Are you feeling lost in the forests of too much information, so lost that you can no longer see the individual trees with their trunks of clarity, their branches of discernment or the insight that seems to flicker through the leafy canopy ?

No wonder the most effective leaders continue to sharpen their decision-making protocol beyond the classic seven-step problem-solving process, beyond: (1) Collection, (2) beyond Selection, (3) beyond Investigation, (4) beyond Determination, (5) beyond Inspection, (6) beyond Execution and (7) beyond Evaluation. The most effective leaders overcome the 8 barriers to thinking long before launching into the classic seven-step problem-solving process.

Think of the word THINKING as an acrostic to help you more readily remember to hurdle these eight barriers to effective thinking and enhance your leadership.

T

Tunnel vision: We limit our scope to only the urgent not the important.

H

History: We tend to base our future action on past experience.

I

Information Overload: We tend to keep looking for more and more information.

N

– Numbers : We’re too quick to play the odds of what to focus on.

K

Knowledge: We react only to what we already know.

I

Inundated: We’re too busy to take the time to think.

N

Notation: We’re too quick to act on the last thing we noted, saw or read.

G

–Generalize: We tend to jump to conclusions from a small sample.

The most insidious of these eight barriers is information overload. Like a dog gnawing on a bone, we can fool ourselves into thinking that chewing on the same thing over and over again nourishes without digestion. Then we parlay that information to make our decisions for us –not by us.

“Data don’t make decisions, people do,” noted Harvard professor Ellen Langer in her book Mindfulness. “Decision-making is independent of data gathering.” Leaders make decisions strategically after jumping over these eight barriers to effective THINKING.

To more fully hone your skills in jumping over these eight barriers to thinking more creatively, more productively and more profitably, pick up a copy of THINKING Like a Leader, With Clarity – a Leadership Mints Series book

Dear Leader:                                                                   

Are you feeling guilty like me after 30 years in business?

I know I should be helping my team sharpen their leadership skills in conflict management, creative thinking and persuasive communications. But I don’t have the time. And neither do they. Consider this depressing data:

• 58% of managers said they didn’t receive any management training. (CareerBuilder.com)
• 50% of senior leaders believe that their talent development efforts don’t adequately build critical skills and organizational capabilities. (Harvard Business Review)
• 87% of millennials cite access to professional development and career growth opportunities as the most important factors in a job and 60% of professionals said they would rather have a promotion and no raise rather than simply a raise in pay. (Gallup)

 Serving Leadership Mints

 There must be a better way to provide our employees more consistent, on-going professional development in less time and still refresh the skill sets of seasoned and emerging leaders on a regular basis.

What if we could help our teams refresh and renew their leadership skills on-the-job in 5-minute segments during our weekly staff meetings? And what if we could provide more than a year’s worth of this on-going professional development for just $15 per employee?

“No, no, no, I don’t need another book on leadership development,” I can hear you saying right now. And you’re right. A book takes too much time to read, digest and discuss.

But what if your employees had their own bowl of Leadership Mints to grab ‘n go anytime whenever they felt a need to refresh and renew their feeling for leading? On-the-go. In 5 minutes.

Consumed like a breath mint  – quick and on the go – a LEADERSHIP MINT is bite-sized idea that energizes leadership behaviors and personalizes leadership principles so they are easily remembered, more readily acted upon and more fully applied.

And like its candy counterpart, a Leadership Mint is easily spooned, quickly digested and immediately invigorating.

These Leadership Mints are focused on specific behavioral traits and indexed for easy access to issues like conflict management and emotional intelligence.

These Leadership Mints are wrapped between the covers of three different books:

To get your copy of LOVING Like a Leader: Click here.

To get your copy of THINKING Like a Leader: Click here.

• To get you copy of SPEAKING Like a Leader: Click here.

Each book features 77 Mints (quick-read stories) and insights from more than 50 other leadership books.

A Weekly Reminder

These Leadership Mints fill a key learning gap especially for newly minted leaders and their busy coaches and mentors: the need for a time-sensitive, weekly reminder of key concepts that could stand on its own or be used as an on-going follow-up to a workshop or seminar with a – dip-in anytime, anywhere grab ‘n go – reading and learning experience. In 5-minute segments.

Reviving the Annual Review Process

These Leadership Mints also serve as a convenient conversation starter between leaders and their direct reports especially as the Annual Review continues to morph into more frequent, on-going, face-to-face conversations throughout the year.

Serve these Leadership Mints to convert the routine nature of the on-going Annual Review into an-ongoing process of CHECKING IN – rather than CHECKING UP –on your direct reports. And reinforce your ability to give effective negative feedback.

Reinforcing Your Feedback Skills

Sprinkled with insights from more than 50 other leadership books, these Leadership Mints convert negative feedback into more of a positive learning experience for both the leader and their direct reports through well-researched examples on optimum leadership behaviors from business, sports and politics.

Buy New at Amazon.com

Invest a few minutes of reading time for a lifetime of leading. Dip into the Leadership Mints Bowl of your choice. BUY NEW at Amazon.com.

THINKING Like a Leader (With Clarity) is ideal for all to sharpen creativity and enhance concentration.

LOVING Like a Leader (With Empathy) is ideal for seasoned leaders as a conflict management tool.

Sincerely, Peter Jeff
Author The 3-book Leadership Mints Series
On Twitter @LeaderMintsGuy

Suddenly, their 6^th grade class turned into a makeshift boxing arena when two boys landed punches on each other before the teacher broke it up. The fisticuffs erupted when the taller boy taunted the shorter boy with a diatribe of his so called “short-comings.” Later in a restorative circle the two boys listened and learned from each other how the other’s behavior impacted them.

Then the teacher intervened. He handed each boy a list of names and asked them to write one sentence on their claim to fame and to note their height. He asked each of the boys to Google a list of famous people.

One boy’s list included: Israel’s David Ben Gurion, China’s Deng Xiaoping, Soviet Union’s Nakita Kruschef, and Russia’s Dmtry Medvedev. The other boy’s list included: South Africa’s Demond Tutu, India’s Mahatma Gandhi, France’s Napoleon Bonaparte, and Jordan’s King Hussein.

 The next day the teacher met with the two boys. They each reported their findings. All the people on their lists were 5-feet 3 inches tall or shorter:

• Israel’s David Ben Gurion, who founded the State of Israel, was 5-feet even.
• China’s Deng Xiaoping, The Principal Leader of the Peoples Republic of China, from 1978 to 1989 was 5 feet 2 inches.
• James Madison, at 5 feet 4 inches, was elected the President of the United States.
• Gustav Eiffel, at 5-feet-5 inches tall, wasn’t too vertically challenged to design, engineer and build the 1,061-foot-tall Eiffel Tower in Paris.  
•  Harry Houdini, at 5-feet-6-inches tall, wasn’t too vertically challenged to be a world-famous magician and escape artist.

The teacher then leads both boys in a discussion on defining people by what they do not how tall they are.

The teacher noted that Dr. Wendell Holmes, the physician, author and father of the Supreme Court Justice, stood only 5 feet tall. But he had a quick response when someone derisively asked him how it felt to be looking up to everyone all the time. “I feel about like a dime must feel when thrown in with a bunch of nickels —half as big and twice as valuable,” the teacher quoted Dr. Holmes.

Then the teacher appeared to change gears.

He asked his students to close their eyes and picture themselves as spectators as supercharged cars roar around a race track. “Here they come racing toward the Grand Stand,” the teacher announces. “Zoooooom!!!!  Wow, those engines are so loud. The teacher booms his voice and repeats for emphasis: “loooooudd! Then the teacher lowered his voice in setting up his teaching point. “And how did those cars sound after they passed by?” Softer the students agreed. “Did those race cars somehow muffle their engines after they raced by you?”the teacher wondered.  His students looked puzzled.

The teacher then explained the counter-intuitive notion that the SHORTER the soundwaves the louder the engines sound is perceived. The teacher explained the physics of the Doppler Effect. He noted the loud sound of the cars stems from sound waves that are shorter as they roar by the grand stand. The softer sound is created when the sound waves get longer the farther they race away from you.  So there is awesome strength in some things that have less length, the teacher drove home is teaching point.

The teacher then told a personal story. He said that before he began his teaching career he worked in a company as a marketing vice president. His boss, the leader of a multi-billion company was smart, witty and had a commanding sense of authority. She stood 4 feet 9 inches tall.  “She taught me a lesson I have never forgotten,” the teacher said. “Your self-esteem is a measure of your attitude –not your altitude –an attitude of confidence in yourself and empathy for others. It’s a measure of WHO you are between your ears rather than the measure of how far your head is from your toes.”

For more ideas on measuring up to your potential with a heightened insight on your physical height, on a greater understanding that size matters –the empowering size of your self-esteem, exercising your power of what you stand for personally, not for simply powering an exercise in how high you stand physically pick up a copy of THINKING Like a Leader, a Leadership Mints Series Book.

Get Your Copy of THINKING Like a Leader