Category: Leadership

Impact writing: In a digital world, everyone is a writer. However, not everyone entered the digital world with the same writing skills. How can you engage your readers for action and interest?

4 Ways to Engage Your Reader with Impact Writing

• Don’t Add the Word, “Very.”
• Don’t write “Is, Was, and By.”
• Use Words that Show Commitment.
• Verify Your Quotes.

Don’t Add the Word, “Very.”

Adding the word “very” to a sentence makes it weaker.

There are three options to more impactful writing.

1. Just cut the word “very.”
2. Create a comparison for impact.
3. Use stronger wording.

For example:

Weak: “Susan is very intelligent.”
Comparison: “Susan is more intelligent than her friends.”
A stronger statement: “Susan is brilliant.”

A second example:

Weak: “Bill ran very quickly across the yard.”
Better: Bill ran quickly across the yard.
Stronger wording: “Bill sprinted across the yard.”

Don’t Write “Is, Was, and By”

These three words create longer, weaker sentences.

Weak: “This play was written by Shakespeare. ”
Stronger: “Shakespeare wrote this play.”

Notice that the first sentence is longer.  It has two more words than the second sentence.  The extra words weaken the sentence.  Additionally, effective sentences show action.  They start with the person, place, or thing that acted.

Weak: “The city was flooded by the storm.”
Stronger: “The storm flooded the city.”

Use Words that Show Commitment

Weak: “When I get to it”
Stronger: “I will finish it and have it back to you at 3:00PM.”

Weak: “Maybe I’ll work on it later.”
Better: “I will start on this project at 8:00AM and have it back to you by 11:00AM.”

Verify Your Quotes.

For example, Mark Twain didn’t say,

“If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.”

Winston Churchill didn’t say,

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Abraham Lincoln didn’t say,

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

You can do a web search to verify quotes. I start with sentence like this, “Benjamin Franklin didn’t say…”

For example, you can search the Internet for “Benjamin Franklin didn’t say a penny saved is a penny earned.”

Character traits for leadership are more than a leader’s personality.  These traits are a leaders’ moral, emotional, and mental makeup.  What character traits empower leaders to excel?

Leadership Character Traits

They are many character traits that make leaders successful.  Here are four of those traits.

1. Accountability
2. Authenticity
3. Commitment
4. Humility

Accountability

President Harry Truman said, “The buck stops here.”

Leaders hold themselves accountable.  I was a lieutenant in the United States Navy.  My commanding officer (that is, my captain) held me accountable for my actions.  Additionally, the Navy also held my captain accountable.

Successful leaders accept accountability for the failure of their organization.  These leaders can’t do everyone’s job.  However, they can build and train an organization for success.

At the end of the football season, the fans may blame the quarterback for the failures of a team.  However, a head coach with the authority to lead is accountable for the team’s results.

That coach can try to place the blame on the players.  But the coach is the person who hired and trained those players.  The coach is the one who is accountable.  Therefore, successful leaders must hold themselves accountable.

Authenticity

By playing politics, you may be able to gain support from people above you and around the office.  However, if you focus on politics and not performance, you will fail in the long-term.

Furthermore, authenticity is the bedrock of innovation.  When you focus on pleasing people instead of better ways to help you company, your creativity dies.

“If you copy other people, you are an impersonator. When you remake the work of other people in ways that it becomes your own work, you are authentic. When authenticity leads you to break the rules and change the world, you are a rebel. With authenticity, rebels change the world.
~ www.jaywren.com”

Commitment

The failed expectations of others undermine leadership as much as any other event.

Failing to fulfill your commitments weakens the trust that people have in you.

To be more effective, do these things in honoring your commitments.

• Act Now.
• Exceed Expectations.
• Arrival early.
• Work through the finish of the day.
• Be honest about your abilities.
• Don’t over commit in the first place.

Humility

The best book I have read on humility as a leadership trait is Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins.

If you personalize to your own experience, how much do you enjoy having other people take part or all of the credit for your efforts?  The people you lead are no different.

Great leaders have the humility to give credit to the team. To quote President Reagan, “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

Creating Future Leaders:  How can companies hire and train future leaders? Here are four steps companies can take to strengthen their leadership for the long term.

The Four Steps to Creating Future Leaders

Creating future leaders is critical to the long-term growth of a company.  ~ www.jaywren.com

1. Hire for leadership
2. Establish Authority & Responsibility
3. Teach for leadership
4. Increase Responsibility

Hire for Leadership

People in any organizations have specific levels of responsibility.  Some of those people will stay in same job for which the company hires them.

Other people come into a company as developmental candidates.  These people may start in entry-level jobs.  However, the company has a plan to move these people into bigger roles.  Their responsibilities increase as they master each job.

Teach Authority, Responsibility, and Accountability

For new leaders to become successful, they must know their authority.

They must know what they can do.  Additionally, they must know when to notify their supervisors.

Furthermore, they must know their responsibilities.  Knowing the boundaries of their responsibilities makes them more engaged and focused.

Last, future leaders must learn accountability.  They are not only accountability for their own mistakes.  They are accountable for the mistakes of the people under them.

Accountability is a great teacher. ~ www.jaywren.com

Train for Leadership

Authoritative leaders criticize. They control the people who work for them.

Ordering people around teaches them the things what not to do.

However, future leaders must learn more than what not to do.  Mentoring leadership builds confidence and skills in future leaders.  Without this mentoring, a company is not creating future leaders.  It is creating people who follow orders.

Increase Responsibility

For leaders to continue to grow, their responsibility must increase.  Companies promote new leaders into bigger positions.  These positions have a higher pay grade.  Additionally, they have the greater responsibility.

However, companies cannot always promote leaders. But they must keep the leaders growing and engaged.

What companies can do is relieve experienced future leaders of bottom rung responsibilities.  At the same time, companies can give them responsibilities that will prepare them for greater responsibility.

Open-Ended Questions: What are they? How do they create opportunities for greater understanding in solving problems and creating leadership?

One of the most important skills in leadership is the ability to answer open-ended questions. ~ www.jaywren.com

Examples of Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions enable a person to give meaningful, well-developed answers.  The person uses knowledge, feelings, creativity, and skills of self-expression.

Furthermore, these questions show how well a person can think . That is, to see not just one solution, but multiple solutions.

Examples:

“What are business problems that you have solved? How did you solve them?”

“What would you do if you never had to work again?”

“Why should I hire you?”

Examples of Closed-End Questions

People use convergent thinking to answer closed-end questions. Additionally, closed-end questions have one answer.

“What color is your car?”
“Blue.”

“How many fish in the bowl?”
“Three.”

“Did you leave at 4:30?”
“Yes.”

The Importance of Developing Skills for Open-Ended Questions

Some brilliant people have very poor skills for answering open-ended questions. They have vast amounts of knowledge.  They know the facts and can solutions.

However, their careers falter, because they cannot express their knowledge and their ideas.

For example, financial executives must have skills to know the accuracy of their calculations.

CFOs must be able to explain to a board what the numbers mean.  Additionally, they must be able discuss how the company got into a financial position and how to manage the company’s finances going forward.

Presentation Skills

The place to start learning how to answer open-ended questions is presentation skills.  Developing these skills with help you do many things.

• Sell more effectively,
• Interview more effectively,
• Become a more effective public speaker,
• Be a leader in workplace meetings.

In short, you will be more successful when you develop your skills to answer open-ended questions.

In conclusion, here are articles that will help you become more effective in answering open-ended questions.

Triggers are anything that cause negative emotoinal response. Everyone feels stress. However, the degree that people experience stress, the things that create stress, and the way people respond to stress varies.

Different Triggers for Different People

We all have individual triggers.  I say individual triggers, because different things create different feelings and different responses in different people.

For example, heights frighten some people. For other people, heights are thrilling.  Furthermore, the amount that people feel fearful or thrilled varies from person to person.

In the case of bungy jumping, some people are fearful of leaping off a high place to the extent that they cannot even walk out to point where other people jump with glee.  Between these extremes are people who have more intense or less intense feelings about jumping off high places.

How Powerful are Triggers?

When triggered, we experience the impulse to act.

Emotions are not thoughts.  And, under some circumstances, our emotions can fire faster than our ability to think before acting.

For example, two people see a person fall.  One laughs.  Another one winces.

Neither person thought about how they would respond to what they are seeing.  Instead, they are impulsively responding to a visual experience.

Becoming Smart to Avoid Triggers

In many cases, we can recognize patterns in the emotions governing our thoughts.  These patterns are circumstances that increase the likelihood that we will respond emotionally rather than mentally. However, we can become smart to avoid triggers.

When we recognize these patterns, we can make changes in our behavior that affect our ability to deal with stress.

For example, in rush-hour traffic on the freeways, there are miles of cars.  The way that each driver experiences the drive varies from calm awareness to rage.

Rage can lead to dangerous actions.  If we recognize the patterns of behavior that precede the rage, we can change that pattern.  For example, caffeine, hunger, fatigue, and starting late increase anxiety before we even get on the road.

Additionally, anxiety can press us to try to drive faster than the flow of traffic.  When we become frustrated with drivers who slow us down, our anxiety increases further.

The solution is to eliminate or change our behavior before we get on the road.  In this case, we avoid the stimulates, eat, take a break, and start early.

Once we start our drive, we can decide to be part of the flow of traffic and not an intimidating threat to our own safety and the safety of others.

Toxic people create stress that spreads throughout an organization. What are the skills that you can develop not only to survive but to grow around destructive personalities?

Change What You Control

If you can control the actions of toxic people, your first step is to stop what these people are doing.  The way that I have ended toxic behavior is confronting these people with the facts of their actions.  From there, I have shown them the price they will pay if they continue their destructive behavior.

Avoid the Poison.

When I can’t change the behavior of toxic people, I avoid them. If there is no reason to have to deal with them, I don’t.

Skills for Becoming a Healthier Person

Toxic people: When you can’t fight them, don’t join them.  However, make yourself healthier.

When I can’t change the behavior of toxic people or avoid these people altogether, I focus on the changes I can make in myself to become a healthier person.

Here are some things that work for me.

1. I write about my feelings.

In writing about my emotions, I name my feelings.  Fear, anger anxiety, insecurity, and resentment are common feelings that people have around toxic people. You may have other bad feelings. When I experience these feelings, I write about them.

2. I write about my actions.

In this step, I can see what things I can change in my own behavior to reduce the damage in a toxic relationship.  For example, if I act out of anger, I can change my actions.

3. I discuss what I am feeling with a mentor.

One of the problems with writing about my feelings is that I have trouble seeing solutions.  Instead I focus on how people have harmed me.

However, I have close friends I can trust.  These people keep what I tell them a secret.  These friends are mentors who show me how I can grow and improve my behavior.