Fast Results through Powerful Communication
The 2008 Presidential Election has been full of drama and excitement. I know I have a hard time keeping up with everything going on so I created a new news feed page that grabs the latest news and headlines related to the election.
You can visit the page here.
Since today is President’s Day, I figured it would be a good day to talk about leadership at the highest level. Whether you’re the President of the United States or the president of a company, being a successful executive requires some skills in addition to the ones necessary to excel at lower levels of management. Today we’ll look at the following three:
Each US President from George Washington to George W. Bush had these skills before becoming President (some were better than others) so we’ll use some Presidential examples.
If you’re not familiar with both Facebook and LinkedIn, they are definitely worth checking out. There are dozens of social networking sites out there, but these two are among the most popular.
LinkedIn is geared more towards business professionals where Facebook was created for high school and college students (however it has recently been repositioned for those of us out of school). Both sites have their benefits and they are the only two I’m currently using (I wrote a review of LinkedIn a few months back in my e-zine).
The sixth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, is coming out this November. I haven’t seen a trailer or teaser for the movie yet, but I did find a sneak preview that has some behind the scenes footage as well as some clips from the actual film.
It’s interesting how what originally started out as children’s books evolved into books targeted towards adults. Although JK Rowling’s writing style is geared towards children, the themes in the books are more for adults (hence the PG-13 rating of the fifth film). It’s an example of how goals can change when you have an unexpected success.
Too many people in leadership roles (business owners, managers, executives, etc…) believe that they deserve people’s respect simply because of their positions. Some go as far as demanding respect, presiding over their subordinates with an iron fist and using fear or threats to coax others to take action. This type of behavior may work in the short term, but people will resent you instead of respect you. So how can you earn respect as a leader? Here are some ways:
1: Treat others with respect.
Many goal setting exercises have you look ahead to the winter of your life (sometimes as far as your deathbed) and ask you what you would have hoped to have accomplished by then. The point of it is to get you take a look at your life and see if the things that you’re doing are accomplishing the goals that mean the most to you.
When I’m at the end of my life, I imagine myself looking back at the various chapters of my life with “My Way”, that popular song written by Paul Anka and immortalized by Frank Sinatra, playing in the background.
I was watching some of the Super Tuesday coverage on the Fox News Channel and caught an interview with Michael Reagan. Michael is the son of President Ronald Reagan (Reagan and first wife, Jane Wyman, adopted Michael) and he said “I’ve heard my father’s name mentioned so often during this race that I thought he was running!”
Ronald Reagan was an extremely popular President — he left office with the highest approval rating of any 20th Century President and won 49 states during his re-election bid in 1984. So it’s no surprise that republican candidates are all claiming to be “the next Reagan.” Even Barack Obama recently paid the Gipper some compliments, only to be distasteful attacked by the other democrats vying for their party’s nomination.