Leadership Done Right

Brandon W. Jones

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This Week’s Top 5 Leadership Blog Posts – 6/22/2012

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As a leader, you probably have many leadership responsibilities.  This week has been one of those weeks for me and it has been a challenging week to keep up on blogging.  Because my time was so limited, I just decided to highlight some of the posts that I really enjoyed without taking the time to post my thoughts on each post.

Some of the posts that I am highlighting in this weeks top 5 leadership blog posts were about leadership relationships.  As a leader, it is very important to work to maintain good relationships with those you lead.  The relationships you make as a leader are very important because leaderships are, in many cases, far more important than the actual work you do.

I hope you enjoy my favorite posts from this week!

4 Essentials For Cultural Leadership By William Powell

It’s been said so many times, but it’s worth repeating, “Good leadership is more than getting tasks accomplished.” Quality leadership develops people. It builds people up, inspires confidence and makes a genuine, positive difference in everything it touches. One thing that leadership MUST do is influence, maintain and perpetuate culture.

Often times leaders get so focused on WHAT to do that HOW to do things becomes open for interpretation. Don’t misunderstand what I mean by this. It isn’t a license or call to micro-manage people or bureaucratically babysit them. It is a delicate balance – a dance if you will. People need their autonomy and enough freedom for the individuality to shine through. The line needs to be drawn where the desired expression of individuality begins to erode the desired culture and THAT is where cultural leadership must be effective. [Read more…] about This Week’s Top 5 Leadership Blog Posts – 6/22/2012

This Week’s Top 5 Leadership Posts – 6/13/2012

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The calling/responsibility of leadership is an important responsibility.  You must take it seriously because what you do as a leader each day has a major impact on where you end up long term.  The posts below are great posts because they help you to understand how to be a better leader.

Great Leaders Develops Both Themselves And Those They Lead By Beth Miller

Congratulations! You’ve worked hard to be a leader in your company. But don’t think you can sit back and relax from now on because great leaders understand that they must always be developing themselves and their employees.

Leaders lead others, but sometimes they don’t realize that the best leaders never stop improving themselves; they are passionate about learning and teaching, and their passion spreads to those who work around them.

It has been said that leaders are discovered, but really they are developed. Success is an ongoing process of improvement and adjustments.

Brandon’s Thoughts
As Beth pointed out, leaders must focus on their own improvement on a regular basis.  They must also focus on the development of those they lead.  As they train those they lead, they improve their team and the skills of their group.  The training helps their team be more successful because it will increase the overall skills.  Many leaders have a fear that training their followers is bad because it will make their followers replace them as the leader.  In reality, the opposite is more often the truth; the leaders that train their followers to be successful end up being more successful themselves.  By helping others succeed, they help themselves to move up the ladder because people see them as effective leaders. [Read more…] about This Week’s Top 5 Leadership Posts – 6/13/2012

Why Don’t People Change?

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Isaac Newton was able to come up with some incredible advancements in the world of mathematics and science during his day.  Some of those advancements were:

  • Newton’s Three Laws of Motion
  • The development of the infinitesimal calculus
  • The discovery of refraction of light
  • Newton’s Laws of Universal Gravitation

Do you think Newton came up with all these discoveries on his own?  Did he have any information or knowledge to start from?  Newton was quoted as saying,

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675

Standing on the Shoulders Of Giants

As a leader in math and science, Newton understood the importance of learning from others.  He took the knowledge he received from others and improved on it to make things better.  He constantly studied the practices of previous scientists and mathematicians so he could come up with new discoveries. [Read more…] about Why Don’t People Change?

Overcoming The Leadership Blogging Challenges

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Recently, I received a comment on one of my blog posts asking for some insight on how I started out as a blogger. The question went as follows:

Brandon, I liked the article. However, I’d like to know how you overcame the blogging challenges to be a consistent blogger. Hearing your personal experience relative to the topic is like a breath of fresh air and sets your blogs apart from the rest. What problems did you face when starting out this webpage/blog? Did you have to do a little self “reprogramming” to be consistent? Were there any tools you used that helped? Thanks.

He brought up some very important questions that each blogger must ask him/herself when they start out blogging. If you want to be an avid blogger and gain a following, you must know how to answer the questions he asked. When you first start out blogging, there are many challenges you will encounter. If you want to be a blogger, you must set your goals before you even start so you know the direction you plan to go.

How do you overcome blogging challenges to become a consistent blogger?

I have been blogging for the past two years off and on. I started out blogging when I was in the MBA program at the University of Nevada – Reno. At that time, I had to blog for a class I took from Bret L. Simmons. The blogs we wrote were responses to case studies and articles we read.

I posted blog posts as often as we were required to in the class. By the end of the class I had gotten a few followers for my blog. I then felt obligated to continue blogging. I wasn’t very consistent at that time though. I would blog for a few weeks and then miss a few or sometimes even a month.  I was very sporatic.  [Read more…] about Overcoming The Leadership Blogging Challenges

Dishonesty: The Fall Of A Leader

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A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the CEO of Yahoo, Scott Thompson.  He was in the news because he had only been with Yahoo for a short time and already was making major layoffs.  Well, once again he has gotten himself into the spotlight.  This time it is for his dishonesty.

Mistakes

Over the last few months since Scott Thompson took over as CEO, Yahoo has continued to struggle.  In a recent regulatory filing, it was encountered that Scott’s resume erroneously said he had earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science when in fact he only had a degree in accounting.  [Read more…] about Dishonesty: The Fall Of A Leader

This Week’s Top 5 Leadership Posts – 5/9/2012

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This week’s top five leadership posts will help motivate you to be a better leader.  The leadership posts have a lot of good content that you can use to improve your leadership abilities.  The topics of this week’s posts are learning from mistakes, living out your dreams, obstacles that get in the way of change, the importance of thanking your team, and accomplishing your goals.  I hope you enjoy!

The Top 5 Mistakes Leaders Make by Beth Armknecht Miller

Over the years, I have worked with hundreds of leaders many who have displayed specific leadership shortfalls, that when improved, have had a positive impact on the effectiveness and profitability of the organization. Both new and experienced manager/leaders can make these top five mistakes; which one is your Achilles heel? And what is your plan to improve?

  1. Focusing on the urgent and not the important
  2. Lack of consistent communication
  3. Ineffective feedback
  4. Failing to define clear goals
  5. Misunderstanding motivation

Brandon’s Thoughts
I really like the points that Beth made.  It is very important to not fall prey to any of these pitfalls.  As a leader, it is so important to regularly evaluate your performance and identify what works well and what does not.  As you do that, you will avoid the mistakes other people had to painstakingly go through. [Read more…] about This Week’s Top 5 Leadership Posts – 5/9/2012