Leadership and personal development and school

In my seminar yesterday I mentioned "plays well with others" may be one of the most valuable skills in adulthood for team-based activities. Yet we treat it as a joke for children, or at best a euphemism implying the student in question doesn't do well academically. Have you ever learned something amazing while developing yourself as a leader or person and wondered why leadership and personal development isn't taught in school? School taught me valuable things like math, science, history, and so on. It vaguely addressed things like physical fitness. What didn't school teach? When I lead seminars on self-awareness,…

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My next leadership seminar: June 4 and 5 at the New School (jointly with Columbia Business School)

(Some details TBD, but mark your calendars. The room is beautiful and centrally located. Please contact me with any questions. I'll update details as they are determined.)   LEADERSHIP THROUGH SELF-AWARENESS AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE At a time when businesses and business schools seek to learn from designers and design schools seek to prepare "students to be leaders in their professions and society", cross-pollination between communities over common interests is as valuable as ever. Personal leadership skills, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence have emerged as common and fundamental to both communities. In a weekend, learn how to develop these skills using recent…

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When you want to feel fake

Why would anyone want to feel fake? When do you want to feel fake? Developing leadership skills or other types of personal development aren't like learning typical how-to skills. When you develop leadership skills or develop personally, you change how everyone sees you and how you see everyone. You change as a person, in other words. You used to be person A and expect to become person B. As person A you knew what environments, beliefs, and behaviors brought you reward. You knew how to enjoy life. As the person B you will become you expect to know what environments,…

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How to find strengths in your weaknesses

Do you have weaknesses you just can't seem to lose? Maybe you interrupt too much? Or solve problems when you should be building relationships? This perspective may help. When clients tell me about their weaknesses, I generally ask them for examples of how the skills in question worked or didn't work. A common pattern emerges, though it's not universal. One example is my student/client with great listening skills who interrupted a lot. Anyone conversing with him could tell his comprehension and recall were excellent, so he wasn't weak in that area. Yet he got poor reviews. Why? Because he interrupted.…

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Perfection in leadership and how to improve

Leadership does not require perfection -- far from it. Effective leaders don't have to be strong in many leadership skills at all. Effective leadership emerges more from knowing your strengths and weaknesses than on having many strengths. Speed and strength are valuable to any position in football, but a quarterback doesn't need strength like a lineman. And a lineman doesn't need to be as fast as a running back. A quarterback trying to be as strong as a lineman is wasting his time and hurting his team. Using Columbia Business School's breakdown of leadership skills into the six categories, for…

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Why learn leadership (even if you don’t want to be a leader)

"What's so important about leadership? Why learn to be a leader? What if I don't want to be one?" I get these questions a lot in my seminars and in conversation, often preceded by "What is it with you Americans?" I often let others in the audience answer the question. Developing leadership skills reveals their value, whether you use them to lead people or not, so a few people answering usually effectively addresses the questions. I answer with a few perspectives. First, people like to interact with people with solid leadership skills -- that is, they are attractive -- and…

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