When Vicki Stanford, Director of the Speakers Bureau for The Ken Blanchard Companies, invited me to send a video for one of their webcasts, I sent this video on Un-Leaderlike Moments. It’s how I’m solving the problem of too much passion. (2 min. 47 sec.) :
How have you seen passion get in the way?
This is my first personal video on Leadership Freak. Feel free to give feedback. By the way, the blurry shirt makes me dizzy! 
Everyone says, “Follow your passion.” But what if you can’t find it?
Find your passion; don’t wait for it to find you.
Discontent:
Pick the scab of dissatisfaction. Hidden passion often lurks under the surface of discontent. Explore what you don’t like.
What don’t you like about you? Forget what you don’t like about the world. Passion to write Leadership Freak, for example, grew out of disappointment within me – about me.
Explore what you don’t like about what you don’t like?
Comforters kill passion. They’re enemies. Reject comfort. Find passion by following pain. Burning discontent guides. Those close to you feel compelled to help you feel better. They should help you feel worse.
Strength:
Follow your strength if you can’t find your passion. Give your abilities to others. This option falls way below following pain, but if you don’t feel dissatisfaction, try it.
Passion isn’t found in current activities, if it was, you’d feel it now. Passion is more about what you aren’t doing. Explore new channels for strengths. Follow your strength if it’s buried, neglected, or under-utilized.
Who:
Your contribution to the world rises up when you work on you. Frantic living muffles passion. Reflect every morning or evening. Take walks. Sit quietly 10 minutes a day.
You can’t escape the tyranny of the urgent because you haven’t given yourself a chance. Walk even if you can’t get stuff off your mind, for example. Keep doing it.
Passion is first about being, then about doing. Embrace the future you.
Find:
Talk with someone who’s found their passion. Forget success; look for contagious joy coupled with discontent. Miserable people won’t help.
Was passion a flickering flame that eventually erupted? Did it strike like lightening? How much of their passion is about them; how much about the world?
How did you find your passion?
How do you help others find their passion?
Most talk; few act. Rooms go silent when someone asks, “What’s next?” Dreaming, thinking, and talking aren’t doing.
Leaders do; dreamers talk.
Talking:
Nothing happens till you take the first step.
Before stepping out:
Go deep before stepping out.
Ask, “How does this step express our values?” Are you following popular trends or embracing behaviors that matter to you. Fads fade because they’re shallow.
Stepping out:
Bonus: Stepping out prepares for stepping off.
Great endeavor always encounter resistance.
Stepping off:
Bonus: Know your strengths before arriving at stepping-off moments.
Power of skin:
Get skin in the game or get out! Real leaders have most to lose. Fake leaders posture and protect. Never let others take risks you should take.
Leaders who protect themselves create environments where others protect themselves.
The path to great achievement always leads to stepping-off moments. Prepare don’t run away.
How do you move from talking to doing?
What prepares individuals or teams for stepping off moments?
There are two types of people in the world, dreamers and doers.
Lazy dreamers are useless. Avoid them.
The way to matter is doing what matters.
Dreamless doers are anchors. Reject them.
The way to matter is pursing dreams.
Dreamers:
Doers:
Success:
Find your counterpart. Dreamers need doers and doers need dreamers. Most aren’t great at both.
Extraordinary success demands dreaming and doing.
A word to dreamers. Doers get more done. Getting them to commit is challenging. Life is filled with tasks they must complete. Adding tasks frustrates because it postpones completion. They love success and certainty.
A word to doers. Dreamers take your further. Getting them focused is challenging. Life brims with dreams to chase. Adding dreams excites because it expands impact. They love pursuit and thrive with uncertainty.
Dealing with the difference:
The key:
Rather than frustrate, compliment. Know who you are and how you work. Accept who they are and how they work.
Tip:
The more you are of one the less you are of the other, usually.
What corresponding strengths and weaknesses do dreamers and doers possess?
How can dreamers and doers best function together?
The encore presentation of “Writing Blogs that Get Read,” is 12/19/12 at 1:00 p.m. EST. Join me.
We were poor college students, over 1,600 miles from home, when we celebrated our first Thanksgiving as husband and wife. The capacity of our kitchen was two, uncomfortably. It was 1976.
Dave Tricky, a fellow student, came over with his girlfriend. It was a big deal; friends and food mean a lot when you don’t have much.
Holidays make us miss home when we can’t be there. But, I’ll never forget how proud and excited we felt to host our own gathering of four. We were becoming real adults. I was 20 and Dale was 19.
We moved the tiny kitchen table to the slightly larger living room and stationed it uncomfortably close to the front door to accommodate the crowd.
After the blessing, I ceremoniously stood, as the “man” of the house to proudly carve the bird. It was one of life’s great moments.
Sadly, thankfulness was soon replaced with deflating humiliation. The knife didn’t glide through tender breast meat. It hit bone!
I stayed calm and poked around. The whole damn turkey was devoid of meat. I brought home a bone turkey. If not for the legs, it would have been vegetarian Thanksgiving. Finally, they left.
Defeated, I carried the bone-bird to the kitchen built for two, uncomfortably, to scavenge the remains. We could use even sparse leftovers.
In the processes of cleaning the carcass I flipped the bird and there, before my defeated eyes, lay two succulent turkey breasts, laughing at me. We’d cooked the bird breast-side down. I’d carved the boney back.
A lesson for a boney bird:
Successful leaders search through bones to find meat.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends in the US.
Image source
Every morning I put my fingers on the keyboard not knowing what will come out. An hour or two later, I post 300 word or less on this blog. (Technically its fewer not less.)
Writing is thinking and often I think differently when the hour’s over. Yesterday it happened again when I typed, “Fearful leaders are followers.” I hadn’t planned it. But, there it was in all its discomfort. It’s been on my mind since.
Fearful leaders follow because they:
Certainty:
Fearful leaders need too much certainty.
Josh Linkner, in “Disciplined Dreaming,” suggests entrepreneurial leaders pull the trigger with 70% certainty. Anything higher isn’t entrepreneurial.
Traditional leaders pull the trigger at 80% certainty. Anything higher is stagnation.
The uncomfortable 20%
What about the 20% uncertainty factor? Answer fear with trust. Believe in people. Let them rise to the challenge.
Once decisions are made, focus on supporting people, forget the decisions.
Fear and love:
Fear works for the short-term but exhausts in the end. Love works for the long-term. Love your organization, its mission, and its people. Build them up. Trust them. Love energizes.
Winners risk failure. Losers can’t fail. Furthermore, willingness to fail, frees. Protection mode hobbles you and those around you.
Leaders controlled by fear may have positions but they aren’t leading.
Yesterday’s post: “Igniting Change from the Middle.”
For the passionate middle: “Lead your Boss,” by John Baldoni.
Fill in the blank, “Fearful leaders _______.”
How can leaders overcome fear?
Image source
The first pressing challenge of leadership is focusing on the thing that matters most.
People matter most.
In one sense, you are the person that matters most.
Nurture and develop you
as much as you nurture and develop others.
In another sense, others matter most. You make others matter when you:
The second pressing challenge of leadership is making what’s obvious to you obvious to everyone.
Make the obvious, obvious again:
***
If you don’t say it, no one knows.
If they can’t see it, it doesn’t matter.
If they can’t repeat it, it’s irrelevant.
***
The third pressing challenge of leadership is narrowing your focus.
Opportunities and challenges exceed resources.
What are the daily challenges of leadership and how can leaders best face them?
Your job is bringing out the best in others by the way you interact with them. Well timed, well executed conversation change people’s lives.
First:
Determine and affirm aspirations and goals. Never have conversations about an individual’s life, strengths, weaknesses, or potential until you understand their hopes and dreams.
People open their hearts to people
who understand their hearts.
Second:
Explore strengths and weaknesses in the context of aspirations.
Ask:
Tip:
If you’re addressing weaknesses, try two questions at once. “What behaviors and qualities will enhance your progress and what qualities and behaviors will hinder your success?” Address negatives in the context of positives.
Affirm strengths by explaining practical benefit and positive potential. Address weakness by exploring how they hinder aspirations.
Third:
Address negatives without being a downer?
Use positive qualities as foundations to discuss behaviors that need improvement. For example, if you’re having conversations with a goal oriented person. Open the “you need improvement” part of the conversation by asking, “A goal oriented person may walk on others, how might that be true of you?”
Fourth:
Craft strategies with them not for them.
After they identify strengths and weaknesses, craft strategies that better move them forward with them. You may feel you know the best answer but they must find their own. Embrace their journey.
Fifth:
Focus more on positives than negatives. If you bring something up that creates frustration or anger, pull back. But, know that anger indicates it matters. Touch the topic at another time. They just aren’t ready to deal with it yet.
How do you have conversations that move people forward?
What types of conversations haven’t worked for you in the past?
The challenges of leadership are inside leaders. Stop blaming organizations and others for your shortfalls and failures.
Take the bull by the horns.
You are the bull.
The 12 Toughest Challenges of Leadership:
Situational or not:
Leadership challenges always involve changing situations. You, however, are the common factor. Your ability to lead yourself is your greatest ability. Situations come and go but you are always there.
Number 12:
Leading yourself to build the team is the leadership challenge that produces the most fruit. Success depends on your ability to attract, develop, and retain top talent.
How to spot top talent?
Top talent wants to:
Key qualities:
Determine the nonnegotiable qualities you expect from your team members. Go with their strengths; compensate for their weaknesses.
What are the toughest challenges of leadership?
What qualities do great team members possess?
You might think it’s awkward but I asked anyway.
“What makes me think you can be a leader?” The person I asked is in their early 20’s with many leadership accomplishments.
Maybe it was part humility, part fear of saying the “wrong” thing, or part sincerely not knowing, eventually they said, “I don’t know.” I said one word, “dissatisfaction.”
Dissatisfaction makes me believe
you could be a successful leader.
Why I said dissatisfaction:
Not enough:
Dissatisfaction is the beginning of leadership; it doesn’t guarantee you’ll lead. Many dissatisfied people remain stuck. They never change anything. They comfort themselves by blaming others.
Dissatisfaction destroys people
unless they take responsibility for change.
Make your move:
Don’t let go of dissatisfaction; embrace it.
Deal with an imperfect world, imperfectly,
if you don’t, you’re doomed to become what you despise.
Related post: Walking the Leadership Tightrope
What role does dissatisfaction play in your life and leadership?
How do you deal with dissatisfaction?
Leadership Freak by Dan Rockwell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at leadershipfreak.wordpress.com.
