We are entering the time of commencement speeches. Some may go viral while others will evaporate as soon as the words are spoken. It is an important time, nonetheless, as a younger generation enters the next phase of their life and leadership path.
A millennial leader address to other leaders
It might be interesting to switch the roles. Rather than an audience filled with newly minted graduates, let’s make the audience today’s leaders, consisting of Boomers, Generation X and the Silent Generation. The commencement address is given by a millennial (Generation Y) leader. What words of wisdom would a millennial pass on to older leaders? It might go something like this:
Welcome to this graduation as we move from one generation to the next. As I look around the audience, I see hands and faces wrinkled by the experiences of time, showing the shock of challenges unforeseen and successes big and small. (read more…)
How unfortunate that our popular ideas of what a good leader should be are so often grandiose. Through current media, television and movies, we expect perfection; a leader is strong, fearless and flawless. If we believe that myth, they should be superheroes, royalty and saviors all rolled into one.
So we become disappointed when our leaders reveal themselves only human. Could it be that we expect too much? If you consider some recent examples of leaders who’ve fallen from grace, you might find that they made very human mistakes, the kind we all make. That isn’t an excuse for bad behaviors; it’s simply a reality that nobody is perfect.
In the end, the best leaders are very human. Like most of us, they don’t see themselves in some grandiose, bigger-than-life way. They know that it’s the little things that will make a difference in their leadership, and they work on getting better at them every day. (read more…)
TIME Magazine has rolled out a new feature that allows users to view time-lapse images of Earth’s landscape. The Timelapse project compiles free images from Landsat satellites provided by the Department of the Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey. The feature shows how image and map technology can be used for several purposes, such as to monitor climate change, track the expansion of the city of Las Vegas and observe deforestation in the Amazon.
Timelapse joins Esri’s ChangeMatters Viewer in providing Landsat data that help GIS professionals in their public- and private-sector endeavors.
“The 40-year archive of Landsat images of every spot on earth is a treasure trove of scientific information that can form the basis for a myriad of useful applications by commercial enterprises, government scientists and managers, the academic community, and the public at large,” said Anne Castle, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Water and Science.
ChangeMatters allows users to see how the Earth’s landscape changed between 1975 and 2010. (read more…)
When I first heard about 360-degree feedback, it reminded me of those horrible slam books from middle school. The ones that kids taunt one another with by anonymously adding their opinions of a peer into a spiral notebook that then gets furiously passed around at lunch.
My imagined nightmare is not that much of a stretch, considering that the fundamentals of 360-degree feedback consist of people throughout a company (salaried and hourly employees, CEOs, supervisors) who all anonymously tell X worker what they think of his/her performance. Sounds pretty horrifying, right?
Well, before you resort to hiding in your locker, consider the one group that could be greatly served by 360-degree feedback — the managers. The purpose of a manger is to effectively communicate with the team, be a middleman (or woman), oversee projects and implement order. Having a touchstone to the effectiveness of those efforts would not be the worst thing in the world. (read more…)
“Nothing is less important than which fork you use. Etiquette is the science of living. It embraces everything. It is ethics. It is honor.” ~ Emily Post, American expert on etiquette
Is there a proper “etiquette” for leaders to follow when developing their teams? I’ve often heard it said that etiquette is simply helping others to feel comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings. Taken in this context, there is a connection to career development and etiquette because leaders are well-positioned to help their followers navigate the uncertainty that often comes with a career transition.
So where does honor fit into the equation? As the mother of modern manners points out, rules aren’t the governing factor in the science of living — honor is. When leaders come from a place of honorable intention with career development, they are stewards of their followers’ careers in the best possible way. They aren’t squeezing somebody into a predefined mold because the company policy said that how it must be. (read more…)
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