Being Comfortable In Your Own Skin

Posted on November 29, 2013 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here is an idea to help you cope with extraordinary demands of a leader. Reading time: 5:18

The newly promoted CEO is rifling through a stack of congratulatory phone messages.

phone message He’d just returned to his expansive and expensive new office from a press conference announcing his appointment as the leader of a $3 billion company.

His compensation had just increased 10 fold and now his span of control reached globally into eight other countries and over 18,000 employees.

But this newly minted milionaire CEO had more meaningful things to think about than dwell on his own success. And in the process he taught us all a keen leadership lesson in authenticity in his first few minutes in the BIG Chair.

“That’s the most important message of them all,” the CEO says, handing the phone message to his top public relations guy.

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Filed under: Emotional Intelligence | Tagged: being honest with yourself, faking it, getting to know yourself, humility, keeping things in perspective, know thyself, putting on aires, working with integrity | Leave a comment »

Making Yourself Heard in the Jungle

Posted on November 26, 2013 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to collaborate more productively. Reading time: 2:02

Swinging from the vine, Tarzan’s yell trumpeted throughout the jungle, blasting his personal signature in the movies with an ear-piercing, attention-commanding roar.

tarzan Yet in reality, Tarzan’s yell was comprised of three different male voices collaborating together to record cinema history.

Tarzan’s Scream Team is an instructive metaphor for the way the most effective leaders collaborate to assure their collective message is heard, understood and acted upon by the broadest set of followers.

Collaboration enhances overall performance. In the jungle and in the sky. Take a look at the North Star. It’s revelatory to note that

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Filed under: Teamwork | Tagged: breaking 4-minute mile barrier, Chris Brasher, Collaborate, collaborating to break 4-minute mile, collaboration, Issac Newton, NorthStar, Roger Bannister, standing on the shoulders of others, Tarzan, Tarzan scream, Tarzan yell, yell in the jungle | Leave a comment »

Glove Love & Dream Catchers

Posted on November 22, 2013 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to rekindle your passion for your profession’s tools. Reading time: 3:34

Yeeeowwww! He grimaced as the pain burned through his fingers, the stinging pain of a hardball slammed on a baseball field and caught. Bare-handed!

Baseball Glove circa 1920

Then stoically, the infielder somehow finds the strength to grip the ball and throw to first base, transferring the same stinging pain to the first baseman who likewise absorbed the pain — bare-handed.

And in the process these hard-core, bare-handed baseball players of yesterday taught us a keen lesson in leadership: Passion trumps convenience and the bond of a team working together for a shared goal can endure and even thrive on pain and frustration.

They followed their passion for the game FIRST. Then the supporting equipment -from baseball gloves to catcher’s masks—would follow decades later.

FOLLOW YOUR PASSION

Leaders know that passion drives performance. No sense waiting around for another tool, another piece of equipment, a larger lab, a more advanced manufacturing facilities. Build it now.Play ball! Now!

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Filed under: Conviction | Tagged: baseball gloves and shaving cream, baseball gloves and shoe laces, baseball gloves and vaseline, breaking in a baseball glove, catching baseballs barehanded, passionately caring for your tools, playing for the fun of it, respect for your tools, working for the fun of it | Leave a comment »

Zooming In vs. Zoning Out On the Run

Posted on November 19, 2013 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you cope under stress. Reading time: 4:02

Picture yourself as a marathon runner midway into your 26-mile 385-yard challenge.

Your lungs are burning. Your legs are heavier with each step. Your breathing’s erratic.

And the pain rips through your body like so many coffin nails piercing your feet every time your foot hits the ground.

You want to zone out. You have to zone out.

But then the leader in you takes charge. And you do the opposite. You zoom in.

Elite runners -leaders-zoom in. They “focus intensely,” observes author Geoff Colvin in his book Talent is Overrated. “They count their breaths and simultaneously count their strides to maintain certain ratios.”

Meanwhile recreational runners-followers by definition- zone out. They “think about anything other than what they’re doing,” adds Colvin. “It s painful and they want to take their mind off running.”

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Filed under: Conviction | Tagged: concentrating on pain, coping with pain, dealing with pain, focusing when you are in pain, Paavo Nurmi, pain and concentration, pain and focusing, rhythm and breathing | Leave a comment »

Writing Your Wrongs

Posted on November 15, 2013 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to gain more control over your anger. Reading time: 2:53

Ohhh! If you could only install a punching bag in your office! You’re that mad!!

man writing a contract Well, how about trying another weapon of choice? Something you already have in the office.

Something sharper.
Something more pointed.
Something lighter and easier to push around.

Consider making like a modern day Zorro. Unsheathe your pen. And figuratively rip your opponent to shreds. With the written word.

Sounds absurd? Tell that to President Harry S. Truman who exercised his Anger Writes in what historian David McCullough called “one of the most intemperate documents every written by an American president.”

Fortunately, Truman’s Chief of Staff intercepted the president’s vitriolic speech writing before it -and he-became a public embarrassment.

But at least President Truman’s pen vented his pent-up emotions. Now with the air cleared, Give ‘em Hell Harry’ could later think more constructively with his advisers to solve an escalating problem: striking union workers choking the economy.

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Filed under: Writing | Tagged: controlling your anger, Federalist papers, give them hell harry, journaling to vent, pen is mightier than the sword, Truman and anger, Truman and venting his anger in writing, writing away your anger, Writing for Emotional Balance, writing to vent | Leave a comment »

Turning Stage Fright Into Stage Might

Posted on November 12, 2013 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help better endure stage fright. Reading time: 4:05

For the first time in your career you will be making a company-wide presentation to the largest audience you have ever faced. Sure, you’re nervous. Maybe even a little scared.

Astronaut Gus Grissom (center) flanked by Glenn (left) and Alan Shepard (right)

Astronaut Gus Grissom (center) flanked by John Glenn (left) and Alan Shepard (right)

You know your material. You spent more than a month researching, writing and rehearsing. Yet now -two hours from show time —the butterflies in your stomach are tearing you apart. (WTF!)

Your heart’s thumping. Your lips are quivering. Your voice is quavering. Your head is swirling. Your knees are knocking. Your palms are sweating. Your face is reddening. Your throat is choking. And your eyes are tearing.

Whoa there Mealy Mouth! Take a breath. And take comfort: You’re not alone.

In fact, stage fright inflicts the best of leaders but it doesn’t get the best of any leader, especially those leaders as prepared as you.

And you can take some solace knowing that even the most pioneering and courageous leaders suffer from those butterflies. Even if they can perform admirably out of this world. In outer space.

Astronaut Gus Grissom for example struggled with stage fright at the podium. “Asking Gus to just say a few words was like handing him a knife and asking to a main vein,” writes Tom Wolfe in his book The Right Stuff.

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Filed under: Public Speaking | Tagged: Bill Russell and nerves, Bill Russell and vomiting, Bill Russell getting sick before games, fear of public speaking, flight or fright, Gus Grissom and public speaking, heroes and fear, James Cagney and stage fright, stage fright | Leave a comment »

Crawling Out From Under Your Skin

Posted on November 8, 2013 by The Leadership Mints Guy

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to strengthen your emotional intelligence. Reading time: 3:32

Ben Franklin did it in the nude. D.H. Lawrence did it under a tree. Gertrude Stein did it in a car. Robert Louis Stevenson did it in bed. Ernest Hemingway did it standing up. And Sir Walter Scott did it on horseback.

Ernest Hemingway at his stand up desk: typewriter perched atop dresser doors

Ernest Hemingway at his stand up desk: typewriter perched atop book shelf.

Indeed, the process of writing is as diverse as those individual writers. So is the process of leading.

Yet the object is the same in both writing and leading: get into the mindset of your readers or followers and serve their interests.

How do you more efficiently adopt the mindset of another beyond basic research and survey tools?

Writers do it with a ritual that begins each writing session; a ritual that signals a conscious effort to change their behavior from the ordinary “me and we” to the extraordinary “them and theirs.”

It’s a ritual so arresting writers seemingly climb a ladder -step by step -to get away from everything familiar and then they take a proverbial plunge into something new, different, and exhilarating. Consider these various writing rituals to get into the hearts and minds of others:

Poet Friedrich Schiller would fill his desk with rotten apples. Composer Richard Wagner wore historical costumes. Author Samuel Johnson wrote most prolifically with a purring cat near him.

Author Marcel Proust lined his work room with sound-absorbing cork. Author Charles Dickens required his standing desk face north and Rudyard Kipling couldn’t work at all without black ink in his pen. And Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk would leave his house, walk around the block twice and then come back home to write.

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Filed under: Emotional Intelligence | Tagged: Ben Franklin writing in the nude, Ernest Hemingway writing standing, getting under a reader's skin, getting under someone's skin, leaders are writers, Richard Wagner wearing costumes, Schiller and rotten apples, Sir Walter Scott writing on horseback, writers and leaders, writers are leaders | Leave a comment »

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Being Comfortable In Your Own Skin

Making Yourself Heard in the Jungle

Glove Love & Dream Catchers

FOLLOW YOUR PASSION

Zooming In vs. Zoning Out On the Run

Writing Your Wrongs

Turning Stage Fright Into Stage Might

Crawling Out From Under Your Skin

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