What is the difference between providing an explanation and making an excuse?
Tag: self-awareness
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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
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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?
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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.
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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
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Quote to Consider: Waiting for the Applause
“Not in the clamor of the crowded street, Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.”Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Question of the Week #8
What disincentives to taking the initiative would a visitor observe in our company?
The Question of the Week is offered to increase awareness of one’s personal leadership practices and encourage experimentation with creative alternatives.
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Listen In -> Good Leaders in Bad Times #3: Training People to be Better Than You
Come on now. Do you really believe that you got the promotion because you know more than everyone else on the team?If you have a “more than” mentality about the tiers on the organizational chart, then this episode is for you.
The question becomes, whose skills, capacities and energies are you quenching if you have to know more than everyone else on the team? What talents and expertise are you missing out on by not being able to hire those who have more experience than you?This week Claudia and I discuss the value of training people to be better than you. Imagine with us the breadth and depth of skills and experience you could amass if you didn’t need to be better than everyone else!
Listen in.
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Question of the Week #7
How can you create three opportunities to redeem a recent failure?
The Question of the Week is offered to increase awareness of one’s personal leadership practices and encourage experimentation with creative alternatives.
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Listen In -> Good Leaders in Bad Times #2: The Issues Behind the Problems
The problem can seem so straightforward. A runaway complainer. A mounting cost overrun. A slipping schedule.What if the problem, though, were merely a symptom of something deeper needing attention?
What if addressing the problem on the table was actually preventing you from looking deeper, asking more probing questions, exploring what values and practices were creating the breeding grounds for the issue at stake?
In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss just this dynamic. Good leaders in bad times don’t settle for relieving symptoms. They dig deeper than the presenting issue and solve for underlying causes and confront systemic dysfunction.
Listen in.
