Great Leadership - Carnival

Check out the Great Leadership Carnival currently being hosted by Dan McCarthy.

I particularly like the following insights (the bold emphasis is mine) - but there are many more lessons to be taken from the rest of the content !]:

"When leaders infuse the organizational culture with the element of human value, it has a ripple effect. First, it helps leaders form an emotional connection with the people they lead.  Second, it strengthens the emotional connection among the people they lead as employees adopt the leaders’ values in their interactions with one another. Third, the sense of connection reaches out to customers (or patients, in New York-Presbyterian’s case) when frontline employees become intentional about demonstrating human value"  [Michael Lee Stallard]

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To manage well requires that you recognize the subtle, but important, differences between people and that you know how to put those differences to work for your organization. Great managers thrive on helping people experience incremental growth. The dynamic creativity of figuring out how to move from the player to the plays is the real genius of a great manager.

Leadership isn’t about that at all. Leadership is about finding the words, stories, and images that bring great clarity to people. And that’s just different from being a good manager. You could have both talents, but good managers don’t necessarily make good leaders.

So when you actually "learn" leadership - you actually make a great shift in your worldview. You cannot build a new worldview on top of your existing ones. You have to let them go. [Gautam Gosh - citing Marcus Buckingham]

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6 Unwritten Rules to Advancement in the Workplace (aka - Professional Networking 2.0)

• Network and build relationships both within and outside your organization.
• Find ways to become visible in your team and organization, e.g., seek out important assignments. 
• Lobby for yourself and your work, do not be afraid to “brag” about your accomplishments.
• Communicate effectively and ask for feedback.
• Find a mentor, coach, sponsor; developmental relationships not only provide knowledge and experience, but can help expand your professional network. 
• Develop a good career plan; prepare for each step, learn the right skills.  

[Britannica Blog]

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You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose.

The message here is that we can learn from every experience, and that in fact every experience can be regarded as a gift. This, perhaps, is a hard thing for us to hear - we have been conditioned to think of illness and pain  in a negative way and we try to avoid suffering at all costs. But all growth involves pain and so perhaps we should be less eager to shy away from it, learning instead to welcome it and take something of value from these experiences. [Michael Miles on 'the wisdom of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross]