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Hold Your Fire & Aim Strategically

Posted on September 28, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to enhance your strategic thinking skills. Reading time: 2:43

There are six animals: a bear, a bull, a horse, a lion, a tiger and a wolf. If you put them in a single cage, which would dominate as the strongest animal?

You picked the horse right? Of course you did if you thought more strategically than simply logically.

It’s a matter of timing. Not speed. Not strength. And strategic timing is key leadership skill.

Let’s see what we can learn about strategic timing in solving your own problems from the way the horse emerged victorious over his stronger foes. The horse first adopted a wait-and-see attitude when the animals charged into each other.

The horse held back and let other five animals claw and jaw each other to death. Then when the bear emerged the lone victor from that initial battled, the bear charged after the horse.

The horse stood firm and poised. The horse leverage his height advantage over the bear and at the precise moment the bear bared his teeth and leaped with an intended death grip, the horse timed a well-placed kick in the bear’s eyes. Continue reading →

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

Making New Connections On Your Train To Success

Posted on September 26, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you leverage your contacts. Reading time: 2:54

The little girl dove into the recently chemically cleaned swimming pool and rubbed her eyes. “Oweee, Oweee,” the 4-year-old screamed. “My eyes burn.”

Chlorine can be caustic by itself and in high concentration dangerous. But if you combine chlorine with sodium the resulting compound is something you enjoy on popcorn and hundreds of others foods. Something very tasty and zesty. Normal table salt. Sodium chloride.

Same elements. Different connection. Different association. Different affinity.

Making new connections. That’s what leaders do. They make connections that turns potentially dangerous elements into creatively productive solutions.

New Connections

They take something pure and add a new connection, a new element, and make what was once pure even more valuable and viable in much the same way sugar looks brighter in a blue package.

Consider sterling silver. It is not pure silver. Pure silver would be too soft for use as table ware. So sterling silver is mixed with copper. Leaders make that critical and creative copper connection.

Consider 24-karat gold. It is not pure gold. Pure gold would be too soft for use as rings. So 24-karat gold is mixed with copper. Leaders make that critical and creative copper connection.

In their drive to make those connections, leaders feed—and feed off of Continue reading →

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

7 Ways to Combat Stage Fright

Posted on September 24, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you be more confident in your public speaking. Reading time: 3:26

Nervous about delivering your next speech? Here are 7 ideas you can use to combat your fear of public speaking. Use these 7 tactics to fortify your voice, energize your body and corral your nerves—all 45 miles of them — rumbling, quaking and quivering throughout your body.

COOKIES & HOT WATER

Eat two cookies and sip some hot water just before you take command of the podium. Think of it as your game day meal – fuel for your body to gear up for a strong performance. The cookies are for energy and the hot water is to soothe your vocal cords. That’s what the Greater Communicator did.

As a former actor, President Ronald Reagan knew the importance of coating your vocal cords with hot water and eating cookies to enhance the vitality and energy in his voice. Reagan said he got those speaking tips on the care and feeding of the voice from two celebrities who built their fame on their voices, Frank Sinatra and Reverend Billy Graham.

BITE YOUR TONGUE

Sometimes no matter how much water you drink, you still end up with cotton mouth. Your mouth is so dry you feel like it is filled with cotton balls. It even has a medical term (xerostomia). Now what do you do? Bite your tongue. Try it now. Pull the tip of your tongue to the back of your mouth and bite down hard. You will generate enough saliva to combat cotton mouth. Continue reading →

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

Public Speaking: Making SOUND Decisions

Posted on September 21, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to enhance your persuasive skills with your tone of voice. Reading time: 3:19

You’re at a cocktail party. You scan the room. You can’t hear the individual conversations but you can infer plenty of meaning in the body language and the tone. In fact the most effective leaders religiously regard –and guard -their tone of voice as a key leadership tool.

Metropolitan Opera House, New York City

That’s why the most effective leaders readily acknowledge the validity in the results of a Harvard study that the tone of voice between a doctor and his patient can be as telling as the words they share.

Judging only on the tone of voice and with no information on the skill level of each surgeon, the Harvard study could predict with 95 percent accuracy which surgeons got sued.

Tone is critical in communicating effectively. In fact tone can be five times more important that the words, according to a UCLA study by Albert Mehrebian. He found that communications impact was 55% visual, 38% tone and 7% verbal (actual words spoken). Some Video Gamers even speak Simlish. They can only undersand each other by the tone of voice they use.

Tone is so prevalent that leaders fully embrace and celebrate that tone can thrill. Continue reading →

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

Treating Others Fairly Not Equally

Posted on September 19, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to reinforce relationships in times of stress. Reading time: 2:49

Your high profile, highly-regarded top employee embarrasses your company –and himself—in a late night fender bender that clearly broke expected rules of behavior. Other employees are lobbying you to make sure you dole out the proper punishment “to serve as an example to all employees,” they say.

Catcher Yogi Berra bear hugs pitcher Don Larsen to celebrate Larsen’s Perfect Game in the 1956 World Series

Of course you have to enforce the rules. No favoritism. Black and white issue. Done deal.

Not so fast.

That’s why the most effective leaders focus more on the shades of gray. Penalizing without paralyzing future performance.

Consider how Casey Stengel, a gray leader extraordinaire, handled this situation as the manager/leader of The New York Yankees.

It happened during the spring exhibition season a few months after his star performer – Don Larsen – pitched the first (and still the only) perfect game in a World Series. Larsen wrapped his car around a lamppost at 5 am in St. Petersburg, Florida –then known primarily for its high concentration of retirees. Larsen was more embarrassed than hurt.

Newspaper reporters asked Yankee leader/manager Stengel if he was going to fine the star pitcher. Stengel smiled and said: “Anybody who can find something to do at 5 am in St. Petersburg deserves a medal not a fine.”

Stengel diffused the situation with humor when he realized the minimal impact of the situation: no one hurt, minor damage etc. and the opportunity to reinforce his supportive relationship with his star player.

Of course, Stengel opened himself up to critics who charged favoritism. But Stengel recognized his role as a leader was to treat all of his direct reports FAIRLY not equally. Continue reading →

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

Innovation: Turning An Irritant Into A Pearl

Posted on September 17, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you turn a bad experience into a creative idea. Reading time: 2:13

The melting carton of ice cream oozed all over the seat in the row boat. The faster he rowed, the quicker the ice cream seemed to melt along with his visions of a fun picnic on the island with his girlfriend.

A 15-minute rowing trip turned into an hour struggle against changing winds and waves.

And Ole Evinrude got mad.

He took that irritant of having to fight those waves with only a rowing paddle and turned that grueling and frustrating experience into a pearl of innovation. He engineered the boating industry’s first outboard motor.

That’s what creative leaders do. They take ordinary problems and turn them into extraordinary innovations Continue reading →

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

Persuasion: From Sumo to Judo

Posted on September 14, 2012 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you counter challenges in the marketplace. Reading time: 2:02

You’re the CEO of a family friendly resort. But the prostitutes seem to be more visible than ever before around the resort, no matter how much security and police patrol.

Judo -Using an Opponent’s Weight Aganst Him

Now the prostitutes are getting even more brash, distributing their business cards in public lounges, on vending machines and in bathrooms among others places throughout the resort.

It seems the faster the janitorial staff confiscates and trashes those business cards, the quicker those prostitute business cards reappear. (For a Fun Time call xxx-xxx-xxxx).

How would you solve this problem?

Practice judo not sumo. That’s what the most effective leaders do. They outsmart the prostitutes.

They use their strength—against them — the way combatants in judo use each other’s weight against themselves.

Forget trying to out power them the way sumo wrestlers do. Forget trying to confiscate those business cards faster than they can distribute them. Out do them with judo like this:

The CEO decided to turn the prostitute’s strength -their business card distribution system-into their weakness. He had his janitors carry a label stamp.

This time the janitors picked the prostitutes business cards up, stamped them with a three-word message and put them back on the vending machines, in the bathrooms and in the public lounge areas.

The three word message: “First Hour Free.”

Within 24 hours none of the prostitute business cards could be found on the resort.

Continue reading →

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

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