Helping Managers Lead Better in Crisis

February 2014

In This Issue

Monthly Video

Blog Highlights

Featured Article

Professional Development

Life Balance

From the Bookshelf

Speaker's Corner

Special Offer!

Leadership Coaching at 25% savings

In over 35 years as a crisis manager, I have been exposed to numerous leadership theories and models and taken hundreds of hours of leadership training. The Leadership ChallengeŽ is the first program I have found that correlates with my personal experience and offers a practical method for improving as a leader.

And it's not just my own experience: over 400,000 leaders have participated in the Leadership ChallengeŽ since its inception in 1985. Over 1.1 million surveys have been analyzed to determine the relationships among a variety of measurable outcomes and to ensure strong reliability and validity.

Here are a few of the benefits you will gain from my coaching program:

Gain a better understanding of your leadership strengths and weaknesses.
Clarify your fundamental values and beliefs
Identify areas for immediate and long term improvement
Create a Personal Development Plan with measurable and achievable goals

The Leadership ChallengeŽ is usually given as a workshop but by special arrangement with Sonoma Leadership Systems, I am able to offer the program on an individual basis designed exclusively for emergency managers.

And as a thank you for being a reader of Emergency Management Solutions, I am offering you a 25% discount for a limited time. Just click on the Leadership Challenge link below to get started:

The Leadership Challenge is a registered trademark of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. www.leadershipchallenge.com

Monthly Video

Pyroclastic Flow followed by series of Tornados, Sinabung Volcano

This is some remarkable footage from the eruption of Mount Sinabung in Indonesia on February 1st of this year. The lava dome from a previous eruption in 2013 collapsed, creating a pyroclastic flow. The rising heated air then created a series of twisters similar to those seen in wildland fires. Note that where a tornado starts from the base of a cloud and moves towards the earth, these start from the ground and move up.

Blog Highlights

The following are excerpts from my blog

Canton on Emergency Management. Please visit my blog to see the rest of my articles.

Over-commitment to process leads to death in DC

02-06-2014

Process can be a good thing but when it trumps common sense it can lead to deadly consequences....ť

Resistance to Change: A Tail from the dog park

01-28-2014

He goes by the improbable name of Bowser, a big, gentle labrador who loves to play. Bowser until recently was one of our regulars at the dog park. Sadly, he won't be joining us for our early morning romps in the future......ť

Remember that you can also follow my Emergency Management Magazine blog Managing Crisis.

Quick Links

My Website

My Blogs

Follow Me

Newsletter Archive

My Book

Welcome to the February issue of Emergency Management Solutions.

This month I am very pleased to announce the debut of my new leadership coaching program based on The Leadership ChallengeŽ. It's a project I'm very passionate about and been working on for some time now, so it's great to see it finally come to fruition.

As a thank you to you as a reader of Emergency Management Solutions, I'm offering the program to you first and at a deep discount. Since the program represents a commitment of time on both our parts, I can only take on a small number of participants. Once I reach that number, the discount will no longer be available, so please let me know if you're interested.

The movie Pompeii just came out here and as a "swords and sandals" fan, I'll probably go see it at some point. However, it's bound to spark some interest in volcanoes among the general public, so most of this month's issue is devoted to volcanoes. I hope you find it useful.

Regards,

Lucien Canton

_________________________________________________

Featured Article

Volcanoes

The Ultimate Cascading Event

On February 14^th, Mount Kelud on Java Island in Indonesia erupted, throwing debris 12 miles into the atmosphere, displacing over 100,000 people and killing four. Ash from the volcano was found to have fallen up to 350 miles away and the blast was heard up to 125 miles away. The eruption is estimated at 4 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, a logarithmic scale of 1-8 similar to the Richter scale used to measure earthquakes.

This comes on the heels of an announcement last December by researchers that the magma chamber under the Yosemite caldera is more than two times larger than originally believed. The chamber is believed to be 55 miles long by 13 miles wide and runs from 3 to 9 miles below the surface of the earth.

The Yellowstone caldera is one of seven potential "supervolcano" sites around the world. Two others are located in the United States: Long Valley, California, and Valley Grande in New Mexico. Supervolcanoes are volcanoes that have the potential to erupt with a VEI of 8, with an ejecta volume greater than 240 cubic miles, creating a global event that could change civilization as we know it.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE

_______________________________

If you are having trouble viewing my featured article, try clicking on the link at the top of the page. You can always find my articles in the white paper section of my blog site, Canton on Emergency Management.

Professional Development

The key to making extraordinary things happen in organizations is great leadership. Or, as the late management guru Peter Drucker put it: "Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership."

In this webcast hosted by Sonoma Leadership Systems, author and researcher Jim Kouzes will present evidence that exemplary leadership makes a significant and meaningful difference in people's engagement at work and in the performance of their organizations.

Jim will explore what that difference looks like through the lens of The Five Practices of Exemplary LeadershipŽ - the sets of behaviors that he and coauthor Barry Posner have found, in their three decades of rigorous research, lead to extraordinary results. He'll also offer concrete advice on what you can do to put each of the practices to use immediately to improve engagement and performance. If you are ready to say "yes" to exemplary leadership in your organization, this webinar will offer you that opportunity.

As a result of participating in this webcast participants will learn:

The one attribute that is the foundation of all leadership.
The factor that most distinguishes leaders from individual contributors.
The condition that is most likely to produce personal-best leadership and how you can create it.
The factor that rules innovation, brand image, acceptance of leaders' influence, commitment - just about everything else important in organizations-and what leaders can do about it.
How positive you need to be as a leader for people to feel fully engaged.
The word that's required to get things moving in a positive direction.
How great leadership impacts engagement and the bottom line.

Life Balance

My father was never one for retirement. As an accountant, he had both worked for a company and handled a small number of private clients. He was an old-fashioned accountant who could add complex columns of figures in his head and kept handwritten ledgers.

So I was a bit surprised when he came to me one day and asked me about my new computer (20 megabytes of disc memory - very high end for the time!). He wanted to know if I had one of the new accounting software programs installed and if he could use it. It seems that he was looking for part time work to keep busy and everyone was asking if he had that skill.

For the next several months he came by each day to spend an hour or so learning the system on his own. He was still learning at the time of his death.

At a time when it would have been easy to accept retirement, my father felt it was important to continue to learn in order to adapt to the changes in his profession. It kept him alert and it kept him competitive, melding his years of experience to modern tools. More importantly, he taught me why "continuous improvement" is more than just a catch phrase - it's the way to live the good life.

From the Bookshelf

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

by Simon Winchester by Harper Perennial

The eruption of the volcanic island of Krakatoa in 1883 is a seminal event in disaster history. The eruption was enormous: the explosion was heard almost 3000 miles away and generated a shock wave that traveled seven times around the world. On the Volcanic Explosivity Index, a logarithmic scale of 1 to 8, it registered 6, the equivalent of 200 megatons of TNT. The death toll was put at over 36,000 but may have been as high as 120,000.

The eruption also spawned widespread global climate change, resulting in a lowering of the earth's temperature and chaotic weather patterns lasting until 1888. Moreover, it produced significant social change in Indonesia as Christianity was gradually replaced by the Muslim faith.

If this were all Simon Winchester discussed in his book, it would still be a fantastic read. But Winchester gives us much more, making the book particularly useful to emergency managers. He uses the eruption of Krakatoa to trace the development of the theory of plate tectonics and the discipline of volcanology. He demonstrates the importance of the data gathered about the eruption to the development of these foundational concepts and why the study of that data is still important. And he does all this in a very accessible and readable style.

An Emergency Manager's Reading List

Speaker's Corner

Looking for a Speaker?

Need a speaker for your next conference? I offer keynotes, seminars and workshops.

Three Reasons Why I'm the Right Speaker for Your Conference

You can find more details and sample videos on my website or on my SpeakerMatch page.

Speaking Engagements

Now taking bookings for 2014!

ŠLucien G. Canton January 2014