Why should I care as a Leader??; Book to read for the month of June; A Thank You Note

Leadership and Caring, what do they have to do with each other?

     Think of the prototypical example of a quote on quote "leader" or boss. Big, tough, get-er-done types with the all-to-familiar "tough guy" approach. They boss people around and don't let anyone stand in their way. They're about results.

What's the problem with these types of bosses?

The answer is simple, when employees, students, or kids are treated as nothing more than cogs in a results-driven machine, the only message that they perceive is "I don't care about you." It's as simple as that. 

"Not caring is not tough, it's weak. It stems from fear, not strength."

The above quote comes from this article by author and founder and Chief Encouragement Officer of Giant Leap Consulting, Bill Treasurer. He found that "the most effective leaders know that the surest way to get results is to treat people respectfully, equally, and kindly."  Make sure you go to the article and scroll down to the final paragraphs in the article to find out how you can develop the courage to "care dangerously." 

Introducing the Book of the Month: June

LeadersOpenDoors.com

My father is very adamant on reading. I take that back, he's a fanatic. (In a good way). To stay on the cutting edge of his industry as a business consultant, he has to be learning constantly. The one rule that I got from him was to read at least one significant book each month. That is why, once a month, I will be recommending a book that I feel will provide you with significant learning that will in turn help you be more successful. 

I'm not sure who said it, but it's true: LEADERS ARE READERS. Example: Mark Cuban reads 3 hours/day. The good news is that you can relax. Not everyone is Mark Cuban, and you only have to get through one book a month. 

Without further ado, let me introduce you to this month's book: Leaders Open Doors by Bill Treasurer (does the name ring a bell?)

One the simplest and straight-forward books on Leadership in recent years, Leaders Open Doors provides a very simple and highly effective framework for leadership. Each chapter provides easy-to-implement tips so you can start changing how you lead for the better from Chapter 1. Needless to say, I recommend this book because it is simple and I noticed the improvement right away. Thank you Bill, with this book, you have saved countless hours of our time studying advanced leadership theories, frameworks and models that try to decode but ultimately complicate leadership. 

Speaking of Thank-You's...

Last Wednesday (just twenty-two days ago) the blog surpassed the 1,000 pageview mark, and I wanted to give a big thank you to everyone who has been following and supporting the blog by telling their friends and sharing by Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc...It really helps, so thank you again!

Leadership and Football: Don't let your team get Deflated; Peyton Manning's best Leadership wisdom

Don't let your team get Deflated

In a recent blog post, leadership expert Kevin Eikenberry shares four things that leaders often do (both intentionally and not) that "deflates the spirit, energy and engagement of their team members."

Parents/Educators: These are actions/habits that can have a 'deflating' effect at home or in the classroom as well.

The four common  things that leaders do to 'deflate' their team are:

1. Giving no Positive Feedback
2. Giving all Negative Feedback
3. Not Trusting your Team (or kids, students, friends, etc...)
4. Not Caring

Take three minutes and scroll through the article to learn how to avoid these leadership mistakes and maintain an inflated (inspired and motivated) team! 

Peyton Manning's Leadership Wisdom

In the midst of all that is happening in the NFL regarding deflated balls, other, more worthwhile news seems to have fallen somewhat between the cracks.

This article, for example, titled "7 Winning Leadership Ideas from Peyton Manning's Playbook."

The article outlines what, according to Peyton Manning, are 7 key skills that leaders in any field need to be obtain and work to develop. The article also does an awesome job of connecting the on-field examples that Peyton Manning gives to practical, real-life examples that are key to leaders.

Most notable skills (in my opinion)

• Learning to thrive on being uncomfortable. Needless to say, expanding your comfort zone is a must-do if you are seeking any significant growth, professional or personal.

• Finding a new way to do the old job. AKA: Innovation. Being adaptable and your ability to innovate is something that is of vital importance in today's exponential world. Things are moving fast and constantly changing with new tech disrupting so many industries. If you stop innovating, you fall behind. 

• Aligning your personal goals with team goals. In 2013, Peyton Manning didn't set out to break records. He set goals that he knew would help his team score more points and thus win more games. He focused on pass completion percentage and number of touchdown passes. As the old saying goes, there's no "i" in "team", but there is no "i" in "goal" either. 

Here's the link to the article: http://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/peyton-manning-leadership.html 

Bonus Video

While looking for some funny photos criticizing deflategate, I found this hilarious video. Enjoy!

So what do you guys think of deflategate and the punishment handed out by the NFL? Leave your comments below! 

Monday Video: The Journey Across the High Wire

Start your week off with with some meaningful and thought-provoking stimulus.

Philippe Petit's Journey from card tricks to high-roping between the Twin Towers. 

     As early as the age of six, Philippe Petit was performing. He started off by learning card tricks. Not just any old card tricks however, Philippe found himself inspired to master the hardest card trick manipulation in the book (literally, it was the hardest trick in a book of card tricks he was given for Christmas). After years of practice, he was able to perform the trick perfectly, completely hiding the card in under one second. Philippe goes over the trick in minute 2:25 of the video below.

Long story short, after stints with street juggling and years of practice as a tight-rope walker, nobody would hire him. So what did he do? He starting putting tight ropes wherever he saw fit, walking across monuments such as Notre Dame and the Twin Towers, tightrope walking himself to international fame.

Set aside 20 minutes and watch the inspiring video below, where Philippe describes his journey and the aspects that drove him to success and happiness. (The aspects are highlighted below).

Original Video URL: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3zZVQPaKKQ&feature=iv&src_vid=xYemnKEKx0c&annotation_id=annotation_927634)

Aspects that drove Philippe to success and happiness, in his eyes:

Passion: "Passion is the motto of all my actions."

Tenacity: "How I kept at it against all odds."

Intuition: "A tool essential in my life...instead of listening to the teachers I am my own teacher."

Faith: "Faith is what replaces doubt in my dictionary."

Improvisation: "Improvisation is empowering because it welcomes the unknown."

Inspiration: "By inspiring ourselves we inspire others." 

Public Speaking: Avoiding common rookie mistakes, 12 foolproof ways to grab your audience, and what to do with your hands.

Avoiding the 10 most common mistakes in public speaking.

     At some point almost all of us are faced with having to give some form of presentation in front of an audience, be it co-workers or classmates, and I hope and assume that you want to keep your audience engaged and get your message across effectively. This article by Terry Gault will help you do just that by going over and helping you avoid the 10 most common rookie mistakes in Public Speaking. Some of them are common sense, but just in case you need a public speaking refresher. Here is a quick list of the mistakes, go to the article to find out more info on avoiding them. 

1. Using small scale movements and  gestures
2. Speaking with low energy
3. Not preparing enough
4. Not practicing enough
5. Data-Centric presentations
6. Playing it safe
7. Avoiding vulnerability
8. Taking oneself way too seriously
9. Presenting too much material
10. Rushing

Start Strong: 12 foolproof ways to grab your audience. 

"Hello, my uh name is Bob and I'm here to speak to you guys now about managing your um employee logistics and how to manage some HR systems. I'm gonna outline some new research in the field and will be explaining some new things for you guys. Okay so let's gets going." 

Are you bored to death or what? 

How you start a speech or presentation matters, and it matters more than you think. In just the first 30-60 seconds of a presentation, your audience has already figured out whether or not they are going to be genuinely engaged or sit back in their seats and go into mindless-sponge mode (passively absorbing information instead of being actively engaged and really learning). That's why a strong start to your speech or presentation matters so much. 

Here are 12 foolproof ways to start a speech according to this Genard Method blog post:

1. Question
2. Story
3. Quotation
4. A Strong Visual
5. Impactful/Disruptive Statistic 
6. Startling Statement
7. Personal anecdote (story) or experience
8. Humor
9. Expert Opinion
10. Sound Effect
11. Physical Object
12. Testimony or Success Story

I also recommend going to the blog post where the tips came from and scrolling down to see some examples of great starts to speeches. Click here to see the blog post.

What the heck do I do with my hands while speaking?!?

If you have ever been given a presentation and found yourself in the awkward position where you didn't know what to do with your hands then you are not alone. I believe that hand gestures can make or break an effective presentation. Maybe "break" is a little harsh, but a great speech can be denigrated with awkward or small hand gestures. Likewise, a less-compelling presentation can be boosted with effective use of hand gestures. 

Take a few minutes and check out some tips from this article on hand gestures during presentations.

Are there any other useful tips you know of for public speaking? Leave a tip in the comment section below. 

     

Monday Video: Avoiding the Catch 22 of self-control (and why it's important!)

Start your week off with with some meaningful and thought-provoking stimulus.

     Self-control is important, no doubt about it. You've probably heard about the importance of self-control a million times. Or, you haven't figured out its' importance yet and that's why you might be holding yourself back without knowing it. However, ask most parents and teaching their kids self-control is probably high on their list of parenting priorities. (Or teaching some form of self-control, such as trying to restrict the number of hours spent watching TV or teaching them to resist certain degenerative temptations like eating too much candy).

But don't take it from what you've heard about self-control thus far, take it from the research. Angela Duckworth et al. surveyed middle school students on self-control and IQ and found that while IQ was a factor in final GPA, levels of self-control had a bigger effect on grades. Look at the graph below. IQ alone can get you to the 90's level, but self-control pushes you beyond.

Duckworth et al. 

Cool study, but i'm not in middle school.

Now, you might be thinking "so what if this worked on middle schooler's, it doesn't apply to me", and you have a fair point. However, self control has been found to be a significant factor in adulthood as well.

The Duniden Longitudinal study (Moffitt et al.) measured self-control in 1,037 young children born in 1972-73 from the same region in New Zealand (Duniden) and have been following them for the rest of their lives. So far the findings have been remarkable. Researchers pitted self-control against IQ and socio-economic status. Throughout the participants adulthood the researchers looked at wealth and financial decision-making, crime, age of becoming a parent, and long-term physical health. The researchers found that self control was just as, or in many cases more important to wealth, crime, health, etc... than IQ and socio-economic status during childhood. (Just imagine the same results graph like the one above, but instead of Final GPA on the side it is Wealth).

So how can I develop self-control?

Self-control is tricky because as Angela Duckworth puts it, there is a catch 22 involved. A lot of the strategies we are taught for self-control require self-control to implement. Example: "Slowing down and taking a deep breath." If you find yourself easily ticked off, then it is unlikely that remembering to slow down and take a breath will work, because by the time you remember you have already blown a gasket.

Have no fear though, that's where this Mondays' video comes in: Go to minute 8:20 in the video below to learn about the five most-effective strategies of self-control. The best part? You don't need a good level of self-control to implement them. (Note: Following the video can get a little tricky, so below the video I have included a short definition of each strategy).

(Here's the video link: https://vimeo.com/96079124)


Summary of the 5 strategies of self-control:

Situation Selection: Sitting in the front rows in class or meeting, selecting the right social situation. (Parents/teachers/bosses: Can't make people sit in the front or make them choose their friends, because it's not self-control. Instead, make them aware of how situation selection boosts self-control and its' benefits).

Situation Modification: Seeing vs. not seeing the reward. Study showed that secretaries are much more likely to eat candy on their desk if it is in a clear jar vs. in a jar they can't see through or reach easily.

Selective Attention: Where you look matters. Catch yourself if you are off-task and eliminate distractions to help you stay more disciplined with a task.

Cognitive re-appraisal: Think of yourself in the third person as you imagine yourself doing things versus in the first person to help regulate negative emotions. (Imagine yourself getting angry with someone from the point of view of a bystander).

Response Modulation: Direct suppression of impulses (willpower). Not as reliable as the other strategies, but if all else fails, try summoning the willpower for self-control. (The more you do the better you will get).

Interesting nugget of knowledge: Self-control is correlated with Grit and vice-versa. Duckworth found that if someone has a high level of self-control, they are likely to have a high level of Grit. However, keep in mind that having a high level in one aspect doesn't guarantee a high level in the other, it's just a correlation.

Further resources:

Duckworth Study: Self-control in school-age children: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1296633.files/Self-Control%20in%20School-Age%20Children%20072513.pdf

Duniden Longitudinal Study: http://www.pnas.org/content/108/7/2693.full.pdf

Multitasking: How to make you happier and make the time more productive; and a life-changing speech by Jim Carrey.

When multitasking makes you happy and when it doesn't.  

     Do you ever find yourself multitasking too often? A recent study by Jordin Etkin and Cassie Mogilner published in the Harvard Business Review discovered when multitasking makes you happy and when it doesn't.

They conducted a series of experiments with a broad-range of participants and then measured how happy they felt while performing tasks. You can take three minutes and read about the specifics of what they measured here.

Here are their findings: 

"Whereas participants expected that more variety would always make them happier, when looking back, more variety only made them happier for sufficiently long periods of time - like over a day, a week, or a month. Over short time periods, like 10 minutes or an hour, more varied activities actually made people less happy." 

So what are the practical implications?

"Schedule varied activities throughout your day, week, and month but make sure that you remove variety from your hours and minutes." That is, leave the cell phone alone while you are cooking dinner but don't cook the same thing every night. 

"But sometimes I HAVE to do two things at once."

If that is the case, try to think of tasks collectively: Instead of thinking "I need to get my science homework done, study for my math test and prepare for my english presentation", group it into "get my homework done." Similarly for adults, don't think of getting your kids ready in the morning as "cook breakfast and make sure they are dressed while they have the right shoes on and permission slips are signed and the right folders are in the right bags and we are out on time to beat traffic." Instead, think about getting the kids ready collectively as "'getting ready tasks'" instead of thinking about how many tasks that you need to get done. According to Etkin and Mogliner's research, thinking about tasks collectively "will make you happier and the time feel more productive." 

To conclude, leave the cell phone alone while you are cooking dinner but don't cook the same thing every night. It may sound  like common sense, but take a step back and reflect on how recently you were engaged at doing two different things in the same short span of time and think about your level of productivity and satisfaction. 

Access the full article by clicking here. 

Jim Carrey's commencement address at Maharishi University of Management. 

     This speech is absolutely brilliant. It's the perfect mix of clever, hilarious, and life-changing packed into an incredible 26 minutes. Worth the time, no doubt about it. [However, if you're really pressed for time, I included the three most powerful quotes from the speech below the video].

(original video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V80-gPkpH6M)

Here are the three most powerful quotes from the speech (in my opinion):

"Our eyes are not viewers, they are also projectors that are running a second story over the picture that we see in front of us all the time. Fear is writing that script, and the working title is 'I'll never be enough'"

"As far as I can tell it's just about letting the universe know what you want and working toward it, while letting go of how it comes to pass." 

"Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world." 

Monday Video: Keys to solving the U.S. education crisis.

This marks the first post in the Monday Video series. The purpose is to help you guys start your week off with with some meaningful and thought-provoking stimulus.

Where the U.S. education system has failed us and what to do about it. 

Whether the term "education crisis" is appropriate or not, the data is clear. US teens rank among the bottom of developed countries on performance on the PISA. (Program for international student assessment). The percentage of kids from low-income families who graduate from college is 9%. 

What's the solution?

It's not about higher spending per pupil, smaller class sizes, or more teachers with masters degrees says Seth Andrew, the founder of Democracy Prep Charter School, the highest performing school in the City of New York consistently over the past five years. The answer according to Seth lies in the elements of South Korea's culture shift. (South Korea has the best educated population in the world). Here's a snippet of South Korea's transformation in the words of Seth Andrew:

"...they went from being Afghanistan to richer than the EU, from a OECD and UN aid recipient to a donor, from an agricultural economy to the leading knowledge economy in the world... They went from an autocratic system to having the head of the UN, IMF, a female president, all through democratic transition, from the 200th largest economy in the world to the 12th largest economy in the world with no natural resources, with no oil, no, you know, special trick. They did it through Grit." 

The three factors that Seth outlines for South Korea's successful shift? 

1. Grit -- overcoming adversity

2. Growth mindset. A deeply rooted, fundamental belief in their culture that hard work directly correlates with success, and that intelligence is not fixed but can be increased through effort. This mindset takes effect in the form of their "hagwan", private spending on supplemental education services like tutoring. South Korea has one of the highest spending rates on supplemental education services in the world. 

3. Korea has great teachers. Respect for teachers is rooted in their language and culture. The word for "Teacher" in Korean means "honored one"and "nation builder". It's like the equivalent of having the title of "Doctor" in the US. 

Skip to minute 6:50 in the video for Seth's explanation of each factor and how he implemented the South Korean model into Democracy Prep Charter School.  

If you are having trouble viewing the video, here is the original video link: https://vimeo.com/96055664

New rules of today's transparent society, Steve Jobs on loving what you do.

Your online reputation IS your reputation.

     Erik Qualman's new book "What happens in Vegas Stays on YouTube" outlines why today's explosion in mobile and social technologies means that society is in a new era of transparency -- eyes are always watching. Erik points out that 92% of children under the age of two already have a digital posting about them. NINETY-TWO PERCENT!! Offline actions are producing online consequences more often than not. 

"That sounds scary, so is there any good news?"

     

     The good news is that learning to manage your (online) reputation, preventing and dealing with inevitable digital disasters is all outlined in the first chapter of Erik's book. It's a very quick read, and definitely worth it. 

Steve Jobs on loving what you do.

     I have recently been collecting responses from the Grit Scale Test that was developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in order to measure Grit (you can take the test by going to the link on the right or by clicking here).

     After the responses started to roll in, I began to notice common themes in the data. I could go into a deep analysis here, but I'm going to save you the time and just give you the most important point. PASSION IS LACKING! The questions that scored the lowest on average had to deal with focus on long-term goals and being distracted by new projects. These are two tell-tale signs of someone who is not currently pursuing something that sparks their passion. 

     How does this relate to Steve Jobs? He has a thing or two to say about loving what you do. Check out the video below and skip to minute 7:48. 

Welcome to Grit Weekly

     Welcome to my blog Grit Weekly. So what's with the name?? Grit is defined by University of Pennsylvania Researcher Angela Lee Duckworth as "perseverance and passion for long-term goals." In-depth research by Carol Dweck, Ph.D, Paul Tough, Angela Lee Duckworth et el, coupled with my personal experience has shown me that Grit is in fact the key to success. While it is not Grit alone that "brings home the bacon" per-say, it is, in my humble opinion, the most reliable building block upon which success is achieved. Grit is the key.
   

 Still not convinced? 

     Pick up a biography of one of the most successful and influential leaders of our time -- Steve Jobs. Look at any article or speech done by or about him and see if you can spot these elements: Passion, Resilience (overcoming challenges), or Determination. In fact, take anyone who has achieved a decent level of success in their life, and I'm sure that you will find that one or (most likely) more of the elements mentioned above came into play. The best news? Grit ensures success regardless of IQ. 

     Back to the name question: This blog is dedicated to providing you, the reader, with a few quick and useful tips for success to each week. Grit is the essential ingredient necessary for success in any field. I also started and run a series of summer programs for high school teens, set to launch this July of 2015. The program is called the Grit and Leadership Challenge and is dedicated to developing Grit within teens along with the #1 student leadership curriculum, The Student Leadership Challenge by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. You can check out more info on the program by clicking here.

In conclusion, that is why, instead of "Success Weekly", the blog is called "Grit Weekly."

If you're new to the blog, watch the video below and go to minute 1:30.

Want to take the same "Grit Test" that was mentioned in the video? Click here.

Enjoy!

Cameron