Saturday, July 12, 2014

It’s less about what WE say, rather it’s how WE say it.

Great leaders have a monumental impact on the people around them, so much so that they can change the trajectory of their careers. Among great managers, it’s incredibly easy to find people on their teams who have fundamentally been transformed. Thus, the prototypical leader of the future will shift from the steely-eyed command-and-control type to one who is more open to feedback….one who specializes in communication, collaboration and co-ordination. To become one of them, there’s a few things we could do:


Articulate a vision that enrolls and inspires the people around.


Be a role model for those around you and invest in reaching your potential

Frame your communications in the values of who you are communicating with.


Leadership is not a title, it is about having the attitude of taking responsibility backed up by the willingness to take action. Leaders are prepared to put in the effort and sacrifice short term results to reap dividends in the longer term. Great leaders make a commitment to achieve excellence in all areas of life and regularly invest time and money into becoming the best they can be, taking themselves and those around around them to the next level.


It’s vital to understand there are many paths to success. We need to understand that managing by trying to be liked is the path to ruin. As a leader, we need to care deeply, deeply about our people while not worrying or really even caring about what they think about us. However this is easier said than done, but added it’s important to avoid simply telling employees what they want to hear.


It’s also very important to be transparent; people are always looking at you – Don’t lose their trust by failing to provide transparency in your decisions and critiques. The way we build trust with our people is by being forthright and clear with them from day one.


As we can imagine in a startup environment where leadership roles may not be well defined. But if we don’t deal with, dysfunction could become embedded in the company. That dysfunction becomes learned and part of the culture of the company and it’s almost impossible to eradicate it. Knowing how to effectively project ourselves as a leader and to understand the impact we have on others will define the success as a leader. Employees look to leaders to give them confidence that their organisation is moving in the right direction and that, as employees, that they are part of an important cause. Because they understand the fundamental difference between “Intention” and “Impact” in communications and how to structure their behavior and communication style accordingly to create an engaged, inspired and effective team.


Successful leaders also understand that their team will always be a reflection of themselves. If as the leader, they are not highly organised, the team is unlikely to be either. If the leader does not focus on growing their knowledge and on-going personal development, then it is almost certain that their team will not either. So successful leaders need to be congruent and display the behaviors that they want to see exhibited by their team members.


One true test of a leader is whether their teams and achievements endure after they leave their post. If we aspire for leadership, we need to ensure that we’ve prepared our team to succeed without us. That means finding or grooming a successor, building processes that can persist long after we transition to a larger role, and creating a culture that embeds the right habits and norms into the fabric of our team.








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If email is the problem, WE alone are the solution.

Some people might say – Nobody uses email anymore – you get too much of it. Many of us are even declining email use as more users adopt social media platforms and real-time mobile-chat applications these days. The shift from email to newer forms of communication is the result of a consumer trend favoring real-time communication methods offered by applications like Twitter, SMS text messaging, WhatsApp, Kik, Viber etc.


But, the world’s obesity problem isn’t the fault of food, and the world’s debt problem isn’t the fault of money. Our email problems aren’t the fault of email as a communications system, and they’re probably not even the fault of the tools we’re using. However the real problem for most people who feel email is out of control is that they haven’t taken responsibility for figuring out why the problem exists for them and how to change their habits to address it.


Learning to cope with email may involve things that feel painful, but a few handful of action can relieve the dread we apparently feel each time we come face to face with our inbox:


Use a modern email service that has features that put us in control. Use an email provider that filters spam more effectively.


Turn off social network notifications. They seem to be such a huge source of our angst, yet they don’t need to be. Just turn them off.


Don’t sign up for mail lists unless we really need to. Nobody can force us. Also unsubscribe from mailing lists we enjoy, particularly those that distract us into reading more, would help.


Filter stuff out of inbox that isn’t urgent. The glory of virtually unlimited email storage is that we don’t have to keep everything in our inbox, yet we can find it when we need it or browse through it when we’ve time.

Force yourself to respond to difficult messages immediately. Delete or fill certain messages without taking action on them.


If, after carefully considering and adhering to the suggestions above, you’re still inundated with a tidal wave of unwanted email, you might consider being grateful that people actually take the time to write you.


Perhaps we’ll have to do all these things, or none of them. That’s obviously not for me to say. Certainly email overload is not a trivial thing to deal with. But people have successfully and definitively dealt with it. Before we can do that, however, we have to accept that we alone have the responsibility to make email work for us. And the one thing we mustn’t do is shift the blame to email as a medium or to an imperfect email app, because WE alone are the solution.








from WordPress http://ift.tt/1qTSa8Z

via IFTTT

It's less about what WE say, rather it's how WE say it.

Great leaders have a monumental impact on the people around them, so much so that they can change the trajectory of their careers. Among great managers, it’s incredibly easy to find people on their teams who have fundamentally been transformed. Thus, the prototypical leader of the future will shift from the steely-eyed command-and-control type to one who is more open to feedback….one who specializes in communication, collaboration and co-ordination. To become one of them, there's a few things we could do:

  • Articulate a vision that enrolls and inspires the people around.
  • Be a role model for those around you and invest in reaching your potential
  • Frame your communications in the values of who you are communicating with.


Leadership is not a title, it is about having the attitude of taking responsibility backed up by the willingness to take action. Leaders are prepared to put in the effort and sacrifice short term results to reap dividends in the longer term. Great leaders make a commitment to achieve excellence in all areas of life and regularly invest time and money into becoming the best they can be, taking themselves and those around around them to the next level.

It's vital to understand there are many paths to success. We need to understand that managing by trying to be liked is the path to ruin. As a leader, we need to care deeply, deeply about our people while not worrying or really even caring about what they think about us. However this is easier said than done, but added it's important to avoid simply telling employees what they want to hear.

It's also very important to be transparent; people are always looking at you - Don't lose their trust by failing to provide transparency in your decisions and critiques. The way we build trust with our people is by being forthright and clear with them from day one.

As we can imagine in a startup environment where leadership roles may not be well defined. But if we don't deal with, dysfunction could become embedded in the company. That dysfunction becomes learned and part of the culture of the company and it's almost impossible to eradicate it. Knowing how to effectively project ourselves as a leader and to understand the impact we have on others will define the success as a leader. Employees look to leaders to give them confidence that their organisation is moving in the right direction and that, as employees, that they are part of an important cause. Because they understand the fundamental difference between “Intention” and “Impact” in communications and how to structure their behavior and communication style accordingly to create an engaged, inspired and effective team.

Successful leaders also understand that their team will always be a reflection of themselves. If as the leader, they are not highly organised, the team is unlikely to be either. If the leader does not focus on growing their knowledge and on-going personal development, then it is almost certain that their team will not either. So successful leaders need to be congruent and display the behaviors that they want to see exhibited by their team members.


One true test of a leader is whether their teams and achievements endure after they leave their post. If we aspire for leadership, we need to ensure that we've prepared our team to succeed without us. That means finding or grooming a successor, building processes that can persist long after we transition to a larger role, and creating a culture that embeds the right habits and norms into the fabric of our team.

If email is the problem, WE alone are the solution.

Some people might say - Nobody uses email anymore – you get too much of it. Many of us are even declining email use as more users adopt social media platforms and real-time mobile-chat applications these days. The shift from email to newer forms of communication is the result of a consumer trend favoring real-time communication methods offered by applications like Twitter, SMS text messaging, WhatsApp, Kik, Viber etc.

But, the world’s obesity problem isn’t the fault of food, and the world’s debt problem isn’t the fault of money. Our email problems aren’t the fault of email as a communications system, and they’re probably not even the fault of the tools we're using. However the real problem for most people who feel email is out of control is that they haven’t taken responsibility for figuring out why the problem exists for them and how to change their habits to address it.


Learning to cope with email may involve things that feel painful, but a few handful of action can relieve the dread we apparently feel each time we come face to face with our inbox:

  • Use a modern email service that has features that put us in control. Use an email provider that filters spam more effectively.
  • Turn off social network notifications. They seem to be such a huge source of our angst, yet they don’t need to be. Just turn them off.
  • Don’t sign up for mail lists unless we really need to. Nobody can force us. Also unsubscribe from mailing lists we enjoy, particularly those that distract us into reading more, would help.
  • Filter stuff out of inbox that isn’t urgent. The glory of virtually unlimited email storage is that we don’t have to keep everything in our inbox, yet we can find it when we need it or browse through it when we've time.
  • Force yourself to respond to difficult messages immediately. Delete or fill certain messages without taking action on them.
  • If, after carefully considering and adhering to the suggestions above, you’re still inundated with a tidal wave of unwanted email, you might consider being grateful that people actually take the time to write you.

Perhaps we'll have to do all these things, or none of them. That’s obviously not for me to say. Certainly email overload is not a trivial thing to deal with. But people have successfully and definitively dealt with it. Before we can do that, however, we have to accept that we alone have the responsibility to make email work for us. And the one thing we mustn’t do is shift the blame to email as a medium or to an imperfect email app, because WE alone are the solution.