Archive for the ‘Leadership Development’ Category
Advancing Change in Systems: The Four Key Elements and Milestones for Lasting Change
Building your communication skills will impact the success of leading change more than anything else you can do. Changes require greater and new understanding that takes place through our speaking. This all has to be communicated in a way that every party involved clearly understands "why" its important. Especially why the desired outcome (that the change will bring) will be more satisfying and of benefit. The second and more tangible aspect is to have a framework or "road map" that identifies milestones and actions that will bring change and transformation to a reality. Not just initiate the change, but see it through to completion and outcome needed or wanted. Below I will discuss a simple 4 element approach to implementing change as a leader of a system. Its not complicated, but its lack of complexity makes the pathway no less robust or rigorous. I developed this process when implementing an online learning platform to a segment ...
What I Learned At Recess: Leadership Skills Experienced and Acquired
This post is a summary of the previous writings on my "recess learning". It was interesting to reflect on this experience some 50 years or so later. It still impacts me today. We tend often to only focus on the negative experiences in life. You should look at your own life experiences to see how they have impacted you positively. Influence skills are deeply shaped as kids and at recess these became finely honed. Your ability to influence (or be influenced by) others plays out pretty quickly after the bell sounds for recess...and we are off to gym or playground. Good leaders are building a coalition at restroom breaks, during projects in the class room, and at the lunch table. Indeed a great leader is always aware of opportunities to share their dreams and plans. Influence on others is really fundamental to the success of all leadership efforts. Whether its ...
What I Learned at Recess: Communication Skills for Life and Business
I've established that recess brought to us compressed time to get after whatever was most important. Well that same aspect helped us learn how to communicate for outcomes quickly...and build some tactics. It doesn't take long to find out if your declaration got things going your way at recess. For example, you might have tried the "fine I will just go play by myself then". Somehow this statement would severely punish the little buggers for treating you so poorly. Only to find out they went on without you and really didn't care. Yep, you usually got the opposite of what you wanted. It seemed to me manipulation rarely worked well with our crowd. If it did the results never could be sustained over time...rarely past two recess periods. There were times you wanted to put your idea out there. Sometimes on a rare occasion you even got an..."okay let's do it!" When that happened ...
What I Learned at Recess: Problem Solving
Always disliked the overused and unwitting phrase..."Don't go there!". Really? Well, "I'm going there!". When I was a kid... We didn't have an "app" for this or that on Google Play or Apple. Pin ball was pretty high technology. Heck, we thought it was just crazy talk to even think Dick Tracy's watch with camera and 2 way communication would be a reality some day. Men on the moon just messed with your whole sense of reality about what was possible. Also, you had to look through several grades to find a "fat kid". I mean truly obese children didn't exist in our school. We did chores at home and played like maniacs at recess and ate like pigs. I only mention this so you gain perspective on how far we have come in a relatively short period of time as citizens of this society...or maybe a ...
What I Learned at Recess: Building Respect and Trust
As I look back on the brief moments of play and controlled freedom we called recess... I recall the really good "recess teachers" tried to influence how we played together. They didn't tell us "what" to play. It was the "how" we played together that mattered to them. The idea that we included each other fairly mattered greatly for the best guardians of free time. Left to our own common denominator maneuvers; we quickly became a little community of self centered and narcissistic little brats. With out someone setting the standard of expectations the meek are trampled and the selfish may be destined for the boys or girls home or politics. Building mutual respect and trust is an experience. A learned behavior, that once you grasped the power in it, it created new space for transformation and amazing things to take place. For example, this transformation and amazement happened during square dancing ...
What I learned at Recess: The speed of trust
Disclaimer: My experiences at recess do not represent the experiences of others and are from the window of the soul of a very rambunctious, free spirited, imaginative, fourth child born to parents in their 40"s. I reserve all rights to have moments of lapsing back into these same behaviors as grandfather, husband, and business coach. My fondest AND worse memories about grade school could be contained in those short 20 minute bursts of chaos known as "recess". Recess was often the only thing you had to look forward to while "doing time" in solitary confinement in your neat little desk rows. Getting out of your desk , if only for a short period, was akin to Christmas morning some days for me. The only thing that beat that feeling was the last day of school. Most of us country kids barely tolerated this constriction of the human spirit that ...
Adaptive Leadership: A leader all the time or A Leader for all times
I think there is a lot of value in establishing our signature presence as a leader. Presence is defined in this post as how people experience you over time and in the moments of challenge when it really counts. Just like your handwritten signature is recognized as belonging to you, so is your presence amongst others because it is consistently the same. Much like how you write out your signature without thinking. It becomes natural and a signature, a real good one, can't be faked easily. People want to follow leaders that seem to naturally know what they want. The person they follow creates the assessment and experience that is signature to them specifically. This dependability and consistent approach is needed especially in those times that contain uncertainty. We live in very uncertain times. Indeed we may be just on the cusp of a whole new chapter that offers ...
Coaching to Core Ideals – Be There or Be Square
Coaching to Core Ideals – Be There or Be Square This is another post in the series Coaching to Core Ideals. The IDEAL LEADER is 1) Visionary, 2) Authentic, 3) Disciplined, 4) Accessible, and 5) a Strategic Learner. See the Coaching to Core Ideals post to get a quick overview and context for the series. We are going to break each sub-topic down over the next few weeks. The IDEAL LEADER is ACCESSIBLE Physically available to the right people at the right time Adept at creating forums that important knowledge, information, and direction setting goals can be shared and understood. Emotionally, mentally and intellectually available in ways that they take risks in being vulnerable by sharing not only what they are thinking but what they are “feeling” or sensing As basic as it seems, the biggest challenge for any leader ...
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