How to Spread Teamthink Throughout Your Organization

If you’ve been following this series, you’ve no doubt noticed that I view organizations more like teams than mere collections of people. There’s both a positive reason for this and and a realistic one. The positive reason is that people like being part of successful groups and being praised for what they do. People are [...]

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4 Ways to Effectively Guide Your Team

In our last installment of this series, we discussed setting the vision for your organization and developing SOPs. At least, that’s what the series list says. When I started writing this series, it was more like unconnected braingoo than a series of linear thinking. I did some scaffold-assisted planning and saw that some structure would [...]

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Share Your Vision and Standardize Procedures For Effective Leadership

This post is a continuation of The Elements of Leadership series. Knowing your team is critical if you are to lead them, but knowing what you want them to do is just as paramount. Your job as the leader of your team is to effectively communicate your vision for the organization and to initiate and [...]

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To Lead Them, Know Them

This post is a continuation of The Elements of Leadership. To effectively lead people, you have to know who they are. I’m not talking about learning their names and positions. Where do they live? What’s their spouses’ and kids’ names? Who are their favorite musicians and sports teams? These are the types of questions that [...]

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The Elements of Leadership and Decision-Making

The art of leadership takes years to learn, mainly because knowing how to lead requires knowledge of yourself, knowledge of those you lead, and knowing how to get things done. Despite these variables, there are elements of leadership that will apply in any context. I’ve been in a leadership role in one shape or another [...]

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Make a Difference: Imagine, Then Act!

We live in a world where tragedy befalls millions on a daily basis. The world may be better than it once was, but that doesn’t mean that it’s were it could be. It’s not hard to imagine how the world could be better. But it’s hard to make the world we imagine a reality. What [...]

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Making a Habit of Changing Habits

The Global Elders, from left: Peter Gabriel, Muhammad Yunus, Mary Robinson, Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Sir Richard Branson. Taken from the Global Elders website. Some people seem to be able to script themselves to change habits almost at whim. Where most of us falter and fight, these people make [...]

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How to Lead People for Results – Lifehack.org

Joel over at Lifehack gives a bit longer survey of good leadership traits. It seemed to me that he hit all of the major points I talked about in yesterday’s post, sans the picture with the stooge in glasses. Apparently leadership is on the hive brain.

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What Type of Boss Do You Have?

Throughout my military career, I’ve run into many different kinds of leaders. It’s hard to really specify what exactly makes a good leader, but I have a very quick saying that helps me gauge them: “Some leaders you want to sit at the dinner table with, but you wouldn’t want to go to war with [...]

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