As some of you know, I’ve been reading a lot more than usual. I believe this to be a transformational period for me, one that I’m embracing more and more each and every day. For the past six months or so, I find myself reading 5 or 6 books at a time, while listening to one audio book each week while walking/running to and from the gym. After a long break, I’ve come to appreciate the views of many great authors. Some in which a lot of us have heard of and deserve all the credit they receive… if not more. And then there are the authors that many never hear about for one reason or an other. Continue Reading…
Tag Archive - leader
7 Abilities of the Indispensable Leader
The More Experiments the Better.
In the 1830s, progressive thinking was unfamiliar territory amongst America’s elite. Most intellectuals were members of social clubs where they forged their political, religious, and business alliances.
Having just published Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson was emerging as a serious literary figure. Disgusted with the state of intellectualism, he and his contemporaries, including Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott, formed the Transcendental Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1836.
“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Talk about experimenting. The group met sporadically and kept out those who excluded any topic from examination. From morality to mysticism, the members explored new thoughts, ideas, and concepts previously uncharted. Emerson emerged as a great public speaker whose strong personal belief system gave him the courage to buck popular trends. As a result, he was well rewarded in a career that indulged his passion for provocative thought.
Focus on a vision and work on it from different angles. This will allow for experimentation during the process.
As a leader, you need to envision the future and experiment as much as possible. You just might find the answer you are looking for.
Bad Writing is Like a Virus
I’ve recently come to the conclusion that bad writing is like a virus: everyone becomes a victim sooner or later. From verbose language to dangling modifiers, not to mention passive voice clutter that not only the pages of unfinished books, but also quarterly and year-end reports, business plans, and presentations. Effectively written communication gets the message across…essential for any leader to succeed. Whether you are pitching for new business or looking for venture capital, you need to get to the point. Good writing uses fewer words, not more. This is something that I still wrestle with today!
In her business writing blog, Lynn Gaertner-Johnston (whose mission is “to quash bad writing habits that linger in the classrooms and cubicles of the 21st-century)” says the number one goal is to keep it simple. In today’s hyberbolic world, you lose your audience’s attention quickly. This is especially pertinent in markets where competition is fierce. Worse, you send a subconscious message of uncertainty in your verbose sentences. Don’t use jargon of phrases your reader won’t understand. That technique often looks like you are trying to hide something.
“I believe more in the scissors than the pencil.” – Truman Capote
The next important stage in editing: Don’t settle just for grammatical corrections and perfect punctuation. Take the time to add value by reworking your message. Don’t be afraid to redraft any weak points. This will help other understand your vision and help you stand out against the competition.
How do you go about proofreading and editing your writings?
Stacking the Team
All of us can look back and think of times when we appreciated the one person on the team who just got the job done. When the company car broke down, he was the one who took control. When the projected numbers weren’t making sense, the go-to guy picked up the phone and got the clarification from the finance department.
Find these people and stack your team with them. Then when you ask them to go the extra mile, you won’t have to worry about the task getting complete. Better yet, you won’t have to do it yourself because you’ll know it will be take care of.
When you are fortunate enough to have the get-it-done people on your team, let them do what they do best. Don’t request that they work on a report about a certain thing is used, and then right before they finish, tell them what the found. People with a track record of making things happen despise doing double work. They want to find out the answers for themselves.
Let these team players act as role models for other people who insist on jumping through hoops before they take on a task. Sooner or later, they will eventually learn: it’s best just to dive right in!
Balancing the Leadership Challenge.
Leaders who attract quality people, know that the key is to become a person of quality themselves. Leadership is the ability to attract someone to the gifts, skills, and opportunities you offer as a parent, as a manager, as a business owner. I’m going to go ahead and call leadership the great challenge of life. It seems that what is important in leadership is refining your skills. All great leaders keep working on themselves continuously until they become effective. And once they become effective, they continue to grow in all aspects of life.
Here are some specifics that the late Jim Rohn showed us during his journey into the leadership horizon.
1) Learn to be strong but not rude. It is an extra step you must take to become a powerful, capable leader with a wide range of reach. Some people mistake rudeness for strength. It’s not even a good substitute.
2) Learn to be kind but not weak. We must not mistake kindness for weakness. Kindness isn’t weak. Kindness is a certain type of strength. We must be kind enough to tell somebody the truth. We must be kind enough and considerate enough to lay it on the line. We must be kind enough to tell it like it is and not deal in delusion.
3) Learn to be bold but not a bully. It takes boldness to win the day. To build your influence, you’ve got to walk in front of your group. You’ve got to be willing to take the first arrow, tackle the first problem, discover the first sign of trouble.
4) You’ve got to learn to be humble, but not timid. You can’t get to the high life by being timid. Some people mistake timidity for humility. Humility is almost a Godlike word. A sense of awe…a sense of wonder. An awareness of the human soul and spirit. An understanding that there is something unique about the human drama versus the rest of life. Humility is a grasp of the distance between us and the stars, yet having the feeling that we’re part of the stars. So humility is a virtue; but timidity is a disease. Timidity is an affliction. It can be cured, but it is a problem.
5) Be proud but not arrogant. It takes pride to win the day. It takes pride to build your ambition. It takes pride in community, it takes pride in cause, in accomplishment. But the key to becoming a good leader is being proud without being arrogant. In fact, I believe the worst kind of arrogance is arrogance from ignorance. It’s when you don’t know that you don’t know! Now that kind of arrogance is intolerable. If someone is smart and arrogant, we can tolerate that. But if someone is ignorant and arrogant, that’s just too much to take.
6) Develop humor without folly. That’s important for a leader. In leadership, we learn that it’s okay to be witty, but not silly. It’s okay to be fun, but not foolish.
Lastly, deal in realities. Deal in truth. Save yourself the agony, just accept life like it is…life is unique. Some people call it tragic, but I’d like to think it’s unique. The whole drama of life is unique. It’s fascinating and I’ve found that the skills that work well for one leader may not work at all for another. But the overall fundamental skills of leadership can be adapted to work well for just about everyone: at work, in the community, and at home.
World Business Forum 2010
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