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Leadership Thought #405 – Limit Your Casualties And Maximize Your Allies

September 25, 2012

In my experience there are two types of leaders: those who build alliances across the span of their career and those who leave casualties in their wake. It’s always a pleasure to work with people who operate in the former category. Leaders require followers and the more people who see themselves in your camp the better. At the end of your career, you will hopefully be able to look back and see many lives that you have changed for the better and a large number of mutually beneficial relationships. Approaching life from a win-win perspective just makes plain common sense.

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Leadership Thought #393 – Don’t Succumb to Temptation

August 1, 2012

The more success you have the more temptations will come your way. It’s easy to start to think of yourself as different or special when you outperform your peers. You may begin to rationalize that the same basic moral rules don’t apply to you, but they do. Character is certainly forged in the fires of adversity. However, you also learn a lot about someone’s character when everything seems to go their way. The saying goes “if you want to know who someone truly is then give them money and power.”

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Leadership Thought #376 – Play to Your Strengths

June 26, 2012

When I used to work for Gallup many years ago they had a great saying, “you can’t put in what God left out.” Many of us spend far too much effort trying to be what we are not instead of focusing on what makes us truly special. We all have natural weaknesses and strengths. Some people are great at details while others seem to effortlessly grasp the big picture. Some people are great thinking on their feet where others thrive using a more methodical approach. There are a few of us with the physical ability to be a professional athlete while others are better at reporting and analyzing the events taking place on the field. The list goes on and on. Of course all of this happens on a continuum, but I believe each and every one of us has gifts and talents that separate us from the pack (if only we are paying attention).

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  • Why strategists should embrace imperfection

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    Video Favorites

  • Virtuous Leadership Part 2: The Four Basic Virtues – Alex Havard

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    Reading Excerpts

  • A Sense of Urgency – John Kotter

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  • High Performance: Lessons From The Best on Becoming Your Best

    Please click on link to download a copy of this summary   SECTION 1 – HIGH-PERFORMANCE MINDSET  Lesson 1: Take Responsibility He (Albert Badura) speculated that when people don’t believe they have what it takes to complete a task successfully, they would see little point in making an initial effort. When these people did attempt […]

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