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Some time ago I went into a new local business to check out their offerings. I liked the store and their products but they didn’t have that sense of community. Sadly, eight short months later, they closed their doors. I couldn’t help but notice they committed some cardinal sins that lead to their demise.
When I was a new teacher in the 1970s, each new school year came with the excitement and anticipation of new beginnings. I would go to school a couple of weeks before the official start date to check my new student lists, begin classroom preparation, look over any new texts or equipment, and chat with staff and office personnel who might also be in early. I also tried to discover that year’s “fix-all.” There was always a new panacea to “ensure” successful teaching/learning, better readers, increased graduation rate, improved standardized test scores, or whatever issue was the current media and public concern. After my first year, I learned to steel myself for the opening meetings, so I could hold on to the joy I felt about getting back to what I loved best—teaching.
“Influence is something everyone can do. The people you spend most of your time with will influence you the most. It stands to reason if association influences, then you are an influencer by virtue of your association with others.” – Karl Rohde
As I approached a friend’s house the other day, I noticed a “No Soliciting” sign on the door. It got me thinking about how marketing is changing. The internet’s impact on marketing cannot be overstated; it has leveled the playing field and allowed anyone with a connection to selling their wares to the world.
Many leadership gurus will tell you that by doing certain things you will become a better leader. To sell more books or get more speaking engagements, they develop lists to follow that help you become a better leader. While some of what they may tell you will help, I believe they miss the mark of what really helps someone become a great leader.
“The single most important thing [you can do] is to shift [your] internal stance from ‘I understand’ to ‘Help me understand.’ Everything else follows from that...”
– Douglas Stone, Difficult Conversations
Early in our marriage, I learned the four words my husband feared the most were, “We need to talk.” Through the years, I’ve discovered most of us have the same fear—even when we’re initiating the conversation. Here are a few quick tips to ease the stress of having a difficult, albeit necessary, discussion at work when problems arise.
A year ago, while attending a conference in a major city, I would either walk several blocks from my hotel to the conference or ride the subway each day. Traveling through the city, I noticed that the majority of the people wore earbuds (small in-ear headphones) and were somewhat oblivious to what was going on around them. People walked down the street silently, heads down, avoiding people and traffic by means of peripheral vision, never making eye contact with passers-by, and never engaging those around them.
Today teachers utilize video frequently for their classroom lessons. These videos can consist of either lesson for a flipped classroom, demonstrations of key concepts, or instructions to enhance the learning process.
Some years ago, when I was a student, there was a time when all of my design work incorporated, in full measure, the color pink. That color just worked for the project at hand. Some five projects in a row prominently featured a pink hue. Personally, I don’t like the color pink. Pink, salmon, melon, rouge, call it what you want, I don’t like it. I won’t say I hate pink. Pink is just a color, there’s no need to go all the way to hate. I just had to set my personal bias aside and accept that pink was the right color for the job.
