Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

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  • Listen In -> Visionary Leadership with Marion Skeete #1: Rethinking the Role and Responsibility

    There’s a lot of talk about leadership but not many leaders are making much of a difference.

    Stuck within paradigms based on power and prestige, leaders are at best recycling the latest fad or at worst resorting to fear-based patterns of conquest and control.

    Enter our guest, Marion Skeete, for a new discussion series on Visionary Leadership.

    Marion Skeete is the founder and president of LegacyMakers International, a movement committed to empowering leaders to influence their community and culture.

    Join Marion and I as we rethink leadership in terms of helping people see a future that is both of their own creation and within reach.

    The maps that we have relied on to get us where we are today may not be sufficient for the journey ahead. Hence the value and importance of visionary leaders to help us articulate new ways of seeing, speaking about and maturing into a different and better future.

    We don’t need new commanders-in-chief who pretend to know where we, the people, need to go; but thoughtful, serving leaders who will empower us to step into the futures that we want to build for ourselves and our families.

    Visionary Leadership with Marion Skeete
    Week #1:  Rethinking the Role and Responsibility
    Week #2:  Thinking Outside the Box
    Week #3:  Inspiring and Catalyzing Change
    Week #4:  Respecting and Involving People
    Week #5:  Cultivating a Language for Change

    Listen in.

  • Loving Monday: Fifteen Minutes for Perspective

    loving_mondayFifteen minutes.

    Give yourself the gift of fifteen minutes.

    Before the demands of the day start pulling your strings like a puppet on caffeine, take fifteen minutes to get some perspective on the week.

    What are the main events, milestones or meetings taking place this week? Who do you need to check in with on their work product or progress? What’s the one thing you choose to complete by the end of the day today?

    Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of quiet. Fifteen minutes alone. Fifteen minutes to take a step back and get a panorama view of the week’s landscape before you begin navigating the intricacies of the trail underfoot.

    It’s a gift you cannot afford not to give yourself.

    Fifteen minutes for perspective.

    (Have you seen our Daily Focus Pads? A simple morning reflection tool to make sure you have one thing you know will get done by the end of the day. Click here.)

  • Quote to Consider: Too Many Hurdles?

    quote-to-consider“Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.”

    Samuel Johnson

  • Keeping it Real: It’s Easier to be Yourself

    I am the world’s foremost expert on being me.

    I am a novice at being someone else. Anyone else. Even someone else from whom I might have a lot to learn.

    Yet so many consultants, coaches and career counselors are advising us that we need to be someone other than ourselves.

    “If you want the job.” “If you’re serious about the promotion.” “If you want to negotiate well.”

    I find myself over-thinking interview and sales situations. I am managing both a conversation with the person I am with as well as a conversation with myself about how I am going about the conversation with the other person.

    How can I possible be fully present with someone when I am preoccupied with talking to myself?

    I’m not! is the answer I pretty consistently receive from those willing to tell me.

    Key for me has been realizing that I am an incredible expert on being myself. The task doesn’t require any more thinking. I can give my full attention to the issue on the table and the people I am with.

    When I let go of the need to impress, to appear unrealistically competent, or to artificially mirror the qualifications of an attractive job description, I am free to come alive in the skin within which I am most comfortable—my own.

    I make a very attractive “me.” Even if I’m not a fit or match for every client, job or interview, I will come across infinitely better as myself than any image of competence I might be tempted to put on.

    It’s simply much easier to be oneself.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Keeping It Real is the column where I share what I myself am learning. Beware of the leader who is not always learning themselves!

  • Listen In -> Technology… When Less is More #5: Collaborating Effectively

    Work, organization and communication all come together when we collaborate with others.

    Do our technology tools facilitate our efforts or complicate them? Propel us forward or hold us back? Enhance our effectiveness or stymie it?

    It’s easy to get the thinking process backwards when it comes to what technology will help us best collaborate with others.

    In this week’s discussion, Jorge and I turn the thinking around and and suggest that different expected outcomes require different methods of collaboration.

    It therefore becomes counter-productive to begin with choosing a technology solution.

    Confusing? Listen in.

    Joining this series mid-stream? Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> What the Dog Saw #13: Blowup

    thought-leadersHow do you approach thinking about the failure of large, complicated, systems like a nuclear reactor or a space shuttle disaster?

    Assigning blame is one goal. Understanding what happened and why is a similar but different approach. Fixing the specific failure so that it doesn’t happen again is another related goal.

    What-the-Dog-SawGladwell, are you getting used to this yet?, turns our usual frames of reference on their respective heads.

    It turns out that I’m probably a “normal accident” waiting to happen. Forget complex nuclear power plants or space shuttles for a moment.

    What about the complexities of a person’s life?!

    Work, family, relationships, projects, chores, play, and the unexpected all taking place simultaneously, consecutively, purposefully, randomly, wonderfully, and yes, every great once in a while, tragically.

    It should not come as a surprise that, through no one’s particular act of negligence or incompetence or poor judgment, there might eventually occur a horrible accident.

    In our narcissistic, litigious culture we survive and thrive on finding someone other than ourselves to blame and hold responsible for anything that harms us. But that may not always be either the case or even possible.

    What alternative interpretations of “normal accidents” can we use to help us not only cope, but come out healthier on the other side of that which most horribly rocks our worlds?

    What do you cope when the hard-to-explain brings harm into your life? What was your main take-away from this chapter?

    Each week I post my reflections from one chapter of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Question of the Week #14

    What important issue are you tip-toeing around?

    The Question of the Week is offered to increase awareness of one’s personal leadership practices and encourage experimentation with creative alternatives.

  • Loving Monday: Attitude Rehearsals

    loving_mondayYou want the week to begin well. You get up and prepare with good intentions. “I choose a positive, constructive attitude as I launch this fresh, new Monday morning.”

    But reality is not kind this week. Joe called in “sick”… again. Sarah won’t help a co-worker meet an important deadline. An important client wants to renegotiate your fee. Management unexpectedly slashed your budget mid-year.

    And what began as a positive, constructive approach to the week is rapidly devolving into an dark and ugly—however understandable—reaction to the disheartening choices of others.

    Here’s the deal, though. Attitude is not the same as emotions. We may feel discouraged, frustrated, or angry. Understandable and appropriate in the given examples.

    Attitude, though, is a choice. Attitude is a stance. Attitude is the stance I choose to take regardless of what I am feeling.

    Like any difficult choice, we need to practice and practice and practice embodying the attitude we choose.

    We don’t merely flip a switch in the midst of experiencing a serious setback (more…)

  • Quote to Consider: Your Life… Don’t Miss It

    quote-to-consider“For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”

    Albert Camus

  • Listen In -> Technology… When Less is More #4: Communicating With Purpose

    Do you find yourself sending an email, leaving a voicemail and texting your message just to make sure you get through?

    With such a wide repertoire of communication options available today, we should be communicating more effectively, not less.

    And yet.

    How do you choose which communication method or technology to use for your various purposes?

    In this week’s show, Jorge and I discuss whether we’ve got the cart in front of the horse when we assume the best way to communicate is always by using the latest technology.

    Listen in.

    Joining this series mid-stream? Catch up on the entire series here.