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Semper Paratus: Working Ahead to Get Ahead

Posted on March 30, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you stay mentally ready to exercise your leadership skills. Reading time: 4:56.

Take a ride into small town America and you will find water towers dotting the landscape like huge golf balls sitting on top of 150-foot tall tees in a land of giants.

These tall structures have a tall order : maintain the water pressure especially at high peak times so that when you turn your faucet to take a bath or to make a cup of coffee, the water flows.

Preparation is the key to making that water tower work. Nothing happens without FIRST doing the necessary work to pump the equivalent of some 50 swimming pools of water up to the top of that huge golf-ball shaped tank before it’s needed. Water Towers are Semper Paratus -Always Ready-the motto of the United States Coast Guard.

Likewise leaders are Semper Paratus. They are always ready to do their duty. Like the water in those towers, their leadership principles have been pumped, prepped and placed BEFORE they are needed.

Always Ready for Prime Time

Now these primed leaders are ready for prime time. Ready on demand. Ready to be tapped to lead in times of change and crisis. As Benjamin Disraeli said: “The secret of success in life is for a person to be ready for their opportunity when it comes.”

Primed leaders are ready more than simply prepared to lead. Leaders understand that readiness demands a more urgent and more deliberate focus than simply being prepared. The Boy Scouts motto “Be Prepared” is necessary but not sufficient to lead.

To attain and retain a state of readiness leaders must seemingly simmer in their own juices of integrity and conviction for extended periods of time. The greater the state of their readiness the more significant their performance. Continue reading →

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Attitude: Are You Too Good To Get Better?

Posted on March 29, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to continuously improve your performance. Reading Time: 2:54.

Just a few weeks ago you were the top sales person on your team. Just a few weeks ago you were the most prolific accountant in the department. Just a few weeks ago, you were at the top of your game. And now you are failing: losing sales, missing project deadlines and making too many mistakes. You are losing it. You are way out on a limb.

Squirrel Monkey does his high wire act with Expertise. Or is that expert tease? (Image Credit: D. Mears , Stock.xchng )

Your world is suddenly and surprisingly spinning out of your control. What worked yesterday fails today.

You’re stunned.
You’re frustrated.
You’re embarrassed.

“How could this have happened to me? I am good at what I do. Just look at my record. I am Good! Good! Good!”

Maybe too good.

I have found that when you get too good at something, you stop trying to get better at it. Or worse: you start bypassing the basics, the key points in your sales presentation that earned those stellar results in the past.

Been there. Done that.

You think you’re so good at what you do, that you don’t have to go methodically from A to B to C. You’re quick to jump from A to B then even quicker to jump to P then to Z.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Attitude | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Height Insight: Measuring Your Attitude not Altitude

Posted on March 28, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to heighten your self-confidence. Reading time 2:58.

He’s the leader of a multimillion dollar foundation. Smart. Witty. And 3-feet-9 inches tall.

He deals with community and business leaders with ease and self-deprecating humor. “I just need a minute of your time. “I’ll make it short. I am expert in that department,” he quips.

The first two Triple Crown races are significantly shorter.

He is also an expert in leadership. He has taught me a key leadership skill: your self confidence is a measure of your attitude. Not your altitude.

Consider William Seward, a 5-foot, 6-inch senator from New York. He ran in the 1860 Republican Primary against 6-foot, 4-inch Abraham Lincoln among others.

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her book Team of Rivals, says that Seward nevertheless was a “commanding figure, an outsized personality against whom larger men seemed smaller.”

How do vertically challenged leaders seem taller?

Be curious about others and let criticism roll of your back. That’s what Seward did. Again quoting Doris Kearns Goodwin: “Seward was genuinely interested in people, curious about their families and the smallest details of their lives, anxious to help with their problems. As a public man, he possessed unusual resilience, enabling him to accept criticism with good humored serenity.” Continue reading →

Filed under: Attitude | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Attitude: Parlaying Your Power of Poise

Posted on March 27, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to maintain your poise in the face of frustration. Reading time: 3:32

The bees are swarming. What do you do? Silly question isn’t it? You run for cover of course. Unless you’re an extremely experienced bee keeper. Many of them not only remain poised but also uncovered.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME: Experienced (read stung many times before) bee keeper is poised under pressure.

Amazing. A small percentage of beekeepers actually wear no protective clothing on their bare arms or faces. Those most vulnerable beekeepers exhibit a key leadership skill: calm and confident expertise in a crisis.

They’ve learned how to adapt. They’ve been stung so many times they are seemingly immune to the pain. In fact, I wonder if poet Rudyard Kipling had beekeepers in mind when he wrote his poem IF:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
… Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!

Or a Woman, my daughter. Poise is power. In fact that ability to find sanctuary, to remain calm, poised, and collected when the world around you is spinning out of control is a critical leadership skill that strengthens your performance.

Consider a famous bee keeper of sorts: Joe Torre, former manager of the New York Yankees. He earned a reputation as an unflappable leader who kept his head when others around him were losing theirs. “Be intense but not tense,”observed Torre, who snapped the Yankee’s 18-year barring from the World Series throne room and then went on to win the World Series in four of next five years. The more tense the situation got the calmer Torre got and the better his teams performed under pressure. You got the feeling he didn’t need to wear protective clothing around the bees swarming in his hive known as the New York media pressure cooker.

Unfortunately there’s aren’t that many poised leaders like Joe Torre. There are more leader wanna bees than worker bees. They are more tense that intense. They are more caught up in the day-to-day rat race. They are more apt to Continue reading →

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Cat’s Eyes: Reflecting Long-Term Objectives vs. Short-Term Benefits

Posted on March 26, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to stay focused on your long-term goals. Reading time: 2:13.

When you are trying to catch your train of thought, it’s too tempting to simply reach out and latch on to whatever you can.

It’s too easy to focus only on what HAPPENS next. Sequentially.

It’s more demanding to step back-thoughtfully, strategically and collectively-to carefully consider - what NEXT could happen. Consequentially.

Yet sometimes short-term benefits overshadow long-term objectives.

That’s why I applaud leaders who contain their short-term focus like one of my clients, the first woman to be named CEO of the organization. She pointed to a large framed photo of a cat and told me an allegory I will never forget on the significance of leaders thinking long-term.

Continue reading →

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Orchestrating Your Message with More Than Lyrics

Posted on March 23, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you persuade audiences with more than your words. Reading time: 2:49.

Mark Twain, the famous author and humorist, was getting dressed one morning.

He put on a shirt. It had a missing button.
He put on another shirt. It had a missing button.
He put on a third shirt. It, too, had a missing button.

Twain then unleashed a swirl of swear words. His wife, standing right behind him, heard every word. She methodically repeated every word back to him in hopes of embarrassing her husband.

Twain took it all in and then said: “You have the words, but not the music.”

The most effective leaders I know have both the words and the music in their voice. They use the tone of their voice to articulate even more meaning and memorability. Even with one word musically delivered.

Billllioooooonnnnnnnnsss

Who can ever forget the way scientist and author Carl Sagan spoke of “Billllioooooonnnnnnnnsss and Billllioooooonnnnnnnnsss of stars?”

The turbulence in his voice articulates the vastness of the universe. The trembling whisper in his voice soars through light years of awe, wonder and mystery. And the rumbling of his voice echoing the void of space. Continue reading →

Filed under: Public Speaking | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

POV : Where You Stand Depends On Where You Sit

Posted on March 22, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you factor your frame of reference in problem solving. Reading time: 2:44.

A friend of mine tried to change the subject every time her five-year old granddaughter wanted to know her age.

“Old enough to know better,” she would say to dismiss the subject. Or she would joke: “So old that my back goes out more often than I do.”

Grandma's purse is just another toy box to a five year old girl.

But then one day the wily little 60-month old seemed to get the best of my 60-year-old friend.

“Grandma, I know how old you are.” “You do,” her grandma wondered?

“Yes it’s right here,” the little girl said as she spilled the contents of her grandma’s purse. And out flipped her grandma’s driver’s license on the floor.

“I see your birth date right there,” the precocious little girl said pointing to the grandma’s driver’s license. “And grandma , I see that you were not a very good student, no, no,no.”

“I wasn’t,” the grandma asked?

“No, no, no. See you got an F.”

“An F,” the grandmother exclaimed!

“Yes look at that F….in SEX.”

They both laughed. That scenario showcases the critical insight that every leader faces: defining reality. Continue reading →

Filed under: Perception | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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