Common traits among leaders and successful people across industries, fields, and disciplines

A reader asked me to write about common traits of leaders and successful people across different industries and fields. Of course there's a famous business book that covers seven of their habits. I'll look at it from a couple different perspectives. Functional skills hold you back at higher levels Functional skills are ones to do a specific type of work, like sales, programming, engineering, marketing, and so on. Most people get hired for functional skills. They look good on your resume when you start. A typical job progression for someone who succeeds at each level starts with a functional role…

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How to discipline a friend, an example

How do you discipline a friend? Even when you feel they deserve it, it's not so easy. Too harsh and you lose a friend. Too soft and they'll do it again. I generally advise against giving advice to someone who hasn't asked for it, but sometimes you know someone well enough. To me friendship means you're responsible to help a friend. Below is an example of balancing things effectively. Not that I have special skills in this area, but I hope it helps if you need to balance things sometime. Context: Recently a friend was late to meet for lunch.…

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See Joshua Spodek on leadership at General Assembly, August 23

If you like entrepreneurship and you don't know General Assembly, you should. They teach great courses and have built a great community around teaching relevant skills. On Saturday, August 23, 10am-5pm, I'll lead a seminar with General Assembly on leadership in New York City. Register here, you'll be glad you did. Here is the announcement (they use short descriptions, for a fuller description, see this announcement from an earlier event): Lead the Way: Effective Leadership Techniques Joshua Spodek Adjunct Professor at NYU-Poly About This Workshop You’ve ascended to a position of leadership, but how can you ensure that the people…

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Student-driven inquiry-driven project-based learning rocks!

The KQED blog in San Francisco that covered my using inquiry-driven project-based learning teaching entrepreneurship at NYU recently covered something more remarkable: a student-created program in a high-school where the students create and do their projects on their schedule. The article, "This Is What a Student-Designed School Looks Like," speaks for itself, describing how a Massachusetts high school student saw engagement and mastery lacking in his classmates at his high school and proposed a program to use project-based learning to evoke it. I recommend reading it if you are interested in leadership, motivation, education, and how to improve any of…

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Logic and convincing don’t motivate: an example

If you want to motivate someone, using logic to convince them of what to do often seems like it should work. It rarely does. If the person is already inclined to follow, you don't need it. If they aren't you'll just as likely provoke them to argue back as to follow. Here's a story to illustrate. Context: In college sports (ultimate frisbee), at weekend tournaments we'd play three or four games, leaving us tired, sweaty, dirty, and hungry at the end of the day. After the last game, we'd usually collapse on the sideline of the field where we just…

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More value of low-level instruction for leadership: Margaret Thatcher

The more I teach and coach leadership, the more value I see in low-level instruction. Possibly because people think of leaders having high-level positions in organizations, I find the expect high-level instruction for leadership. I find beginning with the opposite---low-level instruction---more effective. Like piano lessons begin with scales, dance begins footwork, and many sports begin with basic cardiovascular and strength training. Sadly, most of what I learned about leadership in school was high-level and abstract, including Columbia Business School's leadership classes. For someone with little leadership awareness, the classes were invaluable, but looking back, I could have used more basic…

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How to increase empathy, part 2: a model and strategy

Yesterday's post discussed how the world complicates understanding empathy with vague definitions and associating it with neediness and unwanted emotions. Today I'll describe a simple model to understand empathy simply. A simple model for empathy The model you have for something determines how you understand it and how you use it. I'll talk about emotions in general and then empathy in particular A simple model for emotions in general Many people contrast emotions with reason and conclude that emotions are irrational or random. I also used to think so, and that mental model undermined my ability to understand others' emotions…

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How to increase empathy, part 1: why it seems so hard to

You want to improve your empathy because you've heard it's fundamental to leadership, influence, and motivation, but find it hard to define, measure, or see in use, making it hard to improve or learn from others. In other words, empathy is important for working with people, but hard to learn, all the more so for those who lack it most. While I don't pretend to be the most empathetic person, having started with little, I've improved a lot. I can teach you to improve yours. Today let's see how others make it hard. The world makes learning empathy hard when…

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My strategy for success

  • Post category:Leadership

For projects that take more than just what I can do myself, my strategy for success is Do one thing well. By doing it well, Attract people who want to participate. Partner with the capable, motivated ones. If you do things well with capable, motivated people, you get things done.  

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How not to lose your composure: Rational Emotion

Context: Losing your composure hurts you When you lose your composure you don't get promoted. People don't follow you if you lose your composure. You lose your ability to motivate or influence them. If you debate or argue with someone and you lose your composure and they don't---that is, if your emotions become more intense than theirs---you generally lose the argument. People feel emotional reward when someone else's emotions get intense. When you get the other person to lose their composure, you feel a certain reward. If you show intense emotions, you motivate the other person to do again what…

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High status and living by your own rules: Jack Nicholson at the U.S. Open

A friend who grew up in Queens and became the senior ball boy at the U.S. Open told me a story about his friend who worked there too. One day he was working at the door to the U.S. Open's VIP room enforcing the jacket-and-tie dress code. Jack Nicholson came by and started walking into the room wearing shorts and a t-shirt. My friend's friend, following the rules, in a nervous high school student voice, said "I'm sorry Mr. Nicholson. There is a dress code and I'm afraid I have to ask you to follow it." With a polite laugh,…

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Do you rely on authority to lead?

  • Post category:Leadership

Do you rely on authority to lead? The more you rely on authority to lead the more authoritarian you are. Think of authoritarian leaders in the past. Do you want to follow in their footsteps? Relying on authority means using tools of authority, like what comes with your position in the organization, group, or family. Things like hiring, firing, promotions, bonuses, performance-based pay, giving or removing responsibility, perks, and so on. I see many of these things as essential tools to manage people already committed to the cause, but not to lead, inspire, or motivate. If people are already committed…

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How to engage people you lead

The insight below prompted spontaneous applause during a keynote talk I saw at a recent conference. The speaker, whose work brings him sometimes to the White House, was talking about principles of teaching, but you'll see it applies to managing and leading too. He said he was talking to a teacher about creating assignments and test questions. Teachers perennially face challenges of creating problems that the students haven't seen before and can't game. They often resort to abstract problems. Abstract problems address those challenges, but at the cost of relevancy to the students' lives, which leads students to disengage, to…

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Why is “know thyself” hard?

Why is "know thyself" hard? You'd think you'd know yourself better than anything. Here's a major reason why: because almost everyone in the world benefits from you not knowing yourself. Because organizations mediate your interactions with everyone in the world except the dozen or so people closest to you and nearly all organizations benefit from you not knowing yourself. They benefit from manipulating you. Don't believe me? Think of the most influential organizations in the world---governments, religions, corporations, schools, etc. Each says it's right or the best or something like that and all others should be more like it. These claims…

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Leadership without trying to control and change people

  • Post category:Leadership

If you think leadership is about getting people to do what you want, you'll develop a strategy to control and change them. I haven't found much success in trying to change people. If you think leadership is about understanding people and bringing out and supporting them on motivations they already have, you'll develop a strategy of meeting many people and attracting those with similar or complementary goals. Instead of trying to control them, you'll feel more like you unleash them. Instead of trying to change them, you'll tend to coordinate with them. To improve as a leader, you'll develop skills…

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The evolution of a coaching client

  • Post category:Leadership

What happens when you work with a coach? Here is a trend I see with my clients. It's just my impression, not results from an independent third-party, but I'll hold myself accountable by asking my clients to review the post to see if I accurately represented them. What clients get coaching for My clients come with a variety of issues they want to improve, nearly all of them professional---wanting to develop leadership or entrepreneurial skills, problems with their manager, lacking meaning from their work, wanting to switch fields, etc. Comparing with peers sets expectations for what they'll get from coaching.…

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Op/Ed Fridays: military leadership and conscientious objection

I read this commencement speech on leadership given by a military man at the University of Texas at Austin. As much as I found the speech inspiring, I couldn't help but think the following and post it at Hacker News. Here is the full discussion there on the speech, which, as you'll see, contained some controversy. It sounds like an impressive speech. I understand people share his values. The bravest and most meaningful action I saw from a military person was a college roommate who had returned from active duty as a Marine in the Gulf War. I don't know…

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Four ways coaching helps

  • Post category:Leadership

Four reasons, among others, coaching helps, whether you're Michael Jordan, fresh out of school and first making life decisions for yourself, or some place in between: A mirror: The one person you can't see from another person's perspective is yourself, yet you are the one you wish you could see the most. If you lead others, they react to your behavior they see, not what you think or want them to react to, which is most of what you observe of yourself. An effective coach tells you what everyone else sees but you don't. Accountability: When something you want to…

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Hard work is never easy. You can love hard work.

Why do people not get this? If something takes hard work, only hard work will attain it. And hard work is hard. Sure, some work is easy, but some things take hard work. I talk about how much I enjoy doing burpees. More precisely, I like doing them in principle, I like the effects they have on my physical condition and motivation skills, and I like just having finished a set. Before I start every set, I don't want to do them. They're hard. Really hard. While I'm doing them, my body motivates me to stop. I have to work…

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What to say when an organization is considering hiring you

The context: an organization is considering hiring you, maybe as an employee, maybe as a consultant or freelancer, maybe just to collaborate. The challenge: if you read my blog, you don't just want a job where you punch a clock. You want to contribute meaningfully, meaning your vision extends beyond the immediate task they're thinking about. The conflict: if you don't talk about your vision, you don't know how well you fit at the organization. You don't want to join based on a misunderstanding and then find you want to leave soon. But if you do share your vision, they…

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Why I avoid lecturing when I lead and teach

Science Magazine's daily web page, reported research that "Lectures Aren't Just Boring, They're Ineffective, Too, Study Finds." I agree, especially after decades of learning from teachers lecturing on me compared with inquiry-driven project-based learning, which I wrote about recently, "Inquiry-driven project-based learning rocks!," and have been learning about for years. I shared the following on an online discussion about that article. I used inquiry-driven project-based learning -- https://joshuaspodek.com/inquiry-driven-project-based-learnin... -- to teach my class at NYU-Poly, "Entrepreneurial Marketing and Sales" this semester. Experiential learning rocks! I never want to go back to lecturing. I had only recently learned of the teaching…

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I helped a little old lady cross the street

  • Post category:Leadership

The scene: Greenwich Village, crossing the street to my building. A windy rainy spring afternoon. I'm hurrying home. As I cross the street I see a woman, maybe in her 70s, about five feet tall, struggling with an umbrella in the wind. She also has a cane and a handbag. Three things, two hands, and wind. I stop, turn around and ask her if she could use a hand. Yes, she says. She just wants to get across the street. So I take her umbrella in my left hand and offer my right arm for her to hold. She shuffled…

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See Joshua Spodek lead a leadership workshop at General Assembly, May 22

If you don't know about General Assembly, you should. They started as an incubator for startups in New York, then found offering courses met a larger demand and transformed into an educational institution and community, now all over the country, Europe, and Asia. Very exciting, dynamic, entrepreneurial, and building community. They've invited me to speak on leadership next Thursday in Manhattan, 6:30-8pm. Below is the announcement of the event. I look forward to seeing you there. Entrepreneur Meetup Joshua Spodek Adjunct Professor at NYU About This Event You're invited! Join us for a special entrepreneur meetup & workshop. The topic…

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How to follow up a referral

Referrals help get things done. After all, your network is often your greatest asset in any project and referrals increase your network. More valuable than a single referral is someone who will refer you again---a goose that lays golden eggs. You want people like that in your world and you want them motivated to refer you more. Sometimes people get so enamored with a new connection they forget what created the connection: the person who referred them. If they gave you one great referral, they probably have more. My policy for following up a referral: Make the person who referred…

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