Leadership + Management Training and Tips » links

March 05, 2007 Speedlinking

mincus — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 11:45:57 +0000

Not that many people have trouble determining this on their own, but Guy Kawasaki gives some hard fast rules for determining if Your Boss is an Asshole.
Maybe all the reason why you should Be a mentor, starting now – Learn now how to give back the knowledge you have to your peers and keep doing it throughout your career.
Morning Edition’s workplace consultant, Ben Dattner, talks about Workplace Woes: The Team-Building Retreat. He points out that many offsite team-building exercises actually are promoting competitive, individual wins instead of collaboration and team building (Although paint-ball does sound like fun…)
And CNN talks with Eric Schmidt and gets more detail about Google’s 10% time and what “Don’t Be Evil” really helps to accomplish

Leadership, Passion, and Starbucks

mincus — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 12:21:03 +0000

NPR’s Marketplace has a great interview with Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks up on their site.

What stuck me most about the interview was his passion about what he was doing. How fully he believed in his goal.

It’s worth taking a step back and thinking about it during your day. What are you doing right now that you feel that passion for? As a leader, who around you are you helping to build that passion in?

It’s so easy to fall into the day to day activities of “work” that without using your leadership skills, you can forget who is in control of your life.

If you don’t have that passion yet, what a great day today is to start.

January 12, 2007 Speedlinking

mincus — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 04:00:22 +0000

The first two from this weeks links are all about “tricking” yourself into doing what you really want. Some great techniques on how to accomplish what you set out to do from these great blogs -

Steve Pavlina gives some great ways to achieve your goals by improving your character. The simple technique he writes about can really help to get past problems. What would a person with more X do in my situation?
Small things matter more than you think. Carmine from Slow Leadership shows how lots of little decisions are “often the key to acting on the bigger choices you want to make about your life.”
A particular favorite of mine, because so many in the tech world fall into this trap and avoiding it is a great way to stand out by avoiding it – In Oh why won’t they ever learn? Mike Schaffner talks about the trap of becoming annoyed at users because they fail to learn the “obvious.” (Love the new name of your blog!)
And Business Week wraps it up with some more great ideas about running effective meetings. I love the idea of projecting the meeting notes on a wall during the meeting. But, as Penelope Trunk pointed out in our effective meeting ideas, the trick isn’t how to run a great meeting – it’s getting people to use the “great meeting” techniques in the meetings!

January 05, 2007 Speedlinking

mincus — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 11:17:04 +0000

Happy new year! I hope everyone had a happy and safe holiday. Now, on to the links -

Do hardworking employees make their lazy colleagues more productive? Slate is Watching you, slacker
Who’s afraid of the big bad boss? – An interesting study by FSU about what employees think of their bosses
Another excellent post on Brazen Careerist giving us 10 tips for time management in a multitasking world
Steve Pavlina talks about using battlefield triage techniques in your life and in projects for more efficient time management

Meet the LEADER of LEADERS!

rkhoss — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 04:00:26 +0000

Somethings are hard to describe.

But S.M. Lockridge doesn’t seem to have that problem describing the Leader of Leaders. Do you KNOW HIM?

Remember the Reason for the Season.

Have a Very Merry Christmas!

December 14, 2006 Speedlinking

mincus — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 11:57:18 +0000

Exupéry’s Axiom – If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
Booz Allen Hamilton on Money and Innovation – Innovation isn’t R&D
Can you solve this mind-bending problem? – The illiterate of the twenty-first century will be those people who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
Use Myspace? Watch yourself, because managers, HR pros, and others responsible for hiring are using MySpace as part of the hiring process

December 8, 2006 Speedlinking

mincus — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 12:57:17 +0000

Why do smart people defend bad ideas? Scott Berkun gives us his thoughts on it, and some ways to help people avoid it.
The Apollo Syndrome is a phenomenon discovered by Dr Meredith Belbin where teams of highly capable individuals can, collectively, perform badly.
What do you do when asking “Why” results in a dead-end – “We just want it this way”? Michael Schaffner gives us a variation on Six Sigmas 5 whys and a way to get past these dead-ends.
More words to avoid, or how to avoid an argument. A great method to avoid the “I Understand, But…” trap.
Building trust by Returning Calls Unbelievably Fast. “There’s not much you can do to get people to return calls. But you have all the power in the world to return calls yourself.”

November 29, 2006 Speedlinking

mincus — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 12:04:50 +0000

Be Excellent gives us the Gallup 12 Elements of Great Managing
Soichiro Honda on Enjoyment and Innovation on metacool. From the article – “Many business thinkers write about managing innovation, as if innovation were a thing. But innovation is ultimately the expression of a set of behaviors originating in the individual.”
Management Skills points out an interesting way to keep your Meetings from Bombing. Just like Soichiro Honda’s premise above, the key is to not try to create a fake experience.
10 Ways to Keep Your Most Talented People, an open letter to CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CFOs across the corporate world from Escape from Cubicle Nation

November 20, 2006 Speedlinking

mincus — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 11:30:12 +0000

Do you give your employees answers, or do you lead them to the answer through questions? Rick Garlikov demonstrates the power of the Socratic Method by teaching third grade students binary arithmetic.
Roger von Oech asks you to remember to Think Like a Kid when approaching your problem. One question that I would add to his list is the simple “Why?”
Paul Kedrosk has Yahoo’s “Peanut Butter” Memo in it’s entirety if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s a great insight into how an innovative company can become mired by silos, duplicate work, and managing instead of leadership.
Lifehack breaks down what they believe it takes to become a great leader. It’s a great list of simple, key points that all leaders should be using.
CNN tells the story of Sergio Zyman, the man behind “New Coke.” Can you have innovation and at the same time punish failure? Are you punishing failure?

November 13, 2006 Speedlinking

mincus — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 11:40:00 +0000

Ten Leadership Things to Learn from Guy Kawasaki
Is the action in a pit stop a Democracy or Dictatorship? – Management skills blog has former CEO of Porche Peter Schultz’s take on it.
A few leadership tips from Christine.net gathered from Startup Camp – Plan for mistakes, focus on your team, and set expectations
Businessweek shows us How to “Wow ‘Em Like Steve Jobs” in our presentations