Dan McCarthy from the blog Great Leadership has pulled together a year-end review of leadership blog posts from 2011. He asked contributors to the leadership development carnival to submit their favorite post of 2011. You can see the summary here, along with each blogger’s commentary on why it made the list.

Good leadership reading to start the year off right!

Hello, readers!

In addition to The People Equation, I write for a couple of other blogs. Several of those pieces published this past week, so here’s a rundown in case you want to peruse additional content related to human resources, leadership and being workplace savvy:

December Leadership Development Carnival
Becky Robinson, Director of Social Marketing for The Kevin Eikenberry Group is hosting the December Leadership Development Carnival. The carnival typically runs as one (huge!) post the first Sunday of each month. Becky and Kevin decided to shake things up a bit and this week Becky is featuring 10 – 12 posts each day. It is, as she says, “Our gift to you this season is the opportunity to slow down and savor each group of posts in this carnival.” See the carnival segments here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. (Part Five was in the works as of the writing of this post. If you click on any of the other links, Part Five will be featured when it publishes.)

If you want your submission to be considered for a future Leadership Development Carnival, check out the Carnival Guidelines courtesy of regular host (and founder of this carnival) Dan McCarthy.

SmartBlog on Leadership
Every two weeks, members of the Lead Change Group community write for Smart Brief Media on their leadership blog. Last week was my turn, so I offered up Is Stress Ruining Your Leadership Development Efforts? It’s my take on how executives often shoot themselves in the foot by creating pressure-cooker “learning” environments. 

Over at the Women of HR site my post Bully Boss or Tough Boss. How to Tell the Difference is gaining traction. Bullying was on my mind when I wrote this a few weeks ago (due to a personal experience), and the topic surfaced in a huge way this week over at Erin Schreyer’s blog with the post It’s Up to Us to Teach Our Kids to Lead! This is powerful stuff; I encourage you to read this post and the many heartfelt comments that people left.

Also at the Women of HR—Editor-in-Chief Lisa Rosendahl has lined up an excellent series based the manifesto Six Rules Women Must Break In Order to Succeed. Starting December 12^th, Women of HR writers share their thoughts and reactions to this manifesto.

Newsletter Offer

Finally, this isn’t a blog, but it’s a resource you might enjoy. I issue a monthly (ok, more like quarterly) e-newsletter that features tips for becoming workplace savvy. My December newsletter featured tips for holiday office etiquette, a recommended reading list for business books and more. It’s a companion to my blog, so the content is complimentary, not a duplication of my blog posts. Click here if you want to sign up. I don’t sell my lists and I promise to respect your privacy.

The November Leadership Development Carnival is up at Dan McCarthy’s Great Leadership blog. No theme this month, just a straight-up presentation of 45 great essays on leadership. Go on over to the carnival to see how leaders can be both bold and humble, 5 reasons for leaders to engage in social media and letting go of your need to be right.

Got a leadership-themed post you’d like to submit for consideration? Scroll to the bottom of the November carnival post on Dan’s site for a link to the carnival submission form. Not all submissions are published, but if selected, you’ll get some great exposure.

The latest Carnival of HR has come to town and it’s a scary one. Jessica Miller-Merrell, author of Tweet This! and creator of the Blogging 4 Jobs site has assembled a Halloween-themed list of HR blog posts that’s some trick, some treat and even a bit of “smell-my-feet”.  

Head on over to the Scary HR Carnival and find out why I’ve never had a bad boss, we need to put the “human” back into HR and why storytelling is a key business skill.

Hello, readers of The People Equation!

Today I have three fantastic resources to share with you.

First of all, please check out the Recognition at Work blog hosted by the recognition experts at Baudville. As you may recall, Cori Curtis wrote a wonderful three-part series for The People Equation on workplace recognition practices.  Now, I’ve returned the favor and have written a blog post for Recognition at Work called Recognition:  It’s All Good. Right? Wrong.

Secondly, I’ve got another great round-up of leadership and management blogs for you to peruse. This one comes courtesy of bestcollegesonline.com. This is a slightly different spin on the typical business leadership compendium; this time it is for recent college graduates. Even if you’re a few (ahem) years out of college, I still think this is an excellent list. See it at 50 Best Leadership Blogs for the Brand New Grad. My gratitude goes out to the folks at Best Colleges Online for including The People Equation in Management section.

Finally, the Carnival of HR rolled into town this week and is hosted by Neil Morrison at his blog Change-Effect. Any blog that has the word “frippery” in its masthead is certainly worth a look. It gets even better: Neil has teed up the 19 HR and Leadership posts with such flair and humor, it’s a must-reaad. See it all in the October 12, 2011 Carnival of HR.

This month’s Leadership Development Carnival is hosted by Lynn Dessert, author of the cleverly named Elephants at Work blog.  As in “elephant in the room.”  There are twenty leadership bloggers featured this month. Check it out here.

Next month’s carnival will be hosted by Dan McCarthy at Great Leadership. If you have a leadership themed blog you’d like Dan to consider, see the carnival sidebar on his blog for details.

Mackinac Bridge, Lake Huron side

Hello, People Equation readers! While I was away this week enjoying the amazing beauty of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Mackinac Island, there were two interesting blog happenings related to talent management that I thought you’d like to know about.

What Would You Do?

First, Mary Jo Asmus posted the August Leadership Development Roundtable Challenge on her blog Aspire Collaborative Services. This month as our roundtable host, Mary Jo offers us a case study called A Coaching Dilemma. In this scenario, Rob, a mid-level manager has agreed to work with a professional business coach to “up his game”. The leadership development dilemma is that Rob’s progress has stalled and the coach is wondering how to proceed.

Leadership bloggers Art Petty, Dan McCarthy, Mary Jo Asmus, Scott Eblin, Sharlyn Lauby and yours truly will provide our brief (200 words max!) responses at Mary Jo’s blog. Our guest blogger is Gwyn Teatro, certified coach and author of the blog You’re Not the Boss of Me. (LOVE that blog name!) You can join in too by providing your suggestions in the comments section of Mary Jo’s blog.

Just to make it interesting, you can also vote for your favorite response, so click on The August 2011 Leadership Development RoundTable Challenge: A Coaching Dilemma to vote now. Mary Jo will announce the results on August 17^th, 2011.

Welcome to . . . the Jungle?

Secondly, Brett Starr of the blog All Business is Personal hosted the HR Carnival earlier this week. He’s collected over two dozen blog posts on HR, Leadership and Social Media in his post Welcome to the Jungle…I Mean, Carnival of HR

Enjoy your reading!

This month’s Leadership Development Carnival is now up at Great Leadership, hosted by Dan McCarthy.

In honor of the U.S. Independence Day holiday, Dan has bestowed firecracker nicknames upon all of this month’s contributors. There are 45 outstanding essays on leadership featured. So, head on over to the July  Leadership Development Carnival to find out who’s sporting awesome names like Shagadellic Mojo, Screaming Vampires and Space Monkey.

 Happy reading!

Jennifer “Texas Cyclone” Miller

 In early June, a ritual occurs at many high schools across our country— graduation ceremonies, aka the commencement exercise. Commencement means “the act of starting something” and I can think of no better metaphor for leadership development than that of getting something started.  This carnival is dedicated to the Class of 2011—they are the future leaders of our organizations. 

So, let’s get this carnival started!

First up, it’s regular Leadership Development Carnival host Dan McCarthy, with 10 Ways to Get More Candid Feedback (and 5 ways if you really can’t handle the truth) from his blog Great Leadership.

Management

Sharlyn Lauby from HR Bartender  serves up solid advice on a way to enhance your company’s performance review process in Should Employees Do Self-Appraisals?

I’m not sure what the trophy would look like for this award, but Jane Perdue at Get Your Leadership Big On has a great list of what a manager would need to do to earn top honors in 10 Ways to Win Bad Boss of the Year.

Over at Learning Curves, Lakshman Rajagopalan asks the tough (but necessary) questions of prospective managers in Why do you want to become a Manager?

Robert Tanner finds that he’s gleaned wisdom, emotional intelligence, and leadership lessons from Colin Powell in Revisiting Colin Powell’s 13 Rules of Leadership . As Robert says in the post, “The truth never goes out of style!” Read it on his blog Management is a Journey.

Miki Saxon from Mapping Company Success takes on the issue of Positional Deafness, remarking, “I’ve never understood why managers expect workers who were consistently ignored and shut down to suddenly start contributing because they receive a promotion.”

From the Fortune Group Blog and Andy Klein comes this thought: are some managers too wrapped up in being “needed” to properly develop their people? Andy says, “The best managers don’t make people dependent on them; they create an entity that will function in their absence”. See his thoughts on Effective Managers Must overcome the Emotional Need to be Needed.

Enda Larkin gives us a list of 7 typical managerial mistakes in What are the Most Common Mistakes that Managers Make? on his blog HTC Consult.

Adi Gaskell uncovers research that doesn’t paint managers in a very good light, so he offers a balancing perspective with In Defense of Management at The Management Blog | Chartered Management Institute.

Wally Bock offers this enticing blurb from his post, saying, “A CareerBuilder survey found that more than half of all managers get no management training. And that’s not all.”
See Bosses Need Training and Lots of Support at Three Star Leadership to get the full story.

Team Development

Mary Jo Asmus of Aspire –CS highlights the process of a leader skilled in developing his team.  See the guidelines he used to launch a very creative, hands-on team development project in Six Tips to Help Your Team Learn.

At John Spence’s Achieving Business Excellence blog, John outlines the HPT competency models he uses when working with teams. See more via How to Build a High Performance Team (HPT).

Dave Doran, who is an executive coach and writes at The S4P Blog  , offers How to Develop a Pre-Coaching Ritual. This post is geared towards external coaches, but could easily be used for leaders coaching an employee in a one-to-one setting.

Rosaria Hawkins draws an interesting connection between being “lost” and developing leaders.  In her post Lost: The Key to True Learning, she says: “It’s been said that true learning occurs when we are lost—in a liminal place, where nothing works, where old methods, strategies and knowledge just don’t cut it. How can we, as leaders, tap into this potent developmental space?” See more at The Mindful Leadership Blog.

Michael Cardus explores the 4^th phase of building high performance teams, inquiring, Accountability to the Team; When does that happen?  on his blog Create Learning Team-Building Blog.

Using an analogy of tending plant life, Will Lukang identifies five things leaders must do to “grow” future leaders in Planting the Seeds for Leaders of Tomorrow at Will’s Blog .

“The use of the word team has greatly diluted what teamwork is really about. And along the way, the cult of teamwork has created skepticism, mistrust–and even guilt–among employees.” Because of this, Jim Taggart wants to rock the teamwork boat in his post Rethinking Teams: Getting Over the Guilt Complex. See more at the ChangingWinds blog.

Over at Management Excellence, Art Petty gives us plenty to contemplate about the challenges of developing a high-performing team in It’s Time to Start Teaching Your Team to Succeed.

Organizational Culture

In his travels Mark Stelzner meets some interesting people. Fortunately for us, he gleans wisdom from these unlikely sources and shares it in 4 Reasons Change is So Damn Hard at Inflexion Advisors.

Linda Fisher Thornton asks, “How are curiosity and imagination related to ethics and business leadership?” Read Curiosity and Imagination Necessary Ingredients in Ethical Business  on her blog Leading in Context to see her answers.

John Kotter contributes to a Forbes.com blog called Change Leadership and submitted the post Throw Out Your Strategy? Not So Fast. It’s about how leaders can preserve a strategy they’ve worked hard to develop while they take a step back and focus on getting people in their organization to feel a renewed sense of urgency about the strategy.

Weaving social media use into an existing company’s culture is still presenting a challenge for many, even if they have a policy in place. According to Mark Bennett of Talented Apps, it’s because Social Media Policy: Only Just the Start. “The more you can determine a specific business performance measure that you can connect to the purported benefits of social media, the better” offers Mark.  

Bob Lieberman likens executives resistant to a change initiative to encountering an elephant on the road– “if it wants to block the road, you’re sunk”. And this, he asserts, spells trouble for a change effort that’s not supported at the top of the organization. His post The Elephant In The Road appears on his blog Cultivating Creativity – Developing Leaders for the Creative Economy .

Read how Chery Gegelman of Giana Consulting was inspired to write the post Discover THE Solution after hearing presentations from executives from Coca-Cola and Chick-fil-A. Chery’s post highlights the value of strategic partnerships.

Leadership

You’re Not the Boss of Me is the name of Gwyn Teatro’s blog and in Going First  Gwyn discusses what it means to be a leader and (bonus!) offers up some of her favorite leadership blogs.

The post Spotted: A Leader Without Title narrates a short encounter with a leader who needed no title to lead, causing Tanmay Vora to wonder, “what if well-bred, educated professionals stop looking at their jobs as a ‘transaction’ and start treating it as a ‘service’?” Learn more at QAspire Blog.

The post It Takes Courage and Character to Unify People by Don Shapiro appears on the multi-contributor site Lead Change Group Blog – Leaders Growing Leaders. In it, Don writes about the importance of unity and courage contrasted against division and fear. “The crisis we face today isn’t about techniques, methods and attributes of good leaders. We face a crisis of courage and character.”

Lisa Petrilli of C-Level Strategies shares insights from the recent CEO Connection Boot Camp regarding the most pressing issues on CEOs’ minds today in her post Four Priorities Keeping CEOs Up at Night.

In Leadership Guru Reality Check, Brett Simmons of Bret L. Simmons – Positive Organizational Behavior implores us to be wary of the impressively packaged books touting the next leadership “guru”. To be serious about the practice of leadership, he advocates getting to know the true heavy-hitters in the leadership development discipline.

Jason Price draws upon lessons learned in carpentry to define the two key aspects of leadership in Cutting Boards and Building the Leader Within at his One Money Design blog.

David Burkus of Leader Lab muses about the merit of making the distinction between “leadership” and “management” in Toward a New Kind of Distinction.

Personal Effectiveness

Miriam Gomberg sees a connection between customer service and leadership. She writes “I believe that great leaders do what is right without asking for anything in return and the post The Meaning of Customer Service: Pay it Forward embodies the sentiment well.” Find out about the leadership/customer service connection at Miriam Gomberg.

David Wentworth contributes to the Institute for Corporate Productivity’s TrendWatcher site and offers up ways that leaders can incorporate mobile learning into their daily practices in Mobile Learning Anywhere Anytime

 Jason Seiden’s 10 Great Ways to Get Focused… Fast! is a quick hit-list of ways to help you “get yourself grounded, focused, and ready to crush”. See it at My blog is profersonal (yes, that’s the correct spelling)

On Utpal Writes, being open and willing to admit what you do (and don’t) know is the way to being “self cognizant” says Utpal Vaishnav . He urges readers to Know Thyself Better! to develop their leadership skills.

In his post Why Going Back Doesn’t Work Eric Pennington explains why going back is rarely a good plan of action-in work and life. “Revisionism gives us the luxury of telling ourselves lies”, he tells us on his blog Epic Living and gives us 7 reasons why he believes this to be true.

The entry by Bill Matthies is succinct, yet thought-provoking: “Management is often thought of as one telling others what to do but do we give enough thought to what we should do?” Check out his unique blog format at Business Wisdom: Words to Manage By in the post Personal SWOT? in which your comments form the bulk of the post.

Steve Roesler of All Things Workplace wonders Is Everyone Coachable? See his list of 5 traits you must possess to be a viable candidate for coaching.

So there you have it— yet another excellent round-up of leadership essays. Oh, and one more—my entry is Following. It’s the New Leadership, which was inspired by my first in-person attendance at a TEDx event.

My thanks to Dan McCarthy for the opportunity to host a Leadership Development Carnival. The July carnival will be back at Great Leadership.

photocredit: istockphoto.com

This month’s Leadership Development Carnival, hosted by Dan McCarthy, is up at Great Leadership. It features the usual wonderful assortment of recent leadership blog posts and as a bonus— Dan writes a great summary to the question “What is a blog carnival, anyway?”  I’ve been contributing to this blog carnival for nearly two years and I still learned a thing or two!

Next month, it will be my privilege to host the Leadership Development Carnival here at The People Equation on June 5^th. Stayed tuned for details.