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Personal Integrity: Leadership and Taking Turns

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 23 Comments

I've been thinking . . .

about taking turns.

It doesn’t take much experience to know that to be heard, you have to listen. Leaders know that. So do teammates and people who understand human nature. Relationships are an ebb and flow, a “give and get” kind of thing.

From childhood, I learned to take turns at being first, at choosing, at having the lead.

Now, I’m grown up and I’ve been thinking about that “taking turns” rule. It’s automatic. I take my turn and I step back for someone else to move forward. When I don’t I feel the world look at me. Is that best way?

I’ve been wondering for weeks now . . . should a leader stop leading because it’s supposed to be someone else’s turn?

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How to Play Follow the Leader to Kick Start Your Brain

Filed Under Idea Bank, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

Business, Blogs, Living

Outside the Box logo

Did you ever play that game — Follow the Leader — in school? The person in front has an idea, and everyone else does the same thing. You might think it’s a bunch of redundancy. Most times it is.

But it doesn’t have to be.

Here’s a recipe to use this game to kick start your brain.

How to Play Follow the Leader to Kick Start Your Brain

In my class, we made our own rules. The game was not only more interesting. It was a WHOLE LOT more fun! My secret is that I’ve used the premises of this silly game to kick start my brain in every job I’ve ever had.

  • Look around for the great leaders, the great thinkers, you admire.
  • Follow the leaders.
    • Follow the folks who have ideas.
    • Follow the folks who have confidence.
    • Follow the folks who are positive.
    • Follow the folks who are jazzed about what they do.

    Follow the folks who know where they are going.

  • Pick one idea from one of the leaders you follow.
    • Take it apart. Put it back together.
    • Look at the idea from every direction you can.
    • Find the parts that are only like the leader. Find the parts that are also like you.

    Get to know the idea at a cellular level.

  • Take one tiny bit of that idea and replace it.
    • If they’re on a tennis court, move to a movie theater.
    • Move the idea to somewhere you understand.

    In other words, make the idea your own.

  • Here’s the crucial part: Don’t try to write . . . play with the idea. While you do that also do something else that suits you:
    • Listen to music.
    • Go for walk.
    • Take a shower.
    • Dance in an elevator.
    • Clean the refrigerator.

    You know what works.

  • Follow your heart to make the idea your own.

Absolutely, positively do not go back to the source once you’ve started to play with the idea . . . until you’ve made the idea your own. Then all that’s left is to write, tell, or present your thoughts, and to remember to thank the leader who was your inspiration.

You get the idea. Actually with a little practice, my guess is that you’ll be getting more than one.

How do you usually kick start your brain?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Related
I Have an Idea — I Have Lots of Them!
Don’t Hunt IDEAS — Be an Idea Magnet

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It’s about Blogging and Relationships

Filed Under Business Life, Successful Blog | 8 Comments

Glad We Met . . .

I get to talk to people I like who live all over the world. We have important thoughts, and we share them in real time on my blog. We laugh a lot. We don’t comment. We talk.

What is cooler than that?

Read the whole feature in today’s Blog Herald by clicking the logo.

The Blog Herald

It’s about blogging and real life.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Liz Strauss at The Blog Herald, The Blogging Times, and Who’s One in a Million?

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Change the World: Let People Out of the Boxes

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 5 Comments

They Had made Up My Mind

Change the World!

I once worked in a highly political culture. It took a while to know that politica played a huge role there. I had moved to a new city and a new job. I had to sort what was the company and what was the culture in part of the country.

As any new employee, I got to know the folks in my department. They showed me the “ropes” of the company, how things worked, and who was who. I took what I was told on face value.

Time went by. I found feet and my way around. I got to know what worked for me. I got to know what didn’t work too. I figured out that some of those folks who showed me around in the early days had political reasons for telling me things they told me.

I didn’t take into account how my beliefs about the company had been affected by conversations with those political people. It was a while before I woke to realize something about me I didn’t like.


I had opinions about people — people I didn’t know. I had become part of a culture that put people in little boxes.

My mind had people organized by one or two traits and their political clout within the company. It was part of the cultural organizational chart, the oral history handed down to me when I arrived there. I had bought it, as fishers say, “hook, line and sinker.”

That morning I started over. I started talking to all of the folks at work with clear intent of getting to know them. The more I talked, the more I enjoyed the folks that I was getting to know. I found that I’d been missing out on some pretty cool, intelligent people.

The world changed that day, when I let the people out of the boxes.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

______________
If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.

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Change the World: Share a Mini-Vacation at a Favorite Place

Filed Under Successful Blog | 16 Comments

Meet Me in Tuscany — the Restaurant

Change the World!

When I commuted to Massachusetts, I often spent the weekend there. Every Sunday I was there, a couple of friends would plan a drive to show me one of their favorite spots in Maine or New Hampshire. We called it “airing out our minds.”

Last Saturday, I got the chance to do the same with two incredible women and blogger friends, Wendy Piersall and Jessica Duquette. They drove into Chicago, and I got to share a favorite place — a restaurant called Tuscany.

The cool thing about inviting folks to a favorite place, especially if they help choose which one, is that I’m inviting them into a part of my life, and they’re saying they want to come. I get to discover my favorite place again, this time with them and through their eyes.

Jessica and Wendy brought a feeling of family and an anticipation of a night that would be enjoyed. That was perfect because I had done the same. The change of scenery, the fine company, the laughter, the conversation, the food, the wine turned a simple blogger dinner into a mini-vacation.

Three bloggers talked about our blogs, our goals, our lives. We asked questions. We challenged assumptions. We told silly stories and important ones too. I doubt that any one of us could describe the other people in the restaurant — except the lovely lady who was our server. She seemed to understand that something important was happening between close friends. That’s right, we skipped the showier, more surface, poking-around sort of talk that comes before the authentic and real part. Bloggers are good at doing that.

We shared food off common plates while we shared moments of each other’s lives. Jessica and Wendy touched my world and made it better in so many words and smiles that night.

WendyPiersall, Jessica Duquette, Liz Strauss, Chicago 01-20-07

It’s that easy to touch a life.

We can change the world today — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

______________
If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.

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