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 others—in much the same way a room with pendulum clocks set at a different swing rates will synchronized without any manual or electronic intervention.

Leaders affect others the closer they associate with each other the better they perform. They sound so much more robust reflecting off each other when all the strings are played on a single cradle rather than playing each string on a different cradle.

Indeed , the proximity of what or who you surround yourself with, affects you in much the same way the North and South Poles are so different in temperature. The South Pole is colder largely because the South Pole is connected more directly with the oceans that surround the South Pole. The North Pole is surrounded more by land which retains heat longer than water. So the North Pole is warmer than the South Pole primarily because of the associations it has made albiet without much choice.

But leaders have plenty of choice to make new connections, new associations.

Are you camped out and freezing in the South Pole in your career? The most effective leaders are always evaluating the need to make different and potentially more viable connections in the North Pole of their company or organization?

Is it time for you to connect differently? To associate with new people and ideas? To turn the burning in your eyes into a churning toward more productivity, toward more creativity, toward more viability? Make the kernels in your life really POP anew. With a dash of salt.

Today’s ImproveMINT

Keep making more creative connections to keep your leadership thinking in mint condition.

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