This year has just about come to a close. The Type As among us are probably wrapping up their goals and planning for the new year (if they aren’t finished already). The rest will catch up. Maybe.
I saw a great post from Mark Miller last week on New Year’s resolutions for leaders – and it really challenged my thinking. I’m not sure what your leadership goals are for the new year, but if you haven’t thought about it, I’d suggest picking something from these ideas below.
What are your favorite conferences, seminars or training events? Do you have any that you attend every year? Do you take your team with you? One of my annual staples is the Chick-fil-A Leadercast seminar. This year it takes place on May 10. Let me tell why Chick-fil-A Leadercast is so special.
Have you ever been a part of a formal mentoring program at your organization? If so, how did it go? It not, would it have been helpful? Maybe you’ve even wondered how to set up a mentoring program yourself so that you and/or others could benefit from it.
In my last post, I shared the basic principles of mentoring from a potential mentee’s standpoint that I’ve learned over the years. But I’ve also built a professional mentoring program in a previous role and also advised clients on mentoring programs they’ve set up themselves. I’d like to share some of the best practices I’ve collected.
Telemachus consults Mentor
It’s said that King Solomon was the wisest man who ever walked the earth. From the stories it seems his leadership ability was pretty astonishing as well. Imagine what it would have been like to spend an hour with him. What questions would you ask? What problems would you want him to help you solve? What best practices would you want to know about?
I had the privilege of studying under Dr. Jeff Myers in college and he introduced me to the art of mentoring. My life hasn’t been the same since.
Last week I had the privilege to fly cross country from Washington, DC to San Diego to attend a two and a half day writers conference called Re:Write sponsored by The Fedd Agency. It featured many high-profile and incredibly well-written (and well-sold) authors, such as Ken Blanchard, Paul Young, George Barna, Mark Batterson, Peter Strople, John Kilcullen, Mary DeMuth, and others. Most of the attendees had either written books, were in the process of writing their first book, maintained blogs, or just wanted to learn more about how to focus their writing inspirations. There were also publishers and agents in attendance.
I met Ken Blanchard at Re:Write 2012
Everyone is a leader. I really believe that. That may be a new idea for you if you’ve always thought you needed a title or a position, or be a charismatic person in order to be a leader. But let me give you an example by way of posing a question. Is there anything you could do today that would make things worse for the people around you? If you can do something to make things worse, doesn’t it follow that you can also do something to make things better? The bottom line is that leadership is influence.
But here’s the catch: most people don’t think about leadership until they experience a leadership challenge. (Click to Tweet)
