Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Can you recover?
Well, can you recover? Can you recover when something you led didn't succeed? Can you bring growth from the situation? I hope so, cause good leaders do.
Nelson Mandela said "I never lose, I either win or learn." That is a good leader's mantra. Take your time to reflect, re-evaluate, and re-plan. As a leader, your "followers" are going to look to you to figure out "what's next." This is something you will get better at as it comes. Experience and learning from mentors can't be replicated in anyway. Theories are great, but show no usefulness until they are put into practice. Use those opportunities to grow yourself as a leader and a person.
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Monday, April 11, 2016
Are you cultivating the whole "farm system?"
So are you? You may be asking "what does he mean?" Here's what I mean, John Maxwell discusses in his book "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" companies with leaders who were losing leaders to go lead other companies. If you've developed your leadership skills and helped grow your team into these same type of leaders, your going to lose people. Therefore, growing your own next set of leaders becomes an ultra important concept and will help maintain the level of growth and leadership in your organization.
Major League Baseball teams have their farm system with their Minor League affiliated clubs. A General Manager has to keep track of what's happening at the big league level and what they are doing at the minor league level to know what they have and what they need. The St Louis Cardinals have made quite a run building a great farm system.
So what can do to develop your farm system. Today, I found out a lead player in my group is probably moving out. In staying positive and realizing that I have some really quality players behind him who don't graduate for a couple of years and I know there are more coming in the "farm system."
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Go grow cultivate your "farm!"
Saturday, April 9, 2016
Keep Things Growing
In my journey I'm realizing another "law" of John Maxwell's that I'm personally seeing at work. Maxwell states that "you have to have their hearts before you can ask for their hands." Folks, we are seeing this at work everyday right now with our Presidentail candidates here in the US. They are gaining the hearts by saying what they plan to do or what their thoughts are on certain issues and then asking them for their vote and money.
While it is the basic principle at work, I think the leadership level we are all striving to reach requires a deeper and truly genuine reaching of the heart. You have to take a legitimate interest and concern in the lives of the ones you lead. This is an investment for your cause. When those you lead understand that you care more about them than just that you are their leader or boss, they will be willing to give their hand more when you need it for the organization.
Start thinking about how you can genuinely reach the hearts of those you lead. You will see growth in them and in yourself. Drop me a line at BatesThoughtsonLeadership@gmail.com or tweet me @ejbband21 and share with me how to plan to do that. I'd love to see your growth with those you lead! If you want my To subscribe to my Daily Thought email, please do so below!
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Stay positive,my friends.
Another thing I've learned is that a leader stays positive when things are going the other direction. The last few days have showed me that this is beyond true. I am a high school band director in a small rural school and we are preparing for state contest. This time of year for most schools is crazy, but between FFA, baseball, track, BPA, and other random stuff, I'm lucky to see every kid in rehearsal more than once a week.
In the last week, I've had a junior tell me that he may be taking all of his classes at the near by community college next year. Normally, I would have went all panic attack and upset but I remembered to stay positive. Ended up being in the right mind set for the next rehearsal and it was maybe the best one of the year, and on a Monday no less.
It is exciting when you see growth as a leader and a person like that, but remember; taking that challenge generally means there will be challenges that come along(usually pretty quickly.) Stay positive and useband think of these challenges as opportunities and you will take them on, see them better from a leader's perspective, continue to grow, and therefore give yourself more to put into others.
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Enjoy those opportunities!
EJB
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Seeing it all come together.
I am an educator and along with my regular duties, I coach a middle school quiz bowl team. For those of you that may not know quiz bowl is, it is kind of like Jeopardy for teams of 4 and you don't have to answer in the form of a question. Yesterday was our state tournament and my kids did awesome. We were the state runner up, which is the highest any team from our school has ever finished.
As I have started my journey in leadership, I realized that I had picked my captain based on reasons that we should be picking other leaders to help develop. This young lady has a sense of maturity, stayed level headed, took answers from teammates in the team round when she didn't know, consulted with her team on a team round category, and worked for the betterment of her teammates.
As leaders, growing others into leaders should be a principle that we strive for. What I saw in my captain is that I had followed 2 laws from John C Maxwell's "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership." The ones I noticed in particular where The Law of Empowerment(only secure leaders give power to others) and The Law of Reproduction(It takes s leader to raise up a leader.) It gave me great satisfaction I had used another one of Maxwell's laws, The Law of Intuition(Leaders Evaluate Everything with a Leadership Bias.)
I'm glad to see these things this early in my journey. I'd love to hear where you are seeing leadership grow in your journey. Please email me BatesThoughtsOnLeadership@gmail.com and share! Sign up below for my Daily Thought.
Friday, April 1, 2016
Are we on the same journey?
Welcome!
So, as I asked in the title, are you on the same journey I am right now? That journey is leadership, and like life, it is a journey. Sure, there are stops along the way, but we are constantly moving.
For me, this journey is fairly recent but, obviously not everyone jumps on at the same time and that's one way we can relate, learning each other's journey story.
I can tell you this, you probably won't get anything incredibly original, but you will get my thoughts on it. I am a teacher by vocation which does provide the opportunities but until very recently, I didn't realize that I needed to be using them to be effective in my teaching and making my program that way too. In teaching, not every kid will get it the same way, so that's why I'm offering my point. My way of explaining it may click with others in ways they hadn't thought about before.
As you have or will learn as a student of leadership, putting into others is a vital part of leadership and this is a way I hope to do it.
Sign up below if you want the Daily Thought or follow me on Twitter @ejbband21. That is my personal account, so you'll get some personal stuff too. Other social media is coming soon and I hope you'll reach out so I can share in your leadership journey as well. Until next time,
EJB
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