How often have you laid out for your team, perhaps in a presentation followed by a clearly written document, a future state for the team as well as the strategies for getting there. And, you wait, and wait, and nothing happens.
This is the situation that Marshall Goldsmith addresses in “Don’t Just Check the Box”. Though written four years ago, his advice is as timely today as it was in 2005.
Power is a subject that is not often discussed in public. Yet, an individual cannot be a leader without having power, “the potential to influence others.” In this week’s Tuesday Reading, “Power Plays: How to Use Your Power Wisely” from the December 2008 Issue of the Center for Creative Leadership’s Newsletter Leading Effectively, outlines nine strategies for levering your power more effectively:
1. Make relationships a priority. To improve relational power you need to:
This week’s Tuesday Reading “Taking Control of Your Work Life Balance and Gaining Personal Fulfillment” takes a hard look at work life balance. In her review of clinical psychologist Henry Cloud’s new book "The One Life Solution," Meridith Levinson, a CIO staff writer, wrote:
” Work will consume as much time as we allow it. It will take over our whole lives if we let it.“
Today’s reading “IT Careers: 5 Tips for Charting Your 100 Day Plan" by Mary Pratt, a Computerworld contributing writer in Waltham, MA, focuses on developing a plan for the next 100 days. The point being that the more you have a vision of where you want to be in 100 days and a well thought out plan for how you might get from here to there, the more likely you will be successful.
Today’s reading, “Degrees of Giving” by Bruna Martinuzzi, comes from the MindTools November 25th, 2008 newsletter.
Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving and were with our families and thought about all the reasons we have to be thankful. We may have thought about giving -- giving thanks, giving of our time, giving material gifts, etc. Such gifts can give us some understanding of the power of generosity and lead naturally to asking how the ideas of generosity and giving translate to the workplace and leadership.
In today’s Tuesday Reading “It’s Not About You”, Robert Joss, Phillip H.
Throughout ITLP we talk about the importance of listening, of choosing to carefully pay attention to and to understand what is being said.
Today’s Reading “Soft Skills: Listening for Better Leadership” addresses this topic. In the piece, the author Diann Daniel notes that listening conveys respect, not listening makes people feel devalued and less motivated; good listening empowers, not listening guarantees you won’t understand.
Today's reading is "The Success Delusion -- Why It Can Be So Hard for Successful Leaders to Change" from the Marshall Goldsmith Library. Goldsmith's thesis is straightforward: The more successful we become, the more positive reinforcement we get, the more difficult it will be for us to make the changes we need to make to continue to be successful.
This week we turn our attention to Generation Y, those individuals with ages 21-31, the youngest members of our staff. The reading is “Leadership Lessons We Can Learn from Generation Y” which appeared in the July 9, 2008 issue of Fast Company.