Leadership Development Carnival – Hot Cocoa Edition

Here in West Michigan, the temperatures are turning chilly and in our household that means one thing: hot cocoa! A creamy, sweet mug of the stuff is the perfect companion when the snow flies and you have a pile of reading to do.

So grab a cup of your favorite warm beverage and settle in for some excellent reading on leadership development, management and workplace culture.

Regular carnival host Dan McCarthy of Great Leadership kicks off the carnival with A Manager’s Guide to Crying at Work. It’s a pragmatic, yet compassionate discussion on the science and dynamics of tears in the workplace.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

What does a stay in Las Vegas have to do with leadership or management? Is there some takeaway? Robert Tanner of Management is a Journey makes his case in his article, What Las Vegas Taught Me Again About Change, Management & Life!

Chery Gegelman of Giana Consulting offers up Comfort or Magic?  Stay?  Go?  Go?  Stay? in which a simple Venn diagram from Debbie Laskey and song lyrics by Jimmy Durante have inspired Chery to think of change in a whole new way.

Over at Jane Perdue’s LeadBIG blog, she’s offering up three ways to be better with 3 Ways to Blast Outside Your Comfort Zone.

Guy Farmer says “Leadership is about seeing change as an opportunity to grow and succeed rather than sticking one’s head in the sand and hoping it will go away.” See more at his Unconventional Training blog with Leadership and Welcoming Change.

CULTURE AND ENGAGEMENT

Julie Winkle Giulioni’s latest blog post identifies four characteristics that leaders must have to create a supportive environment in Cultures that Support Career Development.

Mark Miller of Great Leaders Serve believes that “the collective habits of people can be a powerful asset to any organization, or they can be a tremendous liability.” Mark post suggests four ways to create a vibrant culture that will help in Today’s Challenge: Culture as Competitive Advantage.

Over at Jesse Lyn Stoner’s blog, she explores 8 Things Collaborative Leaders Know. Says Jesse:  “The good news is anyone can be a collaborative leader, regardless of role. Because they understand these 8 truths about today’s world, collaborative leaders are able to build successful networked communities.”

Kristal Sauer explores Control v. Openness in a Mobile World in which she asks, “Have you considered how mobile capabilities continue to play a more central role in the way we work, the careful balance between security and productivity, and the challenge in how to establish parameters for how employees use mobile technology to do their jobs?” See more at Let Go and Lead.

Miki Saxon draws a thought-provoking parallel between romantic relationships and team relationships via brain chemistry in Love, Sports, Management and Oxytocin. Check out the case she makes on her MAPping Company Success blog.

Karin Hurt of Let’s Grow Leaders offers up this interesting thought: “Empowerment is easy when things are going smoothly, but what about when someone makes a really bad decision?” Her post Empowerment Run Amok:  How One Bad Decision Leads to Another  explores how leaders can respond well and maintain the trust of their followership.

 

DEVELOPMENT

Addressing performance problems with employees is an opportunity to either build or erode trust with those you lead. In his post Addressing Poor Performance is a “Moment of Trust”, Randy Conley outlines 5 steps on how leaders can use these challenging situations to build trust and get an employee’s performance back on track. Via the Leading with Trust blog.

Let Em Shine, says Andy Uskavitch, CM, of the Supervision-Motivation blog. Andy says that clear communication and direction helps staff to shine on their own.

Do we need leadership training devoted specifically to advancing women? Dana Theus provides an answer that might surprise you in The Paradox of Women’s Leadership Training at the InPower Coaching Blog

Sharlyn Lauby generated excellent discussion by creating a distinction between coaching and mentoring on her HR Bartender blog. Sharlyn says, “Mentors and coaches are two different things. For that reason, maybe it’s good to have both. Choosing the right one depends on the situation.” See more at Mentors or Coaches – Why You Need Both.

 

LEADING WITH CHARACTER

John Bossong, writing for the Lead Change Group blog, offers up 8 Reasons Why Pride Is the Core of Leadership Failure. In this post, John details the risks of unchecked pride and the solution which is humility. Humility isn’t being weak; it’s accurately knowing where you stand.  John provides 8 practical ways you can move your organization away from pride and toward humility.

Mary Jo Asmus says, “Reluctance, resistance and anger may be caused by fear of taking action in the workplace. Here’s how to determine if fear is negatively driving you and an important question to ask yourself to overcome it.” See more in her post A Question of Courage.

Linda Fisher Thornton of the Leading in Context blog features a graphic showing 10 types of leadership thinking that can “cripple our effectiveness and undermine our ethics.” See the graphic and more in 10 Thinking Traps (That Ethical Leaders Avoid).

Steven Snyder of  Snyder Leadership Group turns to history for a reflection on one’s “True North” in The Lincoln-Stevens Debate: Your True North and the Swamp.

Joan Kofodimos of the Anyone Can Lead blog takes on one of my organizational pet peeves – the leap to “fix” ethics problems with training. See why she says “not so fast” in Ethics Training to Address Senior Military Officers’ Bad Behavior?

 

MUSINGS ON LEADERSHIP

Robyn McLeod of Chatsworth Consulting Group presents Leading like a Dog Whisperer on The Thoughtful Leaders Blog where she discusses what we can all learn from the Whisperers’ approach to leadership.

Dr. Anne Perschel resorts to prose and declares “there is one and only one reason to lead. Furthermore, if you can lead on behalf of same, you must” in The Only Reason to Lead on Germaine Insights.

Jim Taggert has A Big (Obvious) Idea for Leadership–There Are NO Experts! See the details at the Changing Winds blog.

Deb Mills-Scofield muses about the use of technology and posits that True Leadership is Social on her blog Mills-Scofield.

Over at the Horizon Point Consulting blog Captain Davis Ozier, U.S. Army, suggests reversing the order of a familiar methodology used by the military to achieve more empowerment in Task- Purpose- Endstate.

 

PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS

Susan Mazza of Random Acts of Leadership asks, “What if holding someone to account is actually the process of holding them up to be the best they can be every step of the way rather than hammering them down after they fail?” See her answer in the thought-provoking Accountability is Not about Justice.

On Joel Garfinkle’s Career Advancement Blog he says it can be hard for some people to feel confident in being “visible” at work. Joel provides tips on how to do so in Let Your Light Shine: How to Stand Out from the Crowd.

How influential are you as a leader? Neal Burgis, Ph.D. of Practical Solutions offers Influential Leadership Trait in which he discusses the specific influential traits of business leadership.

Wally Bock of Three Star Leadership says, “You’re not going to succeed every time. So it’s a good idea to consider how to get the maximum return on your failure.” Spot on, Wally! See more with Return on Failure.

What does it mean for leaders who must choose whether to go with data or experts when making important decisions? Mark Bennett of the TalentedApps blogging group covers this issue in  Data vs. Experts: Nine Years On.

On his blog More Leadership, Bernd Geropp tells this story: “As a true leader you want committed people who contribute and act on your behalf – then you must first explain what the point is. Why should they follow you and your rules? I just recently learned about this at a cash register of a grocery discounter when someone wanted to buy red wine.” He makes the connection of these seemingly disparate things in Why? Rules, Purpose and Merlot!

Where do you focus your impatience? Is it focused on your important things in life? Jon Mertz of the Thin Difference blog says, “Our life needs the right balance to keep our pace and stride focused.” He elaborates in Where Is Your Impatience Placed?

PODCASTS

For those who prefer an auditory experience –

John Hunter of the Curious Cat Management Improvement blog offers up Deming’s Management Ideas Today in which John discusses some of his history with Dr. Deming’s ideas on management and his thoughts on the application of those ideas today.

S. Chris Edmonds presents the podcast A Deeper Look at the #CoolCulture Research, in which analyzes initial results from his new Performance-Values Assessment and points out some disturbing trends on vitally important culture practices. Listen in at Driving Results Through Culture.

 That’s it for this month’s carnival. Thanks to all who contributed. The January 2013 Leadership Carnival is back with regular host Dan McCarthy of Great Leadership.

Image credit: elenathewise / 123RF Stock Photo