Keep it balanced, in 3D

The concept of Quiet Leadership includes the the notion of "balance." My vision of balance is multifaceted where balance applies to many elements of life, work and leadership. This includes, for example, the balance of work and personal life, the balance between individual needs and organizational needs, the balance of opinions that needs to occur within teams, the balance required to moderate disagreement. A quiet leader strives to keep it balanced.

Jim Bolt recently wrote about balance on the Fast Company site. The article, Developing The 3-Dimensional Leader, describes the common absence of balance in leaders and the need for three dimensional leaders. As he writes, "Too many leaders today are one-dimensional, narrowly focused on business results."

Bolt's three dimensional leadership implores leaders to strike a balance between business needs, leadership, and personal needs. Here is his description of the three dimensions:

The three-dimensional framework calls for the development of an individual’s business, leadership, and personal effectiveness skills:

• Business Dimension: Mind-sets and capabilities needed to identify and address critical business challenges
• Leadership Dimension: Fully developed leadership capacity needed to lead the organization confidently into the future
• Personal Dimension: Personal effectiveness skills needed to achieve excellence, balance and ongoing renewal

This three dimensional framework perfectly depicts the balance required of quiet leaders. Please read Bolt's article.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.

Don

Building Community with Giving

One of the principles of quiet leadership focuses on the need for leaders to build community. I've suggested in an earlier post that community building can start simply, with thanks, and smiles. One of my favorite Tom Peters pleadings, "It begets it." Smiles begets smiles, thanks begets thanks.

What follows after the simple start? I'd propose giving and service.

Consultant Michelle Kunz writes extensively about giving in her Power Energy Leadership blog. In Excellence is Giving she talks about the benefits of giving and quotes the creed of BNI, the global business networking group that "Givers Gain."

Consider these returns cited by Kunz in her post:

• Trust -- people trust those who have their interests truly at the center of all they do
• Admiration -- people admire those who commit their energies to advancing the common good
• Respect -- people respect those who dedicate their time to helping others win
• Wisdom -- when we listen deeply to what others need we learn more about ourselves and the world around us
• Humility -- giving to others shines a mirror back on all that we have and helps us feel grateful
• Authenticity -- giving deeply of ourselves removes the filters we keep in place when we withhold, requiring our true selves to come into focus
• Integrity -- aligning our values with principles which do not change greatly simplifies the challenge of walking our talk

This represents huge returns for the simple act of giving and serving. Maybe building community doesn't have to be hard. Start with smiles, thanks, and add a little giving.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Leadership in 60 Seconds or less

Don't have enough time to study leadership?

Leadership consultant Phil Dourado author of The 60 Second Leader: Everything You Need to Know About Leadership, in 60 Second Bites has posted an even shorter ebook available on his blog.

I've embedded the slideshow here:

| View | Upload your own

Among these gems there were numerous highlights. Here are a couple of my favorites:

“Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it.”

Henry Mintzberg

Make people feel an essential part of the story through the work they do every day…Remember this mythical JFK anecdote?
The president was visiting NASA headquarters and stopped to talk to a man who was holding a mop. “And what do you do?” he asked. The man, a janitor, replied, “I’m helping to put a man on the moon, sir.”

Phil Dourado

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Learning to Use the Full Brain

I wrote in September about my development experiment Improve Your Brain Power - Use your right brain. In this post, I wrote about the suggestion that you could develop your brain by the simple act of moving your mouse to the opposite hand.

I continue to be fascinated with left brain/right brain differences.

This week, after a couple of weeks of pretty intense day-job work with no time for blogging or reading, my discretionary reading took me to the Freakonomics blog where I discovered the The Right Brain vs Left Brain test.

Try it. It's fascinating.

I can switch directions with a different focus. What does this mean? When you read the Freakonomics blog comments, it seems that most people get a single direction.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Leadership - Spread it like butter

This week I read a thoughtful and memorable quote in Don't be a Leadership Hog by blogger Miki Saxon on Leadership Turn. She says,

Leadership is like manure, it produces the best results
when spread around.

Miki describes the benefits of pushing responsibility and leadership opportunities to every corner of the organization. It provides a number of developmental and productivity benefits.


I totally and wholeheartedly agree with the underlying principles. The sharing of leadership is perfectly consistent with the Quiet Leadership principle of building community.

However, I don't feel the same about the analogy.


Maybe it's my Minnesota farm boy background. I spent enough time pitching and spreading manure to be able to speak with some expertise. Here is my issue. Regardless of how much you spread it, it is still _______. (You can fill in your own favorite four-letter word if you prefer or use just use manure.) It is simply distasteful no matter how thin you spread it. Leadership should not be distasteful.


It caused me to question. Is there another spreadable metaphor that doesn't carry the same image or memory? I came up with butter.


Here in Minnesota, you start with your standard one pound box of Land O' Lakes butter with 4 quarter sticks. Take a knife and cut off about one half inch or about one teaspoon of butter. Not many people can eat a teaspoon of butter straight from the stick. You can try it if you like. Not me.

Most people would say that if you spread it onto a piece of bread or toast, the true taste and pleasure makes it mark. Kind of like leadership, butter is best when it is spread around.


Now imagine if the butter is cold and you try to spread it onto a piece of bread. You usually end up splitting the bread. Cold, macho leadership does the same with teams.


If the butter is warm, it spreads easier and the butter is easily accepted into every pore of the bread. Kind of like quiet, thoughtful leadership. Spreads easily. Easily received.


And, if the butter is totally melted, imagine the ecstasy of shrimp or scallops performing synchronized swim routines in the butter warmer. This is like servant leadership where the butter gives up it own identify to only serve and influence.


Please read the Leadership Turn post and it great leadership principle. However, I prefer to spread butter over manure.


Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.


Don

Happy Birthday Google

Reading Happy 9th Birthday Google on CybernetNews.com caused me to consider how much this blog and my daily life is dependent on Google tools and applications. Here is my suite of essential Google apps:

• Blogger
• Feedburner
• Google Reader including mobile version
• Google Mail including the mobile version
• iGoogle
• Google Search - the blogger in me particularly appreciates Book, Scholar, and Blog Search
• Google Maps

Then I consider that my Google list doesn't include YouTube, a site that I generally only access when another blog links me to a video, but a site that is truly a social phenomenon. My list doesn't include AdWords, the Google revenue flagship.

Am I afraid of Google's dominant position? For me, not yet. But I recall having the same feeling about Microsoft a few years ago. This feeling changed with the emergence of Linux, Yahoo, and Google. Competition is good. I truly hope that another player is certainly sitting in the wings.

In the meantime, a tip of the hat and "Happy Birthday" to Google.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Improve Your Brain Power - Use your right brain.

OK. I confess. I'm writing this blog using my mouse in my non-dominant hand, i.e. my left hand.

I also plan on looking around my office for people who are using their mouse in the opposite hand. Of course, I'll have remember that I have a couple of people in my area who are left handed. They should be mousing with their right hand.

Why, you say?

I'm trying to improve my brain power. Read this post at Dumb Little Man and make your own decision. Could it be this easy?

I'm a little afraid of being duped by some new urban legend. Is this the blogger, lifehacker equivalent to a virus hoax? Is there a blogger somewhere laughing at my gullibility?

I have done some preliminary research and find some basis for the thinking. The SelfHelp.Com site is pretty supportive with the article, Whole Brain Thinking: How to Get Your Right Hemisphere in the Picture.

For sure, I'd like to find a more scholarly resource for confirmation. I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly. Use your non-dominant hand.

Don
P.S. If you find that any of the links are flawed, I blame my left hand.