- A. Smith Blog - Leadership in Life
Leaders get involved in difficult speaking situations. Great leaders shape the conversation to everyone’s benefit.
Some conversations are studded with “gotcha” risk. Media interviews. Tense negotiations. Q&A with an aggressive or angry employee. Convincing a group about a major change initiative with significant risks to the status quo. You need to shape the conversation as a leader. [Read more…] about How Leaders Shape the Conversation
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” – British historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson in 1957. We call this Parkinson’s Law even though it’s an observation of human behavior, not a principle of physics.
Two observations: [Read more…] about How Leaders Can Exploit Parkinson’s Law
3000 years ago Solomon wrote: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) There are new technologies, but not new behaviors. Every leader facing a “new” business, organizational, technological, social, or political situation can be assured that there are lessons to learn from history.
Studying history–almost any history–will strengthen your ability to discern patterns in the swirl of current events, and parse signal from noise.
I recommend leaders follow a 3-part practice: [Read more…] about How Leaders Learn by Studying History — New Technologies but Not New Behaviors
