My Mother, a very wise woman, taught me that, “Practice makes perfect.” However, after 5 months of diligent (swimming) practice, I was not getting close to passable, let alone perfection. And if that adage was truly the case, the folks on the job that had done it the longest would be the best. Clearly not my experience in swimming or in life.
Intention and perception often run a collision course. I think I am being helpful, my employees see it as micromanaging. I think I am empowering someone, they think I have abandoned them. I believe we’ve had a solid two-way dialogue, the other person believes that I talked too much and listened too little.
A Gallop poll indicated that only 15% of employees in corporate America could articulate the purpose of their company or how their job contributed to it.
I was working with a client, a young entrepreneur who had quite successfully grown his business from nothing to a several million dollar enterprise. We had an interesting dilemma – he could see very clearly where he was taking the company. And yet, without fail, his employees told me that not only was the direction fuzzy for the company, but they weren’t sure of what they needed to do.
It has become clear that since 1998, Penn State leaders had multiple chances to take a stand for their values. Unfortunately, the discussion went like this…
I’ve watched Simon Sinek’s TED presentation multiple times. But it took experiencing someone who works from the WHY personally to really understand the profound difference and the impact that working from your WHY has on others.
An uproar has been happening at Purdue University. The current governor of the state of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, has been named as the next president of the university and will take on his new duties in 2013. For those that study leadership, change and resistance, this is the perfect case study.
As a student and university teacher of entrepreneurship, I follow the conventional wisdom of strategy and talk about BHAGs –
Learning to let go is freeing – it frees my energy, it allows me to focus on more postive things, it robs the person that inflicted the hurt the power to inflict ongoing harm. Yet letting go is not easy. Here are some ways in which I’ve gotten better (note I am better – not perfect) at letting go.
Guest blogger MaryAnn Rivers shares a simple 5 step renewal of confidence system you can begin today. Commit to doing these steps regularly and you will see results. In fact, as you build confidence it multiplies and soon you will be doing things you never imagined possible.
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