The understanding handshake: skipping it undermines your ability to lead

Has anyone ever told you they understood you and then did something that someone who understood you never would? You feel they not only don't understand you, they think they did, which they don't, and told you they did, which was wrong. You write off that person as not understanding you and therefore not worth listening to or following. You might not even consider them worth your time to help them understand you. What's the point if they think they do when they don't? You could easily waste a lot of time with someone like that and get nowhere. Now…

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How to set your angel free

I wrote on my model for personal development and coaching of setting your angel free based on Michelangelo's answer on how he carved David out of a block of marble: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." My model says that since we feel most natural and people are most attracted to us when we behave free of the constraints and motivations others impose on us, our most effective goal in personal growth isn't to put more stuff on us but to free ourselves from society's impediments. (EDIT: I just referred to this…

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See “The Business of Movies with Director Corydon Wagner, winner Golden Lion Cannes 2012” February 27, 6-8pm

I will be presenting Golden Lion Cannes Award-winning Director Corydon Wagner February 27, 6-8pm. As a successful entrepreneur who leads projects with billions of dollars at play, he will present what business leaders can learn from directing and producing film. Sign up here. Below is the announcement text with a link to Wagner's page. Business today forces leaders to form and lead teams under difficult conditions, even where few team members have worked together before, yet all have to create world-class quality on which billion-dollar campaigns hinge. The film industry has worked in those conditions since its start and business…

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People who succeeded despite adversity, part 3: Superbowl Edition

[This post is part of a series on people who succeed despite adversity. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Continuing my series on people who succeeded adversity, I'll start with deaf football player in today's Superbowl, as shown in these two videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW51d5Om614 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQvB7FMkIWg Person Achievement Adversity Derrick Coleman First offensive deaf football player in the NFL, who said "“They told me it couldn’t be done, that I was a lost cause. I was picked on and picked…

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How to lead your manager or boss

Nearly everyone I know wishes their boss or manager led better or at least differently. They act like they are powerless to motivate or influence their boss. Motivating and influencing your boss is one of the main things I work on with clients. It's also one of the most empowering things they experience. Yes, dealing with a hard-to-deal-with manager can be encouraging, not discouraging. I'll give a top-level overview of one technique to lead your manager to support you to do the work you want. With clients we practice the skills so they can practice and make mistakes with me…

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How to create a mentor

If you don't know the value of a mentor, you're missing out on a major way to improve your career and life. You can find elsewhere the benefits they bring, but I'll mention some I've gotten. You can learn from their mistakes They create connections for you They teach you They help you through difficult times Sometimes they do business with you, like investing in your companies You can name-drop knowing them and many more How do you make someone a mentor? Here's the simplest trick in the world that will turn someone you just know into a mentor that…

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Four reasons to see your colleagues as people first and places on organization charts second

Do you see your colleagues more as people or do you work and relate with them more based on their place on the organization chart? Over and over clients come to me with similar perspectives and challenges. Often they see their managers as people to please, whom they want to learn about but never do because they don't feel it their place to get to know him or her... as people they have to earn their place to work with. They see people who report to them as having to perform for them or to earn their places with them.…

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The top sign of a successful seminar series?

  • Post category:Leadership

At the leadership seminar I led in Singapore I remember hearing attendees making job offers to each other. The one in Shanghai led to a group of former strangers forming that continued to meet to follow up the seminar work for months. I haven't checked recently but they might still be meeting. But Saturdays' seminar outdid them by far. An attendee approached me at the end while I was giving out the books. He said he attended one of my seminars a couple years ago. After it ended he talked to a woman who also attended. One thing led to…

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Thank you, attendees and organizers!

I want to thank all the seminar attendees and organizers for a fantastic experience at Saturday's seminar "How to Lead People So They Want You to Lead Them Again." I had given that seminar several times before, but this was my first with fifty people in a room at capacity. Everyone seemed attentive, genuinely interested, and open to experimenting. I only know other people's perspectives what they tell me, but everybody who spoke afterward found the seminar valuable, useful, and engaging. From my perspective, the exercises, simple and brief as they were, gave the most value. That's generally the case…

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More inspiration from Martin Luther King, especially if you haven’t achieved much yet

Perhaps the best honor one person can give another is to understand them and continue their legacy. I'm writing today's post to suggest you can do that with Martin Luther King more than you think. Many people believe Einstein got bad grades, but I understand he didn't. Martin Luther King, Jr got bad grades. He started graduate school at a school near Philadelphia called Crozer. Note among his grades -- the grades of one of the premier public speakers I've heard of -- he got a C in Public Speaking one term and a C+ in another term. He also…

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Protected: Slides for How to Lead People So They Want You to Lead Them Again, CBSACNY, January 18, 2014

  • Post category:Leadership

Hello all, Click here for the slides for the January 18, 2014 presentation, “How to Lead People So They Want You to Lead Them Again”. Please let me know if you have trouble downloading or opening them. Please don't redistribute them. Otherwise, enjoy! And keep in touch! Josh

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Sold to capacity

With bittersweet feelings, I report that Saturday's seminar, “How to Lead People So They Want You to Lead Them Again,” is at capacity for the venue. I expect we'll book future seminars on the topic. I look forward to seeing everyone there. Previous sessions have gotten great reviews. I plan to deliver a great seminar tomorrow.

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A leadership position doesn’t make someone a leader

Many of my clients tell me they want leadership positions. Come to think of it, many of them are already in what most people would call leadership positions. They manage people, direct them, decide on bonuses, hiring, and firing, and so on. But they aren't satisfied with their current positions. They don't know why. They just think they'll like things more when they are higher on the organizational chart or running a company they started. They misunderstand leadership, confusing a position or title with having control over their lives. The more your role consists of obligations over which you have…

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Master introversion AND extroversion

Yesterday I wrote about freeing yourself from constraining beliefs. Today I'll expand on creating new beliefs to free yourself from such constraints. I wanted to illustrate at least one alternative to the standard one-dimensional model of introversion and extroversion that I find impedes self-awareness, understanding, and personal growth and development. Many people continue to believe it because they have no alternative that helps their life more. Others rigidly hold on to their old belief because they can't distinguish between the belief and the object of their belief -- for example, telling people who disagree with their view that they don't…

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“How to Lead People So They Want You to Lead Them Again” — My January 18 Leadership Seminar in NYC

Want to motivate people more effectively? Come to my January 18 seminar, "How to Lead People So They Want You to Lead Them Again," with the Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York, which will be held at NYU-Stern, conveniently located in Greenwich Village. Past attendees of this seminar rated it very highly. Below is the text from the CBSACNY announcement: Effective leaders motivate people from the inside – so people they lead contribute fully and thank the leader for giving them the opportunity to work with them. You can learn this skill too. Isn't someone thanking you for…

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How to bring happiness and emotional reward to your life by analogy with pleasure—the series

I've written, thought, and acted on distinguishing between pleasure, happiness, and emotional reward. I like them all, but sometimes life creates situations where sacrificing one will get more of another. Knowing their differences and similarities helps you figure out how to create the optimal balance of each in your life. For example, lately I've been experimenting with cold showers, although the following applies for any other SIDCHA or challenging activity. It's incredibly important for improving your life if you prefer living to sitting on the couch eating ice cream. Everybody I tell about them who hasn't tried them evaluates the…

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The Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity (SIDCHA) series

I'm so swept up by SIDCHAs I made a series for them. Click here for the SIDCHA series. Do you want success or failure? Do you want to lead yourself or to follow others? Do you want a shot at greatness or mediocrity? Do you want resilience from feeling bad when things don't go your way or do you want your emotions to wreak havoc with you when things inevitably don't go your way? The Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity (SIDCHA) is the foundation for success, personal leadership, your shot at greatness, emotional resilience, and more. While a SIDCHA alone…

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An inspirational SIDCHA video

[This post is part of a series on the Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity (SIDCHA). If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] [It's also part of a series on Cold Showers. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view that series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] About twenty-five days into taking thirty days of cold showers I watched the following video by the guy whose blog motivated me…

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After a difficult decision affecting your team: Eisenhower and the paratroopers before D-day

Yesterday's clip on Ike deciding whether to risk sending tens of thousands of men into potentially pointless suicide missions with losses up to seventy percent didn't show how he followed up. Those paratroopers were the first wave of the invasion, to jump the night before the amphibious invasion. He decided to send them. What do you do when you decide to send tens of thousands of young men possibly to become sitting ducks--seventy percent of them? Ike had spent most of the months preparing for launch working with Generals, diplomats, the King, the President, and so on. The military chain…

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Eisenhower, D-Day, and keeping teams strong while making hard choices

If you think making decisions is hard, how about ones where the lives of thousands of people depend on your choice? Or possibly the free world? I find learning how people succeeded in difficult cases makes doing things well in my world easier. Today's post shows a dramatization of a decision then-General Eisenhower, Ike, had to make in preparing for D-Day. This scene stuck with me since I first saw the movie for a leadership class at Columbia Business School during a unit on decision-making. The context: The clip shows two scenes--one two days before D-Day, the other the next…

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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on John Wooden — one of the best basketball players on one of the best coaches

You can learn a lot about leadership from what great leaders say about people who led them. I'll show a video of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on his college coach, John Wooden, and then describe how it teaches a lot about leadership -- specifically motivating others. First a few words on each. Who are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and John Wooden? Abdul-Jabbar ranks among the best basketball players (and athletes of any sport) ever. According to Wikipedia's page on him, he was a record six-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), a record 19-time NBA All-Star, a 15-time All-NBA selection, and an 11-time NBA All-Defensive…

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The Method — the series

I posted The Method on how to use The Model — my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development — in series form. Here is a link to it. I find the Model and Method the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. The Model tells you how we work. The Method shows you how to use The Model to lead yourself and others and create the lifestyle you want. I recommend reading The Model Series first, then reading this series…

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The Model — the series

I posted The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- in series form. Here is the link to it. I find this Model the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. Why? A model's value comes not from its accuracy but how well it serves its purpose, which improves from effective filtering of information. Street maps, for example, are more useful for driving for having less detail than, say, a satellite picture. Subway maps are more useful for…

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The Method: the series

[EDIT: I covered this series in more depth in Leadership Step by Step, so I recommend the book, but the core is here. I use this technique as a part of my life, basically daily.] Here is The Method on how to use The Model---my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development---in series form. I find the Model and Method the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. The Model tells you how we work. The Method shows you how to…

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Coaching highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students: Two months in Tibet

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Two months in Tibet is a technique that complements accountability for the long-term part of leadership and personal development. It overcomes a major source of resistance for many people trying to change. Some background: One of the major sources of resistance when you try to change is other people. They know they old you. If they like…

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