Friday, April 10, 2015

#79 Carve Out Social Times

Michael Lee Stallard

Schedule regular social time for people to connect. Genentech has weekly Friday afternoon social times where they serve drinks and snacks. We know a manager who orders pizza and salad for his team every other Friday.

During the warm summer months, organize an ice cream social on Friday afternoon to bring your team together for conversation (include fruit for the those who prefer a more healthy alternative). You should help serve those in attendance and once everyone is served make your way around to say hello to everyone. Avoid talking about work matters and instead ask people about their interests outside of work and what they are looking forward to over the remainder of the year.

This is the seventy-ninth post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.

 

4 Techniques to Develop Leaders

Leadership Done Right

The world we live in is crying out for people to guide other people that don’t have a sense of direction. There’s so much terror and poverty in so many countries over the world and the tragic thing is that there’s nobody doing anything about it. It’s a widely renowned fact that things don’t change for anyone until they themselves try to change the course of things. For that reason, it is very important to develop leaders.

This leads us to the topic of this article: How can a person, a normal person that used to not care about anything in their life, step up and lead a caravan of people to a brighter destiny? How can that person develop leaders in others to progress and improve? How can the course of things be changed by the will and zeal of people led by a formidable leader? The answer to these questions is simple: It’s human nature to find some driving force and make it the reason of the rebellion.

It’s a common man who has to wait for someone else to take the initiative and raise a voice, but it’s a leader, a special human being, a person with increased will and fervor to change how things are carried out that shapes the destiny of a nation.

Develop Leaders

So, today let’s discuss what could and should be the essential qualities in a person in order to act properly as a leader. If you have made up your mind and want to lead a certain group of people, then these are the things to remember:

1.     Remember Your Status:

2.     Motivate: Another important part of leading a group of people is to motivate them whenever you find the time.

3.     Learn to Share: When you desire to develop leaders, remember that whatever comes into your knowledge needs to be shared with the people that believe in you.

4.     Stay firm: Last but not the least, you need to stay firm yourself. You can’t just feel a bit of pressure and bail out or try to take a break.

 

Seven Ways Curious Leaders Succeed

Leadership Freak

Question what you know; explore what you don’t. Curiosity is a way of seeing. 4 powers of curious leadership: Curious leaders: Lower resistance. Ignite energy. Expand potential. Explore possibility. Lower resistance expand opportunity. 7 ways curious leaders succeed: Enable thinking from a new point of view. “What don’t you know?” Challenge assumptions. “How’s that working for you?”

1.             Enable thinking from a new point of view. “What don’t you know?”

2.             Challenge assumptions. “How’s that working for you?”

3.             Reveal new capacities. “Did you know that you’re really good at…?”

4.             Expose unseen obstacles. “What if….?”

5.             Clarify ambiguities. “Could you help me understand …?”

6.             Share experience. “What has experience taught you?”

7.             Connect with others who have experience. “I wonder who might know about this?”

The world is filled with information, but curiosity solves problems.

 

The Incredible Work Habits of 12 Great Artists

Mental Floss

What does it take to make great art? Work habits and muses may vary.

1. Salvador Dali

2. Gerhard Richter

3. VINCENT VAN GOGH

4. Willem de Kooning

5. Andy Warhol

6. Henry Darger

7. Leonardo da Vinci

8. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

9. J.M.W. Turner

10. Michelangelo

11. GEORGIA O’KEEFFE

12. GRANT WOOD

 

The Stats On Women In Tech Are Actually Getting Worse

Huffington Post

Google just hired Ruth Porat, a former Morgan Stanley executive, to be its chief financial officer, and is paying her a reported $70 million. You’d think that’s a sign that things are looking up for women in the tech industry.

Not quite.

The percentage of computing jobs held by women has actually fallen over the past 23 years, according to a new study.

In 2013, just 26 percent of computing jobs in the U.S. were held by women, down from 35 percent in 1990, according to the study released Thursday by the American Association of University Women, a nonprofit that promotes gender equality. During that same period, the number of women earning computing degrees also declined.

 

Best Advice: You Can Do Better

LinkedIn - Douglas Conant   All #BestAdvice

It is my belief that even the briefest interactions wield limitless potential. The power of a few well-timed and sincerely delivered words can have life-changing impact. I’ve seen it firsthand, and benefited immensely from the advice delivered to me in pivotal moments throughout my life and leadership journey.

I’ve written about the many resounding interactions with mentors, colleagues, family, and friends that have influenced my behavior; their words have meant so much to me, and left an indelible imprint. I’ve also spoken about the TouchPoints that have defined my work and life trajectory in keynote speeches, and I’ve celebrated the infinite capacity of brief interactions to leave a positive imprint, in my book co-authored with Mette Norgaard, TouchPoints.

But of all the moments — of all the helpful, indispensable words spoken to me — I think the one that cast the most memorable light on my life was a call-to-action from a revered mentor, which challenged me to reach beyond my current capabilities.

 

100 Leadership Quotes I’m Memorizing by End of 2015

Paul Sohn

1. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. — Peter. F Drucker

2. If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. — John Quincy Adams

3. Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what do do and let them surprise you with their results. — George S. Patton

4. Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

5. Great leadership is about human experiences. It’s not a formula or a program. It is a human activity that comes from the heart and considers the hearts of others. It is an attitude, not a routine — Lance Secretan

16. The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. — William Arthur Ward

31. In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock — Thomas Jefferson

100. You teach what you know; you reproduce what you are. – Leif Hetland

 

How to Create a Learning Environment

Switch and Shift

Organizations cannot really change people and educate them, that is something employees have to do themselves. As a manager, if you feel responsible for people’s self-development–and you should be–a good alternative is to tweak the environment so that people change themselves, educate themselves, and start developing the desired habits.

One company that understands this well is the Australian software company Atlassian. Once every three months, they select a day on which everyone in the company works for the entire day on an idea of their own choosing. The requirement is that they deliver a result in just 24 hours, hence the name ShipIt day. (The original name was actually FedEx day, but the FedEx company started to voice concerns about this.) Several other organizations, including Facebook and Spotify, organize similar internal events called hackathons or hack days. It pretty much boils down to the same thing. Business stands still for one day—some people even stay at the office for a whole night—and everyone learns.

 

The Innovative Organisation: Learning From Design Firms

Insead

The world’s top design firms have innovation down to almost a science. For traditional incumbents looking to build innovative capabilities, design can be the ideal catalyst.

Designers’ most valuable capabilities have nothing to do with Photoshop, or any tool or technique for “designing”. They are much more about setting a direction than executing directives, more about shaping creativity to practical needs than indulging flights of fancy. By observing how many design firms work, I have identified three core organisational capabilities at which they particularly excel, which also comprise the rudiments of any innovation journey: user-centric insighting, deep and diverse ideating, and rapid and cheap iterating.

 

How Trust Can Unlock Superior Performance

Conant Leadership

In a high-trust environment, populated by contributors with great competence and laudable character, even the most challenging task can be accomplished. Often without much fanfare. People do what they say they are going to do. Contributors listen carefully to one another to safeguard against miscommunication. Engaged colleagues rally around a shared vision, have each other’s back, and are aligned properly to produce results that meet, and often exceed expectations. Trust is the lubricant that enables the high-functioning human machinery of an ideal enterprise.

 

Put simply: breeding high-trust is essential to delivering extraordinary results in an enduring way.

 

As you might expect (or may have even experienced), the alternative is all too common and yields a much less desirable result: a low-trust environment, where competence is questionable and character is murky; in these workplace climates, even the most mundane task can seem unachievable. The efforts of the group become marred by chaos. I contend that in the absence of trust, potential doom looms large. Mistrust causes discord when people fail to listen to one another. It festers and begets resentment when people don’t do what they say they’re going to do. It multiplies exponentially as people strive in futility, without a clear direction or alignment around goals. Mistrust thrives in the pettiness and incompetence it helps to create, and it almost always leads to sub-optimal performance.

This is why building trust is the absolute first thing a leader must do. When I developed the Campbell Leadership Model as CEO of Campbell Soup Company, Before a leader can create direction, align the organization, build vitality, or deliver excellence – the trust must be there. Before he or she can surpass the expectations of all the stakeholders, materialize a transformational initiative, or steady a ship that has drifted off course, the trust must be there. Without it, there will simply be no foundation for results. Think of trust as the roots – and everything else a leader must manifest as the tree. You’ve got to put down the roots if you expect the branches to sprout, grow strong, and inch ever-higher towards the sky.

 

Think Like a Scientist

YouTube

This is a remix/edit made from two short videos by science journalist Alan Dove