Category: Thought Leaders

When we practice Compassion, it sorta serves as a multivitamin in our interactions with others. Compassion provides a boost to us and those with whom we engage by …

In music, harmony is the combining of notes that creates a pleasing sound. That combining happens both in simultaneous fashion (at any single moment) and in progressive fashion (as the song flows). There are numerous ways to affect harmony, but the result is that it pleases the ear and brain of the listener(s).

Harmony also occurs in personal, interpersonal and communal environments. We can “feel” it when our body/spirit is “in harmony.” Same goes for our relationships. And, we sense that same “vibe” in the organizations we are members of. It just feels right when we’re in harmony. It is noticeably unpleasing when we are not.

As one of my mentors says, “We are clearly singing the same song, but the notes don’t seem to be in harmony.”

The best leaders I know are superb at getting us to sing the same song, in harmony.

*If you’d like to read more of nc’s blatherings, go to nc’s Recursive Learning.

Experiencing pain is part of living. Some of the pain is physical, some intellectual, and some emotional/spiritual. Pain hurts, but it rarely does us in (unless we choose to be done in).

Watching some folks I respect and love deal with pain, it seems they apply one or more of the following viewpoints as they deal with it:

• They use the pain to help clarify and focus on the truly important stuff.
• They examine the pain and its antecedents carefully, seeking to learn the embedded lessons for future living.
• They apply the experience of personal pain toward being more understanding of and empathetic toward others who are living with it.
• They realize that pain is often the result of pushing our limits, which usually leads to improved performance.
• They appreciate that pain almost always humbles us, and humbleness is truly a virtue.

The holiday season is in the air. Pretty hard to miss.

Sitting in numerous business meetings and other human gatherings this week, I was reminded that our Presence is a gift. Though a gift of great value, it doesn’t cost us much to share it.

Giving the Present of Presence means lending to the engagement:

• Our full attention to the Other(s)
• Our eyes
• Our ears
• Our open body language
• Our brain/thinking
• Our participation in the chatter
• Our inclusion of others in that chatter
• Our expressions of care (whether we agree or not)

Those who serve in leadership roles (e.g., parent, teacher, manager, coach, captain, CEO, …) know full well that the world is not a black-n-white environment. Most of the decisions leaders make land squarely in the world of grayness. The higher up the leadership food chain we move, the grayer the world gets.

The leaders I value and study subscribe closely to some common principles when making those inevitable and numerous GRAY decisions that come their way:

• They refuse to engage in or condone unethical/illegal behavior.
• They seek counsel from wise others (when time permits).
• They start always from a position of “do no harm.”
• They strive for fundamental fairness.
• They press always for the common good.

One reality of leadership is that most of the easy decisions never come through our door. Those decisions get made in the customer service division, or in Room 174, or out in the field, or at the worksite, or… The gray ones, however, have a persistent way of landing on our desk or in our inbox.

Happy deciding…

*If you’d like to read more of nc’s blatherings, go to nc’s Recursive Learning. 

 I recently read The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (2024). Dr. Dennis Wissing, the Dean of our college at LSU Shreveport, “baited” us to read this book. I am thankful.

My top takeaways:

• Mental health and social acuity of children plummeted from 2010-2015, the window in which phone-based existence began to predominate.
• Haidt’s 4-fold proposal: 1) No smartphones before HS, 2) No social media before 16, 3) Phone-free schools, 4) Far more supervised play and childhood independence.
• Fear triggers full response; anxiety is triggered at “perceived” threat.
• Smartphones allow us, and our kids, to be “forever elsewhere.”
• Attunement develops in free play as result of “serve and return” interactions, which forge emotional maturity.
• Synchronous, F2F, physical interactions serve as basis for this healthy social development.
• Social media in a powerful purveyor of conformity attraction, serving as virtual peer pressure.
• Antifragile = things that need to get pummeled and knocked down in order to grow stronger.
• Safetyism = safety above all else.
• The human brain has two subsystems: Discover mode and Defend mode.
• Superbly effective experience blockers: Safetyism and smartphones.
• Four Harms of a phone-based childhood… Harm #1: Social Deprivation. Harm #2: Sleep Deprivation. Harm #3: Attention Fragmentation. Harm #4: Addiction.
• 4 reasons girls are particularly vulnerable: 1) Girls are more affected by visual social comparison and perfectionism. 2) Girls’ aggression is more relational. 3) Girls more easily share emotions and disorders. 4) Girls are more subject to predation and harassment.
• Loss of belonging to a loving and lasting community may be the highest price of social media addiction.
• “The Great Rewiring of Childhood pulled young people out of real-world communities, including their own families, and created a new kind of childhood lived in multiple rapidly shifting networks.” (p. 197)
• Our attention makes USthe product that platforms sell to their customers.
• We should consider the Gardener vs Carpenter analogical dichotomy of childrearing.

My favorite quotes:

“… overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.” (p. 9)

 “I see few indications that a phone-based childhood develops antifragility.” (p. 81)

“We should be giving children more of the practice they need in the real world and delaying their entry into the online world, where the benefits are fewer and the guardrails nearly nonexistent.” (p. 82)

“The strongest and most satisfying communities come into being when something lifts people out of the lower level so that they have powerful collective experiences. They all enter the realm of the sacred together, at the same time.” (p. 203)

“We need to start prevention early, in elementary and middle schools, before our children start wilting.” (p. 263)

I’ve read JH before, and been impressed with his thinking each time. A worthy scholar and impactful researcher who seems genuinely interested in shaping better for futures for all of us, particularly our children.

*If you’d like to read more of nc’s blatherings, go to nc’s Recursive Learning. 

The wisest leaders I know are masters at empowering those on their team. They provide Impetus to the team by engaging in the following “juicers”…

• Vision — They work with us to craft a very clear vision of the better future we can make together.
• Comms — They provide a relentless drumbeat of communication, internal and external, around that Vision.
• Relate — They choose to know us well and engage with us authentically.
• Study — They are driven to learn more and understand deeply, and pull us right along with them in that learning.
• Service — They model exemplary Servant Leadership, and expect the same from each of us.

Championship is more verb than noun. It springs from intention and daily discipline.

The verb Championship embodies the enactment of several other verbs:

• Optimize — pushing the talents/gifts to the limit.
• LEARN — studying best practices and practitioners, adopting the habits of both.
• Commit — investing the time, effort, and resources to pursue excellence.
• Work — knowing it to be the foundational verb.
• Collect — assembling a similarly focused team of partners and experts.

Trophies are nice but you can’t eat them and they are notorious dust collectors.

Champions smile, take pictures, glow briefly in the acclaim, then………….get up in the morning and get back to work.

Why? Because Champions know that Championship is more verb than noun.

*If you’d like to read more of nc’s blathering, go to nc’s Recursive Learning.

Business folks often talk in terms of Return On Investment (ROI). We sometimes refer to that concept as “bang for the buck.” The bottom line is this: Resources are finite and almost always limited. That is especially true of human energy.

Energy is in short supply. Personal energy is in short supply. Team energy is in short supply. Leaders’ energy is in short supply.

With that “shortage” in mind, the best and wisest leaders I know are masters of directing their finite stores of energy. These smart, effective, influential, and impactful cookies do the following with remarkable diligence:

• They stay relentlessly focused on the VISION, the BIG PICTURE, the WHY of their lives and the organizations they lead.
• They deliberately work at crafting a Culture of Continuous Improvement.
• They exhibit and demand from others consistent Respectful Behavior toward all stakeholders, both internal and external.
• They insist on constant examination of important metrics (aka meaningful and relevant data) and on having open and honest conversations around that data.
•  They work mightily to assemble and empower teams of folks who are smart, efficient, effective, attentive, and committed to excellence.

Excellence is a state, one that occurs when a person, team, organization, or community chooses to break out of the customary and usual way of doing things. It is always the result of choices made, choices to be different. 

Excellence is never accidental. It springs from a deep aspiration for betterness. Excellence — whether in individual athletic performance or international business success — emerges on the heels of deep commitment, high attention, and extraordinary discipline. Never is it the result of dumb luck or a flip of a coin.  

Excellence is not a permanent state. Even if achieved today, it can evaporate on us tomorrow. How in the world can that happen? 

Excellent turns into Excellain’t when we become satisfied and/or comfortable. When our state of mind changes from how-can-we-get-better to how-can-we-preserve-what-we-have, we have crossed that line. Good news: We can always turn around and cross the line in the other direction.

Excellent or Excellain’t. We get to choose. And, tomorrow, we get to choose again.

*If you’d like to read more of nc’s blatherings, go to nc’s Recursive Learning.