by Jane Perdue | Leadership
Do you hear agitated, frustrated, and concerned whispers at your workplace…
I don’t know how to do any more with less.
I just can’t work any harder.
No one seems to care.
Is my job next?
Does anyone care about me as person, or is it all about the bottom line?
I don’t matter around here.
Are you hearing similar whispers in your head as you contemplate your career future in these tumultuous times?
With the job market still unstable, be gentle with yourself.
Nurture your skills, pay attention to your feelings, reach out for support.
Take time to laugh, to play, to reflect, to rejoice.
For those whom you lead, embed a heartbeat in your spreadsheet. Liberally sprinkle caring, heartfelt laughter, and time for talking and sharing into your need for accountability, results, and performance. Too much emphasis on logic makes the whispers of discontent louder. We’re all hard-wired to connect. When the workplace only seems to value results, people feel like they don’t matter. So the whispers begin.
What greater sign of illustrious leadership could there be today than someone who nurtures themself and who takes/makes the stand that they are leading from the head and the heart, too.
What have you done to nurture yourself and those you lead?
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Some quotes about leading from your head and heart on which to reflect
To work in the world lovingly means that we are defining what we will be for, rather than reacting to what we are against. ~Christina Baldwin
Leadership is not so much about technique and methods as it is about opening the heart. Leadership is about inspiration—of oneself and of others. Great leadership is about human experiences, not processes. Leadership is not a formula or a program, it is a human activity that comes from the heart and considers the hearts of others. It is an attitude, not a routine. ~Lance Secretan
Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do. The visible signs of artful leadership are expressed, ultimately, in its practice. ~Max Dupree
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there. ~John Buchan
Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others may receive your orders without being humiliated. ~Dag Hammarskjöld
Are there heartbeats in your spreadsheets, or is everything all about the numbers? ~Jane Perdue
Image source before quote: pixabay
by Jane Perdue | Workplace tips
People who met Martin for the first time walked away feeling like they’d made a new friend. They gushed about how kind, warm, open and caring he was.
It wasn’t until they got to know him better or began working for or with him that the truth came out.
Martin was a suave backstabber.
He had perfected the art of smiling in your face and later plunging his knife in your back.
I’ve known some Martins in my time and bet you have to. Right?
(more…)
by Jane Perdue | Creativity
The significance of an off-hand remark made at a group lunch didn’t hit me until later.
The remark? “Tea is my favorite but I gave it up because it stains my cups.”
What hit me?
How we sometimes deprive ourselves of simple pleasures for inconsequential reasons we’ve elevated to extreme status. Why do we save things for special days or events that sometimes never happen?
Holy moly, the power of blind spots!
Intrigued, and because I know her well, I double-backed with my lunch buddy to learn more.
“Aggie, I’m curious about your remark at lunch the other day that you don’t drink tea anymore. I thought you loved trying out new flavors.”
“I do enjoy that, but I can’t tolerate stained cups and I don’t have the time to hand scrub them.”
“When did the stained cups start to be a problem?”
“Right after we re-did the kitchen and bought new white dinnerware.”
“What color were your dishes before the remodel?”
“Black.” Aggie smiled as the realization of what she was doing hit her. “Let’s walk down to the department store so I can buy some black mugs!”
Aggie now tells a delightful story about herself: how she regained a simple pleasure by learning how to work around the things that don’t matter and to value those that do.
Have you had a similar “Aggie moment” of self-realization?
Thoughts about blind spots
Has the dark shadow really disappeared? Or is it inside me, concealed, waiting for its chance to reappear? Like a clever thief hidden inside a house, breathing quietly, waiting until everyone’s asleep. I have looked deep inside myself, trying to detect something that might be there. But just as our consciousness is a maze, so too is our body. Everywhere you turn there’s darkness, and a blind spot. Everywhere you find silent hints, everywhere a surprise is waiting for you. ~Haruki Murakami
Seeing-is-believing is a blind spot in man’s vision. ~R. Buckminster Fuller
All abilities are paid for with disabilities. perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. Insight into one area involves blind spots in another. ~William S. Burroughs
Because your brain uses information from the areas around the blind spot to make a reasonable guess about what the blind spot would see if only it weren’t blind, and then your brain fills in the scene with this information. That’s right, it invents things, creates things, makes stuff up! It doesn’t consult you about this, doesn’t seek your approval. It just makes its best guess about the nature of the missing information and proceeds to fill in the scene. ~Daniel Gilbert
We have to have a version of our own story that we keep telling ourselves that allows us to get up in the morning. This version of yourself is what you sell to yourself. I think it necessarily includes … not looking at certain things. Everybody’s got some blind spot. ~Steven Soderbergh
Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will. ~Bono
Image source: morgueFile
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
As I cast the fishing line again and again into the incoming tide (I’m not about to win any angler prizes), it dawned on me there were leadership lessons to be learned from fishing.
Holy smokes!
I married into a clan with a rich heritage of fishing trips and tall tales about the elusive yet huge one that got away. Over the years I tolerated the fishing outings as I know Hubby did with the cultural outings and new restaurant adventures I favor.
Fishing usually finds me on mental autopilot, assessing what’s on my ‘to do’ list.
Why this fishing outing took on a deeper significance, I haven’t a clue yet I’m grateful for the epiphany.
As I watched everyone that day, a few insights became clear.
Leadership lessons from fishing (of all places!)
Every cast is an opportunity filled with promise and potential.
This time I’ll catch the big one. A single cast that didn’t return a fish wasn’t a failure. It simply meant you needed to try again (and again and again for me!). Consider how this optimistic attitude could improve many workplaces if leaders allowed room for the learnings that come with failure.
“The phoenix must burn to emerge.” ~Janet Fitch
Your catch is everyone’s prize.
The word of someone having “a fish on” quickly spreads with your fellow fisher-people offering encouragement and advice as you reel in. There are “oohs” and “ahs” when the fish is finally landed. The spirit of community from those you know—and those you don’t—is palpable, and positively infectious. It’s almost as if everyone there had a hand in catching the fish. Think how that shared spirit of accomplishment could transform a team.
“Each of us must rededicate ourselves to serving the common good. We are a community. Our individual Fates are linked; our futures intertwined; and if we act in that knowledge and in that spirit together, ‘We can move mountains.'” ~Jimmy Carter
My lessons are yours, and yours are mine.
The kind of bait or lure used to land a big one (and even a small fish) is shared, not viewed as some industrial secret to be hoarded or closely guarded. (To be sure, some fishing captains do take to their grave the coordinates of a particularly rich and always fruitful fishing hole.) Tips, pointers and advice are freely shared, and cordially received. Imagine a work place where feedback is constructively, promptly and lovingly given, and warmly welcomed and heeded. How productive such an organization would be!
“One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.” ~Franklin Thomas
Off to share the blackened redfish!
What unlikely places have you picked up a leadership lesson or two?
Image source before quote: Gratisography
by Jane Perdue | Be your best you
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Think how many times as a child or young adult that question was posed to you.
Think about your answer.
Did you say a firefighter, doctor, teacher, nurse, businessman, astronaut, baker or candlestick maker (couldn’t resist!)? (more…)
