Description:
Dr. Larry is a mental health professional and business leadership trainer of many years. Check out our Executive Leadership site for a schedule of his open trainings, as well as to consider booking a training for your company or organization.
Global Upheaval: Take Change by the Hand Before it Grabs You by the Throat
A one-day participatory seminar in two parts tailored to your company or organization
What You Will Learn
You will examine huge worldwide changes impacting your operation and employees for better or worse. What difference do the following crises and upheavals make?
9 Ways Our Entire World is Changing
Industrialization of millions of people
Drought encompassing huge parts of the earth and the earth's people
The use of cell phones and internet technology virtually everywhere.
Climate change on a scale not seen since the twelfth century.
Political change.
Financial upheaval.
Population increase.
Energy crunch.
Food crunch (starvation along with inflation of food prices and a scarcity of food in the face of growing consumption).
The original thanks givers did not make much distinction between thanking God for things and thanking God for one another. Remember, it was widely believed in the Puritan tradition that prosperity was a sign of God's favor, indeed of salvation from the jaws of Hell. Leadership in that tradition was also considered part of the divine order of things. Translation: do what the leader ordered.
Suggestion number one, therefore, is that you not get overly theological about Thanksgiving but simply make it more about people than things. People, not things, are your customers, your workers and your associates. Let the people you appreciate decide for themselves what they are thankful for and how they will go about giving God the credit - or not. It is worth noting that not everybody is thankful. Make the emphasis on what you are thankful for, namely those who are closest to you. And do not be tempted to act as though your leadership position
When it comes to business leadership the question is false because the answer is that both matter. One without the other is a formula for disaster.
And then of course it also depends on what we mean by leadership. For example, in case of a fire somebody might lead others to safety through a burning smoke-filled building. A guide might lead people to where the fish are biting. An usher leads people to their seats. To follow another is to be led. Such leadership does not necessarily require all that much character or skill. In a burning building the first person to figure out where is the nearest exit will head for that exit. Others will follow: no skill and no character required. On the other hand, for a fire fighter to save people trapped in a fully involved structure there is required both skill and character. Of such stuff are heroes made and many of these heroes receive their commendation posthumously.
There is much to be learned about business leadership from politics. "The making of a president" might better be phrased as "the marketing of the president". Political campaigning for federal office has evolved from personal dialogue to the use of media to reach millions of people every day. Most of us will vote for candidates we have never met. In presidential elections more than eighty millions of us will vote based on our evaluation of somebody's character and capabilities for leading a nation of three hundred million people. We will not have the opportunity to do a job interview of the candidates. We will not have the results of pre-employment screening, letters of reference or prior performance reviews.
What we will have are impressions provided by a variety of media.
These impressions are generated with an eye towards marketing the candidate. They are carefully crafted pictures, speeches and messages designed to convince us
Most of us associate stress with a lack of success. "Lack of success" is generic for almost anything: lack of money, lack of profitability, lack of skill, lack of opportunity, lack of (you fill in the blank).
During this current political season we have all heard ample reminders about how widespread this type of stress happens to be both nationally and globally. Large masses of people are eating dirt, wading through storm water and dying in the sun for lack of food and water. There are 148 million orphans on earth. Poverty, starvation, famine, drought, storms, ethnic cleansing, war, genocide and lawlessness stalk the earth.
There is another kind of stress: getting what we pray for. This type of stress is common to those CEOs on their way to jail for crimes related to greed. Too much success, too much efficiency and being too good at achieving can turn us into monsters - if we allow that to happen. Whether it be power or wealth, the danger of
Those who are leaders in their businesses and organizations can learn a great deal from this election season. With the whole country talking about the qualifications of the candidates, we are all presented with reminders about what it takes to lead. Here is my list.
Character
I do not hear supporters of any candidate describing their nominee as dishonest, lazy, indifferent, incompetent or hateful. A leader of anything at any level should have good character. We all learned about character from the time we were children listening to stories about George Washington. A person of good character is honest, prizes integrity, works hard, is responsible and values each person. Good character includes being loyal, courageous, and trustworthy in deeds, not just in words.
Vision
Leaders, presumably, are leading us to somewhere or something. The vision of the leader needs to be from the heart and it needs to be worthy of the effort needed
Imagine that as we turned on the evening news the lead story was interrupted by a special bulletin: we will all be dead by this time tomorrow! The panic would be uncontrollable and the anguish indescribable.
And yet the fact is that we will all be dead someday. So why is there no panic or anguish across the world? Because we all manage the stress of knowing we will someday die. It is referred to as the denial of death: we live at any given moment and on any given day as though we were never going to die.
A closer look, however, reveals that there is more to it than simply denial. We focus on the day at hand with its activities and challenges. We compartmentalize our thoughts to center on what we are doing at any given time by concentrating. We live in the present moment, recognizing that yesterday is gone and tomorrow has not yet arrived.
Sometimes we think about death and dying. Sometimes we talk about our death with ou
Good professional football coaches know when it is time to change the game plan and great coaches make the right changes. How do they know which changes are the right changes? This writer thinks it is because they are very good listeners. They hear their players and their assistant coaches.
How can they hear anything in the midst of all the noise and commotion going on at a professional football game? Listening is more than hearing words. It has to do with "hearing the whole picture".
How do leaders hear pictures? They simply allow the views of everyone involved to "sink in" while trusting their own internal computer to put all the pieces together. That is exactly what today's business leader must do to make the right changes in the game plan: allow the views of everyone involved to sink in. Trust your own internal computer to make sense of it all. Trust that changes in the business plan will come clear.
"Don't worry" is one of our most frequently spoken phrases. Not that it does any good, of course! Western culture is strongly committed to the notion that worry is a bad thing and, therefore, should be avoided. But since it is impossible to be alive and not worry, the prevailing culture simply encourages us to act and speak as though we have no worries. We put a very high premium on those who can make us laugh and on those who can remain calm and act cool in any situation. The truth is that only fools and dead people do not worry.
This author and trainer has long contended that there is such a thing as "good worry", and that learning to worry well is a far more productive and useful approach than learning to suppress , deny or ignore matters that we ought to worry about.
Executive business leaders are, in fact, paid good money to worry. We are told that two thirds of our worries are wasted because they are about the past or the future. There
News came on July 16 that inflation has jumped more than one percent in a month, the fastest single month increase in decades. Gasoline is selling at four dollars per gallon. The home mortgage market crisis continues to play out. Airlines and automakers are reporting steep losses. 400,000 jobs have been lost so far this year. Credit is tightening.
None of these developments are going to destroy the United States or its economy. As a matter of fact, there is plenty more bad news to worry about: massive floods this spring, the state of California is on fire, the corn crop will be late and less than anticipated. Also, as Mark Twain might say, a president will get elected and so will Congress come November.
Stress management assumes that there will be events and situations to which people react with anxiety. Anxiety is made up of both a cognitive component (worry) and a visceral component (blood pressure goes up, adrenalin flows, emotions run strong). The manager and
MVP Seminars offers executive leadership and business coaching, inspirational and motivational keynote speakers, customer service, team building, project management, communication skill training and seminars for your professional organization. MVP Seminars business training and consulting will have an immediate impact on your sales, workplace and employee success.
