Taking a risk, self-care, courage and integrity were top-of-mind for the BIG team this past week and show up in our curation of our weekly favorite posts…enjoy!
Avoiding Risks and Seizing Opportunities (Colin Gautrey’s Influence Blog) Continue reading
The Get Your BIG On team’s weekly leadership favorites are an eclectic collection of articles, blog posts, quotes, pod casts and whatever else engaged our interest as we did our work over the past week. Some items are recent, others aren’t. Some are mainstream, others are off the beaten path. Enjoy! Learn, connect and share.
Are You A Power-Poisoned Boss? (Bob Sutton, Fast Company)
The BIG team is fascinated with power and how it all too frequently goes awry. Several of the stories will hopefully make you cringe (provided you haven’t been poisoned with power as Bob calls it).
40 Best Movies to Honor Women’s History Month
March is Women’s History Month. If you’re looking for a unique way to celebrate it, grab some popcorn and wine and sample 40 movies by, for and about women. (Lots of other interesting lists on this site, too.)
Old School Persuasion Tools You Learned, But Should Never Use (Persuasive.net)
If your efforts at persuading others are falling short, perhaps you’re guilty of committing one (or more) of the four erroneous practices described here that derail your ability to influence others.
Take 5: Why Men Should Care (Catalyst)
“Seventy-four percent of the men Catalyst interviewed in their Engaging Men in Gender Initiatives series identified fear and apathy as barriers to supporting gender equality.” Here they look at five reasons why men have a lot to gain and nothing to fear from equality.
Conforming to the Norm (Psyblog)
Ever wonder why most people join in and ignore the obvious and well-known elephant in the room? Read some science behind why “many people find their inability to conform is a real problem in their lives while others find it more difficult to break away and do their own thing.”
Fixing Your “Boss Problem” with Self-Supervision (Dawn Lennon, Business Fitness)
If you’re in the half of workers who have a problem boss whom you can’t trust, you might find a tip or two here for managing yourself to help you deal with the situation.
Rethink, reframe, renew. “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.” ~Gilda Radner
Our weekly leadership favorites are an eclectic collection of articles, blog posts, quotes, pod casts and whatever else engages our interest. Some items are recent, others aren’t. Some are mainstream, others are off the beaten path. Enjoy! Be inspired!
The Leader And The Peacock In The Closet (Terry Starbucker)
Striking the fine balance between confidence and humility is a perpetual challenge for many leaders. Terry shares some of his early lessons from powerful mentors who helped him learn how effective leaders think more about we and less about me.
Management Debt (Ben Horowitz, ben’s blog)
As Gary Hamel writes, business is full of irreconcilable trade-offs, yet Ben adds a new twist. ”…you will run into serious trouble if you fail to keep the trade-off in the front of your mind. There also exists a less well-understood parallel concept, which I will call management debt. Like technical debt, management debt is incurred when you make an expedient, short-term management decision with an expensive, long-term consequence.”
Power Failure in Management Circuits (Rosabeth Moss Kanter, HBR post)
What a great opening line: ”Power is America’s last dirty word.” And what’s even more compelling (to me) is that this article was published in 1979…and is still totally relevant today. Read on to learn more about sources of power, powerlessness, and sharing power. Then, ponder, as the BIG team is, about when this is all going to change…
What The Eyes Reveal: 10 Messages My Pupils are Sending You (Psyblog)
If you are looking for clues as to what story someone’s eyes are telling you, you’ll find ten interesting possibilities here. The second item was a surprise to the BIG team.
Three Convenient Non-Excuses Keeping Women Off Boards (Melissa Anderson, The Glass Hammer)
While research from Catalyst and a host of other sources shows the positive bottom line impacts of more women in senior teams and on boards, the presence of women on those roles remains limited. Melissa writes about ”three convenient non-excuses that boards make for their lack of business-building diversity – and to counter them.”
A thought to noodle: ”I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.” ~Gilda Radner
Here’s to using your head to manage and your heart to lead!
We hope you enjoy our leadership favs from this past week!
Mastering the Art of Living Meaningfully Well (Umair Haque, HBR Blog Network)
Whether we define and measure success with things or outcomes or feelings, the choice is ours. There’s no right or wrong answer. The key to fulfillment comes with knowing what our personal success target is. That way, when we claim our prize, we’re getting what we truly wanted. Yearend is typically a time for reflection, and Umair offers some compelling reasons for thinking about how we define success…is it via economics or something else?
The “Inner Game” – 10 Steps That Lead to Success (Marty Wolff, guest post on Elegant Leadership)
OK, we admit it, we got hooked on the topic of “success” this week. Only natural, we say, as the year winds down, and we ask ourselves how we’ve made a positive difference this year. If you’re seeking some inspiration for that, Marty offers ten tips for upping your “inner game.”
10 Hidden Benefits of Smiling (PsyBlog)
Let’s hope you don’t need a reason to smile! However, if you do, you’ll find ten good ones here - a solid mix of topics for those who lean toward logic and for others motivated by the heart.
Persuading, Storytelling and Leading (Colleen Sharen, Thinking is Hard Work)
We stumbled across this blog while researching storytelling and leadership. Colleen offers up a real life example of how a story, not PowerPoints or numbers or money, pushed a group of her students to success. The BIG team hopes all of Colleen’s class took note of the power of authentically touching emotions…a great lesson to carry into the workplace.
Find Someone Who is Willing to Advocate for You (Joel Garfinkle, Career Advancement Blog)
One of BIG’s findings in its research (with Germane Consulting) on power was that people passively wait for mentors and sponsors to magically appear. Won’t happen! We love two things Joel does in this post: reinforces the message to pro-actively seek out those who will advocate for you, and paying it forward.
Quote of the week: “Some folks go through life pleased that the glass is half full. Others spend a lifetime lamenting that it’s half-empty. The truth is: There is a glass with a certain volume of liquid in it. From there, it’s up to you!” ~Dr. James S. Vuocolo
Here’s hoping you’ll find some good reading - and inspiration - in our fav list for this week!
10 Ways to Act More Important Than You Really Are (Dan McCarthy, Great Leadership)
Dan’s post sure didn’t rub the BIG team the wrong way…we say right on! Character-based leaders are all about authenticity and sincerity rather than fretting about the size of their chair or feigning pseudo-intellectualism. (We did have a great walk down memory lane thanks to Dan, reminiscing about the big shots who sported the latest briefcases and had assistants fetch Italian coffee for meetings, thinking we would all be impressed!)
7 Ways Work Can Make You Physically Sick (Jeremy Dean, PsyBlog)
As the year winds down and you’re feeling a bit off even thinking about going to work, check out this post to determine if any of these factors may be in play for you.
The Four Corners Of Great Leadership (Tim Sanders, Tim Sanders blog)
Whether you’re new to the leadership game or would benefit from a quick view of what’s most important, Tim’s list of four — vision, commitment, influence and purpose - is either a great introduction, or reminder, of some foundational leadership premises.
Boosting Your Career and Personal Resilience (Kate Buller on The Glass Hammer)
Resilience is a key ingredient for life and workplace success. Kate provides interesting information regarding the biological responses to stress and offers a number of helpful suggestions for boosting your own resiliency.
Food for thought: There are seven things that will destroy us: wealth without work; pleasure without conscience; knowledge without character; religion without sacrifice; politics without principle; science without humanity; business without ethics. ~Mahatma Gandhi