A Poem for a Sister: Read Me A Story
From my earliest memories I recall loving to be read a good story. This poem is a tribute to my sister Mary. Had she not loved reading and books she may not have seen fit to read to a pesky little brother. I'm not going to elaborate on pesky...but she might in a reply to this post! The gift my youngest sister gave me by reading me story after story was huge. Many were from the "My Book House" 12 volumes pictured below. As you read the poem, imagine a 12-14 year old girl taking the time to read to a hyperactive 5-7 year old farm boy. Now, especially imagine her reading to a young 6 year old boy who had just lost his fingers in a farm accident. Her reading was a healing balm. Mary went on to eventually get her masters in Learning Disabilities. Guess what she focused on? Yep, ...
A Poem for a Farmer: Sunlight Captured
Just a little set up to how I write poems and how this particular poem came about. I'm not sure exactly where my poems come from really. Its almost like the poem has me and not the other way around. They are born out of moments of deeply felt "muse" that hits me when it is ready. The amazing part is that they take very little time to write. I do go back and tweak them, but only with minimal refinement or typo work. This poem came to me one day in 2006. Many years after an experience of being a farm boy and farmer. I grew up watching my father plant corn, soybeans, oats, and alfalfa. He loved farming. One day we were filling the planter box with corn seed and he picked one up and said..."everything it needs to know to grow is contained within this seed". This poem ...
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 ...
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