What you can learn from a film director

The reason we on the Distinguished Leaders Committee of Columbia Business School's alumni club booked a director for this evening's talk was something one of last year's speakers, Rita McGrath, said. If you're near New York City, I recommend you come (click here for details of location and how to sign up, you don't have to have graduated from Columbia to join). She pointed out that as people work at companies for shorter times, their personal networks that they maintain become more important. That is, someone you hire in their twenties today may not have worked at any company for…

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Context, Action, Result (CAR): answering interview questions and describing experience effectively

[This post is part of a series on Communication Skills Exercises for Business and Life. 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.] Has an interviewer ever begun a question with "Can you tell me a time when ..." or asked you about your experience? Such questions arise in job interviews, with people considering promoting you, when seeking funding, even dating, to mention a few places. I'll take a lot of the guesswork out of how to answer. Your answer has…

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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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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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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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“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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Coaching works.

I've been coaching clients one-on-one for a few years, as readers have noted from my references to clients. I've coached nearly a hundred clients by now, most of whom found me through word of mouth. I added a new coaching page to this site to help people find coaching with me. Why? My clients succeed. That’s why I love coaching. You can achieve more too. Because coaching works. I have a coach who helps me Identify my priorities Tell me how I look from an outside perspective (the one person you can't see from another person's perspective is yourself, the…

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A risk that paid off and learning from it

Here's an anecdote from a woman named Elle Luna: I was using Uber all the time in San Francisco, even though I hated the design. And then I went to the Crunchies awards ceremony and at a post-ceremony event, where I was in a ball gown, I saw the CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, sitting at the bar. I was three whiskeys deep at this point and I walked up to him and said, “I use Uber all the time and I absolutely hate the app. I think you should bring me in to fix it.” He replied, “Oh, yeah?…

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Reminder: See my leadership seminar this weekend!

Brought to you by the Distinguished Leaders committee of the Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York (copying the following announcement from that site): Leadership Through Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence In a weekend, learn how to develop your personal leadership skills, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence through the latest advances in cognitive behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and positive psychology. While business schools and corporations are increasingly focusing on personal leadership, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence as foundations for leading others, many MBAs never had the opportunity to take a formal course in personal leadership. Joshua Spodek, MBA, PhD, has developed a…

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People who succeeded despite adversity, part 2

[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.] Ask yourself which helps more — having advantages or learning to overcome adversity? I base this series on noticing how many extremely successful people had problems that mediocre people claim hold them back. Sure, many successful people emerged from privileged backgrounds and sure, some social problems keep many people from any chance at success, but if you’re reading this blog…

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Leadership problems today and a call to action

[I alluded to this topic before. I still have to write it up formally and edit it more than a daily post allows. I hope it gets the main ideas across. Please contact me if it interests you.] You only have to read the news to see the problems Do I have to convince anyone that we have many people in leadership positions who lead ineffectively? You only have to read the headlines. As I'm writing these words the New York Times' top headline is about a spy scandal in which the top person at the NSA lied to Congress,…

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Another awesome success — Museum Hack and Nick Gray

An awesome side benefit of writing daily is that awesome people find you. Recently a guy wrote to tell me he liked my writing and invited me to participate in what seemed like a crazy project, but turned out to be one of the most awesome things I've done in New York City in a long time. And I've done a lot of awesome things in New York City. It's an amazing entrepreneurial story too -- the kind we love, which is why I, who endorse entrepreneurship and believe opportunities are everywhere, am sharing it with you. He started doing…

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See me on Leadership through Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness

Brought to you by the Distinguished Leaders committee of the Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York (copying the following announcement from that site): Leadership Through Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence In a weekend, learn how to develop your personal leadership skills, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence through the latest advances in cognitive behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and positive psychology. While business schools and corporations are increasingly focusing on personal leadership, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence as foundations for leading others, many MBAs never had the opportunity to take a formal course in personal leadership. Joshua Spodek, MBA, PhD, has developed a…

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The risks of someone calling you smart and how to avoid them

When I was a budding entrepreneur, recently having earned my PhD in astrophysics, people would often introduce me as a rocket scientist. At first I enjoyed the praise. In time I found being called intelligent didn't help me in business. By "in business" I mean in business roles with leadership and decision-making. People talk about intelligence as valuable in business and some behave so, but I came to conclude successful businesspeople, especially investors, didn't value intelligence as someone's primary value. On the contrary, I came to find many venture capitalists and other investors viewed people with intelligence as their primary…

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What kind of leadership is this: Obama fighting for less accountability and more centralized power

Leadership and politics overlap. I generally try not to take political positions on this blog to make it accessible to more people, but the push to increase surveillance and erode protections like habeas corpus seem enough like ineffective leadership that I feel compelled to cover them. In response to this article stating that Congress granted the president the authority to arrest and hold individuals accused of terrorism without due process under the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act of 2012], but Mr. Obama said in an accompanying signing statement that he will not abuse these privileges to keep American citizens imprisoned…

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“Needs as understood”: How to start sales presentations — and conversations where you want to influence someone

I've written before about a student group from Columbia Business School I still contribute to long after graduation called InSITE that promotes entrepreneurship and connects students at several schools including Columbia, NYU, Harvard, and Stanford to entrepreneurs. A recent post on InSITE's blog by Lukasz Strozek, Stanford Business School 2014, described a challenge common in product development and entrepreneurship. It reminded me of a great solution I'll write below applicable to many situations where you want to influence people. The challenge Read that post for the details, but broadly it points out We care about products we create We want…

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My Seminar on Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence and Self-awareness in four evening sessions starting June 17, 6:30pm-9:30pm in New York

I'll be leading the next session of my leadership seminar in New York in June. I'm experimenting as four three-hour evening sessions Session 1: Monday, June 17 Session 2: Wednesday, June 19 Session 3: Monday, June 24 Session 4: Wednesday, June 26 I'll give the same full attention I do for a weekend session. Sign up here. Here's the course description: What You’ll Learn If you don't know how to lead, you can only do what you can do yourself. If you can lead, you can achieve anything anyone else did with a team. Even if you want only to…

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A model to get more sales and to stay calm under pressure

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” 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.] Do you want to get more sales? Even if you don't sell anything, you probably propose things, pitch things, apply for things, and so forth. Do you want to be more successful there and to close more? I learned today's model in sales class in business school, but it applies to many cases -- nearly any…

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How not to overspend on things you don’t want

I can't resist reposting a comment I posted on the forum of one of my favorite other blogs, Mr. Money Mustache. I'm reposting it because two other readers rated my response highly, one giving my response this animated image, making me proud. The post I responded to Alright mustachians [the term for people in the Mr. Money Mustache community who practice his principles of not spending money on stuff that doesn't improve your life] I need your sage advice. In the last three months I have really cut down on my bad habits. I pack my own lunch to work…

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Leadership in garbage we can learn from

I just read that Sweden is separating their trash so effectively, they're buying garbage from other countries. That is, their reducing-reusing-and-recycling programs work so well, their waste-incineration program is running low. Needless to say, reducing waste reduces pollution more than incinerating garbage, so one program starving the other helps the environment. According to Phys.org, Europe's average amount of trash ending up as waste if 38 percent. Sweden's is 1 percent. I shudder at what the United States' is. My home country doesn't lead in this area. It follows. Probably embarrassingly, at least for people who don't like to pollute the…

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An entrepreneurial example of leading by example

In September, 2001, the company I co-founded, Submedia, was installing its first display in Atlanta for our first big launch. We anticipated a lot of press. Giving away part of how the story ends, we did get a lot of media attention. The night before launch was crazy -- we had a few hours to finish installing the display, we had to prepare for the Fire Marshall's inspection the morning before the launch, and we had national, Atlanta-based, and possibly some New York-based press scheduled to attend the launch. At the pace we had worked before, we'd need more than…

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Protected: Starting a leadership school

The project I am starting a school for leadership. I have a business plan and early seed funding. My first goal is to create an online presence. I have started other successful businesses before. The project is driven by the large demand for leaders and lack of supply. The main institutions teaching leadership are business schools, military schools, and corporations (only to their employees). While successful and effective, they focus on areas useful only to large corporations and the military. This leadership school will teach aspects of leadership common to all applications, without focusing on banking, finance, consulting, war, etc.…

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INSEAD leadership seminar

When I met Jose Gaztelu, my business school classmate and friend who did the bulk of the organizing for this weekend's INSEAD leadership seminar in Singapore, at the hotel Friday, he asked how many people I thought were signed up. When my flight had taken off that morning from Shanghai it was ten or twelve so I guessed about a dozen. "Thirty-two" So the attendees filled the room -- a great group. They were attentive, asked great questions, and started applying the material before the seminar ended. When I mentioned burpees, they wanted to get me to do a few…

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