While I’ve certainly called people “talented” over the years, and meant it as the highest kind of compliment, it might be taken differently than that. As Seth Godin says in The Practice, “talent is not the same as skill.” He goes on to define each word: Talent is something we’re both with: it’s in our […]
Leadership
Be selfishly selfless
The idea of being selfless is great. Constantly putting others ahead of you seems like an admirable way to live. It is, perhaps, but it won’t work. In order to serve others, you need to take care of yourself first. If you’ve been on a plane, you know the safety drill, and a big thing […]
We did it ourselves
There are some professions that tend to be underappreciated until something goes wrong. Take the I.T. department at a large company, where many people will think one of two things: “Things are running smoothly, so why do we need I.T.?” “Things are a mess, what is I.T. doing wrong?” You could say the same about […]
Praise and criticism are both vapor
In listening to a recent meditation track from Headspace as part of a recent clarity break, the focus of the clip was on this: Praise and criticism are two sides of the same coin. If we believe in one, we believe in the other. Better not to get attached to either. A similar thought was […]
Goals are a commitment to the process
Setting a goal is easy enough: “Lose 20 pounds by March 1” sounds great. If you follow something like the SMART framework, that simple goal essentially checks all of the boxes. While losing 20 pounds might be the goal, setting that goal really means that you’re committing to a process. This likely means eating less […]
Don’t create followers; create leaders
Robert Glazer said in his book Elevate: Remember, great leaders don’t create followers. They create more leaders. A great example of this is Nick Saban, head football coach at the University of Alabama. In his time at Alabama, 33 of his players have gone to the NFL in the first round. That’s incredible! Many of […]
Make More Mistakes
This is kind of a riff on my recent post failures faced by Michael Jordan and others, but it has more to do with making mistakes. Thomas J. Watson, the founder of IBM, is quoted as having said: “Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that […]
More about clarity breaks
I mentioned the idea of a “clarity break” yesterday and thought I’d unpack it a bit more. It’s a concept that I’ve struggled with over the years, but find great value from when I do it regularly. The EOS Worldwide blog defines it as: A clarity break is a regularly scheduled appointment on your calendar […]
Busy isn’t the goal
When asked “what’s going on?”, I think we’ve all said it: “Super busy.” That response is usually seen as being a good thing, so we keep going back to it. Is that really the goal, though? In Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism, he has a variety of things to say about busyness. His main point: What […]
Good decisions can have bad outcomes
As humans, we too often judge the quality of a decision based on the outcome, when many other factors (often luck) play into it. The “Resulting Fallacy” is a case where we create too tight a relationship between the quality of the outcome and the quality of the decision. Or as poker player Annie Duke […]