If the posts collected in Reader are any indication, the hot topic at the moment appears to be gaining attention by taking care how you hold yourself.
It’s been true for a long time that you can do certain things to attract people to you, but they’ve always seemed to escape the notice of image consultants and personal development gurus. If you walk into a room like you belong there, people are going to notice. This is especially useful if you’ve never been to a certain place, among a given group of people, or are shy.
Really, your posture is what tells people who you are. They size you up in a single glance by how you stand or sit. Body language is a powerful nonverbal communicator.
Feel like you aren’t being seen for you think you are. Try adjusting how you present yourself and see what changes.
Posted by Rebecca as Networking, Leadership and management at 9:03 AM EST
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When you manage, you learn you have a few resources that you always need to keep an eye on: time, materials, money, and people. The problem is, you have to manage people completely differently from how you manage time, materials, and money.
I realize I’ve written on this before, but I really think this is where managers who are otherwise good completely fall down.
People are people not human resources. You manage people. Living, breathing, feeling, imperfect, lovable, exasperating people. People will enliven you, deaden you, excite you, disappoint you, thrill you, and contort you into many different shapes. In short people will have a profound impact on you. As a leader, always remember you are also doing this to them. (Source )
People are people. Their skills are resources. It’s their time you’re managing. They’re unpredictable. They’re feeling. Many of them try their best against next to impossible odds.
You cannot manage people the way you manage everything else. You have to remember that you’re a person, and that the “resource” you’re dealing with is a person, too. They deserve the same respect and application of common sense that you would expect.
You also have to remember that if you continually forget that you’re managing people instead of one more resource, people can find somewhere to go where they’ll be seen as someone who has a lot of relevant skills as opposed to a number on a piece of paper.
Posted by Rebecca as Leadership and management at 7:54 AM EDT
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Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.- Peter Drucker
The guys over at Slacker Manager are asking what the difference is between management and leadership. Reading over the comments, it seems that no one agrees. For some people, the two are synonymous. For others, there’s a distinct difference.
For me, managing and leading are two different things. Managing is overseeing things, making sure everything is running smoothly, making decisions and changes to keep everything running smoothly. It’s about processes. It’s operational.
Leadership, on the other hand, is an underlying set of governing principles. Where management is often something everyone can put their finger on, leadership is a bit more elusive. You know someone is a bad manager because they aren’t handling resources well. You suspect someone is a bad leader because it feels like the person never really knows where they’re going, and that translates to confusion in the ranks.
Management is a practice. Leadership is a trait.
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized, Leadership and management at 7:49 AM EDT
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Everybody is going nuts for the Manager’s Cheat Sheet right now, and it’s not hard to see why. 101 common sense tips, right there for the priting and tacking to your wall for reference! What could be better?
Since everyone seems to be picking a couple and blogging them, I decided I’d pick a couple that reflect what I feel cna be the difference between a manager who encourages high turnover and a manager able to retain their employees.
89. Get the facts first. Before you pass judgment on a situation, make sure you have the whole story. Listen to employees and refrain from questioning anyone’s integrity without first ensuring that you’ve gathered all the data.
Because my workplace is what it is, I’ve seen what happens when this one is actually applied. The manager arms themself with the facts, and then can best address the issue, be it a gap in a program, a complaint, whatever. And if the manager is going based on what they see, then it’s imperative to talk to the employees who are actually involved to get all of the information. There may have been something going on the manager couldn’t see from a distance.
I’ve also seen what happens when the manager doesn’t bother to research all of the facts. Nothing destroys your credibility as a manager faster than to tell someone you’re yelling at that you couldn’t be bothered to actually look into what happened. Especially when the situation is one that could be neatly mediated between all concerned parties just by taking a quick look at the facts.
40. Know your subordinates’ jobs. You don’t want to be caught with inferior job knowledge.
Along the same lines, nothing loses an employee’s respect faster that hearing, “I have no clue what you do, but I’m going to tell you how to do your job. You know, the one you normally do just fine.” Learn what people do. Learn how they do it. This puts you in a better position to help the employee out if something comes out, and allows you to be sensitive to their issues.
Amazingly, by knowing what your employees do, it also allows you to match up the right task to the person with the best experience/job scope.
I know I did them out of order, but I just wanted to address them in this order. Just doing these two things can go far in retaining employees, making the manager’s life simpler because training and “ramping up” takes a lot of time and resources.
An aware and alert manager is a good thing.
Posted by Rebecca as Leadership and management at 8:06 AM EDT
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I had originally thought to review Brazen Careerist and Career Intensity separately, but I’ve realized they really go together. Both focus on taking charge or your career.
Penelope Trunk, writer of Brazen Careerist, really has a bright casual tone that will likely resonate more with younger readers. Her rules are organized step by step from starting the job search clear through to management, all in 200 pages. She focuses on showing off your best side without running yourself into the ground, and making connections while being authentic. It’s good, relevant advice at a time when I think a lot of people are trying to figure out how to move in their professional paths. I came away with a ton of notes to help me deal with my own lost career.
David Lorenzo, author of Career Intensity and the blog by the same name, focuses more on how to move a stuck career you’re already in. He classifies workers as being on of four types: Workplace Warrior, Management Maverick, Intrepreneur (which is where I fit in the grid), and Entrepreneur. Lorenzo then spends the rest of the book speaking mainly to those who fall into the Workplace Warrior and Management Maverick categories, providing thoughtful advice on how to get unstuck and enjoy the career enjoyed by Intrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs. He encourages more strategic risk-taking and managing your image, two very important components of a successful career.
The two read incredibly well together as a continuous flow through career stages, both providing their own voice and ideas on a variety of topics. I’d actually recommend that if you choose to read them, you do read them together and start with Brazen Careerist. You can also read them separately and come away with great advice to help you jolt your own career.
Posted by Rebecca as Changing careers, Skill building, Networking, Leadership and management, Work skills, self-analysis at 8:13 AM EDT
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I have a great deal of respect for Rosa Say because she so often says so elegantly exactly what needs to be said on a topic.
Recently, she shared her twelve rules for self-leadership, and I think they nicely sum up core practices that can help leaders become great leaders. These twelve rules can help make a leader more authentic in their practices because they are essentially leading by modeling, and it’s been my experience that’s the easiest way to lead any group.
As my quote collection recently reminded me, leadership is action. It’s not a place for “Do as I say, not as I do.” When you act, when you embrace these ideas for leading yourself, you are creating a situation where people can clearly see your vision. They don’t feel conflicted. They might even feel better, not only about your leadership, but also their role in your organization.
Governing yourself, doing what you expect others to do, strengthens your leadership and your credibility.
Posted by Rebecca as Leadership and management at 8:27 AM EDT
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Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.- Peter Drucker
Just in case you were wondering…
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized, Leadership and management at 7:38 AM EST
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People who feel respected as experts tend to respect their own serious nature more and more. They understand that they can always kid around when they want to, but they don’t have to.- Carol Bly
The way you coax a shy kid out of his shell at school is to give him something to be the expert at. Something he shines at on his own. It’s the same way you sharpen up the class clown.
It’s the same way in the workplace. Find that one talent, that one bit of expert knowledge, that makes a person unique, and then use that to let the person shine. Do it for an entire team, and you soon have this great team of experts who are willing and wanting to share their knowledge.
Of course, make sure they know it’s okay to have some fun while being the “go-to” person for their topic.
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized, Leadership and management at 8:02 AM EST
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Sorry about the headline. I simply couldn’t resist!
The Business Opportunities Weblog has recently been filled with gems. (I feel like it’s been forever since I linked to that blog.) One of my favorites was this list of principles that contribute to success.
1. Clarity: You must be absolutely clear on who you are and what you want.
2. Competence: To be truly successful and happy, you must be very good at what you do.
3. Constraints: Between you and your goal, whatever it is, there will always be a constraint or limiting factor.
4. Creativity: The essence of successful business is innovation.
5. Concentration: Your ability to concentrate single-mindedly on the most important thing and stay at it until it is complete is an essential prerequisite for success.
6. Courage: It takes tremendous courage to take the entrepreneurial risks necessary to become wealthy.
7. Continuous Action: Perhaps the most outwardly identifiable quality of a successful person is that he or she is in continuous motion.
They’re all good principles to help you get farther. In some ways, this list actually reminds me of the leadership traits I had to learn in leadership development class in high school- candor, commitment, competence, and courage. You’ll notice that two of them show up on this list for success.
Hmm…I wonder if that’s a coincidence.
Posted by Rebecca as Leadership and management at 8:18 AM EST
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“Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and action.”
– Harold S. Deneen
“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”
- Abraham Lincoln
“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”
- Gloria Steinem
Posted by Rebecca as Leadership and management at 8:22 AM EST
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