“Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.”
Louisa May Alcott
Blog
-
Quote to Consider: Aspirations as Inspiration
-
Choosing to Show Up… Showing Up Engaged
No matter how powerless you feel at work. No matter how little power you actually wield. You always have control over how you show up.You can wield this “power” in a childish manner. Resentfully drag your feet and do the bare minimum at the last minute and only when asked for the umpteenth time. In other words, barely show up at all. As powerful as it feels to “stick it to the man” in this way, you end up diminished as a result as well. In other words, you’re only hurting yourself.
Do yourself a favor and choose to show up engaged no matter what’s going on at work. Even for the most ungrateful supervisor, show up engaged. Even for the most uncooperative team members, show up engaged. Even for the most toxic of work cultures, show up engaged.
You don’t have to keep working here—in fact, you should probably be looking for a change if you’re in an unhealthy situation—but while you are here, (more…)
-
Listen In -> Good Leaders in Bad Times #5: Creating a Culture That Get Results
One of our recent Questions of the Week was, “What disincentives to taking the initiative would a visitor observe in our company?” (Watch it here.)
As we conclude our audio series on Good Leaders in Bad Times, we take a look at the workplace as a cultural system. (Our passion, I know. It might be risky to listen this week.)
We are all familiar with the workaholic workplace culture. We know the fear-driven cultures, the cultures of panic, and the cultures of boredom. We know the workplaces where everyone wears masks of competence and works in splendid isolation as a result.
We know the cultures of finger-pointing and blame-shifting. We know the workplaces that are always running at 100 mph, the ones who are always a day late and a dollar short, and those which have so many rules no one can use their judgment in making a decision.
But what about a culture of results? What if, in the very fabric of how you went about your days, how you communicated with each other, and how you approached complex and difficult issues, you created a culture of getting results?
What if?
Listen in.
-
Question of the Week #9
What is the difference between providing an explanation and making an excuse?
The Question of the Week is offered to increase awareness of one’s personal leadership practices and encourage experimentation with creative alternatives.
-
Loving Monday: Verdict on a Rainy Day
I hate the rain.Grey skies and rain-drenched highways evoke a spectrum of responses as we roll out of bed to begin another week of work.
For some, including me, dreariness and traffic jams fill the imagination before we even get out the door.
For others, thankfulness for the nourishing and cleansing water covering our desert metropolis fills our hearts, and we smile.
It’s a matter of perspective. Same circumstance. Radically different experiences of it.
Particularly powerful, though, is to realize that you get to choose what perspective you adopt each morning.
Given that it’s Monday morning, and we’re trying to get our weeks off to a good start, I’d venture that anything we can do to read refreshment and gratitude into the precipitation would help set the brighter, more constructive tone we want for the busy week ahead.
How aware are you of the perspective with which you interpret circumstances? Do you even realize that you are making a choice when you interpret circumstance as positive, negative or somewhere in between?
Try an experiment with me. Next time something out of the ordinary happens: like a change in weather, a deadline change, an irritable client, an absent co-worker. Try noting your initial reaction. Then write down three other possible interpretations of the same set of circumstances.
Now take another look at your original reaction. The choice is yours, and you are, in fact, making a choice. Will you stay with your original interpretation of the circumstance or will you choose to adjust it?
The choice is yours. You have more power in how you experience of what happens around you than you think.
I‘m still not particularly fond of rain, but I choose to be grateful for its gift of life and appreciate the clean skies that will result. My week is off to a much better start.
What about yours?
-
Quote to Consider: To What End?
“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”Henry David Thoreau
-
Thought Leaders Unpacked -> What the Dog Saw #8: Million-Dollar Murray
What if the choice were between solving a costly problem and staying true to one’s principles?In other words, what if staying true to one’s principles actually perpetuated a situation where complex and intractable social problems were merely soothed without being solved.
Such is the fascinating observation Malcolm Gladwell makes in this week’s chapter about Murray.Yes, it is interesting that most of the costs related to homelessness are concentrated in a relatively small number of chronic cases.
But absolutely spell-binding is the insight that those on both the political right and left cannot hear this fact because it violates their principles at too core a level.
If the bulk of the costs of homelessness could be eliminated by focusing the aid resources on the few complex and intractable cases, those on the right would object because those people don’t deserve so much help, and those on the left would object because the distribution of aid would not be fair.
As a result, almost no group of policy-makers or activists will ever choose the route that might actually solve homelessness. Being true to their respective principles will result in aid efforts that actually perpetuate homelessness.
Ironic, wouldn’t you say? Maybe even tragic. In any case, extremely expensive.
What was your main take-away from this chapter? Where do you stand on the solution-first versus principles-first spectrum?
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.
-
American Idol Savvy: Knowing Who You Are
“You don’t know who you are as an artist.” “You’ve lost your way.”Criticism, advice and other forms of feedback are received differently by those who “know who they are” and those who don’t.
I’m not referring to those who blow off all feedback in order to prove that they are their own best judge. People who don’t listen to feedback are insecure fools merely masquerading as the confident and accomplished.Each Idol contestant receives a variety of feedback each week. Criticisms about what didn’t work. Suggestions for improvement. Challenges to stretch or try something new.
Those who “don’t know who they are” put on the advice like trying on a new costume or mask. As a result their next performances don’t work either. You can tell the “costume” doesn’t fit, and that they clearly are not comfortable wearing it.
Those who are more comfortable with who they are receive the advice and make it their own. In order to listen carefully these contestants don’t need to adopt indiscriminately.
It’s the difference between squeezing into a mold, which assumes the mold is the standard and you are what doesn’t quite fit until you incorporate all the given advice, on the one hand. And enhancing your appearance with some make-up and fashion accessories, which assumes that you are the standard and the advice will help you become an even better you, on the other hand.
How do you receive advice from your elders, mentors, supervisors and others who have words of wisdom they wish to give you? Do you tend toward the extremes: either rejecting all input or conforming to all input?
How might you listen more carefully without needing to adopt indiscriminately?
-
Listen In -> Good Leaders in Bad Times #4: Reporting To Your Team
What if you measured your effectiveness as a leader by the effectiveness of your team?At first blush there’s nothing unusual about the question. Leadership is measured by one’s ability to achieve results.
At issue though, comes in the process of achieving those results. For whom do you really work?
Are you looking back, over your shoulder, at those higher on the organizational chart? Or are you looking forward, at those who report to you?
In this week’s show, Claudia and I suggest that leaders who report to their teams have a better chance of achieving results in tough times than those who report to their official bosses.
Listen in.
-
Loving Monday: Focus and Push
A phrase I find myself returning to more often than not is, “Focus and push.”There is a place for multi-tasking and working along a number of fronts. In fact, most leadership roles require as much. Systems thinking is an essential skill. The finances need monitoring, the schedules need to be maintained, the team must function with high levels of trust, energy and efficiency, and so the list goes on.
Just as important, though, is recognizing when the time is right to focus and push. When what is called for is a concentrated, single-minded, all-out effort on one single matter.This week is one of those moments for me. Many important, valuable matters need to either be set aside entirely or merely brushed over in order to give my full attention to one solitary matter.
Focus is the capacity to hone in on what is crucial and keep one’s attention there in spite of the many competing priorities and distractions.
Pushing is the intentional organizing of one’s activities around a concentrated effort to make something happen. We are not going with the flow. We are creating the flow.
How do you discern when you need to focus and push? At which end of the spectrum do you fall: do you tend to miss these moments or do you tend to focus and push at the expense of attending to the broader, multi-faceted dynamics taking place around you?
On your side,
– Karl Edwards
