My father James Cardus died May 27, 2006…he was an educational leader for over 30 years. At his funeral I heard amazing stories about him, stories he never told me. What stood out about my fathers leadership was the small things he did for people;
We all operate with different mental models and necessities of learning + training. When facilitating team building & leadership processes with individuals and teams a challenge is trying to determine what each person needs in order to feel our time together is used effectively.
Team meetings we all know them, sit through them and find some effective and some a total waste of time.
Prior to team meetings it is the manager or team leader (the person who called the meeting) who is responsible to frame the context of the meeting taking place.
“When someone else is talking about what they learned and how they can apply it. SHUT UP! and let them speak. Your solution and ideas mean NOTHING to the person speaking. We all have to apply lessons through our own context. Your context means nothing to me.”
The workplace has the capacity to develop paranoia and/or trust. Psychologically when aroused either mechanism in people readily takes over. They magnify and distort the reality that is separate from our perception and experience.
A Word on Theory.
Two actually: useful lies.
All theories are useful lies. Theories are attempts to simplify what is happening in a set of observations.
Setting effective goals with camp staff can make or break your programs.
Are you setting goals for your staff?
Is your manager at camp setting goals for you?
“Our agency is often changing plans, don’t you think that instead of focusing on planning that we should be focusing on peoples ability to deal with change?”
You don’t know everything you can and must learn.
Once you believe that you know everything you are no longer adding value to others, yourself, and you organization…you might as well be dead.
When examining the human system, the part cannot be removed and repaired, and the decisions become more complex. Complexity increases because human systems are interactive and what you see as the effect is not always the cause…