Heather and I love to travel. A great perk of my work is that I am invited to speak or lead workshops and retreats in some beautiful places around the world. Heather carefully selects which ones she joins me for. Northern Canada in winter rarely makes the cut! When we travel to a new city, we start our stay with a city tour. This gives us a broad overview of the area and helps us decide where we want to spend more time.
Tomorrow we publish my November blogs in the December issue of The Leader Letter. In some ways, this issue — and many of my blog posts — are like a city tour. They highlight a few areas in the vast territory of leadership and culture development. As you read through each post or newsletter item you can jump off the bus, follow the links and take a quick look around, snap a few photos, and then re-board for the next destination. Or you can treat this as a “hop on and hop off” bus route allowing you to click deeper and deeper into links for further exploration of a topic area before returning to the main post.
To help your organization/culture development journey, tomorrow’s issue highlights the “culture change compass” from my last blog to chart your location and map out the next legs of your route. This multi-layered tool allows you to drill down ever deeper into those areas you’re most interested in or feel the highest need to explore and improve.
You can also determine if you’ve fallen into one of the deadly time traps that ensnare so many leaders in todays overloaded and over accelerated world. Communication is critical. Are you balancing electronic tools and human connections?
Leadership is more critical than ever. Good managers must become great leaders if our organizations are to thrive in today’s ever tougher conditions. That calls for more effective approaches to leadership development that leverage strengths (proven to be 2 to 3 times more effective than fixing weaknesses) and build extraordinary coaching skills.
Far too many Learning and Development professionals are badly off track using old approaches that don’t work. Our webinar on how Wilfrid Laurier University is blazing new trails in strengthening leadership skills and culture shows a much more effective pathway to peak performance.
Jesse Lee Bennett, an early 20th century, American author, advised, “Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which others have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life.” Today, blogs, newsletters, and websites provide navigational tools to navigate the dangerous seas of organizational life.
I hope my blogs and newsletters provide a useful “city tour” opening up connections to deeper destinations that guide your journey.
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