At breakfast with S this morning, we were talking about leadership training. On the 30 second drive back from that breakfast, I reflected on what has stuck with me for leadership concepts. I have taught a lot of these over the years, but when it comes down to it, only a few remain a part of my own philosophy.
The first one that I spout about all the time is one from Alfie Cohn. He believes that testing kids in school is stupid because you are testing them mid learning cycle. Not all kids learn at the same pace, so the test is mid-way for most of the class. Standardized tests are the same thing. I always told my kids that they were obsolete as soon as you 1) got into college 2) finished that class. Translated to the work environment with a Deming quality concept thrown in, you cannot distinguish performance for 85% of the population. So why do we spend so much time on merit increases, when you cannot distinguish the difference in performance? Pet peeve of mine for sure.
My most recent learning was about brain chemistry, the partial topic of a previous post. I must have used this concept to explain changing behavior, 100 times since that February workshop, as recently as yesterday in fact.
This is the obvious one, MBTI. I revisited a worksheet yesterday and these two comments about my personality jumped out from the page like cold water on my face to remind me of some opportunities for enlightenment: ENFP Stress Behavior - Keeps talking until you FEEL the same way as he/she does AND ENFP Resists Rules by - Relying on the force of personality to overcome laws of physics. I learn something every time I conduct a MBTI workshop. I use it daily to interact better with family and friends and workmates. I laugh at myself daily about my type.
The last one for this post is the book Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham. The best thing to do, is to focus on people's strengths and not try to fix their weaknesses. This one is so obvious, however, we are in the middle of performance reviews at work, and I am not sure our system is geared to focus on strengths as much as it is to have "developmental" opportunities.
OK, those 4 are the top of mind for me, today and many of them have been on my radar and in my daily language for at least a decade.
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