Learning by Example
In the November 1, 2016 Tuesday Reading, Always on Stage, readers were invited to respond to the question
What’s the most important, or effective, way you lead by example?
In the November 1, 2016 Tuesday Reading, Always on Stage, readers were invited to respond to the question
What’s the most important, or effective, way you lead by example?
As leadership communities grow across our client organizations, we’ve witnessed several interesting approaches to leading leaders. Here are a few noteworthy trends we see in letting leaders spread their wings.
Once MOR begins a leadership journey with someone, we never leave their side. Or, put another way, they keep us with them. Perhaps that’s why our organizational client retention rate this year was 100%.
This week we celebrate Thanksgiving Day, traditionally a day of giving thanks for the harvest (that provides our food) and for the preceding year. History and tradition suggest that this celebration goes back in the United States at least to a 1621 feast in the Plymouth Colony celebrating a good harvest in the Colony’s first year. This tradition, with both civil and religious roots, has continued. Since 1941, the holiday has been celebrated each year on the fourth Thursday of November.
· Did I do my best today to make progress on each of my priorities for the day?
· Did I do my best today to provide time to meet the needs of my staff?
Last year, shortly after Marshall Goldsmith’s book Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts, Becoming the Person You Want to Be was published, I focused – in the August 11, 2015 Tuesday Reading, Triggers – on a practice he discussed there that has brought significant discipline into his life. (Goldsmith is one of the best-known executive coaches in the U.S., if not, perhaps, the world.)
We say over and over again “Leaders are always on the stage.” Why? Because someone is always watching. Someone is always taking the leader’s behavior to inform their impression of her or him and as an example of how to behave. Good or bad, it’s OK. We think, if it works for her or him, it’ll work for me; if he or she can get away with it, so can I.