Listen to the results of my online leadership course: the full interview, part 5/9

[Another post superseded this one by posting the full interview and the highlights. I’ll copy that post here: Over the past six months I created an online leadership course, The Fundamentals of Leadership. I interviewed a student who took it. Listen to the interview highlights and full course. If you want to learn to lead yourself or others better, or to improve your life, listen to the interview and see if it fits your interests. Click here for the interview highlights (about ten minutes) Click here for the full interview (about an hour) Here it is in nine 5–8-minute segments:…

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Listen to the results of my online leadership course: the full interview, part 4/9

[Another post superseded this one by posting the full interview and the highlights. I’ll copy that post here: Over the past six months I created an online leadership course, The Fundamentals of Leadership. I interviewed a student who took it. Listen to the interview highlights and full course. If you want to learn to lead yourself or others better, or to improve your life, listen to the interview and see if it fits your interests. Click here for the interview highlights (about ten minutes) Click here for the full interview (about an hour) Here it is in nine 5–8-minute segments:…

Continue ReadingListen to the results of my online leadership course: the full interview, part 4/9

Listen to the results of my online leadership course: the full interview, part 3/9

[Another post superseded this one by posting the full interview and the highlights. I’ll copy that post here: Over the past six months I created an online leadership course, The Fundamentals of Leadership. I interviewed a student who took it. Listen to the interview highlights and full course. If you want to learn to lead yourself or others better, or to improve your life, listen to the interview and see if it fits your interests. Click here for the interview highlights (about ten minutes) Click here for the full interview (about an hour) Here it is in nine 5–8-minute segments:…

Continue ReadingListen to the results of my online leadership course: the full interview, part 3/9

Listen to the results of my online leadership course: the full interview, part 2/9

[Another post superseded this one by posting the full interview and the highlights. I'll copy that post here: Over the past six months I created an online leadership course, The Fundamentals of Leadership. I interviewed a student who took it. Listen to the interview highlights and full course. If you want to learn to lead yourself or others better, or to improve your life, listen to the interview and see if it fits your interests. Click here for the interview highlights (about ten minutes) Click here for the full interview (about an hour) Here it is in nine 5–8-minute segments:…

Continue ReadingListen to the results of my online leadership course: the full interview, part 2/9

Listen to the results of my online leadership course: the full interview, part 1/9

[Another post superseded this one by posting the full interview and the highlights. I'll copy that post here: Over the past six months I created an online leadership course, The Fundamentals of Leadership. I interviewed a student who took it. Listen to the interview highlights and full course. If you want to learn to lead yourself or others better, or to improve your life, listen to the interview and see if it fits your interests. Click here for the interview highlights (about ten minutes) Click here for the full interview (about an hour) Here it is in nine 5–8-minute segments:…

Continue ReadingListen to the results of my online leadership course: the full interview, part 1/9

Highlights from interviewing the first student of my new online leadership course

[Another post superseded this one by posting the full interview and the highlights. I'll copy that post here: Over the past six months I created an online leadership course, The Fundamentals of Leadership. I interviewed a student who took it. Listen to the interview highlights and full course. If you want to learn to lead yourself or others better, or to improve your life, listen to the interview and see if it fits your interests. Click here for the interview highlights (about ten minutes) Click here for the full interview (about an hour) Here it is in nine 5–8-minute segments:…

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The value of technique in leadership

An actor told me about a time he forgot his line on Broadway in front of about a thousand people, some who paid hundreds of dollars for their seats. He was in his forties and had acted for decades. Still, sometimes you forget your lines. What do you do when a thousand people are watching you and you don't know what to say? Most of us have faced not knowing what to say or do, though usually only in front of one or two people, which is more than enough to paralyze us with anxiety. Actors know about a technique…

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My next seminar, January 12 at The Yard in NYC!

My next leadership seminar will be January 12 at The Yard, a premier office space and coworking community designed to support business growth whose environment promotes creativity, collaboration, and connections. Perfect for my seminar! If you've thought about attending one of my seminars, this will be a great chance in a beautiful space, conveniently located. Click here for testimonials.   HOW TO LEAD PEOPLE ...so they want you to lead them again. ~ Leadership Workshop ~ Click here to register Why you should attend You’ve ascended to a position of leadership, but how can you ensure that the people you…

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The Meaning of Leadership — the class

NYU posted my course next semester: "The Meaning of Leadership." I designed it to cover developing the fundamental skills of leadership as comprehensively as one semester allows. I expect many students to find it one of if not the best class they ever take. From the syllabus, the course description begins: The Meaning of Leadership will prepare you to practice effective leadership and teamwork in a variety of contexts—business, politics, community organizing, entrepreneurship, sports, teaching, sales, coaching, etc—without relying on authority, status, hierarchy, or other external conditions. You will learn to create more meaning, value, importance, and purpose in your…

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You learn behavior through experience, not people telling you what to do

Increasingly my answers to questions about certain topics are not to give information but to tell a process by which the person can find out the answers for themselves. I read a lot of leadership, professional development, and personal development books. Almost all tell people principles instead of how to learn things themselves. Principles sound great, but people who know the principles didn't learn them from being told them, they learned them from doing them. In other fields people know to develop skills through practice---sports, art, dance, music, math, etc. I hope to see leadership change from thinking someone can…

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The Model: 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 The Model as a part of my life, basically daily.] Here is 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. Click in the table of contents to the left for each page. 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…

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What happens when you develop empathy and compassion skills

Each exercise in my seminars teaches a fundamental, useful leadership skill. Collectively, when you practice them more than a few times, they teach empathy and compassion, two critically important skills if you want people to want you to lead them. With my one-on-one coaching clients I can see their empathy and compassion skills develop over weeks and months. I've noticed patterns. At first people feel odd asking about emotions and passions, especially at work. "Can I use the word passion?," they ask. "Is it appropriate at work? It will feel funny." They ask if using someone's emotions to motivate them…

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How to start to lead

The more I teach and coach leadership and entrepreneurship, the more I see them as sets of behavioral skills anyone can learn. Behaving in certain ways results in people choosing to follow you. Behave otherwise and they won't. There's no magic to it. The question isn't if you can behave like effective leaders do. The question is if you choose to learn and if you find effective learning technique. Your behavior is backed up by beliefs, experience, skills, and so on, but ultimately you transmit all those other things through your behavior. Other people can't sense your thoughts or see…

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How do you motivate someone who claims to have no motivation?

An attendee from a recent seminar asked a common question I get about learning other people's passions: How do you motivate someone who claims to have no motivation? He did the exercise in this post, "How to make someone feel understood: the Confirmation Cycle," where you ask the other person their passion. He wrote: How do you deal with the "I don't know" when you ask people what they enjoy or what they're passionate about? I found this in trying out this exercise with several family members, I believe it's related to the idea that as a leader, it's your job…

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See Joshua Spodek at Cole Haan, Flavorpill, and General Assembly’s Inspiration Workshop, September 6

Post-event update: see a write-up and video of the event here -- http://flavorwire.com/477424/history-begins-here-starting-a-legacy-in-nyc. Everybody who attended it seemed to love it. My event had a packed room with enthusiastic participants. I made several great connections at my event and the others I attended. I hope to see you next time. See me next weekend The event is free and there's lots more than just me presenting on leadership. My part is next Saturday, September 6, 12:30pm-2:30pm. I'll talk on leadership and lead attendees through some exercises to develop leadership skills. People describe more workshops as inspiring and I teach others…

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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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A model for one of the most valuable skills related to beliefs

[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.] This series covered a lot about flexibility with your beliefs -- the ability to try out believing something new and letting the new belief crowd out the old one. Doing so is hard because believing means believing something is right. If you don't get it, changing beliefs is hard because you'll think it means believing what…

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A model for intuition, especially in complicated times

[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.] Leading in complicated times can be challenging. Many people prefer not to lead because of the risk of visible failure. Others thrive under pressure. They don't have better odds of success than others. If you can become like that, people will want you around. Even if all you can do is stay calm beyond where others…

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A model to think deeper

[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.] Have you gotten to consider and tackle the important things in your life? Do some important issues still elude you? Do you still spend time in the unimportant parts of life? Or even when on the important parts, do the urgent fires take more of your time than you want? Urgency Importance Important, not urgent Important,…

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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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What happens when you change beliefs

[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.] The movie Moneyball and the book it's based on illustrate how new beliefs take root and can challenge and crowd out your old beliefs. Today's post is long, but the movie very well illustrates some stages and the emotional challenge of adopting a new belief, facing and overcoming resistance, and how it can lead to effective…

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A model that answers all of life’s most important questions

[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.] Answering all of life's most important questions is a tall order, but if you've read this web page long, you know the value I put on the Model, my model for human motivations and emotions. The Model forms the foundation of what I consider the best way to view and live life. A model that answers all…

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A model for direction in leadership and personal development

[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.] We are a social species. Most of what we care about in our environments are other people. Maybe I'm different than most people because I spent so much of my life not working on or valuing social skills -- a PhD in physics doesn't force you to learn social skills. Learning them later in life, I…

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A model to promote responsibility

[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.] Today's model polarizes. That is, it doesn't build consensus or bring people together. While building consensus and bringing people together may sometimes help in politics, if you want to stick to your values, you won't improve your life by living partly by your values while mixing in some other peoples' values you disagree with. So today's…

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A model to find the best in someone, including yourself

[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.] Today's belief helps overcome a challenge in helping someone's growth. It also helps you shine as a leader or mentor. When you lead or mentor someone or work to improve yourself, it helps to track progress, but you often can't. You can for external things, like how fast they run 100 meters, how they scored on…

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