Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: leadership

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> The Soul of a Leader #5: Practicing Gratitude

    thought-leadersThe pressures of work and leadership are many. The tough economy merely compounds and complicates these concerns.

    I believe the leader is responsible for maintaining perspective in the midst of all these pressures. Keeping things in perspective for him or herself, and keeping things in perspective for the team.

    While a variety of means are available to the leader, Benefiel reminds us in this week’s chapter of the importance of gratitude as a perspective provider.

    The beauty and power of this insight lies in its integrity. Gratitude is good for the soul, good for bringing valuable perspective to a situation, and good for building of trust and collaboration into relationships. Gratitude is correcting, restorative, renewing, and generative.

    Of all the gifts a leader can bring to the team, gratitude belongs at the core. No other leadership function can endure without it. Not focus, not direction, not vision, not organization, not team building, not accountability, not confrontation, not planning, not communication… you get the idea.

    Being a workplace culture builder myself, I’m partial to Benefiel’s (more…)

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> The Soul of a Leader #4: Keeping Mission at the Fore

    thought-leadersIncreasing the bottom line isn’t a big enough mission.

    It’s not that the profit motive is categorically bad in some way or less than foundational for the best of capitalism to flourish. It is simply too small.

    Great for accountability. Great for measurement and quantification. No other system in human history has resulted in raising the standards of living for so many so quickly. Not even close.

    Still, the profit motive is too small.

    The human heart needs a bigger, fuller, more dynamic, more wholistic, more generative mission to invest itself into.

    When an organization doesn’t articulate a mission, doesn’t reinforce its mission, or strays from its mission, people lose three vital components of successful engagement with their work. We lose a vital source of inspiration, a vital source of direction, and a vital source of integration.

    Without inspiration, direction or integration work becomes an inhuman—maybe even robotic—race to do as much as possible in the least amount of time as possible. This race has no finish line because more is never enough. Work soon devolves into a meaningless grind. The exchange of one’s life for the profit of someone else. Small wonder so many people end up barely offering the minimal requirement in the maximum amount of time.

    Hence Benefiel’s exhortation to leaders to focus on something more, share that something more widely and repeatedly, and keep returning to that something more. It’s literally the difference between life and death in the workplace.

    What “something more” is your organization working for? How do you provide inspiration, direction and integration for the work efforts of your team? What was your main take-away from this chapter?

    Each week I post my reflections from one chapter of The Soul of a Leader by Margaret Benefiel. My reflections are my own and are intended to generate conversation, catalyze additional thinking and encourage mutual learning.
    If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> The Soul of a Leader #3: Daring to Dream

    thought-leaders“While many people think of reality as the enemy of dreaming, in fact, hard-headed reality must ground dreaming.” (p. 53)

    I‘ve long struggled with the tendency of dreamers to begin their process with tidy utopian ideals disconnected from the complex and messy realities of human frailty and inevitable systemic dysfunctions.

    The approach, (while the bread and butter of political campaigns,) is naive. Noble maybe some of the time… naive all of the time.

    The implementation of utopian ideals cannot help but be as messy and broken as the people and systems that embody them.

    While other thinkers have observed the importance of beginning the dream with a frank assessment of one’s presenting realities (e.g. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline), core to the Christian worldview is the possibility that such honesty need never be the end of the story. Problems are never a death sentence, fate, or doom. They are simply facts.

    As mere facts, they can be brought out into the light and examined. Turned over and over and looked at from a variety of angles. Underlying causes can be explored. Complicating circumstances, personalities, and effects can be examined.

    No matter how disastrous, disappointing or desperate the results of our (more…)

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> The Soul of a Leader #2: Finding Partners

    thought-leadersThis chapter was a challenge for me.

    At first blush, I don’t seem to do partnership very well.

    It’s not that I have anything against partnership, sharing or working with others. In fact, I’m a big believer in the complementary nature of people’s interests, skills and working styles.

    But the fact remains that partnership has proven elusive.

    Benefiel offers three phases of extending one’s hand in partnership.

    1. Speaking the heart’s truth
    2. Seeking resonance
    3. Inviting partnership

    Speaking, seeking, and inviting.

    What though, if one (me) is running into bumps in the course of the speaking, seeking and inviting?

    What if one is getting blank stares when speaking one’s heart truth?

    It could be an issue of vocabulary. New ideas are sometimes outside of people’s perceptions. Bridging vocabulary needs to be found before understanding can happen.

    What if one is getting only polite nods when seeking resonance? How do we locate those who will appreciate, understand and get as excited as we are about our idea?

    For some of us this is a real conundrum. It’s wearying to tell the story so many times with so little to show for it. How do I keep my spirits in the game? What is my learning edge here?

    And finally, what if one’s ideas are new enough that the search for partners is more like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack? Not all new ideas are good ideas. And yet one cannot simply give up on a trajectory that includes one’s heart truth!

    I have more personal reflection to do.

    It seems so straightforward and simple when reading Benefiel’s articulate descriptions. And maybe it is. Maybe I simply need to reconnect with the power of my heart’s truth, muster the courage to tell my story again and again and again, and risk working with those who share some if not all of my vision and passion.

    What is your learning edge when thinking about finding partners? What was your main take-away from this chapter?

    Each week I post my reflections from one chapter of The Soul of a Leader by Margaret Benefiel. My reflections are my own and are intended to generate conversation, catalyze additional thinking and encourage mutual learning.
    If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Question of the Week #18

    Whose day would be transformed if you paused in your busy schedule and expressed interest in their work?

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

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> The Soul of a Leader #1: Following the Heart

    thought-leaders“What possible good can result from venturing into the unknown?”

    Margaret Benefiel thus thrusts us into the crux of the leader’s conundrum. We do not all traverse paths paved and mapped by others. Increasingly in today’s ever-changing world, we find ourselves in new territory, exploring not yet imagined possibilities.

    If knowing or controlling the outcome is a prerequisite for leadership, then we are trapped before even beginning. How does anything new ever break in? If the end has to be determined and proven before we begin, there is no means for experimenting with the new, strange or different.

    Benefiel’s bold assertion is that the heart can be trusted as a leader’s compass in charting strange territory, discerning the need for change, and trying entirely new approaches.

    Anyone reading here probably already believes that leadership is not a mechanical catalogue of techniques that one masters and implements with precise and reliable effect.

    What if leadership derives its very nature, form and power from the particular individual who enacts it? What if leadership were an embodied dynamic?

    Suddenly the importance of what sort of person this leader is becomes significant. The quality of one’s character limits or enhances one’s capacity (more…)

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> The Soul of a Leader by Margaret Benefiel

    thought-leadersIf you believe that you need to be self-sufficient, dominant, proficient, and heartless in order to be a good leader, I don’t know whether to welcome you or warn you about our next Thought Leaders Unpackedâ„¢ series.

    More than a challenge to the prevalent myths about leadership in our culture, Margaret Benefiel’s The Soul of a Leader is a guide to a healthier, deeper and more human understanding of leadership. Ironically, or maybe I should say, poetically, the evidence seems to suggest that such a human approach is also the more effective approach.

    From my perspective, it makes perfect sense that it takes a healthy human person to effectively lead other human persons. Strange that so much of the leadership cult and culture today is content with mechanizing and commoditizing what by nature—people—are unique and diverse in talents, interests, styles and motivations.

    What about you? Are you trying to squeeze yourself into the uncritically accepted mold of the self-sufficient, dominant, proficient, and heartless leader? Are you slowly dying inside in the process?

    What if by doing so you were robbing yourself and the world of the very gift you have to offer… you!? You in all your distinctness, passion, giftedness and power.

    Please join me as we explore this renewing and empowering book together. We will be working our way through one chapter at a time. I will post my reflections here each week. I invite you to contribute your reflections in the comment section. We can all learn more when we share more learning.

    Choosing the Path
    Following the Heart
    Finding Partners
    Daring to Dream

    Staying on Track
    Keeping Mission at the Fore
    Practicing Gratitude
    Battling for the Soul

    Persevering to the End
    Breaking the Cycle of Violence
    Persevering to the End
    Finding Spiritual Guidance

    Here is a link to the book on Amazon.com. Get your copy today and we’ll look at the first chapter next week.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

  • Listen In -> Avoiding Success. Four Fears That Hold Us Back #5: Fear of Not Being Liked

    More painful for the new leader than probably anything else is being unpopular.

    Accepting a promotion would involve choosing to put myself in this awkward place vis-a-vis my team where my decisions might evoke negative reactions.

    The promotion is attractive because I anticipate being successful, making good decisions, and being enthusiastically appreciated for doing so.

    And yet, deep within, we know reality is not so simple. Reality is that we cannot please everyone.

    A wise question to ask oneself is how will one respond to the negative reactions, both those with substance and those without.

    More germane to this week’s discussion, though, is asking whether you are avoiding the responsibility of leadership in order to avoid the unpopularity that often goes along with it?

    Listen in.

    Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Listen In -> Avoiding Success. Four Fears That Hold Us Back #3: Fear of Blame

    Politics is a management reality that will give us as much challenge as it does headaches.

    Learning to face reality is a different process than becoming adept at avoiding it. The reality of office politics too often degrades into a no-win blame game. When something goes awry it seems the leaders focus first on whom to blame and then on what happened or what needs to happen next.

    Again, it is normal to experience some fear when such craziness affects your job. We are not interested in helping you not feel something which is perfectly normal to feel when the powerful act like children.

    What Claudia and I discuss in this week’s show is how we actually step away from our own leadership opportunities in order to avoid experiencing this ordinary fear.

    Don’t let the fear of being unfairly blamed hold you back from the very opportunity you’ve been waiting and working for!

    Listen in.

    Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Focus and Push

    “Focus and push.”

    A reminder to simplify. A reminder that less is more. A reminder that we cannot do everything. A reminder that we must, in fact, do something.

    I’ve been advising myself and others to “focus and push” in various ways and forms for years now.

    This week valued friend and associate, Rodney Walker of Walker & Associates, offers a helpful piece, “3 Common Mistakes Businesses Make By Doing Too Much” on his blog.

    Check out his practical suggestions for exchanging busyness for effectiveness. His advise on allocating time, nurturing connections, and continually improving are excellent.

    Rodney Walker is a must-meet professional. Make a point to have a conversation with him if you haven’t yet.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards