Most leadership BOOKS (not reading) seem like a huge waste of time. The best ideas can usually be summed up in 150 pages less than the publisher and author actually used. Here are a few books that are worth their price tag that have had a profound impact on my leadership and lifestyle:
hasn’t everyone had a job that really sucked? i hate to admit it but while i was in college – in the era before the current laws on phone solicitation – i was that guy who called during dinner to sell you a time share that you didn’t need and couldn’t afford. i took the job because it promised ‘bonuses’, had a flexible schedule and was better than what i was doing before (believe it or not). the only thing that was promising about the job was the information i had about it before i started. i carried on through it all — the rah-rah motivational first session, the stupid script training, the half truths i was being told concerning the homes i was calling being (secret= they weren’t actual ‘winners in jeep grand cherokee drawing’), and of course the necessary shady characters that were running the joint. i got hung up on, cussed out, lied to, cheated out of bonuses and worked in a cruddy office. beyond that, i really didn’t like talking on the phone or with strangers.
however, that single sucky job has paid dividends time and time again. i have become convinced that having learned how to sell time shares over the telephone (a product and an environment i didn’t believe in) that now i could talk to anyone about anything. today, if i have a product or an item that i actually do believe in, with all integrity, i can talk with anyone about it at any time. i also learned to be concise, articulate clearly and to not give up – cause there will be someone out there interested in what i have to say. + talking on the phone to strangers these days —- no sweat!
so the question to you is this… what is your sucky job? AND what have you learned from it?
with the right frame of mind, i think we can grab great leadership concepts from our worst experiences.
ANGST – it exists in even the most chiseled of leaders.
your 20′s will contain periods of time where you doubt your education, your professional choices, your internal make-up and your external deliveries. the pain and process of leadership development will cause you to pause time and time again with the self-evaluation of whether you are cut out for your current pursuits.
what is your driving life passion?
why did you place yourself in your current situation?
what was your dream when you first headed in the direction that you are going?
these are the things that you MUST keep in front of you. don’t follow some other person’s dream or plan for your life. let your passion and your values guide your life commitments. allow yourself to learn from the challenges inside of your current context — pull out the nuggets that will make you a better leader and person — then apply those to your next leadership opportunities.
when you first learned to ride, what was the color of your bike?
RED?
Mine was. Ok, it wasn’t my bike. My friend Brian from down the street had a small red bike. Mine was a full-sized, used, hand-me-down bmx. I am not even sure how my dad could have found training wheels for it. The top tube (middle bar for those of you who don’t ride) was almost as far up from the ground as I was. However, the red bike Brian had fit just right. It was a perfect height from the ground for a 5 year old. It had training wheels too! But the greatest thing about his bike is that it gave me confidence to build on for riding my own bike. A few spins on that puppy taught me that I could possibly learn to ride without the training wheels. His dad set us free the very next week. Sure, he held the seat and started us down a small hill near his house to help us get going, but by the end of week two we were flying — skidding to stops AND MOST IMPORTANTLY I was getting the courage to step up to my full-sized bmx.
Leadership is like learning to ride a bike. You will start slow, it will come to you over time, once you learn you won’t forget AND you will gain confidence with each success to step up into bigger situations. Akin to bike riding, you can gain some confidence and some assistance by tapping the experience offered by others who have learned to ride and are out there ‘enjoying the sport’. Save yourself some early pain by dedicating yourself to learning about leadership and easing your way into it, possibly even getting a mentor.
That is what these blog articles will be for… to help you get going. I don’t have all the answers, so you won’t find me writing all the articles. My goal is to make the early experiences in leadership more beneficial. Odds are you will still have some crashes that will cause some pain – those are unavoidable, even with training wheels and assistance. But as you come to experience the thrill of leadership and glean from the insights of others, I am betting you will in turn become a leader who is reaching your potential.
I am looking forward to counting you in as a leader who is learning and making positive impacts in your world!
ever wonder how others perceive you? no? you ought to, it just might be seriously effecting your leadership opportunities.
try this exercise: get a recorder and take it into your next meeting or a larger gathering of co-workers. push ‘record’. after the meeting is over, go back and listen for yourself. see what you find. chances are you don’t need a recorder at all. you probably have a good enough memory to think about your contributions in a group setting.
were you cocky, being overly sure of yourself and your answers? were you quiet, not contributing at all, but sitting in there, hoping just to get through unnoticed? possibly you were overly quippy and sarcastic, chimming in when not needed, derailling the meeting off topic and drawing attention to yourself. Or were you argumentative, trying to prove your point well past the time when everyone had already understood where you were coming from.
“I don’t care what other people think!” could very well be the most damaging thing a young leader says, thinks or lives out in their first leadership environments. you need to care, at least some. as i once heard and then learned from one of my mentors, at some point, you will need the respect and attention of those who you aren’t considering right now.
so try this… find some balance.
if you are quiet, slowly try to contribute. if you are loud, practice silence. if you are sure of yourself, consider the ways of those around you who are succeeding but are nothing like you. if you are argumentative, focus on results not debates. and if you are new, take a back seat to those who are there already — & take a few notes while you are at it.