Be mindful leaders and inspire

The key being personally first; they are inseparable to me. I remember a line in the now holiday classic The Family Man when Jack Campbell (Nicholas Cage), says to his future (current) employer:

"You know, it doesn't matter if it's Wall Street or Main Street, at the end of the day, it's just people doing business with people." (Or something like that.)

Before Christmas I had lunch with John Anderson, one of principals of The Glowan Consulting Group, and was reintroduced to this motivating leadership development firm. Besides an engaging and fruitful conversation with John, he recommended that I read their The L3 Leadership State of Being Manifesto.

I did. Now, I'm not going to go on and gush of how life-changing it was, but it was truly life-changing. And will be when I work through the exercises. Anyone who manages (and those who don't) should read this piece. The powerful simplicity of leading yourself, leading with others and leading others made so much sense to me. We've worked with hundreds of firms over the years and this one truly made me do a double-take at myself and how I manage.

Here's a taste. Keep your eyes on Glowan. (I was going to write a-Glowan, but I didn't know how that would go over.)

With all the talk about Leadership these days, many managers and executives are frustrated by the myriads of approaches to Leadership Development. The L3 Leadership model assumes a different position than traditional, or even more progressive leadership models. L3 Leadership is more about who you are than what position you hold, what training you have had, or what personality traits you bring to work and other life situations. L3 is based on the fact that personal leadership is a "state of being." It is who you are, what you believe, and how you behave.

The L3 model of Leadership explores three critical attributes of effective leaders. These three attributes are:

L1 Leading Self: Total Life Leadership. Achieving personal mastery and work/life integration.

L2 Leading With Others: Creating and sustaining Collaborative Advantage.

L3 Leading Others: Cultivating the Best Place to work: culture of high engagement, retention, performance and productivity.

Then today I decided to catch up one of Total Picture Radio's podcasts with Peter Clayton. This one, titled The Ten Essentials of Pathwise Management - A Wise Path to Follow in This Extraordinarily Tense Job Market, was completely engaging. Peter Clayton interviewed the co-founder of Pathwise Management, Todd Hollow Bist, about some pretty in-depth psychological tools that can help businesses solve critical people management challenges. Pathwise compiled the Ten Essentials of Pathwise Management and I'm still absorbing and reabsorbing and want to know more.

Here are the highlights for me:

Suspension of Attention

In this course you will expand your ability to understand why employees, managers, and clients behave the way they do, and how to better influence them. There is a hierarchy to perception that has a direct influence on the effectiveness of action. Learn how to differentiate between higher and lower levels of perception, and how to access and sustain more strategic levels of perception.

Interpersonal Patterns: Transference

Learn how to navigate the unspoken but powerful relational dynamics that can lead you to greater success with clients, co-workers, managers, and employees. Understanding transference can help you to better perceive how clients, employees, and manager dynamics are applied to you, and can create counterproductive reactions in you. With this knowledge you can then learn to respond to others in ways to reach your desired result.

Advanced Listening

Advanced listening creates the capacity to motivate and understand at the level of a top caliber leader. Learn how advanced listening compels others to provide you with exact information, and allows you as the listener the capacity to hear and comprehend more of the available information. This includes simultaneously listening to and understanding the cognitive, emotional, non-verbal, and unconscious modes of communication.

Again, a great way for me to start off the year and wanted to share with you all. Let's be mindful leaders and inspire.