The Role Model

We all need someone to look up to.

A role model helps direct aspirations, measure the self against a greater standard, creates an environment of learning through differential analysis.

Too much of the wrong thing

As individuals matriculate through careers, it is quite common for blind spots to develop.  Some common blind spots have to do with interpersonal relations, focus and direction, and delivering on hard-to-quantify soft skills for the good of the organization.

4S Model: Skills

In the same way organizations must continuously improve, you must also continually increase your capability to become more valuable to employers, clients, and other stakeholders in your career.

Capability is the overall combination of your knowledge, skills, abilities, and the other intangibles you possess.  Increasing this capability is the Skills step of the 4S Model, and is driven by your personal development plan.

4S Model: Surroundings

“No man is an island.”  This is the first line of John Donne’s famous poem “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” written back in 1624 as part of his private notes, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.

Also popular in corporate circles is the story of a butterfly flapping its wings causing a hurricane:  a small event far away that creates a large impact.  While some of the nuance is usually lost, the point remains that we can be affected by events outside ourselves.

Surroundings are important, as they determine in large part what the effect will be of actions we take.  The better we know our surroundings, the more effective we can be.

Advice at the coffee shop

At a coffee shop, a man is talking with his wife about how he is “repositioning” their finances for the “crazy market we're in right now.” Then he proposed to:

• buy gold because the price is really high and lots of people are talking about it


• liquidate their stock and bond holdings, including retirement accounts, because they've lost so much money over the past few months


• keep cash at home instead of in the banks because "another one could go under at any moment, and who knows if it's ours?  And with inflation about to skyrocket, we have to be ready."

Strangely, he has no issue in using the Starbucks card to make the transaction - after all, when the Starbucks card is used to pay for coffee, you get a free shot of flavor with it.

GE: serious about leadership

In most large organizations, leadership is affirmed as a key contributor to organizational success.  Typically there is some form of leadership model, special programs for high potentials, and perhaps rotational programs to move high performing or high potential leaders through the experiences needed to lead and perform at the next level.

Leadership models come in all shapes and sizes, and most are helpful in keeping leaders (and aspiring leaders) focused and developing.  NASA offers an excellent graphical representation of leadership behaviors arranged on a disc, moving from large dimensions in the middle to more granular areas towards the outside.  The MIT Leadership Center promotes FCF (Four Capabilities Leadership Framework), which points to four critical components of leadership:  sensemaking, relating, visioning, and inventing.  Leadership powerhouse Lominger (part of Korn/Ferry International) has developed 67 leadership competencies and publishes a book called FYI:  For Your Improvement that’s now in its 5^th edition.And then there’s GE.

Catching Negativity

My three-year-old son picked up a bad habit at school. When asked why he was behaving this way, he said “I don't know. Adrien does it!” And with that, he repeated the behavior again.Unbelievable. My impressionable, well-behaved boy was being corrupted by this child! It must be true that one apple spoils the whole bunch.

Eat That Frog, by Brian Tracy

I've just finished Brian Tracy's 2007 book, Eat That Frog, 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, and found it to be a quick and interesting read.  Brian is a writer, speaker, and consultant focused on both personal and corporate development.

The major themes of the book:

• Determine what's really important to you, where you want to be/go/become in the future.  Do so from both career and personal perspectives


• Determine which tasks (frogs) are most important in achieving these goals


• Tackle the biggest, ugliest frog first, and finish that task all the way through.  To achieve this, carve the big task into smaller, bite-sized tasks (insert eating an elephant reference here :) ).  With that one complete, tackle the next hardest and finish it as well


• While doing these things, be sure to get plenty of sleep, time away from technology, and exercise at least 250 minutes per week

Things we learn by age two

Some friends of mine and I were talking the other day about human development, and how quickly we learn. As I thought more about how we develop – and when we develop, my thoughts turned to a time not too long ago when my son had just turned two years old. By that age, so much has already been learned.

Instructional Design

Great and enduring leaders are also great and enduring teachers. In organizations, the function is usually called learning, training, development, or some combination of the three. In short, the idea is to equip the team with the knowledge to make both the team and the individual successful.

Delivering quality training is more than simply telling the team to “do what I do and you'll pick it up.” It requires a thoughtful design process that develops the content necessary to make the team successful.