Jim Clemmer's Leader Letter


Jim Clemmer's Leader Letter




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March 2012, Issue 108
Tame Your Technology and Get More Sleep
Ten Things Managers Need to Know
Leading @ the Speed of Change: Transforming Personal, Team, and Organization Performance
Smartening Up: Boosting Emotional Intelligence
Love is at the Heart of Strong Leadership
Are You Ready for the Changing Workplace?
Vote for the World's Top Leadership Gurus
Review of The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
Thoughts that Make You Go Hmmm on … The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor
Leadership and Culture for Higher Safety Performance
Tweet Reading: Recommended Online Resources
Read The Leader Letter in Twice Weekly Installments
Feedback and Follow-Up


Permission to Reprint

You may reprint any items from The Leader Letter in your own printed publication or e-newsletter as long as you include this paragraph:

"Reprinted with permission from The Leader Letter, Jim Clemmer's free e-newsletter. For almost thirty years, Jim's 2,000 + practical leadership presentations and workshops/retreats, seven bestselling books, columns, and newsletters have been helping hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. His web site is www.jimclemmer.com."

 
 

book_jim

 


March 2012, Issue 108


Actor portraying Alexander Graham Bell in an AT&T promotional film

On this day (March 7) in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was issued a patent by the U.S. Patent Office for "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically ... by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound."

The telephone was first seen as an entertaining novelty. Bell and his partners offered to sell the patent outright to Western Union for $100,000. In yet another glaring example of the futility of forecasting, the president turned them down because he could never see it being more than a toy. Just two years later he ruefully declared that if he could now get the patent for $25 million it would be a bargain. But the newly created Bell Telephone Company no longer wanted to sell their now highly lucrative invention.

Communication technology has since shrunk and dramatically changed our world. It's created today's global village where we can easily "reach out and touch someone" (AT & T's famous slogan launched in 1979) -- or connect to millions of people.

Communication technology is double-edged. It has interconnected our world like never before. But it also presents big new challenges for managing our time and attention. If we don't tame our technology, our tools can quickly enslave us. That vital issue is the focus of the first item in this issue.

Communication is to leadership as water is to a ship. Without effective communication there is no leadership. But far too many managers confuse information with communication. Information connects with our head (thinking and logic) while effective communication connects with our heart (feelings and perceptions). In this issue we look further at effective leaders with high levels of emotional intelligence daring to live the L word - love - in making heartfelt connections that inspire and energize. This is a vital element in leading at the speed of change. Emotionally intelligent leaders start with Why, and are responding to the changing workplace.

We'll also look at more research showing how strong leaders draw from the inside out to build the happiness advantage. And because leaders care deeply, safety transcends programs, strategies, or initiatives to become embedded in the organization's culture.

Alexander Graham Bell's famous first words on his new invention were to his assistant in an adjoining room, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you." In these fast moving times, people in your workplace want to see you lead. How are you answering the call?

Tame Your Technology and Get More Sleep


Electronic tools are incredible. They can enhance communications, build relationships, and increase time effectiveness. Electronic tools can also replace true communication with information overload, damage relationships, and overwhelm our day. Electronic tools are vital and valuable, but they can also become vampires sucking our vital time and energy. Is it time you put them down or put on the screen saver and saved yourself?

Arianna Huffington is the founder of the online news site The Huffington Post. Last fall she was a speaker at the International Women in Digital Media Summit in my home region. She's made millions with her wildly popular web site. It's driven by a 24 hour instant news cycle and the immediacy of social media.

Arianna spoke of how she had to learn a very tough lesson on turning off her Blackberry and getting more sleep. "Three years ago, I fainted from exhaustion while at my desk. I broke my cheekbone and required stitches to my eye," she related in her presentation. This sounds a lot like someone needing to survive a heart attack in order to change his or her lifestyle. We can either change or be changed.

She learned from this painful lesson to master her technology and regain control of her time and life. She's no longer a slave to the messages, calls, and e-mails that create "a false sense of urgency in our lives." Here's her best piece of advice: "don't live your life from your inbox. If you do, you're just at the mercy of whatever's coming at you."

Arianna became a self-described sleep evangelist. She found her creativity, pro-activity, and wisdom increased. She now has staff nap rooms in her New York City newsroom.

I heartily agree on both counts. I used to think I was getting more done by cutting back on sleep and racing through jam-packed days. I've found that 7 - 7.5 hours sleep, 30 minute power-nap, (and morning aerobic exercise) does wonders for my energy and mental capacity.

And it's way too easy to allow our technologies to take over our lives. Highly effective leaders manage IT tools to leverage their effectiveness and improve their communications. They don't let the tools manage them.

Further Reading:

Ten Things Managers Need to Know


It's always very interesting to see what readers identify as the most significant messages in my books. Occasionally I wonder if they actually read the book I wrote. Maybe they mixed it up with another one?

But most often I am pleasantly surprised at what a reader has learned from the book. Through the power of Google Alerts, links to references and reviews of my seven books regularly appear in my in-box, "A Summary and Analysis of The Leader's Digest for Practicing and Aspiring Managers" showed up on bizcovering.com. Written by David Wyld, Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University, it's the most extensive and accurate summary of The Leader's Digest yet!

I especially appreciated David's section on The Ten Things Managers Need to Know from The Leader's Digest. David did an excellent job of identifying key messages and summarizing each one in a short paragraph. Here's a synopsis of his summary that you might want to use as a leadership development checklist:

  1. Management vs. Leadership -- We manage things and lead people. Managing has more to do with a way of doing where as leadership has to do with a way of being.
  2. Emotional Intelligence -- the most primal and important skill in the leadership realm. It starts with a clear idea of who you are and where you want to go.
  3. Leaders Take Responsibility -- It is a true and rigorous test of maturity and emotional intelligence. In leadership, this is "ground zero."
  4. Leadership is action not a position -- Leaders do not wait for things to happen. Instead, they take the initiative to make things happen.
  5. Leaders direct themselves first -- if we wish to lead others, we must first look in the mirror.
  6. Leaders Address Obvious Problems That need to be Dealt With -- Leaders will do everything in their power to rid their organization of any "moose" in their midst.
  7. Passionate Presence -- engage people's hearts so as to instill not just an obligation, but a desire to get things done.
  8. Leaders help the people in their organization to find meaning and purpose in their work -- most people want to feel like they are making a difference.
  9. Communication -- there is a huge difference between information and communication ... it is important to know how to speak to people's hearts and emotions as well.
  10. Leaders are team players -- Rather than being a personal problem solver, a leader acts more as a facilitator to help a group solve a problem as a team.

Click here to read David's full review and synopsis of The Leader's Digest. The book is now available in French, Spanish, and Portuguese editions. It has also been published in a variety of e-book formats. And our customers in Australia and the UK/Europe are now able to buy hard copies through their local Amazon web site and save shipping costs.

Keep reading, leading, and growing!

Leading @ the Speed of Change: Transforming Personal, Team, and Organization Performance


The accelerating rate of external change is overwhelming the rate of internal growth for individuals, teams, and organizations. That's creating:

  • Debilitating stress and unbalanced lives.
  • Cynicism, helplessness, and negativity.
  • Feeling overwhelmed by technology and work demands.
  • Eroding teamwork and weakened team spirit.
  • Communication breakdowns, trust gaps, and conflict.
  • Sinking morale, increased absenteeism, and lower safety.
  • A soaring "snicker factor" for vision, values, and mission statements that aren't lived.
  • Cultures misaligned with declarations of customer focus, quality, safety, caring, or innovation.
  • Resistance and apathy as yet another round of organization change initiatives sputter and stall.

These are leadership issues. On June 5 and 6 I'll be running my only public workshop of 2012 in my hometown of Kitchener, Ontario (less than an hour drive from the Toronto airport). We'll address these and many other personal, team, and organization leadership skills, such as:

  • How we personally deal with change and help others -- as Leaders, Followers, or Wallowers.
  • Balancing management (processes) and leadership (people).
  • Identifying key team and organization improvement gaps and developing improvement plans.
  • Clarifying personal focus, priorities, and development strategies.
  • Assessing, leveraging, and addressing our leadership strengths and lesser strengths.
  • Aligning and improving ourselves to develop the leadership paths that will take us, our teams, and our organizations where we want to go.

This provocative, intense, reflective, and humor-filled two-day workshop is based on the key lessons of leadership condensed from our work with thousands of managers, and the research and writing of my books.

Click here for more information and to register. Take advantage of early registration and team discounts to save up to $300 per person!

Smartening Up: Boosting Emotional Intelligence


Like the debate on whether leaders are born or made, an early debate in the emerging Emotional Intelligence research was whether our EQ, like IQ, is fixed once we hit adulthood. The debate is over and the verdict is in: like building leadership or other forms of expertise, we can improve our EQ at any time in our lives. In one study at Case Western Reserve University, Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) students were given Emotional Intelligence training (not a normal part of most very analytical M.B.A. programs). In follow-up studies for years after the program, some students had raised their EQ scores 40 percent!

In a Harvard Business Review article entitled "Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership" Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis write about "an important lesson from neuroscience: Because our behavior creates and develops neural networks, we are not necessarily prisoners of our genes and our early childhood experiences. Leaders can change if ... they are ready to put in the effort."

Richard Boyatzis is professor and chair of the department of organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve University. He says it's not a lack of ability to change but an issue of motivation. He likens this leadership development issue to treatments for alcoholism, drug addiction, and weight loss: "They all require the desire to change. More subtly, they all require a positive, rather than a negative, motivation. You have to want to change."

Many EI coaches have found that self-awareness is a key first step on the stairway to boosting our Emotional Intelligence. Howard Book, associate professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, suggests, "One simple way to measure your self-awareness is to ask a trusted friend or colleague to draw up a list of your strengths and weaknesses while you do the same. It can be an uncomfortable exercise, but the bigger the gap between your list and your helper's, the more work you probably have to do."

Science is showing us -- once again -- that when it comes to developing the "soft skills" of leadership and EI, where there's a will, there's a way. We can smarten up!

Love is at the Heart of Strong Leadership


Looking beyond the commercialization of Valentine's Day, it's always a great time to nurture our inner romantic and express gratitude for our loved ones. As I wrote this blog post for Valentine's I was listening to a randomized Beatles playlist. Of the nearly 200 songs on the list, "The Word" started playing. Its opening lines are, "Say the word and you'll be free; Say the word and be like me; Say the word I am thinking of; Have you heard the word is love?"

Love isn't "the word" found in most organizations. Fear is more like it. Fear of criticism, fear of failure, fear of getting caught, or fear of speaking up. The L-word makes hard-nosed managers squirm. These are the same managers loudly pronouncing goals of higher employee engagement and increased customer loyalty. They'll often use another L-word -- leadership -- in complete ignorance of how their loveless "bottom line" orientation is rooted in pessimism and fear. These managers use lots of "leader-speak" about vision, values, engagement, or caring but their rhetoric is heartless and empty.

In his book, Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands, Kevin Roberts, CEO of the global advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, explains that fads attract but without love it's a passing infatuation. He shows that the most successful organizations create fanatical loyalty that goes way beyond reason to highly charged emotional connections. Chapter titles include "All You Need is Love," "Love is in the Air," and "What the World Needs Now." This approach won Saachti & Saachti a $US 403 million contract with JC Penney.

"We have always felt that a company is much stronger if bound by love rather than by fear," explains Herb Kelleher, co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines. Herb is featured, along with many frontline employees, in an inspiring 15 minute video we've been using for years when working with Clients on leadership and culture development. Entitled It's So Simple, the video explains how Southwest is "the company that love built." Southwest first started flying from Love Field in Dallas, their stock symbol is LUV, and their logo features a big red heart in the center. It's So Simple shows how "love becomes an action verb that clears a path for what really matters."An employee hosting much of the mini-documentary explains, "we transfer our love for what we do, and for each other, to the customer."

When using a video like It's So Simple� there's always some question about its authenticity. In my last trip to Australia to deliver the pilot program of LEADERSHIFT we'd designed with the Qantas Engineering and Maintenance group, we invited a new executive who had just joined the company from Southwest to share his inside experiences. Tony knew many of the people featured in the video and was able to give us a much deeper appreciation for how a genuine love of people and customers permeated their culture. For example, love and respect is a key ingredient in the company's early decision to invite unions in as partners from the beginning.

So what are the hard results of all this soft love stuff? In their new book, Great by Choice, Jim Collins and Morten Hansen, feature Southwest in their extensive research on "10X companies." This research started with 20,400 companies and goes through 11 stages of cutting, screening, and shifting to identify the companies that beat their industry index by at least 10 times!! Here's what they conclude:

"...if you'd invested $10,000 in Southwest Airlines on December 31, 1972 (when it was just a tiny little outfit with three airplanes, barely reaching break-even and besieged by larger airlines out to kill the fledgling) your $10,000 would have grown to nearly $12 million by the end of 2002, a return 63 times better than the general stock market...according to an analysis by Money Magazine, Southwest Airlines produced the #1 return to investors of all S&P 500 companies that were publicly traded in 1972 and held for a full 30 years to 2003."

Ya gotta love it! It's at the heart of leadership.

Are You Ready for the Changing Workplace?


How are you incorporating social media into your workplace? Is your workplace attracting or repelling the next generation of workers? Are you engaging and retaining frontline team members through effective employer brand management. Are you living your brand from the inside out? Do you lead with What or even How and miss the energizing power of Why? Are you breaking down silos to unleash positive power? Is career development fostering engagement?

Do most people in your team or across your organization Lead, Follow, or Wallow? How are you lessening the impact of mental health and addiction issues affecting 20% of our workforce? What are the keys to sustaining wellness programs? How do leading organizations build thriving workplaces? Can you build exceptional workplaces on a limited budget? Why aren't you investing as much time leading as you'd like to?

Our workplaces are dramatically changing. These are some of the critical questions leaders must address to be victors rather than victims of these seismic shifts.

These are also some of the issues covered at The Changing Workplace: Are You Ready? on April 18 at the beautiful Royal York Hotel in Toronto. I am delighted to partner with Your WorkPlace founder and president, Vera Asanin, at this high impact session. She's assembled a stellar line up of top experts and panelists from award-winning companies. As conference leader, I'll be opening and closing the Conference while connecting the critical leadership dots throughout the day. We're putting the finishing touches on an action-packed agenda that will interweave TEDx-style short, value-packed presentations, videos, and discussions with focused networking and application opportunities. You'll leave with a rich assortment of best practices, solutions, and inspiration.

I am especially excited to hear Simon Sinek's luncheon keynote "Start with Why." This is the title of his bestselling book, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, that followed his TEDx, "Talk about Why." It's one of their top twenty most viewed. Simon's inspiring keynote will get to the very heart of leadership. Strong leaders connect everyone with the power of purpose. This builds the foundation of a thriving workplace.

Attendees will receive a copy of my latest book, Growing @ the Speed of Change with registration. And as part of our partnership with Your WorkPlace, The CLEMMER Group is offering a $100 discount on registration (discount code CLM100). Click here to register and be sure to use discount code: CLM100 to save $100!

If you don't live in the Toronto area, this is a great time of year to visit. You can even catch a Blue Jays game while you're in town! You can guess who's a fan�

If you're not able to make it, I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences on your changing workplace. What are you doing to get ready? Which of the opening questions are the most critical to your workplace? What are you doing to respond?

Vote for the World's Top Leadership Gurus


Last spring I was pleasantly surprised to be included in the World's Top 30 Leadership Gurus for 2011. It's an honor to be included with the leadership leaders who have inspired and taught me such as Warren Bennis, Tom Peter, Ken Blanchard, Jim Collins, Stephen Covey, Marshall Goldsmith, and Rosebeth Moss Kanter.

Voting is now underway for the 2012 rankings. Who's your favorite leadership guru? I would certainly add one of my mentors, Jack Zenger, to this list. Go to www.leadershipgurus.net and join in the decision. At risk of sounding like a politician, I'd be honored to get your vote.

Last year's news sent me researching the word "guru." What I discovered about "darkness disperser" was fascinating, inspiring, and relevant to my Why or life purpose. And the concept of "inner guru" is highly relevant for all of us. To lead from the inside out we all need to develop our inner guru. You can read more about this at Top 30 World's Leadership Gurus: I am Honored to be in Such Company.

Review of The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor


Up until the late nineties psychology was overly focused on the "sickness model" and treating mental illness. In The Happiness Advantage Shawn points out "as late as 1998, there was a 17-to-1 negative-to-positive ratio of research in the field of psychology. In other words, for every one study about happiness and thriving there were 17 studies on depression and disorder." The shift from sickness to wellness in the past 10 years has been dramatic. Search Amazon for books on happiness and you'll find over 22,000!

The cover of the January-February 2012 Harvard Business Review featured a yellow smiley face with dollar signs as crinkles at each end of the smile. Superimposed on the face is the title "The Value of Happiness: How Employee Well-Being Drives Profits." The introductory page to a section of articles on happiness proclaims:

"...emerging research from neuroscience, psychology, and economics makes the link between a thriving workforce and better business performance absolutely clear. Happiness can have an impact at both the company and the country level. And the movement to measure national well-being on factors other than GDP could be game changing: As we know, what gets measured gets managed. We've learned a lot about how to make people happy. We'd be stupid not to use that knowledge."

I am torn on how to review and rate The Happiness Advantage. I was originally drawn to the book by its sub-title, "The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work." I am constantly looking for evidence of how "soft skills" produce hard results. We use this in our retreats and workshops to go through the heads of "hard-nosed and results-focused" operational executives and managers to get at issues of the heart.

The Happiness Advantage does have a fair bit of strong research showing the positive impact of employee happiness/satisfaction on organizational results (see my next blog post). For example, Shawn produces powerful evidence that social support and nurturing relationships are major happiness factors. This is followed by an MIT study where researchers followed 2,600 employees at IBM for a year and showed that people with the strongest social connections had the highest performance. He also cites research showing that it takes a ratio of 2.9013 to 1 positive to negative interactions to make a team successful. A ratio of 6 - 1 creates optimum teamwork. When a global mining company was coached to increase their ratio from 1.15 to 3.56 positive to negative interactions production and performance increased by 40%!!

However, The Happiness Advantage is primarily aimed at increasing personal happiness. With Shawn's conversational writing style, solid research base, and plenty of engaging examples (such as his years helping his students at Harvard increase their happiness) the book is very useful. The Seven Principles form the book's core chapters and is a good framework:

  • The Happiness Advantage - retrain our brains to capitalize on positivity and improve productivity and performance.
  • The Fulcrum and the Lever - adjust our mindset (fulcrum) to give us the power (lever) to be more fulfilled and satisfied.
  • The Tetris Effect - spot patterns of possibility to see and seize opportunities wherever we look.
  • Falling Up - finding the mental path that leads up and out of failure and teaches us how to be happier and more successful from it.
  • The Zorro Circle - regain emotional control when overwhelmed by challenges by focusing on small manageable goals and gradually expanding our circle.
  • The 20-Second Rule - by making small energy adjustments we can reroute the path of least resistance and replace bad habits with good ones.
  • Social Investment - avoid retreating within ourselves during tough times and invest more in building our social support network to propel ourselves forward.

But as the old proverb teaches, "it's good as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough." The field of positive psychology is rapidly moving beyond happiness to well-being and on to flourishing. This is a much deeper, lasting, and ultimately more fulfilling place. Happiness is a byproduct of well-being and flourishing but not the end goal. The founder of Positive Psychology (and the field's rock star), Martin Seligman's book, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being, is at the forefront of this radical rethinking of the flood of happiness research. Another excellent book that's more toward well-being and flourishing and surpasses the personal growth advice in The Happiness Advantage is Barbara Frederickson's Positivity.

So I'll rate The Happiness Advantage 3.5/5. It doesn't quite live up to its sub-title and deals with one dimension of our emotional health and well being. On the other hand, it is an entertaining summary of happiness research and applications. And its seven principles are well proven methods for dealing with life's setbacks, navigating difficult change, building resilience, and increasing optimism and happiness.

In reading and reviewing The Happiness Advantage, I was struck -- once again -- by the point that whether for our own personal growth or leading others, it's not what we know that makes us effective. It's applying that knowledge that matters.

Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmmm on…The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor


"...positive psychology researchers finished a 'meta-analysis,' a study of nearly every scientific happiness study available -- over 200 studies on 275,000 people worldwide... happiness leads to success in nearly every domain, including work, health, friendship, sociability, creativity, and energy."

"Data abounds showing that happy workers have higher levels of productivity, produce higher sales, perform better in leadership positions, and receive higher performance ratings and higher pay. They also enjoy more job security and are less likely to take sick days (unhappy employees take15 extra per year), to quit, or to become burned out."

"...doctors put in a positive mood before making a diagnosis show almost three times more intelligence and creativity than doctors in a neutral state, and they make accurate diagnoses 19 percent faster."

"...project teams with encouraging managers performed 31 percent better than teams whose managers were less positive and less open with praise. In fact, when recognition is specific and deliberately delivered, it is even more motivating than money."

"The fastest way to disengage an employee is to tell him his work is meaningful only because of the paycheck."

"...a study of over 350 employees in 60 business units at a financial services company found that the greatest predictor of a team's achievement was how the members felt about one another."

"A longer, 15-year study even found that employees who had a difficult relationship with their boss were 30 percent more likely to suffer from coronary heart disease."

"In the U.S. Navy, researchers found, annual prizes for efficiency and preparedness are far more frequently awarded to squadrons whose commanding officers are openly encouraging. On the other hand, the squadrons receiving the lowest marks in performance are generally led by commanders with a negative, controlling, and aloof demeanor."

"One sweeping study of 7,400 employees found that those who felt they had little control over deadlines imposed by other people had a 50 percent higher risk of coronary heart disease than their counterparts. In fact, this effect was so staggering, researchers concluded that feeling a lack of control over pressure at work is as great a risk factor for heart disease as even high blood pressure."

Leadership and Culture for Higher Safety Performance


Improving organizational health and safety is like motherhood. Everyone is in favor of it. Vision, values, and mission statements abound with warm words about its importance. Who doesn't agree with slogans like "everyone going home safe and healthy every day"?

Only the most twisted executive or manager wants to hurt anyone. Yet many organizations are stressing, sickening, hurting, and killing the very people they claim to care about. And when it happens, managers and executives will often look for ways to blame the worker for their unhealthy lifestyles or unsafe work practices.

Sometimes the sick, injured, or killed worker is at fault. But the well proven 85/15 Rule clearly shows that 85 � 95 percent of errors, rework, stress, and unsafe practices are caused by the system, process, or structure. Who screened, hired, oriented, trained and supervised the worker? What are the production pressures, measures, and rewards they operate under? What behaviors get noticed and recognized? How often are "shortcuts" that skip safety steps overlooked (AKA "normalization of deviance") to get the job done? Is the boss a bully, "snoopervisor," or trusted coach? In who's opinion?

  • Who designed and controls the job design, operating processes, and support systems?
  • What tools and equipment are provided and how are they maintained?
  • Who sets up and maintains communication channels, tools, and practices?
  • What kind of reception do team members get when they point out problems or raise concerns?
  • Does management care about team members' needs and how they feel ("that's not reality; it's just their perception")?
  • Are team members human beings or faceless factors of production ("assets with skin")?
  • When a near miss or accident happens is the investigation focused on who rather than what went wrong?

These are leadership behaviors deeply embedded in an organization's culture. And it's some of the thinking behind a one-hour complimentary webcast I am now researching and developing for May 23 @ 3:00 PM (EDT). Leadership and Culture Development for Dramatically Higher Health and Safety will draw together the latest health and safety research, The CLEMMER Group's expertise with leadership and culture development, and experience with helping Clients like Barrick Gold reduce their Lost Time Incidents by 70%!

Click here for more details and to register for this free webcast!

Tweet Reading: Recommended Online Resources




This section summarizes last month's LinkedIn Updates and Twitter Tweets sent about online articles or blog posts that I've flagged as worth reading. These are usually posted on weekends when I am doing much of my reading for research, learning, or leisure.

My original tweet commenting on the article precedes each title and descriptor from the original source:

Even if you're not an NFL fan, or a casual one like me, the four steps of team leadership outlined here provides very useful reminders.

"Know Your Teammates: Leadership Lessons from the Super Bowl Quarterbacks" - Karl Moore
http://www.forbes.com

"Quarterbacks Tom Brady and Eli Manning will square off this Super Bowl Sunday. These two elite quarterbacks play at the highest level and make the people around them better, which is an essential leadership skill in football or business. "

 

Another writer compared this rude behavior with smoking back in the 70s. We need to call people on their anti-social techno habits.

"How To Lose Friends and Alienate Coworkers With Bad Mobile Behavior" - Jenna Goudreau
http://www.forbes.com

"Nearly 80% of HR managers believe mobile devices are being abused at work. Bad mobile behavior is all around us and in many circumstances can cost you friends and coworkers."

A fun checklist from a favorite movie (and character) on the mind/values set so fundamental to team and organizational leadership.

"7 Leadership Lessons from Yoda" - Ben Lichtenwalner
http://modernservantleader.com

"Perhaps the most iconic mentoring leader on the silver screen, Yoda is an excellent example of great leadership. Here are 7 leadership lessons from Yoda."

Coaching and developing others is one of the most critical differences between a manager and a leader.

"The Fourth Level of Leadership: People Development" - John Maxwell
http://www.success.com

"If you can achieve Level 4, you will create a sense of community where victories are celebrated, gratitude is evident, and loyalty is shared. Level 4 is the sweetest of all levels a leader can achieve."

Helpful research as I prepare a webcast on the impact of leadership and culture on health & safety. Managers need to look in the mirror.

"Challenging Heinrich's focus on behaviors" - Judith Erickson
http://www.ishn.com

"Popular safety intervention programs are targeting the wrong cause of workplace injuries. Safety performance occurs in a (organization) context � There is a scientifically valid association between safety performance and what the organization values."

Read The Leader Letter in Twice Weekly Installments


The items in each month's issue of The Leader Letter are first published in my twice weekly blog during the previous month.

If you read each blog post (or issue of The Leader Letter) as it's published over twelve months you'll have read the equivalent of one of my books. And you'll pick up a few practical leadership tips that help you use time more strategically and tame your E-Beast!

Feedback and Follow-Up


I am always delighted to hear from readers of The Leader Letter with feedback, reflections, suggestions, or differing points of view. Nobody is ever identified in The Leader Letter without their permission. I am also happy to explore customized, in-house adaptations of any of my material for your team or organization. Drop me an e-mail at Jim.Clemmer@Clemmer.net or connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook, or my blog!

Keep learning, laughing, loving, and leading - living life just for the L of it!!

Jim



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