“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
– John F. Kennedy
As leaders, personal development is part of the job description. Not only do we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our teammates. These posts will help you lead yourself better so that you can lead others more effectively.
Life is full of choices; how do you know the right direction to take? The choice one woman makes while walking alone out in the American southwest can serve as a good example for the rest of us in how to choose the right path to follow.
Are there any leadership exercises I can do? Someone asked this question recently, and I thought it was a good one. Learning leadership is tricky business. It’s not like practicing musical scales or pumping iron at the gym. But I do think there are exercises we can do to become …
Leadership Exercises: 7 Ways to Build Your Influencing MusclesRead More »
“How can seeking discomfort be a good thing for leaders?” Hey, I’m here at a local park in Minnesota, getting ready to do my weekly tempo run. Believe it or not, I think that there is a very close parallel between learning to run fast and becoming a better leader, …
Comfortably Uncomfortable: 7 Ways Seeking Discomfort Makes You BetterRead More »
Are you a potential leader who’s just looking for an opportunity? Do you think you have what it takes, and just need others to notice your leadership ability? If so, this video is for you. Today we’ll talk about seven things you can start doing today that will get you …
Are You a Potential Leader? 7 Ways to Get NoticedRead More »
How can we be sure our efforts will lead to goal achievement? Here’s a unique way one person answered this question, and what we can learn about how to make sure our own efforts result in the goal achievement we hope for.
“How do you build influence if you are the low person on the totem pole?” We all have to start somewhere, and usually that somewhere is at the bottom of the heap. So how is it that some people seem to climb higher faster than others? It really comes down …
How to Build Influence: Go From Gofer to Go-To with These 3 Simple StepsRead More »
Not long ago, my son called me from Oregon. He was driving some friends to the airport when his car suddenly quit and wouldn’t restart. Beyond attempting to diagnose the problem over the phone, there was little I could do to help from where I was in Minnesota. The good …
The Leader’s Triple-A Club: How to Navigate the Hazardous Highways of LeadershipRead More »
What’s it like to run an Ultra-Marathon, and how do you motivate yourself to finish any great challenge? Today’s post will be a little different. In 2014, the year I turned 50, I somehow came to the notion that I should celebrate a half-century of life by trying to run …
“How do you find the courage to continue?” Teddy Roosevelt once reminded us that “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.” But in our struggles to achieve, that difficulty can be enough to make us want to quit. Where can we …
Unstoppable: 12 Ways to Find the Courage to ContinueRead More »
Kennedy said that “leadership and learning are indispensable to each other,” so how do we make sure we keep learning? It’s easy to get caught up in the daily business of getting things done. But if we’re not careful, though we may accomplish much, we don’t become better in the …
The Leader Apprentice: 5 Ways to Master the Learning MindsetRead More »
“How can you optimize a system that’s error-prone?” As humans, we are fallable. In our efforts to achieve, produce, and progress, we make mistakes, we misjudge, we stumble. Any enterprise that involves humans will, by definition, be imperfect. But is that really such a bad thing? When it comes to …
Optimization: Surprising Lessons in Efficiency from the Ant WorldRead More »
Is the first problem solving step really ‘Identify the Problem?’ If you’ve ever watched someone who is tired or emotional struggling to solve a problem, you know that somebody forgot a step in the problem solving process. People can get so wrapped up in the problem of having a problem …
Problem Solving Steps: 3 Steps to Take Before You Take Any StepsRead More »