January, 2013

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10 Stunning Benefits of Failure

Leadership Freak

Success teaches repetition. Do more of the same because more of the same produces more of the same. In changing times more of the same is deadly. Success teaches confidence. Without confidence progress stalls, second-guessing prevails, the status quo persists. On the down side, success inflates confidence. Bill Gates said, “Success is a lousy teacher. [.].

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Finding Your Leadership Style

Kevin Eikenberry

Here is some very good news for you. There is no perfect leadership style, which means there is more than one way to lead effectively. Why is this good news? Because it means you, yes you, can become a highly effective leader. Read that again and let it sink in. Whatever your past experience, whatever [.].

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12 Ways to Fuel Your Own Fire

Leadership Freak

Image source Burned-out is easy. Neglect your energy and you’ll go out like an unstoked fire. Fire always cools without fuel. Ten years ago, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz wrote, The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal. It still sells like hotcakes. They wrote: [.].

Energy 102
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Popping the Self-Delusion Bubble

Leadership Freak

I woke up this morning disturbed at the subtlety of self-delusion. The trouble with delusion is illusion. What do you call someone who believes they’re: Supportive but demanding, instead. Humble but in reality, arrogant. Listening when they’re talking. Able to do everything “right” while others fall short. Informed when they don’t know. You call them [.].

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SME Relationships: Proven Solutions for Seamless Collaboration and Success

Speaker: Tim Buteyn, President of ThinkingKap Learning Solutions

💢 Do you find yourself stuck in never-ending review cycles? Are you wondering if your Subject Matter Expert actually got that last review request? Are you having trouble trying to decipher impractical or conflicting feedback? 💢 If any of these scenarios sounds familiar, you may benefit from a crash course on managing SME relationships!

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The Secret to Defeating Manipulators

Leadership Freak

Don’t get played. Cowards, manipulators, and backstabbers encourage you to take risks so they don’t have to. They posture in shadows. Let others get dirty. They step into the light when it’s safe. Leading requires risk-taking. Don’t lead if you can’t take responsibility. Backstabbers and players, on the other hand, manipulate leaders. They want benefit while [.].

Benefits 101
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Purposeful Abandonment: The Art of Letting Go

Leadership Freak

© Qrius4ever | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos You employ systems and strategies for starting, maintaining, and moving forward. Adopt systems for stopping, as well. People who can’t say, “No,” chase all the spilled marbles at once. They’re confused and empty handed in the end. Too many yeses distract, weigh down, and waste energy. [.].

Energy 99

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Redefining Practical

Leadership Freak

Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” I’ve been asking people, “If you started over, knowing what you know today, what would you do differently?” Paul Smith, author of, “Lead with a Story,” said: “I’d. be less practical in [.].

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How to Find Your Passion and Change Your Life

Leadership Freak

Everyone says, “Follow your passion.” But what if you can’t find it? Find your passion; don’t wait for it to find you. Discontent: Pick the scab of dissatisfaction. Hidden passion often lurks under the surface of discontent. Explore what you don’t like. What don’t you like about you? Forget what you don’t like about the world. [.].

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Facing the Challenge of Challenging Others

Leadership Freak

Challenge people! Fully prepared is boring. Wrong: “Who is ready for opportunities?” is the wrong question. Ready is overrated. You weren’t ready. Remember how you didn’t know? You see your skills but forget where they came from. Experience taught you. Are you ready for the challenges you’re currently facing? I hope not. It’s foolish and wasteful to expect others to develop [.].

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One Thing All Outstanding Organizations Do

Leadership Freak

Aspiration is useless, on its own. You aspire to excellence, success, and fulfillment. Big deal. Who doesn’t? Aspiration apart from definition, method, and means is life lived by blind hope and dumb luck. Furthermore, defining isn’t enough. Defining organizational excellence apart from developing clear strategies to achieve it is, “Equivalent to telling a middle-school basket-ball player [.].

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Change Management 101: A Practical 3 Part Guide

Implementing new tools or business processes in your organization? Lemon Learning put together a practical 3 part guide to prevent the pitfalls of change management. Drive a successful change management project from diagnosis through to measurement.

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Drift

Leadership Freak

Life goes where you look. Drift is inevitable. Course correction is normal. Cars and motorcycles drift where drivers look. Skiers and runners go where their eyes go. Individuals and organizations drift toward short-term views and urgencies. Drift demands intervention. Uncorrected drift always end badly. Drifting: “Everything’s running smoothly,” may indicate drifting.

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Three Surprising Secrets to Moving People

Leadership Freak

All leaders move people. Moving people begins when you understand them, not when they understand you. Daniel Pink believes the ability to move people begins with attunement. “Attunement is the ability to bring ones actions and outlook into harmony with other people and with the context you’re in. Think of it as operating the dial [.].

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Getting Past Excuses

Leadership Freak

If I started over, knowing what I know today, I would … Aim higher and start sooner. Mark Hopkins Excuses: Mark went on to say, “Life’s curveballs and my conservative nature provide daily excuses for not doing what I am capable of. But my experience has shown me that anyone can hit what they aim [.].

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Them

Leadership Freak

Successful leaders propel others forward. It’s about them, not you. Magnetism inward is inevitable, persistent, and backward to leadership. Backward leaders view life through the lens of personal impact and feelings. They ask: How does this impact me? How does this make me feel? How am I doing? 10 ways to spot selfish leaders: You [.].

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Is Training the Right Solution?

Speaker: Tim Buteyn

Let's set the scene: you’ve identified a critical performance gap in your organization and need to close that gap. A colleague suggests training, but you suspect there’s something going on that training can’t address. How can you determine if training is the right solution before you commit your budget and resources to a new training program? In this webinar, you will learn how to determine if training is the right solution using the Behavior Engineering Model.

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Three Surprising Secrets to Creating Simplicity

Leadership Freak

Fog rolled in last week in Central Pennsylvania. Warm temperatures collided with cold snow and gray mist blanked our valley. Everything slows in fog. Everything’s more dangerous. Complexity creates fog; simplicity clears it. Simplicity produces clarity; clarity enables confidence. Confidence fuels progress. Causes of complexity: Fuzzy purpose. Life is more complex and confusing for those [.].

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Bringing Hands-Off and Hands-On Together

Leadership Freak

I lead with a hands-on type leader. I’m a hands-off. He’s a, “get things done type,” I’m a, “go with it type.” I thrive in ambiguity; too much frustrates him. The other day, he said, “If we do it your way, nothing will happen.” We’ve been together so many years we can say things like that. I’ve [.].

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Life Lessons from Amy Lyman, Co-Founder of Great Place to Work®

Leadership Freak

Image source I asked Amy Lyman, co-founder of the Great Place to Work® Institute, what she would do differently if she could start over. She said, “I would not do anything differently as I don’t think about my life and work in that way. What I do try to do is think about how to [.].

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5 Ways to Become a Healthy People-Pleaser

Leadership Freak

Only people-pleasers succeed. The more people you please the more success you enjoy. The list of people who need pleasing includes: Clients. Superiors. Boards. Employees. Colleagues. Vendors. “Just please yourself,” may be an excuse for lazy, self-indulgence. But, unchecked people-pleasing destroys people. Five ways to become a healthy people-pleaser: Please yourself in ways that please [.].

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Revitalizing Dry Content: A Lesson in Engagement

Speaker: Tim Buteyn, President of ThinkingKap Learning Solutions

We’ve all been there. You’ve been given a pile of dry content and asked to create a compelling eLearning course. You’re determined to create something more engaging than the same old course that learners quickly click through, but how do you take this “boring” content and create something relevant and engaging? Many instructional designers will say, “Boring in means boring out.

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Needy Leaders

Leadership Freak

I can still find my way around grocery stores but I don’t do the shopping anymore. I used to see young moms with toddlers tugging on their pant legs. It was cute to me but not always to them. You can love someone and hope they leave you alone, at least for a while. In [.].

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Winning in Collaborative Environements

Leadership Freak

Competition limits potential by blocking collaboration. I love competition. But, I’m wondering about the damage it causes within teams. Don’t expect competitors to collaborate. Would you help a teammate beat you? What if the winner receives a raise or bonus and you don’t? Leadership: Leaders don’t compete against team members. “We” environments leverage diversity. “I/you” [.].

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How to Watch the Super Bowl for Leadership Lessons

Kevin Eikenberry

Chances are, in a few days you will be watching the Super Bowl. Whether at a party, or home alone, whether you are a true fan, or are watching for the commercials (or as an excuse to eat), the Super Bowl offers you a leadership learning opportunity, if you know what to do. Just like [.].

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Leading a Team for the First Time

Leadership Freak

Leading a team for the first time is exhilarating and stressful. If you aren’t nervous, you’re oblivious. Confidence: Real confidence is rooted in your ability to try, learn, persist, work hard, and deliver results. That’s what got you here. Believe it. Fairy-tale confidence is saying its so, when it isn’t so, in order to make it so. [.].

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Brain Fog HQ: Memory Enhancement Techniques for Professional Development

Speaker: Chester Santos – Author, International Keynote Speaker, Executive Coach, Corporate Trainer, Memory Expert, U.S. Memory Champion

In October, scientists discovered that 75% of patients who experienced brain fog had a lower quality of life at work than those who did not. At best, brain fog makes you slower and less efficient. At worst, your performance and cognitive functions are impaired, resulting in memory, management, and task completion problems. In this entertaining and interactive presentation, Chester Santos, "The International Man of Memory," will assist you in developing life-changing skills that will greatly enha

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Today is.

Kevin Eikenberry

You were ahead of some people when you woke up this morning, because some people didn’t. That old quasi-joke is certainly true. You are alive today – and there is no question about that. The question is. how will you use this day? Dale Carnegie gives us some suggestions in the quotation [.].

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What is Leadership?

Kevin Eikenberry

Less than two weeks ago, actor Charles Durning passed away. In the days that followed, I read this quotation from him. It speaks to acting, his chosen profession, but when I read it, I immediately thought about the application for us as leaders. Stay with me and read on. “What is acting?” ”Acting is listening. If [.].

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The Three Conversations that Follow Feedback

Leadership Freak

Three conversations follow negative feedback; excuse, denial, and/or tell-me-more. Excuse-conversations blame. Everyone who says, “It’s not my fault,” subtly or directly says, “I’m not responsible for my negative behavior, they are.” Excuses are the reason: You feel good about you and bad toward others. Frustration continues. Growth stops. Efficiency and effectiveness plummet.

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Assumptions – Asking the Obvious

Leadership Freak

Testing assumptions makes you look stupid or misinformed. “You can be perfectly clear and perfectly wrong.” Karen Martin, “The Outstanding Organization.” Assumptions are unquestioned “truths.” Everyone knows the answer to the obvious. Why don’t you? Assumptions create false confidence by preventing obvious questions. Unquestioned assumptions ultimately distill into malaise.

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If I started over …

Leadership Freak

Joel Garfinkle’s response to, “If I started over, knowing what I know today,” took a surprising turn. He said, I would… “Realize I can’t do it alone.” I expected Joel to explain a group of personal advisers and mentors. After all, many of us act independently far too long. Instead he described an advisory group consisting of [.].

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Seeking and Seeing Breakthrough Moments

Leadership Freak

Hate surprises? Plan on staying the same. Surprises propel into the future or drive into the past. Problem is, surprise signals uncertainty. Organizations hate uncertainty. Extraordinary leaders realize surprise is a catalyst not an enemy. Reject surprises to your own peril. Surprise energizes innovation. I asked the “expert on surprise,” Soren Kaplan, “If you could [.].

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Start Fresh; Don’t Fix

Leadership Freak

Toddlers who stumble and fall aren’t broken; they need practice. Fixing is a backward-facing activity that centers on mistakes and weaknesses. Move forward; don’t fix. Leaders grow leaders. Developing isn’t fixing. Growth suggests they aren’t there, yet. Can you live with people who haven’t arrived? Can you accept people who aren’t as skilled as you?

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When Stepping Up Blows Up

Leadership Freak

Accepting challenges lifts careers. But, holding on to them destroys. Learn to challenge others as well as challenging yourself. Raise your hand and say, “I’ll take that on.” New challenges are opportunities. Challenges that lift careers include: Initiatives that impact large segments of organizations. Let others handle departmental challenges. Take on organization-wide opportunities.

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Something Better than “I think I Can”

Leadership Freak

Traditional wisdom says self-affirmation builds optimism and confidence. Dispel doubt, discouragement, and fear by repeating things like: “I’m awesome.” “I can do this.” What if the Little Engine that Could – “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can” – was wrong? Self-question rather than self-affirm: Best selling author, Daniel Pink undermines [.].

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Choosing Second Best

Leadership Freak

Sometimes second best is the best. Yesterday I chatted with Davis Taylor, founder and leader of TAI Incorporated. I wanted to learn more about the Pro Development Assessment™ my coach, Bob Hancox recently gave me. My interest led me to Davis. Not surprisingly, we talked more about leadership than anything else. Our conversation turned to [.].