Spring Newsletter & Article

The Leadership Compass Spring 2011

In This Issue:

In The News

Featured Article: Seizing The Role Model Opportunity

Survey Reveals Common Barrier to Team Success

Featured Leadership Workshop: Re-Calibrating Our Leadership Compass

Quick Links To Learning

Leadership Thought To Consider

In The News

David O'Brien to Host Book Signing Events

David O'Brien will be hosting two upcoming book signing events for his very popular book, The Navigator's Handbook, 101 Leadership Lessons for Work & Life. In addition to sharing insights from his book, David will be introducing the key concepts from his new Soul of Leadership model and related workshop. The first book signing event will take place at Hartford's La Paloma Sabanera Coffee House located at 405 Capitol Avenue on Thursday April 28th from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. The second book signing event will take place at Caffeine's Cafe in Unionville, CT on Saturday May 7th from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Caffeine's is located at 45 South Main Street (Route 4) in Unionville, CT. These free events are open to all and signed copies of The Navigator's Handbook will be available for purchase.

David O'Brien to Present The State of Leadership 2011 at National Conference

David will be delivering a keynote address entitled The State of Leadership 2011 at the Healthcare Users Group national conference on May 18th in Hilton Head, South Carolina. To learn more, please visit the HUG Conference website by clicking here.

WCS Launches Quick Links To Learning

As part of our ongoing commitment to leadership learning, we are pleased to announce that starting in this issue of the Leadership Compass Newsletter, we will feature Quick Links to Learning. These links to learning represent many current and relevant insights into leadership excellence. We encourage you to take a closer look and invite you to share other links that you think would be of interest and value to our readers.

WCS Marks 11th Anniversary as Trusted Learning Partner

As many of you know, April 11th of this year marked the 11th anniversary of WorkChoice Solutions. Over this time, we have been very fortunate to count many of you as a valued partner in leadership learning. We look forward to the next 11 years and offer our heartfelt thanks for the role that you have played in helping us to get to this important milestone.

Dear Friends,

Welcome to another edition of the Leadership Compass Newsletter. I hope that all is well with you and that you are managing to find the time to continue your leadership learning. Although I too find this to be a challenge some days, I am mindful of the fact that the richness of my leadership journey is in no small way linked to my continued learning and discovery.

Included in this issue is a follow-up to my last two articles as well as a variety of other resources that are intended to motivate and hopefully stimulate your thinking about leadership. In response to positive feedback and many requests to take the role model issue a bit deeper, I share my thinking on what it takes to seize the role model opportunity in my new article.

Thanks for your continued commitment to leadership excellence and best wishes for a new season filled with an abundance of learning and discovery.

Choose to Navigate,

Dave O'Brien

Featured Leadership Article:

Seizing The Role Model Opportunity
10 Strategies for Accessing Your Full Leadership Capacity

The starting point of all achievement is desire. This powerful reminder from legendary human development author Napoleon Hill represents a common theme among the many recent requests I've received to help leaders more fully access their leadership capacity. Another theme and important reminder among these requests is that our capacity to demonstrate true leadership goes well beyond the boundaries of the workplace. The truth is that without a strong desire to improve as leaders, none of us can expect to recognize our full leadership capacity. It is within this context that I present the following 10 Strategies for Accessing Your Full Leadership Capacity:

1. Find your True North by considering your values, intentions and purpose. Much has been written about the concept of True North and despite a wide range of viewpoints, self-awareness is central among leadership thinkers. True North in navigating terms is the most direct line to the North Pole axis and is used to set a compass. In leadership terms, it is the most direct path to a fully integrated life where core values consistently guide actions and behavior.

2. Define who you want to be as a leader and what others expect of you as a leader. A natural outcome of self-awareness is the clarity and resulting purpose that allows us to define ...

Survey Reveals
Common Barrier to Team Success

In a recent WCS survey of senior leaders, it was determined that evolving and competing priorities among teams represent a significant barrier to achieving long term objectives. The survey was done in conjunction with a request for feedback on an updated version of our very popular Re-Calibrating Our Leadership Compass workshop. Other factors that were identified included; the critical importance of leadership communication in helping teams to stay focused on key priorities, the need to continuously build momentum off even the smallest of successes and the importance of having a set of guiding principles for all teams. In response to the survey feedback, we have included the Re-Calibrating Our Leadership Compass workshop as the featured workshop in this edition of the Leadership Compass Newsletter. We invite to review the full workshop outline and encourage you to contact us to explore how it might make a positive difference for your team and organization.

Featured Leadership Workshop:
Re-Calibrating Our Leadership Compass

For most teams today, the pressures of constantly evolving and at times, competing priorities create a barrier to staying the course and achieving key objectives that were defined and implemented in the first quarter. Add to this the never ending drive for greater productivity and today's do more with less business climate and most senior leaders would agree that helping their teams to get re-focused and re-energized toward shared goals is not only good leadership but good business too. The May through July timeframe represents the perfect opportunity to help teams reassess key priorities, actions, metrics and accountabilities. In this comprehensive, highly customized and hands-on workshop, leaders explore a wide range of issues and techniques for re-calibrating their leadership compass to help ensure that year-end goals are both clear and attainable.

For the Full Course Description of this workshop, please click here.

Quick Links for Learning Quick Links To Learning

Link # One: The EI Consortium

The mission of the EI Consortium is to advance research and practice of emotional and social intelligence in organizations around the world through the generation and exchange of knowledge. The website features a wide range of case studies as well as many excellent EI related articles. Please click here to connect to EI Consortium.

Link # Two: "Next Generation Leadership Interview with Bill George and others

Harvard's Center for Public Leadership recently hosted a panel discussion with Bill George, David Gergen, Rosalinde Torres and Betsy Myers that explored the next generation of leadership. The discussion presents many powerful insights and reminders that are well worth considering. Please click here to watch the video of the panel discussion.

Link # Three: WorkChoice Solutions Learning Resources

In continuing our commitment to leadership development, we have added new content to the Learning Resources link on the WorkChoice Solutions web site. Within the link, you will find a wide range of complimentary leadership assessments, power point slides and a variety of leadership articles. Please click here to connect to Learning Resources.

Leadership Thought To Consider

"The opposite of leader is not follower, it's pessimist." -- Author Unknown

Leadership Suggestion: Consider what this quote means in your world of work and in your role as a leader. Also try to uncover the leadership opportunity that it presents.

Three Questions Worth Considering:

Do you need a high impact / high content speaker for your next off-site event or conference?
Is there a high potential employee on your team that struggles with public speaking?
Could other people in your organization improve their public speaking effectiveness?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, please click here to learn more about Speaker Solutions.