More on leadership

Who gets two days to do nothing but think about what leadership means? This was a valuable time for reflection and maybe my employer gets something out of it as well.

Some more observations about workshop programs. These trainers love flipboards. They hand you markers and give you posters to write on. So you are brainstorming in big bold words and they look like they're doing something. You are empowered.

Also this trainer had a personal advisory board. Apparently, she has six people she has in her life that she has her advise her on any big decisions on her life. At least once a month, she has a one on one session with one member of her board and at least once a year she holds a board meeting where she invites them all over for dinner to talk about her. This makes me laugh that a person teaching about leadership would do this. Can't she make up her own mind? But than I thik about some decisions I have made and how they may have been different if I had listened to friends or family. And I certainly know people who could use help making big decisions. Maybe it works for some people, but I'll choose my own path. Wifey is the only committee I need for most decisions.

So my homework was about inspiring a vision. There was a very systematic exercise about looking at your past life and looking at where you are to figure out where you are going. Looking for themes in your life. This was difficult for me. For the most part, I just seem to float along and I'm pretty lucky so things work out. So in the car ride about two minutes from the hotel, I finally came up with my theme. Be Flexible and be prepared. By being flexible, I mean take it as it comes, just like I have most of my life, by being prepared I mean, you need to be ready when an opportunity does come up. Sort of how, I just lucked into my current position when a friend told me about it. I'll need to work on it a little more, but I do want to bring that vision back to my team and see what they think.

Lesson 3 was about challenging the process. Searching for opportunities and taking risks to fix things.

Lesson 4 was about enabling people. We talked about fostering collaboration and empowering the people we work with by giving them power and supporting them.

The last lesson was about encouraging people and all the other things taught in kindergarten. Say please and thank you and making people feel appreciated.

When I add it up, I don't know how I survived two years of managing people without this sort of thinking. And I also figured, there's a lot I need to learn. There are a lot of ways I can improve and I feel I owe it to my team to try those things.

They're in for it now. We're in for a lot of growth together.