I will be enjoying a family vacation for the next few weeks. While I’m gone, I want to share with you some of the Gold Feature articles I have written. Each of them supports my mission to serve you, which is to provide Practical Strategies to Help Leaders Get Real Results. Not a lot…
A young friend of mine called last week.
“Hey, did Jamie Dimon steal your book?” he asked, referring to the The Essential Hallmarks of a Good Leader recently published.
“No, he certainly didn’t steal it,” I said. “He might have read it since you can get it for free right here? Why would you think he stole it.”
“Okay,” he replied. “I guess he didn’t steal it then … but is there any chance he might have written it?”
Funny guy, huh?
As you probably know, Jamie Dimon is the Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, with an enviable track record as a visionary executive leading large and complex financial organizations.
And, no, he didn’t write The Cornerstones of Effective Leadership … but I was eager to see just what my friend was referring to … and more importantly, what Jamie had to say about the characteristics he thought were the most important to being a successful leader.
I haven't been invited to give a Commencement Speech ... yet … but when they're ready, I've got it down to just 6 words. [quote style="boxed"]Be yourself. Everyone else is taken. ~ Oscar Wilde[/quote] Question: What else would you tell graduates today?
“Nope. I know what my intention is. People’s opinions of me who don’t know me and have never met me, that’s none of my business. That’s a projection of theirs, and it has nothing to do with me.”
Earlier, my wife put the most recent copy of People magazine on my reading table, not for me to read but just to set it down somewhere while she did something else.
[pullquote]To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. ~ Elbert Hubbard[/pullquote]
Of course, when I saw the headline that it was about the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, I had to pick it up and see, “Who?” … “Why Her?” … and, you know, see how well it aligned with my world view.
But, as I started to read the article, I was immediately drawn to Paltrow’s response to the question posed in the title of this article.
Do you notice anything different about her response? (more…)
On a recent morning, I headed to a favorite place just down the street to fetch a couple of lattes for my wife and me.
Our forbearers would have awakened in woolen underwear, stepped in the dark onto a cold dirt floor, and stumbled outside to chop some wood to start a fire in the cook stove balanced on the rocks outside.
They would have tossed some coffee grounds into a beat-up metal pot … grounds that had already been used for several days … filled the pot with water, boiled it … and at some point, would finally get that first bitter cup of java.
No coffee house down the road, no car to get there, certainly no latte or cappuccino. Eat what you kill, literally. If you ain’t got it, you ain’t gonna get it.
[pullquote]“The secret of success is constancy to purpose.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli[/pullquote]
In many ways, we’re much less resourceful than our forefathers.
While we may have expanded the definition of community in many positive ways, using our physical and social media “mobility” to create unimagined connections, we’ve also become more dependent on external resources to get through our day.
In some ways it’s probably better that we’re co-dependent. (more…)