Leadership Excellence
About a year ago, we purchased a great learning package called “Lessons in Leadership” from the Business Source. Besides receiving a Book Library (similar to the Coles’ Notes) of the top Leadership and Financial Success books written, we also recieved five – 90 minute video modules which include leadership sessions from five leadership gurus.
I once heard Stephen Covey speak years ago and the main thing I remembered is that you don’t truly learn until you teach others. So, throughout this past year, I’ve been able to take the learnings from the materials and adapt them to our needs so that our team could improve their communication skills and continue developing their leadership qualities.
In September of this year, I reviewed the module entitled “Leadership Excellence” which involved John Maxwell, author of The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and felt our entire team, technical or otherwise, would benefit from hearing some of the key messages John was imparting about the real measures of leaders and what causes people to truly connect and be inspired to follow a leader. I decided to take the information presented in the video segment and reorganize it to create a condensed version of the learnings and attention span of our team (under 30 minutes). Those that attended our lunch hour “non” Techtalk, found it insightful and and useful.
I also reviewed another module called “How to be a more Influential and Persuasive Leader” presented by Kevin Hogan. This module, although similar in terms of overall topic, had a completely different approach and point of view. It really highlighted a variety of tactics people, and also leaders in a workplace, can use to influence behaviour of others (children, employees, potential customers, and hiring managers). To share this knowledge with our team, I decided to send out daily leadership nuggets by email (less than 1 minute) that team members could read, digest and use as they felt relevant.
A third module I reviewed called “Becoming a Better Communicator (especially in crucial conversations)” presented by Ron McMillan, was also very interesting and involved the strategies master communicators use when having “crucial conversations” with team members. I actually prepared a half-day workshop for our Support Crew including discussion time, and exercises, and was able to use some of the supporting materials from Ron McMillan’s organization www.crucialconversations.com to analyze the team’s individual and collective strengths in having these types of tough conversation.
The entire “Lessons in Leadership” package is certainly worth the cost and I encourage you to check out http://thebusinesssource.com/ for other products.
Tags: communication, leadership
