Waypoints
Mark Petruzzi's Weblog

How Love Makes a Leader a Leader

Heartshaped Crowd with Leader at the Head of it
Free Download, "Leadership as Connection" (Link at the End of this Post)

I’ve always thought that there was more to work than the work. We give our work meaning. Without the meaning we give to it, work seems like just “moving stuff around.” This is true whether that "stuff" is ideas or services or widgets or widget parts. When we get too serious about the moving stuff around part, and don’t balance that with the human-value part in the equation, well, work’s not as fulfilling or fun (and make no mistake, fulfillment and fun are big parts of employee engagement).

What’s love got to do with it?  Love makes a leader a leader.

~Lucira Jane Nebelung


 
Sure, whatever we do serves others, and creates new opportunity, and creates value. Nevertheless, that value is quite literally undeliverable unless there is a “someone” to perceive it, and receive it.
 
When I’m working with clients, I like to coach them toward both bringing more of who they are to their work, while appreciating the rich diversity of  personality and value among those with whom they share the workspace. This sort of mental/emotional practice can add a dimension to our business lives that makes more engaging and rewarding. Within the space of this approach, it is easier to both deliver and receive value.
 
Yes, “who we are” matters in our work, and some companies are stretching to transform their practices and culture to encourage this awareness, and invite greater employee engagement, performance, and work satisfaction. Still, it’s a strange thing how many of us cling to rather antediluvian, mechanical, management practices—approaches that in the best cases, invite mediocre engagement, and in worst cases, are quite dehumanizing. 
 
Now, against this backdrop: is the business world really ready to talk about love in leadership? 
 
Enter my colleague, Lucira Jane Nebelung, who has made a well-researched, and eloquent case for doing just that:

Read More...
Comments

Anyone Can Train, Right?


Business Trainer/Presenter, Delivering Presentation to Adult Learners

From time to time, my blogs will come straight off one of my answers to a LInkedIn question. In this case, one poster queried the ASTD group as to how readers would respond to the belief that confronts many an educator, trainer, or training manager in the business environment. What is this belief, and who holds it?

The "who," in this case, is any decision-maker not in the company's performance improvement or training organization, but who has input or sign-off on the training that will happen in his or her department.

The belief is none other than (drum roll): "Training is easy, and anyone can train".

This usually means that our decision-maker has a subject matter expert (SME) on the staff, who they feel they can put in a training or conference room, or put on a conference call, and this SME will present to everyone, and everyone who hears the presentation will go away and do what they just learned.

Good luck with that, right?

Read More...
Comments

How We Give Away Self-Leadership



My self-leadership is self-authority—my power to author my life, from the inside out.  It's my freedom to make choices that make sense to me, regardless of outside influence. This doesn't mean that I don't factor in consensus belief, or that I dismiss what others think. It does mean that when I'm on my game, the buck stops with me, and I like it that way.

How do we give our leadership away? Let us count the ways:

  • To doctors, lawyers, scientists, pills and diet books, and experts on TV and other media...
  • To our spouse, our friends, our kids, and unwritten family rules...
  • To clients, bosses, co-workers, company culture...
  • To religious leaders, anti-religious leaders, political ideas, fashion trends, and even the weather...
  • False or limiting beliefs and cognitive distortions.
  • You name it.
We live in a world pulls us from our center with a powerful, seductive gravity of common thought.

Degrees, certifications and titles are all products of some amount of consensus agreement and couldn't exist without it. We invest our power in pills and concoctions, and "proven" science (I once read that only 1 in 3 people have the predicted reaction to any pharmaceutical. Advil is a miracle drug for me, and does nothing whatsoever for my wife).

Read More...
Comments