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In the topic 'Self-Leadership'


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Jest for the Pun of It

If you’re a father I hope you enjoyed Father’s Day and were treated like a king. I tried to get our three kids — although they’re now in the twenties and hardly kids anymore — to give me the gift of laughing at all my Dad Jokes all day long. But they would not groan […]

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Reclaim Your Time, Reclaim Your Life

I recently had a conversation with a vice president about the pressing challenges she’s facing in her division with priority overload. She was looking at bringing her management team to our Leading @ the Speed of Change: Transforming Personal, Team, and Organization Performance public workshop. We decided to tailor a session for her group that […]

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Use This 10 Point Checklist for a Leadership Check Up

Use this checklist as a “time out” to reflect on your leadership strengths and gaps. When faced with wrenching changes, setbacks, and difficulties do you generally Lead, Follow, or Wallow? What would your team say? How do you know? What percent of your time are you now spending on Technical (applying your expertise and solving […]

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Is There a Place for Ego in Effective Leadership?

A few months ago I posted a blog on “What’s Your Me/We Ratio? based on a salient observation made by Donald Cooper in his newsletter about managers’ use of “I” and “my,” rather than “we” and “our.” They seem to live by the American pop music star Madonna’s creed: “everyone is entitled to my opinion.” […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Behold! A Leader is Born!

A long time reader, P.K. Seshadri, sent this “quip to enjoy and use in your future posts: An amateur photographer was invited to dinner with friends and took along a few pictures to show the hostess. She looked at the photos and commented ‘These are very good! You must have a good camera.’ He didn’t […]

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Three Core Questions to Start Your New Year

Happy New Year!! May this be your best one yet! The start of a new year is an excellent time to renew and refocus ourselves, our teams, and our organizations. It’s an essential part of centering or grounding ourselves. In The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age, John […]

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Change Choices: Creating Our Own Reality

The short video clip Lost Generation continues to be a big hit with keynote and workshop audiences as we discuss our choices to Lead, Follow, or Wallow when faced with challenging changes or setbacks. It features a poem written by Jonathon Reed for a “U @ 50” contest sponsored by the American Association of Retired […]

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When to Work on Weaknesses

It was an eerie coincidence! Maybe it’s because Halloween is about to pounce on us … I had just read my old colleague Jack Zenger, and his colleagues Joe Folkman and Scott Edinger’s excellent article in this month’s issue of Harvard Business Review. Entitled “Making Yourself Indispensible”, the article builds on the strong research and […]

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Native American Folktale Illustrates the Power of Expectations

I don’t recall how this Native American fable ended up in my database: A native brave came upon an eagle’s egg which had somehow fallen unbroken from an eagle’s nest. Unable to find the nest, the brave put the egg in the nest of a prairie chicken where it was hatched by the brooding mother […]

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Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmmm… on “Flourishing” from Martin Seligman

My last post reviewed Martin Seligman’s new book, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being. Here are a few key excerpts: “When asked what, in two words or fewer, positive psychology is about, Christopher Peterson, one of its founders, replied, ‘Other people.’ Very little that is positive is solitary… Other people are the […]

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Review of “Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being” by Martin Seligman

Since the mid-eighties I’ve been an avid follower of Martin Seligman’s leading-edge work at the University of Pennsylvania. He began his distinguished psychology career in the late sixties studying pessimism, learned helplessness, and depression. His two previous books, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life and Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive […]

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Highlighting Bright Colors During Dark Times

My last post focused on our work with Aga Khan University; a remarkable example of a highly values and mission driven organization navigating through very turbulent times in difficult parts of the world. In my initial trip last June and my recent visit this May, I had some time to tour the teaming city of […]

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For Pete’s Sake: Learning from the Error of My Ways

Within 10 minutes of Tuesday’s blog being posted (“Changing Seasons, Changing Skills, Habits, and Perspectives”) an alert reader sent me an e-mail entitled “For Pete’s Sake,” pointing out that I’d incorrectly credited Bob Seger as writer of the song, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” from Ecclesiastes. It was actually Pete Seeger. Mia culpa! Sorry Pete! I hope […]

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Draw from Sales Training to Develop Critical Influencing Skills

Persuasion and influence skills have always been a big part of leadership effectiveness. In today’s complex and matrix organizations these skills are central to our success. There are many people and situations that we don’t have direct control over. This could be upward to more senior leaders, outward to our peers and other departments, and […]

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Practical Leadership Tips from May’s “Harvard Business Review”

I’ve been an avid reader of Harvard Business Review for over 35 years. It’s often filled with leading edge research, thoughtful observations, and useful approaches to personal, team, and organization leadership. Every few months an issue like May’s comes along bulging with lots of great articles that I file in my electronic database. The regular […]

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Building Our Resilience in Facing the F-Word

Failure. Is it temporary or permanent? Is it an experience or who you are? Do you learn from it or get crushed by it? Do you get traumatized, bounce back, or grow and become better off? The April issue of the Harvard Business Review is entitled “The Failure Issue: How to Understand It, Learn From […]

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Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on… Involved Leadership

The messenger must be the message. The most effective communication is face-to-face. But the most believable communication is behavior. We would all much rather see than hear a sermon. Many well intentioned managers lead change or improvement efforts that are all about changing everyone else while they carry on pretty much as before. They’re preaching […]

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Book Review of “Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility”

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old your body is? “You’re only as old as you feel” is folk wisdom that’s almost a cliche. In Counterclockwise, Harvard psychology professor, Ellen Langer, presents powerful evidence showing just how true that is. Langer’s life work is on illusion of control, aging, decision-making, and […]

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