Gifted Leaders

What Matters vs. What Merely Annoys

"The capacity to see the big picture is perhaps most important as an antidote to the variety of psychic woes brought forth by the remarkable prosperity and plentitude of our times. Many of us are crunched for time, deluged by information, and paralyzed by the weight of too many choices. The best prescription for these modern maladies may be to approach ones's own life in a contextual, big-picture fashion - to distinguish between what really matters and what merely annoys." - Daniel Pink, in A Whole New Mind

To distinguish between what really matters and what merely annoys ... now there's a wake-up call for all of us! How much of an average day do we devote to people and things that really matter to us vs. other things that, if we are honest with ourselves, fall into the "have to" or "ought to" categories?

Daniel Goleman’s research with leaders demonstrates that one cognitive ability, "pattern recognition," distinguishes star performers from average ones. This critical ability allows them to pick out the meaningful trends from an overabundance of information around them and to think strategically.  These individuals, he found, "relied less on deductive, if-then reasoning" and more on intuitive, contextual reasoning.

How are you at "pattern recognition"?  How do you distinguish between what really matters and what merely annoys?

To develop your skill in this area, read the chapter on "Symphony" in Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind.

Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute

“The real power in an organization is within its people. By learning to release that power, an organization can be a powerful force in the business world.” - Mark Robbins, Director, Professional Development, Robbins-Gioia, Inc.

Empowerment offers the potential for tapping into a wellspring of underutilized human capacity that must be harnessed if organizations are to survive in today’s increasingly complex and dynamic world. Indeed, empowerment relies on an explicit recognition that people in organizations have tremendous power in their experience, knowledge, and internal motivation.

“When people go to work, they shouldn’t have to leave their hearts at home.” - Betty Bender

To create an empowered workplace, management’s role in organizations must move from a command-and-control mind-set to a responsibility-oriented and supportive environment in which all employees have the opportunity to take initiative and ownership and to do their best.

Empowerment has moved beyond the fad stage and become essential for effective organizations in today’s dynamic and complex world.  Empowerment is definitely achievable, but the journey is not for the weak in spirit.

What have you done to help create an empowered workplace?  What’s working for you?  What advice can you give to others who are on the same journey?

Source: Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute – Engage People and Watch Your Organization Soar!  by Ken Blanchard, John P. Carlos, and Alan Randolph

Margin or Marginless?

“Marginless is not having time to finish the book you’re reading on stress.  Margin is having time to read it twice. Marginless is our culture. Margin is counter-culture, having some space in your life and schedule. Marginless is the disease of our decade and margin is the cure.”

This quote and the information below are from the January 5, 2009 edition of the Purpose-Driven Life Daily Devotional

A lot of people are on overload and headed for a crash. Consider these statistics:

• People now sleep 2½ fewer hours each night than people did a hundred years ago.
• The average work week is longer now than it was in the 1960s.
• The average office worker has 36 hours of work piled up on his or her desk. It takes us three hours a week just to sort through it and find what we need.
• We spend eight months of our lives opening junk mail, two years of our lives playing phone tag with people, and five years waiting for people who are late for meetings.

At least in the U.S., we're a piled-on, stretched-to-the limit society that is chronically rushed, chronically late, and chronically exhausted. Many of us feel like Job did when he said, “I have no peace! I have no quiet! I have no rest! And trouble keeps coming.” (Job 3:26 GWT).

Overload comes when we have too much activity in our lives, too much change, too many choices, too much work, too much debt, too much media exposure.

We’re stressed by information overload; we’re stressed by accessibility overload – we’re connected all the time. Simply put, we’re stressed by the pace of life.

Is there a solution? Yes. The solution is to put some margin into your life. Margin is breathing room. It’s keeping a little reserve that you’re not using up. It’s not going from one meeting to the next to the next with no space in between.

Margin is the space between your load and your limit. But most of us are far more overloaded than we can handle, and there is no margin for error in our lives.

What can you do to create a healthy amount of margin in your life?

The Upside of Down

"Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance." - Bruce Barton

This month’s Gifted Leaders e-Newsletter looks at “The Upside of Down: Why Failure is Good for You”.  Here are some additional quotes on the subject:

"Everybody fails. It’s part of the process that leads us to maturity and success. Most successful entrepreneurs have been through a number of failures in life, but they usually don’t think of their failures as defeats. They think of them as lessons." - Os Hillman, author of “Upside of Adversity”

"The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart." Robert Ingersoll, Civil War Veteran and American political leader

"I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot . . . and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why . . . I succeed." - Michael Jordan, NBA Superstar

How can you begin to look more at the upside of down and view failure differently?