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Leadership topic - renew

and motivate teams to continually reflect on successes. Focus on team and personal renewal and reflection.  Collects systemic feedback, refines project processes and most important, rewards excellence among employees and teams; works on compensating for weakness and limits; Maintains a conscious work/life balance. 

Roadblock – Is closed to learning new personal, interpersonal, managerial and leadership skills, doesn’t share/celebrate successes with team members. Burns out teammates and self.

wonder how to Celebrate?

wonder how to Celebrate?

Mar 5, 2021 | , ,

Parental Advisory – Explicit Content.  ;-)… so I have wanted to write this post since I started writing these – literally.  It is one of the greatest musicians, with the greatest names, and bundled into one of the best live bands ever… and there will be a lot of double and triple entendres and allusions that you will get, and some will probably miss… but whatever.  Here we go, and I am indebted to my friend for suggesting we talk about J Geils – as I now have an excuse… as with newspapers, those of you reading this on LinkedIn and FaceBook will have to wonder what happens under the fold… 

Celebrate or observe?

Celebrate or observe?

Mar 4, 2021 | , ,

Explaining my empower framework to people, they will often ask me ‘Which one is the most critical?’  And like picking your favorite child, it is a fool’s errand as it mostly depends on the situation you are in.  Pressed hard, it is a toss-up between today’s observe and tomorrow’s wonder.  The interesting paradox to Celebrate this week is that the songs were literally released on the same single in 1971 – this is the A-side, and tomorrow’s is the B-side.  Both were huge hits, but this was their first top 40 hit – cracking it at 39.  And both were on the album titled, The Morning After… which makes the story today even more poignant… 

partners to Celebrate

partners to Celebrate

Mar 3, 2021 | , ,

Yes, that picture is Faye Dunaway, and no that is not Frank Zappa.  I always enjoy finding odd things to Celebrate about the artists, and try to tease just enough that if you really want to know more, you can.  And with today’s theme being “partner”, this seemed like a perfect place to slot in a story about one of the other major players in the band, and also a short story about partners that I still Celebrate from those days at SMU in the ’70s…

managing Celebrating

managing Celebrating

Mar 2, 2021 | , ,

Realizing that no one was actually listening made me question why I was giving my nights and weekends to being a college radio DJ.  So after a few weeks, I stepped down, but what to do with my time?  A few guys on the floor were starting to play guitar in the evenings, and I managed to bring mine back after a weekend at home.  Politely, one of them that I was tutoring through Physics pulled me aside and suggested that I might want to switch over to Bass …. as I was actually never going to be good on guitar… honest feedback that many years later I still Celebrate… 

Celebrating by engaging

Celebrating by engaging

Mar 1, 2021 | , ,

As I headed west from Tyler, my destination was Dallas where I engaged in the fall of 1976 on my path to become an Electrical Engineer.  One thing about engineering was once you picked which type (EE, ME, IE, etc), your class schedule was mostly set.  To get through it all in 4 years, you had to take 18 hours a semester, and the classes were sequenced so your “planning” was mostly just filling in a few “electives” that were like ‘free spaces’ on the Bingo card.  And being a good student, I ripped into the classes, including an 8 am MWF Statics class – a tough ME class required for all engineering majors… 

Performing and renewing

Performing and renewing

Feb 28, 2021 | , ,

After that jarring start yesterday, let’s take a more restful approach for today’s conversation.  It is difficult to tell what is real and what is Performing, particularly as you consider another’s or your own stance on faith.  Paradoxes of what is said versus what is done can be a conversation that goes in directions that are not renewing for anyone.  For me, it has helped to realize it is more a dance, and sometimes the steps are not clear or easy, and balance is hard to hold…

The renewal of Harmony

The renewal of Harmony

Feb 21, 2021 | , ,

It is appropriate that the week on Harmony ends where my first experiences were:  singing at church.  Growing up around the College Kids, in the early 60’s they would often be playing/singing Peter, Paul, and Mary songs, and watching them blend their voices “in renewal” encouraged me to learn how to do that.  I don’t know exactly what “ear training” is, but there are pictures of me sitting with my Flute-o-phone and those kids where I was playing Harmony.  Hearing the notes, and trying to get your brain/voice to match was a fun challenge, which eventually I mapped into reading music… sorta…

renewing Rhythm

renewing Rhythm

Feb 14, 2021 | , ,

The one remaining element of Rhythm critical to Management Hygiene is summarized with a single word: When?  All of the work on priorities, partners, directs, strategic planning, even email fail… unless they make it onto your calendar.  As I tell each leader: your calendar does not lie – it shows who, what, and why you do what you do, and the paradox is that managing the calendar is the easiest and hardest exercise we do.  In one engagement a leader wanted to move from 12 hours a day to 8.  As we examined each day, by Thursday, after eliminating no meetings, I moaned, “…so you don’t really want to work less..:”