Tag Archives: Leadership

Collaborating Nose-to-Nose

Leave a reply

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you increase your productivity. Reading time: 3:42

Two percheron horses were pulling a wagon load of people through an apple orchard on a sunny, crisp fall afternoon.

horsesThe driver of the horse-drawn wagon said that individually each horse could pull almost 3,000 pounds. But together they could pull 8,000 pounds, at least 33% more than they could pull individually.

The horses learned how to interact with each other, how to work with each other. They learned how to move like dancers in step with each other.

They learned to get ahead they had to stay head to head. In tandem. Nose to nose.

No wonder horses are more easily trained when they can touch noses with other horses. Nose to nose, they are more productive. Nose-to-nose, they are more attentive.

And no wonder that aligning talent nose-to-nose –collaborating -is a key leadership skill for increased productivity and performance. The most effective leaders know that collaborating in general increases speed, enhances power, builds strength and increases overall performance. Continue reading →

Beyond Experience: Keeping It Real & Relevant

Leave a reply

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to enhance your confidence. Reading time: 2:56.

In a leadership review meeting, an executive complained that the candidate lacked experience. “Wait a minute,” objected another executive, “he’s got at least 10 years experience with his former company. “Yeah, right,” demurred the executive, “More like one year of experience 10 times.”

Leaders know they have to keep it real. Every day is a new experience. Not a redo or a redux but a rekindling and rejuvenating; a renewal and revival.

Leaders step on the platform of yesterday only to soar higher today without paying too much attention to past limitations.

Consider Charles Lindbergh. He became the first to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean even though he had never flown half as far as he did over those 33.5 hours from New York to Paris 1927. Lindbergh, at 25, didn’t know what he didn’t know and proceeded onward with an insight, with a vision, with a mission burning and yearning within him of youthful exuberance. Lindbergh called it “the poet’s eye.” Continue reading →

Impulsive Thinking: Beware of Jumping to Conclusions

6 Replies

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea that will help you become more deliberate in your thinking.

Pull the toggle!
Pull the toggle!
Pull the toggle!

The commands blared over my two-way radio as I hung from my parachute 3,000 feet over South Florida. It was my first parachute jump. My jump instructor on the ground screamed at me to steer my parachute for a safe landing by pulling the toggle.

I pulled. And I pulled. And I pulled. The more I pulled, the louder the commands from my jump instructor blared on the radio buckled into my chest. And no wonder the jump instructor was fuming mad.

I was off course and heading for a nightmare of a landing. I looked down and there were electrical power high-tension wires immediately below me. A canal just in front of me. And a wooded area to the left of me.

Pull the toggle!
Pull the toggle!
Pull the toggle!

I pulled. My steering “wheel” seemed locked. I was drifting down to a terrible landing. And I was scared. Continue reading →

Leadership is R-Rated

3 Replies

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you deal more effectively with people. Reading time: 4:34

The rancher carefully displayed a lizard for the general public at a zoo. A woman in the crowd backed away. “I don’t like reptiles,” she demurred.

“It’s not a reptile. It’s a lizard,” the rancher said. The woman winced at the implied distinction.

The rancher lifted his lizard high for all to see. And then in a soft, comforting voice that seemed to caress the on-lookers, he said: “His name is Sam. “Lizards aren’t so bad when you get to know their names ? He looked at the same woman in the audience and said: Do you want to pet Sam now? She smiled.

The rancher and Sam the Lizard demonstrated how getting to know someone more personally can break down the barriers of diversity and shine a more inviting light that seeks to leverage differences for mutual growth. That’s what leaders do. They build relationships.

No wonder leadership is R-rated —R for Relationships.

Leaders realize that relationships can begin only after you first let go of all your personal baggage, let go so that your hands are free to lift others up. Let go so that you can can listen and learn for more than the name of another; so that you can listen more significantly to where the other is coming more than merely where they are from. Then they find common grounder together.

Continue reading →