Leading through happiness 1

I’ve been having conversations about happiness over the last week and it reminded me of one of the best books I’ve read on leadership in some time, How Remarkable Women Lead, by Barsh, Cranston, and Lewis. Their 5 elements of centred leadership (meaning, framing, connecting, engaging, energizing) really spoke to me, in particular the concept that meaning involves identifying strengths, purpose and happiness. I’ve had to work on happiness and so I will be featuring practises over the next few blogs that have helped me cultivate happiness. Today’s is the practise of writing down 5 things at the end of each day that you appreciated about the day.

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Save your team some time

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Does your team have the same conversation over and over and/or not follow through on your decisions? Clearly documenting decisions is one way to avoid this. It’s also useful to mention the decision making strategy employed and who was involved in the decision as well as the outcome of the decision. This blog is based on the three of clubs from our Teamwork Explorer cards and iPhone app.

One tip to lighten your day

Is this you? It’s certainly been me at times and I have gone through phases of watching too much doom and gloom on TV (and this includes the daily news – sorry all you news junkies who think you can’t live without it – you can). It’s amazing what cutting back on this sort of stuff will do for your energy, optimism and creativity.

Of course, this doesn’t include those compelling evening soaps, too numerous to name at this point 😉

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Just one step

I spent Friday with an amazing group of women reflecting, visioning, questioning, visualizing, laughing, supporting, realizing. As a result, I have put in place a big vision and Monday morning has brought with it an overwhelming sense of yikes, how will I ever do this??? And right behind that, my own words many times in our creativity workshop, “just take one step and don’t think about the whole thing or you will become paralyzed and not do anything!”

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Making it safe to fail

The Etch A Sketch designer, Andre Cassagnes, died at the age of 86 this past month which got me thinking about creativity. A few things to note:

  • People often create outside their discipline. Cassagnes was an electrical technician who was working with metal powders and noticed the potential for a toy.
  • Etch a sketch itself, much like the ipad today, creates conditions to make it safe to fail. All you need to do is shake or erase and you can start over.
  • It’s too bad we find it so difficult to collaborate with others outside our discipline and shake and start over in organizations!

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The Extravert/Introvert Conundrum

Today’s blog is inspired by the sometimes complex interactions between extraverts and introverts and a most hilarious clip from Big Bang Theory. Enjoy!

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The fallout of showrooming

I was shocked to hear about Best Buy closing a number of stores across Canada. It used to be that working for a large organization offered some job security, but no longer. Given that Best Buy has named this “stage” of their transformation Renew Blue (apparently in response to the growing trend of showrooming) why is it that employees showed up to closed stores as if this was something no one saw coming?

Some leadership lessons here methinks …

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Learning as a way of being

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So, how to sum up my learning over the last 30 days? It has been an interesting blend of looking over the wall to what’s possible and looking in the mirror to find my own sense of self, creativity, possibility. More specifically:

  1. There is a yin, yang to this challenge – discipline to do a blog every day, but staying open and receptive to whatever might show up that day.
  2. That while I gathered ideas from what was going on around me, I had to focus inwardly to capture that visually.
  3. That while I looked over the wall for feedback (sometimes obsessively), ultimately I was so energized by what I was doing that regardless of feedback, I wanted to continue.
  4. That my desire to explore whatever is next for me professionally and personally has been blown open by this challenge!
  5. That I may have finally put a few gremlins to rest about my artistic abilities (this after I’ve lost count of how many classes over the years have left me feeling like a complete twit … just ask Dave!)
  6. That I have a pretty interesting summary of January, 2013 🙂

Thanks Matt Cutts for your brilliant TED video and everyone who has been cheering me on.

Here’s to the next 30 days!

Feedback is like oxygen …

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“So what have you learned from doing this 30 day challenge and what’s next?” asked my friend and gifted visual recorder colleague Lisa.

“Well, let me think.” Long pause.

“That you need feedback!” Dave exclaimed.

“I do not!” As that would be needy. Another long pause. “Well maybe a little …”

“Why don’t you use your 30th blog to ask people for some feedback?” Lisa quickly sketched out today’s visual. (Thank you Lisa!)

And so I am, but with some hesitancy, because of course what if the feedback is not what I want? I hear the adult educator in me coaching the oodles of learners with whom I have worked over the years urging them to put feedback in perspective and learn from it, blah, blah, blah …

And as for what’s next, I have already decided I am going for another 30 days as something seems to be happening for me (more on that tomorrow when I list more of what I have learned.)

Unlike my other attempts at blogging, I LOVE doing this. In fact, I would rather do this than any other work I need to do to make a living. Gulp …

The price we pay for multi-tasking

I am so guilty of multi-tasking and one of the things I’ve learned from my 30 day visual blog challenge is the power of focusing on one thing. I’ve learned many other things but will save that for tomorrow, as that is day 30 🙂

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