| November 2012 Volume 4 Issue 11 |
9 Life Lessons for Leaders
I recently read an article about Gordon Dean. He was an American lawyer and prosecutor who died in a plane crash in 1958. Among his personal effects was an envelope with nine life lessons scribbled on the back.
These lessons provide some excellent advice for leaders:
- Never lose your capacity for enthusiasm.
- Never lose your capacity for indignation.
- Never judge people. Don't type them too quickly. But in a pinch, never first assume that a man is bad; first assume that he is good and that, at worst, he is in the gray area between bad and good.
- Never be impressed by wealth alone or thrown by poverty.
- If you can't be generous when it's hard to be, you won't be when it's easy.
- The greatest builder of confidence is the ability to do something--almost anything--well.
- When confidence comes, then strive for humility; you aren't as good as all that.
- The way to become truly useful is to seek the best that other brains have to offer. Use them to supplement your own, and be prepared to give credit to them when they have helped.
- The greatest tragedies in the world and personal events stem from misunderstandings. So communicate! Thank you Gordon Dean for your random envelope etchings. How else can you apply these life lessons?
|
What Leaders are Reading
Risky is the New Safe by Randy Gage
This is a different kind of book for a different kind of thinking, a thought-provoking manifesto for risk takers. It will challenge you to think laterally, question premises, and be a "contrarian." Disruptive technology, accelerating speed of change, and economic upheaval are changing the game. The same tired, old, conventional thinking won't get you to success today.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
.
Leadership Tip of The Month
Here is a fun exercise I have used as an ice breaker in facilitation sessions that you may find interesting.
Have each participant choose six words that could explain their life or be used on an epitaph. They can only use six words! Here are some examples from a recent session I facilitated.
"Seventy years, few tears, hairy ears."
"Extremely responsible, secretly longed for spontaneity."
"Painful nerd kid, happy nerd adult."
"I'm my mother and I'm fine."
"Grumpy old man needs love, too."
"Joined army. Came out. Got booted."
This isn't just a fun activity. Challenge yourself or participants to be profound, witty, topical, provocative, spiritual, intellectual, etc.
Do you have a vision for yourself that you can put into six words?
Who knows ... you might find your genius in there!
For additional information contact LBD.
John Branstad
Quote of the Month
"Who you are speaks so loudly I can barely hear what you are saying."
Emerson
|
|
