If you had to save something from a neighbour’s house that was on fire, what would you retrieve to help them out – one of their prized possessions or a coat?

For most of us, the answer is obvious since we view this scenario in terms of what we’d like others to help us save when faced with the risk of losing our home to a fire. However, as revealed in a story shared by Mark Bezos, sometimes these assumptions can obscure our vision of what’s really needed by those we’re trying to help.

During the work week, Mark heads the Development and Communications department at the non-profit organization, Robin Hood, but in his off-hours, he also serves as the assistant captain for a volunteer fire company which provides support to the town’s fire department.

As Mark points out, when you’re a volunteer firefighter, you have to get to the fire scene as soon as you can if you’re to have any chance “to get in on any action” and he certainly managed to get himself an interesting piece of that at his first fire scene.

When Mark arrived at the scene of this particular fire, he found the fire chief talking with a woman standing under an umbrella wearing pyjamas and no shoes, someone he’d later find out was the owner of the burning house. Before he could reach the fire chief to offer his assistance, another volunteer firefighter approached the fire chief and was given the task of saving the woman’s dog. When Mark got to the fire chief and asked what he could do to help, the fire chief looked at Mark and told him he needed Mark to go into the house to get the homeowner a pair of shoes.

Mark and the other volunteer firefighter went into the burning house and searched for the items they were told to locate. As they exited from the house, the other volunteer firefighter understandably received all the attention as he handed the saved dog to the homeowner while Mark gave the woman the pair of shoes he ‘rescued’ from the flames.

A few weeks after the fire, the fire department received a letter from the homeowner in which she Click here to continue reading »”Do You Lead Your Organization To Meet Or Exceed Expectations?”

How do we stop or curb drama in the workplace? That’s the basis of the conversation I had with Marlene Chism in the fifth episode of my leadership podcast series, “Leadership Biz Cafe”.

Marlene is a speaker, author and founder of The Stop Your Drama Methodology, an eight-part empowerment process to increase clarity and improve productivity and personal effectiveness. Marlene has a master’s degree in HR Development from Webster University and is the author of “Success is a Given: Reading the Signs While Reinventing Your Life”, as well as recently published “Stop Workplace Drama – Train Your Team to Have No Complaints, No Excuses and No Regrets”

Over the course of our conversation about how to manage workplace drama, Marlene and I discuss the following:

• Learning to appreciate the difference between the drama that arises at work and the drama that comes out from your reaction to that situation.
• How a lack of clarity leads to workplace conflict and what we can do to regain clarity when our perspective about what’s going on around us becomes obscured.
• How to identify the gap between your goals and where your team is and the relationship this gap has in creating drama in the workplace.
• Why we need to take responsibility for what we can control in order to resolve workplace conflict.
• That workplace drama in itself isn’t the real problem; that it’s something more personal and more within our control that we can address.

As I mentioned at the end of the show, Click here to continue reading »”Leadership Biz Cafe Podcast #5 – Marlene Chism on Stopping Workplace Drama”

The following is a guest post by Tom Salonek.

In technology, a big part of our job involves solving problems. Perhaps we’re trying to figure out how to integrate a new software package into our existing architecture, or maybe we need to find a way to make a program run faster. But no matter what the work situation, problems are always challenges to be met with creativity, energy and persistence.

Some think that problems in a business are evidence that people are doing something wrong. Sometimes leaders deny or ignore dealing with problems because they’re afraid of such negative judgments. Others simply feel too busy to focus on problems until they become big, fat, hairy monsters.

Running a strong business, writing software, working with others. . . or whatever else you’re doing on this planet means there will be challenges. I’ve found if you don’t accept these little monsters, embrace them and meet them head on – early on – they can turn into insurmountable ogres pretty quickly.

Voltaire is usually credited with the saying “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.” When you change your mindset to one that sees problems as challenges to be conquered, it’s pretty easy to find them and solve them. Although dealing with problems is part of any job, leaders must be particularly skilled problem-solvers.

Here’s a simple process I’ve used time and again to help define problems and slay them early: Click here to continue reading »”How To Catch And Solve Problems Before They Become Insurmountable”

As this is the last week of the year, many of us are understandably looking back at the past 12 months and discussing what we consider to be the significant events of 2011. In most cases, such discussions tend to focus on the numerous challenges and upheavals we’ve either watched from afar or witnessed first-hand. From natural disasters to political uprisings, there’s no question this year has placed our collective humanity within the frame of adversity and unimagined change.

Of course, adversity in and of itself is not necessarily a good or bad thing. Rather, it’s what we do and whether we’re open to learning from it that should decide whether it’s been of benefit or harm to us.

Certainly for businesses, the state of the global economy and the growing level of competition coming in from multiple fronts counts as one of the biggest challenges organizations and their leaders have had to contend with. And yet, contrary to what we might be reading in the papers, this doesn’t mean that weren’t some bright spots to be found amid all that doom and gloom.

One such example of this comes from the article, “Business Lessons Learned in 2011”, where a number of business leaders look back at the past 12 months and share their experiences of the lessons they’ve learned which will help them to improve and build on their business in the coming months.

Some of my favourite lessons shared in this piece include: Click here to continue reading »”What Has 2011 Taught You About Business and Leadership?”