The following is a guest piece by this month’s guest blogger, Roberta Hill. Roberta “complains” she has too many fingers in too many pies. It seems the older she gets the more interests she discovers. Lately she has been calling herself a digital nomad. She writes three blogs, runs an online assessment business and maintains a coaching practice. In her real life, parenting is her recent challenge. She tells me, it is the most worthwhile, time consuming and difficult role she has ever assumed. You can read more of her insights on leadership and personal development on her blog.
While the focus on leadership is important, it is my opinion that good management is a lost skill in “Corporate America”. This may be a reflection on the well being of our family structure as well. Leadership is an interesting topic and since taking on the role of a parent, I have found that the family is the best microcosm of larger corporate organizations.
I have always considered myself a pretty good manager and by association tend to assume I am a good leader. Don’t misunderstand me; I do recognize the difference. I stepped out of the corporate world years ago and my formal role of managing others ended. Since then, I have been the Chair on a few non-for-profit boards. I have coordinated large projects with consultants. I coach executives on how to be global leaders. Surely I know how to lead! Looking at how well I parent, I often wonder.
In my family, I organize, plan, control and direct.1 I use my power effectively and I balance coercion, reward, position and even informational influence. Things get done. However, I am not sure I inspire my children. I can motivate then to do what I think needs doing; but not sure I fully engage them. Am I stuck in the sixties? Am I a good manager but not a modern leader?
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One thing I enjoy sharing through my writings is looking at how everyday events can provide us with valuable lessons on leadership, workplace interactions, as well as changing how we view our present-day circumstances. It’s for this reason I’m sure many of you won’t be surprised that I want to share with you my thoughts about leadership that were inspired from celebrating Mother’s Day.
As was the case in most households over the past weekend, our house was abuzz with activity surrounding the celebration of a day that honours mothers everywhere. Watching the excitement and intensity my children have for planning and orchestrating the events for Mother’s Day, I realized there are some important connections between mothers and leadership.
Granted, motherhood is not something one thinks about as being a useful role to gain some insights into how to lead others given that the dynamics between a mother and her child are vastly different from that between an employer and their employees. And yet, if we look at this from the perspective of the life lessons we learned as children from our moms, we can see some useful points that can help us better understand how to approach the role of leadership in our organizations. Click here to continue reading »”Mothers – Our First Example of Real Leadership”
I’m always amazed at how seemingly unrelated pieces can stir up new ideas or perspectives about our world and the way we live and conduct ourselves within it. Take, for example, this commercial released on YouTube last week by Coca-Cola called the “Happiness Machine”.
While the commercial is effective in creating this idea of Coca-Cola being a source of happiness, there’s also a valuable lesson here that can be imparted to business leaders in how they interact with their employees.
One of the things I enjoy doing with my kids on those lazy, sunny days of summer is looking for animals and other shapes in the puffy, white clouds that drift on by. Sometimes we’d find an elephant throwing water up into the air from its trunk, other times we find a dragon breathing out fire from his mouth. One time we even saw a cat flying a spaceship next to a laughing frog.
Of course, looking for shapes in the clouds is something many of us did when we were kids. As we got older, though, we “outgrew” this habit in favour of more practical ones. Admittedly, I only resumed this playful activity thanks to the encouragement of my kids. But the ease with which I was able to once again see such fanciful imagery in the sky was like riding a bike again; it just came back to me without much effort or thought. In some ways, I suppose this should hardly be surprising as none of us Click here to continue reading »”Finding Our Creativity In The Clouds”
