Skip to main content

Leading by Learning and Applying What You Learned

workshop participants


Who has taught you the best lessons? What have you learned that has become part of the value of your life and who was it who taught you?

Some people in your life had lots of opportunity to teach you. They had time. They had proximity. Maybe they even had authority. They were people involved with you closely: your parents, your grand parents, siblings, elementary school teachers, high school teachers, college professors, best friends, lovers, adversaries, organizational leaders, pastors, priests, gurus, yoga teachers, improv coaches, music conductors, choir leaders, policy officers, military officers, coaches, cooks, fraternity and sorority members, doctors, therapists, nurses, dental hygienists, dentists, chiropractors, delivery staff, food service workers, co-workers, bosses, mentors...if you dive deep enough for long enough the list is extensive. For all of us. Ponder that list.

Ponder those lessons.

Know it. Do it. Teach it.

What did you learn? What have you learned so completely, so thoroughly, so deeply that you know it, do it, and even teach it? (For, there are so many ways to teach. It need not be your job title.)

The best satires of your life can be told, over and over again -- with more detail, with different lessons, with seasoned meanings. We can keep learning something long after we think we have it all figured out -- even long after we think that we have mastered something, it peels away deeper layers and reveals new connections.

We're never really finished learning. And what we think we've learned is never really finished teaching.

What have you learned today?

-- doug smith


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Connect With Respect

It's the start of a better, deeper, more productive conversation. It's the small effort to make a big impression in establishing relationship. Connect with respect. You don't have to love the person you're interacting with (although, wouldn't that help?) but if you make the effort to demonstrate respect whatever you have to share will land with more credibility. It is a leadership strength. Connect with respect. Smile. Make eye contact. Listen. Honor customs, traditions, even organizational hierarchy.  The choice of course is up to you. It's a very personal choice to connect with respect. If you make that choice, I think you will like the results. -- doug smith PS: I didn't expect to use a picture featuring a horse for this posting but when I saw it there was a deep feeling a respect showing.  Action Step: Find a picture that represents respect for you and for a week, keep it close enough to look at it for a bit every day. 

More Service Please

Would you agree that what we need is more service, not less? And yet, everywhere we look we see service slipping away, drifting into some lip-service pretending or worse yet, not even pretending. It is often a financial decision: you can have it nice or you can have it cheap. Over and over and over again people will choose cheap, even when that is not what they really want. We are better than that. You're better than that. I certainly hope that I'm better than that, too. If the level of service you provide depends on the payment you receive you are doing it wrong.  Everyone deserves the very best service that you can possibly provide. -- doug smith

Serve With Love

Leaders must serve. We don't all like that. Sometimes, we'd prefer to be served. But, think about it. We serve our customers. We serve our boards. We serve (yes, we do) our team members. We even serve our peers and of course we serve our bosses. That gives us an important choice: we can serve gladly, or we can serve madly. The work is the same; the emotion is different. The difference between serving with resentment and serving with love is the difference between hardship and happiness. Doesn't happiness feel better? -- doug smith  

Angry Leaders Fall

It is scary to watch someone lose their temper. Yelling, screaming, slamming, isn't it all unnecessary? Calm it down. Breathe. Relax. If you burn too hot you burn out fast. - - doug smith

Enjoy The Outcomes

Every problem leads to an outcome.  Some you want and some you definitely do not want.  You're going to prefer the outcomes of the problems you solve. Don't you think so? -- doug smith

Roots of Their Own

What looks like the root cause of a problem may have roots of its own. Keep digging. The rush to solve may leave things unresolved.  -- doug smith  

Who Defines Your Goals?

Maybe your goals are assigned to you from someone else. If you have a job, that's probably true about many of your goals. But in the end, isn't it really up to you? What you do, when you do it, how you do it, no matter how formalized the process you are still involved and deciding. You define your goals and you define when those goals are done. Finish what you started, or kiss that goal goodbye. -- doug smith