July Leadership Carnival

Welcome to the July 1st, 2013 edition of the Leadership Development Carnival! We hope you enjoy these great posts from 32 of the best leadership bloggers from around the globe. Dan McCarthy from Great Leadership presents How to Overcome the 3 Organizational Barriers to Leadership Development.  “Why is it that more organizations and executives don’t fully embrace the effective development of their leaders? It all comes down to 3 barriers: They either don’t understand why it’s important, how to do it, or they just won’t. This post reviews each barrier and provides tips for overcoming them.” Dana Theus from InPower Women presents Activating the

I was about to go on a rant… but then there was one…

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been talking about what employers want in employees. (The 4 Cs of conscientiousness, creativity, communication, collaboration). After today, I feel like the things I talked about led me to jump to point C when I should have started at point A.   Why should I be talking about these 4 Cs when most people don’t even do the basics like showing up? You see, I teach a Work Skills class at the local community college.  It’s a 1 hour credit course designed to help students with resume writing, interviewing, workplace topics, etc.  Basically, it’s the tactical stuff of getting a job.

Leadership Lessons from Moses

Our church is doing 90 days with the Bible challenge.  This is where the congregation is engaged in reading the entire Bible over the summer.   I’ve struggled my way through Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy but found that reading the entire account of Moses through in a few days has revealed several leadership lessons from his life that I never noticed. Lesson 1:  Get a wingman.    Aaron was Moses’.  A wingman is someone who complements you so that two end up being better than one.  Moses had a stuttering problem and Aaron was a good speaker. They worked together to accomplish many

Want to get job? Foster Collaboration

The First 2 Cs that all employers want-conscientiousness and creativity are about individual contributions.  However, the second two, one which we have already discussed, communication and our final C, collaboration focus on how we interact with other people.   I would argue the final two are more important. They, also, help people be more successful at the first two, creating even greater gains in your marketability as an employee. Consider a recent article, by George Anders that stated that empathy would be the number one sought after skill in the workplace is 2020.    Empathy, or the ability to put oneself in

Why I Hate Employee Handbooks

I don’t do employee handbooks.  Wait, I made an exception for a wonderful client and just finished up an employee handbook a few weeks ago.   But I don’t do employee handbooks, or maybe the better thing to say is, I don’t like them.  Here’s why: Most of the content in them these days implies that you can’t trust your employees. Most of the content in them these days implies that you think your employees don’t remember the lessons they learned in kindergarten. Most of the content in them these days is written for the exception rather than the rule.  In