Integrity: Lex Luther vs. Forrest Gump

Which is worse - A or B?

A. A person with intelligence and without integrity.

B. A person with integrity and without intelligence.

Basically, if you only had these two options, would you rather have a team full of Lex Luthers or Forrest Gumps?





PLI Teachers/Trainers - Have your students discuss this question within the context of the current U.S. economic crisis. The part of Lex Luther is played by Wall Street traders/analysts and SEC officials and the role of Forrest Gump is played by your average, everyday investor and middle to low income home buyer. Key terms to research: sub-prime mortgages, credit default swaps, and AIG.

Good follow-up questions:

1. Which is rewarded more in today's society, Lex or Forrest and why?

2. How do we create leaders that are strong in both intellectual and moral prowess? Provide historical and local examples of leaders who had/have both.

3. Why is it so difficult for humans to be strong ethically when large sums of money come into play?

4. How have they personally been impacted by the current recession our Lex Luther Leaders put us in?

5. Who should ultimately be held most responsible for the crash of the mortgage industry? Lex for creating such a risky environment or Forrest for choosing to live in it (knowingly or unknowingly)?

Teaching PLI: PLI Required Reading List

There is a great new book titled "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time." The authors have put together a fabulous collection and did a great job in the book of summarizing the main points of these classics and new-classics. I personally have my reading to-do list done for the year, as I have only read 31 of the 100.

The other great benefit of this book to our PLI teachers and trainers is that it inspired a "PLI Required Reading List." This list certainly isn't all-inclusive, but it is a great place to start to get your students doing some out-of-class, non-curriculum PLI reading.

Again, the following books are all in Jack and Todd's new book. So, you can get a quick synopsis of each by reading their new book. Click on the ^ after each to go directly to that book's 800CEOREAD page, where you can read about the book and/or buy it. If there is more than one book listed in an Essential, I put an * to donate the one I would recommend most.

Vision
Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will^
What Should I Do With My Life?*^

Integrity
Questions of Character^

Innovativeness
The Art of Innovation^
The Innovator's Dilemma^
Orbiting the Giant Hairball*^
The Creative Habit^

Wise Judgement
Influence*^
The Power of Intuition^

Service Mindedness
(This being a business book list, there isn't a book about service leadership. All the service books listed are about customer service.)

Goal Processing
Getting Things Done^

Skill Assessment
Now, Discover Your Strengths^

Emotional Maturity
Emotional Intelligence^

Fostering Relationships
How to Win Friends and Influence People*^
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team^
The Team Handbook^

Masterful Communication
Made to Stick*^
The Story Factor^
Never Give In!^

Following is a list of the books that I would recommend you have your students read, but they just don't fit nicely into one of the Ten Essentials:

General
The Leadership Challenge^
Leadership Is An Art*^
The Leadership Moment^
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People^

Skill Assessment: Your Career Insurance Policy

No matter what condition the economy is in or what misc. talent/information/skill set you might be currently lacking, if you are these two things you will always be in demand:

1. A hard worker.
2. Fun to be around.



Processing Questions for PLI Curriculum Teachers/Trainers:

1. Why is hard work always touted as a key to success? Produce at least one historical case study and one case study from your circle of friends, family members and/or community members.

2. Is "being fun to be around" really valuable if you are involved in serious projects, activities, jobs, etc.? Defend your opinion.

3. What careers have historically been the most "recession-proof" over the past 50 years? Which ones will be over the next 50 years? Site your sources.

4. How are you personally on the TRAX Scale with being a hard worker and being fun to be around?

Please visit www.yournextspeaker.com for more leadership development.

Skill Assessment: Shining a Light on the Torchbearer Concept

A Torchbearer is a passionate and highly-skilled organizational ambassador. Their "organization" could be personal, professional or third-place in nature.

(Third places include hobbies, associations, volunteer efforts, etc. Anything not directly associated with their home life or their work life. Starbucks if you will.)

The list below breaks down the seven defining characteristics of a Torchbearer and includes strategies for moving your staff, volunteers, or student leaders away from the dark side and closer to the bright light of the Torchbearer world. Some of them are pre-filters (I.e. - while picking your people, look for these qualities.) Some of them are developmental in nature.

A Torchbearer...

1. Is thirsty for helping organization grow.
Powerful Torchbearers are servants. It is in their nature to help others for the sake of helping others. Although the basic behaviors can be taught, the internal "servant compass" is developed from a young age. Look for people who have it.

2. Owns a strong allegiance to organization.
Pure allegiance is a powerful force. Think soldiers. Think father-daughter relationships. Think a person of faith. You want people who will stick with your organization through the good, bad and ugly. The mechanisms of allegiance include self-interest, loyalty to relationships, shared experiences and common values and beliefs. These are all emotional elements. How are you making an emotional connection with your people?

3. Values and fosters relationships within organization.
Of all the allegiance elements, the relationships piece is the most powerful. People may join organizations because of material gains, but they voluntarily commit blood, sweat and tears because of relationships. If you are trying to mobilize a volunteer staff, don't send out a form letter to the membership body. Get ten inner-circle folks to each call thirty Torchbearers-in-Training they either have a relationship with or are willing to form one with.

4. Gains part of identity from organization.
Where do you see this in every day life? An NFL football game in Pittsburgh with thousands of fans waving their Terrible Towels. 3:00 pm at a middle school with every mini-van plastered with stickers announcing their children's academic accomplishments or sports team affiliation. Anyone accessorized in clearly designer bling-bling. These folks are all visually and vocally proud of their connection with their sports team, 13-year old or Prada shoes. You need to ask yourself, what are the personal benefits a member of your organization would receive from being vocal and visual with their affiliation with you and have you provided them the means to do so? I.e. - how can you be upset about no one shouting your message when you keep all the megaphones in the closet?

5. Clearly understands role in organization.
One of the simplest ways to get someone engaged in your organization - give them something to do. The clearer the instructions and the amount of time/money/skills they will need to do it, the better.

6. Knows and believes in organization's core values.
If we refer back to the allegiance elements, we see that common values and beliefs is a driving force in getting people to go to battle with you and for you. Common values and beliefs are so foundational to the DNA of an organization, that many times we forget to shout them from the rooftop. If you are going to really get the best from your Torchbearers, you need to constantly remind them of the deeper, wider and more significant reasons why your organization and their work for it are, not just important, but vital.

7. Speaks positively about organization, its leadership and members.
This final characteristic is very similar to the servant-minded one - either someone is in the habit of talking positively or they aren't. Research actually states that our optimist/pessimist nature is both ingrained in our DNA and a function of the environment of our early developmental years. Find people who are built with a positive bent. A price cannot be placed on the value of the subtle and forceful work they do to bring other people into the fold. However, even the most positive soul needs something to say. It is your job to continually push the good news of your organization and ideas on how to use them.

Google the books The Tipping Point, Tribes and Bowling Alone for even more great info on this topic area.

 

Processing Questions for PLI Teachers/Trainers:

1. What are organizations are you a member of and do you know: why they exist, who formed them, when they were formed, what are their greatest strengths, what are their great shortcomings, and what role you play in each? List all six answers for each of your organizations.

2. When we think about "organizations" in the context of Torchbearers, why do we include not only tradition school-based, community-based organizations, but also peer groups, your family, your hobbies, etc.?

3. Read one of the above mentioned books, write a 5-minute speech on the biggest lessons you learned from it and deliver the speech in class.

Fostering Relationships: How to Motivate the Unmotivated

Your official strategy for dealing with someone who "isn't motivated"...

1. Identify what you mean by "isn't motivated" for the person. What exact actions are they not displaying that you wish they did?

2. Ask yourself these questions...

• Do they know they are supposed to do those actions?
• Do they know how to perform the actions in the manner you expect?
• When was the last time they were reminded of those actions?
• Are there clear reasons why those actions are important, necessary, valuable, etc.
• Are there clear guidelines on what will happen if they don't do those actions?
• Are there regular or irregular sessions between you and the person to discuss their movement from where they are currently to where you wish them to be?

3. Your strategy for dealing with the "isn't motivated" will come directly from your answers to those questions. They either aren't clear on what is expected of them, there isn't a clear reason for doing the actions, there aren't clear repercussions for not doing the actions and/or no one is coaching them to get from point A to point B.

Motive to act is ALWAYS driven by self-interest. Even actions by the most selfless, giving, Mother-Teresa like person in the world. Your great task as a leader of your people is to figure out which of their self-interests you can tap into clearly, gracefully, leaderly.

Just a few Self-Interests to consider...

• Respect from Others
• Contribution to Team
• Achievement of Goals
• Self-Image
• Job Security
• Friendships
• Money
• Social Status
• Avoiding Pain
• Gaining Pleasure
• Love
• Safety
• Personal Well-Being

Emotional Maturity: The Copernicus Solutionicus

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543) was the first astronomer to put the Sun at the center of the universe instead of the Earth, which was the TRUTH before Copernicus disproved it.

As leaders of others, we need to take a lesson from ole Nic and take our own little world out of the center of the universe and put the true source of our power there - the people who, by choice or chance, are following us.

The Copernicus Solutionicus - Stop being so self-centered and get to thinking about your people more.

Some strategies -

* Let your first interaction with people be asking them questions to get them talking about their world.

* Don't make assumptions (which are based primarily on your perspective) and go straight to the information source.

* Ask for help more often. Being the leader doesn't mean you have to know all the answers or are supposed to be right all the time.

* Adapt your leadership style to the situation. Being one-dimensional in how you deal with people is very self-centered.

* Think about the full impact range of each decision you make. As the leader, your words and actions make bigger ripples on the pond.

* Make time to get to know your team members. This will also provide space for them to get to know you.

* Publicly (or privately, depending on each person's preference) celebrate big and small accomplishments. Unlike the Sun, your source of power is not always self-powering. They need you to fuel their motivation and attitude.

* Ditch the Golden Rule and follow the Platinum Rule - "Do onto others as they would have done onto them." (Google Platinum Rule for source - that one's not mine. I would, but I am driving right now and driving while Googling is extremely harmful to the environment.)

* Make personal sacrifices for the benefit of the team. And I mean "above and beyond the call of duty" ones.

* Above all, be your team members' biggest FAN - be Fair, be Aware of others and be Nice.

Processing Questions for PLI Curriculum Teachers/Trainers:

1. What is one thing that you do on a daily basis that is solely for the purpose of benefitting someone other than yourself?

2. Why is it sometimes difficult to put others’ interests before your own?

3. Why is it easy to think only about our own needs and wants?

4. Why is it important for a leader to be selfless?

5. Would you rather be under the leadership of someone who is selfless or someone who is selfish?

6. Who is an example of a selfless leader in your school/ community/ workplace?

7. What does it mean to have a one-dimensional leadership style? And what can you do to develop multiple leadership styles?

8. Name 3 things that you can implement into your daily routine that would help those around you.

Skill Assessment: Guts

"If you don't have the guts to be honest or the cooth to know how to pull it off without making us want to slap you across the forehead with a two-by-four, please let someone else be in charge."
Your People

Processing Questions for PLI Curriculum Teachers/Trainers:

1. Have you ever been in a situation in which the leader created more anxiety within the group members than they relieved?

2. What are some ways the leader could have resolved the issues without creating added anxiety to the group?

3. Why is it hard to let someone else take the reins on a project that you have started?

4. It is hard to step down from a leadership position, but it is sometimes the best mode of action for a group. What are some ways that group members can help to ease this difficult transition process?

Teaching PLI: A Few Simple Leadership Truths

Six Simple Leadership Truths


1. The best leadership truths are as simple to say as they are complex to do.


2. Any person in a position of power should hold an inborn fondness for the complete well-being of the people they are called to lead.


3. The most effective leaders find out what their people need to be successful and help them get there.


4. You can't get an accurate diagnosis of your leadership effectiveness until you ask the people you are leading how you are doing.


5. In the workplace, the best leaders are trusted by their team, help their team have pride in their work and help everyone enjoy one another.


6. Your role as a leader is separate, but not wholly separated from your primary job role.

Processing Questions for PLI Curriculum Teachers/Trainers:

1. Have you asked the people you are leading how you are doing lately? What are some ways to raise this question in a professional, yet relaxed manner?

2. What are some actions that show that a leader has an “inborn fondness for the complete well-being of the people they are called to lead?”

3. What are some ways to build trust within a team?

4. What are some antagonistic qualities of group members that result in team mistrust?

5. If you could add a 7th Simple Leadership Truth, what would it be?

Skill Assessment: Five Skills to Practice Today

1. Talk up about people not in the room. It will build trust with those that are in the room.

2. Talk more about solutions than challenges. Your primary job function as a leader is to creatively solve problems (seen and unseen).

3. Smile more and be nice to people. One of the main purposes of your leadership should be to be an encouraging and uplifting force.

4. If you are a talker, listen more. If you are a listener, talk more. Be balanced.

5. Tell your team about the high expectations you have for them. People will only give you their best when they know A) What the best looks/feels like, B) They have someone consistently helping them get there.

Processing Questions for PLI Curriculum Teachers/Trainers:


1. How often would you say you practice these skills?

2. Why is important to have an enumerated list of skills to practice each day?

3. What are some ways to practice being an encouraging and uplifting force to group members?

4. Do you consider yourself a talker or a listener?

5. How can you create a balance between the two?

Fostering Relationships: Four Resources to Develop Your Team Leadership

The PLI Navigator Introduction Section
Rhett Laubach & Ryan Underwood
PLI website Link

The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (and Their Employees)
Patrick Lencioni
Amazon Link

Eight Ways to Win With People (60-minute Audiobook)
John Maxwell
Audible.com Link

Tribes
Seth Godin
Amazon Link

Fostering Relationships: Are you a Team, Group or Troop?

Team - A set of individuals who use their core strengths and a defined decision-making system to accomplish a common goal under the direction of a trusted leader and who create and revisit big memories along the way.

Group - A set of individuals.

Troop - A set of young individuals identified by matching outfits and either selling cookies or setting something on fire McGyver style.

There are five clear characteristics of an actual working team:

1. A trusted leader.


2. An agreed upon goal.


3. An agreed upon decision-making system.


4. The creation and revisiting of big memories.


5. Each individual is engaging their core strength.

Take a look at your "set of individuals" and cross-reference your experience with these five characteristics. The secret to your group becoming an actual team probably lives in this list.

Processing Questions for PLI Curriculum Teachers/Trainers:


1. Which of the three do you consider your members to be classified as?

2. If you were to ask an outside source which of the three you should be classified as, what would their response be?

3. How would you feel about that response?

4. What are some actions steps you can take toward becoming a true team?

5. If you already consider yourself to be a team, then what can you do to ensure your team continues to function accordingly?

6. What “big memories” has your team made over time?

7. What qualities does your leader possess that deems them “trusted?”

8. What core strength do you contribute to a team in your life?

Vision: The Schindler Drive

He started his factory in Nazi-occupied Krakow, Poland to take advantage of slave labor from the Jews (who didn't earn money for their work - the wages went to the Third Reich.)

However, because of key people around him (including his factory accountant Itzhak Stern), his motivation became fueled more by altruism than capitalism.

His 1,200 factory workers were saved from death by being on Schindler's List.

His name was Oscar Schindler and he was a leader driven by a Vision to set as many Jews free as he could from the Nazis.

You are a leader. What Vision drives you?

Skill Assessment: Little or Big Legs?

• Going from the car to Wal-Mart with the two little ones - 4 and 2 (Blue Leader 1 and 2, respectively).


• I am striding easily.


• Blue Leader 1 is in a lope (define: jog or slow pace of running).


• Blue Leader 2 is flat out running.

As a leader, are you aware of how your pace is influencing those around you? Your knowledge, ambition, natural talent and experience has helped you reach a leadership position. Don't let those advantages push down those you are called to lift up.

It was much harder for little Blue Leader 2 to get from the car to the door. However, her struggle had nothing to do with her - it had to do with her in relation to her older sibling and her dad. To help her in her walk, we had to...

1. Be sensitive to her needs


2. Recognize that just because we could do it easily didn't mean she could


3. Adjust our behavior accordingly

Are you doing the same for those around you? Being a leader doesn't always mean setting the pace for people. Sometimes it means adjusting your pace to give those learning from you space and time to catch up.

Processing Questions for PLI Curriculum Teachers/Trainers:

1. Recall a time when you felt inadequate because someone around you was much better at something than you were. How did that make you feel?

2. What is the difference between setting an example of leadership and setting the pace of leadership?

3. What are some practices that you could implement into your leadership role to ensure that the people following you are not getting left behind?

4. Why is it important that we uplift those we lead, rather than make them feel left behind?

5. What are the benefits of considering the skills and talents of all of those around you?

6. How could you encourage someone to “quicken their pace” in a gentle and humble way?

General: Happy Holidays

This blog is on vacation until January '09. Until then, please feel free to peruse our over 250 insightful and personal leadership posts. If you are a leadership teacher or trainer, please visit our PLI curriculum page at http://tinyurl.com/thepli.

Happy holidays to you and yours.

Emotional Maturity: What Makes Your Holidays Happy?

Here are ten things that make my holiday season joyous:

*  Listening to  Nat King Cole sing The Christmas Song.

*  Watching my little daughters tell our Christmas Tree good night.

*  Saying Merry Christmas to strangers.

*  Buying unique gifts for family and friends.

*  Taking that first sip of our home made egg nog.

*  Hanging our special "One Per Year" ornaments on the tree.  

*  Let it Snow!  Let it Snow!  Let it Snow!

*  Christmas eve with the Laubach clan and Christmas morning with the in-laws.

*  Reading Christmas cards and letters from friends.

*  Spending three straight weeks at home with the girls.


Leave one of yours in the comments. Happy Holidays.

Skill Assessment: An Interesting Look at Success

Malcolm Gladwell's new book Outliers is an interesting look at success. His storytelling makes the book a great read. His concepts make the book a great learning tool.

Here is an excerpt:

"The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today? To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success - the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history - with a society that provides opportunities for all."

Get it today.

Teaching PLI: The PLI Curriculum Is Here!

Click here.

Our Personal Leadership Insight curriculum is tailor made for leadership classes or personal leadership study.

The curriculum includes:

The Locator - The leadership guidebook designed to improve your understanding of how to positively influence people and situations to create value and growth. Basically, it helps you become a leadership ninja warrior.

The Navigator - Every great leader had help getting there. This is the instructor's guide to not only teaching the student material, but it includes more bells and whistles than Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It features facilitation tips, one day to one month long project ideas, over 50 of our best leadership classroom exercises and provides you access to online resources that will enrich the students' learning experience and make teaching PLI a barrel full of fun for you.

The Primer - An abbreviated version of The Locator, this element is great for just dipping your feet in the PLI pond. You won't learn to swim, but you won't be left behind either.

Find out more information, download a preview copy of the materials, get pricing and buy online by clicking here.

Innovative: The Magic of SNL

Weekend Edition is an ongoing skit on Saturday Night Live. The process that the writers go through to create the jokes that make it on the short bit teaches a quick lesson on finding creative ideas and solutions.

1. Each week, the three main SNL writers create 800 jokes for Weekend Edition. 800.

2. The head writer (Seth Meyers) for SNL then whittles that list down to 200ish that he thinks are W.E. Worthy.

3. Lorne Michaels, the head guy at SNL, then chops that down to 18-20 jokes that actually make the cut.

To get to 20 working lines, they have to come up with 40 times that many. So, next time you either think you can't find an answer or need a more creative idea, look a little harder.

Skill Assessment: The New Three Giant Jumps

I had the ultra-cool experience of keynoting the Oklahoma Association of Student Councils State Conference this morning in the beautiful Performing Arts Center on campus in Jenks, Oklahoma. PDC Productions out of Norman, Oklahoma provided the Audio/Visual support and did a great job. The 1,500 student council officers and members provided the energy and we had a powerful 45-minutes.

I put together a new "3 Giant Jumps" message for the program and here they are...

[Programming Note - The 3 Giant Jumps speaks to three big moves good student leaders need to make to become great student leaders.]

Jump #1 - Go from Concerned to Consumed

Good leaders are concerned with being a leader and everything that goes along with it. Great leaders are absolutely consumed with it. They constantly think about how they can serve others, make things better, create greatness, etc. This consumed attitude allows great leaders to create amazing things that lead to remarkable results.

Jump #2 - Go from "I am" to "I create"

Good leaders know who they are. They are very self-aware. They have a ton of language for how they are built. Great leaders not only know who they are, they also intimately know what they create. Not only do they know what they create, they also place a good amount of their identity on what they create. They are consumed with creating value, making things happen and leaving a legacy.

Jump #3 - Go from an Obligation to a Privilege

Good leaders feel obligated to lead. They take responsibility for not only the conditions of their own life, but for the conditions of those around them. Great leaders don't just see their leadership duties as an obligation (something they have to do), they see them as a privilege (something they get to do). This mindset creates a greater enthusiasm and a stronger commitment towards the responsibility of leadership. Great leaders view their work as a joy, not as a job.

Fostering Relationships: Celebrate Those Around You

No matter how you feel about your friends, peers, co-workers, family members, etc., celebrate them when they achieve or are recognized in public. When you lift up people close to you, you not only make them feel great, you also give them permission to lift you up.

You also communicate a healthy self-respect and that you are a person of character when you are seen celebrating others from your home town, home state, school, organization or place of business.

Wise Judgment: Making Complex Decisions (like who to vote for next week)

The act of deciding where to put your mark for President is an example of a complex decision filled with heavy emotional and intellectual triggers.  Its complexity overwhelms voters with pros and cons, misinformation, deep affiliations, peer pressures, gray areas and politically-motivated advice coming from everywhere.

It is a decision that is so complex many voters place their mark based on the simplest factor that is the easiest to understand (and defend) and aligns with their personal world view.  Here are some examples....

I will vote for John McCain because....

- He's Republican (so am I)
- His VP is a woman (so am I)
- He is war Veteran (we are a country at war)
- He will run a bipartisan administration (he has been a political maverick his entire career and I hate partisan politics)

I will vote for Barack Obama because....

- He's a Democrat (so am I)
- He is black (so am I)
- He says he will change things (I need change)
- He is a smooth talker and looks good on TV (that correlates to impressive and competent to me)

People who say it is crazy to decide a U.S. President based primarily on one of these basic factors are ignoring this dynamic - when people are faced with a complex choice, many times they will base their decision on the simplest metric.

Remember this truth the next time you are called to make a complex decision or are trying to get others to make one.

Goal Processing: Time Management PowerPoint

Click here to download the It's A Breeze Time Management PowerPoint from today's seminar at Great Plains Technology Center.

Click here to download David Allen's Outlook Rule PDF.

Masterful Communication: Technology Tips Slideshow

Oklahoma FCCLA Technology Techniques October 2008

From: rhettdean, 1 hour ago

Oklahoma FCCLA Technology Techniques October 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: visuals speaking)

A brief slide show with tips and tricks for Oklahoma FCCLA Advisors. Includes PowerPoint, Stock photos, iTunes playlists, and more.


SlideShare Link

Fostering Relationships: Resolution Pyramid

(This post includes content from Associate Speaker, Kelly Barnes...)

Working in a team environment can be a stressful situation. Conflicts arise. Tempers flair. Disagreements happen. The most cohesive teams don't agree all the time. They simply know how to resolve disagreements effectively.

Step 1: Speed. When you are experiencing a riff with a team members, get it resolved as quickly as possible.

Step 2: Process. How you go about resolving the riff is critical to maintaining team trust. Disagreements can keep from growing into major blowouts if you follow the lessons from the Resolution Pyramid below...

1
The top of the pyramid is you internally resolving any small issues you might have with a team member. Certain issues that you have with other team members need to just stay with you and need to be let go. You are not always going to agree with everyone, but that doesn't mean you have to make an issue out of every disagreement.

If you do need to talk it out, the top level is about you getting your side of the story mapped out before you talk to the other person. Get a firm understanding of how you feel, think about why you feel that way, and consider how your feelings are affecting how you think about the disagreement. In any disagreement, there is both emotions and logic involved. Many times sound logic can't be heard because the emotions are speaking so loudly. Giving yourself time to think about your emotions can help balance out this equation.

1 - 1
The second level is where the rubber meets the road. It is you privately approaching the person you need to have a difficult conversation with. This session starts with you asking questions and listening to learn. You are learning their perspective, their opinions and their side of the story. This is not about you stating your case or trying to convince them they are wrong. This is about diplomacy, charisma and character first. Your end goal is to get to "Our Way."

Group
Instead of a 1-on-1 discussion, sometimes a third party needs to be included and the meeting needs to be a group meeting. This might occur if a mediator needs to be present or if more than just you and the other person are intimately involved in the disagreement. The biggest concern here is to be careful with who you think needs to be in the group. Only people who can bring valid and relevant first-hand information to the discussion need to be involved.

Team
The bottom level of the pyramid is about clearing the air or talking about the elephant in the room. Information (and mis-information) spreads quickly among team members. The team layer is about sharing with the entire team the truth (do bad information doesn't spread) and allowing any of the disagreement partners (from a 1-on-1 or a group discussion) an opportunity to share with the team what they learned and how they will move forward. This is not a time to rehash everything (as everyone in the room d0esn't need to know everything, nor will they care).

Following this hierarchy of information exchange will allow you to build trust in a team environment and get conflicts resolved quickly and accurately.

Skill Assessment: The Abstract Curse of Leadership

If only learning how to be a better leader were more concrete.

One of the challenges of not only doing, but also teaching/training leadership skills is their inherent abstract nature.

Do you know how to eat with a fork? Either you do or you don't. Do you know how to convert a document into a PDF? Either you do or you don't.

Do you know how to encourage others? Do you know how to resolve conflict? Do you know how to make a well-informed decision that will impact the future of your organization? Not quite so black and white. Yes, it is leadership's grey matter that can cause confusion and atrophy.

Your task as a leader-in-the-making is to do everything you can to make being an effective leader as concrete as possible. Learn specific behaviors and benchmarks that you can use to self-evaluate your effectiveness. Write down and apply what you learn. Take the abstractness out of it by keeping these lessons simple, personal, patternable, repeatable, and even formulaic if necessary.

Skill Assessment: It All Starts Here

You cannot fully lead until you achieve self-awareness....

You cannot leverage your strengths until you know what they are.

You cannot make decisions consistent with your core values until you identify what they are.

You cannot communicate your ideas and opinions until you invest time in ironing them out.

You cannot make better choices tomorrow until you understand why you make the choices you made today.

You cannot achieve total self-respect until you become aware and proud of your greatness and humbled by your shortcomings.

Masterful Communication: 4 Books You Need

I have read, studied and use the techniques from all four on a daily basis. A phenomenal $60 investment...

Slide:ology on Amazon (Used from $20.95)

Presentation Zen on Amazon(Used from $17.86)

Made to Stick on Amazon(Used from $14.00)

Brain Rules on Amazon (Used from $17.78)

Skill Assessment: Up Your Technology IQ with a Few Ps

The PLI Essential Essential of Skill Assessment is about knowing who you are, making the most of what you've got and getting better at interfacing with the world. It amazes me when I hear leaders complain about how technology is making their life more difficult. That is like someone in the 1920s complaining about the automobile or someone in the 1970s complaining about the telefax. It's not the car or the fax machines or the technology that hinders production. It is the willingness (or lack thereof) to learn something new. This is, of course, because learning something new after the age of twenty-one is extremely time consuming and energy dependent. It is hard work.

If your purpose for reading this blog is to become a better, more effective leader and you complain about all the technology around you that you don't understand, stop complaining and..

Pause - When you find yourself in a technology situation that you can't figure out, stop what you are doing and make time to learn something new. It only takes two-minutes to learn how to save that number in your phone. Plus, if you save it once, you never have to save it again. If you choose not to learn how to save it, you are wasting thousands of seconds having to look it up every single time you need it.

Peruse - Everything comes with a manual for a reason. Google is Google because it has answers to your questions. Whatever challenge you are having with your technology, the answer is written down somewhere. Find it. Learn it. Plus, once you learn it, you can forget it over time, but you can never un-learn it. You will then own that information and your Technology IQ will go up.

Practice - After you find the answer to your challenge, fix it right then and try it on a couple of times. Then the next time the challenge comes up, fix it again. Pretty soon, you will either stop having the challenge or you will be able to fix it quickly. It is amazing how tangible and relevant a person's technology IQ is to their personal and professional life. For some people, it is more important than their social IQ. (And you can immediate spot the difference! I.e. - unless you are a leader in a black hole, don't sacrifice your social IQ or your emotional IQ for your technology IQ.)

Praise - Become a proponent of technology. Talk up about it. Most people who are thinking up technological designs and components are doing so to make your life easier, more efficient, more entertaining and/or all the above. Be an Expert Leader and encourage the process.

PS - Here are three cool Internet sites you will find useful and/or interesting and that you will want to share with your friends and peers. (To show them how technologically cool you are!)

Photosynth.net - Microsoft's Live Lab's newest venture. It takes photo sharing and viewing to the next level. On the home page in the top right-hand corner, type in Laubach in the search engine to see a few "synths" I have tried. I plan on using this site over at my speaking skills blog to teach people training and keynote room set-up.

Pando.com - A simple, easy way to send up to 1 GB of data to someone. We use it all the time to "email" pictures of the girls to the grandparents without having to clog up our email servers with megabytes worth of photo data. We also use it to send our Leap Show (which is a 30 MB PowerPoint file) to people who buy it.

Pandora.com - An outstanding way to discover new music. I love my iTunes and my iPods, but sometimes I want to listen to something I have never listened to before, but that is fairly similar to what I like.

Enjoy and have a great holiday weekend!

General: DUH Leadership - Drab, Uninteresting, Heroic

I, like you I'm sure, have a fair amount of cynical, too-good-to-do-good friends. You know the type...

* Too cool to follow the simple, but really important rules (like calling people back, doing what you say you will do, etc.).
* Too self-absorbed to care about others.
* Too good at what they do to be humble.

These folks think that just because they are talented or aren't in an official leadership role or don't feel like it, that following a few basic leadership rules won't make a single bit of difference in their life or the lives of the people around them. When, in many cases, their talent and ambition actually make them a perfect candidate for something called DUH (Drab, Uninteresting, Heroic) Leadership.

I have a friend just like this. The kid is as talented as anyone I know. He has moved up in his industry. Makes a ton of money. Etc. But for some reason, he chooses to live an immoral, unethical, certainly un-leaderly lifestyle. He throws his relationships around like rag dolls. His word is worth less than a button on his $1,000 suits. If he only followed even a few DUH Leadership rules, his quality of life, his relationships, and his reputation would break right through the glass ceiling he has inadvertently created.

So, what is DUH Leadership you ask? Well, it is a simple set of behaviors that are basically very boring when you think about them and even more non-sexy when you do them. Most require little energy to do once or twice, but require a heroic amount of energy to do habitually. And the acronym for them is perfect because most people who struggle with their leadership impact would look at the list of heroic behaviors and think, "Well, DUH! Everyone knows you should do those things." But then, if you asked them to do a self-inventory on how many they do on a regular basis, another DUH moment occurs. They actually don't do many of them and that is exactly why they aren't making a big leadership impact - because they aren't doing the small, mundane tasks necessary to be a heroic leader.

The PLI Essentials give us a good structure to highlight 10 acts that represent the heroic way and DUH Leadership. As you read this list, your thoughts will go to those friends you have who do the exact opposite. Just because they have chosen to be average, instead of heroic doesn't mean you have to. They want you to be "too-good-to-do-good" on the surface because they will have persuaded yet another friend to live the average life with them. However, under the surface, even your most cynical peers want you and need you to be heroic. They know there is a better way to live, they just haven't mustered the strength to do it. You can be the spark they need. How? Here are 10 DUH ideas...

Vision - Talk optimistically about the future.

Integrity - Follow through on every commitment you make. If you're not going to follow through, don't make it.

Innovative - Talk more about solutions than problems.

Wise Judgment - Admit quickly when you make a mistake.

Service Minded - Give your time, money or both for the benefit of a complete stranger in need.

Goal Processing - Create and stick to a "Not-to-do List".

Skill Assessment - Learn something today to move you one step closer to being excellent at a task you do everyday.

Emotional Maturity - When you get mad, step away from the situation before you respond.

Fostering Relationships - Be nice.

Masterful Communication - If an email you are drafting is longer than 5 sentences, delete it and call the person.

A good closing metaphor to demonstrate the power of DUH Leadership is your average American millionaire. He or she is a normal, working-class person who drives a drab car, sleeps in an uninteresting home and lives a normal life. What they did to accumulate a heroic amount of wealth was small, simple, and disciplined daily acts.

* They spent less than they made.
* They started and stuck to a long-term savings plan from a young age.
* They placed more value in the money itself (which, because of compound interest, is worth more with each passing day) than on the things it could buy (which, because of depreciation, is worth less with each passing day).

Very much DUH. Very much uncommon among the masses. Very heroic.


Sent to you from the road.

Vision: A Short Nugget From John Maxwell

A short nugget of leadership wisdom from John Maxwell's Leadership 101...

Achievement comes to someone when he is able to do great things for himself.
Success comes when he empowers followers to do great things with him.
Signficance comes when he develops leaders to do great things for him.
A legacy is created only when a person puts his organization into the position to do great things without him.

Masterful Communication: Handling Nervousness

Click over to the Authenticity Rules blog to see how to turn speaking nervousness into a piece of cake...

C - Change your perspective
A - Audience-focused
K - Knowledge
E - Experience

Go there now

Goal Processing: A Cloud of Dust

One of my favorite classes at OSU was an Agricultural Economics course with a guy named Justin Beadles. A group of us would get together before every test and just drink all the coffee and economics we could stand.

Justin went on to seminary and is now the Pastor at Grace Bible Church in Nacogdoches, Texas - http://www.gracebiblechurch.com/. Here is a line from Justin's welcome page on their web site...

"The last thing we want to do at Grace is feverishly stir up a cloud of dust, but essentially go nowhere. Nor do we want to meticulously chart maps, yet never leave the runway. Our desire is to chart a biblical course and energetically travel it together."

You and your team might be like the team I worked with this weekend - struggling with the issue of growth. How fast should we grow? How thin can we spread our resources? Should we put one ton of energy into 100 separate projects or put 50 tons of energy into two?

Obviously, Justin's leadership at Grace is a great model for you to follow with your team. There is no need to sow row after row of crops year after year if you deplete the land of nutrients so much you can't grow anything and dust covers the land instead of bounty.

Justin also recently joined the blogging world - http://justinbeadles.wordpress.com/. I encourage you to check it out and read regularly. Justin's wit, creativity and love for the Lord are all inspirational.

(He is also part Pastor, part Psycho - check this out...)

General: The Leadership Blog Voting

Personal Leadership Insight has been nominated for the Best of Leadership Blogs 2008 award. Please click here to vote for your favorite leadership blog.

The voting ends in July. We are currently in third place and just need a few more votes. Thank you for your support!

General: Student Award/Recognition Banquet Success Strategies

The middle of the summer isn't the best time of the year to be thinking about year-end banquets, but I promised a room full of teachers today that I would put up this post. So, if you are going to be in charge of or helping to plan a year-end student organization award/recognition banquet, here are a few tips to print off and save for later...

1. Set the date, announce it early, and build in a "WOW" factor.

Obviously, if you are working with a school's calendar, you are going to set the date fairly early. What most people forget is to announce it early. I am certain you don't have a big promotional budget (plus, you will have to send an announcement a few weeks before the event), but even just a simple postcard with a "save the date" message works wonders. Send it to local boosters, all the students' parents/guardians, all your school's staff/administration, etc. If you include a "WOW" factor, you can build in anticipation. This could be a special guest appearance, a special meal item, and/or a unique demonstration from the students. Don't be afraid to build it up and make it seem greater than it is. A little showmanship here goes a long way to people anticipating a cool event.

I spoke at one banquet where the big thing every year was what a local shop was going to do for the table center pieces. They were always something phenomenal and someone from each table got to take their table's centerpiece home. This was also a great promotional for the local vendor.

2. Assign every student a duty, check on their progress, offer them assistance and help them be exceptional.

Students get engaged in anything where they have a clear purpose and role. Find out their talents and/or the talents of their family members and go from there. Our local FFA chapter in the small town of Laverne, Oklahoma (population 1,000) had a huge banquet every year because we delegated and assigned roles. It was a huge event that created strong community awareness and support of our little 60-member FFA chapter.

Have a handful of gophers - students who simply play the role of helping you do misc. tasks. Put your nicest, friendliest and most outgoing students at the front as greeters. If you have a guest speaker, local VIPs or school administration coming, assign two students to each to specially greet them, help them feel "extra special", show them where they are seated, etc.

3. Talk positively about the event.

It is amazing how our language is powerful in shaping the mood of the planning and delivery of an event. The more you talk up about the event, the more your students will do the same. Everything is not going to go as planned and everything is not going to be as great as you say it will be, but if you (as the chief planner of the event) can't get excited about it, why should anyone else?

4. Have students perform with equipment that works.

I have been to hundreds of student award/recognition banquets and the best ones are the ones where the students not only do most of the podium work (emcee, introductions, announce awards, etc.), but where the students get to show off their talents also. This might be traditional banquet entertainment (singing, piano, etc.), but also showing off their speaking skills. Regarding the performances, whether from the podium or otherwise, make absolutely certain you have (and triple-check the morning of) facility items that add to the experience instead of detracting from it....

1. If you can't hear the speakers, then why have an event? I have been to banquets where the microphone is literally running into the portal podium built in 1960. If your town doesn't have a facility with a good sound system, someone in town has to have a portable sound system you can borrow. Ask the local churches, car dealers, auctioneers, local motivational speakers :), etc. You don't have to secure a high-dollar BOSE system, but one built after Reagan was in office would be nice.

2. If you are doing a slide-show, lighting is critical. If you can't turn the lights down for the show, then don't have the show.

3. If you can't hear the music behind the slide show, then don't have music. And a laptop's speakers with a microphone pointed at it is not good. Ask your local Radio Shack AV expert (come on, even my grandparents' town in po-dunk Oklahoma has a Radio Shack), to show you how to get the laptop's sound to run through the house sound. It takes an investment of about $40. It involves a few cords, adapters, and a little thing called a DI box.

4. If you are going to hang signs, banners, etc., make absolutely certain they will stay up. Duct tape is good, but duct tape and bailing wire (seriously) will hold anything. 50-pound fishing line works better and is more discreet than bailing wire also. You also need to check your facility's rules before using tape. Many places don't allow it. But if your banquet is in your grade school's 60-year old cafeteria, I doubt they will mind.

5. Make the room cooler than normal. If a few of your guests are complaining it is too cool, that is a good thing. 70 is a good room temp for meal functions. But remember, 65 in an empty room might get you 70 in a full one.

5. Keep the agenda short and simple.

No one ever, in the history of banquets, has ever complained about the event being too short. 90-minutes should be your target and 120-minutes should be your ceiling. You know you have reached your perfect banquet flow not when you have nothing left to add, but when you have nothing left to take away. Some say that every student should get something at an awards banquet. Well, if every student accomplished something, then that is true. However, you and I both know that not every student put in the work necessary to receive an award.

Because every event planner should be concerned with program length, here are a few time savers:

1. Have multiple registration/sign-in lines.

2. Have multiple food lines (if you are doing a buffet). Also, don't have food in a buffet line people have to assemble (tacos, sandwiches, etc.).

3. If you ask people to speak, ask them to speak about half as long as you actually want them to speak (i.e. - tell your Mayor she has 5 minutes if you expect her to go 10.)

4. Have someone other than the teacher give out the awards. It is tough for teachers to not want to say everything they can think of about every student who received an award. If certain highlights need to be said to give special recognition to work done, put it in the script. The best person to announce student awards is another student.

5. If you do a year-end slide show, put a two-song limit on it. I know you took a ton of great pictures throughout the year, but after 7-minutes even grandparents stop looking for their grandchild's smiling face and start looking for the last slide. If you have more pictures to share than can fit in a 7-minute show, put them in an online web album, put the URL in the program and announce the URL from the podium.

6. If you have a guest speaker, don't ask them to talk longer than 15-minutes. Trust me on this one, if the speaker is worth their keep, they can say in 15-minutes what they can in 30.

7. Bring multiples up all at once. If you have an award that goes to a group of individuals, call their names out all at once, have all of them come up to the front, then give them their awards individually. Award winner walking time is the third biggest time killer (second place is not having enough buffet lines and first place is a long winded teacher.)

6. Invite both friends and enemies.

Send out invitations to both your best supporters and to those people who you know don't support your organization. If you are out-of-sorts with the coaches or administration or the adult leader of a different student organization, send them an invite and call them personally to extend a personal invite. Tell them you just want to let them see the good work "the school's students" have been doing all year long. Don't make it about your students versus their students or your agenda versus their agenda. Make it about your event being a place for the school's students to be recognized for their hard work. It is amazing how much support you can create when people see you are trying to include them and, if they actually show, when people see the good works you do.

7. Seek sponsorships.

A banquet is a great marketing opportunity for local businesses and individuals that want to get their name in front of the community for a good cause. Check out this post on fundraising. The connection isn't direct, but some of the same principles apply to sponsorship acquisition. Getting sponsors isn't easy, but it gets easier as time goes on. Most organizations have a set "donations" budget and once you are in their list, it is easier to stay on their list year after year. And if you can get one bank or one retail outlet to sponsor, you can use that sponsorship to "nudge" their competition to do the same.

8. Invite the media.

Telling the good news is critical to the success of your organization. There is no better place to shout than at your annual banquet. Invite as many media outlets as you can. If no one from their shop shows, then send a picture and a press release the day after your event and ask them to run it. They will print it if the picture is good and the press release follows some basic rules. Here is a post at BNet an overview of press release rules... BNet. Also, make certain your picture has a few close-up shots of faces in it. Better to be able to actually recognize three faces than barely make out 20. Remember, the picture won't be printed full-sized and will be in black and white.

9. Have a printed script.

Your script should be in at least three, three-ring binders, double-spaced, 14-font, numbered pages and not copied until the morning of the banquet. You want multiple copies of the final event-ready script just in case something happens to one. You don't want to print it until the day of the event because things will change on you at the last minute. If things do change at the very last minute, just write in the changes. Use a three-ring binder so it will lay flat on the podium and so you can insert pages with changes. You should have students memorize their parts (the better they know their speaking parts, the more comfortable they will be at the podium), but have the manuscript available just in case their nerves get the best of them. When you put names in your manuscript, put them in phonetically correct, not grammatically correct (i.e. - Law-buck, not Laubach.)

10. Practice the night before, show up extra early to start preparing the day of and expect things to go wrong.

As much energy should be exerted in the practice the night before as the actual banquet itself. Early, in event planning terms, means as early as humanly possible. Everything at a banquet takes longer to prepare than you think. When things go wrong, as the event coordinator, you need to keep a calm head, walk with a hurried calmness and remember to put relationships before results. If something goes wrong, most times no one can tell anyway except you and your planning team. Just roll with it. And take notes after the event for next year. Send thank you notes out the next day. Send your press release and picture out the next day. Then celebrate with your students for a job well done!

I welcome any comments with more great banquet tips.

Working in the 17% Zone: 6 Big Keys to Getting and Keeping Engaged Team Members

The Gallup Organization did a study on how people feel about their job. The results:

17% felt they were actively engaged in their work.

54% were disengaged in their work.

29% actually felt actively disengaged.

How do you, as a leader in your organization, get people into the 17% zone and keep them there? Here are six big keys...

1. Encourage up. People have a basic need for reward. This reward doesn't have to always be pay or gifts or awards. Many times it is just simple encouragement. This positive interaction is especially important between a boss and a team member. The health of this relationship is the strongest factor in determining an employee's job satisfaction.

2. Target down. Identify what "a good job" means. People need loops in their life. This means they need to shoot for something, accomplish it and be given something new to strive for. Sometimes the "target" needs to be artificially manufactured, but as long as the work involved is substantial and meaningful, engagement will follow.

3. Strengthen in. Do you know what gets your team members excited both in the office and out? When you learn what naturally stimulates a person, you can help them do those things more often - even if they aren't work related.

4. Weaken out. When you ask a team member to do a task that engages one of their weaknesses, this actually weakens their ability to do other tasks. It takes time to massage the work flow around weaknesses, but it is a task worth pursuing.

5. Make it sharp. The sharper the axe, the better the cut and the easier the work. This principle works in the world of work, as well as the world of tree-cutting. Create, encourage and support (but don't mandate unless for licensing purposes) professional development opportunities. People desire accomplishment and for thousands of adults, their development path at work is their primary success outlet.

6. Rock the gap. People have a need for inspiration, even the cynical. In the world of employee engagement, this inspiration can come from seeing the gap between an average performance and an amazing performance and then being put in an environment that coaches and encourages an amazing performance from everyone - top to bottom.

General: Book Review

A Leader Becomes A Leader is a phenomenal new historical leadership study book by J. Kevin Sheehan. It includes 65 in-depth, creative and insightful profiles of highly successful individuals and the corresponding leadership trait they exemplified.

This image is an example of one of the profiles. Each profile includes images, quotes, a page description of the leader's life, a column dedicated to the leader's timeline and a sentence providing a brief, interesting story from their childhood. This profile picture is from John Coltrane, which is an example that not all the profiled leaders are your traditional historical leaders (Lincoln, Churchill, Einstein, etc. - although they are included, as well.)

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in history and leadership, as well as any educators who teach leadership in their classroom.

Purchase it from Amazon or from the publisher, True Gifts.

General: Best Leadership Blog Nomination

Personal Leadership Insight has been nominated for the Best of Leadership Blogs 2008 award. Please click here (the voting box is at the bottom of that page) to vote for your favorite leadership blog. The voting ends when July ends.



Thank you for voting and thank you for being a loyal PLI reader.

Skill Assessment: Doers, Throughers and Spewers

In my extensive time spent around leaders and teaching leadership, I have noticed there are three distinct types of people in this world - Doers, Throughers and Spewers. Understanding which category you fall into might provide some valuable insight into improving the value of your leadership footprint. Let's take a closer look at the pros and cons of each.

Doers

These are the Type A personalities that range from the glory-seekers to the servant leaders. They are interested in getting things done. Doers see a problem, opportunity, or challenge and they take action. Some for personal gain; some for the betterment of the greater cause. Their intentions matter in some conversations, but not this one. What matters here is not why they are in the Doer category. What matters here is how they came to become a Doer and the trail they leave behind.

The upsides of the Doers are pretty self-explanatory. They get things done. They make things better (most of the time.) Doers fail a ton, but mostly because they try a ton. Being a Doer doesn't make one right or better. It simply makes them productive and contributive (yes, that is a new word.) Many of the world's greatest and smallest solutions are a result of a Doer taking action.

The cons of the Doer are a little more complicated to explain and sometimes complex to understand. Many of the downsides of a Doer's actions are a result of a Doer taking action when...

1. They didn't have all the information necessary to make a decision.
2. They didn't have the right information needed.
3. They made a decision when it wasn't their place to do so.
4. Their decision cause them to sacrifice something more important (often times a relationship).
5. It wasn't the right time to take action.
6. And the list goes on...


Throughers

The Througher is defined as someone who simply passes through situations, events, opportunities, challenges and relationships in their life without exerting any extra effort to improve or add value.

The main pro of the Througher is they don't rock the boat. They don't disrupt any preexisting leadership/decision-makers structure.

The main con of the Througher is they don't rock the boat. Sometimes the boat needs to be rocked. Sometimes all a problem or challenge needs is a Througher to stop and do something about it. A common phrase we use in many of our programs is that the problem in many organizations is not the negative vein or the poor decision makers. The problem of most broken organizations is good people who, for whatever reason, don't step up and take action. These people are the Throughers. Most Throughers are in this category because:

1. Fear.
2. They think their opinion, information or help isn't valuable.
3. They are comfortable where they are and they know (rightly) that many times if you talk about a problem or offer a solution, you will more than likely be asked to do something about it - which leads to more work.
4. They don't know how to help.
5. They don't want to find out how to help.
6. And the list goes on...


Spewers

The Spewer (as you probably guessed from the name) is the worse of the three. The Spewer is defined by their negative attitude and unfortunate tendency to spew said attitude on everyone around them. They love to gossip, chat and advertise about how bad things are.

You wouldn't think there would be any pros to the spewage (another new word) of a Spewer, but there are a few...

1. They bring attention to problems.
2. They can actually provide motivation to a Doer simply by making them mad or annoyed.
3. They validate the importance of the Doers and show Throughers a way to get involved.
4. And the list goes on...

Yes, there are quite a few negatives of a Spewer. Here is the short list...

1. They don't take any positive or constructive action.
1. Unpleasant to be around. (Yes, there is a tie for first place here.)
2. They actually block the creation of positive solutions by killing the motivation, spirit, and ideas of Doers and Throughers.
3. They have a tendency to make things worse by delaying or damaging the constructive action of others.
4. They highlight the negative and make the problem or challenge larger than it actually is.
5. And the list definitely goes on and on and on and on...

So, you need to decide where you live - in Doerville, Througherland or Spewer City.

Doers, keep at it. You help more than you hurt.
Throughers, find a place to help out. You are needed somewhere.
Spewers, there is a better way. Find it.

Good luck.

Skill Assessment: The Benefit of Getting Leadership Training at a Young Age

Leadership training at a young age, especially in the formidable teen years, is life-changing for many of the students we work with. The reason is because they get ingrained with positive habits that serve them so richly throughout their life - in and out of leadership positions.

I was reading an article by Bob Costa in the Wall Street Journal today about the impact Tim Russert (recently deceased NBC journalist and broadcaster) had on him and his career. Bob mentioned a conversation between Senator Pat Moynihan and a young Tim Russert after Tim told Moynihan he didn't think he had what it took to be a journalist. Tim was born in Buffalo, attended college in Ohio and was feeling overwhelmed by his Ivy League peers...

Senator Moynihan said, "Tim, don't let them intimidate you. What they know, you can learn. What you know, they'll never understand."

This is how I feel about the impact of the leadership training young students receive through student organizations, particularly the Career and Technical Student Organizations we work with (FBLA, FFA, TSA, SkillsUSA, HOSA, DECA, FCCLA and BPA).

The leadership experiences these students go through are so extensive and challenging, they literally shape and mold them into new people. They gain communication skills, time and people management strategies, positive verbal and non-verbal cues, and critical thinking skills that many of their peers may never fully understand.

If you are a student reading this, keep going to leadership conferences, pursuing leadership positions and studying leadership material. If you are a parent, business leader, or community member reading this, encourage this in the students you know.