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Category Archives: Organizational Health
Leadership Rx: Spiritual Leaders Bring Healing to Others
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Nowadays we witness many individuals who find their working life does not bring them hope but oppression.
Workers are losing their rights in many industries; others are cast aside with ease to bring temporary profit to the greedy. Increasing numbers of workers do not find the dignity and fulfillment that work ought to contribute to their lives, families, and communities.
Leadership Rx
A hope-filled spiritual leader sees these new tasks for leaders in dealing with individuals and organizations as a major responsibility.
They know healing is needed when people:
- Focus exclusively on self-interest
- Exhibit excessive internal competition
- Constantly engage in comparisons with others
- Evidence mutual blame
- Lose vitality
- Compromise their integrity
- Deliberately do things they know are unethical
A leader also recognizes the need for healing when some in the organization are always marginalized; there are voiceless members, and widespread indifference to others’ needs.
Healing is clearly needed when administration restricts communication, misuses power, allows significant disparity in executives’ salaries, and governs autocratically.
Starting at the Top
When managers get in and get out of the organization with increased salaries and golden parachutes, having done nothing significant, then the organization and its board members need healing. When managers simply do not try to slow the erosion of values, then they also need healing.
Every organization has some individuals in pain, feeling loss, experiencing broken relationships at work and at home, suffering from a lack of meaning, and this sense of pain affects the quality of their work.
In fact, some within on organization need healing but do not know it.
Then again some sick individuals make everyone else sick without ever feeling anything themselves. A leader of hope has to heal the wounds caused by former bosses and also by coworkers. Some individuals adapt themselves to sick situations and then become as sick as everyone else.
No organization can function well amid unhealthy situations that sap vitality, creativity, and commitment. So, dealing with organizational dysfunctions is one of the challenges of a spiritual leader who wants to give hope to others.
A Leader of Hope
A leader of hope allows no one to feel inferior but raises them up to their just level of appreciation, showing empathy to all. Healing others is a major task of a leader of hope who thus enables others to become their complete selves.
This includes:
- Healing relationships within organizations
- Clarifying and refocusing roles
- Setting goals together
- Making sure channels of communication are open
- Reflecting on each others’ gifts
- Expressing recognition and appreciation of everyone’s contribution
The leader’s healing influence will vary for each member in need.
Some may feel they are taken for granted and a leader must give them visibility and prominence.
For others who have been the object of bogus empowerment by former failed leaders a leader of hope must give genuine, significant delegation. There are always members who feel used, often because they are, and a leader will need to heal by letting people feel at home in the organization and making them objects of sincere admiration and respect.
A Healthier Way to Lead
A good leader creates for those within an organization a healthy way of living together, and this implies risk taking. He or she will encourage others to get involved in the journey to wholeness, to share in common values, to become vulnerable as he or she manifests genuine emotions of heart and love.
Part of a healthy way of living together is to heal the loneliness of all around us, to awaken others to hope, to enable people to resolve conflicts constructively, to move them by making it clear that they are loved.
Leaders of hope restore others to healing through listening, empathy, and compassion, and even a sense of humor; healing broken relationships, restoring justice, and building a reconciling community.
A leader of hope will focus on values of colleagues, since a person without values causes problems for those around. Then the insidious destruction of the vision of hope causes everyone to live a reduced notion of what it means to be human.
Many so-called leaders do nothing about the hurt that surrounds them, but a spiritual leader seeks always to bring healing where it is needed.
So how are you doing at putting on your spiritual leader role and serving others with empathy, love and trust so that healing can be a natural part of your organization? If you need some improvement in this area, what steps can you take and what behavior can you emulate to become a healing leader? I would love to hear your thoughts!
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Dr. Leonard Doohan is an Author and Workshop Presenter
He focuses on issues of spiritual leadership
Email | LinkedIn | Web | Blog
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Equipping Leaders to Battle Fear with Accountability
Leading with Honor Video Coaching from Lee Ellis
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Six Leadership Obstacles to Team Success
As leaders, we want the positive elements of success—achievement, notoriety, money, and excellence for clients and customers.
But we’re unwilling to do the right things to get there. The missing cultural piece is courageous accountability.
What are the six obstacles that can get you off-course? Read Lee’s latest article below, and see where you’re vulnerable –
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Lee Ellis is Founder & President of Leadership Freedom LLC & FreedomStar Media.
He is a leadership consultant and expert in teambuilding, executive development & assessments
Email | LinkedIn | Web | Blog | Book | Facebook | Twitter
His latest book is called Leading with Honor: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton.
L2L Book Review “Under New Management” by David Burkus
An Open Invitation To Join The Integrative Leader's Book Club
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David Burkus argues in his book Under New Management: How Leading Organizations Are Upending Business as Usual that the management practices that have evolved from the factory work economy just do not apply to today’s knowledge work economy.
Burkus walks the reader through compelling case studies of companies who have abandoned traditional management and leadership practices in favor of new ways to organize and lead.
His premise is this:
Burkus’s insights are convincing companies to leave behind decades-old management practices and to implement new ways to enhance productivity and morale. Fire all the managers, outlaw email, and make pay transparent.
Title: Under New Management: How Leading Organizations Are Upending Business as Usual
by David Burkus
Purpose:
The purpose of David Burkus’s new book Under New Management is to find answers to these questions and more:
- Do open-floor plans really work – or do they make employees miserable?
- Are there companies which really put their employees’ welfare first, and their clients second?
- Are annual performance reviews really necessary?
Premise:
Fire all the managers, outlaw email, and make pay transparent. These are all chapters in David Burkus’ new book “Under New Management”. David argues in this book that the management practices that have evolved from the factory work economy just do not apply to today’s knowledge work economy.
He walks the reader through compelling case studies of companies who have abandoned traditional management and leadership practices in favor of new ways to organize and lead.
A Reader’s Guide:
I found myself starting each chapter thinking that there would be no way that what I was about to read would work. But, by the end of most chapters, not only did I feel it was possible but optimal.
In my opinion, any book on leadership and management that gets me to pause and reflect is of great value. This book provides page after page of things to pause and contemplate.
New Book Club
The Integrative Leader’s Book Club
I was so energized after reading it, that I decided to feature it as this month’s selection in The Integrative Leader’s Book Club.
What is really exciting is, I was able to connect with David and he graciously agreed to join us for a live Q&A session.
Linked 2 Leadership is one of the best forums for leadership exploration. By nature, its readers are actively working to hone their craft. Therefore, I would like to personally invite you to join The Integrative Leader’s Book Club. Each month we pick a thought provoking book to read and discuss.
This club was created to help us lift our heads up from working in our business and allow us to spend a little time working on it. Leadership is a practice and the books read and the wisdom shared will help us all become better at our craft.
I would also invite you to register for the online Q&A session with David on Monday, May 23at 11am Pacific.
At the end of each month, I will post right here on Linked 2 Leadership a review of the book and some of the key learnings that our club gained and shared. Hopefully together, we can all become better leaders and develop future leaders that are well prepared to guide the organizations of the future.
I hope to see you in the club.
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Elliot Begoun is the Principal Consultant of The Intertwine Group, LLC.
He works with companies to Deliver Tools that Enable Growth
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | GROW | Website
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Mentoring in the Workplace: Spreading the Knowledge
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We often hear about the need for gaining and sharing organizational knowledge to further our careers, reach our goals (and create new ones), and make connections in various industries.
One of the best ways to share knowledge is also a vital part of the leadership toolkit – mentoring.
Mentoring in the Workplace
Mentoring is an essential leadership skill, and encompasses the professional development of others. Mentors show others the ropes, answer questions, and guide mentees in the direction they need to go.
When a new employee first meets with a mentor, the first question often is this:
What can you tell me about your experience at this organization?”
Mentees must get oriented to their working environment and learn how to handle the challenges it poses. The mentor serves as a guide through those challenges with advice and constructive criticism, while paving the way to the mentee’s next goal or challenge.
Throughout the process, mentors build on their acumen as leaders and information sharers.
Sharing Knowledge
Sharing organizational knowledge is an invaluable part of mentoring, as much as it is a way to keep an organization’s business practices. Mentoring to share knowledge is different from traditional mentoring, in that there is more emphasis on practical applications than on organizational culture or building networks.
The key is to combine both types of mentoring.
Sharing information about an organization and teaching about its culture, mentors offer mentees a richer experience and a more complete picture of the organization and its needs.
Types of Knowledge
Knowledge management (KM) is the process of capturing, distributing, and using knowledge, and considers an integrated approach to sharing the information assets of a given organization. These assets include policies, databases, documents, procedures, and the expertise and experiences of individual employees.
KM looks primarily at two types of knowledge, explicit and tacit, which are the primary types of knowledge imparted to employees, especially via mentoring; a third type, embedded knowledge, can be found in processes, organizational culture, and ethics.
- Explicit knowledge is codified, and can be found in documents and databases.
- Tacit knowledge is more intuitive and is rooted in experience, context, and practices.
Learning How to Teach
One way to look at mentoring is to imagine teaching someone how to ride a bike. The act of learning to ride the bike is the tacit knowledge, while a set of precise instructions on how to ride the bike is the explicit knowledge. And embedded knowledge is the “rules of the road” to keep in mind while riding the bike.
Establishing mentoring relationships are crucial to fostering leadership skills and professional development, both for mentors and mentees. Mentors ensure the transfer of organizational knowledge and offer guidance to those who may one day become leaders themselves; mentees benefit from learning about their roles and the organization.
So how are you doing at creating an atmosphere and workplace that actively relies upon sharing knowledge, experiences, and expertise? If you are not doing this, what steps can you take now to implement a process of systematic mentoring to help people learn, grow, and develop? I would love to hear your thoughts!
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Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™
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Linda R. Ranieri is a Graduate Student in Communication
She works in the Medical Testing and Assessment Industry
Email | LinkedIn | Google+ | Web
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Communication Breakdown: Are You Resonating With Your Audience?
How Leaders Can Refine their Focus to Know their Audience
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Over the course of my career many leaders have lamented this: “Little I say seems to be resonating!?!?”
Although this can be very frustrating, it certainly does not mean that you should just stop communicating (as I’ve also heard…)
Knowing Your Audience
Problem:
Most likely, the failure to communicate effectively an indicator that you need to take more time to find out what makes your audience tick, and how and when they’re most receptive to information.
Solution:
Think about any questions and concerns they might have that will impede their ability to hear you. By anticipating audience needs and concerns, you can ensure that you shape your message in a way that will resonate with your listeners.
The Real Communications Challenge
As challenging as it can feel to state your thoughts clearly and concisely, the real challenge is shaping those thoughts clearly and concisely for your audience.
Employees (and any audience) want you to appeal to them in terms that speak to them and their needs, often on a personal and emotional level—yes, even if you’re just talking about work.
Especially if you’re talking about work.
When leaders don’t understand their audiences’ needs or perspectives, they make these two common missteps:
- They mistake any communication for good communication
- They communicate from their perspective instead of the audience’s
Your Communication Role as a Leader
As a leader it’s your job to use communication to help your audience make the connection between business objectives and their role in helping you meet them. But it’s important to understand that before you can get to the business big picture, you’ll need to address employees’ personal needs first.
At the end of the day, employees want to know “What’s in it for me?”
They might articulate that need in any number of ways:
- “How does this affect me?”
- “What does this have to do with me?”
- “What should I be doing?”
- “Does anyone care about me?”
The Solution: Know Your Audience
Know your audience and speak to them. There’s real magic in addressing your audience’s needs first. When you do your audience is more likely to trust you, and as a result be more generous, open and receptive to big-picture, strategic communication.
All communication should always be tailored to the specific audience to make them aware of their role in the organizational whole.
That’s what leads to engagement and the discretionary effort all of us want.
Then, you can truly inspire employees to action as only a great leader can by giving them feelings of significance, community, and excitement through your communications.
Specifically as a leader you should:
- Contextualize organizational information to ensure your team understands how it fits in.
- Craft information so that it’s relevant to individual employees and teams.
- Provide job-related information so that individuals and teams can do their jobs effectively.
When it comes right down to it, it doesn’t matter what you say, it’s whether you can make it relevant to your employees.
So, how clear are you about who EXACTLY is your audience? Have you developed the right mindset to serve them in a way that will work with them? Or are you stuck in a place where you seemingly don’t connect well? If you are, what would you do to get to a more effective platform for your audience? I would love to hear you thoughts!
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David Grossman is Founder and CEO of The Grossman Group
He is a much sought-after Consultant, Speaker, and Executive Coach
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web | Book
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The Leadership Yawwwn-Fest
by Karen Dietz
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Are you inspiring others to action with your captivating stories that delight your audience?Or you guilty of just providing a leadership yawn-fest?
Your Best Tool For Inspiring Others
I was at a board meeting the other day where an outside organization was presenting its latest project. The vision was in creating a sustainable vision for the future of the region. The idea provided the perfect opportunity to enroll people in their grand vision!
All they needed was the perfect vision pitch from an inspiring leader.
But what a big “yawner” this presentation turned out to be. What a lost opportunity!
So what was the problem? It wasn’t for lack of commitment, enthusiasm, or interest. It wasn’t because a young inexperienced executive was before us. In fact, the presenter had a lifetime of success under his belt. It wasn’t even an experience of death by PowerPoint.
It was simply because the presentation was dry as a mouthful of sand. In addition, it was without a compelling story to engage people. The result? Nice project. No inspiration. No enrollment in taking action.
Telling Compelling Stories
Being able to tell a compelling story is an essential leadership skill that bears paying attention to, no matter how experienced or successful you are.
As Howard Gardner says, “Stories are the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal.”
Just imagine how many missed opportunities that this successful executive has created over his career because he wasn’t sharing stories, much less in ways that inspire others to action.
Brain research (Story Proof, Influencer) has shown time and again how sharing stories immediately engages people and their imaginations. It is the most efficient method for transmitting knowledge, and is a powerful tool for enrolling others moving them to action.
Authenticity
Every leader who is able to link their own personal stories into specific initiatives will score big on the engagement meter.
Q: Why?
A: Because they are viewed as authentic — one of the core qualities of an effective leader.
Over one thousand studies during the last fifty years have attempted to define successful leadership styles or qualities. Yet none of this research has produced a clear profile of an ideal leader. That’s because leadership has many voices and the key to being a successful leader lies in your ability to be you – authentic, passionate, and disciplined.
Leaders are defined by their unique life stories. They are defined by how those stories illuminate their passions and leadership purpose, and by the way they frame those stories for others. Every leader, whether young or old, has inspiring stories to tell. Most however, don’t recognized the power in their own stories, much less know how to tell them in ways without sounding arrogant or self-serving.
By being willing to explore, reframe and tell their life stories, leaders set free their passions and the ability to inspire others.
Training is required though. Just because we can speak doesn’t mean that we don’t need to go to Toastmasters. Even though we can all tell a story at some level, that doesn’t mean we don’t need to identify our stories and learn to tell them in ways that inspire others.
Core Stories
What stories do you need to tell? There can be many. And every leader needs to master a set of core stories to get started.
These stories are:
- About the founding of your organization and the challenges it is addressing
- People and results stories – About customers/clients and the results they’ve experienced, along with stories about people within your organization and the difference they have made
- Recovery stories – Those about mistakes that have been made, and the recovery / lessons learned from those experiences
- The story about the future you are creating – Why should we invest in you? How will the future be different through our engagement together?
- The My Commitment story – That story of what gets you up in the morning, what inspires and moves you, why you are doing the work you are.
Successful leadership takes deliberate development and necessitates being true to your stories. You are never too old or too young to share your stories and lead authentically.
Don’t wait. Don’t miss the incredible opportunities waiting for you when you become a proficient story teller. It’s all low-hanging fruit. Spending time on developing your stories now will allow you to leverage them for years to come.
So, how many yawn-fests have you suffered through in your career? How many time have you seen wonderful ideas fail due to a lack of polish on the communicator’s story line? Have you ever been guilty of leaving your audience or team members flat because you could not engage them in personal stories that inspired them? Come on… tell the truth! I’d love to hear your STORIES!
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Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™
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Karen Dietz is a Principal at Polaris Associates Consulting, Inc.
She helps clients tell their most inspiring stories as an essential influence skill
Email | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Web | Blog | Skype: karen.dietz
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Leadership and The Ugly Four-Letter Word: Fear
by Kristi Royse
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We all have different ideas of what fear looks like. Some people fear taking risks, others fear conflict or confrontation, and still others fear rejection by peers, just to name a few.
So what is fear?
My Fear of Failure
Personally, I struggle with fear of failure. I am a perfectionist by nature, as are many of us in the corporate world. As children we are taught making mistakes equates to failure, and accumulated failure makes it impossible to become successful.
Further, failing can sometimes feel like a knock on who I am as a person-I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not driven enough, etc. It has taken me many years to unlearn the lies I was fed as a child, however this fear still holds me captive from time to time.
“Everybody has their own Mt. Everest they were put on this earth to climb.” ~Hugh Macleod
The Four-Letter Word
The point is that we all have fear in our lives. If we all face fear, though, why isn’t it more readily discussed in the workplace?
“Fear” is often viewed as an unmentionable four-letter word.
- Uttering it is received with feelings of discomfort and disdain.
- To admit fear is to accept defeat.
- Society at large views fear as a sign of weakness.
- We are expected to be big, bad, courageous trailblazers.
- Overlooking the presence of fear, though, gives it power.
- Inability to face our fears allows them to grow and fester until they paralyze us.
Thus, the first step to ridding oneself of fear is admitting that it exists. From there, one can begin to understand the fear that holds him/her hostage and create a plan of action to confront and overcome that fear.
“The key to release, rest, and inner freedom is not the elimination of all external difficulties. It is letting go of our pattern of reactions to those difficulties.” ~Hugh Prather
Facing Uncomfortable Circumstances
Freedom from fear does not involve changing or avoiding our circumstances. Rather, freedom is found when we face our fear-invoking circumstances head on. This confrontation helps to release us from our bondage to fear.
“The circumstances of our lives have as much power as we choose to give them.” ~David McNally
A Choice to Be Made
So, then, at the root of fear is a choice:
- Do I allow my circumstances to define me?
OR
- Am I willing and able to overcome my circumstances?
In Maximum Leadership, John C. Maxwell poses the question, “Which emotion will [you] allow to be stronger?” (2012) Choosing faith over fear is a moment-by-moment decision.
- Will I choose to face my fears or will I let myself be overcome by them?
- Do I have faith enough in my abilities and belief in what I am pursuing to overcome my fears?
These questions, and others, are what define who we are as leaders and team members.
The Solution
So once we face fear, what is the next proactive step to keep it away?
Learning to trust.
In Oestreich and Ryan’s book, Driving Fear Out Of The Workplace, the authors discuss the benefits of creating a high-trust workplace environment. The authors interviewed 260 people at 22 organizations about fear and how each workplace handles the fear they face.
In the book, “fear” is defined as “the belief that speaking up about on-the-job concerns may result in adverse repercussions.” An overwhelming 70% labeled this situation as one that provokes anxiety.
Why does this matter?
The workplace can be full of change and uncertainty. Fear affects us all as both individuals as well as a corporate body.
On Anxiety, Trust and Fear
Anxiety and fear in the workplace creates:
- Insecurity in workers
- Fear of honesty, vulnerability, and openness
- Anger as a result of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and ego defense
- Lower levels of creativity
- Lack of concern for the company
Trust has the power to eliminate fear.
Trust creates an environment that fosters positive vulnerability among coworkers.
When trust is present, people:
- do not fear they will be rejected as a result of speaking up
- feel comfortable and are willing to take more risks
- are willing to be more open and honest with coworkers and company leaders
- push themselves further, knowing they will have the support of their coworkers/leaders
- have greater commitment to work at hand and the company as a whole because the ability to trust at work creates loyalty to coworkers/the company itself
Anxiety inhibits, trust relaxes and releases.
For more information on trust, check out my trust blog entry here.
Continuing On In Freedom From Fear
Over the course of the next four months we will be discussing different types of fears that inhibit growth for leaders and teams as well as the steps necessary to overcome these fears.
We will also be discussing Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team as it relates to overcoming fear in the workplace. The five dysfunctions include:
- Inattention to Results
- Avoidance of Accountability
- Lack of Commitment
- Fear of Conflict
- Absence of Trust
“Striving to create a functional, cohesive team is one of the few remaining competitive advantages available to any organization looking for a powerful point of differentiation.” ~Patrick Lencioni
My hope is these tools for overcoming fear will create more cohesive teams and more effective leadership within your company. I hope you will join me in reading the upcoming blog focused on exploring the fear of conflict.
What fears in the workplace hold you captive? What tips do you have for dealing with these fears? Do you tend embrace fear or run from it? Do you believe trusting relationships can truly combat fear? Do you have another way of handling fear in your life/at the office?
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Learn, Grow & Develop Other Leaders™
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Kristi Royse is CEO of KLR Consulting
She inspires success in leaders and teams with coaching and staff development
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web | Blog | Articles | Services | (650) 578-9626
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The Importance of Leading Your Future Today
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Leadership today requires much more than just doing your job with the people who you lead. It now involves your public persona.
This reality impacts your ability to influence with the global reach of the Internet. Things that you say and do are now are on display and can impact you, your role, and the organization that you work for. These things also have a funny way of staying around into perpetuity.
Your reputation, your role, and your business can change overnight with just a single Tweet.
If you are online doing business today, then you should understand a few things about your online reputation. First of all, you need reputation management no matter how small – or how big – your company may be. Secondly, you must understand how to properly use reputation management in the modern world of business.
This article will discuss some of the things that you must do as well as things from which you must stay away!
6 Do’s and Don’t’s of Reputation Management
1) Claim and complete all of your social media profiles
Because of the way citations are done, completing all of your major social media profiles will give you a boost in all of the search rankings.
Make sure that you have a profile on these sites:
- Google+
- YouTube
- SlideShare
- Better Business Bureau
- Yelp
- About.me
- YellowPages
and any reputable niche social media sites that are relevant to your industry.
Fill out these profiles as completely and uniquely as possible. Keep the address the exact same on all profiles. Do not abbreviate if you can help it. List a local number that matches with the zip code that you are advertising instead of an 800 number.
This will help to maximize your search listing juice and will help fill the search engine result page (SERP) with online profiles that you control.
2) Don’t rely on your personal websites alone to get the job done
Most people will find your business from your major social media profiles at the start of your campaign. You may be able to redirect traffic from those places to your landing pages later on, but the major websites will always have a juice that your personal websites will probably never attain. Hence, sometimes buying youtube likes is a necessity and cannot be treated as a luxury to be afforded at one’s expense.
Starting multiple WordPress or Tumblr accounts to build a link profile will probably serve you in a negative way, as the major search engines are all against this technique. They have protection mechanisms against it. And these thin, minimal blogs will have very little chance of ranking well themselves for your brand or personal terms.
Yet there are many who still try to rely on building dozens of micro-blogs for their business in order to try to overcome negative content on the SERPs.
3) Do take time to build an authentic online presence
Not only does authenticity help you with your human visitors, but the major search engines love it as well. If you are seen as an expert guest blogger and you are on reputable sites, then these sites will often appear high in the SERPs for your branded terms.
If the information that you tout matches your social media personality, this maximizes your effort. As a matter of fact, you may want to take the time to use Google Disavow to disconnect your landing pages from any spam techniques that you may have employed previously.
Poor links to your site are tantamount to being seen in a bad neighborhood.
They’re simply bad for your online reputation.
4) Don’t try to downgrade your competition with fake reviews
Not only is this a waste of time, but review sites like Yelp.com are actually quite good at determining what may be a fake review and completely destroying it. On top of this, if they link it to you, then your business suffers.
Even if you do get a few fake reviews up, your time is much better spent making your own reputation positive, as creating negativity for a competitor does not help your visibility at all.
5) Do be proactive when you see something that needs to be fixed
You should look at authentic negative reviews as an opportunity to fix a problem before your competition gets to fix it and take your business away from you.
Many companies will use an aggregation program to see if there are any trends in the comments that people are making. The company mentioned can then devise a strategy based upon these trends rather than guessing at their next PR move.
6) Don’t ignore your online reputation and try to fix it at the last-minute
Why should you never do this? First of all, it never works. If people have already run your name through the mud, then you will spend a great deal of time trying to play catch up rather than improving your ranking online.
As you learn how to incorporate the tips above into your everyday marketing online, you will see a gradual but consistent shift in your online visibility. Keep this up for the long-term, and your business will eventually occupy a position online that will be very hard to usurp.
As the reputation of your business ages online, it crystallizes. Make sure that you give it the best chance to crystallize as a positive for your business.
So, how well have you done to make sure that your online persona is working well for you? Are you represented well by having a comprehensive mindset and approach to your online presence? What steps can you take to cast a positive light on you, your organization, and the opportunities ahead of you? I would love to hear your thought!
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Tayven James is a Freelance Business and Tech Author
He focuses on Emerging Trends and the Marketing Methods Behind their Success
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter
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On Leadership and Overcoming a Crisis
By Jack Davis
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Make no mistake about it, there will be moments when a crisis strikes. Life has a way of making sure that plenty of lemons come our way.
And it seem that none of us can escape this truth.
Leaders often have to manage through crisis. This can only be done with good information. Because of a crisis, you may feel like your life has been a waste. But don’t worry… there are plenty of chances to turn those lemons into something good.
Mistakes are Inevitable
In my experience, no one is always happy, excited, or hopeful. We may not always see progress. At times we see things slipping backwards. Sometimes through no fault of our own, yet often through our own mistakes as well. Everyone makes mistakes, the mistake is not the important part, the lesson is.
Here is a key truth to overcoming our mistakes:
Admitting your mistake quickly positions you to extract wisdom from it
That’s right. You learn when you admit your mistakes openly and transparently.
Laugh them off, brush them off, learn the lesson, and move on to your next (even greater) accomplishment!
You see, pain births a willingness to change. No matter what has to change around you, the first thing to change is YOU. Renew your mind to what a crisis is to you.
These steps may help:
Understand that your feelings are created by your focus
What you are focusing on determines how you feel. Here are a few ways to change your feelings:
- Through focus
- Through music
- Through the people around you
- Through praise
And if you are so inclined…
- Through worship
Understand that your feelings can change as quickly as they arrived
Did you suddenly get upset at something? Then you are able to suddenly get happy again! It’s all a matter of what you decide to focus on. That will get your joy back.
Nothing is ever as bad as it first appears
What you see as a loss is actually an investment – if you perceive it through new eyes. Bad times can activate great relationships. Think about it, when the bad time hit, your fair weather friends left, didn’t they? But your true friends stuck with you. Your relationship with them is now cemented even better than before. What a wonderful gift to receive! Absolutely priceless in my book.
Quitting does not improve your life
WOW, WOW, WOW! This one hit me strongly the first time I read it. It just never occurred to me that QUITTING HAS NO REWARD. What does quitting give you? Regret, guilt, shame, more fear, less faith. Nope, I don’t want any of those, I’ve had enough of feeling those things. So I have decided today that I’m not quitting. How about you?
Endurance is a bridge
Everyone walks through a wilderness experience. Everyone walks through the rough places. Everyone experiences crisis, even those who seem to “have it all together.” Get real. They don’t. If you could see deeper into their lives, you would see that they don’t have it all together.
Instead, see that your endurance will increase access to someone – a friend, someone to help you, someone to encourage you, someone to help you solve the problem.
Your endurance is a testimony of encouragement to others
Someone is watching your life. Someone is learning from what you are doing. Someone is secretly rooting for you to win. People love to see the underdog win. So if you are feeling like that underdog today, take courage in knowing that when you do win, it will be a heroic and inspirational story! You will encourage others with it! So today, allow encouragement to sink in. You will win if you do not give up.
Always know that I am here to help put things in perspective and to be your friend and encourager!
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Jack Davis is a John Maxwell Certified Success Coach and Speaker
He serves as Coach, YouthMax Speaker & Board Member Team Xtreme Ministries
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