Distinguishing between healthy pride vs. hurtful pride.
Pride is good. For example, “Have some pride” and “Take pride in your work.”
Arrogant pride, however, represents the dark, blinding, deceptive underbelly of leadership. Arrogant pride drives leaders to gather in protective huddles of pseudo-invincibility where stepping on others is smugly applauded and lifting others is foolish weakness.
Filthy dark festering pride drives outrageous salaries, underhanded dealings, and deceptive accounting practices. What about employee handbooks and HR guidelines intentionally vague or confusing so they can be used to accomplish any leader’s personal agenda?
The danger of healthy pride is its putrid ravenous brother lives one step across the border. His name is arrogance.
10 symptoms the ravenous beast has you:
- Flattery – Hateful manipulative speech that creates vulnerability to deceptive self-serving influence.
- Stubborn unwillingness to reconsider. After all, you might look weak!
- Insults, put downs and slanderous speech.
- Sacrificing relationships for power, position, and prestige.
- Refusing to explore…
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The opening lines resonated with me: “It’s easier for leaders to step up and in than to step down and back. Beginnings demand stepping in; enduring, exponential success calls for stepping back.”
It’s easier for leaders to step up and in than to step down and back. Beginnings demand stepping in; enduring, exponential success calls for stepping back.
Before stepping back:
Before you step back, build people who embrace organizational values. People who don’t share values always suggest wrong directions, dilute focus, and slow progress.
After values, clarify mission and vision.
After clarity:
Clarity is powerful but not enough. Success requires people who possess confidence and optimism; one follows the other. Building confidence in others gives leaders the confidence to step back.
Confidence:
Confident people believe they can succeed in ways they haven’t already succeeded. To put it like Captain Kirk ” They boldly go where no man has gone before.”
Successful leaders nurture and feed confidence in people who are facing new challenges.
Foundations of confidence:
You build confidence in others when you:
- Provide new challenges.
- Give support from experienced leaders.
- Emphasize…
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My favorites are:
- Be constructive more than critical. Ask what CAN BE done more than WHAT WAS done.
- Give and accept today’s best. You did what you could.
*****
There was a time when I thought my anger was about the world out there. But, anger, frustration, and complaints are first about who I am and then about other people, circumstances, and environments.
Not liking my performance:
There’s always room for improvement. Translation, I’m falling short.
For example, I always see ways my last presentation fell short. There are always “could haves” and “should haves.” Encouraging compliments from audience members never silence my inner critic.
Here’s another example, reading past blog posts is disappointing. Like jello, there’s always room for more – more improvement.
Yet another example, I hate missing a coaching moment. I was too bold or too passive. I asked the wrong question or created distractions.
Dealing with the inner critic:
How can we keep leading, presenting, writing, or serving if our inner critic keeps beating us up?
- Better is good when it’s found in the…
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I love tapas!
One of my favorite cities….. Barcelona has the sea, the mountains, the fashion, the beautiful people and the food. I think its one of the few places that has it all….including conmen and robbers (thats another story)…
There is a 3 hour break in between work. Not wasting anytime, i googled “best tapas” and Quimet y Quimet came up. Looking at the metro map, ah….a few stations away on a direct tram L3 to Paral Lel. Good, here we go.
A short 5 mins walk from the subway.
I would have missed it if not for the fella standing there. Why are most good food places in a not easy to find location ? And which is the entrance ?
Took this with App “Autostitch” for the panoramic view. A very small place, no seats. But the chatters in spanish, english, french (what to expect, this place was featured in…
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I would profoundly respect a leader who did this.
Image source
One high performance department is miserable and oppressive another is joyful and liberating. One leader has fun while another leader …
All leaders get things done but the way they do things matters.
John Bell, former CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), suggested he would not do different things as much as he would do things differently, if he could do it again.
Doing things and the way things are done are two different things.
If I could do it again:
Bell said he had no regrets about business strategies. But, if he could do it again he would:
- Make it more fun. I was too serious.
- Be just as competitive.
- Not be as intense. The desire to enjoy continued success along with the pressure to make the numbers, which was intense, pushed us.
- Mentor more. I would spend more time with individuals.
- Treat…
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Repost: As the Earth Allows the Rain
February 8, 2012
As the Earth Allows the Rain
Sitting with Feelings
Taking the time now to sit with your feelings and acknowledge them will save you much distress down the road.
It can take great courage to really sit with our feelings, allowing ourselves to surrender to their powerful energies. All too often we set our feelings aside, thinking we will deal with them later. If we don’t deal with them, we end up storing them in our minds and bodies and this is when anxiety and other health issues can arise. Denying what our bodies want to feel can lead to trouble now or down the line, which is why being in the thick of our feelings, no matter how scary it seems, is really the best thing we can do for ourselves.
One of the reasons we tend to hide or push aside our feelings is that we live in a culture that has not traditionally supported emotional awareness. However, as the connection between mind and body–our emotions and our physical health– becomes clearer, awareness of the importance of feeling our feelings has grown. There are many books, classes, workshops and retreats that can help us on our way to emotional intelligence. We can also trust in our own ability to process what comes up when it comes up. If sadness arises, we can notice its presence and welcome it, noting where in our bodies we feel it, and allowing ourselves to express it through tears or a quiet turning inward.
When we simply allow ourselves to fully feel our feelings as they come, we tend to let them go easily. This is all we are required to do; our feelings simply want to be felt. We often complicate the situation by applying mental energy in the form of analysis, when all we really need is to allow, as the earth allows the rain to fall upon it. As the rain falls, the earth responds in a multitude of ways, sometimes emptying out to form a great canyon, sometimes soaking it up to nourish an infinitude of plants. In the same way, the deeper purpose of our feelings is to transform the terrain of our inner world, sometimes creating space for more feelings to flow, sometimes providing sustenance for growth. All we need to do is allow the process by relaxing, opening, and receiving the bounty of our emotions. [From DailyOm]
I passed these on to my brother, who needs some serious motivation!
*****
It’s easy to confuse and difficult to clarify. Confusion drives us toward clarity. Clarity allows us to act.
I’m looking for your perspective and insights on this set of Leadership Freak quotes. Will you grab one or more and expand, correct, clarify, and/or modify it.
The Sweet 16:
- Don’t let the stupid things others do be the reason you do stupid things.
- When we believe that we matter and what we do matters, we lead from within.
- Dream, imagine, think, and plan all you want. Nothing happens until you take the first step.
- Fearing failure is a sure way to fail.
- If you plan to grow a business, plan to grow people.
- Don’t narrow the dream, expand the team. From: “Dream Builders”
- It’s amazing how a good word motivates better than a criticism. See the bad, say the good.
- The advantage of a poor memory is I’m…
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Been looking for a good cucumber salad recipe…
a quick lunch tomorrow (in my new bento & co. “origami bento,” bought on karaimame’s brilliant suggestion), made up of leftovers from batch dinner cooking i did earlier this week, plus a pantry item. recipes and calorie count below.
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Repost: No Wrong Response
February 7, 2012
No Wrong Response
Experiences Shape Your Reactions
There is no such thing as a right or wrong response to any given situation as we all come to it with our own experience.
Our view of the universe is largely determined by our experiences. It is when we are caught off guard by the spontaneity of existence that we are most apt to respond authentically, even when our feelings do not correspond with those of the multitude. Events that arouse strong emotions with us or are surprising in nature can be disquieting, for it often is in their aftermath that we discover how profoundly our histories have shaped us. The differences that divide us from our peers are highlighted in our reactions when these diverge from the mainstream, and this can be highly upsetting because it forces us to confront the uniqueness of our lives.
When our response to unexpected news or startling ideas is not the same as that of the people around us, we may feel driven by a desire to dismiss our feelings as irrational or incorrect. But reactions themselves are neither right, nor wrong. The forces that sculpted the patterns that to a large extent dictate our development are not the same forces that shaped the development of our relatives, friends, colleagues, or neighbors. There is no reason to believe that one person’s reaction to a particular event is somehow more valid than another’s. How we respond to the constant changes taking place in the world around us is a product of our history, a testament to our individuality, and a part of the healing process that allows us to address key elements of our past in a context we can grasp in the present.
Life’s pivotal events can provide you with a way to define yourself as a unique and matchless being, but you must put aside the judgments that might otherwise prevent you from gaining insight into your distinct mode of interpreting the world. Try to internalize your feelings without categorizing or evaluating them. When you feel unsure of the legitimacy of your reactions, remember that cultural, sociological, spiritual, and familial differences can cause two people to interpret a single event in widely dissimilar ways. Examining your responses outside of the context provided by others can show you that your emotional complexity is something to be valued, for it has made you who you are today. [Reposted from DailyOm]