Fresh from a weekend of rediscovering the lawn and gardening muscles that clearly took the winter off, I found myself happy that I was able to quickly access freshly sharpened, well-oiled tools. As any good tradesman or craftsman (or weekend gardener) will tell you, there is no substitute for the right tool, properly maintained, when you need it. The same goes for leaders.
One of the best leadership public services you will find is Dan McCarthy’s hard work to produce the monthly Leadership Development Carnivals.
Dan scours the world far and wide for compelling content designed to inspire, energize and challenge you to step up your leadership game.
Consider these common refrains from two different leaders:Leader 1: “That’s great! Congratulations! How do we do more of that?” Leader 2: “That’s broken and we need to fix it right away.”
We have all met both of these characters. One sees opportunity and achievement and building blocks everywhere she looks and the other sees flaws and problems that need fixing. And while you are free to accuse me of making a hasty generalization here, my “blink” assessment of the two is that I want to hire or work for Leader #1
A few weeks ago, I published a post on “Jumpstart Your Marketing Reading to Restart Your Brain.” Here’s my suggested summer reading list for managers looking to refresh and renew. Note…while my marketing list is relatively contemporary, the management list takes on a bit of a “classic” tone to it. That is by design.
Anyone involved in leadership and responsible for the development of leaders should read the recent BusinessWeek article, “Can GE Still Manage?” The article offers a fascinating look into GE’s traditional leadership and high-potential development practices, and raises an interesting question of whether these practices still hunt in a very different world than when they were conceived. While I’m not qualified to critique GE’s approach, the article certainly begs all of us to be thinking about or rethinking everything that we take for granted in how we find and cultivate talent and how we deploy our resources.
While the phrase is most commonly referenced as attitude adjustment, I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that one of the abilities that leaders must develop to be effective is the ability to adjust their altitudes. Good leaders learn to scale institutional and intellectual heights with ease and comfort, quickly adapting to the audience and situation.
The paternal twins, Arrogance and Laziness are experts at biding their time and waiting for an opening to slip into your leadership party. Constant vigilance is the only way to keep these destructive gatecrashers from moving in and taking up residence as permanent parts of your leadership style.
Let’s face it, there’s much about the world of work for many that is monotonous or at least fairly routine. It’s easy in many roles to get lulled into the rhythms and routines of days, weeks and months. Wake-up, dress, get on the train, drink coffee, meet, talk, write, plan, meet some more and run to catch the express train home. Rinse and repeat. Monotony and routine are the natural born killers of creativity and innovation. Like weeds invading a spring lawn here in the Midwest, these twin killers quickly overwhelm the healthy pursuit of better, new and different.
As an early career leader, you have little depth or breadth in your leadership voice. You struggle or at least strive to be relevant to your team members and your organization, and many flail in the process. Over time as you gain experience, learn and build confidence, a complex leadership personality begins to emerge. This is what those around you will take as your style, but you know that it is much more than an outward fashion statement. It’s who you are as a person that also happens to serve as a leader.
While some argue that the natural order of life is towards entropy (a gradual decline into disorder), I would argue that the natural tendency of most humans is towards a kind of comfortable sameness and consistency in their daily lives. The pursuit of different requires more energy than the descent into routine. It is most definitely easier to not change. While comfortable and comforting, routine is the enemy of growth and progress and innovation
