There is a huge difference between a boss and a leader

There is a huge difference between a boss and a leader. I’d much instead be working for a leader any day. I’ve been lucky enough to have labored with both, and it’s excellent what working with any individual that you appreciate and greater yet, respects you. Smart leaders understand that it’s the people beneath them that make an enterprise successful, not them. As one person, it’s not possible to develop anyone if you have to micromanage each little factor and no longer let your them grow and develop. Micromanaging is the worst component you can do as a boss, for a few reasons: It slows your team down It doesn’t let personnel grow and learn new skills It destroys motivation It eliminates you from doing other work you could be doing What a clever leader does, is to delegate, and is usually there for support and to have answers to any questions. Comments are appreciated. # hashtag#leader hashtag#leadershipdevelopment hashtag#transformational hashtag#leadershipdevelopmentcoaching hashtag#businessleaders hashtag#emotionalintelligence

The Business World Needs Positivity

Hello my friends, continuous readers and supporters  of this blog. Today I would like to start out with a big thank you to all who support my cause and read my blog postings and who share what I have to say. I just want to say that what I do write most of the time comes from the suggestions you the readers send me to write about.

Today I received a suggestion regarding building a positive environment in the workplace and I have to tell you that of course it starts with leadership and their efforts to make that happen. I have seen many times where you create one as a leader and here comes your boss and because there has been no drama in a while they must create some just to make it exciting for themselves because it affects everyone else in a very negative way and they do not realize it or they just do not care.

Here is what happens to so many good leaders in many organizations when you try; Many managers leave their leaders because they have no relationship building skills ( The so called leaders).

Here is just one story that seems to ring around many organizations;

 I was qualified, and had done the majority of the responsibilities already, so I assumed the job was mine. Much to my surprise they brought in an elderly women from another store who because she had been around for 20 years leadership assumed that she had the right skill sets. She was really bad at interacting with people, asked my help with everything, and I might mention she was creepy in the way that internal customers cringed when she approached them.

I find the problem to be most of the time that management is very controlling and mostly sits in the office all day watching the employees to see how many minutes they are late.

Here is a great way to start thinking for yourself by Catherine Pratt www.Life-With-Confidence.com She explains it this way;

There is an African proverb that says,

"When you cross someone on your path who is more committed to their hatred than you are to your love, then their hatred will take the place of your love.” 

The moral of this proverb is that you need to make the commitment to yourself that you will walk with positive thoughts and have joy for life. Don’t let the negative people bring you down. It’s very easy to get caught in that trap. Step 1 is to be aware of your thoughts and try to focus on the positive. Listen to your thoughts, are they positive or negative? 

 If they’re negative, try to look at the situation from a different angle and make it a positive. This gets easier with practice. Also, just because everyone around you is unhappy doesn’t mean you have to be. This can be tough to do but it’s definitely worth it. If you can train yourself to be positive in these types of situations, you will be able to deal with almost any situation you come across. 

 Remember, most of the time environments are all in how you think about them. If you think it’s a horrible place to be and there’s no hope, that’s exactly how it will be. If you look at it as a learning experience and a challenge to come up with meaningful solutions, you will be able to find the answers. 

 Whether you love your job or hate it is really going to depend on how you view it and what you’re willing to do about it. You have much more power than you may think. Instead of feeling like it’s hopeless, view it as a challenge to actually make a real difference in your workplace. You’ll appreciate the results as will your co-workers. You definitely have the power to change a negative environment into a positive, fun place to be. You can do it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only the highway of useful service leads to the city of happiness.

Psychologists who study human behavior have concluded that we are happiest when we are striving to achieve success. It is the act of striving, not the successful completion of the task, that provides the greatest psychic rewards. When you strive to achieve success through service to others, you multiply the benefits to yourself, and you ensure that whatever road you choose in life will ultimately lead you to success and happiness.

 

 There is no occupation or profession that will not benefit from a concerted effort to better serve others. But the greatest benefit will be to you, in the form of the self-satisfaction that comes from knowing that you made a difference, that without you others would never have received the service you provided.

I hope you really enjoy this posting and please feel free to send me more suggestions regarding what you would like to read about or send suggestions. I am open to anything!!

 

"If a person cannot say what they feel then they will feel what was never said"-Dr. Luciano Santini

Good morning to all my readers and thank you for your continued support. Today I would like to talk  about a few things but one being people of character do what they say they will do, when they say they will do it, and according to agreed-upon conditions. They are the leaders, the individuals to whom others turn for guidance, because they have demonstrated that they care, that they can be trusted. If you respect yourself enough to keep commitments even when it’s inconvenient to do so, others will come to respect you too. Dependability, like any other character trait, is a habit

I know that sometimes I write perhaps what I like to call controversial stuff but hey someone has to say it! I believe:

 "If a person cannot say what they feel then they will feel what was never said"-Dr. Luciano Santini

The one issue that I always seem to have when training and teaching executives is that though they usually think that their peers and employees believe in them and trust them. This is such an issue almost in all corporations in both government and privates sectors. What I found while doing surveys and interviews with both top leaders and staff was that those thoughts were completely made up in their minds because when talking to middle management and then employees the truth was and still is that most of the time they are not respected but both middle management and employees will follow policies and procedures to keep top leaders off their backs giving the perception that all is well and yet everyone is dysfunctional. 

I can tell you some reasons why this happens. One reason is by simply saying that any solution to a problem that was not their idea (Top Management) is rejected. I can tell you that most of the top management is very good at one thing which is deception. They will play the good cop bad cop and deceive good hard working people and you just have to be just as good to be able to see their deception and in today's world it is not very difficult to see.Then there is also a favorite that is used today which is (Top Management) will create the process to the solution using mechanics which will become boring and no one will want to do it. 

Then there is the favorite of all to break up the solution into so many pieces that to many people will be involved thinking that they are doing the right thing and yet at the end come up with so many ideas that nothing will make sense and once again the top leaders will of course reject at the end.

My favorite joke of all time. We have an open door policy!! How many times have we heard this one before! I understand the reality of this world today in business and I also understand what it means to have a true open door policy. I have personally worked with some amazing leaders who knew and understood what it meant to have "An open door policy" And unfortunately I have also worked side by side with leaders who openly voiced their open door policy but was the biggest joke among all staff.

In many surveys and in many interviews with top leaders in top organizations both government and private I would ask the question; What does open policy mean here? Most would just simply say that they had no idea what it meant or that nothing like that existed currently and yet I would see postings by a leaders office that stated the open door policy.   What most said was the following; "It means that if you do not like the way we do things around here leaders would be more than happy to show you the open door" I know pretty sad but yet it is a true reality among most organizations today.

In today's world of business I find that most  bosses do not ever say that someones idea is not wanted or that it will never work. I always find that when you bring an idea to a leaders that manages by power of position that a few raising of the eyebrows or well placed frowns or a reiteration of the issue and of course their time in the company is enough to kinda tell you that your ideas are not welcomed. One of my favorite of course is the conspiracy of silence from peers! What do I mean by this well let me explain. 

Let us say you have worked with a team for a while and you have some great ideas that have been proven among top leaders. Then at one time or another you do something that is so good they look bad somehow and yes it was not their idea. They also know you have the intellectualism and are afraid of it.

 What the so called top leaders will begin a conspiracy to manipulate those around you that allow themselves to be manipulated to simply stop speaking to you or the best one yet make themselves so busy all the time that they will not return phone calls or give you assistance. 

I will tell you again you have to be able to see it to survive in an organization because if you do not then you will drive yourself insane. I have seen great managers leave organizations when the so called 'Top Leaders" do such things but once again if you see it! I can tell you that it is the funniest thing to watch as it unravels.

Many conversation from my research and interviews admitted to me that they contributed below their capacity simply because so called top leaders had no idea how to manage people's knowledge. I worked with an individual who had been a dishwasher for over ten years in a hospitality organization.

 He did not speak one word of English. One day I asked him how we could streamline a process to avoid so much breakage of dishes and glasses. We were buying cases and cases every month to replace the breakage. He responded that his supervisor never listed to his ideas and so he stopped saying anything.

 I listened to him implemented his ideas with his direction and voila we saved close to one hundred thousand dollars across the organization and yes he was well taken care of and was sent to management school where he learned English and management skills that eventually made him a top leaders in the company.

My friends the Psychology of managing and learning must be a competency for management. The issue is here that to many so called leaders are not leaders at all but somehow ended in a leadership role and simply manages by power of position which is the worse thing a company can do to their staff.

The Psychology Of Training And Learning The New and more Effecient Way

I am sorry I missed writing the blog for you this past weekend but I have a good excuse. I had surgery and was literally out and bedridden for five days. I am much better today and well all I could think was about writing my blog and well here we go.

While I was learning and studying psychology I have to tell you that it is not an easy subject. I have learned that while you may think you know people there is always something that will bring about a new way to think and to study the human mind. I have found that when leaders treat people with respect and dignity they will always earn their respect. 

I have always found it challenging to know that research brings out so much more in a person the when they had before they started the research. So how has recent psychological research taught us in leadership?

I have learned that there are several factors in the human mind that needs to continuously stay alert and ahead of the times including technology.

I will give you an example: So many leaders or people in leadership roles still believe that when you offer a reward to someone that they will actually do a better job but the reality is that there persons motivation will decline more so then when there is no reward but simple become ,more competent in the learning  process of the human mind.

 This will also have an affect on their ability to focus on one task at a time because leadership will assume that because this person is so smart that they can do more than one task at the same time which by the way will inhibit the person from doing completed staff work and when they are done they will feel as failures because they will attribute their failure to the ability of within as opposed to the effort that should have been given from within to complete the task.

Another great example is that when leadership in any organization fails to understand the way to teach and train properly not because the leaders are not good trainers but because they are not good teachers nor will they have real life examples to share where the staff can become real and also be able to understand.

When top leaders have a clear understanding that from where they sit and look down that they clearly have no idea what is going on and that they should involve those who actually do the work to create new ideas and policies  by actually letting them structure the models for all to follow including leadership because what I have found is that simply put most leaders are so out of touch from reality that when they create their new policies they are so wrong and actually inhibit their company from moving forward.

It has been proven that when staff are allowed to come up with a better solution to a problem the solution that they come up with has been much more efficient then the policy that was written by upper management.

Leaders have to understand sooner or later I prefer sooner but in most cases they do o not understand until it is way too late in the process. They must ask great questions like reflective questions;

• Recount their thought processes as they attempt to solve a problem; and
• Make graphic representations of their thoughts and knowledge

We frequently hear that staff have disparate learning styles: That some are auditory learners, while others are visual or tactile or kinesthetic learners (who learn by manipulating objects or engaging in projects) or analytical learners (or prefer information presented in sequential steps), or global learners (who do not like to be bored and prefer various kinds of stimulation). Then there are other learning styles: competitive, collaborative, independent, dependent, participatory, resistant, and avoidance.

 Rather than placing staff in rigid categories, it appears that most staff learn in multiple ways and that it is best, therefore, to present information in multiple ways and yet it is always thought such that one way fits everyone and thus failure will occur and still upper leadership does not understand.

How does work environment affect staff? It influences their verbal, quantitative, and subject matter competence, their cognitive skills, their identity, self-concept, and self-esteem, and values and attitudes.

Students’ psychological development does not end at adolescence. Indeed, it is clear that the working years are just as important in employee cognitive, emotional, moral, and social development. 

 The leadership group is the single most important source of influence on employees development: on personality development, attitudes and values, behavior patterns, career development, and satisfaction with their current work.

As a leader, one of our most important tasks is to guide, motivate, and assist employees through this maturation process. Employees must recognize the limits of their current skills, knowledge, and perspectives. They must realize that leadership is there to help them understand where they are.

 I found that most leaders in leadership roles tend to go from an approach —such as rote memorization, the mechanical use of formulas, or the parroting back of ideas from a policies written so long ago that the words do not make sense to the new generations.These types of training's and teachings  no longer are enough the work environment, where a premium is placed on originality, high-level analytical skills, and facility in writing.

     

Strategy -deficiency or Culture deficiency Either one Means Failure!!

Hello everyone and how are we all doing? I must share a story that happened yesterday on my home from a trip to the Bay Area. On my way home I stopped at a small mall to get a drink and I started to talk to a jeweler from a nearby\y store. I have no idea how the conversation went from talking about a watch to; What defines a person?

I believe I sat with this unknown  person for a good half hour talking about what characteristics define a person. I started by asking why he would ask a perfect stranger  such a question. His response was because if you do not know me you can be honest.

I started with a quote from Ralph Emerson: "Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think."I also stated that I had read a great answer to this question that read like this:

Character is defined through your scruples, or your ability to maintain your moral beliefs despite temptation. You don't actually have to give into temptation to have a weak character, but through those actions, your character is seen. Understanding the right choice is intelligence. Having the ability to turn those beliefs into actual made decisions, is having a strong moral character. The less temptation needed, the weaker your character.

S-FURY-https://answers.yahoo.com/activity/questions?show=2LA74BMBFOCU4R6FAET65T2SGI&t=g

Happiness is found in doing — not merely in possessing.

It’s true: money can’t buy happiness. Most of us are motivated by aspirations of the lifestyle we desire for ourselves and our families, not by the physical possessions — homes, vacations, automobiles, etc. When you recognize this fact, you will know that you must constantly “raise the bar” to encourage yourself to reach higher goals. Your goals should include the possessions that you desire, but as former Apple Computer chairman and CEO John Sculley said, “Success is a journey, not a destination. Make sure you enjoy the trip.”Napoleon Hill

In business I find that sometime in the life of the organization that their greatness if they reach that goal is usually owed to individual leaders who have mastered leadership skills and have passed such skills to managers. I always tell owners and top executives when I do executive coaching that one must have a very clear understanding that they must lay a strong foundation of strategic thinking and be able to build a culture that will go with the new starters that will be implemented.

We know or I should say that whom ever is the leader of an office or a large organization must know and understand that both strategic thinking and culture building work in tandem When there is an action based on strategic thinking must be  effective to satisfy  customers needs. When going into executive coaching with an individual I am already aware that there is some kind of strategy thinking in place but only follow halfheartedly which brings up the question: Does this individual understand or know how to implement.

I have shown and taught many times over that most organizations though they will never admit to it or if someone comes along with better leadership skills well we all know what happens here and I have seen it many times the so called leaders will of course do their best to keep that person out of the picture as much as possible. Most organizations either have strategy -deficiency or culture deficiency. I have also shown many times over that deficiencies in either side will only bring failure.

The world has changes and so is all management styles and if you are in a leadership role you need to be aware of the changes in order to adapt to the constant changes, however most longtime leaders do not want to change not because they do want to but because they have no idea how! 

A new style of leadership is needed now!! a style that will express self- development and not just at the top but at all levels.I believe that top executives need to  recognize the need for powerful and influential leadership in order to survive and to change the thinking of all of those who resist change.

One of the most important things that top executives need to understand specially in non-profit organizations is that when morale begins to sag and decline managers become frustrated and powerless and thus causes decline on the service delivery thus casing clients to stop coming in through the front doors.

The most important thing to remember as a leader is:
Open-mindedness is essential for belief. Closed minds do not inspire faith, courage, and belief.