Blog - Page 17 of 39 - Evergreen Leadership

Accountability

Ten Things Accountable People Abhor

I’m not sure how we came to the point where demanding accountability is equated to finding a scapegoat, placing blame, and demanding retribution. The cry for “someone to be held accountable” is code for finding someone to fire or dismiss so that business can go on usual. It has very little to do with what I would define as true accountability.

It’s very easy to spot someone with a high degree of personal accountability by what they do and don’t do…

Performance

Which is More Important – Dreaming or Doing?

Folks get tripped up in the dream/do cycle. There are two types of traps:

Doers who believe that dreaming is a waste of time. Far better to do something, anything. And oh, by the way, they are far too busy with all they are doing to take some time to pause, reflect, or allow themselves to imagine anything other than their current state of affairs.

Dreamers who believe that what they think up will magically manifest itself once they articulate the dream in some manner. They create the vision board, sit back, and wait for good things to happen.

Both are dead wrong.

Goals

The Spirit of the Season – All Year Long

How would you be different if the spirit of this season lasted all year long? As you pause, cease your paid labor, gather with friends and family, take a moment to reflect on the messages that this time of year brings, and determine what parts of this holiday you’ll carry forward. You can be a light in the darkness, you can bring hope to those in despair, and by caring for others you’ll find you’ve cared for yourself.

Leadership

Collective Wisdom or Collective Folly: What Do you Nurture as a Leader?

I often say “we are smarter than me,”… referring to the increased capacity, deep wisdom, creativity, and solid decisions that groups of people can make – as opposed to one individual acting in isolation. No matter how smart that one person is, in general they will be “outsmarted” but a group of people. That is, of course, if that group of people can work together effectively.

Briskin, Erickson, Ott, and Callanan examine the phenomena of group decision making in their book, The Power of Collective Wisdom: And the Trap of Collective Folly. They answer how groups can come up with novel and powerful solutions to intractable problems at times – and at other times wallow in cobbled together solutions that are amazingly awful.

Learning

Share a Story this Thanksgiving

As you gather across the generations this Thanksgiving, I encourage you to share stories as well as a meal. Share them, celebrate them, and save them. We all have a life story – and the longer we live, the richer the story. Far too often in our fast-paced, media-driven world, the most meaningful stories can get lost. It is an act of affirmation to be asked to share our story. It is an act of love to listen. When we ask and then listen – we not only affirm, we learn. We enrich our family history. We understand our families, ourselves, and our world, in a new and more balanced way.

National Public Radio (NPR) has created the perfect way for you to capture the stories of those around you. Using their StoryCorps platform, they have issued a challenge: to collect 120,000 stories over the Thanksgiving weekend. Their goal: To create an archive containing the single largest collection of human voices ever gathered.

Intention

What’s Value Congruence Got to Do with It?

Think about these three retailers: WALMART, KMART, and TARGET. All discount department stores. All ones that you have likely shopped in at some point. Now, see if you can match the company values with the retailer.

Retailer A

Great shopping, anytime, anywhere
Celebrating diversity and inclusion
Design for all
Community support and engagement
A fun and rewarding place to work

Retailer B

Creating lasting relationships with customers by empowering them to manage their lives
Attaining best in class productivity and efficiency
Building our brands
Reinventing the company continuously through technology and innovation

Retailer C

Service to our customers
Respect for the individual
Strive for excellence
Act with integrity

Read on to find the answers… and to explore what value congruence has to do with profitability.

Intention

Barbie Shoes and the Vacuum Cleaner

As my children were growing up, Saturday was “clean the house” day. Everyone participated, no matter their age. For my daughter, Nicole, at age six it meant that toys and clutter had to move off the floor and into their designated storage places so that the vacuum could be run.

In spite of knowing this, the floor would often be strewn with Barbie shoes on Saturday morning. After reminders that escalated to nagging and warnings, there was one thing that was certain to create an immediate surge of frantic activity to put the shoes away. And that was the sound of the vacuum cleaner headed to her room.

Now Nicole was not a naughty or unruly child. She just has at least one thousand things better to do than to pick up Barbie shoes. Until the roar of the vacuum sent a clear message: Run now to save the shoes!

Not unlike most of us. We have many things to do. We aren’t bad or lazy; perhaps distracted and overwhelmed. So the leadership question becomes this: WHAT CAN WE DO TO SPUR FOCUS AND ATTENTION ON THE THINGS THAT ARE MOST IMPORTANT?

Change

Why Your Zone of Discomfort is the Perfect Place to Be

Ahhhh… how comfy our comfort zones are. We know these places so well. We can be on autopilot. We don’t have to expend emotional or physical energy. It’s easy. It’s like riding a bike downhill – all the time.

Ultimately, however, our comfort zones can be our undoing. Too much time there are we become stale, unchallenged, and stagnant. And that is a dangerous place to be in a world in which maintaining the status quo becomes obsolete in the blink of an eye.

Dynamics

Swagger

In my executive coaching I see plenty of folks plagued with this problem: They are smart. They have deep expertise in their field. They are competitive and are on the hunt for the next promotion. And they have an almost uncontrollable need to prove just how brilliant they are. Unfortunately, these actions work against them. Even when they are smart and capable and driven.

Leadership

What Organizations are Unlearning

WARNING: If you love bureaucracy, you’ll hate this post. If your life is consumed with climbing the corporate ladder, this post will give you a splitting headache. If you are in what is considered a “safe” occupation (HR/accounting/law) – be prepared to be unnerved.

This is a follow-up to my post about unlearning. Here, you’ll learn what you might need to unlearn about how organizations operate and the work done within them. The content of this post draws both on my personal experience with a variety of organizations I work with, and the work of Frederic Laloux and his book, Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness.

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