HarvardBusiness.org: 3 Things You Didn't Know About Marine Corps Leadership http://bit.ly/3XHmHu # Philip Garrido's Guide to Low-Budget Dating #badbookproposals # Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Leadership
What Was Difficult
One friend described an interaction with Fujio Cho, former head of Toyota, visiting a plant and gently chiding people for too much attention to accomplishments and too little on struggle points. If he didn’t know what was difficult for them, he was reported to ask, how would he know where he could be of help? — HarvardBusiness.org. Read more →
Twitter: 2009-08-10
RT @diablocody: I wonder if there are any amazing singles who live right in my area. # Leading When You Don't Have Formal Authority http://bit.ly/EST45 # Read more →
Organic Organizing
A problem-solving leader’s entire orientation is toward creating an environment in which everyone can be solving problems, making decisions, and implementing those decisions, rather than personally solving problems, making decisions, and implementing those decisions. — Gerald M. Weinberg, Becoming a Technical Leader Read more →
With My Hands Behind My Back
A couple of days ago, I saw one of our senior managers walking down the hallway with her hands clasped behind her back. I’d never seen her do that before — the hands thing, I mean. It gave her a different look — in fact, it gave her a different sort of presence — so I decided to try it myself. I immediately felt more thoughtful — or at least I felt like I looked more thoughtful — like a professor strolling across the quad. Today I was doing it again when I happened to meet up with the woman I copied it from. I told her I was trying to emulate her hands-behind-the-back leadership technique. She said the only reason she’d been doing that is her shoulders were sore from Pilates class and she was trying to stretch them out . . . Read more →
Building Credibility
Many people worry that not knowing something is a sign of weakness, and that if a leader seems not to have all the answers they will lose the confidence of their team. Such people try to pretend they have the answer in every situation, making things up if necessary and never admitting mistakes. However, this approach ultimately backfires. Sooner or later people learn the truth and figure out that the person never admits when they don’t know. When this happens the person loses all credibility: no-one can tell whether the person is speaking from authority or making something up, so it isn’t safe to trust anything they say. On the other hand, if you admit that you don’t know the answer, or that you made a mistake, you build credibility. People are more likely to trust you when you say that you do have the answer, because they have seen… Read more →
That’s Not Leadership
We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen. — Barack Obama, May 16, 2008 Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat. “He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.” — The New York Times, January 28, 2009 Read more →
Leadership Questions
Do you find that when one person is appointed Leader, other people in the group then expect the Leader to do things that they could do perfectly well for themselves? That they expect the leader to function as a sort of surrogate parent or playground monitor? If you are the Leader, what, if anything, do you do to encourage or discourage this? Thus spoke The Programmer. Read more →