TrustBusters

The best leaders I know work double-time to foster trust. They understand that magic occurs when there is a high level of trust among and between members of the organization. Those impactful leaders strive to be exemplars of behaviors that foster trust.

Here are some well-documented Trust Busters:

• One-sided communications
• Absence of transparency
• Lack of integrity
• Hubris
• Abuse of power
• Outright dishonesty
• Exclusive, rather than inclusive, practices

How can we foster trust? A good start would be to scratch those seven elements off of our to-do list.

Trust lost is almost impossible to regain. Gaining and holding trust requires intentional and persistent work.

We can start right now...

MEchanic

The craft and process of betterment seeking is intensely personal. It starts with LEARNING and results in MEchanicing (aka fixing) the things in ourselves we think might "run" a little better.

When we're tinkering on ourselves, we LEARN through multiple channels:

• By observing those we admire and attempting to copy their ways of thinking and behaving.
• By paying attention to anti-examples -- those we do not particularly admire -- and working to eradicate those kinds of thinking/behavior out of our own.
• By studying intensely -- via written word, podcasts, videos, personal conversations -- the strategies and habits we believe will move us toward becoming the best version of ourselves.

When we're truly committed to getting better, every day, on purpose, we really don't have the time to "fix" others. 

Being a MEchanic is pretty much a full-time job.

ExcellenceMissed

Of course it is!

We fall short of Excellence for two primary reasons:

1) We weren't striving for Excellence in the first place. It's much safer to aim low, stay off the radar, caste blame, not care, give up.

2) We were striving for Excellence, which is a bold, worthy, and illusive undertaking. We may have missed by an inch or even a mile, but at least we were pushing our limits toward betterness. Even those who occasionally do achieve Excellence have an extremely difficult time sustaining it.

Pursuit of Excellence is not for sissies. It is, however, for those who want to be better, to do better, to leave the world a better place than we found it.

Let's roll!

UnreasonableHospitality

I recently read Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect by Will Guidara (2022). 

WG is a high-end restauranteur in New York City. He and his team have garnered acclaim both in the U.S. and internationally.

 My top takeaways:

·       We can think of service as “black and white,” but hospitality is what adds the “color.”

·       Genuine hospitality means making others feel valued, seen, a part, welcome.

·       Providing hospitality can also be a selfish pleasure.

·       There is tremendous nobility in making the choice to serve others.

·       Hospitality can be expressed in almost any vocational or professional field. 

·       The enthusiasm of one person can be the genesis of extraordinary things.

·       Let our energy impact those to whom we are speaking, rather than the other way around.

·       “Cult” is short for “Culture.” An interesting assertion.

·       Culture is caught, not taught.

·       Learning a system from the ground up has tremendous value.

·       The 95/5 Rule: Spend 95% of your business resources scrupulously, the other 5% foolishly.

·       We all -- especially leaders -- need someone who in our inner circle who feels comfortable telling us when we aren’t acting as the best version of ourself.

·       Find and leverage the strengths of each team member, no matter how deeply buried those strengths may be. 

·       Keep emotion out of criticism.

·       Every hire sends a message. 

·       Hire slow, fire fast (judiciously).

·       Being intentional is important; articulating it to the team is more so.

·       “It might not work” is a terrible reason not to try.

·       Excellence is the culmination of thousands of details executed perfectly.

·       Channeling Walt Disney: “People can feel perfection.”

·       Management key: How we choose to praise + How we choose to criticize = Level of success.

·       There is a difference in being attentive and paying attention.

·       The opposite of a good idea can, and should be, a good idea.

·       Better things happen when we can replace “transactional” with “transformational.”

·       Seeking to replace monologue with dialogue almost always yields better results.

 

My favorite quotes:

 

“Fads fade and cycle, but the human desire to be taken care of never goes away.” (p. 5)

 

“Some of the best advice I ever got about starting in a new organization is: Don’t cannonball. Ease into the pool. I’ve passed this advice on to those joining my own: no matter how talented you are, or how much you have to add, give yourself time to understand the organization before you try to impact it.” (p. 64)

 

“You’re not always going to agree with everything you hear, but you’ve got to start by listening.” (p. 64)

 

“The day you stop reading your criticism is the day you grow complacent, and irrelevance won’t be far behind.” (p. 90)

 

“You must be able to name for yourself why your work matters.” (p. 99)

 

“The first time someone comes to you with an idea, listen closely, because how you handle it will dictate how they choose to contribute in the future.” (p. 116)

 

“One of my dad’s quotes I love the most is: ‘The secret to happiness is always having something to look forward to.’” (p. 145)

 

“It isn’t the lavishness of the gift that counts, but its pricelessness.” (p. 209)

 

“Creativity is an active process, not a passive one.” (p. 224)

 

“Start with what you want to achieve, instead of limiting yourself to what’s realistic or sustainable.” (p. 238)

 

This book reaffirmed much of what I already knew and believed, and framed some of it in new and interesting ways. It was well worth the time I spend with it.

EnergyManagement

The best leaders I know are superb at managing energy (their own and that of the organization).

Here are some of the daily disciplines they leverage:

• Relentless focus on the Vision and clarity of direction
• Continual thinking, dialogue, and action toward improvement
• Mitigation of confusion and chaos
• Attention to relationships (internal and external)
• Team centered data analysis, reflection, and adaptation
• Constant communication, transparency, and full disclosure

These impactful leaders approach the work holistically, rather than in reductionist fashion.

Yes, it's a LOT. 

But..... We really don't have enough energy or time to waste otherwise.

TeachingNaked

I recently read Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning by José Antonio Bowen (2012). My Department Chair, Dr. Joyce Farrow, put this one on my radar screen. Thankfully. 

 

My top takeaways:

·       Education has become, and will increasingly be, a highly competitive marketplace. Adaptability and nimbleness will win the day.

·       Design of learning tasks must be framed in a customized and personalized way for the individual learner.

·       We each have a personal epistemology, in that we take what we have learned (knowledge and skills) and frame it against our own contexts (beliefs, motives, aspirations, needs). 

·       Technology is a tool. Like all tools, it can be leveraged to accelerate movement toward desired outcomes -- in our case, LEARNING -- or if wrongly chosen or poorly deployed, it can inhibit the learning.

·       As educators, our product is LEARNING, not the diploma or degree.

·       In educational institutions, the educators/teachers had better be the most passionate and aggressive learners. If not, they will rightly be deemed irrelevant.

 

My favorite quotes:

 

“The problem of teaching, therefore, is not getting the facts but the context from my brain to yours.” (p. 87)

 

“Bain (2004) came to the same conclusion: The best teachers focus on challenging students in a supportive environment where failure is tolerated.” (p. 93)

 

“Today’s employer now expects anyone coming for an interview to have studied the organization’s website carefully.” (p. 151) 

 

“Every profession is becoming more like law and medicine: there is now more information than anyone can memorize and more need for analysis.” (p. 184)  

 

“Record companies fought the demise of the CD because they mistook the delivery system for the product.” (p. 259)

 

Dr. Bowen wrote this book in 2012. I read it 12 years later. He proved to be downright prescient in some of his predictions about where education was/is going. Sadly, we remain mired in some of the same educational paradigms from which he was trying to lead us.

 

Worth the read for those who love education.

Artful_Inquirers

The best leaders I know, in both personal life and professional, are masterful inquirers. At almost every encounter with members of the team, they find a way to ask questions that keep us focused both on the direction we're heading and the way we are spending our precious resources (both tangible and intangible) in pursuit of that direction.

Here are some examples of the questions that Artful Inquirers put before us regularly:

How clear are we about the direction we are heading?

In what ways are we spending our time, effort, resources well in this pursuit?

What expenditures of our time/effort/resources seem not to be moving us toward our vision?

How clear are we, both as teams and as individuals, about the roles we are being asked to play?

How might we be clearer about the vision we have chosen, and why we have chosen it?

These types of questions, and variations on them, serve to cause deep reflection and tightening of alignments. Both are good things.

By the way, these are not posed as hypothetical questions. Thinking and dialogue are required responses.