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.


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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.