Wisdom from Young Leaders

Last week I was catching up on my blog reading and three posts caught my attention.  They were all by young leaders, and each one dealt with an issue that impacts us personally and our organizations.

Brad Lomenick warns against being average.  Average seems like it’s okay, but it’s not.  We don’t grow up wanting to be average, but at some point it just becomes okay.  Read, “Don’t be Average“

Jenni Catron talks about people who just don’t get it.  We’ve all been in meetings or worked on projects with people like this.  The flip side is that everyone has also been the person who doesn’t get it.  Do you have people and/or systems in place to warn you when you start losing touch?

Emotional intelligence and self-awareness is something that is often overlooked by many as a quality of a good leader.  Casey Ross gives us a surprising way that insecurity can manifest itself, and discusses managing this emotion. 

I hope you enjoy these great posts from dynamic young leaders.

Things to Check Out

Check it out, there’s lots of good stuff in here:

Michael Hyatt offered some words of advice about leading during turbulent times.  He also had some practical pointers to improve meetings.

Seth has had some great thoughts on effort, or lack there of, over the last couple of weeks, including:  The Sad Lie of Mediocrity, The 90/10 Rule of Marketing a Job.

Craig Groeschel continues with practical, helpful advice.  Two weeks ago, he spoke about leading teams.  You can read the intro here, and the follow-up posts here, here and here.  This past week he wrote about leading during financially troubling times.  You can read what he had to say here, here, here & here. 

Bill George wrote a Business Week article about leading in a new generation, the “We” generation (h/t: Michael Hyatt)

Paul from Results Junkies offered a great reminder that what gets measured gets managed.

Mark Batterson shared some thougts from a talk he gave on Purple Cows.

Tony Morgan says, “Resign Today!”  Read the post that drew all sorts of interesting comments, and then watch his interview with Perry Noble that offers some more explanation.

Mark Waltz reminds us that if you’re a high-level leader in your organization, you need to spend some time periodically with volunteers (or front-line employees) who make things happen in your organization.  Read volunteering as staff.

Learning from Others’ Mistakes

A few weeks ago, I was reading a book by Rick Warren and noticed that several times he wrote about the benefit of learning from others’ mistakes.  He said that we don’t have enough time to make all the mistakes and learn the respective lessons ourselves, so we need to watch and learn from the mistakes of others.  Great wisdom.

So, with that in mind:  Circuit City filed for bankruptcy yesterday.  You can read about it and the effects here, here, here, and lots of other places.  Casey Ross posted last week (before the bankruptcy filing, after the store closing announcement) some lessons that can be learned from Circuit City.  Enjoy the great insights and use this opportunity to learn from others’ mistakes.

Success is Not An Accident

I’m a firm believer that most people work very hard for any measure of success they experience in life.  Sure there are a few people who get lucky, but luck being your success plan is about as solid as winning the lottery being your retirement plan.  It may happen, but the chances for most people are slim.  I even wrote about planning to win recently.  Here’s what some others have to say:

Carey Nieuwhof talks about the intentional nature of success.  He said, “A person who has a mediocre gift set but works hard at developing that skill set every day will accomplish much more than a person with a fantastic skill set who plays video games all day and never engages them.”  Read the complete post here. 

There were some similar statements made by Seth in a post entitled, Is effort a myth?  He said, “While luck may be more appealing than effort, you don’t get to choose luck. Effort, on the other hand, is totally available, all the time.”

Jim Collins spoke at Catalyst a few weeks ago and shared the following thoughts: 

“Greatness is not a function of luck or circumstances.  Greatness is a function of conscious choices & discipline…Greatness is a function of the small choices you make that no one can see.”

What choices are you making today, that will impact tomorrow?  Are you underestimating the importance of small choices, because you think it’s all about the big choices?

Entry Points

I’m pretty passionate about customer service.  A couple of things organizations with good service do well is make you it easy for you to interact with them and make you feel comfortable, early.  There were a couple of things that I read over the last week that reminded me again of the importantance of first impressions and entry points.

I read this story on Mark Waltz’s blog about making the first steps safe.  At Granger, they’ve made intentional decisions about their environments that have make it safe for someone to connect.  Volunteers, especially those entrusted with making the first impressions for your organization, are given a huge responsibility to make people feel comfortable and welcomed.

John Bishop wrote about the crazy volunteers at Elevation Church and their eternal impact on one lady’s life.  The volunteers there have a history of impacting the lives of those who show up for the first time. 

Casey Ross asked the question, “Do You Make it Easy for People?”  How difficult is it for people to interact with your organization?  Once they show up, will the environment(s)/experience(s) you’ve intentionally created cause them to put up their guard, or let their guard down?  Also check out his latest installment about the importance of “How,” which contains one thing his organization did to help create a less confusing first experience for outsiders.

How easy is it for others to interact with your organization?  If you could get them to give you one shot, how confident are you that they would return?  Are you helping those who are entrusted with your first impressions understand the importance of their role in your organization?

Things to Check Out

Here’s a sampling of interesting things I found on the interwebs the past couple of weeks:

Guy Kawasaki talks about the difficulty of implementation and other thoughts on entrepreneurship in an article from the New York Times – read it here.  (Thanks to the folks at Leadership Turn for the original post.)

Tony Morgan shared a story and some insight into the “other duties as assigned” part of a job description and what your response could say about you.

There was an article in The Wall Street Journal about the use of ”Mystery Shoppers” in Churches.  Definitely some heated conversation about this one.  (h/t: anne jackson)

Casey Ross added a page on his blog about Closing a Church.  This is an area where he has some great insight and loves to help others avoid some of the pitfalls he’s seen.  By the way, if you don’t currently subscribe to his blog, go subscribe now.

Pastor Steven Furtick wrote about Developing People, and what they’re currently doing to continue to develop their staff and key leaders.

Michael Hyatt spoke about how they’re Leading Powerful Conversations at Thomas Nelson, and he gives some practical tips that should help you start to do the same in your organization.

Seth Godin advises us all to, “Be Careful Who You Work For.”