October, 2011

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How One Word Can Kill Your Ability to Influence Others

Kevin Eikenberry

That is an interesting title isn’t it? Does it leave you curious? Or does it leave you scanning through words in your mind, in a competitive way, trying to guess if you come up with the right one? Either way, I hope I have influenced you to read on. While you likely [.].

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Stop Wasting Your Time Solving Problems

Leadership Freak

Many leaders and managers have a compelling; even perverse interest is fixing things. Average managers solve problems and get results. Great managers build people. A recent conversation with a new manager reminded me that it’s all about people. If you build them, they will fix problems and enhance productivity, not you. If you build them, they [.].

Manager 94
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Jesse Lyn Stoner | How Leaders Can Develop An Effective Organizational Vision

Tanveer Nasser

Does vision still play a key role for organizations in today's ever-changing world? That the basis of my conversation with best-selling author and former executive Jesse Lyn Stoner in this episode of my leadership podcast show, "Leadership Biz Cafe". Jesse Lyn Stoner is a business consultant, former executive, and bestselling author. For over 30 years, she has worked with leaders in hundreds of organizations including Honda, Pfizer, Marriott, Edelman Public Relations, Yale University, and SAP.

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The Four Leadership Lessons of Halloween

Kevin Eikenberry

Tom woke up Halloween morning and mentally previewed the day ahead. He didn’t have to think much to know it was going to be a long one. A full day of leadership training followed immediately by the costume party his wife was dragging him to. The only good thing about the day that he could [.].

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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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Making Someone Else Smarter

Kevin Eikenberry

In Tim Sander’s blog he closed his post yesterday with a quote from Stanley Marcus Jr, long time chairman of the retailer Neiman-Marcus. “You will never get dumber by making someone else smarter.” - Stanley Marcus, Jr. Questions to Ponder Do I agree with Marcus? What learning can I share with others? How [.].

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Passion is Your Problem

Leadership Freak

Your passion to make a difference makes you do too much. Sincerity is a curse when it turns you into a leaf blown around by the latest possibility for positive impact. Unfocused passion frustrates and dilutes you and your potential. Doing less enables more. The fewer things you do the better you can be at [.].

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Control Your Feelings – Don’t Express Them

Leadership Freak

Image source Emotions are responses to information; believe wrong information and you’ll experience wrong feelings. For example, you think someone neglected their responsibilities causing deliverables to fall through the cracks. Based on that, you feel concerned, frustrated, or even angry. Don’t trust those feelings. Don’t express those feelings. Push those feelings aside.

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Do You Ever Do Nothing?

Kevin Eikenberry

Sometimes a quotation encourages you to consider something you weren’t expecting. This is one of those. “You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think.” – Mortimer Adler, philosopher, educator, and author Questions to [.].

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How to Overcome the Fear of Losing

Leadership Freak

Fear of losing keeps you from winning; holding on holds you back. The more you have to lose the more you have to protect. Protecting is backward facing. Some things should be protected. Protect family and reputation but let go of past success. Clinging to success makes you fail. Things to hold to: Cling to [.].

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16 Competencies Guaranteed to Deliver Results

Leadership Freak

One in three leaders has no outstanding strength. If you have one extraordinary strength you are in the 64th percentile of over 200,000 leaders. Competency delivers results. Extraordinary leaders display and leverage at least one extraordinary strength. John Zenger, author and CEO of Zenger|Folkman, spoke with me about strength-based leadership.

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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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How to Celebrate Your Birthday – and Every Day

Kevin Eikenberry

It’s my sister Paula’s birthday. Several years ago I wrote a post on her birthday, and later I wrote a post about ways to celebrate your birthday. I reprise and update them today, as a way to tell my little Sis happy birthday, and give us all something to think about. Happy [.].

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Identifying Dysfunctional Relationship Patterns

Leadership Freak

“When relationships are dysfunctional, there are three basic roles people play: persecutor, rescuer, and victim,” Marlen Chism. The lists that follow are adapted from, Stop Workplace Drama. Victims: Constantly complain. Resist solutions. Lack boundaries. Feel they’ve been done wrong. (sometimes you have) Fear conflict. Won’t speak up. Borrow money. Rely on parents, even in adulthood. [.].

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Stop Asking Stupid Questions

Leadership Freak

Questions focused on the present are management questions. “What’s the problem?” for example. Leaders, on the other hand, ask questions about the future, “Where do we want to be next year?” Managers ask about execution. Leaders ask about direction. In today’s complex world, leaders manage and managers lead. Determine which moment you’re in. Is this [.].

Manager 82
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How to Magnify the Impact of Your Strengths

Leadership Freak

“A man should never be appointed to a managerial position if his vision focuses on people’s weaknesses rather than on their strengths. The man who always knows what people cannot do, but never sees what they can do, will undermine the spirit of the organization,” Peter Drucker. John Zenger, co-author of the HBR article, Making [.].

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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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8 Secrets to Rising Above the Pack

Leadership Freak

Malcolm Gladwell explains the deepest fear of all is being rejected by our peers – “social risk.” I’m watching the recording of Gladwell’s presentation at the World Business Forum (WBF), “We are hardwired to want the approval of our peers … we want to do what everybody else is doing.” The problem: People pleasing makes [.].

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Overcoming the Mediocrity of Doing Your Best

Leadership Freak

“Do your best,” is an excuse for not doing your best. It’s code for, don’t worry if you don’t make it. Stop telling people to do their best; give them a goal, instead. Goals motivate because they define desirable results. “Do your best,” is obscure babble. You don’t know what your “best” is. Goals, however, [.].

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There Are Stupid Questions

Leadership Freak

Image source: Who ever said there are no stupid questions was wrong. Drucker said, “The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.” Your questions establish, limit, and maintain the focus of others. A question: How many passes? (55 sec. video) Wrong questions – wrong direction: Questions control perceptions. Tal Ben-Shahar, author and speaker at the World [.].

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Five Ways to Master Office Politics

Leadership Freak

Image source Office politics is not a dirty word; you’ll go further if you can play. Believing good work always speaks for itself is naïve. Sadly, many bosses rise to authority because they understand and play dirty office politics. Even in work cultures where bosses effectively deal with backstabbing, gossip, and office maneuvering, playing politics [.].

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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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Pain is Necessary and Good

Leadership Freak

Life eventually hardens like arteries unless there’s painful intervention. Positive statements affirm us. Negative statements change us. Furthermore, compliments and affirmations validate the past and solidify the present. But, crisis, criticisms and corrections change us. Spencer Johnson correctly observes, “Change happens when the pain of holding on becomes greater than the fear of letting go.” [.].

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Six Keys to Crafting Your Story

Kevin Eikenberry

Starting from the time we have enough of a vocabulary to string together two sentences, we start telling stories — and even before that, we are entranced by them. The poet Mariel Rukeyser wrote “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” While that isn’t literally true, we all recognize the wisdom in the thought. [.].

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Five Penetrating Questions that Expose Humility

Leadership Freak

Patterns are developing after a year and a half’s worth of conversations with high profile leaders and successful authors. Jay Elliot, former Sr. V.P. at Apple said, “Great people are hard on themselves. My job is to encourage them.” John Spence pulled off the road while on his way to a speaking gig to listen [.].

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How Big is Your Big Picture?

Kevin Eikenberry

One of the roles of a leader is to provide the perspective that the rest of the team or organization might not see. It is easy to get caught up in the daily to-do list, the quarterly objectives and the rhythm of the calendar, and lose sight of the bigger picture, the larger goals, the [.].

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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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Embracing the Joys of Fear and Pain

Leadership Freak

Fear and pain motivate you to stop, run, avoid, or stubbornly dig in. They don’t move you forward, they move you away. Fear and pain may, however, ignite passion to change. Politicians create fear that galvanize constituents around a cause and garners votes. The problem, fear only works for the short-term. It creates a huddling [.].

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Dealing with Tattlers, Whiners, and Backstabbers

Leadership Freak

Tattlers, whiners, and backstabbers wear a path to your office filling your ear with spin. They have one goal in mind; make their world better at the expense of others. Console them and they propagate like destructive bunnies. Confront them and they go underground only to focus on you. I’m more direct, so my approach [.].

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The Essential Secret to Full Engagement

Leadership Freak

The reason your team isn’t fully engaged is you aren’t fully committed to them. They know, you’re dedicated to them only so long as their performance pleases you. They know organizational interests come first, theirs don’t. They know you’re playing hide-n-seek with opportunities, pay raises, and promotions to manipulate them. Always place the best interests [.].

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How Blowing up a Factory Changed Jack Welch

Leadership Freak

I asked Jack Welch, at the World Business Forum 2011, to talk about tipping points in his life and he said, “I blew up a (GE) factory the first year I was there.” He was in his mid-twenties and figured his career was over. “I was running a little pilot plant. It all exploded, went [.].

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Accepting Average Enables Exceptional

Leadership Freak

People remain average because they don’t understand exceptional. A friend of mine recently said, “Maybe average is ok. That’s what most people and organizations are so what’s wrong with it?” We were exploring vision, passion, and excellence. I don’t think he was advocating for average; you don’t have to. He was, however, pushing me and [.].

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What You Do Matters

Kevin Eikenberry

I’ve featured William James, the father of American Psychology here before (most recent, further back). Today, another powerful thought from him. I think after you read it, reflect and the questions and take the actions I suggest, you will be glad I did. “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” -William James [.].

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The Secret to Failing Well

Leadership Freak

Our children finished their Little League Baseball (LL) experience long ago. My LL experience goes back to the mid ’60’s but I still remember. My first at-bat ever, I hit a home run. That solidified my role as clean-up batter. My last at bat I struck out. All these years later, I still remember those [.].

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Six Strategies to Get Your Tough On

Leadership Freak

Err on the side of pushing harder not easier. When you wonder if you should challenge or comfort someone, challenge them. Expect more not less. Encourage those who are struggling but don’t exclude challenging them. Reject the temptation to coddle. People rise to challenges. Maxed out: A few on your team are maxed out. Strengthen [.].

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Your Frailties Make You Beautiful

Leadership Freak

Image source We’re all drawn toward skillful competent individuals. Maybe they’ll teach us? Hopefully, they’ll rub off. But competency without frailty is uncomfortable, unapproachable, and unattractive. The things that make competencies beautiful are the frailties that surround them. I was thinking of this during lunch with Doug Conant, former CEO of Campbell’s Soup.

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15 Ways to Fight Fair

Leadership Freak

Image source “Most organizations have far too little conflict,” Pat Lencioni at the 2011 World Business Forum. Friction between individuals based on personalities, backstabbing, and gossip stifles organizations, hinders productivity, and creates negative work environments. Solve it quickly. On the other hand, teams that can’t fight fair are mediocre.