seek out learning opportunities

Don’t wait for learning opportunities to be handed to you. Seek them out and volunteer to take them on.  And if you don’t see the opportunities in your own organization, find them outside your professional work in a community group, a non-profit, or a religious organization, which are often hungry for leaders to step in and step up. For example, Wharton’s Stew Friedman has described how one young manager who aspired to become a CEO joined a city-based community board, which allowed him to hone his leadership skills; three years later, he was on a formal succession track for CEO.

Ron Ashkenas and Brook Manville

"The 6 Fundamental Skills Every Leader Should Practice" Harvard Business Review. Oct. 24, 2018

practice these essential basics

Our [HBR Leader’s Handbook] research [interviews with over 40 successful leaders of large corporations, startups, and non-profits] pointed to six leadership skills where practice was particularly important. These are not mysterious and certainly aren’t new. However, the leaders we talked with emphasized that these fundamental skills really matter. Aspiring leaders should focus on practicing these essential basics:

1. Shape a vision that is exciting and challenging for your team (or division/unit/organization).
2. Translate that vision into a clear strategy about what actions to take, and what not to do.
3. Recruit, develop, and reward a team of great people to carry out the strategy.
4. Focus on measurable results.
5. Foster innovation and learning to sustain your team (or organization) and grow new leaders.
6. Lead yourself — know yourself, improve yourself, and manage the appropriate balance in your own life.

Ron Ashkenas and Brook Manville

"The 6 Fundamental Skills Every Leader Should Practice" Harvard Business Review. Oct. 24, 2018

humble people

There's an allure about humble people. They exude greater power, influence and persuasion than their overly-talkative brethren because, well, nobody likes hearing the same voice time and again. If you're compelled to speak for fear of not being heard otherwise, then the greater question is “Why does that fear exist?” There needs to be a firm foundation of trust to be heard so everybody knows their best interests are held. Without trust, the tendency is to shy away from we and instead focus on me. Not ideal.

Jeff Boss

"These Leadership Lessons From The SEAL Teams Are Universal For Any Industry" Forbes. Mar. 2, 2017

my job is curation of our culture

Last March, Microsoft unveiled Tay.ai, a Twitter bot that promised to usher in a new era of human-to-artificial-intelligence conversation.

Within hours, hackers turned Tay into a venom-spewing racist, and the project was quickly shuttered with a public apology.

In the old days of Microsoft, heads surely would have rolled.

But Satya Nadella, 49, a one-time company engineer who took the reins of the $500 billion tech giant three years ago this month, instead sent the Tay team a note of encouragement.

“Keep pushing, and know that I am with you,” he wrote in an e-mail, urging staffers to take the criticism in the right spirit while exercising "deep empathy for anyone hurt by Tay. (The) key is to keep learning and improving.”

The group responded with Zo, a new AI chatbot that debuted in December. So far, no issues.

“It’s so critical for leaders not to freak people out, but to give them air cover to solve the real problem,” Nadella says in an interview with USA TODAY. “If people are doing things out of fear, it’s hard or impossible to actually drive any innovation...”

"What I realize more than ever now is that my job is curation of our culture," says Nadella, who will explore this topic and others in a book due out this fall called Hit Refresh. "If you don't focus on creating a culture that allows people to do their best work, then you’ve created nothing.”

Marco della Cava

"Microsoft's Satya Nadella is counting on culture shock to drive growth" USA Today. Feb. 20, 2017

prioritizing your work as a leader

"...author Stephen Covey coined Eisenhower's Urgent/Important Principle in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The tool is based on the way President Dwight D. Eisenhower prioritized the tasks that demanded his attention. This principle recognizes that tasks typically fall into one of four quadrants--and that we tend to complete them in this order:

1. Urgent and Important: Things that are important to do and need to be done now.
2. Urgent and Not Important: Minor tasks that are time-sensitive. It feels good to check these off our lists, but they aren't really critical.
3. Important and Not Urgent: Things that need to be done but don't have to be done immediately.
4. Not Urgent and Not Important: These tasks are neither important nor time-sensitive."

"A few years ago, I began organizing my to-do list into the following buckets (I have put them in recommended order and outlined my thinking for each):

1. Urgent and Important:  Do them because you have to, and delegate where possible to get tasks done right.
2. Important and Not Urgent:  This is the most important bucket because these things move us toward our big-picture achievements. The key to getting these tasks done is to make time each day or week to move toward your goals. 
3. Urgent and Not Important: Get these off your plate and don't let them distract you. Keep your eyes on the prize!
4. Not Urgent and Not Important: Do your best to avoid these entirely."

Robert Glazer

"Start Acheiving Your Long-Term Goals With This President's Task Management System", Inc.com, 20 Nov 2018