the website, but the term was foreign to him. Once he got it, he understood. Jargon is a great way to connect, but make sure that everyone knows the lingo. Otherwise, speak plainly.\n\n<h3>Meeting Of The Minds</h3>\n\nMy business law professor, still a good friend of mine, taught us about the legal implications when two parties have any business arrangement. This \"meeting of the minds\"  assumes that both parties at that instant understood what they agreed upon. It\'s not enough to think that two parties have a mutual understanding; leaders should go all out to make sure there is mutual understanding among all parties.\n\n<h3>Can\'t Hear</h3>\n\nWhen I first became a restaurant general manager, I hired two siblings who had great talent. The younger brother, Lance, was hearing impaired. Undaunted, I was confident in his ability to do the job, and to have his sister help with sign language. My boss was skeptical at first, and then gave his full support months later. I knew that Lance had the skills, we just needed to go beyond the physical challenges to be able to understand each other. Once we could communicate on some basic terms, we built a solid ground of training and trust and the rest Lance took care of on his own.\n\n<h3><strong>Can\'t Speak</strong></h3>\n\nMy dog and I have a tremendous challenge in communicating. She doesn\'t speak my language. And apparently I don\'t speak hers, either. So how do we know what the other wants or needs? Trial and error. By being determined to find ways to communicate based on her actions I can know what she\'s trying to convey. And when I give consistent, clear commands and direction, she knows what I\'m saying, even though she doesn\'t speak English (or German). If two people aren\'t able to communicate, at least one must continue to work at it until a positive response is elicited.\n\n<h3>Speak Vision - Repeat Often As Necessary</h3>\n\nOne of my best mentors was incredible at <em>folding in</em> the vision and mission at every opportunity. He believed it so much that every interaction - phone, email, personal contact - drew you into the vision as well. He was <a href=\"http://upwardsleader.com/2015/01/25/funnels-lasers-and-megaphones/\">like a megaphone</a> going around and telling everyone what we were all running towards. It wasn\'t badgering or annoying - it was infectious. He was able to magnify the vision so big by constantly preaching that we didn\'t care about the dysfunction in the leadership above him, or the challenges our market\'s competition presented. We just ran toward the goal. His leadership made us accomplish goals that otherwise would have been squelched by the disruptions around us.\n\n<h3><strong>The Intellectual</strong></h3>\n\nI had another college professor, a professor of philosophy, who was not very effective in teaching. His attitude conveyed that he was the guru and we should be thankful just to be around him. His lectures were quite condescending, and generated some resentment from the students. He couldn\'t be bothered to acknowledge that we didn\'t understand his level of thinking. Great leaders talk their people up and are <a href=\"http://upwardsleader.com/2015/01/25/funnels-lasers-and-megaphones/\">funnels of information</a> to them.\n\nCommunication is not just how we convey the message, but rather how it\'s understood by the recipient. These lessons have served me well thus far, and I hope they give you some ideas as well.', 'Communication - Do You Hear What They Hear?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'communication-do-you-hear-what-they-hear', '', '', '2015-02-05 06:00:37', '2015-02-05 11:00:37', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21663', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(21672, 252, '2014-12-08 06:00:10', '2014-12-08 11:00:10', 'Have you ever had someone accuse you of an offense that you were totally unaware of? Maybe you unknowingly got ahead of them in line at the coffee shop.\n\nOr you inched out of a lane in a parking lot so you could see, and someone approaching too fast had to swerve around you, cursing you all the way.\n\nI feel icky with this happens. I want to explain it wasn’t intentional. But the damage is already done. Many times, the offended doesn’t want to hear it.\n\n<h3>Of Course It Can Go Both Ways</h3>\n\nRecently I met with an acquaintance at local cafe. During our discussion she kept looking around. She didn’t maintain eye contact. Was I boring her? Why did she even want to meet with me if she wasn’t going to give me her attention?\n\nAt one point I did ask her if she was looking for something. She said no and came back to me, for a moment. Our relationship was not such that I would say more to her about it.\n\nDuring our coffee she mentioned she and her boyfriend had broken up. I didn’t connect this to the behavior I saw.\n\nI came away from the meeting wondering just what was going on. She’s not a rude person. Later she contacted me, apologizing. She said she saw a few people at the café who were common friends of her and her ex.\n\nIt hit her harder than she expected. She wasn’t ready to speak with them. She felt like she had to keep looking over her shoulder or watch for who was listening.\n\n<h3>Sometimes We Need To Practice The Same Lesson Over & Over</h3>\n\n\nThis is not the first time you’ve heard a story like this. It won’t be the last. I needed yet another lesson on expecting the best of people.\n\nMy fellow instigator, Jane Perdue, has written a <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/judging-others-favorably-stop-think-consider/\">magnificent piece</a> on unconditional positive regard. Message received, Universe.\n\nI was complaining to a fellow blogger the other day about a really nasty comment someone made on one of my posts. “How do you handle this, Andrew?”\n\nHe said that he started by imagining they were just having a bad day. That’s a level of maturity and compassion I aspire to. How about you?', 'Let&#039;s Cut Each Other A Break', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'lets-cut-each-other-a-break', '', '', '2014-12-08 06:00:10', '2014-12-08 11:00:10', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21672', 0, 'post', '', 4),
(21695, 274, '2014-12-05 06:20:54', '2014-12-05 11:20:54', 'My team and I will soon pass an important milestone as a company. It\'s a milestone I identified and have been looking to achieve by year\'s end.\n\nIf I look at it from a big picture, strictly business perspective, I would have reason to downplay or even feel disappointed about my results as a business owner so far.\n\nHowever, when I view the results and this milestone through a larger perspective - through the lens of our company values and my own personal values - I have a deep sense that I have done well. We have reason to celebrate.\n\nAs a leader, it is my job to set the pace for the team. Through what I talk about and celebrate, my team will understand and internalize what\'s important to us as a company.\n\nHere are a few of the not-so-usual measures I want to celebrate:\n\n<strong>Money That Goes Into The World</strong> - Though a strictly business mindset would focus on net revenue, an important measure, certainly, I take great joy in the money my business generates as income for others. The money that goes into the world is a measure of blessings shared. The money that goes into the world is a measure of the number of opportunities we are creating. Every pay day, I pray that the money I am sending into the world will have a great return of blessing in the lives of the people who subcontract for my company. I celebrate the money that leaves my company to bless others.\n\n<strong>Number Of Books Launched</strong> - Our company\'s primary focus is launching business books. The more books we launch, the more great ideas we are sharing with our online networks and communities. In my view, we can track the difference we are making as a company to the number of books we are launching. More books = more great ideas = making a bigger difference.\n\n<strong>The Difference We Are Making</strong> - When I feel discouraged, I find encouragement by asking myself this question: \"Whose life is different because I am doing this work?\"\n\nWhen I ask this question, my mind floods with obvious people - the team members working with me and the clients we serve - and with less-obvious people. If you are reading this, you might be one of the less-obvious people.\n\nWhat kind of difference do I want to make? A big one! This unsolicited comment from a team member sums up what I want to create and celebrate:\n\n<blockquote>\"I love what I do. I love who I work with. The respect level is high. The teamwork is great. The support we have for each other is second to none. My wife and I have a stronger relationship now because I\'m happy with what I do. I get to spend time with and bond with my daughter.\"</blockquote>\n\nAs a leader, I <em>could</em> focus on the less-than-perfect numbers on our P&L. As CEO, it is my job to look at the bottom line.\n\nAs I attend to the bottom line, I am also mindful of the measures that matter beyond the bottom line. And you can bet I\'m celebrating them.', 'Beyond The Bottom Line - Measuring &amp; Celebrating Success', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'beyond-the-bottom-line-measuring-and-celebrating-success', '', '', '2014-12-05 06:20:54', '2014-12-05 11:20:54', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21695', 0, 'post', '', 5);
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(21713, 375, '2014-12-09 06:00:14', '2014-12-09 11:00:14', 'Some people believe that you have to be ruthless in order to achieve success. I’m here to tell you that they’re dead wrong. Here are common fallacies about winning in the game of life.\n\n<strong>Promote Yourself To Make A Great Impression</strong> - Self-promotion won’t always lead to a favorable impression. In fact, the opposite may be true. If you want to make a great impression, spend your time listening and making others feel special rather than telling them how great you are.\n\n<strong>You Have To Move Fast To Get What You Want</strong> - Relationships are built on trust, which takes time to develop. When people are viewed as “a bull in a china shop,” their motives are likely to be misinterpreted.\n\n<strong>If I Don’t Take It first, Someone Else Will</strong> - When someone makes a concerted effort to be fair, others often return the favor. The opposite is also true — when someone thinks only of himself or herself, it breeds suspicion and contempt.\n\n<strong>Packaging Yourself Is Everything</strong> - When you work smart and provide significant value, you don’t have to use gimmicks or play dirty to be recognized as a star. The best way to differentiate yourself or your organization is to be honest, caring, and hardworking.\n\n<strong>Always Try To Get The Upper Hand</strong> - Relationships are all about identifying areas of shared interest and creating opportunities for everyone to be a winner. When someone gains the upper hand at the expense of others, it creates envy and resentment.\n\n<strong>Don’t Compromise If You Don’t Have To</strong> - Relationships are built on compromise. When you watch your partner’s back, your partner will watch yours. Compromise is key. If two people are five steps apart, the best way to meet in the middle is for each person to take three steps forward.\n\n<strong>In Business, Everyone’s A Competitor</strong> - Some people believe that the best way to propel their career is to outmaneuver their colleagues. But when you make people look good, you’ll earn their trust and respect, and they’ll be supportive of your efforts. Plus, they’ll want you on their team.\n\n<strong>There’s Not Enough Time To Help Others</strong> - When you make an effort to help others, you’ll create an army of people willing to return the favor for you one day. But remember, please don’t keep score.\n\nThis is adapted from Frank’s new book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Follow-Your-Conscience-Difference-Others-ebook/dp/B00O4IWYFS\">Follow Your Conscience</a>, released November 2014.', 'Eight Reasons Why Greed Is A Dead End Strategy', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'eight-reasons-why-greed-is-a-dead-end-strategy', '', '', '2014-12-09 06:00:14', '2014-12-09 11:00:14', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21713', 0, 'post', '', 3),
(21733, 251, '2014-12-10 06:00:59', '2014-12-10 11:00:59', 'Being together again after so many years was pure delight. The connection took up as if we were finishing a conversation begun only the day before.\n\nFamiliarity is so comforting. Until...there’s too much of it, and its dark side surfaces: lack of innovation, narrow-minded thinking, ingrained and unquestioned bias, outdated practices, and failure to grow as a person. Boredom, too.\n\nSo what’s the antidote to comfort zones with self-imposed boundaries that have become inflexible? Training our brains and hearts to accept and appreciate differences.\n\nAn increasingly connected world multiplies our contacts with others—some who share our beliefs as well as those who do not. Interacting with people who agree with us and who share similar interests is usually a pleasant experience. Those contacts can become more challenging when they happen with people who see the world differently than we do.\n\nA multitude of contributing factors that prompt different points of view exists:  age, race, gender, ethnicity, religion, socio-economic and marital status, upbringing, disability, appearance, education, and lifestyle.\n\nOther elements come into play as well in shaping how we approach situations and people, things as simple as what sports teams we root for or which political party we support.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/ways-to-be-different.jpg\" alt=\"Ways To Be Different\" />\n\nIf ignored or met with intolerance or indifference, these dissimilarities can be divisive, even lethal for career or business success. Blockbuster, Eastman Kodak, and Borders are but a handful of companies where process became habit and values became dogma, resulting in those companies becoming history. Professor Donald Sull calls it active inertia, an organization’s tendency to follow established patterns of behavior.\n\nPeople do the same thing. I once had a boss who had an imaginary grid on his desktop—financials had a certain resting spot as did staff reports and marketing news. He wore a straw fedora in the summer and a wool one in the winter. He abhorred dissent, uncertainty, and pens with red ink.\n\nMimicking his decision-making and thinking styles assured lovely raises. Alternate points of view, not so much. His department output was reliable but unremarkable. A classic case of active inertia.\n\nThere’s three things you can do to begin appreciating differences:\n\n<ol>\n<li>Decide to be open-minded and not automatically reject the unfamiliar.</li>\n<li>Challenge yourself to actively seek out new experiences and people.</li>\n<li>Embrace the purposeful discomfort that accompanies gaining new experiences, insights, knowledge, and maybe a friend or two.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">All great experiences that engage us have an element of uncertainty at their core.</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Aaron Dignan</div>\n</blockquote>\n\nIf acknowledged and taken into consideration, differences make us better. Diversity of thought, opinion, and perspective yields richer and more productive outcomes. Plus it fuels creativity, innovation, and deeper thinking—the ideal solution to unyielding and stifling comfort zones that hold us back from our potential.', '3 Ways To Harness The Power Of Differences', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', '3-ways-to-harness-the-power-of-differences', '', '', '2014-12-10 06:00:59', '2014-12-10 11:00:59', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21733', 0, 'post', '', 3),
(21749, 318, '2014-12-30 05:45:57', '2014-12-30 10:45:57', 'With all the juggling and <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/frontline-festival/leaders-share-about-worklife-balance-integration-a-frontline-festival/\">balancing</a> of being a parent and doing your leadership day job, it\'s easy to feel like you can never do enough.\n\nAfter all, you only have so many hours in a day, and on most days someone gets the short stick. If you\'re like me, there are days the guilt comes on so strong you wonder if you\'re trying to do too much.\n\nMaybe your kids would be better off if you worked less. Or perhaps your team would be stronger if you didn\'t have your competing parenting priorities.\n\nLet me introduce an important reframing. chances are you are actually a <em>better leader</em> because of your parenting, not in spite of it.\n\nLook around at the best leaders you know. I bet that at some point in their lives, they went home at night to what they considered their most important job, kissed them, and tucked them in bed.\n\nJuggling makes us better multi-taskers. Wiping tears makes us better listeners. Parenting is all about influence. So is leadership.\n<h3>8 Ways Parenting Improves Leadership Competency</h3>\n<em>As a parent you must:</em>\n<ol>\n	<li><strong>Care Deeply About Results</strong> - How your children turn out matters a lot. You care about outcomes and learn to watch for signs of improvement or indications your sweet little project is getting off course. Caring deeply is the first step to making a difference.</li>\n	<li><strong>Manage Through The Shock Factor</strong> - My mom\'s favorite story is when I ate the diaper pail deodorizer. I\'ve got some doozies from my own kids. Parents deal with such stupidity around the clock. So it takes more than a little workplace nonsense to get us rattled.</li>\n	<li><strong>Take The Long View</strong> - Parents invest deeply for the long run. They know that every move won\'t be perfect, but they\'re going for the long-term impact. Leaders see mistakes as an opportunity to grow.</li>\n	<li><strong>Juggle To Survive</strong> - For most parents juggling has become an important survival skill. This translates well to prioritizing and getting a heck of a lot done.</li>\n	<li><strong>Be Resourceful</strong> - No funding? Ask a parent to figure out a way to make it happen. Parents have to get creative and make the most of what they\'ve got lying around.</li>\n	<li><strong>Act Like A Grown-Up</strong> - My friend says that she considers a finished book report a win if the kid is the only one crying. Parents get enough drama at home; they don\'t have energy to get sucked into more of it at work.</li>\n	<li><strong>Speak Simply &amp; Check For Understanding</strong> - Parents know that just because you ask a kid to do something, doesn\'t mean they heard you. They learn to double-check to ensure the message is clear.</li>\n	<li><strong>Influence</strong> - To simply say \"<em>because mommy said so</em>\" doesn\'t work. Parents learn to influence and inspire the behaviors they most want to see in their children.</li>\n</ol>\nIt works the other way too. Being a good leader is a great way to develop <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/leadership-in-children/teach_kids_about_leadership/\">leadership</a> in your children.\n\nAre you interested in developing leadership in your children? Then you might be interested in the <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/publications/parents-guide-to-leadership/\">Parent\'s Guide To Leadership</a>, a free ebook, available for download at Let\'s Grow Leaders.\n\nNOTE: There will not be a Lead Change Group post tomorrow (12/31/14). We look forward to greeting you on 1/2/15 with our first post of the year! ~ pk\n\n&nbsp;', 'How Being a Parent Improves Your Leadership Competency', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'how-being-a-parent-improves-your-leadership-competency', '', '', '2014-12-30 05:45:57', '2014-12-30 10:45:57', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21749', 0, 'post', '', 3),
(21767, 329, '2014-12-18 06:00:49', '2014-12-18 11:00:49', 'A significant part of the Vietnam conflict in the late ‘60s was fought in thick jungle. Most areas of the northern part of what was then South Vietnam, what the military termed I Corps, were thick, mountainous jungle.\n\nU.S. soldiers who were separated from their units and forced to wander the jungle, often died from hunger - with a feast of edible food all around them. They perished rather than eat rats and snakes. Keep that perspective in mind as our change management back story.\n\nAfter I completed infantry officer training and tour of duty as an instructor at the Army Infantry School, I was given (funny word) orders to deploy to Vietnam to serve as an infantry platoon leader with the elite 82nd Airborne. However, I had influenced the right people and won the opportunity to attend the Army Jungle Survival School in the Republic of Panama as an interim stop on my route to Southeast Asia. A part of the intense survival training included a special lesson aimed at equipping soldiers to effectively deal with the challenge outlined in the first paragraph.\n\nFollowing a fact-based lecture on the plight of soldiers who needlessly starved in jungles, the head of the Camp Sherman mess hall unveiled a special banquet. Food from the nearby jungle had been specially prepared and was displayed on long serving tables as if it had come straight from the kitchen of a five-star restaurant. Each dish was clearly labeled. The serving procedure was simple - grab a plate, get in line, and help yourself.\n\nBaked rat was served in a special curry sauce. Large black beetles deep-fried in a flavorful batter were served with a spicy mustard dip. Boa constrictor strips were grilled and served with a guava glaze. Monkey brains came sauteed in a butter sauce with shredded coconut and a touch of papaya. Monkey eyeballs came in a savory broth with bamboo shoots, black palm leaves, and palm nuts. And, the dessert table included large ants and worms slow baked and covered with a chocolate sauce with a hint of pineapple. There was much, much more.\n\nThe instructors were in the front of the line with obvious enthusiasm. Students who were brave early adopters followed them, filling their plates and heading for a table to show off to their buddies, all with the admiration of the instructors. Queasy diners dreamed of a Big Mac and a cold beer. But, an important change occurred. The iron stomach, try-anything soldiers bragged to their colleagues about their tasty choices and encouraged their timid classmates to “try the baked rat, it tastes fantastic!”\n\nIt clearly worked. Soon most soldiers had at least tried most of the items on the large banquet table. Long military experience had shown that, faced with survival, soldiers would be far less likely to be repulsed by the idea of eating gross food if they had at least tried it once. While the food in the wild would never be as scrumptious as the gourmet treatment it received at Camp Sherman, it bridged an important barrier to change.\n\nLet’s dissect the Army exercise to discern leader lessons for broader application in the business world.\n<h3>Change Management Starts With Compelling Rationale</h3>\nParticipants were given a well-defined purpose for the unique dining exercise. It was about potential survival, not about appeasing some power-hungry sergeant. Change is a door opened only from the inside. People can be forced to comply; but they cannot be driven to commitment. Change is more likely embraced if there is a compelling reason for making the change. Why do people go on a diet, stop smoking, or start exercising? Typically, they have facts that the hard work of change is for a persuasive reason.\n<h3>Change Management Turns On Perceived Emotional Worth</h3>\nThe WIIFM (what’s in it for me) dimension can never be ignored. Change is embraced with those impacted by that change if they view some return on their emotional investment. Helping out the company (unless you are an owner), getting your budget cut in half, or deferring a bonus, only is acceptable if anchored to something worthwhile to the person making the change. It is not that people are not altruistic; but tough change (e.g. eating rats) needs to be grounded in a benefit to the <em>changee</em> not just the <em>changor</em>.\n<h3>Change Management Is Amplified By Broad Based Participation</h3>\nPeople do not resist change. They resist the prediction or perception of pain or discomfort over which they have no control. The Army Jungle Survival School’s eat the beetle exercise was completely voluntary. No one was forced to eat anything they did not want to eat. Allowing people to opt in or opt out communicated trust and respect. Change management needs to be laced with compassion coupled with a clear and present recognition that people differ in their capacity to change as well as their pace of acceptance.\n<h3>Change Management Is Bolstered By Peer Influence</h3>\nSome people have such a fear of rejection that they are reluctant to change even if they know change is best. They do not want to stand out. However, when they observe peers embracing the change, it provides encouragement. Call it the herd mentality or the power of the first follower (with a hat tip to Derek Sivers). People are comforted in knowing they are not a lone pioneer on the forefront of a challenging change. At the Army Jungle Survival School, those students at the front of the serving line were affirmed for their bravery. That recognition sent an important signal to others to join in.\n<h3>Change Management Is Solidified By Leadership Role Models</h3>\nThe Army Jungle Survival School instructors were at the front of the serving line. They not only set the tone and modeled the change, they were enthusiastic in their embrace of the avant garde menu. Leaders seeking change walk in a floodlight. Effective change management is not just achieved by leader conversation; it must include observation—leader actions that followers see as congruent with the change message.\n\nI was lucky. The geography of the region of Vietnam where I served was much like the southeastern U.S. farmland where I grew up. While there were monsoons and tropical vegetation, there was no jungle. But, the superb Army Jungle School experience stayed with me. And, when I am asked by a senior leader to facilitate a large systems change, I find myself metaphorically thinking, “How can we encourage queasy, skeptical employees to eat snakes and rats?”', 'Change Management Lessons from Eating Snakes and Rats', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'change-management-lessons-from-eating-snakes-and-rats', '', '', '2014-12-18 06:00:49', '2014-12-18 11:00:49', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21767', 0, 'post', '', 5),
(21787, 243, '2014-12-15 06:00:25', '2014-12-15 11:00:25', '“He made me mad.” “They irritated me.” “That ticked me off!\" To initiate means to start something; to cause the beginning.\n\nA reaction is never a beginning. It is always a second action. When we react to things we give some previous action or person the ability to dictate to us. We let them dictate our behavior or our attitude.\n\nOne of my favorite qualities of leaders is how leaders choose their response. When we choose not to react the way others might normally react, we exercise a little leadership. It takes courage and reserve and planning to choose actions when we might otherwise simply react. But every time we make a conscious choice, we exercise leadership.\n\nOf course, if someone swerves into your lane and stops, you don’t have to hit the brakes, but you probably should. Reacting and avoiding an accident is much better than not reacting. Sometimes reactions are necessary for safety and peace. But often they are excuses to abandon the work of being our best self and leading with character.\n\nMost of the time, you have the time to choose. When someone takes credit for something you did at work, what can you do? When someone cuts in line? I’ve recently been traveling quite a bit and just about anything that happens in an airport qualifies as an opportunity to choose a first action. It seems every delayed flight has one passenger who believes the gate attendant has the power to make the plane arrive sooner or make the weather clear up?\n\nMany of us have default non-leader actions. My default non-leader action is anger. Anger is fear turned inside out. As I begin to fear a situation is slipping from my (perceived) control, I try to influence others by demonstrating decisive, harsh or even angry outbursts. It never works, but it worked in my family of origin, so it’s my fall-back procedure. \n\nWe often fall back to what worked in our families of origin. Some get passive, or disengage; others seem outwardly passive yet are really actively resistant. But the world isn’t like my family of origin. My default behavior rarely works and often creates a negative outcome.\n\nIn every case, the leader (the one we admire) in us, on our team, or in our organization, <em>chooses</em> a first, courageous action. The moment we command our actions, choosing the right and courageous action, is a moment of leadership. We and our team and those around us are inspired. Life and hope return.\n\nRather than shrink to react, we rise to act and exercise leadership in a way that inspires. When we exercise the courage to initiate a first action, we are our best selves and we encourage others and make a greater future possible.\n\nSure, we could just react, fall back to our family of origin tactics, but those seldom achieve the team objective. Our nature is not to lead. Our nature is not to serve anyone but ourselves. Our nature must be led.\n\nLeaders choose action over reaction. Leaders initiate. They create first actions where one didn’t exist. Leaders choose to take the energy to initiate a first action. Easy is never best.\n\nIt’s easier to look out for ourselves and hang on to our resources than it is to be generous and graceful. It’s always more natural to take than to give, unless you’ve trained yourself well.\n\nChoose a first action instead of reaction today. Find an opportunity to initiate a new action and break the chain.', 'Leaders Initiate', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'leaders-initiate', '', '', '2014-12-15 06:00:25', '2014-12-15 11:00:25', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21787', 0, 'post', '', 6),
(21793, 382, '2015-01-02 06:00:05', '2015-01-02 11:00:05', 'Logos, Brands, Slogans. Our world is saturated with advertising, marketing and branding, but are you missing the big picture?\n\nThe true measure of branding success is when the logo stands alone without any adornment, when the consumer base at large has a brand recognition of the logo.\n\nWhen you see the Apple logo, it inspires certain opinions and thoughts - innovative, reliable, sleek.\n\nTake this further than retail and physical products. What thoughts do the image of Abe Lincoln generate? Thoughts of the Gettysburg Address, his leadership, which overcame many setbacks, or the fact that his quotes, are among the most famous in the world.\n\nAsk any CEO and they will tell you brand recognition and logo familiarity are what make or break a company.\n\nAs a leader, this is no different…\n<div style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">...Your <em>face</em> is your <em>logo</em>.\n...Your <em>style</em> is your <em>slogan</em>.\n...Your past <em>success</em> or <em>failure</em>, along with how you achieved it, defines your <em>brand</em>.</div>\n<div class=\"clear\"></div>\nDo your followers recognize you as a leader or a manager? An innovator or a maintainer? A teambuilding innovator or a tyrannical dictator? A servant leader or a narcissistic one?\n\nDoes your persona light a fire in their gut or just under their butt? Does it inspire thoughts of innovative change, teamwork and success or does it make them think of a company man striving to maintain the status quo?\n\nWhether a multi-billion dollar company like Chevrolet or Apple, a collection of like-minded innovators like those at Lead Change Group or an individual like Abe or you, the ultimate goal is to create a successful Brand. Too many individuals do not think of their careers and lives this way.\n\nMany times we ask, “How will you be remembered?”\n\nThis is simply brand recognition, and with each day and action you are further promoting your Leadership <a href=\"http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/marque\">Marque</a>. To be successful, this must be a deliberate development, a structured evolution of both who you are and who you strive to be.\n\nAlthough the definition of leadership varies and will always remain the topic of much debate and passionate opinions, the variables which define your leadership marque easily fall into four variables: <em>presence</em>, <em>principles</em>, <em>actions</em> and <em>reactions</em>.\n<h3>Presence</h3>\nYour leadership presence is an interwoven result of your past experience, learned abilities and future capability. It is an intrinsic quality which motivates people to follow you, to respect you. Realize every person in a room has a presence - however small or large, positive or negative. Be deliberate about developing your leadership presence and you will leave just as lasting of a mark.\n\nLooks aren’t everything but appearance is a strong first impression. A leader is not always in a pristine suit, but the attire should match the situation. If your appearance, demeanor and office are neat and tidy, it subconsciously informs everyone you expect the same from them.\n\nRemember, a group takes on the demeanor of the leader. Leaders must focus on their poise and be confident, not cocky. Grace under pressure confirms to everyone watching that you are in total control and have the ability and capability to be successful. Further, ultimate leaders make every person they talk to feel like the most important person in the room.\n\nFinally, a leader should always be the most prepared individual in any room. Study, prepare and don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” Never <em>wing</em> an answer. Incorrect facts and verbal tap-dancing detract from your credibility and yield unrecoverable <em>sound-bites</em>.\n<h3>Principles</h3>\nLook to the headlines on any given day and you will find a CEO who has fallen from grace because of a decision to stray from the moral, ethical or legal path. Your leadership marquee will always be first defined by your adherence to these basic guidelines, but it is more than that. Principles are not always black-and-white. Your followers rely on your lead.\n\nDo you <em>speed</em> to make progress and achieve success? Think about the law. When you drove to work this morning, the speed limit was 65 mph. As you merged onto the 405, you most likely saw all those around you setting the cruise control well above that speed. While illegal, you probably joined the masses and watched for the California Highway Patrol while you pushed your luck.\n\nDo you <em>speed</em> in business? Do you overlook small legalities, justifying actions to get where you are going faster? In leadership, \"speeding\" reinforces to your followers that selective adherence to rules and regulations is acceptable in order to achieve success. Know that someone is always watching your every action and inaction, decision and indecision, shortcut and corner you cut. Know what principles you stand for and never let them be compromised.\n<blockquote>Speeding reinforces to followers that selective-adherence to rules and regulations is acceptable in order to achieve success.</blockquote>\n<h3>Actions</h3>\nLeadership is about result, period. The definition of results will vary by situation, but this fact is indisputable. What results does your leadership marque inspire thoughts of when people think of your style?\n\nTo be successful, a leader must be efficiently effective on the quest for mission success. Their actions must inspire growth in followers and motivate them to strive for and achieve levels of success they never thought necessary.\n\nLeadership is about decisions. We all know a leader whose leadership marquee invokes a clear picture of analysis paralysis, the ones who continually want more data and a definitively positive guarantee of success before making a decision and putting their name on the line. Many so-called leaders too often forget that indecision is a decision.\n\nWe also know those leaders whose actions are driven by calculated and deliberate risk taking. The type we would trust with our lives…and coming from a military officer, I mean that literally.\n<blockquote>Indecision is a decision.</blockquote>\n<h3>Reactions</h3>\nThink of both the best and worst leader you know. What is the #1 thing that came to mind about them? Most likely it was their reactions. When things went bad, my best leader put his arm around my shoulder and said, “how do we recover.” Meanwhile my worst leader lost his temper, yelled pointlessly and was only concerned with the personal impact on him.\n<blockquote>As a leader, never lose your temper unless it is intentional.</blockquote>\nIf your first thoughts of a leader are almost always memories of their predisposed reaction style, why is this so often an overlooked aspect of leadership development? The problem with this aspect of your leadership marquee is that it is encompassed by emotion. Emotional Intelligence has recently been recognized as a vital aspect of success. Ninety percent of top performers have a high EQ and this EQ is responsible for well over half of job performance.\n\nThe beauty of this aspect is that it is completely moldable, adaptable and variable. As a leader, you must make the same calculated and deliberate decision in high-stress, fluidly dynamic environment as you do in a preplanned boardroom setting. Business is combat. In the military, it is not stock prices and investor confidence we are worried about, it is the lives of the individuals we have been entrusted and charged to lead.\n\nA common saying is, “<em>no plan survives first contact with the enemy</em>.” This simple statement reminds us as leaders that we must plan as thoroughly as possible, but also must understand that to lead is to make life-or-death decisions under fire, with limited facts in a time critical environment. This is the ultimate variable in establishing your leadership marquee.\n\nFor confirmation of the importance of this aspect, just look at any military professional’s resume or biography and take notice of the first descriptor which is usually listed: <em>Combat-proven leader</em>. This, in our world, is the ultimate mark of leadership and cements our leadership marquee. Grace under pressure confirms to everyone watching you are in total control and have the ability and capability to be successful. What is the descriptor you are striving for in developing your leadership marque?\n<blockquote>No plan survives first contact with the enemy</blockquote>\n<h3>Your Leadership Marque</h3>\nPassion must be genuine, it should never be faked. If you are passionate about your brand, your mission, your organization, your team - this will affect and infect those you lead. Build your leadership brand, your leadership marque, into something which you and your followers are proud of and passionate about. Be as deliberate in building your personal brand and creating recognition as a Fortune 500 CEO.', 'What’s Your Leadership Marque?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'whats-your-leadership-marque', '', '', '2015-01-02 06:00:05', '2015-01-02 11:00:05', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21793', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(21813, 274, '2014-12-17 07:22:33', '2014-12-17 12:22:33', 'As 2014 comes to a close, do you feel like you are on a Tilt-A-Whirl? The combination of year-end business activities and personal holiday observations can be dizzying.\n\nIn the midst of the blur of time and activities, I hope you\'ll take a moment to enjoy the submissions from this month\'s participants in the Carnival of HR.\n\nSince I am hosting, and my main business focus is books, this month\'s post is mostly about books that have influenced people. We relaxed the usual requirement that a post should be no more than two weeks old, so that people could share their favorite books of 2014.\n\nI see the lights of the Ferris wheel ahead; I hear the music of the carousel, and I smell the tempting foods of the midway. Let\'s see what\'s ahead in the Carnival of HR...\n\n<h4>Dazzled By The Options</h4>\n\nUpon arriving at a carnival, it can be a challenge to choose where to start. There are so many choices. When trying to choose which book to discuss as part of the carnival, I couldn\'t stop at just one. Here are five standout attractions: <a href=\"http://weavinginfluence.com/launching-books/the-year-in-review-lessons-from-2014-books\">The Year in Review: Lessons From 2014 Books</a>.\n\n<a href=\"http://www.greatleadershipbydan.com/\">Dan McCarthy</a> shared Scott Eblin\'s guest post that also addresses the topic of being <em>overwhelmed</em>, along with a feeling of being <em>overworked</em>. The post discusses solutions gleaned from Scott\'s book, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Overworked-Overwhelmed-The-Mindfulness-Alternative/dp/1118910664/\">Overworked and Overwhelmed</a>. While your stomach settles from that Screamin\' Swing, check out the full post: <a href=\"http://www.greatleadershipbydan.com/2014/10/why-mindfulness-is-for-leaders-and-not.html\">Why Mindfulness Is For Leaders & Not Just Monks</a>.\n\n<h4>Planning</h4>\n\nEventually, carnival goers have to make a plan for their time at the event or they\'ll miss out on the attractions they would have enjoyed the most.\n\nSimilarly, <a href=\"http://johnhunter.com/\">John Hunter</a> posts about Gerald Suarez\'s take on finding direction in his book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1494401363/worldwidedemingw\">Leader of One</a>. The Turkish proverb he shared, <em>\"No matter how long you have been on the wrong road, turn back\"</em>, appealed to me: <a href=\"http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2014/06/25/gerald-suarez-on-creating-the-future/\">Gerald Suarez Creating The Future</a>.\n\nIn keeping with the theme of strategy, <a href=\"http://www.chipbell.com/\">Chip Bell</a> encourages us to remember that there is always a way. Yes, it\'s just a carnival and the decisions between cotton candy versus funnel cakes are not life threatening. But someone has to lead, always. His post about <a href=\"http://leadersopendoors.com/\">Leaders Open Doors</a> by Bill Treasurer\'s book is inspiring: <a href=\"http://www.chipbell.com/blog/rules-combat-open-door-leadership/\">The Rules Of Combat & Open-Door Leadership</a>.\n\n<h4>People</h4>\n\nAnd then there\'s peer pressure. What height-phobic individual hasn\'t been ridiculed by a friend for being a scaredy-cat? The bungee jump is one thing; choices in the workplace fueled by peer pressure are another. <a href=\"http://upstarthr.com/\">Ben Eubanks</a> feels that there is a <em>positive</em> pressure leaders should apply at work: enthusiastically encouraging (yes, he uses the word force) employees to read. More about his thoughts here: <a href=\"http://upstarthr.com/force-employees-read-books/\">Why You Should Force Your Employees To Read Books</a>.\n\nLeading involves difficult conversations. <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/\">Karin Hurt</a> recommends the book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Discomfort-Zone-Difficult-Conversations-Breakthroughs/dp/162656065X\">The Discomfort Zone</a>, explaining that <em>discomfort zone</em> conversations involve a leader who risks making someone uncomfortable enough to allow their beliefs to be challenged. The entire post is here: <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/authenticity-transparency-trust/difficult_conversation/\">How To Have A Difficult Conversation</a>.\n\nLeading also involves establishing trust. Susan Mazza discusses how moment-to-moment interactions set the stage for the quality of a relationship. She introduces a book to which she contributed, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Inc-Strategies-Building-Companys/dp/1932919368\">TRUST, Inc: 52 Weeks of Activities & Inspirations For Building Workplace Trust (Volume 3)</a>. Read the full article here: <a href=\"http://randomactsofleadership.com/moments-of-trust/\">Moments Of Trust</a>.\n\n<h4>Let\'s Take More Books For A Ride</h4>\n\nGetting in tune with the times is critical to keeping up. When discussing <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/World-Gone-Social-Companies-Survive/dp/081443326X\">A World Gone Social</a>, in her blog <a href=\"http://mills-scofield.com/\">Deb Mills-Scofield</a> reminds us that <em>\"No matter who we are, the more open we are, the more global our impact.\"</em> Here\'s Deb\'s post: <a href=\"http://mills-scofield.com/blog/2014/8/20/if-you-havent-gone-social-you-should-be-very-very-worried.html\">If You Haven\'t Gone Social, You Should Be Very, Very Worried</a>.\n\nHas a carnival employee ever mystified you by guessing your age and weight? Sometimes it is best to avoid the guesswork, keep your money, and trust your own scale at home. <a href=\"http://www.octopus-hr.co.uk/\">David Richter</a> revisits the business classic <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Built-Last-Successful-Visionary-Essentials/dp/0060516402\">Built to Last</a> and is reminded of some timeless principles of doing business well, along with some myths to be broken. Read his six core values in this post: <a href=\"http://www.octopus-hr.co.uk/hrmoz/article/my-favourite-book.aspx\">My Favourite Book That I\'ve Read This Year</a>.\n\n<a href=\"http://andyuskavitch.com/\">Andy Uskavitch</a> tells us about getting enlightenment and inspiration from Frank Sonnenberg\'s book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Follow-Your-Conscience-Difference-Others-ebook/dp/B00O4IWYFS\">Follow Your Conscience</a>. Read the full article on Andy\'s blog, <a href=\"http://supervision-motivation.blogspot.com/2014/11/follow-your-conscience.html\">SuperVISON Motivation</a>.\n\n<a href=\"http://www.insiteskill.com/\">Jane Anderson</a> discusses the potential impact of an organizational constitution in her review of Chris Edmonds\'s book, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Culture-Engine-Framework-Transforming/dp/1118947320\">The Culture Engine</a>. Read the full article on Jane Anderson\'s blog, <a href=\"http://bizcatalyst360.com/the-culture-engine/\">Insite Skill</a>.\n\n<h4>As The Carnival Starts To Wind Down</h4>\n\nThere are times in the midst of a carnival\'s cacophony when you just need to regroup. <a href=\"http://www.biggreenpen.com\">Paula Kiger</a> talked about the role of the book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Wisdom-Work-Finding-Sanity/dp/1609947975\">Yoga Wisdom At Work</a> by Maren and Jamie Showkeir and its application to strategic planning in this guest post: <a href=\"http://spinsucks.com/communication/dharana-of-planning/\">The Dharana Of Planning</a>\n\n<h4>After You Have Ridden The Rides & Eaten All The Goodies</h4>\n\nWhen a day at the carnival finally winds down, we leave with fun memories, full tummies, and possibly an over-sized stuffed bear. When we leave the midway behind us, we are back to our regular lives. It seems fitting that <a href=\"http://infullbloom.us/about-naomi-bloom/\">Naomi Bloom</a> chose an old book to remind us of everlasting principles.\n\nShe says, \"I made the contents of a very special book, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Testament\">The Old Testament </a>, also known as <a href=\"http://www.jewfaq.org/torah.htm\">The Torah</a>, central to my thoughts on that period of self-reflection and course correction we Jews call \"The Days of Awe.\"  \n\nObviously some of the points don\'t apply, and others have been overtaken by thousands of years of human history, but there remains a lot in this list if, taken as intended, would make our workplaces and our world a much better place. Read more about <a href=\"http://infullbloom.us/5078/rosh-hashanah-yom-kippur-and-the-days-of-awe-5775/\">Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, & The Days Of Awe</a>.\n\nOn behalf of the Lead Change Group, I hope you have enjoyed today\'s carnival. For future carnivals, consult the schedule at the <a href=\"http://carnivalofhr.com/?page_id=8\">Carnival of HR</a> website.', 'December 2014 Carnival of HR', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'december-2014-carnival-of-hr', '', '', '2014-12-17 07:22:33', '2014-12-17 12:22:33', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21813', 0, 'post', '', 4),
(21818, 277, '2015-01-07 06:00:46', '2015-01-07 11:00:46', 'Suffering from low employee engagement? Take a look at how well your managers are setting staff expectations and whether those expectations are moving targets.\n\nFor example, if you tell new employees that they will receive a performance review after 90 days on the job and then you don’t deliver? You’ve just dashed an expectation.\n\nOr let’s say you tell your team that a project is due January 31. Then, in a customer meeting, you agree to complete the work sooner, say by January 24.\n\nIf you spring this date change on your team, instead of involving them in a conversation to determine whether January 24 is realistic, do you expect a happy reception?\n\n<h3>Setting Expectations</h3>\n\nA good manager sets expectations in the following six areas and then follows through:\n\n<ol>\n<li>Performance review expectations.</li>\n<li>Timing of pay reviews and how pay raises work.</li>\n<li>Promotion possibilities and time tables for review.</li>\n<li>Characteristics of the company (what to expect).</li>\n<li>Vacations and time-off.</li>\n<li>Assignment or project expectations.</li>\n</ol>\n\nWhen setting expectations for a specific assignment or project, an effective manager covers the following eight topics:\n\n<ol>\n<li>What I expect you to do now.</li>\n<li>When I expect you to get back to me with questions, thoughts of how to proceed, advice needed, etc.</li>\n<li>What will happen with the results of this project or assignment (how it fits in with the big picture).</li>\n<li>What communications I expect, to me and to others.</li>\n<li>Interim milestones where we need to check progress.</li>\n<li>What other people need to be involved and how to involve them.</li>\n<li>What form the final report or presentation should take.</li>\n<li>The timeline or deadline.</li>\n</ol>\n\nIn exit interviews, it is very common to hear remarks about lack of expectations, unclear expectations, and shifting expectations. Line managers can’t control customer requests, c-suite decisions, or competitor news, but they can manage a team’s expectations.\n\nIn the January 31 to January 24 example above, the manager may be inclined to say:\n\n<blockquote>“There was nothing I could do. We just have to bite the bullet and make it happen.” </blockquote>\n\nThis approach can kill engagement. It’s not effective people management. Instead, a good manager will say to the customer:\n\n<blockquote>“Before I can promise January 24, I need to check with my team to understand the ramifications of moving the date.”</blockquote>\n\nThen, the manager goes back to the team and says:\n\n<blockquote>“We have received a customer request for a date change. Since this affects your work, I told them I needed to talk with you first. It would be nice to be able to accommodate them, but not if it means 16-hour workdays. What response can we offer that demonstrates we highly value the customer but also is doable without heroics?” </blockquote>\n\nWhen the team creates the game plan, the team buys into the new expectations much more easily. This approach fosters engagement.\n\nThere will be times when expectations need to shift. The key to maintaining high employee engagement is communication. Don’t stay silent on an expectation change, hoping no one will notice.\n\nTalk with employees as soon as you know you won’t be able to meet an expectation. Explain the circumstances and have a dialogue.', 'Setting Employee Expectations', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'setting-employee-expectations', '', '', '2015-01-07 06:00:46', '2015-01-07 11:00:46', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21818', 0, 'post', '', 3),
(21846, 307, '2014-12-23 06:00:38', '2014-12-23 11:00:38', 'Year after year, Christmas after Christmas, I\'ve watched the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer TV special and cringed at the atrocious leadership displayed by nearly every adult character.\n\nDonner rejects his son. Santa ignores Rudolph\'s obvious leaping skills because of his nose. The workshop foreman ridicules Harvey (the elf with dentistry aspirations).\n\nOf course, you know how things work out. Santa studied his Peter Drucker:\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">The effective executive makes strength productive. He knows that one cannot build on weakness. To achieve results, one has to use all the available strengths–the strengths of associates, the strengths of the superior, and one’s own strengths. These strengths are the true opportunities. To make strength productive is the unique purpose of organization. It cannot, of course, overcome the weaknesses with which each of us is abundantly endowed. But it can make them irrelevant. Its task is to use the strength of each man as a building block for joint performance. </div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ -The Effective Executive</div>\n</blockquote>\n\nDo you build on your team\'s strengths or do you waste strength, time, and energy focused on \"weaknesses\"? Let Santa be your guide.</p>\n\n<h3>Santa the Strength-Blind Leader</h3>\n\n<em>Santa, the strength-blind leader\nHad a special flying deer,\nBut if you can believe it\nSanta wouldn’t let him near.\nAll because his nose was red\nSanta wouldn’t let him work;\nHe never valued Rudolph\nIn fact he was quite a jerk.\nThen one foggy Christmas eve,\nSanta came to see.\nStrengths are all you really need,\nWeakness is a waste to heed.\nThen how the Reindeer loved him\nAs they flew around and beamed.\nSanta, the strength-based leader\nBuilt a real productive team...</em>\n\nTake care and happy holidays!', 'Santa the Strength-Blind Leader', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'santa-the-strength-blind-leader', '', '', '2014-12-23 06:00:38', '2014-12-23 11:00:38', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21846', 0, 'post', '', 8),
(21872, 374, '2014-12-19 06:00:14', '2014-12-19 11:00:14', 'On behalf of the Lead Change Group, I am happy to introduce you to one of our newest offspring, the <a href=\"http://app.thinkaha.com/index.php/internal/tweets/182/3/bd#myTab\">Instigating A Leadership Revolution Aha Amplifier</a>.\n\nAha Amplifiers are socially enabled ebooks. Each one contains 140 well-thought-out quotes, or <strong>Ahas</strong> that are 140 characters or less.\n\nAs explained on the <a href=\"http://www.thinkaha.com/aha-amplifier/\">ThinkAha</a> website, Aha Amplifiers make it easy to increase your influence by amplifying and activating quality <em>Aha</em> moments to your online networks. Each Aha is sharable via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+, so you can easily share an important idea or statement with thousands, if not millions, of people.\n<h3>Aha Amplifier Benefits</h3>\n<ul>\n	<li>When you like an Aha, you can spread its influence instantaneously</li>\n	<li>Ahas are quick and easy to consume!</li>\n	<li>Ahas allow you to appreciate good, curated content while potentially extending your social media presence into the authors’ networks.</li>\n</ul>\nTo get a sense of how it all comes together, let\'s look at one Aha and see what it can do:\n<h4>Here\'s the Aha...</h4>\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Cole-Aha.png\"><img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Cole-Aha.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"299\" height=\"286\" /></a>\n\n<strong>The heart of the Aha is, of course, the text...</strong>\n\n<em>If you want to live your life on purpose, you must begin to ask the right #questions. @PageCole #LeadChange</em>\n\nThere is so much more you can do with this information that just read it, though!\n<h4>Go To The Entire Aha Amplifier</h4>\nYou can do this by clicking <em>Instigating A Leadership Revolution</em>, <em>More Info</em>, or <em>Lead Change Group</em>.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Cole-Aha-Ovals.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"299\" height=\"286\" />\n<h4>Train The Aha Amplifier</h4>\nThe system can learn to know your preferences by giving the Aha a <em>thumbs up</em> or a <em>thumbs down</em>.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Cole-Aha-like.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"299\" height=\"286\" />\n<h4>Share The Aha On Twitter</h4>\n<img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Aha-Tweet.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"623\" height=\"282\" />\n<h4>Share the Aha On Facebook</h4>\n<img class=\"size-full wp-image-21876 aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/facebook-aha.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"492\" height=\"252\" />\n<h4>Share The Aha On LinkedIn</h4>\n<img class=\"ligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/LinkedIn-Aha.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"647\" height=\"149\" />\n<h4>Share the Aha on Google+</h4>\n<img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/g-plus-aha.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"353\" height=\"225\" />\n<h4>And/Or click \"Surprise Me\"</h4>\nWhen you click <em>Suprise Me</em> you will get a randomly selected Aha from that same Amplifier.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/surprise-aha.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"316\" height=\"296\" />\n\nHere at Lead Change Group, we are excited about this additional way to share our fantastic content with you.\n\nIt\'s perfect to visit when your brain needs a break, when you need a jolt of inspiration, or when you want to get a bite-sized taste of an author or group before investing in their book or other products.\n\nThis webinar, whose primary audience is mainly prospective authors, gives a superb demonstration for anyone interested in interacting with the Aha Amplifier:\n\n<iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/U0d0NXGjN9k\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"></iframe>\n\nHope to see you at the Instigating A Leadership Revolution Aha Amplifier soon. If you visit, please <a href=\"http://ctt.ec/GaZOp\">tweet me</a> and let me know you were there.', 'AHA! Instigating A Leadership Revolution', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'aha-instigating-a-leadership-revolution', '', '', '2014-12-19 06:00:14', '2014-12-19 11:00:14', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21872', 0, 'post', '', 1);
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(21920, 374, '2014-12-24 06:00:27', '2014-12-24 11:00:27', 'Here at Lead Change Group, we know that problems are most effectively solved when individuals come together to meld ideas, energies, and approaches.\n\nTo use a golf analogy, not every shot is a long drive. Many times, golfers have to take a <strong>chip shot</strong> to move the ball along for a short distance, with incisive accuracy.\n\nIf you are new to the Chip Shots green, welcome. In our Chip Shots feature, our Leading Voices are invited to provide brief insights into a leadership dilemma. Our first Chip Shots post can be viewed <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/chip-shots-from-our-leading-voices/\">here</a>.\n\n<h3>Today\'s Question</h3>\n\nThere is lots of gift talk this time of year.\n\n<em>Even though one-size-fits-all is often an inaccurate statement, what is one gift you could give each of the people you lead that would equip them for a great 2015?</em>\n\nMost of our Leading Voices took a shot at this question. This is what they said:\n\n<h4>Joy Via Regifting</h4>\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/chip-bell/\">Chip Bell</a> suggested a gift for re-gifting.\n\nHe asked \"What if you sent someone a ten dollar bill, a gift card, a ticket to somewhere cool, a picture your child or grandchild drew, a poem you wrote, or a photo you took with the instruction that they give it to someone of their choosing?\"\n\nYour gift would say something like: \"My gift to you is the feeling of joy you will receive when you share this gift with another.\"\n\n<h4>Permission To Fail</h4>\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/mike-henry/\">Mike Henry, Sr.</a>, suggests permission to fail.\n\nIt could be given with this message: \"If you\'re trying to do something to improve your job, our customers, or the company, this is your get-out-of-jail-free card.\"\n\n<h4>Empowerment</h4>\n\n<strong>Mitchell Levy</strong> and <strong>Mary Schaefer</strong> both recommend the gift of empowerment.\n\nFrom <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/mitchell-levy/\">Mitchell Levy</a>: \n\n\"I like to give the gift that embodies empowerment, leverage and time. For those working for me that are too busy, I suggest that they find 1-2 things that are mundane and can be handled by someone else and ask them to find a resource on <a href=\"https://www.odesk.com/\">Odesk</a> to take care of it for them. All my folks have access to the corporate account for paying for these resources. The hiring and firing of folks on Odesk gives a level of empowerment and leverage that they didn\'t have before.\"\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/mary-schaefer/\">Mary Schaefer</a> elaborates: \n\n\"Empowerment is the gift of self-permission for people to be the authors of their own lives, to own their decisions and enjoy the journey.\"\n\n<h4>Coaching</h4>\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/will-lukang/\">Will Lukang </a> would give a gift of coaching or mentoring depending on where they are in their career. Or, a gift of free training with the goal of achieving a breakthrough via personal transformation.\n\n\"It\'s why my <a href=\"https://will-lukang.squarespace.com/i-will-aim-program/i-will-aim-training-and-coaching\">program</a> is (#IWillAIM) always aiming to help people make breakthroughs.\"\n\n<h4>Sincere Acknowledgement</h4>\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/susan-mazza/\">Susan Mazza</a> notes that there\'s a lot of obligatory giving this time of year.\n\n\"I think leaders miss the opportunity to wrap those customary gifts or bonuses with a sincere acknowledgement of not only what others have done but for who they are and what they bring to the their team that matters and truly makes a difference.  The experience of being known is an extraordinary gift that can fuel motivation and self confidence.\"\n\n<h4>Healthy Communication</h4>\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/david-dye/\">David Dye</a> would give everyone the gift of healthy communication.\n\nHe says, \"Regardless of your position, role, challenges, goals, or relationships, good communication makes everything better, more enjoyable, and reduces stress.\"\n\n<h4>Confident Humility</h4>\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/karin-hurt/\">Karin Hurt</a> believes confident humility would be the most appreciated one size fits all gift. \n\nShe further explains: \"Confidence to dream big, take risks. and express their views.  Humility to truly listen, recognize opportunities for growth, and care deeply about the welfare of their team as human beings.\"\n\n<h4>Building Capacity</h4>\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/becky-robinson/\">Becky Robinson</a> would give everyone the gift of being a part of building capacity for the company.\n\n\"I want each member of my team to be involved in creating opportunities for others by involving additional people in our work. I want each team member to multiply what they can do in the lives others. For example, when we have more graphic design work than we can handle, we invite new designers to the team and help them become successful in contributing to our work.\"\n\n<h4>Time</h4>\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/jon-mertz/\">Jon Mertz</a> writes that the one gift I can give each individual on my teams is time.\n\n\"It is more than just time; it is undistracted, empathetic time. And it is more than just a one-time thing. It is dedicated time each month to focus on what is working for them and what is not and how their career aspirations are being realized or challenged. Time is valuable to spend and give. By giving time, we are spending to empower and challenge an individual\'s work and life purpose.\"\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/susan-quote-300x258.jpg\" />', 'Chip Shots - Gift Ideas', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'chip-shots-gift-ideas', '', '', '2014-12-24 06:00:27', '2014-12-24 11:00:27', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21920', 0, 'post', '', 4),
(21941, 376, '2014-12-29 06:00:45', '2014-12-29 11:00:45', 'Current motivational theory tells us that not everyone is swayed by the same arguments, enticed by the same toys, or moved by the same emotions. \n\nMakes sense to me, since we display a dizzying array of attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, preferences, and values, to say nothing of our overall personalities. \n\nWe are each unique, every one of us. As serious students of leadership, we try to remember this simple idea as we manage our operations and our people. \n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">\"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?\"</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ George Eliot</div>\n</blockquote>\n\nWe intentionally vary our programs for employee motivation, provide options for incentives and rewards, and generally try to play to the individual. This extends to our corporate holiday celebrations and practices, right?\n\n<h3>Corporate Holiday Culture</h3>\n\nIn no particular order, here are some of my observations over the years about corporate holiday culture:\n\n<ul>\n<li>In some corporate offices, every possible religious observance of this time of year is visible. Inclusion rules, and creates a hodgepodge, where nothing stands out.</li>\n<li>Employee celebrations occur where all are encouraged to attend, because Santa is not the only one keeping a list.</li>\n<li>We choose corporate gifts with an eye to either reinforcing our brand or gifting all with the same exact thing, to avoid the messy emotions when some get this and others get that.</li>\n<li>We get into complex discussions about how to greet others, trying to satisfy both our own needs and those of others who may not share the same detailed beliefs.</li>\n<li>Either the work environment is completely frenetic (retail, hospitality, end of year deadlines) or pretty much non-productive, with many folks just marking time until they are off work for a few days or a few weeks.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<h3>Two Quick Observations & Discussion Starters</h3>\n\n<ol>\n<li><strong>The Group Is Important</strong> - Rituals are how we as individual members of a group mark our important times and thus they tend to be the same for everyone in the group. We bind to each other by sharing traditions, behaviors, dress, and sayings. Little in life can match the power of being part of a group, with everyone in sync, marching to the same beat, and in solidarity. We just need to remember that our group is not <em>the group</em>, but one of many groups, each with their own beliefs, behaviors, and values.</li>\n<li><strong>The Individual Is Important</strong> - Even when everyone in a group, a department, or even a company shares the same general beliefs, behaviors, and values, we are still individuals. For example, not everyone enjoys a rousing and joyous holiday party. For some, this time of year is a time for quiet reflection on the year ending and the year to come. For some, this is even a time to remember and grieve. Some folks are just not into Christmas and forcing them to get into the spirit is not an appropriate goal.\n</ol>\n\n<h3>Some Questions To Consider</h3>\n\nWith the above thoughts in mind, please consider the following questions:\n\n<ul>\n<li>How does your organization approach the holidays?</li>\n<li>How do you as a leader make life easier for others at this time?</li>\n<li>What of my observations and opinions do you disagree with and why?</li>\n</ul>\n\nOn a personal note, I hope everyone\'s holiday season is all you desire it to be as we try to balance the <em>us</em> and <em>me</em> in the holiday spirit.', 'Making It Easy - A Few Thoughts Around This Festive Time Of Year', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'making-it-easy', '', '', '2014-12-29 06:00:45', '2014-12-29 11:00:45', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21941', 0, 'post', '', 5),
(21998, 274, '2015-01-05 13:00:23', '2015-01-05 18:00:23', 'This Leadership Development Carnival is the first of 2015 and the first since the Lead Change Group has taken the reins from Dan McCarthy of Great Leadership.\n\nSince the first Leadership Development Carnival in <a href=\"http://www.greatleadershipbydan.com/2008/07/leadership-development-carnival-1.html\">July 2008</a>, our community has grown, evolved, and thrived.\n\nI appreciate Dan\'s stewardship of this carnival over the years, and feel privileged to be entrusted with it for the future.\n\nFor our inaugural post, we are highlighting relevant posts about preparing to lead well in the new year. Fittingly enough, we start with Dan\'s submission:\n<h3>Let\'s Get Started</h3>\n<strong>Dan McCarthy</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.greatleadershipbydan.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Great Leadership</a> shared <a href=\"http://management.about.com/od/leadership/fl/New-Yearrsquos-Development-Goals-for-Leaders.htm?nl=1\" target=\"_blank\"><em>New Year\'s Development Goals For Leaders</em></a>. Dan notes: \"For many leaders, it’s a time to reflect on accomplishments for the year and establish goals for the upcoming New Year. It’s also a good time to set leadership development goals, either as part of a formal development planning process, or just because it’s a proven way to continuously improve as a leader.\" Find Dan on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/greatleadership\" target=\"_blank\">@greatleadership</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Dana Theus</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.inpowerconsultingllc.com/\" target=\"_blank\">In Power Consulting</a> submitted <a href=\"http://inpowercoaching.com/communicating-powerfully/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Communicating Powerfully In 2015</em></a>. Dana reminds us: \"Communications is more than the words spoken. Powerful communications result from powerful intentions.\" Follow Dana on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/DanaTheus\" target=\"_blank\">@danatheus</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Jane Perdue</strong> of the <a href=\"http://braithwaiteinnovationgroup.com/\">Braithwaite Innovation Group</a> contributed <a href=\"http://braithwaiteinnovationgroup.com/changing-stereotypes-family-time-off/\"><em>Changing Stereotypes About Family Time Off</em></a>. Jane says: \"Starting a new year is prime time for assessing and changing outdated stereotypes that impede doing what\'s right.\" Follow Jane on Twitter <a href=\"https://twitter.com/thehrgoddess\">@thehrgoddess</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Jeff Harmon</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.brilliancewithincoaching.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Brilliance Within Coaching</a> sent <a href=\"http://www.brilliancewithincoaching.com/jeffsblog/whatgotyouherewont/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>What Got You Here Won\'t Get You There</em></a>. Jeff writes: \"As you lead, you need your people to be and give their best, but the harsh reality is the odds are stacked against you that this is actually happening.  The truth is what got you here and the results you are getting won’t get you there and the results you want and need in 2015. Upgrading how you lead provides the largest opportunity to upgrade the results you get.\" Follow Jeff on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/jeffdharmon74\" target=\"_blank\">@jeffdharmon74</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Jennifer V. Miller </strong>of <a href=\"http://people-equation.com/\">The People Equation</a> shared <a href=\"http://people-equation.com/tips-for-wrapping-up-the-year/\"><em>Tips For Wrapping Up the Year</em></a>. Jennifer accumulated these tips from her colleagues. What a great idea. Follow Jennifer on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/JenniferVMiller\">@JenniferVMiller</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Jesse Lyn Stoner</strong> of the <a href=\"http://seapointcenter.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Seapoint Center</a> provided  <a href=\"http://seapointcenter.com/why-your-company-values-might-not-matter/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Why Your Company Values Might Not Matter</em></a>. Jesse commented: \"Research shows that high-trust, values-driven companies outperform in the marketplace. So why do so few companies fail in their effort? Here\'s a true story and the 5 common errors they made that will derail any effort, including your own.\" Follow Jesse on Twitter at <a href=\"http://twitter.com/JesseLynStoner\" target=\"_blank\">@JesseLynStoner</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Jill Malleck</strong> of <a href=\"http://epiphanyatwork.com/blog/\" target=\"_blank\">Epiphany At Work</a> asks <a href=\"http://epiphanyatwork.com/give-em-hell-year/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Should You Give \'Em Hell This Year</em></a>? She elaborates: \"The start of a new year gives leaders an opportunity to be bold and reset expectations. But if you give ‘em hell, do it right.\" Follow Jill on Twitter <a href=\"https://twitter.com/epiphanyatwork\" target=\"_blank\">@epiphanyatwork</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Jim Taggart</strong> of <a href=\"http://changingwinds.wordpress.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Changing Winds</a> submitted <a href=\"https://changingwinds.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/should-work-life-integration-replace-work-life-balance/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Should Work-Life Integration Replace Work-Life Balance</em></a>? Jim says: \"I chose a very recent post, which I believe fits well with bringing in the New Year. Hopefully, it will stimulate people to do some reflection on what has been a long-talked about topic: work-life balance. Given our increasingly busy lives and the turbulence affecting organizations, caused by local and far-away events, leaders face the growing challenge of how to maintain focus. Yet they must also somehow try to maintain balance in their own lives, while advocating this for the people they lead. My post takes a different look at work-life balance, suggesting some other approaches to explore.\" Find Jim on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/72keys\" target=\"_blank\">@72keys</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>John Hunter </strong> of the <a href=\"http://management.curiouscatblog.net/\" target=\"_blank\">Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog</a> provided <a href=\"http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2012/06/25/leading-improvement-and-enjoying-the-rewards/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Leading Improvement &amp; Enjoying The Rewards</em></a>. He writes: \"As a leader your primary responsibility is to improve the system: both the systems within your sphere of control and those outside of it.  One powerful way to leverage your impact is coaching people so they are able to be more effective at improving the system themselves.\" Follow John on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/curiouscat_com\" target=\"_blank\">@curiouscat_com</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Jon Mertz</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.thindifference.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Thin Difference</a> sent <a href=\"http://www.thindifference.com/2014/12/27/live-lead-others-will-not-miss/\"><em>Live &amp; Lead So Others Will Not Miss You</em></a>. Jon continues: \"It\'s easy for leaders to get caught up in the myth of being missed. As we look toward 2015, we must lead and live so that we aren\'t missed. To truly lead with purpose is to empower others to continue our mission even when we\'re gone.\" Follow Jon on Twitter <a href=\"https://twitter.com/ThinDifference\" target=\"_blank\">@ThinDifference</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Linda Fisher Thornton </strong>of <a href=\"http://leadingincontext.com/\">Leading In Context</a> encourages you to explore  <a href=\"http://leadingincontext.com/2014/12/10/9-questions-for-ethical-leaders-in-the-new-year/\"><em>9 Questions For Ethical Leaders In The New Year</em></a>. She says: \"As we head into the New Year, use these 9 questions to plan how you will transform your leadership, your workplace and your world.\" Follow her on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/leadingincontxt\">@Leadingincontxt</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Lisa Kohn</strong> of <a href=\"http://chatsworthconsulting.com/thoughtful-leaders/\">The Thoughtful Leaders Blog</a> presented <a href=\"http://chatsworthconsulting.com/2012/01/05/the-gym-is-overcrowded-for-only-a-few-weeks-why-make-new-years-resolutions-anyway/\"><em>The Gym Is Overcrowded For Only a Few Weeks: Why Make New Year\'s Resolutions Anyway?</em></a>. In her article, she shares how to successfully leverage New Year’s resolutions as an opportunity to change behavior and be a more Thoughtful leader. Find Lisa on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/ThoughtfulLdrs\" target=\"_blank\">@ThoughtfulLdrs</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Mark Deterding</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.triuneleadershipservices.com/\">Triune Leadership Services</a> shared <a href=\"http://www.triuneleadershipservices.com/set-stage-build-performance-2015/\"><em>Set The Stage To Build Performance in 2015</em></a>. Mark comments: \"Personal development and enhancing your performance as a leader takes intentional action. In this post I highlight some key steps to help insure an improved year of leadership performance in 2015.\" Follow Mark on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/mwdeterding\">@mwdeterding</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Mary Ila Ward</strong> of <a href=\"http://horizonpointconsulting.com/\">Horizon Point Consulting</a> gave us <a href=\"http://horizonpointconsulting.com/blog3/item/how-personality-assessment-can-help-you-be-a-better-leader\"><em>How Personality Assessment Can Help You Be A Better Leader</em></a>. She believes: \"Beginning a new year as a leader should begin with a self-awareness gut check. Personality assessments can help begin the self-awareness process for ourselves and our team as we drive towards results in 2015.\" Follow her on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/MaryIlaWard\" target=\"_blank\">@maryilaward</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Mary Jo Asmus</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.aspire-cs.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Aspire-CS</a> recommends <a href=\"http://www.aspire-cs.com/forget-resolutions-and-make-a-commitment\"><em>Forget Resolutions &amp; Make A Commitment</em></a>. She says: \"Resolutions can be wishy-washy. Commitments are solid. Try committing to improving the way you lead in 2015; here’s how.\" Follow Mary Jo on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/mjasmus\" target=\"_blank\">@mjasmus</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Miki Saxon</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.mappingcompanysuccess.com\">Mapping Company Success</a> provided <a href=\"http://mappingcompanysuccess.com/2007/01/successful-new-year-resolutions/\"><em>Successful New Year Resolutions</em></a>. This post is a look at why resolutions often fail even for those who typically achieve their goals and a simple way to change the outcome. Follow Miki on Twitter <a href=\"https://twitter.com/OptionSanity\">@OptionSanity</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Neal Burgis, Ph.D.</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.successful-solutions.com/\">Burgis Successful Solutions</a> submitted <a href=\"http://www.successful-solutions.com/2015/01/02/happy-2015-new-year-breakthrough-success-plan/\"><em>Happy New Year 2015: Breakthrough Success Plan</em></a>. The plan includes things you can do to create and produce business breakthrough results and move forward in order to thrive in the new year. Find Neal on Twitter <a href=\"https://twitter.com/Exec_Solutions\" target=\"_blank\">@exec_solutions</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Page Cole</strong> of <a href=\"http://synergizeme.net/\">Synergize.Me</a> shared <a href=\"http://synergizeme.net/2014/05/20/this-moment-changes-everything/\"><em>This Moment Changes Everything</em></a>. Page noted: \"It\'s easy to allow our discouragements, failures or even the chaos in the world to overwhelm us. Although we never had a choice about the where &amp; when of our birth, we do have choices about how to play the cards we\'re dealt.\" Find Page on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/synergize_me\">@synergize_me</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Randy Conley</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.leadingwithtrust.com/\">Leading With Trust</a> submitted <a href=\"http://leadingwithtrust.com/2015/01/04/ditch-the-new-years-resolution-and-do-this-one-thing-instead/\"><em>Ditch the New Year\'s Resolution and Do This One Thing Instead</em></a>. Randy shares: \"If you’re like most people you’re probably already struggling with your New Year’s resolution to lead and live in different ways.\" He suggest this \"one thing\" alternative. Follow Randy on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/RandyConley\">@randyconley</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>S. Chris Edmonds</strong> of <a href=\"http://drivingresultsthroughculture.com\" target=\"_blank\">Driving Results Through Culture</a> contributed <a href=\"http://www.drivingresultsthroughculture.com/the-announcements-fallacy/\"><em>The Announcements Fallacy</em></a>. Read this post to find out the definition of <strong>MbA</strong>, which is different from an <strong>MBA</strong>. Follow Chris on Twitter <a href=\"https://twitter.com/scedmonds\" target=\"_blank\">@scedmonds</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Scott Eblin</strong> of the <a href=\"http://www.eblingroup.com\">Eblin Group</a> points us to <a href=\"http://eblingroup.com/2014/12/set-2015-direction-life-gps.html\"><em>Set Your Direction of 2015 With A Life GPS</em></a>. In this post, he shares how to create and use a Life GPS that will help you show up at your best as a leader in 2015 and create the outcomes you hope for not just at work but at home and in your community. Follow Scott on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/ScottEblin\">@scotteblin</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Susan Mazza</strong> of <a href=\"http://randomactsofleadership.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Random Acts Of Leadership</a> sent <a href=\"http://randomactsofleadership.com/a-year-of-kindness-a-call-to-lead/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>A Year Of Kindness, A Call To Lead</em></a>. When asked she says: \"What if committing an act of leadership could be as simple as committing an act of kindness?\" Find Susan on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/SusanMazza\" target=\"_blank\">@susanmazza</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Tanmay Vora</strong> of <a href=\"http://qaspire.com/\">QAspire</a> submitted <a href=\"http://qaspire.com/2014/12/31/better-leadership-in-2015-and-beyond-9-essentials/\"><em>Better Leadership In 2015 &amp; Beyond: 9 Essentials</em></a>. Tanmay further shared: \"The challenges that leaders often face in a <a href=\"https://hbr.org/2014/01/what-vuca-really-means-for-you\">VUCA</a> world are also opportunities to practice better leadership, provided we know the essentials of leading in a new world of work. This post outlines 9 essential thoughts that will define leadership success in 2015 and beyond.\" Find Tanmay on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/tnvora\">@tnvora</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Wally Bock</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.threestarleadership.com/\">Three Star Leadership</a> sent <a href=\"http://www.threestarleadership.com/personal-development/your-new-year-dos-checklist\"><em>Your New Year Do\'s Checklist</em></a>. Wally encourages: \"If you want the New Year to be better, you must do things differently.\" Follow Wally on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/wallybock\" target=\"_blank\">@wallybock</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<h3>Until Next Time</h3>\nWe appreciate everyone who submitted posts for this month\'s carnival. We encourage you to follow our fantastic contributors and consider contributing yourself. Submissions should be forwarded to Paula Kiger at <a href=\"mailto:paula@weavinginfluence.com\">paula@weavinginfluence.com</a>.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ldc_rectangle.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"380\" height=\"240\" />', 'January 2015 Leadership Development Carnival', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'january-2015-leadership-development-carnival', '', '', '2015-01-05 13:00:23', '2015-01-05 18:00:23', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=21998', 0, 'post', '', 3),
(22003, 372, '2015-01-05 06:00:30', '2015-01-05 11:00:30', 'We won! ’Tis the season of football playoffs here in the US, both on the college and professional fronts.\n\nFans, players, and coaches can be heard loudly bragging that <em>their team won</em> much to the chagrin of the opposing team’s fans, players, and coaches.\n\nMany societies - not just Western ones - place a great deal of value on <em>winning</em>. However, that emphasis can cause leaders and team members to tolerate lousy behaviors and practices so long as their team “wins.\"\n\nIf winning is the only thing, then winning at any cost - behaving badly, cheating, bending the rules, withholding information - is OK. It might even be reinforced, if unintentionally so.\n\nFor example, I remember a sales award meeting where the top sales person was called to the podium to pick up their award - a trophy, a bonus check, and a trip. A sales colleague of the winner turned to me and said quietly, “It’s taking her a while to reach the stage - she’s dragging a lot of body bags behind her.\"\n\nI believe it is important to be very specific about how you define <em>winning</em> for your team or company.\n\nHighly regarded, best-companies-to-work-for organizations define winning as <strong>performing</strong> well and <strong>operating</strong> well. Those companies make values and culture as important as results and profits.\n\n<h3>Let’s Look At These Two Elements</h3>\n\nEvery organization needs to <strong>perform</strong> effectively. To ensure desired performance, clear goals must be defined and embraced by all leaders and team members. With clear agreements about performance expectations, progress towards goals as well as goal accomplishment can be measured, monitored, and rewarded.\n\nIn addition to performance, every organization needs to <strong>operate</strong> effectively. To ensure a healthy work environment, values must be defined in behavioral terms - and embraced by all leaders and team members. With clear agreements about values expectations, progress towards <em>great citizenship</em> as well as consistent demonstration of valued behaviors can be measured, monitored, and rewarded.\n\nOnce leaders have defined what <em>winning</em> means, they must align everyone’s practices and behaviors to deliver on their <em>winning</em> expectations. Everyone, including the leaders themselves, must be held accountable for delivering expected performance while modeling the organization’s valued behaviors.\n\nThis approach redefines what a good job looks like - what <em>winning</em> looks like. Desired team members embrace your values and deliver on promised results.\n\nWhat about those players that deliver the results you want but don’t model your valued behaviors? Like the story of the top sales person, they bust their quota while busting chops!\n\nIf leaders accept or tolerate the lousy behaviors because of a player’s great performance, what does that tell the rest of the organization about their valued behaviors? They’re a lie. That’s not a good message nor is it a good practice.\n\nWhat’s required is that leaders hold those players accountable for both performance and values. They engage, clarify, and coach so that results are delivered in desired ways, with desired behaviors.\n\nIf a player, be they a leader or team member, is unable to embrace both performance and values, the leader must <em>lovingly set them free</em> and release them from employment.\n\nThat action sends the right message - our values will not be compromised while we deliver promised performance.\n\nThe challenge today in our <em>winning</em> global culture is to help leaders pay as much attention to values as they do to performance.\n\nTake the time and energy to create a real winning team, one that delivers high performance and treats others with trust, dignity, and respect, every interaction, every day.', 'Build a Real Winning Team', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'build-a-real-winning-team', '', '', '2015-01-05 06:00:30', '2015-01-05 11:00:30', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22003', 0, 'post', '', 4),
(22017, 343, '2015-01-09 06:00:04', '2015-01-09 11:00:04', 'Let\'s face it. As a leader you\'re most likely the catalyst in your respective organization.\n\nYou get the initiative rolling, the dream envisioned, and the communication flowing. You help the systems get developed, the revenues stream in, and the company be promoted.\n\nThe technical, or hard, skills of leadership demand a lot from you. But when the intersection of our heart and energy come together, what does that demand of your people and your teams?\n\n<strong>In other words, are we a vortex for our organization, or are we a drain within it?</strong>\n\nIf you\'re a vortex, you are the type of leader that funnels energy and focuses it upward, moving everything around you along, and catapulting forward the goals, values, and mission of your company. People will naturally be lifted up by your example, and be sucked along with the focus you\'ve generated because of the irresistible lure of what you\'re promoting.\n\nIn fact, many times you\'ll propel others to skills and achievements beyond where you are because you\'ve given them a charge of vision that they spin off, becoming vortexes of their own.\n\nUnlike a tornado, which leaves destruction in its wake, a vortex will increase the energy and intensity of their teams with a positive charge and direction that will carry the momentum of vision, even when those natural lulls in our leadership occur.\n\n<strong>A vortex can be a very influential power within your company, but so can a drain.</strong>\n\nIf you\'re a drain, you suck the life out of your people and your organization. By just sitting there and creating a negative environment, you will drag others down, turn the focus inward and downward, and never move anything beyond your level.\n\nThe purpose of a drain is simple - to be a conduit for waste. Drains waste time, resources, and talent. A person that is a leadership \"drain\" takes everything in its reach and gives nothing in return.\n\nOur energy can pull everything down, or propel everything forward. Drains are the path of least resistance. True leadership stays away from the easy path. Let\'s each determine to be a vortex in our organization.', 'Are You A Vortex Or A Drain?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'are-you-a-vortex-or-a-drain', '', '', '2015-01-09 06:00:04', '2015-01-09 11:00:04', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22017', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(22086, 252, '2015-01-08 06:00:37', '2015-01-08 11:00:37', 'Do you know that some fish, including sharks, will grow only to the proportion of the container you keep them in? Seems sort of obvious, but what this means is, depending on the size of the aquarium, you could end up with a mature 7-inch shark.\n\nThe literature I read stated that in these situations the fish adapt to the capacity of the environment offered to them. At least that’s a myth that has propagated - that this is a reasonable thing to do.\n\nIn researching why fish will mature, but conform to the size of the containers they are housed in, experts say it is due to stunting. The dimensions of the environment they are <em>offered</em> limit their size.\n\nThey could grow larger if not confined. This means you are <em>not</em> going to end up with a healthy 7-inch shark that will live a long natural life. One expert even described this as cruel.\n\n<h3>Is The Size Of Your Culture Stunting Your Employees?</h3>\n\nA colleague recently recounted a story about a meeting with the new CEO at his company. The CEO shared his principles with employees. What the CEO did not do was engage employees about what those principles meant to them and <em>for</em> them in the culture he hoped to establish.\n\nThey were not asked how they were interpreting the principles. It appeared the CEO was not interested in a two-way interaction. Essentially the CEO set up the employees to play it safe and literally contain themselves. Employee growth would be limited to the size of the environment he offered.\n\n<h3>Do You Want Growth or Do You Want To Be Right?</h3>\n\nI have run into <em>leaders</em> who were not interested in a mutual exchange of ideas about principles, expectations or culture. They saw questions as a challenge to their authority or experience or character, or something.\n\nIn one case when I suggested that a dialog with employees might bring more clarity and buy-in, well...my suggestion was met with disdain. The leader said it would be coddling employees. He quickly experienced the consequences of his own stunted mindset, thank goodness, and was promptly replaced.\n\nHow do you make sure those who look to you for leadership experience a culture big enough to accommodate their growth into healthy individuals, performing at full potential?', 'Is Your Culture Big Enough?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'is-your-culture-big-enough', '', '', '2015-01-08 06:00:37', '2015-01-08 11:00:37', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22086', 0, 'post', '', 4),
(22163, 329, '2015-02-12 06:00:12', '2015-02-12 11:00:12', 'Sprinkles for cupcakes have many features relevant for great leaders. Sprinkles make cupcakes special in a way that plain icing cannot. Sprinkles are colorful and fun. They add a charm to a cookie or cupcake that communicates to the recipient the cook or chef cared about the culinary outcome. And, unlike fancy icing, sprinkles have an air of presence—an authentic presentation that is random, spontaneous and real.\n\nHappy employees are resilient in times of chaos, courageous in moments of conflict. While employees choose to be happy, those sourcing positive emotional strength are typically employees bolstered by a supportive, affirming environment. They are able to absorb tension turning their compassion laser gun onto arduous situations. They show pride in their work and respect for the colleagues. They toil for successful outcomes and take pleasure in winning relationships. Sprinkles help leaders help employees feel happy.\n\nLeaders with sprinkles poke fun at themselves and seek ways to shake up the place with quirky events, silly signs, and celebrative occasions. They constantly look for the means, moments and methods to convey gratitude and encouragement for greatness. <em>Thank</em> and <em>you</em> are the two most important words in the English language. <em>Thank you</em> is not simply the expression of a statement but rather the conveyance of a feeling. It means communicating gratitude in a fashion that makes associates feel leaders’ authenticity.\n<h3>Sprinkles Are Colorful and Fun</h3>\nAt the annual Southwest Airlines Halloween party, CEO Gary Kelly showed up dressed as KISS. The hilarious costume was a carry over from founder and now retired CEO Herb Kelleher who not only would come on his Harley as a Hell’s Angels lookalike but also would be known to hide in the overhead bin to say \"boo\" to passengers as they boarded the plane. A willingness to be colorful and fun is the confidence to be vulnerable - a word that means without a shield. Such realness and openness fosters a work atmosphere of trust.\n\nLeaders too often associate their mantle of authority with a requirement for detachment. “I don’t care if my employees like me,” the swashbuckling ruler announces, “I just want them to respect me.”\n\nSuch a view is often a preamble to emotional distance and calculated encounters. The headlong pursuit of aloofness as the expression of authority invites employee evasiveness, not employee enthusiasm. It triggers reserve, not respect.\n<h3>Sprinkles Show You Care</h3>\nSprinkles are not just antics and charm. Sprinkles reflect an expression of extra or generosity. When former Alfa Romeo CEO Luca de Meo came from Audi to head up marketing at Volkswagen AG, he realized the global function was filled with gossip and suspicion. A silo mentality fueled by an assembly line linear approach of \"design to delivery\" clearly prevented the cross-pollination of ideas. Without a culture laced with shared meaning, the path to excellence was unlikely.\n\nAccording to authors Linda Hill, Greg Brandeau, Emily Truelove and Kent Lineback in their book <a href=\"http://collectivegeniusbook.com/book/\" target=\"_blank\">Collective Genius</a>, Italian born Luca first learned to speak German so he could converse with his associates directly and not through a translator. One of de Meo’s early steps was to travel the globe (154 countries in 24 time zones) to meet all employees. And, according to those in his countless meetings, he was not just present in the room; he was in the hearts of all those with whom he conversed. “He has a superior talent for making you feel like you are the most important person in the room.”\n<h3>Sprinkles Create A Presence</h3>\nLeaders with sprinkles are fans of being present. “You can pretend to care but you cannot pretend to be there,” wrote Tex Bender in his book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Squat-With-Your-Spurs/dp/142360699X\" target=\"_blank\">Don’t Squat With Your Spurs On</a>. It is Zappo\'s CEO Tony Hsieh working in the call center on the phone when call volume is especially high. It is Harley-Davidson leaders riding with customers as a part of a Harley Owner’s Group (HOG) outing.\n\nI once checked into the Biscayne Bay Marriott hotel and witnessed Bill Marriott working the front desk. Leaders who are present occasionally working on the front-line effectively show that these ambassadors matter deeply to the organization.\n\nManaging by walking around is not about close inspection or superficial posturing. I once walked the plant floor with a manufacturing company GM who claimed he was an “open door” kind of leader. The first thing I noticed was how few names he could say. And, out of the corner of my eye, I watched a few employees display their middle finger or an “up yours” arm gesture as soon as they were out of the GM’s eyesight. It was blatantly clear this GM’s floor walks were rare and done only to impress a visitor. Presence only matters when leaders are there to learn, empathize, inspire and affirm, not to show off.\n\nPsychologist William James wrote, “The deepest craving of human nature is the need to feel valued.” Sprinkles help leaders show employees they are valued by the manner in which leaders reflect realness, not role-ness; by the ways they demonstrate they care; and by their presence both emotionally and physically. It is about being a gourmet leader, not just mechanically following a recipe. Add sprinkles to your leadership! It will delight your employees and they will delight your customers.', 'Sprinkles For Leaders', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'sprinkles-for-leaders', '', '', '2015-02-12 06:00:12', '2015-02-12 11:00:12', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22163', 0, 'post', '', 1);
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(22166, 329, '2015-01-12 06:00:15', '2015-01-12 11:00:15', 'What happens to most staff and support units when budget time rolls around? For many, there is a fretful push to reduce costs, cut staff, and trim expenses - especially in challenging economic times.\n\nThe conventional view is that staff and support units are a part of the denominator—the overhead in their organization’s financial equation. Less impacted by budget pinches are revenue generators—or, the numerators.\n\nWhat would be the result if support units started acting like revenue generators? Units that use numerator thinking are often the recipient of greater investment, added staff, and expanded resources.\n\nThe secret to numerator thinking lies in re-framing your role to one that creates valued experiences, not just relevant outcomes. Unlocking the keys to numerator thinking can lead to increasing influence and worth among the units you serve.\n\nWhat do natural numerator thinkers do? Take a top-notch sales team. They are the preeminent networkers, always on the prowl for links to getting an audience with those with the gold. They don’t forget a birthday or a chance to surprise a prospect. Then there are the business developers forever in pursuit of new products and new markets. What rings their chime is growth. What about those financial wizards who can find a way to squeeze blood out of the proverbial turnip? They apply resourcefulness to the rational and originality to objectivity. All numerator thinkers are fans of addition and creation over subtraction and cutting; growing over shrinking.\n\nStaff and support units have the same capacity. But, it requires putting a halt to assuming you are in the role of support. To paraphrase a line from the popular Broadway play <em>Grease</em> it means becoming an organizational <em>athlete</em> not settling for the role of <em>athletic supporter</em>. It’s not about just playing the game differently it means getting in the game. Numerator thinkers make things happen instead of reacting to what happens. And, the natural context for applying numerator thinking is the service experience created every time a colleague or unit is served.\n\nI listened to an IT manager explaining on a speakerphone to a colleague he served in the marketing function why it was going to take two days to get a requested report. I was in the marketing director’s office and overheard the whole conversation. It was not a rationale about priorities. Fifteen seconds into his explanation the marketing guy was reading emails and completely ignoring the monologue blaring from his speakerphone. I realized a stark but simple fact: those you serve do not care about how you do what you do; they only care about how your efforts create value.\n\nNumerator thinkers operate with an abundance mentality; denominator thinkers use a scarcity mentality. People with abundance mentality believe the more one gives, the more there is. They cultivate, grow, innovate and invest. Scarcity mentality assumes there is a finite amount of stuff. Use it and there is less; give it away and you have a smaller amount. So, they protect, defend and hoard. They put energy into worrying about turf, credit, and justification.\n\nNumerator thinkers are opportunity seekers. They are not stymied by man-made boundaries such as organizational structure, rigid policies, or restrictive hierarchy. They view service as doing whatever it takes to help a colleague or unit meet a need or solve a problem. While they are respectful and inclusive, they know bureaucracy is the enemy of excellence and the impediment to efficiency. They don’t whine about what they lack, they find a way to go get it! They see challenges as opportunities and setbacks as a key source of learning. Here are six tools for helping you mentally shift from being a hand-wringing denominator to a make-it-happen numerator.\n\n<h3>Numerator Tool #1</h3>\n\n<strong>Be A Great Service Problem Solver</strong> - Numerator thinkers are perpetually in search of gaps between what the colleagues or units they serve get and what they really want. They view feedback from colleagues, not as a report card, but as a piece of forensic evidence to help unravel an unmet need, a disappointing encounter, or an unresolved issue. Intensely curious, they approach service recovery as a chance to discover and improve, not just repair and move on. Their indispensability to the organization is born out of their zeal for excellence and impatience with simply adequate. A satisfied colleague to them represents a missed opportunity since they are uninterested in simply satisfying, instead want raving groupies.\n\n<h3>Numerator Tool #2</h3>\n\n<strong>Be An Adventure Capitalist</strong> - Numerator thinkers know there is an inextricable link between happy staff employees and happy colleagues served. Since those served well advocate more and forgive more, they view the great service they provide as a springboard for adventure and a context for delight. They invest in nurturing a happy front-line knowing that the ROI will be colleagues served with greater patience and a wider berth for error. They know that great memory they create will translate into positive economics. Units with great reputations are those more immune to the budget-cutting ax since those in charge of trimming resources well know constraining a valued staff unit will be create a backlash of negative press.\n\n<h3>Numerator Tool #3</h3>\n\n<strong>Be A Service Line Extender</strong> - Line extensions are the consequence of expanding the benefits of a product or service through a myriad of distinctive applications. A best-selling book becomes a hit movie that spawns a popular video game that leads to a cool toy that becomes an industry. Great service can lead to unique applications each with their own value stream. And, the more the applications, the greater the worth of the service. So, what if you created a collection of powerful YouTube videos on your area everyone could not wait to see? Or a monthly newsletter that was the talk of the break room?\n\n<h3>Numerator Tool #4</h3>\n\n<strong>Be A Human Rolodex®</strong> - Become the network link to service greats. Think about a great concierge. Their value is not the width of their smile but the depth of their contacts. They can get you the best seats and those hard-to-find tickets because they learned that resourcefulness and connections was their best route to job security. Say the head of sales needs to get an important package from headquarters to Tenbucktwo by early morning and its way past the final FedEx pick-up. Having a friend of a friend with a small plane willing to make a few extra bucks might elevate your statue. Knowing the chef at the fancy restaurant might be your ticket to getting an important visiting customer the best table.\n\n<h3>Numerator Tool #5</h3>\n\n<strong>Be the R&D Of Customer Service</strong> - Stay on the cutting edge in your field and teach others what you know. A local car wash operator learned about customer relationship management (CRM) in a magazine and decided to create his own version. While customers waited for their vehicles to be washed, they completed a simple form that told him a myriad of customer facts from hobbies to driving habits to interest in a tailor made car wash experience. In time customers told their friends about this unique car wash that always had their favorite beverage and magazine, a shoeshine stand, a neck masseuse and a manicurist on location. His tailor-made car wash led to a come-to-your-home detailing service, a minor auto repair service, and an early-warning car inspection service.\n\n<h3>Numerator Tool #6</h3>\n\n<strong>Be A Joy Carrier</strong> - Go the extra mile, always. Stay on the lookout for the spirit leeches that enjoy sucking the happiness out of those around them. With surprising stealth, spirit leeches can sneak in their negativity or pessimism before you can say, “Have a nice day.” Remember, the best way to remove a leech is with a lighted match. Meet their cold gloom with hot passion. Transform their caution and skepticism into courage and possibility. Be the “hostess with the mostest” when colleagues seek your support or staff unit’s service.\n\nThe budget ax always plagues support units as leaders annually assemble the balance sheet for the upcoming year. Support units too often hunker down or complain about valuable muscle being trimmed, not just worthless fat. It does not have to be this predictable ritual. Worth comes with contribution. And, serving colleagues in ways that are unique and unexpected elevates value.\n\nPretty good service is not your ticket to avoiding the blade, innovative service is. And, innovative service is the creation of unexpected experiences that get people positively remarking. The greater the buzz you create, the larger the investment you will obtain. Abandon the bottom of the equation and start being a numerator.', 'Stop Numerator Thinking - Innovating Your Service Experience', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'stop-numerator-thinking-innovating-your-service-experience', '', '', '2015-01-12 06:00:15', '2015-01-12 11:00:15', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22166', 0, 'post', '', 4),
(22176, 329, '2015-03-17 06:00:52', '2015-03-17 10:00:52', 'The scene was a corporate cliché - the annual management meeting. There was the usual banner, banter, and baked potato. The CEO was about to begin his eighty slide <em>State of the Company</em> PowerPoint presentation.\n\nI was a consultant to the company and sat as a guest at a table of eight managers toward the back of the hotel ballroom.\n\nThe guy beside me leaned over and knowingly whispered, “He doesn’t give a rat’s butt about the managers here tonight.” He paused to gauge my interest, and then continued.\n\n“Our benefits suck, we have to stay in cheap hotels when we’re on the road, and he took away the daycare, casual Friday, and office parties at Christmas time.”\n\nBefore I could respond, the lights lowered, and the CEO started his show.\n\nThe CEO by no means seemed to be the ogre described by my seatmate. He convincingly outlined his rationale for austerity and sacrifice. His slides painted an unmistakable picture of economic challenge. But instead of doom and gloom, the CEO spoke of hope and opportunity. Rather than dwell on the errors of the past, he delivered his enthusiasm for the future.\n\nHis passion was indisputable; his words, inspirational. He closed by inviting his top management team to the stage. One by one, he complimented their unique contribution with a sentence or two about each manager’s primary mission in the weeks ahead. I was super-psyched by the end of the presentation - ready to rush out and sell something - and I was just a guest.\n\nThe lights came up, the audience warmly applauded, and the group on the stage marched off in harmony. I looked around to see that most attendees were visibly moved by the stirring call to action. Their nods were up and down rather than side to side. Their buzz had a supportive tone.\n\nBut my seatmate was unmoved. “See what I mean,” he announced. “Not a single word about what he’s going to do for us out here in the trenches.”\n\nThough I wanted to say, “There’s no crying in baseball” I could see this guy was not interested in letting go of either his position of entitlement or his disappointment in not getting his share.\n\nI walked away wondering, “What lessons do you think this man’s attitude teaches his kids about life and work?” And what insights for leadership can be gleaned from my experience?\n\n<h3>A Cantankerous View Of Employee Engagement</h3>\n\nWe used to call it employee morale but it got changed to employee engagement. It means the level of emotional investment employees make in the work goals they assume or are assigned. Every year organizations around the world hire an outside firm to assess employee engagement. When the results are sliced and diced, meetings are typically held to discuss the results.\n\nLeaders are charged with crafting improvement plans for increasing engagement scores. This is often initiated by hearing anecdotal commentary from employees about the leadership or organizational practices they believe contribute to less-than-desired scores.\n\nBut, are leaders the only ones charged with improving employee engagement scores? Now, I know there are draconian ogres in leadership roles that view their job as dictatorial shepherds. They abuse, use, and emotionally bruise. However, I believe most leaders in most organizations know such antiquated irritating behavior works completely counter to high productivity and morale. So, what role do employees play in their engagement scores? And, what part should great leaders play?\n\nMy seatmate probably had low employee engagement. It was clear to me he cynically enjoyed the “blame game” so he would not have to engage in the “aim game.” He viewed his leader’s job as “taking care of me” and seemed to relish being an entitled victim. He no doubt had previously labored under people in oppressive leader roles (including his parents) and conveniently chose to paint all authority figures with the same gloomy brush. I suspect had he been a free agent, not an employee, his contract would not be renewed.\n\nLeaders are not surrogate parents. Their job is to communicate a clear mission, demonstrate a passion for that mission, provide important tools needed to carry out that mission, and telegraph to employees both encouragement and affirmation along the way. They are effective when they exhibit trust, maintain high standards for performance, take time to listen, patiently mentor, and hold employees accountable for commitments made. As soon as we look to leaders to be chief motivators (instead of being responsible for fostering conditions for employees to motivate themselves), we are on a slippery slope to leader parenting not leader partnering.\n\n<h3>Great Leaders Are About Execution, Not Excuses</h3>\n\nMy business partner, John Patterson, was a former senior executive with a major hotel chain. After the hotel was sold to another company, he started a consulting practice. Several months into his growing practice, he was invited to attend an executive meeting of a new client. Scheduled to run for three hours, John was just twenty minutes into the meeting when the outcome was clear. The group had no intention of making the important decisions on their meeting agenda.\n\n“They were involved in a serious game of <em>shake and fake</em>” reports John. “<em>Shake and bake</em> is what employees should be responsible for doing,” continues John.\n\n“They plan and execute. But each member of this team, no doubt with more on their plates then each thought reasonable, had one goal: to sound passionate and committed but to exit the meeting with no decisions made that would result in any more <em>to do’s</em>.”\n\nJohn laments how sad it was to watch a doomed meeting get <em>pretended</em> long enough to use up three hours.\n\nGreat leaders get things done. They waste neither their time nor that of others with fake rationalizations and lame excuses. They enjoy both the process of accomplishment as well as the outcome of achievement. They truly believe that closing is as sweet as commencing. And, they enjoy getting others to partner with them on their journey\n.\n<h3>Great Leaders View Mediocrity As A Nasty Enemy, Not A Necessary Evil</h3>\n\nMediocrity can usurp the energy from passion and the opportunity from initiative. Leaders who tolerate mediocrity signal that their real standards are much lower than what they generally state. Great organizations can in fact be populated by only winners - people who have a passion for their work and constantly seek to improve their surroundings. The proverbial bell shaped curve of performance and attitude, i.e. there will always a small percentage of superstars and an equal number who do just enough to get by, is by no means a cultural necessity. How many mediocre members of the Navy Seals, an Olympic team, or a Super Bowl winning team are tolerated to balance the superstars on the bell-shaped curve of performance?\n\nWhen Bob Patton was head of SBC Global Markets Customer Care Group, he frequently would tell his employees to “stand up and be counted or go somewhere else where sitting down is tolerated. We are about passion here. We cannot make you passionate - it’s something that comes from within you. We are passionate and excited about what we have ahead of us. We will do our best to create an opportunity and a supportive environment for you to contribute with zeal and enthusiasm. But it is partly up to you. And, if you can’t get turned on about what we are striving to be here at Global Markets, we both made a poor employment decision. We will help undo that mistake by making it real easy for you to go to work someplace else.”\n\n<h3>Great Leaders Are Not Just People in Charge</h3>\n\nOrganizations that sparkle with employee engagement are those populated by employees who take pride in the spirit of their work environment. Slackers are called out; excuse-makers are given a peer-to-peer pep talk. Their sense of ownership in the well being of their unit or company runs deep enough to surface the courage for candid confrontation when they spot mediocrity or questionable commitment. They know placing total responsibility for morale on the boss diminishes their own personal power and weakens the capability of their team. They opt instead to share that responsibility - to stand and be counted.\n\n<em>Spartacus</em> was the true-life story of a slave who led a massive grassroots uprising against the Roman Empire. The movie was a major hit with a cast of silver screen giants like Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Jean Simmons, Lawrence Olivier, and Peter Ustinov. After the severely outnumbered slaves were defeated in a bloody battle by the Roman Army and several of their allies, the Emperor coveted the head of the person who started the slave revolt. Surveying the field of defeated survivors, he announced that if anyone would reveal which one of them was Spartacus, all but Spartacus would be freed. If they did not, all would be crucified. One by one each of the hundreds of survivors stood and proudly proclaimed, “I am Spartacus!”\n\nWhen leaders boldly stand up, they rarely stand alone. When they fail to coddle crybabies more interested in complaining than accomplishing, they harness the commitment of those with a passion for excellence. Employee engagement serves as the energy in the engine of performance. Great leaders are people who turn purpose into performance and partner with others to make it successful. So, who is responsible for employee engagement? In a word, everyone.', 'Who&#039;s Responsible For Employee Engagement?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'whos-responsible-for-employee-engagement', '', '', '2015-03-17 06:00:52', '2015-03-17 10:00:52', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22176', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(22178, 374, '2015-01-27 06:00:27', '2015-01-27 11:00:27', 'Here at Lead Change Group, we know that problems are most effectively solved when individuals come together to meld ideas, energies, and approaches.\n\nTo use a golf analogy, not every shot is a long drive. Many times, golfers have to take a <strong>chip shot</strong> to move the ball along for a short distance, with incisive accuracy.\n\nIf you are new to the Chip Shots green, welcome. In our Chip Shots feature, our Leading Voices are invited to provide brief insights into a leadership dilemma. To learn more, check out our first <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/chip-shots-from-our-leading-voices/\">Chip Shots</a> post or spend some time browsing the entire <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/topics/chip-shots/\">Chip Shots Series</a>.\n\n<h3>Today\'s Question</h3>\n\nA recent Forbes article identified the <a href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianaltman/2014/12/09/455/2/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Top 10 Business Trends That Will Drive Success In 2015</em></a>. Here is a comment made about one of the trends, <em>interdisciplinary workshops</em>:\n\n<blockquote>\"The best companies will recognize that the entire organization can contribute to valuable content, and each team member plays a role in selling. Look for companies to invest in interdisciplinary workshops that bring the entire company together to gain perspective on sales, marketing, and customer experience. No longer can you thrive with <em>silos</em>.\"</blockquote>\n\nSeveral of our leading voices shared their observations about <em>interdisciplinary</em> efforts they have seen that reduced or minimized <em>silos</em>, and contributed to a better product and experience for everyone.\n\n<h3>Interdisciplinary Workshops</h3>\n\n<a style=\"color: #CA8A12\" href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/david-dye/\">David Dye</a> - In my experience, the key to effective interdisciplinary efforts, cross-departmental cooperation, and breaking down silos is a clear focus on one organizational priority. I’ve worked with companies ranging from public high schools, to marketing firms, to technology firms who completely changed their culture when they truly rallied around one outcome that everyone in the company had to own.\n\n<a style=\"color: #CA8A12\" href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/mary-schaefer/\">Mary Schaefer</a> - I facilitated a series of 3-month leadership development programs that set up participants in teams of 6 from different functions in the company.  Four groups of six ultimately came together in the same room for a week of intensive, personal work on their leadership. They always remarked about how they appreciated and understood different parts of the company better after that experience, and now had established relationships with people in other areas, to really make things happen.\n\n<a style=\"color: #CA8A12\" href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/susan-mazza/\">Susan Mazza</a> - Interdisciplinary efforts only work well when there is a clear and compelling goal the participants share.  This creates the experience of being on one team which is essential to turning us and them into a we.\n\n<a style=\"color: #CA8A12\" href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/mitchell-levy/\">Mitchell Levy</a> - I am starting to see more Chief Marketing Officer/VP Human Resources pairings as a result of the understanding of the importance of employee advocacy and engagement. Getting marketing involved to craft messages that resonate internally is important. HR encouraging employees to share content not just inside but outside the organization is key. This is a great trend.\n\n<a style=\"color: #CA8A12\" href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/jon-mertz/\">Jon Mertz </a> - Product management is a team sport. When we shifted to key drivers for new development, we focused on letting customers and sales identify what what new functionality and features are needed. Behind this, there is a group of people who support each community so we get more diverse insights and ideas from this approach. We don\'t ignore the market. We still embrace it, just more fully and with a broader perspective. We gain by developing and delivering a more robust solution, and it is accepted with energy since they were involved from the start.', 'Chip Shots - The Power of Interdisciplinary Efforts', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'the-power-of-interdisciplinary-efforts', '', '', '2015-01-27 06:00:27', '2015-01-27 11:00:27', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22178', 0, 'post', '', 1),
(22186, 307, '2015-01-19 06:00:45', '2015-01-19 11:00:45', 'When I was a child, a mentor told me the story of two boys on their way home after a heavy rain. They\'d just received new shoes.\n\nBefore they’d left home, their mother had given them very strict instructions not to ruin their new shoes.\n\nBoth boys tried very hard to do what their mother asked, but when they arrived home, one boy\'s shoes were muddy and soaking wet while the other boy\'s shoes were dry. Naturally, the mother questioned her sons.\n\nHow did they manage to both walk the same route, both take her instructions seriously, and yet arrive home with such different results?\n\nThe brother with wet shoes answered, \"I don\'t know mom, I tried to avoid all the puddles.\"\n\nThe brother with the dry shoes answered, \"I looked for the dry places and I put my feet there.\"\n\nI always imagined those two boys. One of them jumping back and forth, reacting to every puddle, trying to avoid them, but splashing in the edges despite his best efforts while his brother calmly ignored the puddles and stepped only on dry patches of sidewalk.\nWhat a powerful metaphor for leaders.\n\n<h3>How Do You Lead?</h3>\n\nAre you like the boy with the wet shoes? In other words, do you know what you <em>don’t want</em> and jump back and forth, trying to avoid trouble? Are you reactive, zig-zagging back and forth? Do you create confusion in your team?\n\nOr are you like the boy with the dry shoes? Do you have a clear picture of what you <em>do want</em> and take calm, clear steps toward it?\n\nEffective leaders maintain focus on their vision, on the needs of the team, and on meaningful results. These leaders produce clarity for their teams. Their energy and the energy of their team flow naturally to what is most important.\n\nThe difference between confusion and clarity is often to simply change your focus from <em>what I don\'t want</em> to <em>what I do want</em>.\n\nIt’s the difference between <em>I don’t want to get my feet wet</em> versus <em>I keep my feet dry</em>.\n\n<h3>Your Turn</h3>\n\nRemember, you can’t lead when you\'re reactive. Be clear about where you’re going and what will get you there. Then take calm steps together with your team.', 'A Secret To Success at Leadership Or Any Goal', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'a-secret-to-success-at-leadership-or-any-goal', '', '', '2015-01-19 06:00:45', '2015-01-19 11:00:45', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22186', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(22193, 276, '2015-01-14 06:00:56', '2015-01-14 11:00:56', 'For many years, I’ve always valued attitude as key differentiator. Attitude by and large is a critical influencer on how I decide to engage and connect with people.\n\nWhy? Because I’m a personal testament to the fact that attitude is crucial to one\'s success.\n\nI have personally progressed in my career because of my attitude. When everyone is running the other way, I’ll step up and take the work with open arms and do it with a smile.\n\nMy father taught me that there is no work that is beneath me. The reason why your manager asked you to help or do the work is because the work needs to get done. Therefore, I do it and get it done.\n\nAs I write this, one quote that comes to mind is that of my mentor John Maxwell as I’m a member of his team:\n\n<blockquote>\"People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.\"</blockquote>\n\nThis is very true. When you enter a room and the people you\'ve met welcome you with open arms, you certainly can feel the warm welcome and sense of acceptance. Attitude is the same. People want to work with people with a good attitude more than they want to work with those who have a bad attitude.\n\nOver time this concept of <em>attitude is everything</em> has changed for me. While having a good attitude helps, it is not the end all be all. What do I mean? A person can have a good attitude, but if they are not equipped, educated and capable of doing the job, the attitude can only help so much. At some point they need to deliver. This is when I have the rude awakening.\n\nWhile attitude is important, we need to make sure we have a plan to help our people develop, because attitude can only go so far. While attitude <em>is a key differentiator</em> , I know that I have the responsibility to make sure people who have potential and the propensity to learn new things are given the support that can help them help the organization achieve its goal.\n\nIn conclusion consider this quote from Thomas Jefferson:\n\n<blockquote>\"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.\"</blockquote>\n\nI still believe in attitude as key to people’s success, but I also value people who are committed to continuous learning and making it happen.', 'Attitude Is Not Everything', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'attitude-is-not-everything', '', '', '2015-01-14 06:00:56', '2015-01-14 11:00:56', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22193', 0, 'post', '', 3),
(22209, 374, '2015-01-16 06:00:30', '2015-01-16 11:00:30', 'Next week, Weaving Influence is pleased to present two very exciting complimentary webinars.\n\nWe invite you to please consider joining us as we speak with one of the original TEDx organizers and short talk expert Hayley Foster and award-winning author and international keynote speaker, Eileen McDargh.\n\n<h3 style=\"margin-bottom: 5px;\">Don\'t Tank Your TED Talk</h3>\n<h6><em>By short talk expert Hayley Foster</em></h6>\n\n<img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/hayley-foster-150x150.png\" />TED talks share important messages with power, soul and simplicity. Short talk expert <a href=\"http://shorttalkexpert.com/\">Hayley Foster</a> shares TED-style storytelling to give your clients goosebumps.\n\nHer experience as one of the original TEDx organizers produced a process for crafting original, compelling core messages.\n\nMost authors, business owners and solo-preneurs can use help articulating an awesome idea to those who will want to buy into it.\n\nLearn how telling your authentic story TED-style magnetically attracts the clientele looking for your book, product or services.\n\n<div style=\"color: #CA8A12;\">Date: Tuesday - January 20, 2015</div>\n<p style=\"color: #CA8A12;\">Time: 9:00AM-10:00AM ET</p>\n\n<a style=\"color: #CA8A12;\" href=\"https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8263834100519696385?inf_contact_key=588071732a39955a840bdb9c32d46db8daee9371ed08741a52ac27ea9c046fc7\"><em>Click here to register for Don\'t Tank Your TED Talk</em></a>\n\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n\n<h3 style=\"margin-bottom: 5px;\">On Your Mark, Get Set, Grow - Your Resiliency GPS</h3>\n<h6><em>By award-winning author Eileen McDargh</em></h6>\n\n<img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/eileen-mcdargh-green-top-headshot-150x150.jpg\" />Our 24/7 world begins its craziness with another year. Take time to discover how you and your organization can develop resiliency skills by understanding your GPS - Growth Potential Strategy.\n\nJoin award-winning author, international keynoter and master facilitator, <a href=\"http://www.eileenmcdargh.com/\">Eileen McDargh</a>, for a fast-paced, informal conversation that will turn your notions of resiliency upside down.\n\nIt’s not about adversity. It is about advantage. Discover the 4 critical resiliency skills and ways you can cultivate and strengthen each one.\n\nThink you might face some change this year? This will prepare you to become stronger by any measure. Oh yes — you can expect some recalculating questions as Eileen McDargh presents Resiliency GPS.\n\n<div style=\"color: #CA8A12;\">Date: Wednesday - January 21, 2015</div>\n<p style=\"color: #CA8A12;\">Time: 1:00PM-2:00PM ET</p>\n\n<em>Click here to register for On Your Mark, Get Set, Grow</em>\n\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n\nWe hope you will be able to participate in one or both of these fantastic webinars...see you there!', 'Upcoming Webinars', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'upcoming-webinars', '', '', '2015-01-16 06:00:30', '2015-01-16 11:00:30', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22209', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(22226, 383, '2015-01-23 06:00:39', '2015-01-23 11:00:39', 'Even the most powerful people rarely act alone. The decisions they make are usually influenced by their coworkers and advisors.\n\nUnderstanding the nature and intensity of these changes can be vital to your project’s success. Recognizing the stakeholders of your project is what influence mapping is all about.\n\nWhere should you start? First of all, you need to discover who your true stakeholders are. When doing this, remember a few things:\n<h3>Who Are Your True Stakeholders?</h3>\n<ul>\n	<li>Usually the CEO and the CFO have the biggest impact on organization-wide changes, but it is not always so; in some cases the hierarchy doesn’t reflect the amount of influence, so it’s advisable to check everything carefully.</li>\n	<li>Influence is not static. Relations are always changing. Making influence maps on regular basis helps you monitor the situation and be aware of new circumstances.</li>\n	<li>Stakeholders may be both organizations and people, so make sure you identify the correct individual stakeholders as well as organizational stakeholdlers</li>\n</ul>\n<h3>Learning About Stakeholder Relationships</h3>\nNow you may have a long list of people who have an impact on your project. The next step is to gather as much information about your stakeholders and relations between them as possible. To do this you need to answer the following questions:\n<ul>\n	<li>Who do they influence, and who has impact on their decisions?</li>\n	<li>What is the intensity of the influence?</li>\n	<li>Why is the stakeholder interested/not interested in the success of your project?</li>\n	<li>How well are they informed?</li>\n	<li>What does the organization need from this particular stakeholder?</li>\n</ul>\n<h3>Stakeholder Groups</h3>\nAfter you have found out who your true stakeholders are, you should divide them into groups: <em>(a) static/weak, (b) dynamic/weak, (c) static/strong, and (d) dynamic/strong</em>.\n\nStakeholders in groups A and B are the easiest to deal with. Stakeholders in section C are powerful and can influence other people’s decisions, but their reactions are predictable. Stakeholders in group D require the biggest amount of management attention as they are powerful and their reactions are difficult to predict. You should monitor their expectations for the project regularly and make sure they are well-informed.\n<h3>Constructing Your Influence Map</h3>\nWhen all of that is done, you can start constructing your influence map. Mark the most powerful stakeholders with the biggest circles. Use the size of the circle to indicate the intensity of the influence. Use arrows to mark relations between stakeholders. Thicker lines indicate stronger influence, and two-way arrows mean that influence flows in both directions.\n\nMark people who are interested in the success of your project with green, those who are your critics with red, and the neutral ones with orange.  Put the most influential stakeholders on the top of your map, and place smaller circles lower down.  Now your influence map should look similar to this:\n\n<img class=\" aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/12Безымянный.png\" alt=\"\" />\n<h3>Why influence Maps Matter</h3>\nConstructing influence maps regularly, you can become more effective and create an appropriate environment for developing your project. If you manage to get support from the most influential stakeholders, you will have more opportunities for reaching your goals. By considering their opinion you not only gain their support, but improve the quality of your project as well.\n\nIf the influence is not positive, you should create strategies to manage the opposition. Take time to uncover the root causes of the changes, so you can understand the underlying relations between your stakeholders and predict their reactions.\n\nThe following references were used in preparing this post. You may find them interesting for further information about influence mapping.\n<ul>\n	<li><a href=\"http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_83.htm\">Mind Tools</a></li>\n	<li><a href=\"http://www.the-vital-edge.com/influence-map/\">The Vital Edge</a></li>\n	<li><a href=\"http://www.slideshare.net/SteveRaybould/stakeholder-analysis\">Stakeholder Analysis</a></li>\n	<li><a href=\"http://cep.lse.ac.uk/seminarpapers/10-02-03-bry.pdf\">Centre For Economic Performance</a></li>\n</ul>', 'Infuence Mapping - How To Lead Your Project To Success', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'influence-mapping-how-to-lead-your-project-to-success', '', '', '2015-01-23 06:00:39', '2015-01-23 11:00:39', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22226', 0, 'post', '', 0),
(22248, 290, '2015-01-22 06:00:07', '2015-01-22 11:00:07', 'A new year has begun and we are nearing the end of the first month. I just have to ask: <em>Are we there yet</em>?\n\nA few weeks ago, most of us set some goals to achieve, new habits to embrace, and <a href=\"http://www.thindifference.com/2015/01/14/role-patience-purpose/\" target=\"_blank\">big projects</a> to start and complete. But are we there yet?\n\nImpatience sets in. We are like our kids in the backseat wondering if we have arrived yet. Anxiousness seeps in. Just getting there seems more important than the drive.\n\nImpatience becomes the death knell of new goals, habits, and projects. Instead of trying to overcome our impatience, we need to refocus it. Impatience can deliver new destinations if we are willing to really embrace our impatience in positive ways.\n\n<h3>3 Ways To Embrace Impatience For Real Change</h3>\n\nImpatience can be turned into a positive way to harness our energy. Highlighted below are three ways to embrace your impatience:\n\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Use Your Impatience To Learn & Hone Your Craft</strong> - There are no shortcuts in leadership or in life. We desperately want all things to be easy. We deserve it to be so, right? Achieving our goals is never a straight path though. We simply need to do the work. All through the process of doing the work, we need to learn, adapt, and improve.\n<br />\nThrough the <em>zigs</em>, we learn new things. Through the <em>zags</em>, we strengthen our character. Zig-zags produce a meaningful, robust outcome if we take the time to work through them and grow. Embracing our impatience to learn will keep us growing and enable us to be better leaders and followers.</li>\n<li><strong>Use Your Impatience To Step Up</strong> - Too often, our wanting of a quick result distracts us from the real issues or underlying problems. Sugarcoating evaporates quickly and provides no substance for the long haul. When we are wanting, we need to raise our sights.\n<br />\nWhat really needs to happen to take a step up in what we are doing and how we are doing it? When we really focus on the answer to this question, we begin to see more clearly on what we need to do in order to make a real, lasting difference. Finding the cause of our impatience may enable us to better understand our enduring mission.</li>\n<li><strong>Use Your Impatience To Breathe & Discern</strong> - Impatience clutters. We see others achieving things more quickly than we are. We see so much information that we need to read and understand to become smarter. We bury ourselves in the mass rather than stopping and thinking through what impact we want to have and what we need to know to get there.\n<br />\nIn the mix is who we need to work with. In the storm of activity, community, and people, we need to breathe. We need to think and then act thoughtfully and with full purpose. Leaning into our impatience can clear space to clarify what matters most.</li>\n</ol>\n<h3>Tapping Our Impatience</h3>\n\nAre we there yet? The answer is likely </em>no</em>. However, tapping into our impatience may guide us in how we use our time to learn, step-up, and reflect. We cannot ignore our impatience; we need to calmly address the stir and find ways to be productive in achieving our goals.\n\nAs leaders, we <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leaders-initiate/\">set the example</a>. We need to exhibit patience in:\n\n<ul>\n<li>Having fruitful conversations with colleagues and team members.</li>\n<li>Understanding different perspectives in how to solve problems.</li>\n<li>Learning new ways to meet new marketplace challenges.</li>\n<li>Becoming a better leader, every day.</li>\n</ul>\n\nMoving our impatience to an art of learning, making a difference, and being fully present in the moment will turn the question <em>are we there yet</em> into a statement of achievement, joy, and collaborative relationships.', 'New Destinations - Are We There Yet?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'are-we-there-yet-new-destinations', '', '', '2015-01-22 06:00:07', '2015-01-22 11:00:07', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22248', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(22262, 381, '2015-01-21 06:00:28', '2015-01-21 11:00:28', 'According to Time magazine, <a href=\"http://time.com/3632231/merriam-webster-word-of-the-year-2014/\">Merriam-Webster</a> claims that the word of the year is <em>culture</em>.  But <a href=\"http://time.com/3590093/oxfords-2014-word-of-the-year-is-vape/\">Oxford</a> says, no, the word of the year is <em>vape</em>. Dictionary.com chimes in with their chosen word <em>exposure</em> - as in Ebola.\n\nSuch are the vicissitudes of language. Nailing down one most popular word, for the approximately 430 million English speaking people, is sketchy.\n\nCasper Grathwohl, president of Oxford’s dictionaries division, tells Time: “A word is just the surface of something that often has a really complex and rich life underneath.”\n\nThat’s how I feel about the word integration. It’s complex and rich with fundamental possibilities.\n\nI remember the first time I heard the word integration in a corporate meeting. Teams were called into a small auditorium to hear about the future of the organization.\n\n“We are outsourcing our IT division,” they said. “The integration of our data systems into a data center in another part of the world will take place over the next 12 months.”\n\nEmotion coated the room with shock, fear, anger, suspicion, and doubt. It wasn\'t imagination that productivity dropped off instantly as employees scattered into clusters where speculation drove anxiety to peak.\n\nClearly the next item on the agenda for the executive leadership team would be damage control. Having experienced similar events in two other organizations, I wondered how they would counteract this announcement that fueled chaos, but in that moment offered little to quell growing apprehension.\n\nClarity and communication with answers to these 5 questions might have mitigated the fallout.\n<h3>What Is Integration?</h3>\nIntegration is simple to define but complex to deploy. It means taking individual parts and combining them to make a whole. Simple enough, but integration of dissimilar parts with dissimilar parts is precarious at best, and disastrous at worst.\n\nIntegrating one organization with another requires intimate knowledge of both organizations: services, values, capacity, deficiencies, innovative excellence, products, structure, economic strength, culture and nuances too numerous to cover here. Integration says together we are better than we are alone. Employees whose lives are about to be interrupted want to know their leadership team has considered all elements affected.\n<h3>Why Is Integration Good For Us?</h3>\nThe future of operations requires state of the art systems to assure premier service to our customers. Integration with a data center whose primary products are systems and data processing is strategically the right move.\n\nThink of metal alloys. Pure metals have atoms of the same size and properties, but in isolation they lack the strength and stamina of an alloy. When another metal is compounded with the single metal, the atoms make the integrated layers stronger.\n\nIntegrating our data center with one that is recognized for superiority and competence in data processing is a courageous step, and one that will have a positive, strengthening effect for the organization and protect the careers of employees.\n<h3>What Is The Procedure?</h3>\nWe realize the season of unrest this produces and it’s unfortunate that there are no fast tracks to a change of this magnitude. It’s easy to wonder if your department or your position has been left out of the analysis. In fact, you might think you, personally, have been overlooked. In today’s interconnected world, it’s a daunting responsibility to identify all the processes, all the tasks, all the roles, all the positions, and all the expertise needed to assure a streamlined transition.\n\nThis is a bit like grafting of plants where parts of two or more plants are joined together and grow as one plant. Thorough knowledge of each plant is necessary in order to reproduce a healthy, flourishing hybrid. The leadership team is meticulously analyzing all factors across the organization to assure decisions are made with full awareness and levelheaded rationale.\n<h3>What Happens To The Pieces That Don’t Fit?</h3>\nIntegration naturally reveals duplication of responsibilities and redundancy in processes. Just like in the reference to plant grafting, we recognize there will be overlap and parts whose functions become obsolete. We have a strategic plan for every person affected by this organizational integration. If your current position isn\'t grafted into the root system there will be options open to you.\n<h3>How Did You Arrive At This Decision?</h3>\nThese decisions have been made with the aid of business consultants, human resource experts, and strategic advisers. Change is always difficult because it affects individuals and families and further affects communities. As a leadership team, we have judiciously invested resources in the examination of alternatives and know this integration of our data center is the best opportunity for advantage and remaining prosperous and solvent in the future.\n<h3>Summary</h3>\nThis article discusses only the handling by the leadership team in the early stages. The technique improved by the time they had repeated their presentation a few times. Vague answers produce instability.\n\nAnother factor, not covered here, is the overall reaction of the employees. The clusters of individuals discussing half-truths and feeding each other’s anger was a recipe for turmoil. That’s a whole other article.\n\nThere is a big difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking and it becomes clearly apparent when lives are impacted by organizational change.', 'Integration As Viewed Through The Lens Of The Uninformed', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'integration-as-viewed-through-the-lens-of-the-uninformed', '', '', '2015-01-21 06:00:28', '2015-01-21 11:00:28', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22262', 0, 'post', '', 2);
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(22265, 243, '2015-01-20 06:00:45', '2015-01-20 11:00:45', 'The <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/\"> Lead Change Group</a> was incubated by people who wanted to capture the idea of leadership being espoused by a group of leaders in social media and Internet channels in the summer and fall of 2009.\n\nThe term <em>character-based leadership</em> rose out of this group’s efforts and eventually led to the book, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Character-Based-Leader-Instigating-Leadership/dp/145751222X\">The Character-Based Leader</a>.\n\nAfter a lengthy process considering the many things character-based leadership was not, the group decided that character-based leadership was “leading from who you are rather than from your power or position.”\n\nCharacter-based leadership is not a list of behaviors, but is about who you are at your core.\n\n<h3>Instigating A Leadership Revolution</h3>\n\nIn collaborating to write <em>The Character-Based Leader</em>, we balanced a desire to maintain the individuality of the authors while creating a cohesive message that resonates. When we each bring the best of who we are to the practice of leadership, we find that each person’s character varies the definition. Snowflakes share characteristics but they say no two are exactly alike. No two people are exactly alike. Therefore, no two people will live the definition of a character-based leader the same.\n\nIn future excerpts, Lead Change Instigators will share their experiences and beliefs about character-based leadership. These guiding principles infuse every contribution to the book, look for them in subsequent excerpts. As you’ll see, they also stand alone as leadership principles worth taking to heart.\n\n<h3>Underlying Principles</h3>\n\nYou will see three core underlying principles running through the chapters of <em>The Character-Based Leader</em>:\n\n<h4>Leadership Is Influence</h4>\n\n<a href=\"http://www.johnmaxwell.com/about/meet-john/\">John Maxwell</a> has quite famously stated, “leadership is influence, plain and simple.” It is the ability to get someone else to want to do what you want them to do. Leadership respects the individual and their choice to contribute.\n\n<h4>Influence Is Given</h4>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.startwithwhy.com/About.aspx\">Simon Sinek</a> has stated that we can only inspire or manipulate. Every individual in the developed world is a free agent, even though we acknowledge that many people around the world are not free. Degrees of freedom may be applied, but everyone is free to choose whom they support, what they support, and the degree to which they support an idea.\n\n<a href=\"http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/bio.asp\">Seth Godin</a> calls this <em>emotional labor</em> in his book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Linchpin-Are-Indispensable-Seth-Godin/dp/1591844096\">Linchpin</a>, quoting <a href=\"http://sociology.berkeley.edu/professor-emeritus/arlie-r-hochschild\">Arlie Hochschild</a>. We choose the degree to which we bring our creative energies to an effort. We choose the degree to which we innovate, excite, mobilize and serve others. In the end, cooperation with a leader is contributed.\n\n<h4>People Give Influence Based On Competence, Trust & Purpose</h4>\n\n<strong>Competence</strong> - First, we want to know if the leader can get us to the group’s objective. Although I might trust my wife to want me to be well, I don’t always take her medical advice and I would never let her operate on me. We must believe that the person we choose to join has the ability to get us to the objective.\n\n<strong>Trust</strong> - Second, we must believe that the leader will get us to our objective. In addition to reaching the group’s objective, we need to know the leader will do so in a way that doesn’t violate our best interests, but helps us achieve the benefit we expect from joining the effort. We want our leaders to be for us, not simply for themselves.\n\n<strong>Purpose</strong> - Finally, we must believe the purpose is worth the effort. We may believe the leader capable and we may believe the leader to be trustworthy, but the leader may have a vision and direction contrary to where we want to go. Without regard to the quality of the purpose, we simply must have an aligned purpose or we won’t give the leader much influence or authority over us. We will withdraw our cooperation if the leader’s objectives and ours begin to separate.\n\nWe hope to excite you about the idea that your personal leadership makes a critical difference in the world. We want to challenge you to bring the best you to the marketplace of ideas and to make a positive difference. We want you to achieve your greatest accomplishments based on who you are. Remember, great accomplishments are those that benefit others. Bring your best self, your true character, to make the greatest difference for people in your sphere of influence. That’s Character-Based Leadership.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter\" style=\"border: 0;\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/CBL-Cover.png\" alt=\"Character Based Leader\" />\n\n<em>NOTE: This post is an edited excerpt of The Character-Based Leader. Minor modifications have been made due to space constraints. To order a copy of the book, please visit the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Character-Based-Leader-Instigating-Leadership/dp/145751222X\">Character Based Leader</a> page on Amazon.</em>', 'Leading From Who You Are (A Book Excerpt)', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'leading-from-who-you-are-2', '', '', '2015-01-20 06:00:45', '2015-01-20 11:00:45', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22265', 0, 'post', '', 1),
(22289, 380, '2015-02-09 06:00:57', '2015-02-09 11:00:57', 'Teams are only as effective as the individuals who are part of them. The problem with teamwork, then, is often an issue of individuals lacking adequate communication skills, lacking a clear understanding of roles, or lacking the initiative to do what needs to get done.\n\nHave you ever seen a teammate or colleague just walk past a piece of trash on the hallway floor? That is a great test of ownership versus employee mentality.\n\nI always repeated the mantra to my athletes that <em>if it’s to be, it’s up to me</em>.  What we do as individuals is emulated by our teammates.  I always stopped to pick up trash because I wanted my team to take the initiative to pick up the trash they saw, instead of waiting on <em>someone else</em>.\n\nThe plague of <a href=\"http://greatresultsteambuilding.net/thats-not-job-dangerous-phrase-teams/\" target=\"_blank\">that’s not my job</a> can be dangerous to your culture. I came across a funny but relevant and powerful eulogy that perhaps you and your team will want to celebrate. Yes, you heard that correctly.\n\n<strong>Here is the eulogy:</strong>\n\n<blockquote>“I know that all of you were saddened to learn this week of the death of one of our most valuable teammates Someone Else. Else’s passing created a vacancy that will be difficult to fill. Someone has been with us for many years, and for every one of those years, Someone did far more than the normal person’s share of the work.\n\nWhenever leadership was mentioned, this wonderful person was looked to for inspiration as well as results. Someone Else can work with that group. Whenever there was a job to do, a workshop to lead, or a meeting to attend, the same name was on everyone’s lips. Let Someone Else do it. It was common knowledge that Someone Else was among the largest givers of time and talent in our organization.\n\nSomeone Else was a wonderful person, sometimes even appearing super-human. And the truth is that everyone expected too much of Someone Else. Now Someone Else is gone. And we are left to wonder what to do now. Someone Else left us all a wonderful example to follow, but who is going to follow it? Who is going to do the things Someone Else did? Remember, we can’t depend on Someone Else anymore.”</blockquote>\n\nOnce <em>someone else</em> is given a fitting and respectable funeral ceremony in your organization, perhaps you and your team will enjoy the benefits of improved individual initiative.\n\nRather than thinking that’s not my job, and expecting things will be done by <em>someone else</em>, the above eulogy could be a clever catalyst to inspire your people to clarify roles, to communicate needed changes and improvements, and to take initiative when they see something needs to be done.\n\nIf the eulogy doesn’t work, you might want to consider a <a href=\"http://greatresultsteambuilding.net/\">team building event</a> to boost your morale and productivity or a <a href=\"http://greatresultsteambuilding.net/customized-workshops/\">custom team workshop</a> to address and resolve a common issue that your group may be experiencing.\n\nWant your team to pass the trash on the hallway floor test? Convince everyone that someone else is gone, and the team is desperately depending on each of them to sink or swim. Remember, <em>if it’s to be, it’s up to me</em>.', 'Celebrate The Passing Of Someone Else With Your Team', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'celebrate-the-passing-of-someone-else-with-your-team', '', '', '2015-02-09 06:00:57', '2015-02-09 11:00:57', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22289', 0, 'post', '', 3),
(22349, 318, '2015-02-02 06:00:51', '2015-02-02 11:00:51', 'He\'s just not <em>strategic</em>. I hear that all the time in succession planning and other career discussions. As if <em>strategic</em> were a fixed state - like handedness.\n\nSure, there are many managers that need to think and act more strategically. I also know being strategic is a teachable competency.\n\nIf you\'re looking to help someone be more strategic, first be sure you\'re exposing them to the big picture. It\'s impossible to connect dots you cannot see.\n\nThe next easiest move is to teach them the art of asking great questions. Model it first. Be the asker. Then a great next move is to just say: \"what questions do you think I\'m going to ask next?\"\n\nIf you been an effective question-asking sherpa, they\'ll begin to ask <em>and</em> answer their own questions. Voila, they\'re more strategic.\n\n<h3>12 Strategic Questions</h3>\n\nNot sure where to start? Here are a few to get you started:\n\n<ul>\n<li>Why have your results improved so substantially?</li>\n<li>What was different in August (or whenever you saw a change in pattern)?</li>\n<li>How do you know?</li>\n<li>How does this compare to your competition?</li>\n<li>What’s changed since implementing this program?</li>\n<li>How do you know it’s working?</li>\n<li>What are the employees saying about the change, how do you know?</li>\n<li>How do you know this is sustainable?</li>\n<li>What would a pilot teach us?</li>\n<li>What do you want to do next?</li>\n<li>Why are you interested in this job?</li>\n<li>What are you looking for in this mentoring relationship?</li>\n</ul>\n\nWhat would you add to the list? See also like <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/learning-development/powerful_presentations/\">Powerful Presentations: Teaching Your Team to Talk Strategy</a>. If you\'re looking for more ways to help your team grow, download my free e-book <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/publications/talking-teams/\">Talking Teams</a>.', '12 Questions To Get Your Team Thinking More Strategically', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', '12-questions-to-get-your-team-thinking-more-strategically', '', '', '2015-02-02 06:00:51', '2015-02-02 11:00:51', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22349', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(22354, 376, '2015-01-28 06:00:01', '2015-01-28 11:00:01', 'I wish Viktor Frankl had been my uncle or even next-door neighbor.\n\nSuch a gentle and kind spirit, accomplished, yet humble, very connected to his internal being, yet realistic in his self-appraisals, and with the ability to see how we are and to hold the mirror of words up for us to see ourselves.\n\nYep, I\'m in the Frankl Fanatics Fan group, as are many others who I respect and admire. \n\nThe presence of his small, short, and old memoir with explanation on so many book lists with titles like <em>Important Books</em>, <em>Books That Changed My Life</em>, and <em>Books You Have To Read</em> decades after the events depicted and its original publication, apparently the man and his work have staying power.\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Viktor Frankl</div>\n</blockquote>\n\n<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/080701429X\" target=\"_blank\">Man\'s Search For Meaning</a> is Frankl\'s best-known work, the one placed on those lists I just mentioned. Written and published just after the end of World War II in 1946, the paperback version, even with a foreword by <a href=\"http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/teachers/teachers.php?id=113\" target=\"_blank\">Harold S. Kushner</a>, runs only to 165 pages. I first encountered Frankl and his work in graduate school while learning how to counsel others for change, and I have been a fan ever since\n\nAs I remarked in another post many years ago about this book, you can read it easily in one rainy afternoon and still have time for tea. Understanding and using the wisdom in these few pages will take the rest of your life. I will admit the shortness of this book was an immediate draw for this and other over-worked and time-deprived graduate students. However, it had a sticking power beyond its length and size.\n\nEver wonder why this small book about a psychotherapy model is so popular with leaders, managers, and others who deal with <em>normal</em> people, rather than with those who suffer psychologically?\n\nThese days, we assume that Frankl\'s work is important and useful, but we tend to jump to the quotes (and Frankl is very quotable) without addressing the larger question of why his work is so much still with us, as the world in which his thoughts and ideas came into being has faded into dimly remembered history.\n\nHere are my three reasons why I think Frankl\'s work is so darn important, along with some observations for leaders at the end:\n\n<h3>Frankl Speaks To Both Our Hearts & Our Minds</h3>\n\nUsing the current lingo, he used neuroscience to engage both our cognitive and our emotional motivations. Frankl understood the value of a gripping story and his chronicle of his experiences during World War II as a concentration camp prisoner are both starkly matter-of-fact and terrifying at the same time. Rather than a chronological or historical account, this is a free-flowing collection of observations about his and others\' experiences during a terrible time in their lives.\n\nThe book starts with Frankl\'s prison camp experiences and is full of terrible and fascinating observations about that experience from his perspective. One quick example is the large role played by <em>Capos</em> who were also prisoners, but were chosen by the German guards to supervise other prisoners and who held great power in that particular environment. Frankl also talks about prisoners who chose to share what little food they had with others … to be human, even in the most inhumane of situations.\n\n<blockquote>Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.</blockquote>\n\nThis is not a story about the brutality of the Nazis, although that is present throughout the first part of the book. This is about man\'s ability to be inhuman toward his fellow man in the right situations. Frankl hit on this theme long before <a href=\"http://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/philip-zimbardo.html\" target=\"_blank\">Philip Zimbardo</a> divided his test subjects into guards and prisoners and discovered how easily we fall into our roles.\n\nThe second part of the book will delight those who study the human condition and seek to understand why we do what we do. Frankl\'s model, if one can call it that, is titled <a href=\"http://www.logotherapyinstitute.org/About_Logotherapy.html\" target=\"_blank\">Logotherapy</a>. Logos is <em>meaning</em> in Greek and the search for meaning in one\'s life is at the core. For those who need the academic descriptions and explanations, you will come away with a solid understanding of how Frankl constructed his ideas and his psychotherapeutic model.\n\n<h3>Frankl Understood The Value Of Reality</h3>\n\nFrankl was not one to sugar-coat the realities of life. His description of the brutal and consistent rigors of life as a prisoner and the very real compromises that occur is not the normal stuff of Hollywood films, but it ought to be. We like clear heroes and despicable villains, dealing with resolvable issues and surmountable problems, rather than the gritty and often uncomfortable ground which Frankl tills.\n\n<blockquote>An unrelenting struggle for daily bread and for life itself, for one\'s own sake or for that of a good friend.</blockquote>\n\nFrankl goes deeper by simply showing us how complex real life can be, especially in times of deprivation. We would rather talk about the triumphant liberation of the prisoners from tyranny than consider the grinding and routine horrors of years spent living barely, while watching others die for lack of compassion on the part of others, but also witnessing great acts of heroism and kindness in the same places.\n\n<h3>Frankl Makes Us Believe We Can Be Better People</h3>\n\nUltimately, Frankl is a motivational speaker in the best sense, rather than the commercial sense. He talks about our ability to choose, even in the worst of situations. This is probably one of the most difficult things to truly understand about our human emotions and behaviors - we can choose, although we often choose not to do so, blaming fate, events, and other people for how we experience them.\n\n<blockquote>No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.</blockquote>\n\nFrankl talks often about the role of hope as an essential element of survival. He also talks about the realities of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, long before that term became known and used. That someone who has suffered so much at the hands of some of his fellow men is not filled with thoughts of vengeance and hatred says worlds about his inner strength.</span></p>\n\n<blockquote>The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.</blockquote>\n\nHere is a clip from Frankl talking to a group in 1972, which clearly shows his gentle humor and deep love for his fellow man and for humanity, as well as his ability to hold the interest of college students, which is no small feat. Enjoy the accent: <a href\"http://www.ted.com/talks/viktor_frankl_youth_in_search_of_meaning\" target=\"_blank\">Viktor Frankl Talks To Youth In Search of Meaning</a>.\n\nSo, what has all this to do with leadership, one asks? We are always talking about being leaders who make a difference. Viktor Frankl was one who actually did. I see true leadership at the personal, group, and organizational level as including the ability to understand our fellow man and ourselves at the level where we learn what being human truly involves, and to share that knowledge with others to help them learn, achieve, and grow.\n\nYour leadership journey probably does not include being a therapist. However, your leadership journey had better include some serious work at self-knowledge, both for your personal benefit and to better understand those who you serve as a leader.\n\n<blockquote>It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.</blockquote>\n\nOur self-knowledge leads us to clear articulations in both words and deeds of those values we hold most dear. This requires us to learn and grow as individuals and as leaders.\n\nI cannot think of a better place to start or restart, than by spending a rainy (or snowy, for those in the Eastern US) afternoon with this gentle and wise man.\n\nNote: All quotations are from Viktor E. Frankl\'s work <em>Man\'s Search For Meaning</em>.', 'Three Stops On The Search For Meaning', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'three-stops-on-the-search-for-meaning', '', '', '2015-01-28 06:00:01', '2015-01-28 11:00:01', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22354', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(22405, 374, '2015-01-29 06:00:18', '2015-01-29 11:00:18', 'In a previous post, we shared how the Lead Change Group was incubated by people who wanted to capture the idea of leadership being espoused by a group of leaders in social media and internet channels in the summer and fall of 2009. \n\nThe term <em>character-based leadership</em> rose out of this group’s efforts and eventually led to the book, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Character-Based-Leader-Instigating-Leadership/dp/145751222X\">The Character-Based Leader</a>.\n\nIn order to provide visitors to the Lead Change Group with the background about how this site came to be, and because much of the information is timeless, we are sharing excerpts from The Character-Based Leader occasionally.\n\nPreviously, we shared an excerpted version of Chapter One, <em>Instigating A Character-Based Leadership Revolution</em>.\n\nToday we will examine an excerpt from Chapter Two, <em>Why Character-Based Leadership</em> authored by <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/instigators/chery-gegelman/\">Chery Gegelman</a>.\n\n\n<h3>Why Character-Based Leadership?</h3>\n\nWhen I first started using social media, I sent out a lot of quotes like the one above and quickly learned that the quotes that consistently received the largest number of responses were the ones that touched on a source of pain and a need for change in our workplaces and in our society.\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">The world is crying out for leaders who build up, nurture and enhance; rather than tear down exploit and dominate.</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Laurie Beth Jones</div>\n</blockquote>\n\nRecently, fellow Lead Change contributing author, Tristan Bishop, reminded me about the television show <em>Undercover Boss</em>. I found myself pondering how much that show resonates with the public and the reasons that it is so popular.\n\nWould you rather work with someone who:\n\n<ul>\n<li>Won’t take the time to define what they want, but consistently growls like a grizzly and berates people for doing the wrong things or for taking no initiative?</li>\n<li>Cares more for their people and the mission than for themselves?</li>\n<li>Helps to develop your greatest strengths and empowers you to make a difference?</li>\n<li>When faced with a crisis, is so focused on finding someone to blame, they have no ability to problem solve?</li>\n<li>Provides a motivating vision, removes obstacles, and celebrates you, your work and the impact you are making?</li>\n<li>Has a great vision and desire to serve, then gets distracted by their own success?</li>\n<li>Means what they say, says what they mean, and apologizes when they make mistakes?</li>\n</ul>\n\nConsider the number of leadership speakers, authors, and bloggers whose content is continually devoured by the public. Do you see the emphasis on our human quest for something more? \n\nIn all of these examples, there is a common theme that people want to be valued, to be understood, and to be given the opportunity to make a difference. Would it surprise you to realize that our leadership needs today are the same as they were thousands of years ago? They have been spoken in slightly different words at different times and through different people, but the truths themselves are the same.\n\nTake a look:\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">Love your neighbor as yourself.</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Jesus Christ</div>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but someone who carries water for his people so they can get on with their jobs.</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\"> ~ Robert Townsend</div>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Theodore Roosevelt</div>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">Life\'s most persistent and urgent question is, \'What are you doing for others?\'</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Martin Luther King Jr.</div>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">Leaders provide for their people what the people cannot provide for themselves.</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ John Maxwell</div>\n</blockquote>\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">The purpose of influence is to speak up for those who have no influence.</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Rick Warren</div>\n</blockquote>\n\nSo why does history keep repeating itself? Perhaps it is to emphasize lessons that have already been learned. Maybe it’s to humble us into the realization that modern society is not much more sophisticated than ancient society.\n\nMaybe it is to encourage us with the knowledge that Character-Based Leadership is not a new concept and it is not difficult to understand or to apply. It is just a series of simple truths that have been time-tested and continually proven.\n\nOr maybe it’s because, as humans, we naturally believe that the world should revolve around us. For many of us, it has taken a life-altering circumstance or a season of brokenness before we understood that life and leadership really is not about me. That lesson becomes our defining moment and causes us not just to be willing to bend our knees and serve others, but also to actually desire those opportunities. We begin to realize that each time we serve others from the deepest parts of our hearts, we are filled with intense compassion and new insights.\n\nIf you are a titled leader, seeking to lead differently, be encouraged. You don’t have to drive over people to achieve results. You can choose to be a Character-Based Leader while unleashing greatness in each individual and throughout the organization. When you choose this path, it will be much like setting up a computer for the first time. The initial investment of time and energy is greater than what you may be currently doing. However, in the long run, you will create a more efficient and less stressful workplace for everyone, you included.\n\n<ol>\n<li>First, find someone who is willing to hold you accountable for your actions and behaviors.</li>\n<li>Then, focus everyone on a shared vision and purpose.</li>\n<li>Finally, dig deep to uncover the gifts of each individual on your team, and focus yourself on serving and developing the individuals and the team as a whole.</li>\n</ol>\n\nBy doing so, you will begin to inspire confidence, expectation and hope in those you lead, and as the team develops you will experience increasing momentum and, eventually, a flood of uncommon results. If you are not a titled leader, but you share this vision, you may be wondering how to create a case for change that will be heard and responded to by those in titled leadership positions. Begin by applying one of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Understand that people don’t know what they don’t know and that, like children, titled leaders have learned what they have lived.\n\n<ul>\n<li>Those who have been abused frequently become abusers.</li>\n<li>Those who have lived in fear create fear-based environments.</li>\n<li>Those who have worked in environments without integrity frequently create environments without integrity.</li>\n<li>Those who have been told not to think but just to do expect the same from others.</li>\n</ul>\n\nThe book of Proverbs says that without a vision, people perish. Sharing a vision with titled leaders will require courage and commitment, but consider this: If you can’t or won’t, who will? And if no one does, how can change be created? And if no one steps forward to lead change, what will the effect be on future generations?\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">It always seems impossible until it’s done.</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Nelson Mandela</div>\n</blockquote>\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter\" style=\"border: 0;\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/CBL-Cover.png\" alt=\"Character Based Leader\" />\n\n<em>Note: This post is an edited excerpt of The Character-Based Leader. Minor modifications have been made due to space constraints. To order a copy of the book, please visit the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Character-Based-Leader-Instigating-Leadership/dp/145751222X\">Character Based Leader</a> page on Amazon.</em>', 'Why Character-Based Leadership? (A Book Excerpt)', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'why-character-based-leadership-a-book-excerpt', '', '', '2015-01-29 06:00:18', '2015-01-29 11:00:18', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22405', 0, 'post', '', 1),
(22416, 282, '2015-01-30 06:20:28', '2015-01-30 11:20:28', 'The confetti from New Year\'s Eve has been swept up or blown away. You\'ve already had enough time to break and reaffirm your New Year\'s resolutions. \n\nBefore you know it Valentine\'s Day will be here, Spring will have sprung and school will be out. In a year so full of possibilities and fresh potential, what are your dreams for the year?\n\nMaya Angelou once said, \"If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.\"\n\nThis year will fly by, and as you gaze at 2015 in your rear view mirror, you may ask the same question then that you\'re asking about 2014 now.\n\nThe question is \"How am I going to lead myself and my team to transform our fantasies, our dreams, into realities?\"\n\nBut why wait until 2015 is in the books to ask that question? Let\'s start now with these simple tips...\n\n<h3>Celebrate Your Mission</h3>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Your calling may not be unique, but it is unique to you.</li>\n<li>Life is meant to be embraced. Do something better than anyone, or do something no one else has done.</li>\n<li>Don\'t ever, ever set for dull, average or common. To quote John Keating from <em>The Dead Poet\'s Society</em>, \"Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.\"</li>\n</ul>\n\n<h3>Celebrate Your Team</h3>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Remind your cohorts, whether they are supervisors or the supervised, of things they did as a group that they could not have done individually.</li>\n<li>Challenge them to invest in each other, with time, resources and creativity. Offer specific ideas, incentives and challenges if you can.</li>\n<li>Remember, someone is watching and learning how you lead, so the way you celebrate your team could impact people for generations.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<h3>Celebrate Your Individuals</h3>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Look back to individual success examples, and brag on as many of them as you can.</li>\n<li>Bragging privately to individuals builds self-esteem in them and respect for you, and bragging publicly about the individual to the entire team raises the bar for the organization while building up passion for their own successes.</li>\n<li>Spotlight individuals throughout the year by recognizing them in print, with awards and if you have the pipes, then do it in song.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<h3>Celebrate Your Failures</h3>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Don’t run from your flops. Laugh if you can, cry if you need to, but celebrate that you tried.</li>\n<li>Be brief in remembering failures, but long on reminding what you’ve learned from each misstep and catastrophe.</li>\n<li>Embrace this truth. When you face your failure head on and learn from it, doing so mentors that skill into the life of those you lead.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<h3>Celebrate your Industry</h3>\n<ul>\n<li>You and your team provide a special service or product to our way of life- celebrate it.</li>\n<li>Look to the big changes last year, and in the year to come, and rile your people up about the amazing future you intend to create together.</li>\n<li>Your team members can & will become the innovators in your industry when they are led well. Be that leader.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<h3>Celebrate your Future</h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Point out specific projects, causes or milestones you believe your team can reach.</li>\n<li>Make the Dream and the Cause something worth working for. Little dreams make for little leaders & little victories</li>\n<li>The definition of a horizon is simple. It\'s the place where Heaven touches earth. It\'s the place where sunsets & sunrises remind us to put our past behind us, and that new day awaits us.</li>\n</ul>\n\nOne month down in 2015, but a lifetime of possibilities are waiting on you and the people who will be influenced by your leadership this year. Make this the year of <em>\"Leading Transformation from Dreams to One Million Realities\"</em>.', 'Transform One Million Realities', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'transform-one-million-realities', '', '', '2015-01-30 06:20:28', '2015-01-30 11:20:28', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22416', 0, 'post', '', 7),
(22450, 384, '2015-02-06 06:00:12', '2015-02-06 11:00:12', 'How many times have you heard a cliché related to the separation of home and work? It may have come in response to a bitter co-worker whose negativity oozes from them like lava from a truly angry volcano.\n\nMaybe you or another co-worker made the mistake of asking what’s wrong and from their response you get to learn of a bad home-life situation or the really ugly freeway-driver that cut them off on the way to work that morning.\n\nLet me guess. Someone eventually answered the malady of Mr. or Mrs. Irked with the always appropriate you need to leave home at home and focus on work at work.\n\nRegardless of how it is put, the concept of separating work-life and home-life, or freeway driving-life for that matter, is understood by all of us and we get the professional expectation: Keep them separate.\n\nIf you are like me in one particular way, then that quasi self-management rule may not sit well with you. There is a core feeling or sense inside some of us that says: Wait a minute, stop being me and become someone different?\n\nMentally leaving work at work doesn\'t seem to work well for some of us. For example, I love what I do, and I really like sharing my daily triumphs and challenges with my wife. She not only helps me with her removed perspective, but she in turn gives me her low-down-dirty work stuff as well and then seeks my opinion.\n\nI strangely find that her quests at the office resemble mine and it often seems that we’re both working the same human based algebra problems. They just have slightly different details.\n\nTogether, she and I have conquered many the battles that we each were pitted to fight alone. My curiosity is why do we fight this natural partnership which lies waiting for many of us at home? Secondly, what about the other way around?\n\nWe\'ve all heard the personal stories from our co-workers, and given the severity of the gory details we are either there listening as a consultant, or looking for the next beep from our cell phone to provide the excuse to get away from the conversation.\n\nI have, with caution and curiosity, made it my purpose to blur, dilute and to completely eradicate the line in the sand between life at home and work. I had to start to obliterate the thoughts from my head, whenever they start to creep in. Don’t bring your work-life home. Work isn\'t the place to bring your home-life problems.\n\nAs a result of my little internal mind experiment I\'ve learned a few very valuable concepts:\n\n<ol>\n<li>I am fairly successful at home and at work, and it’s for the same reasons. The solutions I try seem to work for both areas – the type of problem being the same. My attitude plays a tremendous role in this success-failure paradigm, so I remind myself to keep my ego in check and my empathy in the full-throttle position.</li>\n<li>The honesty that I commit to in the face of any opportunity is the same, whether at home or at work. It may not always be pure, but should be consistent. As relationships are based upon trust then I must demonstrate my acceptance for my own failures, willingness to fail and in the moment; true-belief that I may be wrong so I must remain open minded.</li>\n<li>I care about those in my life, obviously not the same way or in the level of intensity when comparing those at work or home, but I value the relationships before the location. I can give something to the co-worker I am working with if I give something from my <em>other</em> life – my home life. In turn, I strengthen my relationships at home when I show enthusiasm in giving detail of my work experience to a home based problem. It shows that I am open to give all of my experience towards working towards a solution.</li>\n</ol>\n\nI like myself at home and at work. This seems to be an obvious key here. How I feel about who I am – which is again, really good, allows me to focus on the other people in my life and not my place among them. If I were to suddenly stop and only move forward on my self-directed path depending on who I was dealing with say a <em>homie</em> or a <em>workie</em> then I’d fall out of balance.\n\nIn fact, if the inner-workings of my mind were displayed on a movie screen and the choice of how to proceed showed the images of stopping and figuring out where I was and then only proceeding if my path matched my location, I’d leave that theater right in the middle of the movie. My wife will tell you I’d never do that.\n\nFocusing on others, regardless of our shared location, is where success lies. While I have learned some great lessons about some very deep subjects by using the things I\'ve learned at home and work without the line of demarcation between the two, one very golden pillar of truth remains from my education in this subject.\n\nWho we are as individuals is a product of our experiences and our attitude. If we employ both in the most positive way towards either achieving success or in dealing with challenges, we will have the best chance for success if we disregard where we are at and remember that family, friends, co-workers, bosses and employees are human beings. They all deserve the best we have to offer regardless where we are at any time.', 'Careful Of The Clichés', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'careful-of-the-cliches', '', '', '2015-02-06 06:00:12', '2015-02-06 11:00:12', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22450', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(22452, 372, '2015-02-04 06:00:30', '2015-02-04 11:00:30', 'The improving economy has prompted many companies to reinvest in their employees through team building activities. With the purse-strings less tight, leaders try to create a fun atmosphere and help team members bond with each other.\n\nA recent <a href=\"http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_27383310/team-building-is-focus-colorado-companies-and-event\" target=\"_blank\">Denver Post</a> article discussed this trend. Getting people out of the structure and formality of the workplace can boost connections and increase communication. Yet some activities rely on competition, which often creates hard feelings.\n\nOne Denver firm operates an indoor kart racing facility that is very popular for company team building events. The feedback they get is 95% positive - yet there are periodic problems. One business owner let the competition go to his head and began ramming his employees\' karts. \"We had to remove him from the track,\" sighed the track owner.\n\nThere is no question that these activities can be fun and are certainly a change-of-pace from your day-to-day work environment. But are you getting tangible, work-related benefit from the time and investment?\n\nThe reality is that team building will not likely have beneficial impact on your day-to-day operations. Bowling, softball leagues, bicycling clubs, ropes courses, and even carting events may be enjoyable for some team members. But there is no guarantee that cheering on a colleague on the sports field will make that same team member more cooperative at work the next day.\n\nHow can companies create beneficial team building experiences that positively impact team members and their business? By engaging in <strong>cooperative</strong> team building activities - not competitive ones.\n\nHere\'s an example. David Greer\'s upcoming book, <a href=\"http://blog.davidgreer.ca/2015/01/20/day-2-wind-in-your-sails/\" target=\"_blank\">Wind In Your Sails</a>, mentions a powerful practice for creating authentic cooperative connections between team members - cooking together.\n\nOne of his first jobs was with a start-up that operated out of a house. A norm evolved that people volunteered to cook lunch for their twenty or so colleagues every workday. It was a terrific relationship-building experience - and you know that real work problems were getting solved over sandwiches daily.\n\nDavid\'s story reminded me of how cooking together helped one of my teams. In my YMCA executive days, I created a similar experience for my day camp staff. We bused 30 team members to a rented cabin for a weekend of planning, training, and bonding. Dinner the second night was a team building experience.\n\nWe assigned people to four teams. Each eight member team had to plan their dinner meal within a $60 budget. That was <em>real money</em> back in the early 1980\'s. They had to plan who would take the lead on shopping, cooking, and cleaning. They had to cooperate with the other teams to share pots, pans, counter space, refrigerator shelves, ovens, etc. in our commercial kitchen.\n\nWe bused the teams to a local grocery store and gave them their cash. They had fifteen minutes to shop and get back on the bus. They then had 40-minutes to cook, 30-minutes to eat, and 30-minutes to clean the kitchen.\n\nThe experience was terrific. Everyone participated - and everyone enjoyed a nice meal. It was loud and fun. There were constant negotiations for needed pans and utensils and space as cooking began. People interacted deeply with everyone on their team - not just their best friends.\n\nAfterwards, we spent an hour facilitating <em>learning moments</em> from the dinner experience - and let these leaders tell us how planning, cooperation, and sharing will make ours a high performing, values-aligned team.\n\nThe <em>chaotic dinner</em> event helped improve relationships, cooperation, and communication across our team that summer.\n\nRemove the element of competition and build on the benefit of cooperation. Get out of the office and find ways of working together to make a positive impact on work relationships and practices.', 'Team Building Sometimes Isn&#039;t', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'team-building-sometimes-isnt', '', '', '2015-02-04 06:00:30', '2015-02-04 11:00:30', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22452', 0, 'post', '', 1);
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(22466, 274, '2015-02-02 13:00:20', '2015-02-02 18:00:20', 'Welcome to the February 2015 edition of the Leadership Development Carnival!\n\nFor those of you who watched the Super Bowl this weekend, did you gain any leadership takeaways? It seems that sports frequently provides an opportunity for leadership analogies!\n\nThis month, participants were given a choice of submitting a recent post or tackling the question of coping with external leadership challenges (for example, budget allocations or opposition from community entities). We opened up the carnival to older posts in order to capture participants best posts on this topic.\n<h3>Let\'s Get Started</h3>\n<strong>Anne Perschel, Ph.D.</strong>, of <a href=\"http://germaneconsulting.com/\">Germane Consulting</a> submitted <a href=\"http://germaneconsulting.com/how-to-define-company_purpose/\" target=\"_blank\">How To Define Your Company Purpose</a>. She shares: \"This is the first of a two-part series on defining company purpose and vision. Purpose is the springboard for an aspirational vision that inspires and galvanizes people. Follow Anne on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/bizshrink\" target=\"_blank\">@bizshrink</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Beth Miller</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.executive-velocity.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Executive Velocity</a> submitted<a href=\"http://www.executive-velocity.com/arent-revisiting-employees-goals-helping-grow/\" target=\"_blank\"> If You Aren\'t Revisiting Your Employees\' Goals, How Are You Helping Them Grow?</a> Beth writes, \"Organizations often have to shift their goals due to the rapidly changing landscape.  It is important that leaders revisit employee goals consistently to insure that employees’ goals are aligned with the company’s goals.\" Follow Beth on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/SrExecAdvisor\" target=\"_blank\">@SrExecAdvisor</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Bruce Harpham</strong> of Project Management Hacks submitted <a href=\"http://projectmanagementhacks.com/problem-solving-strategy/#sthash.ZuJQgPH4.dpbs\" target=\"_blank\">The ABC Problem Solving Strategy</a>. As Bruce notes, \"dealing with challenges requires both proactive and reactive tools. I cover both in the ABC problem solving strategy.\" Follow Bruce on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/PMPhacks\" target=\"_blank\">@PMPHacks</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Chery Gegelman</strong> of <a href=\"http://consultgiana.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Giana Consulting</a> submitted <a href=\"http://consultgiana.com/11-tips-for-dealing-with-manipulators/\" target=\"_blank\">11 Tips For Dealing With Manipulators</a>. This post addresses the fact that there are master manipulators in real life just like in soap operas...and each one of them knows that they are in control if they can successfully divide people. Find Chery on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/GianaConsulting\" target=\"_blank\">@GianaConsulting</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Dana Theus</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.inpowerconsultingllc.com/\" target=\"_blank\">In Power Consulting</a> submitted <a href=\"http://inpowercoaching.com/fearless-feedback/\" target=\"_blank\">Fearless Feedback</a>. In her post and the accompanying video, Dana explores why the feedback loop sometimes shuts down: \"Both sides begin to fear the result of open feedback and before long the feedback cycle diminishes or stops all together.\" Follow Dana on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/DanaTheus\" target=\"_blank\">@danatheus</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Jane Perdue</strong> of the <a href=\"http://braithwaiteinnovationgroup.com/\">Braithwaite Innovation Group</a> contributed <a href=\"http://braithwaiteinnovationgroup.com/using-stakeholders-to-lead-up-down-across-and-diagonally/\" target=\"_blank\">How To Involve The Right People In The Right Way</a>. Jane says: \"Every decision, project, and strategy that you make or do impacts others. That makes those people your stakeholders. So to be successful in leading up, down, across, and diagonally, you need to identify and involve the right people in the right way.\" Follow Jane on Twitter <a href=\"https://twitter.com/thehrgoddess\">@thehrgoddess</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Jennifer V. Miller</strong> of <a href=\"http://people-equation.com/\">The People Equation</a> shared <a href=\"http://people-equation.com/reinvigorate-your-leadership-goals-with-60-x-6/\" target=\"_blank\">Reinvigorate Your Leadership Goals With 60 x 6</a>. According to Jennifer, this post is a quick way to get back on track if you are already feeling the energy drain out of your leadership-related New Year\'s resolutions. Follow Jennifer on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/JenniferVMiller\">@JenniferVMiller</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Jesse Lyn Stoner</strong> of the <a href=\"http://seapointcenter.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Seapoint Center</a> provided <a href=\"http://seapointcenter.com/do-you-have-a-blah-blah-blah-vision/\" target=\"_blank\">Do You Have a Blah, Blah, Blah Vision or a Driving Vision?</a>. Jesse summarized: \"Some visions generate a tremendous amount of energy that drive you and your team where you want to go. Others are simply blah, blah, blah. Here are the 7 characteristics of a driving vision and what to do if your vision is just a wall decoration.\" Follow Jesse on Twitter at <a href=\"http://twitter.com/JesseLynStoner\" target=\"_blank\">@JesseLynStoner</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Jim Taggart</strong> of <a href=\"http://changingwinds.wordpress.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Changing Winds</a> submitted <a href=\"https://changingwinds.wordpress.com/2014/11/17/leading-in-a-time-of-rapidly-shifting-tectonic-plates/\" target=\"_blank\">Leading In A Time Of Rapidly Shifting Tectonic Plates</a> Jim says: \"I chose a post which looks at external challenges, namely economic forces which are causing major challenges for both national governments and organizations. Leadership will play an increasingly important role in how political and corporate leaders will tackle these competitive forces.\" Find Jim on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/72keys\" target=\"_blank\">@72keys</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Joel Garfinkle</strong> of <a href=\"http://careeradvancementblog.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Career Advancement Blog</a> contributed <a href=\"http://careeradvancementblog.com/category/leadership-skills\" target=\"_blank\">Seven Ways To Sell Your Ideas to Management</a>. According to Joel, these seven tips help you communicate and advocate for your ideas successfully, since influencing upward is about selling your ideas to management. Find Joel on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/JoelGarfinkle\" target=\"_blank\">@JoelGarfinkle</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>John Hunter </strong>of the <a href=\"http://management.curiouscatblog.net/\" target=\"_blank\">Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog</a> provided <a href=\"http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2014/01/06/bad-weather-is-part-of-the-transportation-system/\" target=\"_blank\">Bad Weather Is Part Of The Transportation System</a>. He writes: \"The management system must be designed and managed so that the organization successfully delivers value to customers under the conditions the organization will face. A system unable to deliver good results under the conditions everyone knows it will face is one with poor leadership.\" Follow John on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/curiouscat_com\" target=\"_blank\">@curiouscat_com</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Jon Mertz</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.thindifference.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Thin Difference</a> sent <a href=\"http://www.thindifference.com/2015/01/10/5-bold-ideas-recent-millennial-momentum/\" target=\"_blank\">5 Bold Ideas From The Recent Millennial Momentum</a>. Jon continues: \"Finding purpose in our work can be a challenge for leaders of any age. These five bold ideas from Millennial leaders will help make that challenge more attainable.\" Follow Jon on Twitter <a href=\"https://twitter.com/ThinDifference\" target=\"_blank\">@ThinDifference</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Julie Winkle Giulioni </strong>of <a href=\"http://www.juliewinklegiulioni.com/company/\">Design Arounds</a> submitted <a href=\"http://www.juliewinklegiulioni.com/blog/leadership-matters/small-steps-drive-significant-change/\">Small Steps Drive Significant Change</a>. Julie said, \"Part of grappling with external factors and challenges involves affecting change in your organization. I suggest a counter intuitive approach to this important leadership role in this post.\" Follow Julie on <a href=\"https://twitter.com/Julie_WG\" target=\"_blank\">@julie_wg</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>KG Charles-Harris</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.mappingcompanysuccess.com\">MAPping Company Success</a> provided <a href=\"http://mappingcompanysuccess.com/2014/06/entrepreneurs-the-chief-hustler/\" target=\"_blank\">Entrepreneurs: The Chief Hustler</a>. This post by shares the truth abut leading a start-up from someone who is currently doing that. Follow MAPping Company Success on Twitter <a href=\"https://twitter.com/OptionSanity\">@OptionSanity</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Karin Hurt</strong> of <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/\">Let\'s Grow Leaders</a> submitted <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/authenticity-transparency-trust/another-way-to-outsmart-the-competition/\">Another Way To Outsmart The Competition</a>. Karin contends: \"More than ever, telling the whole truth has become a competitive advantage. Outsmart the competition by being an explainer.\" Follow Karin on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/LetsGrowLeaders\">@letsgrowleaders</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Laura Schroeder</strong> of<a href=\"http://www.basware.com/\" target=\"_blank\"> Basware</a><a href=\"http://www.basware.com/\" target=\"_blank\"> </a>submitted <a href=\"https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/out-box-laura-schroeder?trk=prof-post\" target=\"_blank\">Out of the Box</a>. In this post, she shared a recent book club review and connected that review with how to create more positive interactions at work. Find Laura on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/WorkGal\" target=\"_blank\">@workgal</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Linda Fisher Thornton</strong> of <a href=\"http://leadingincontext.com/\">Leading In Context</a> contributed <a href=\"http://leadingincontext.com/2015/01/21/future-2/\" target=\"_blank\">Imagining The Future Of Leadership</a>. She says: \"The future of leadership is globally collaborative and inclusive - communication, relationships and trust will be crucial.\" Follow her on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/leadingincontxt\">@Leadingincontxt</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Mark Deterding</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.triuneleadershipservices.com/\">Triune Leadership Services</a> shared <a href=\"http://www.triuneleadershipservices.com/patience/\" target=\"_blank\">How Are You Doing With Patience?</a>. Mark asks: \"In a world obsessed with instant gratification, as a leader how are you doing with patience? Hear about a story in which patience has paid huge dividends.\" Follow Mark on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/mwdeterding\">@mwdeterding</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Michael Lee Stallard </strong>of <a href=\"http://www.michaelleestallard.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Lee Stallard</a> submitted <a href=\"http://www.michaelleestallard.com/save-shack#more-6411\" target=\"_blank\">How to Save the Shack</a>.  Addressing the challenges currently faced by Radio Shack, he recommends steps including \"restore employee pride\" and \"tap employee brilliance.\" Follow Michael on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/michaelstallard\" target=\"_blank\">@michaelstallard</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Mike Henry, Sr. </strong> of <a href=\"http://owassocharacter.org/\">Owasso Character Council</a> contributed <a href=\"http://owassocharacter.org/going-all-out-with-determination/\">Going All Out With Determination</a>. Mike notes \"without determination we won\'t accomplish anything worthwhile. Follow Mike on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/mikehenrysr\">@mikehenrysr</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Neal Burgis, Ph.D.</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.successful-solutions.com/\">Burgis Successful Solutions</a> submitted <a href=\"http://www.successful-solutions.com/2015/01/29/external-thought-leaders-drive-innovation/\" target=\"_blank\">External Thought Leaders Drive Innovation</a>. In this post, Neal discusses how business leaders drive innovation through their entrepreneurial employees. These individuals take direction from their leaders, and then generate ideas, create and produce the innovative breakthrough results they have an emotional connection with. Find Neal on Twitter <a href=\"https://twitter.com/Exec_Solutions\" target=\"_blank\">@exec_solutions</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Randy Conley</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.leadingwithtrust.com/\">Leading With Trust</a> submitted <a href=\"http://leadingwithtrust.com/2015/01/11/surviving-friendly-fire-8-tips-for-dealing-with-unfair-criticism/\" target=\"_blank\">8 Tips For Dealing With Unfair Criticism</a>. Randy shares: \"One of the most common challenges leaders will face is being wounded by friendly fire – unfair criticism from a boss or colleague. These eight actionable tips show how you can not only manage through this type of challenge, but emerge with your integrity and professionalism in tact.\" Follow Randy on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/RandyConley\">@randyconley</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Robyn McLeod</strong> of <a href=\"http://chatsworthconsulting.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Chatsworth Consulting Group</a> submitted <a href=\"http://chatsworthconsulting.com/2012/10/16/5-key-factors-to-having-those-hard-conversations/\" target=\"_blank\">5 Key Factors to Having Those Hard Conversations</a>. This post covers shares how to successfully navigate difficult conversations, whether it be delivering tough feedback, standing up for your team, or dealing with a harsh critic. Follow Chatsworth Consulting Group\'s Thoughtful Leaders on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/ThoughtfulLdrs/\" target=\"_blank\">@ThoughtfulLdrs</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>S. Chris Edmonds</strong> of <a href=\"http://drivingresultsthroughculture.com\" target=\"_blank\">Driving Results Through Culture</a> contributed <a href=\"http://drivingresultsthroughculture.com/values-matter/\" target=\"_blank\">Values Matter</a>. In sharing this post, Chris explains: \"I’m always inspired by high performing organizations that are international about their values and culture. My blog post and podcast feature two companies, one of which survived the indictment of three senior executives on federal charges of conspiracy to defraud the government to a culture based on vision and shared values. Their engaged employees and performance show how important values are.\" Follow Chris on Twitter <a href=\"https://twitter.com/scedmonds\" target=\"_blank\">@scedmonds</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Simon Mitchell </strong>of <a href=\"http://www.ddiworld.com/home\" target=\"_blank\">Development Dimensions International</a> submitted <a href=\"http://www.ddiworld.com/blog/tmi/october/every-move-you-make-theyll-be-watching-you#.VM7_xmjF-Sq\" target=\"_blank\">Every Move You Make, They\'ll Be Watching You</a>. In this post, Simon shares that leaders - while judged so thoroughly - are just like everyone else and capable of the same mistakes, missteps and awkward moments as other people. When dealing with external challenges, leaders need to be authentic and empathetic, displaying their human side no matter how uncomfortable this may feel. After all, a real person is someone people want to work with.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Tanveer Naseer </strong>of <a href=\"http://www.tanveernaseer.com/about/\" target=\"_blank\">Tanveer Naseer Leadership</a> submitted <a href=\"http://www.tanveernaseer.com/4-measures-leaders-can-use-to-cure-toxic-workplace/\" target=\"_blank\">How Leaders Can Cure A Toxic Workplace</a>. In this post, Tanveer outlines 4 key measures based on neuroscience findings that leaders can use to detoxify a toxic workplace in their organization. Follow Tanveer on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/TanveerNaseer\" target=\"_blank\">@TanveerNaseer</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Tom Walter</strong> of <a href=\"http://thomasjwalter.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Thomas J. Walter</a> submitted <a href=\"http://thomasjwalter.com/2015/01/29/solving-external-leadership-challenges-through-engaged-employees/\" target=\"_blank\">Solving External Leadership Challenges Through Engaged Employees</a>. In this post, Tom outlines four examples which have frequently proven to solve external challenges faster and more accurately. Follow Tom on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/TomWalter1971\" target=\"_blank\">@TomWalter1971</a>.\n<div class=\"divide\"></div>\n<strong>Wally Bock</strong> of <a href=\"http://www.threestarleadership.com/\">Three Star Leadership</a> sent <a href=\"http://www.threestarleadership.com/supervision/dealing-with-the-dust-catcher\" target=\"_blank\">Dealing With The Dust Catcher</a>. Acknowledging that dealing with behavior issues can be the most time-consuming and frustrating part of being a boss, Wally contributes a post providing effective strategies. Follow Wally on Twitter at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/wallybock\" target=\"_blank\">@wallybock</a>.\n<h3>Until Next Time</h3>\nWe appreciate everyone who submitted posts for this month\'s carnival. We encourage you to follow our fantastic contributors and consider contributing yourself.\n\nFor the March carnival, we are pleased to announce that <a href=\"http://www.ddiworld.com/company/media-room/spokespeople/richard-wellins#.VMubnWjF-wI\" target=\"_blank\">Rich Wellins, Ph.D.</a>, Development Dimensions International (DDI) Senior Vice President is hosting the March Leadership Development Carnival on DDI’s blog, <a href=\"http://www.ddiworld.com/blog/tmi#.VMo9vmjF-wI\" target=\"_blank\">Talent Management Intelligence</a>.\n\nWe will send submission details later this month.\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/ldc_rectangle.png\" alt=\"\" />', 'February 2015 Leadership Development Carnival', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'february-2015-leadership-development-carnival', '', '', '2015-02-02 13:00:20', '2015-02-02 18:00:20', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22466', 0, 'post', '', 4),
(22487, 252, '2015-02-03 06:00:59', '2015-02-03 11:00:59', 'I was talking to a client today about her unusual ability to gain people’s trust quickly.\n\nThis supports her ability to get things done. To her bosses, she seemed to perform miracles.\n\nI commented to her that I think the ability to gain cooperation is an underestimated component of efficiency. She said she had never really thought about it that way.\n\n<h3>Take The Time To Prepare</h3>\n\nTake the time to pave the road so things run smoothly when you need them. It was early in my career. I was a mainframe systems manager.  I depended on the operators in our computer facility to do what I needed, when I asked them to. Moreover, I wanted them to want to do to the work. Intuitively I knew it was going to require spending time with them. I needed to earn the right to ask them to do things, when I didn\'t have the authority. They didn’t report to me.\n\n<h3>Don’t Do It If You Are Not Sincere</h3>\n\nDon’t get me wrong. I wasn’t simply using them. I wanted to get to know them. The more I understood their jobs, their routines, and their responsibilities, the more likely I would make intelligent requests of them. For instance, I would manage my work around their biggest printing and delivery days, etc. This would make us all successful at our jobs.\n\n<h3>Cooperation Is Better Than Compliance</h3>\n\nMy supervisor criticized me for what he saw as me spending too much time with them. I tried to explain to him how it paid off. He didn\'t seem to care so much about results as much as the difference between my approach and how he would handle things. He was quite strident with this criticism.\n\n<h3>From The Mouths Of Babes</h3>\n\nOne day my supervisor invited me to his office. He asked me to present a particularly touchy employee relations topic to the operators <em>because I had such a good relationship with them</em>. Okay, so when it works for you, it’s okay that I\'ve got these relationships...right?\n\nWhat I said to him was: “I could do that. They will hear me out. But given your level in the organization I think it might be better for you to present this to them. This way you can develop the skills and the relationships with them so they can hear the message from you.”\n\nI don’t even know where that came from. The other odd thing is that he didn\'t push me to give the presentation then. I don’t feel like I ever paid a price for what could be perceived as impertinence.\n\n<h3>The Skill Of Gaining Cooperation</h3>\n\nAs a former human resources manager we would discuss how different employees were good at teamwork or not. In a technical industry it was sometimes difficult for me to make the case that this was important, or how to measure it.\n\nWhat we came down to is: “Do people want to work with this person? Are they able to get things done through others when needed?” Actually it’s not so difficult to measure, and yet, I still get resistance about the importance of this ability.', 'Is Cooperation The New Efficiency?', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'is-cooperation-the-new-efficiency', '', '', '2015-02-03 06:00:59', '2015-02-03 11:00:59', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22487', 0, 'post', '', 3),
(22513, 251, '2015-02-10 06:00:57', '2015-02-10 11:00:57', 'I’d volunteered for this group for a long time, so I was surprised when the new monthly schedule was released and my name wasn\'t on it.\n\nIn rapid succession, surprise was replaced by anger, then insignificance, reflection, and finally curiosity.\n\nYears ago, I might have gotten stuck somewhere along that chain. I might have gotten good and mad and declared an intent to take my work elsewhere.\n\nPerhaps I would have felt small and discredited while questioning the value of my contribution, maybe even the value of my being.\n\nEver felt that way? I’ve learned those are <em>me</em> reactions that take you nowhere good. You get all spun up or sucked into the downward spiral.\n\nYou spend countless hours, days, maybe even weeks or months wallowing in non-productive muck that only generates more muck. Muck that obscures the truth. That creates intentions that never existed. That fuels unnecessary ill will. That builds an ever-growing pyramid of unplanned and unintended consequences. All with no basis in reality.\n\nThe buried reality is that someone made a mistake. A mistake that had nothing to do with you. Nothing at all. That kind of stuff happens. A lot. And here you made yourself miserable, as well as probably lots of other people around you, taking something personal that wasn\'t personal at all. Ah, the time and emotional energy wasted. And nothing productive or good or meaningful to show for it.\n\n<strong>Next Time, Think Big</strong> - Widen your perspective. Don’t just get out of the box, especially the <em>me</em> one, throw it away. Embrace purposeful discomfort and expand your comfort zone.\n\n<strong>Next Time, Be The Water</strong> - Let all those emotions flow by. Shake yourself free if you get stuck. Look for and discard judgments that encourage thinking—and feeling—small.\n\n<strong>Next time, Own It</strong> - Consider the other person’s perspective. Imagine what they might be feeling. If you don’t know, tactfully and gracefully ask.\n\nAnd expect to hear that you never crossed their mind. In these cases, that’s a good thing. A growth thing. Something I\'ve learned to cherish.', 'Next Time Be The Water', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'next-time-be-the-water', '', '', '2015-02-10 06:00:57', '2015-02-10 11:00:57', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22513', 0, 'post', '', 1),
(22534, 383, '2015-02-17 06:00:37', '2015-02-17 11:00:37', 'The concept of time management is outdated. You can’t manage time. You <em>can</em> manage life. Often, the ambitiousness of our plans does not result in equally laudable accomplishments.\n\nTime managers aim to <em>do</em> as much as possible. Life managers concentrate on what they have <em>done</em>.\n\nTime management tools such as Google Calendar, Asana, Jira, Evernote, and Outlook are useless if you don\'t know the main trick that makes such applications effective: self-discipline.\n<h3>Without Self Discipline, Tools are Useless</h3>\nFilling up your digital agenda with assignments only works if you prioritize them bearing in mind the factors of time, importance, and necessity. To do a simple list of tasks is half the battle. But to win the war you should be focused on priorities. It is ineffective to do everything at one time. You should learn to go deeply into one task and stick to your objective until it is achieved.\n\nConcentrating on one thing sounds simple but it takes years of practice to learn to be completely focused. Taking up this challenge is a direct way to efficiency and happiness at work. You won\'t lose anything if you check your messenger and email after you have completed the A-priority tasks.\n<h3>Take Joy in Your Work</h3>\nIt is not a secret that feeling pleasure in your activity increases efficiency, so enjoy what you are doing. If you are not in the right mood to complete an urgent task on your agenda think of something happy that can help you shift your mental gears motivate you to cross that task off the list. A piece of chocolate, a funny video, jumping jacks – anything that will switch your mood to happy so that you can continue working efficiently.\n<h3>Take Breaks</h3>\nAnother life management tool and significant efficiency booster is a simple break. Our brains, bodies and souls need breaks and can’t function without them. Life management postulates that an efficient worker either works well or does not work at all.\n\nEveryone has their own methods of relaxation. Close your eyes, calm down, refresh your mind. Doesn\'t sound good? Stand up, sit down, do simple physical exercises. Don’t hesitate to give your body and mind the type of rest it wants and deserves.\n<h3>Get Closure On Your Day</h3>\nAt the end of your working day, look at your list of tasks to see if you have managed to complete all of them. Assess your satisfaction with the quality of your work. Savor what went well; plan to improve on what could have been better.\n\nLife managers know how to be focused on tasks, not the hands of a clock. Surprisingly, when you think of a time limit while working you lose about half of productivity to the pull of the anxiety of getting the work done quicker as opposed to well.\n\nPrioritization, concentration, relaxation are integral components of efficiency which lead life managers to undeniable success.', 'Turning Time Management Into Life Management', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'turning-time-management-into-life-management', '', '', '2015-02-17 06:00:37', '2015-02-17 11:00:37', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22534', 0, 'post', '', 1),
(22551, 330, '2015-02-06 10:15:32', '2015-02-06 15:15:32', 'Just a few days ago, a handful of colleagues and I launched a fundraising campaign for our friend <a href=\"http://www.gofundme.com/keepjamieathome\">Jamie Showkeir</a>.\n\nJamie has ALS, the debilitating disease that was the focus of so much attention last summer with the ALS Bucket Challenge. Jamie was diagnosed with ALS in 2014 and is now confined to a wheelchair.\n\nLet me tell you a little bit about Jamie.\n\nAlong with his wonderful wife Maren, Jamie is the co-author of two wonderful books: <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Authentic-Conversations-Moving-Manipulation-Commitment/dp/1576755959\">Authentic Conversations</a> and <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Wisdom-Work-Finding-Sanity/dp/1609947975\">Yoga Wisdom At Work</a>.\n\nI first met him at an author’s retreat north of San Francisco. You know those people whose spirit and liveliness fill up a room? Jamie is that guy. He is large – like a football player, soulful – like a yogi master, and real – like a man who is comfortable in his own skin. He’s also big-hearted. At another retreat a few years later, Jamie sat with me as I grappled with my father’s impending death. His solid presence comforted me.\n\nYou can imagine how shocking it was to learn that such a vibrant man has ALS. The author community surrounding Jamie was stunned. We wanted to help Jamie and Maren but weren’t exactly sure how. So we launched the <a href=\"http://www.gofundme.com/keepjamieathome\">Keep Jamie At Home</a> fundraiser with the goal of raising $60,000. The money will provide 24-hour in-home care, something not covered by health insurance.\n\nThe response has been nothing short of amazing. Within 24-hours of launching the campaign more than 50% of our fundraising goal had been achieved. But something else happened too, something wonderful and unexpected. By actively supporting Jamie in such a tangible way, people have found a productive way to grieve. We started the fundraiser with the goal of helping Jamie.\n\nNow I realize that the fundraiser has been just as important to the community that surrounds him. The fundraiser has been psychologically healing for all of us who love Jamie. ALS no longer stuns us into submission.\n\nYou can be part of this wonderful movement and healing process. I invite you to join our fundraising campaign and donating whatever you can. Go to <a href=\"http://www.gofundme.com/KeepJamieAtHome\">Go Fund Me</a> to contribute. Please give until it feels good.', 'An Unexpected Lesson From A Would-Be Fundraiser', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'an-unexpected-lesson-from-a-would-be-fundraiser', '', '', '2015-02-06 10:15:32', '2015-02-06 15:15:32', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22551', 0, 'post', '', 1),
(22557, 276, '2015-02-11 06:00:40', '2015-02-11 11:00:40', 'The key to a leader’s success is the relationship they develop with their constituents.\n\nThis relationship is always based on trust.\n\nWithout a deep sense of trust, a leader cannot have any relationship with constituents.\n\nThere are many ways to gain trust with your constituents...\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Do What You Say You Will Do</strong> – This the ultimate way to gain their trust. It means following through with what say you will do.</li>\n<li><strong>Trust & Nurture Them To Develop</strong> – To gain trust we need to trust others. It is a two-way street. We need to be patient and give them the time to grow and develop instead of forcing the issue.</li>\n<li><strong>Do The Right Thing</strong> – Regardless of whether or not anyone is watching you, integrity cannot be compromised. It takes many years to establish your credibility, but it only takes a few minutes to ruin it.</li>\n<li><strong>Care For Your People</strong> – Before we ask our people to do something for us, we must appeal to them and touch their heart.</li>\n<li><strong>Serve Your People</strong> – When we serve our people, we ensure that their interest is taken into consideration. By doing so, we don’t focus on who gets the credit. Our focus shifts to getting the job done.</li>\n</ul>\n\nAs I write this post, I can’t help but think of Theodore Roosevelt’s quote:\n\n<blockquote>“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.\"</blockquote>\n\nJust like listening, by knowing our people, we can better work with them and also put them in the right position to be successful. To know them we have to make an effort to spend time with them; through the process, we will learn a lot about ourselves and our people. Think of it as an investment, an investment that will yield results over time, but in which upfront investment is mandatory.\n\nThe advancement of technology has brought about other ways for leaders to connect with their people and share their knowledge. However, just like any tool, this creates the risk of saying the wrong thing or posting material that is questionable. Social Media should be used responsibly.\n\nMany times over the last few years, government officials have had to step down because of their wrongful use of technology. As a leader, you need to think twice and be aware that anything you say or post will be a permanent record that will be associated with you for the rest of your life. Future employers can search you and know more about you.\n\nThese records are archived and will be available for companies to use. Your e-impression is very important, because in the absence of face-to-face interaction, your e-impression is what people have to go with.\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">“Trust men and they will be true to you: treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.”</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Ralph Waldo Emerson</div>\n</blockquote>\n\nIn closing, our relationship with our constituents takes time to develop, but it is easily breached when we don’t do the right thing. Be aware and be careful what you say and post. Feel free to share this post to anyone you know.', 'Trust &amp; Leadership', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'trust-and-leadership', '', '', '2015-02-11 06:00:40', '2015-02-11 11:00:40', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22557', 0, 'post', '', 1),
(22604, 374, '2015-02-13 06:00:08', '2015-02-13 11:00:08', 'Friday the 13th is here, and we get another one next month. Thoughts of Friday the 13th got me thinking about luck, so I decided to poke around among the writings of our <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/\">Leading Voices</a> to see what I could find. Lucky me, I found quite a few references to luck.\n\nSometimes we get to choose our teammates; other times external factors rule. <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/will-lukang/\">Will Lukang</a> looks back on his childhood basketball days and says, \"What a great feeling to be picked first, but that’s not my luck as I’m not the best player and usually play a backup role.\" He goes on to explore the art and skill of building teams in <a href=\"http://willlukang.com/2014/05/28/surrounding-with-the-right-people/\" target=\"_blank\">Surrounding Yourself With The Right People</a>, with a special eye to including people in your inner circle who have different skill sets than  you.\n\nWhen you do hit the sweet spot of collaboration, luck means good fortune. <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/susan-mazza/\" target=\"_blank\">Susan Mazza</a>, in her article <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/can-collaboration-prevail/\" target=\"_blank\">Can Collaboration Prevail</a>, celebrates those who are <em>lucky</em> enough to experience the extraordinary intrinsic rewards of being part of a team, whether they experience it in school or at work.\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/mike-henry/\" target=\"_blank\">Mike Henry, Sr.</a>, in his article <a href=\"http://mikehenrysr.com/2012/11/23/heroic-choices/\" target=\"_blank\">Heroic Choices</a>, discusses the difference between doing heroic things versus living as a hero. He asks: \"Have you been <em>lucky</em> enough to get by with the heroic path yet?\"\n\nIn preparing for the heroic path of war, <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/chip-bell/\" target=\"_blank\">Chip Bell</a> wrote about<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/change-management-lessons-from-eating-snakes-and-rats/\" target=\"_blank\">Change Management Lessons From Eating Snakes & Rats</a>. Ultimately, his post was not the jungle for which he trained, but the lessons stuck for a lifetime.\n\n\"I was <em>lucky</em>. The geography of the region of Vietnam where I served was much like the southeastern U.S. farmland where I grew up. While there were monsoons and tropical vegetation, there was no jungle. But, the superb Army Jungle School experience stayed with me. And, when I am asked by a senior leader to facilitate a large systems change, I find myself metaphorically thinking, \'How can we encourage queasy, skeptical employees to eat snakes and rats?\'\"\n\nHere at Lead Change Group, we often talk about ways to measure results. <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/karin-hurt/\" target=\"_blank\">Karin Hurt</a>, in <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/communication-listening/results-make-the-brand/\" target=\"_blank\">Great Leadership Produces Great Results</a>, notes that results that can’t be replicated are <em>luck</em>.\n\nSometimes, we have to realize our own strengths, such as the situation <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/mary-schaefer/\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Schaefer</a> described in <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/job-security-change-your-mind-change-your-life/\" target=\"_blank\">Job Security - Change Your Mind, Change Your Life</a>. She writes, \"I learned from this experience that they were <em>lucky</em> to have me. I had a lot going for me whether I stayed or left. I would never feel at the mercy of this type of situation again.\"\n\nIn keeping with the theme of knowing your own strengths, <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/author/jane-perdue/\" target=\"_blank\">Jane Perdue </a>cautions against a self-effacing <em>I was lucky</em> when you are paid a compliment. In <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/a-humblebrag-isnt-the-answer/\" target=\"_blank\">A Humblebrag Isn\'t The Answer</a>, Jane explains, \"Individuals might believe your denials and fail to give you credit when credit is due.\"\n\nLastly, I hope that this situation is a hypothetical for many of you, but as <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/david-dye/\" target=\"_blank\">David Dye</a> writes, in <a href=\"http://trailblazeinc.com/resources/engage-newsletter/jan-2015/\" target=\"_blank\">When Your Team Won\'t Work Together</a>: \"If you ask people to work together and then you tolerate obnoxious, conniving, bullying, abusive people, good <em>luck</em>.\"', 'Leadership, Luck, &amp; Friday The 13th', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'leadership-luck-and-friday-the-13th', '', '', '2015-02-13 06:00:08', '2015-02-13 11:00:08', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22604', 0, 'post', '', 8),
(22632, 310, '2015-02-16 06:00:52', '2015-02-16 11:00:52', 'I love James Bond movies. I love the tough way in which this secret agent character confronts danger, boldly embraces his swagger and deploys his cool gadgets.\n\nIn one of the movies, License to Kill, James Bond went rogue — giving himself carte blanche authority to use his know how on a specific mission.\n\nHe broke away from his boss, M16, to avenge the death of a friend’s wife perpetrated by a drug lord on their wedding day.\n\nEquipped with his secret agent insights and tools, James Bond made some decisions on what he thought was right for the situation. Not to endorse the vengeance part of Bond’s actions in this movie, but I do see a connection to my favorite perspectives: Everyone’s a leader.\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ John Quincy Adams</div>\n</blockquote>\n\nA few of my clients engage me to teach workshops on leadership skills for non-supervisors. The goal is to encourage those at any level of an organization to see that wherever they are, there’s an opportunity to jump in and lead, to <em>give yourself license</em>.\n\nHow does one get there? How does someone develop their own lens or know how along the way? Key to this shift is to be on a mission of perspective. Many I encounter in my leadership sessions still think this work is too hard, or feel that they don’t know enough about this concept. The truth is leadership can be a very rewarding experience, and the benefits to taking charge effectively are enormous.\n\nFor one, we learn to handle our professional and personal concerns while helping others simultaneously. Leadership facilitates an increased self-esteem and feelings of personal power to affect a desired outcome of a situation or task. Some might wonder if it is okay to be somewhat fearful of such a lofty, hefty, overwhelming responsibility. Of course it’s okay, and it’s very normal.\n\nThe goal is not to get stuck in that fear but to take action. In doing so, we come to establish a base of internal and external resources that will support us in times of challenge, our own M16. And many problems we experience, whether individually, organizationally, or community, are best addressed at the lowest level. Therefore, the onward onus is on each of us to lead.\n\nKeep in mind that leadership, just like life, is a many-layered thing, encompassing several sub roles that we navigate in our daily pursuits. Clarity on those sub roles, as we honor these assignments, is essential, in order to shift perspective on leadership. It’s definitely valuable to carve out the time to think through. Because leadership skills can show up in many forms and be based in several venues where we perform with authority. A sum of these might look like this:\n\n<ul>\n<li>Parent: Business Owner/Entrepreneur</li>\n<li>Oldest Child: Pastor</li>\n<li>Student: Teacher</li>\n<li>Athletic Captain: Coach</li>\n<li>Team Lead: Soldier</li>\n<li>Supervisor: Subject Matter Expert</li>\n<li>Manager: Committee Chair</li>\n</ul>\n\nWe have a mission in one or more of these roles to use our unique know how. Dreaming, setting goals and inspiring ourselves or others are critical actions in many of them. There’s a life production required here that becomes purposeful, bringing new meaning to all we are and do. We hold this license which strengthens our authority to <em>go rogue</em> for leadership.\n\nParts of this article were excerpted from my book, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/dp/1479324760\">Hardcore Leadership</a>', 'Licensed To Lead - A New Perspective', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'licensed-to-lead-a-new-perspective', '', '', '2015-02-16 06:00:52', '2015-02-16 11:00:52', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22632', 0, 'post', '', 3),
(22653, 374, '2015-02-18 06:00:27', '2015-02-18 11:00:27', 'Here at Lead Change Group, we know that problems are most effectively solved when individuals come together to meld ideas, energies, and approaches.\n\nTo use a golf analogy, not every shot is a long drive. Many times, golfers have to take a <strong>chip shot</strong> to move the ball along for a short distance, with incisive accuracy.\n\nIf you are new to the Chip Shots green, welcome. In our Chip Shots feature, our Leading Voices are invited to provide brief insights into a leadership-related topic. To learn more, spend some time browsing the entire <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/topics/chip-shots/\">Chip Shots Series</a>.\n<h3>Today\'s Question</h3>\nOne of our Lead Change Group members wrote about time management recently. His post got me thinking about time management in general, so I decided to ask our Leading Voices this question:\n<blockquote>What is the one piece of time management advice that you believe is the most useful?</blockquote>\nThese Leading Voices are great time managers - they responded quickly with their thoughts...\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/chip-bell/\" target=\"_blank\">Chip Bell</a> - Prioritize ABC. Do A\'s before C\'s. Doing C\'s feels good but doing A\'s make you successful. You can get more done between 6:00-8:00am than between 4:00pm-6:00pm.\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/david-dye/\">David Dye</a> - At any given moment, there are limitless things you could be doing with your time. You can’t do them all...you can’t even do most of them. When you accept your own limitations and focus on the few meaningful things you can do each day, you create a solid foundation for your decisions - whatever tool you use to make them.\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/susan-mazza/\">Susan Mazza</a> - Ultimately time management is about the choices you make to ensure you invest your time wisely. Software can help us keep track of tasks but you must keep in mind that ultimately productivity is a function of the value you create not the number of tasks you cross of your list. As John Bell, author of <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Do-Less-Better-Strategic-Sacrifice/dp/1137452773\" target=\"_blank\">Do Less Better</a>, suggests the goal should be to Do Less Better rather than try to find ways to do more.\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/mike-henry/\">Mike Henry</a> - My newest piece of time-management advice is to limit the number of things I\'m working on (WIP). As my role as VP of IT expands, it\'s easy to over-commit. I\'m learning to stop trying to maximize my capacity and rather maximize my throughput, or moving items from To Do to Done. Hat tip goes to <a href=\"http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/#sthash.YtxDRAJT.dpbs\" target=\"_blank\">Personal Kanban</a> by Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Berry.\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/karin-hurt/\" target=\"_blank\">Karin Hurt</a> - Build white space into your calendar. When you rush from meeting to meeting, you actually are less productive because you don’t have time to think. For additional thoughts from me on time management, read <a href=\"http://letsgrowleaders.com/results-execution/effective_time_management/\" target=\"_blank\">Effective Time Management</a>.\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/mitchell-levy/\">Mitchell Levy</a> - When in doubt farm it out. If there\'s something that you do that doesn\'t truly need you, is it worthwhile to pay someone else to do it? Think long and hard about this question and your initial Aha statement.\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/will-lukang/\" target=\"_blank\">Will Lukang</a> - There are many things in life that are only available to you depending on your accomplishments and social status. Time is a common denominator; everyone is given the same 24 hours. But it is worth noting that it waits for no one. One of my most effective time management pieces of advice is \"understand your priorities.\" I\'m a victim of this myself, sometimes I preoccupy myself with tasks that can we done easily and I will knock a few of them out. At the end of the day, as I reflect on my work, I realize that no matter how many of those tasks I completed, I did not make any progress, because they are not the correct priority. Understanding your priorities is key to your ability to manage your time.\n\n<a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/jon-mertz/\">Jon Mertz</a> - Be intentional. Each week, block out the time to spend doing what matters most. This could be meeting one-on-one with team members or setting aside time to work on a project. By not blocking out the time, others will schedule their priorities. Intentionally setting aside our time to do what matters most will enable us to lead with greater purpose and feel better about what we do each day.\n\nThank you for using <em>your</em> time to read this post...', 'Chip Shots - Time Management Tips', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'chip-shots-time-management-tips', '', '', '2015-02-18 06:00:27', '2015-02-18 11:00:27', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22653', 0, 'post', '', 3);
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(22657, 307, '2015-02-19 06:00:52', '2015-02-19 11:00:52', 'Recently, my daughter invited me on a tour of New Belgium Brewery. If you’re not familiar with New Belgium, I’m sorry...pay me a visit in Colorado and we’ll fix that.\n\nNew Belgium is a craft brewery. The company is employee owned, practices environmental sustainability, and makes a good product. They also have very low staff turnover and people wait for years to work there.\n\nEvery employee receives a complimentary pint when they finish their work for the day. On their first anniversary with the company they receive a custom fat-tire bike, a symbol of the founder’s inspiring bike trip through Belgium and their flagship product.\n\nOn their fifth anniversary they receive a trip to Belgium. And those aren’t all of the perks and benefits employees receive...\n\nWhen I asked our tour guide why he and so many other staff stay with New Belgium as long as they do, he said, “The beer, bike, and Belgium are all nice…but really, it’s the people.\"\n\n<h3>Why You Can’t Beer Your Way Out of Poor Leadership</h3>\n\nNew Belgium is one of those companies that other companies emulate. In fact, one person in our group said, “This is what the last company I worked for wanted…or thought they wanted. They tried the beer without actually giving a crap about the people.” That might have been the free samples talking.\n\nImagine if I walked up to you and said...\n\n<ul>\n<li>“I don’t care about you.\"</li>\n<li>\"I will use you to achieve my own goals.\"</li>\n<li>“You have no dignity. Your worth is only what you can give me right now.\"</li>\n<li>\"Your opinions are worthless.\"</li>\n<li>“I don’t care what you do well. Do what I want you to do, right now.\"</li>\n<li>\"I will control how you think, what you do, all your decisions, and much of your free time.\"</li>\n<li>“Do not expect my gratitude.\"</li>\n<li>“If you try to improve things, you are a threat to me and I will make your life miserable.\"</li>\n<li>“I will intentionally make your work more difficult than it has to be.\"</li>\n<li>“I will waste your time - my time matters more than yours.\"</li>\n<li>“If you get good at your work, expect to be replaced by someone less skilled and cheaper.\"</li>\n<li>“Please tell me what you think - so that I can ignore it and pretend you never said anything.\"</li>\n<li>\"Oh, and one more thing...Here are a ping-pong table and free donuts on Friday morning - because I want you to feel good about where you work.\"</li>\n</ul>\n\nHow would you respond to my offer of table-tennis and donuts? If you’re like most people, you’d probably want to throw the donuts in my face and tell me what to do with the ping-pong table. You’d be insulted. And you’d be right.\n\nThe thought that I could treat you poorly and then buy your loyalty with a few donuts or free beer is ludicrous. But I see business leaders do this sort of thing all the time. And I understand why...it\'s easier to buy donuts than to do the real work of leading well.\n\n<h3>Substance Then Symbols</h3>\n\n<img class=\"alignright\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/leadership-perk-wont-work-300x198.jpg\" />The bike New Belgium provides its employees after one year of service is a symbol. It represents the company’s founding story, their commitment to \"bike culture\" and the environment, as well as their appreciation for their employees.\n\nPeople may appreciate the bike, but it’s what the bike represents that really matters. As our guide said about what makes him stay: “It’s the people.\"\n\nRemember, leadership is about people and purpose…relationships x results. Do you struggle with employee loyalty? Employee engagement? Productivity? Silos?\n\nPlease don’t try to adapt the symbols of another successful company (free bikes, beer, ping-pong, or donuts) and expect those outward objects to fix your internal problems. That would be like putting a colorful bandaid on a broken arm and expecting it to heal.\n\nThis is what I mean when tell audiences:\n\n<blockquote>Don\'t Motivate. Cultivate. If you want energized, productive teams, get your substance in order first.</blockquote>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Treat people with respect</li>\n<li>Honor their strengths</li>\n<li>Value their time, contributions, and dignity</li>\n<li>Help them to grow</li>\n<li>Encourage them</li>\n<li>Connect their work with meaning and purpose</li>\n</ul>\n\nWhen you consistently do these things, you’ll find naturally find the symbol of your substance. Symbols - whether they are cool ones like a free bike or something more mundane like a coffee mug, are insulting and hurtful when you use them instead of a healthy human relationship.\n\nFocus on substance first, then symbols. That\'s the only way to make your perk actually work.\n', 'How To Motivate Your Team &amp; Why Your Employee Perk Won&#039;t Work', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'how-to-motivate-your-team-why-your-employee-perk-wont-work', '', '', '2015-02-19 06:00:52', '2015-02-19 11:00:52', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22657', 0, 'post', '', 10),
(22680, 381, '2015-02-23 06:00:31', '2015-02-23 11:00:31', 'I credit my altered career path to The Lead Change Group’s book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Character-Based-Leader-Instigating-Leadership/dp/145751222X\" target=\"_blank\">The Character-Based Leader.</a>\n\nBefore you roll your eyes in disbelief, you should know that what I am about to tell you is the unvarnished truth and it all started with a wayward email intended for someone else.\n\nBack then I was working in a position that paid well, with health insurance and a growing 401K. I appreciated the work and never said no to opportunities to put in extra effort to support the corporate vision. Inside, however, I felt the effects of being in a place where my values were out of alignment with the leadership of the organization.\n\nOne day I received a personal email inviting me to a Lead Change Group project meeting to discuss chapters in their collaborative work on the book The Character-Based Leader. I recognized the name of the sender, but not from the Lead Change Group, because at that time, I had no knowledge of the group. In fact at that time I had no knowledge of online communities. Yet, this meeting was to be held and it appeared that it would be attended by people who were not even in close proximity to each other. That in itself was a mystery.\n\nThe sender of the email, Jennifer Miller, had been a co-worker back when I was starting my first official job in a large corporation. I know now that the Jane she was inviting was not me, Jane Anderson but <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/instigators/jane-perdue/\" target=\"_blank\">Jane Perdue</a>, author and leadership futurist.\n\nFrom that wayward email, I discovered that a book on a topic dear to my heart would eventually be published. I was eager to learn from leaders who lived by strong moral and ethical character and was curious to read how so many individuals coming from unique perspectives would write a playbook of cohesive thought.\n\nMany months later I think I was one of the first to purchase their book, the Character-Based Leader. It isn’t purchasing the book that changed my life though. It’s the chain reaction that resulted from it. The book was the catalyst for getting me to make some life changing decisions.\n\nYou see, when I read the chapters I realized that there really are grounded leaders whose organizations are held to a high standard of values. Through that book, I reconnected with Jennifer Miller. I was introduced to <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/becky-robinson/\" target=\"_blank\">Becky Robinson</a> and invited to be a part of her organization as a member of Team Buzz Builder, which gives readers the opportunity to help spread the word about new leadership books.\n\nFrom writing book reviews and participating in online communities like the Lead Change Group I have met the most remarkable people. It all started with my love of the book, the Character-Based Leader.\n\nHere are a few of my favorite takeaways:\n\n<h3>Why Character-Based Leadership</h3>\n\nCheryl Gegelman contributed this chapter. She shares, \"Character-Based Leaders have the ability to unleash greatness in each individual and throughout the organization\" and she recommends starting with you\n\nShe continues, “When everyone of good character draws a line and says that character counts all the time in all places, the revolution [for change] begins.”\n\n<h3>Leadership Touchstones</h3>\n\nIn this chapter, Jennifer identifies three broad categories of trust touchstones:\n<ul>\n<li>Ethics Touchstone - Evaluates moral character of the leader</li><li>Interpersonal Touchstone - This comes from chemistry, the blend of personality traits and daily interactions that affects how leaders connect with others.</li>\n<li>Work Focus Touchstone - Leaders have an opportunity to build trust with people through their methods of getting work done. A leader’s work focus is based on behaviors that are an outward expression of their interior life.</li>\n</ul>\n\nThe bedrock of Character-Based Leadership is that morals and ethics must be impeccable because they funnel into trustworthiness.\n\n<h3>Mastering The Inner Game Of Personal Integrity</h3>\n\nWhile discussing authenticity and accountability, Susan Mazza wrote, \"Choosing to do the right thing because doing the wrong thing would make you look bad is an act of manipulation, not integrity.” Susan implores leaders to mindfully choose values and principles to guide their words, actions, and decisions.\n\n<h3>Leading Yourself Into Integrity</h3>\n\nNo leadership qualities have the impact of plain old fashioned humility. Any leadership quality fails without humility. Humility is evidenced in lifting others up, stepping aside so others can shine, and taking the blame while giving credit. Humility can be learned, but only from practice. In this chapter, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/Leadershipfreak\" target=\"_blank\">Dan Rockwell</a> writes about 7 practices to lead yourself to humility.\n\n<h3>Respect Brings Your Team To Life</strong></h3>\n\nI have a tendency to root for the underdog and feel bad when anyone loses. It’s hard for me to choose sides because I want everyone to win. In this chapter, <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leading-voices/mike-henry/\" target=\"_blank\">Mike Henry</a> writes, “Respect is the pursuit of win-win.”\n\nCharacter-Based Leaders practically manufacture respect because they model it, they share it, they expect it. Although respect is not a natural quality, it can be earned and it can be learned.\n\nThis chapter takes a deep dive into the many ways respect is earned, developed, practiced, and applied. Mike says Character-Based Leadership is an endless source of energy and life for an organization. He relates the impact of respect when dealing with conflict and resolution. He says respect is the key to bringing life to a team and giving everyone in the organization an opportunity to lead in some sphere.\n\nOn September 22, 2012 I published my first ever book review. That number is now in excess of 20. In part, this is what the book review said: I bought this book the first day I heard it would be available. As I was contemplating purchasing The Character Based Leader, I noticed all the names of authors who contributed and realized what a gold mine this book would be.\n\nThere is no one size fits all in our organizations today, but there is the underlying need for leaders who operate with impeccable ethics, passion for their work, with compassion for humanity. This book recognizes that and seeks to build character at the individual level where it will spread into the board rooms and built into business blueprints to create the tapestry for stronger organizations.', 'A Case Of Mistaken Identity Changed My Life', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'a-case-of-mistaken-identity-changed-my-life', '', '', '2015-02-23 06:00:31', '2015-02-23 11:00:31', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22680', 0, 'post', '', 3),
(22696, 385, '2015-02-20 06:00:38', '2015-02-20 11:00:38', 'Recently my son decided that he wanted to change a class in his junior high schedule. My wife and son went to pay a visit to the school counselor.\n\nDuring the meeting, the counselor asked him why he wanted to change to a different science teacher.\n\nHe said, “Well most of the time I have a difficult time focusing which makes the teacher really hard to understand.”\n\nTo this the counselor replied, “What you really mean is your teacher is boring and you can’t stay awake. Is that right?”\n\nHe responded, “Well I didn\'t say exactly that.” Unfortunately for him, she did not allow him to change teachers.\n\nWhen my wife told me this story, I thought that perhaps we were doing something right, and I was impressed that he had enough presence of mind to think about how to frame a message in a way that was more respectful and that might lead to a positive outcome.\n\nConsider the power of words in your message. Dr. Albert Mehrabian taught that when talking about your feelings or attitudes that only 7% of your message comes from the words that you use. He also proposed that your tone accounted for 38% and body language or nonverbal behavior accounted for the remaining 55% of meaning in your message.\n\nHowever, it would be a broad generalization to assume that all messages would be attributable to the same percentages. Once someone asked me, “How do you know when your message was absolutely and perfectly clear?”\n\nTo which I responded, “When I am angry.”\n\nMy confidence in my response is based on the perfect alignment of my words, feelings, and actions. Unfortunately, we know that speaking to people in a state of high or hot emotion does not a rational conversation create, nor can we trust the accuracy of what the other person is hearing or what they will say. What we don’t often take into account when we are delivering our message is the context within which that message is being delivered.\n\nWords when combined are powerful tools for inspiring, uplifting, enlightening, informing, motivating, and describing any number of situations. One of the most powerful functions of words is the picture or context that they create for the listener.\n\nFor example, if someone told you that a person was self-centered before you even met him, when you finally did meet, you would see everything that he or she did as evidence that they were self-centered. And unless you were consciously assessing your own interpretations or judgments of their behavior, you may never change your opinion of that particular character trait.\n\nIn fact a famous psychologist once told me that once President Clinton told the public that he “did not have sex with that woman,” that no matter what evidence was offered later, many people still refused to believe anything that ran contrary to what they initially thought.\n\nIf you want the message that you deliver to have a positive impact, consider the following questions you might ask yourself that will help you consider the context of the message and the person to whom you are speaking:\n\n<strong>What is the topic to be discussed?</strong> Obviously the delivery of your message will be different based on the topic. Is this a search for understanding? Do you need to provide constructive or negative feedback? Are you simply looking for more information on an issue? Is this a very sensitive subject with legal ramifications that need to be discussed? You need to be clear about the topic and determine the best way to approach the message you want to deliver.\n\n<strong>What is the purpose of the conversation?</strong> Specifically identifying your purpose allows you to determine what you would like the person to do. If you don’t know what you want to accomplish, then you are almost assured of not achieving what you want. You have to know what you would like the end result to be if you expect to communicate clearly.\n\n<strong>What is the current status of your relationship?</strong> You might even ask yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how much trust currently exists in your relationship with them. In situations where you have a strong or positive relationship, where the person really knows that you care about them both as a person and a professional, you can deliver a strong message, and they are less likely to take what you have to say personally. However, you must realize that many people take everything personally as a matter of their style. However, the strength of the relationship should be considered as you chose to deliver your message.\n\n<strong>What judgments do you hold or assumptions are you making?</strong> Before holding any difficult conversation, it is important for you to surface and assess the judgments or assumptions that you hold about the person. For example, if you think that they are a “jerk,\" the chances are great that you will treat them in such a way that your behavior will elicit their jerkiness. In essence we often influence people to show up in a certain way by the way that we treat them. You must identify any negative thinking and suspend it if your conversation is going to be successful.\n\n<strong>What are the data in the current situation?</strong> Your thinking is based on the data, observation, or evidence that you have experienced. Once you have surfaced your thinking, you need to look for the evidence that substantiates your thinking. For example, if you repeatedly hear yourself accuse a person of being lazy, but you cannot identify any data that would logically lead you to that conclusion, then you need to seriously reflect on the conversation that you need to hold. After all, the data becomes the justification for what the person needs to change. If you can’t point to a specific behavior that you want them to improve, then they will not know what to change.\n\n<strong>What is your plan for improving the situation?</strong> It is always best if the person comes up with their own plan for improving or changing the current situation. You would do this by asking them what they did, what they might do differently going forward, or where they are stuck in the process of trying to identify a viable solution. If they struggle to identify a plan, you want to be prepared by taking a moment prior to the conversation to identify a possible plan of attack. That way you can offer suggestions to help them create a plan that will work for them and you.\n\nThe questions above should help you to consider the words that you will use as you craft your message or prepare for the difficult conversation that you need to hold.\n\nObviously, not all conversations are difficult, but if the potential is there for the conversation to go awry, you need to slow down, reflect on the questions above, and identify the best way to deliver the message you really want to give.\n\nTaking a moment to do so will improve the message that you deliver and the results you want to achieve.', 'Six Questions To Improve The Power Of Your Message', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'six-questions-to-improve-the-power-of-your-message', '', '', '2015-02-20 06:00:38', '2015-02-20 11:00:38', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22696', 0, 'post', '', 3),
(22729, 290, '2015-02-24 06:00:10', '2015-02-24 11:00:10', 'Why can some people change and others seem like they can never change? This question is a puzzling one to me.\n\nWe work and live with people who seem to always be adapting and others who seem to never say or do anything differently.\n\nI believe change is a must to be relevant in our home place, workplace, and marketplace. There is a big difference between being relevant and being hip. Being hip is a blip.\n\nCall it 15 minutes of fame - meaning there is no staying power to the change. Superficial may be a better designation.\n\nBeing <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/leader-know-yourself/\">relevant</a> has staying power, meaning the change is thought through and the difference can be seen in the weeks and months ahead.\n\n<h3>Changing Ways</h3>\n\n<blockquote>There are two ways to approach change - indifferent or influential.</blockquote>\n\n<strong>Indifferent</strong> - A passive approach to change is being indifferent about it. Change is viewed as something that happens around us. Change is just part of the environment. Within the environment, change is mostly uncontrollable, a happenstance event. Given this, the thought is we can just keep doing what we do the way we have always done it because we cannot control what happens all around us.\n\nEverything else can change but we can stay the same. We choose to be laid back. The problem with this approach is life and opportunity will pass us by. We become observers of work, life, and leadership. What is worse is we become ineffective, obstinate, and ignorant. When we become indifferent to change, we can no longer be leaders. We merely bystanders or barriers.\n\n<strong>Influential</strong> - A proactive approach to change is <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/what-is-your-change-thesis/\">being influential</a> within it. Change is recognized as a necessity. Change is recognized as a constant. More importantly, change is accepted as a growth and learning opportunity. We realize that we cannot keep doing things the way we have always done them because circumstances, people, and information have changed.\n\nChange is much more than just being adaptive. Real changes require real behavioral and thought shifts. Rather than being pulled or overcome by change, we realize we can be influential within the change. We just need to choose to do so.\n\nChange is viewed and acted upon in a proactive manner by understanding what shift is underway, thinking through the impacts, and then plotting a course to lead, work, and live in a refreshed way. By doing this, we begin to influence others to make similar changes and a positive momentum builds.\n\nWhat happens is we live and lead with a clear mission within the changed environment. We become a change driver within change itself and can influence the direction in which it unfolds.\n\n<h3>Change Or Get Out Of The Way</h3>\n\nAs the saying goes, “change or be changed.” Unfortunately, this is not true. The reality is change or become irrelevant. Change or become an obstruction that people always have to figure out a way around. Change or become a grumpy old person that everyone ignores. You get the point.\n\nOur leadership responsibility is to be a <a href=\"http://www.thindifference.com/2015/02/refresh-leadership-practices/\" target=\"_blank\">positive influencer</a> of positive change. In a sea of troubling changes, we need to rise up and <a href=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/drive-change-towards-your-desired-culture/\">provide an example</a> of how the change can be leveraged for good and growth.\n\nIn a wave of continuous change, we need to exhibit the ability to adapt and navigate while also standing tall when strength of character is required. Influencing change is a great leadership responsibility we cannot shirk.', 'The Choice Of Change - Indifferent Or Influential', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'the-choice-of-change-indifferent-or-influential', '', '', '2015-02-24 06:00:10', '2015-02-24 11:00:10', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22729', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(22747, 386, '2015-02-25 06:00:00', '2015-02-25 11:00:00', 'I have a vision. I want to help 100,000 entrepreneurs step into their single biggest challenge by December 31, 2017. What lets me come up with such a vision?\n\nI can set remarkable goals for myself because I am fully living my purpose in life. I have had extraordinary help in my entrepreneurial journey.\n\nLast year, I realized that my career going forward is to help other entrepreneurs as I have been helped. The best way for me to do that is to get entrepreneurs to step into the biggest thing that is blocking them from going forward.\n\n<h3>Finding Purpose</h3>\n\nMy new book <em>Wind In Your Sails</em> draws from the ideas of Jim Collins and Guy Kawasaki, among others. In the both book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0066620996\" target=\"_blank\">Good To Great</a> and the article <a href=\"http://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/aligning-action.html\" target=\"_blank\">Aligning Action & Values</a>, Jim Collins elaborates on purpose. He explains that it is not sufficient to document your purpose and core values. You must have specific measures and actions that demonstrate that people are living and in alignment with your purpose.\n\n<h3>Meaning Matters</h3>\n\nIn <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Art-Start-Time-Tested-Battle-Hardened-Starting/dp/1591840562\" target=\"_blank\">The Art Of The Start</a>, Guy Kawasaki asks us to act with meaning by creating a product or service that makes the world a better place. While you need to be clear where you will be in three years, what markets you will be serving, and what your brand promise is, people are motivated by having meaning in their lives.\n\n<h3>Vision & Purpose In Alignment Accelerate Growth</h3>\n\nSince many people spend much of their lives at work, you will only get high performance when you, your management team, and your employees are aligned in the purpose and culture of your organization.\n\nI am aligning my purpose, vision, and actions to fully live every day by shooting for a clearly articulated goal.', 'Living A Purposeful Vision', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'living-a-purposeful-vision', '', '', '2015-02-25 06:00:00', '2015-02-25 11:00:00', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22747', 0, 'post', '', 4),
(22758, 376, '2015-02-26 06:00:35', '2015-02-26 11:00:35', 'I have noticed a discussion popping up lately. I most recently noticed this while reading the preface to <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Flying-without-Helicopter-Prepare-People/dp/1491752637\" target=\"_blank\">Flying Without A Helicopter</a>, the new book by Joanie Connell launching this week.\n\nIn a few pages, Dr. Connell clearly and convincingly makes almost every one of us feel bad about how we have raised several generations of young people, many of whom now inhabit the workplace.\n\nUsing real-life experience and research-based knowledge, the author describes how we have systematically trained our children to expect rewards for effort, and not for output.\n\nThe best example she uses is the distribution of <em>participation trophies</em> which insure that what one receives, all receives. Rather than focus on achievement according to quality, we look to effort and being present as enough to justify an award. Later in the book, she offers clear solutions, but for right now, let\'s stay focused on the issue.\n\nEven Castle, my favorite guilty pleasure television series, addressed this issue when Alexis, the adolescent daughter of the eponymous hero, became obsessed about getting into a good college, and roundly criticized her previously prized box full of <em>participation</em> trophies, which she realized do not a strong resume make in a competitive market. This general issue bubbles up to two other places, albeit in somewhat different ways.\n\n<h3>In Academia</h3>\n\nA recent article by Stacey Patton in Vitae, the Chronicle of Higher Education online publication, entitled \"<a href=\"https://chroniclevitae.com/news/908-dear-student-no-i-won-t-change-the-grade-you-deserve\" target=\"_blank\">Dear Student - No, I Won\'t Change the Grade You Deserve</a>\" dissects the idea of academic entitlement. This has ignited discussions among faculty members at my institution and elsewhere about how we help students understand the difference between I <em>need</em> and I <em>want</em>. In other words, students want grades that reflect their efforts, rather than evaluate their output.\n\nThis is similar to the concept in many lower education school programs that everyone must receive recognition for something, hence the idea of <em>participation trophies</em> and other vague commendations. While positive in spirit as an attempt to recognize that everyone has value, which they do, this stance has also muddied the waters about what is considered achievement.\n\n<h3>In The Workplace</h3>\n\nWe are probably all familiar with the idea of work tenure reflecting value and qualifying one for rewards. The easiest example involves pay scales where years of employment equal pay raises on some type of objectively measured scale. The longer you survive at <em>Company X</em>, the more money you make.\n\nEven if you do not have a compensation package which benefits long-term employees, many small and even mid-size companies shy away from intentional performance evaluations and similar tools, at least partially to avoid upsetting <em>loyal</em> employees of long tenure.\n\nWe are also familiar with the issues around motivation and engagement which plague many organizations. It seems difficult to find the link between institutional needs and employee needs. In my thinking, this can often be traced to different sets of priorities and maybe even values.\n\nWe often appear to put the emphasis on trying (efforts), rather than doing (accomplishment). Many try to simplify this into the usual corners:\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Be Rewarded For Trying</strong> - Because you cannot control everything that may affect your performance, your effort is worth something.</li>\n<li><strong>The Winner Takes All</strong> - When the whistle blows, you have either scored or been stopped. Only points on the scoreboard matter.</li>\n</ul>\n\nPatton found a common theme in her findings about student perceptions:\n\n<blockquote>\"Their feelings about the quality of their work often don’t match the reality of their performance.\" This fits with the psychological tendency applicable to most if not all of us, often called \"self-inflation,\" where one overestimates their own abilities while underestimating their deficiencies. Here\'s an example: \"I think I created a wonderful report, even if it was on the wrong topic.\"</blockquote>\n\nA variation of this occurs when we value our own contribution more than the work of another, even though an objective evaluation might give the edge to the other person. We attribute our achievements to our hard work and innate abilities, while assuming that others who achieve bribed or charmed their way into the winner\'s circle.\n\nAs a leader of others, I have tried the two extremes and found both wanting:\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Winner Take All</strong> - Performance standards include a clear criteria and then I hold everyone\'s feet to the flame. No exceptions, no differentiation. You either make or do not make the cut. This does not promote team building, in spite of some perceptions that <em>making the cut</em> creates some type of bond. Establishing healthy relationships with others is always based on something more than a winning score.</li>\n<li><strong>Pure Democracy</strong> - I have also tried the approach where everyone receives the same rewards, regardless of value. In other words, everyone gets a trophy, which makes all the trophies equally meaningless. This is more peaceful and certainly easier to do, since the leader is not required to evaluate the contribution, but simply acknowledge that it was made. This encourages more substandard performance and does not create growth.</li>\n</ul>\n\nNeither extreme works well, in my experience. Of course, many other possible approaches exist between these two. Whatever we choose should recognize three important things:\n\n<ol>\n<li>One person\'s contributions, while minimal or sub-standard by an objective measure, might be the very best that individual is capable of producing.</li>\n<li>When we view each person as an individual, we often find evaluating their efforts more fairly to be an easier task, because we know the range within which the person is working.</li>\n<li>Motivation to succeed at a level varies distinctly from individual to individual.</li>\n</ol>\n\nWe help students and employees learn and grow by helping them consistently and positively improve their skills, which is the essence of learning and teaching, We just need to develop and reinforce clear and developmental goals for students, so they clearly understand what they must do and know how to accurately judge their own contributions toward the goals.\n\nNote, this is not an attack on the value of failure or incremental improvement, just an observation that failure should not result in the same reward as success. It is also not an endorsement of sports, where an obvious winner and obvious loser appear at every encounter, but rather an endorsement of thinking about how we reward and what we are trying to accomplish.\n\nThink about your organization and how you try to help people improve performance. Are they all of nothing, everyone wins, or something else? What works best in your situation? What could you change to improve your improvement efforts?', 'A Few Words About Participation Awards', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'a-few-words-about-participation-awards', '', '', '2015-02-26 06:00:35', '2015-02-26 11:00:35', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22758', 0, 'post', '', 2),
(22777, 374, '2015-02-27 06:00:58', '2015-02-27 11:00:58', 'I am part of a group which volunteers at a local women\'s prison to support their running program.\n\nThe volunteer arrangement started with a few runners visiting the prison to talk about running and evolved into formal events.\n\nSome of these events include a graduation 5K after each session, annual participation in their Heart Walk and Breast Cancer efforts, and even a <a href=\"http://gulfwinds.org/GCF/2014-05-24%20Reporting%20from%20Prison.asp\" target=\"_blank\">marathon</a> that involved 91 laps around the recreational field.\n\nMany of the activities I do have a sizable social media component. If I visit a legislator\'s office for <a href=\"http://www.shotatlife.org\" target=\"_blank\">Shot At Life</a>, I am expected to post pictures to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and my blog. Because I am a <a href=\"http://www.fitfluential.com\" target=\"_blank\">Fitfluential Ambassador</a> and Charity Miles All Star, every workout gets its companion image on social media.\n\nAlthough a staff person takes pictures of the races at prison and those pictures are shared publicly, much of our work is not preserved for posterity. Whether there are pictures or not, the leadership behind that work is as fueled by dedication and girded by organization as any I have ever seen. Three different types of leaders contribute:\n\n<h3>People Who Are Paid To Lead</h3>\n\nThe prison doesn\'t have to have a running program. The program started because one warden, who was a runner himself, believed that running would benefit the inmates. Beyond the warden, staff members expend effort far above the minimum required to help us civilians clear background checks and receive training. They handle the logistical challenges of having 15-20 civilians on the premises professionally and cheerfully.\n\nThey could say why bother and keep on doing the minimum required of their work and collecting paychecks. Instead, they share a commitment to fulfilling the institution\'s mission, to helping the women deal with life while they are completing their sentences and to helping the women prepare for life on the outside.\n\n<h3>People Who Lead One Another</h3>\n\nIn almost three years  of working with the prison running group, I have seen firsthand how women who have been stripped of whatever titles they held prior to their incarceration make it their business to empower others.\n\nWomen who have experience in the running group encourage those who are hesitant to take the first step. Women who have excellent organizational skills sit at a table in the full sun checking off laps of marathoners in order to provide support. Faster runners go back to encourage slower runners through the finish line.\n\n<h3>People Who Volunteer To Help</h3>\n\n<img class=\"alignright\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/2014-11-01-07.55.32-1-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Picture This - Leading in Prison\" />As I have watched Mary Jean, my friend and fellow runner who coordinates our efforts, recruit runners to volunteer and liaise with prison staff to organize our activities, I have seen the power of persistence.\n\nShe has set the tone, making the statement: \"show up at 6:30am for an hour of required training before our 7:30am 5K\" sound almost pleasant. More importantly, she has been the link between the staff and the inmates, patiently working around bureaucratic hurdles and shepherding every interaction back to let\'s put one foot in front of another and run.\n\nWe don\'t have any pictures, for instance, of yesterday\'s visit where we informally spoke to 20 women in the running club. What we do have is the echoes in our heads of the woman who said, \"I think I can do this\" and her fellow inmate who said, \"yes you can and we\'ll help you.\"\n\nThree types of leadership, all taking place in an environment more commonly associated with punishment. Pictures are nice when we get them, but no one needs pictures to develop a richly rewarding takeaway.\n', 'Picture This - Leading in Prison', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'picture-this-leading-in-prison', '', '', '2015-02-27 06:00:58', '2015-02-27 11:00:58', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22777', 0, 'post', '', 8),
(22779, 243, '2015-03-03 06:00:05', '2015-03-03 11:00:05', 'It can be common to hear people complain about the younger generation.\n\nBut you’ll have to look pretty hard to find a tool that is so challenging to both millennials and leaders of any age as <a href=\"http://j.mp/1E1UMtv\" target=\"_blank\">Activate Leadership</a> by Jon Mertz.\n\nActivate Leadership presents four truths based on Jon’s study of the aspen tree.\n\nHe explains in the introduction:\n\n\n<blockquote>“It was odd, but I began to see similarities and feel a kindred spirit between aspens and millennials. I saw my sons reflected in those trees. I saw the millennial generation, connection-rich, purpose-filled and community-centered.\"</blockquote>\n\nJon then embarks on a challenge to millennials to lead on purpose. He bases his challenge on four truths:\n\n<ol>\n<li>Patience cultivates growth.</li>\n<li>Connect to expand, collaborate to create.</li>\n<li>Spur purpose.</li>\n<li>Convert to thrive.</li>\n</ol>\n\nThe book is filled with actionable ideas and practical illustrations. It is designed to be contemplated and evaluated, but also finally, it must be acted upon. It’s even written in a format that invites reflection and study. The sections stand in some degree alone so you can study parts as they apply to your present situation.\n\nFor example, in Aspen Truth #3, <em>Spur Purpose</em>, Jon lays out a particularly interesting grid called <em>The Vitality Of Purpose</em> where he makes an important illustration between aspiration and inspiration.\n\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"quote\">\"By itself, to inspire a team can be inert. It’s like a motivational speech with no plan. A team that aspires alone can also be limiting. Inside we feel good about what we are thinking… but without inspiration from others, the actions lose luster.”</div>\n<div class=\"attribute\">~ Jon Mertz</div>\n</blockquote>\n\n<img class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http://leadchangegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Vitality-of-Purpose.png\" alt=\"Vitality of Purpose\" />\n\nThe grid explains how purpose creates engagement by connecting aspiration, the desire to make a difference, and inspiration, the internal energy to act. Jon goes on to describe each level of this purpose-centered engagement moving from un-engaged, to slightly engaged, to self-engaged and finally purposefully engaged. The illustration demonstrates how purpose engages.\n\nEarlier, in Aspen Truth #2, <em>Connect To Expand, Collaborate To Create</em>, Jon also showed an illustration comparing five levels of engagement based on connection. As leaders move from connection to collaboration, and from passive to active involvement they move from ignorant to familiar, then to comprehend, then to interact and finally to champion. A champion is fully engaged. They own the outcome and take responsibility for their contribution to the team.\n\nI’ll be giving copies of this book to many young leaders I know. What about you? How are you acting on what you know about leadership to impact the future? Activate your leadership today and get <a href=\"http://j.mp/1E1UMtv\" target=\"_blank\">Activate Leadership</a>. You’ll be glad you did.', 'Mobilize Millennial Leaders', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'mobilize-millennial-leaders', '', '', '2015-03-03 06:00:05', '2015-03-03 11:00:05', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22779', 0, 'post', '', 1),
(22796, 385, '2015-03-05 06:00:09', '2015-03-05 11:00:09', 'Words all by themselves don’t create anything. But the words you choose and how you put them together will influence the thinking, feelings, and actions of others.\n\nIn short, your language will help to achieve the results you want, improve the quality of your relationships, and create the respect that may be lacking.\n\nI was fascinated years ago to learn that the Aramaic phrase <em>abracadabra</em> so frequently used by magicians, means <em>I create as I speak</em>. This left me wondering what I was creating.\n\nI first started to notice the results that my words were creating when instructing my two young sons about the care of our lawn. I noticed that when I used the sentence, “If you cut the lawn by 2:00 p.m., we will go to the movies,” they never finished cutting the lawn by 2 p.m. However, if I said, “When the lawn is done by 2 p.m., we will go to the movies,” then the task was almost always completed.\n\nI started to notice that many words have an assumption behind them that impacts performance. For example, <em>if</em> seems to project a sense of doubt; whereas, <em>when</em> seems to project expectation and completion. Although both words describe a positive consequence for performance, I always achieved a far superior result “when” I clarified the consequences in this manner.\n\nAs an attorney, I was frequently asked to <em>interrogate</em> a witness as opposed to <em>interview</em> a witness. Interrogate has the connotation that the witness is guilty, and, if asked the right questions, might be manipulated into admitting guilt. An interview describes more of an exchange of ideas, an exploration of perspectives, and a sense of mutual willingness to openly share or talk about an issue.\n\nStopping to think about the words you use and how you use them will help you to improve the outcome of your conversations as well as your professional image.\n\n<h3>10 Word Tips</h3>\n\nHere are a few word tips that will help to achieve clarity and specificity in your messaging.\n\n<ol>\n\n<li><strong>Speak To Contribute Something Worthwhile</strong> - There seems to be more and more talk in the media, in the meeting room, and in the classroom where the message is vague and left to the listeners’ interpretation. If I find myself asking, “Why are they telling me this?\" or “What did they mean by that?\" Then I know that the volume of words is adding little if anything to the conversation. If the person speaking is vague and seems to be rambling in no particular direction without a specific context or clear meaning, we simply tune them out. When this happens repeatedly, we usually just shut down before that person begins speaking. Identify the intent of your message and then let that drive what you want to say and how you say it. Deliver your message clearly and succinctly.</li>\n<li><strong>Talk Less & Listen More</strong> - Some people think out loud, others like to hear themselves talk, and others are uncomfortable with silence, so they fill the air with words. Listening to what others have to say, asking clarifying questions, and inviting them to contribute to the conversation will create respect while enhancing your understanding of their perspective. Share your perspective, but then listen twice as much as you talk.</li>\n<li><strong>Use “I” statements</strong> - When we become frustrated, we often begin a sentence with <em>you</em>. Beginning with you can come off as an accusation and will put people on the defensive. Notice the difference between, “You don’t know what you are doing,” versus, “I wonder if you know what you are doing.” The use of <em>I</em> statements at the beginning of a sentence puts the focus on you, rather than them and will help defuse a potentially defensive response.</li>\n<li><strong>Invite Reflection With Questions</strong> - Describing the situation through the use of questions initiates thinking while painting a picture that creates empathy in your listener. For example, “What do you imagine the client will think when we don’t meet their deadline today?” or “What kinds of feelings will they have about doing business with us going forward?” So why do this? People tend to respond better to self-discovery than you telling them something. For example, “How do you think our clients will feel when we don’t meet the deadline today?” “What should we do to help mitigate the damage?” as opposed to, “Our clients will be really upset you didn’t meet their deadline today  What are you going to do about it?” People will relate more to the images and the feelings that your questions create than you telling them how badly they performed.\n<li><strong>Avoid Redundancies & Qualifiers</strong> - Avoid redundancies and qualifiers to deliver a more powerful and concise message. People often use redundancies and qualifiers to soften their message. For example, “I personally feel,” “I, myself, think that...,” or “That’s just what I think,” or, “I really didn’t have time to think this through first, but...” Using these kinds of phrases in your conversations will water down or possibly confuse your message. Be concise and clear in delivering your message.</li>\n<li><strong>Ask Don’t Tell</strong> - Once, I became frustrated with a client who wasn\'t keeping their commitments. I finally sent an email that said, “I need the following….” I received feedback that making such a demand was very demeaning to the individual. Using a question format to make a request such as “Could you help me by...?” is much more respectful than “I need...”</li>\n<li><strong>Stop Setups</strong> - Have you ever had someone say to you, “No offense…” or, “I don’t mean to offend you, but…?” Then what follows is offensive. Setting up a message or conversation negatively in this fashion does more to shut the person down than to increase engagement. You’ll also want to notice when people say, “I have an observation to share.” When you hear this, you will usually hear anything but an observation of the facts. More likely you will hear a statement of judgment, opinion, or interpretation without any factual support.</li>\n<li><strong>Eliminate Vague Words, Phrases, Slang, & Colloquialisms</strong> - The first time I heard my teenage son say, “That was sick!” made me wonder who was sick and what he was talking about. Also, phrases like perfect, awesome, bandwidth, skin in the game, my bad, or out of the box may not accurately describe what you mean and are subject to misinterpretation.</li>\n<li><strong>Lose Over Used Words</strong> - Many words like“scalable, leverage, synergy, strategic, or thought leadership are so overused and broad that no one really knows what you mean when you use them. Unfortunately, people won’t ask you what you mean because everyone thinks they know what these words mean or they don’t want to run the risk of looking stupid for asking. Being specific will eliminate any doubt about what you mean.</li>\n<li><strong> Avoid Profanity</strong> - Someone once said that profanity was the attempt of a feeble mind to express itself forcefully. You need to identify your audience and the intent of your message. Using four letter expletives can be highly offensive and inappropriate to some people, may damage your image, and dilute the power of your message. Using such language also may cause many people to shut down and become defensive which means that they may not hear or understand what you are saying.</li>\n</ol>\n\nNotice that each of these tips requires some thought and preparation on your part. Obviously, you can’t or won’t want to stop and think about every message you convey.\n\nHowever, if the message is an important one or if it has the potential to turn into a difficult conversation, then you might want to consider the context of your message which we discussed last week and think about your wording.\n\nBeing deliberate and intentional about the message you want to deliver will insure your message has an impact and that you are clearly understood. After all, you want to say what you mean and mean what you say.', 'Making Your Words Work - 10 Tips to Improve The Clarity Of Your Conversations', '', 'publish', 'open', 'closed', '', 'making-your-words-work-10-tips-to-improve-the-clarity-of-your-conversations', '', '', '2015-03-05 06:00:09', '2015-03-05 11:00:09', '', 0, 'http://leadchangegroup.com/?p=22796', 0, 'post', '', 8);
