This Week’s Leadership Favs

The BIG Friday leadership favorites are an eclectic collection of articles, blog posts, quotes, pod casts and whatever else engaged our interest as we did our work over the past week. Lead BIG and enjoy!

How to Map the Politics around Your Work (Colin Gautrey, The Gautrey Group)

Ewwww, say many people when the topic “office politics” is broached. Yet smart leaders understand that office politics can’t be ignored, and in fact, need to be understood. Colin offers up a fascinating exercise in this post, designed to help leaders develop a “firm grasp of what is “really” going on, can you start to navigate safely through the corridors of power.”

The 70-20-10 Rule  (Center for Creative Leadership e-Newsletter, requires free sign-up)

Based on their own research, CCL proposes a formula for developing managers that incorporates three categories of experience: “challenging assignments (70 percent), developmental relationships (20 percent) and coursework and training (10 percent). Says CCL’s Meena Surie Wilson, ‘We believe that today, even more than before, a manager’s ability and willingness to learn from experience is the foundation for leading with impact.’”

Bad is Stronger Than Good (Roy F. Baumeister, et al, research paper)

If your orientation to the world is a glass half empty, you’ll have a field day with the scientific data here, “having a good day did not have any noticeable effect on a person’s well-being the following day, whereas having a bad day did carry over and influence the next day.”  For us glass-half-full folks, all the more reason to keep working on making a positive difference and paying it forward.

Bad Boss or a Bad Job Fit? (Chris Young, Rainmaker Group)

Chris poses an interesting question here: are you certain your workplace problems are caused by having a crummy boss, or is the root cause that the wrong person was hired for the job? He proposed a three-step process to find the answer.

4 Big Reasons to Kill Your Weekly Status Meeting (Art Petty, Management Excellence)

Time is money. Relationships are the new currency of workplace. If you’re a boss and value both time and relationships, read Art’s post before you schedule your next staff meeting.

Quote of the week:  “There’s a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in doing something, you do it only when circumstance permit. When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.” ~Art Turock

 

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This Week’s Leadership Favs

Enjoy our weekly leadership post round-up!

Train Your Brain to Focus (Paul Hammerness,MD, and Margaret Moore, HBRBlog Network)

It’s kinda nice to see the spotlight shining on multi-tasking in a negative way. Maybe that’s a little mean but the BIG team has seen too many people drop too many balls because they believe it’s good leadership/management for them to do 27 things simultaneously.

10 “It’s Your Biz” Brainpower Tools (Dr. Ellen Weber, Brain Leaders and Learners)

Ellen serves up ten brain empowered insights for entrepreneurs based on It’s Your Biz by Susan Wilson Solovic. We particularly like the insight to have “confidence to dance alone at times and live new discoveries.”

Be Bitter or Better (Shawn Murphy, Switch and Shift)

It’s hard being a leader these days, for sure. One of our oft-used pieces of coaching advice - you can either be bitter or get better, the choice is up to you - gets backed up here with Shawn’s three specific easy-to-use tactics for leaders to consider.

Five Signs Your Organization May be Trapped in a Psychic Prison (Chris Young, The Rainmaker)

Think your organization might be trapped by its past and held captive by unconscious bias and habits? Chris offers a short, five item checklist to diagnosis if your organization is “trapped in a favored way of thinking which restricts creativity, prohibits change, and limits its ability to progress into the future.”

A Case For Being a ‘Nice’ Boss (Gwyn Teatro, You’re Not the Boss of Me)

In a business world that sometimes categorizes being nice as a four-letter word, we love how Gwyn challenges us to challenge our thinking about niceness. It’s something leaders should all aspire to.

The Leadership Love-in (John Bell, In the CEO Afterlife)

As a former CEO, John shares some insights into his love of leadership as well as a list of some of his favorite leadership blog sites. Some good places to bookmark!

Here’s to using your head to manage and your heart to lead!

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