Archive for the ‘Creating Opportunities’ Category
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
–BY SCHON BEECHLER
I had made it through the holidays without the whirl of my hard drive interrupting the quiet peacefulness of warm New Zealand summer days. Now it was time to get back to work. Among the sea of junkmail in my inbox, the annual Christmas letter from Sam, an alum from my Columbia Senior Executive program over a decade ago, beckoned. With a smile, I clicked on it, expecting the usual newsy letter from Sam on life in Asia, his health, and job-related challenges and opportunities. But this year’s letter was different…. (more…)
Tags: Asia, cerebral palsy, courage, CP, leadership, making a difference, volunteer
Posted in Courage / Empowerment / Initiative, Creating Opportunities, General | No Comments »
Monday, November 28th, 2011
– BY SCHON BEECHLER
6:19 AM. I am sitting in my hotel room in Shanghai, still a bit jetlagged and waiting for the sun to rise through the haze of the city. I’m here to teach executive courses on positive leadership with two colleagues from Melbourne and we’ve already delivered two programs and are getting ready to start our third this morning. The stresses on the executives attending our courses are enormous – everything here is changing at lightning speed, competition is fierce, work weeks are grueling. And, at the same time, there are fantastic opportunities for each and every one of them. They are just hard to see beyond the mania of the day to day. That’s what we’re doing here. (more…)
Tags: China, positive leadership, teaching
Posted in Creating Opportunities, Diversity / Leveraging Difference, General, Leadership Education and Development | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
– BY SCHON BEECHLER
In my blogs this week I am going to tackle the topic of negativity and positivity in our lives. Today, I characterize what I see as a major problem in our lives, and in tomorrow’s blog I offer up 10 simple ideas how to bring some positivity back into our day to day existence.
I have circled the globe in the past 14 days. Economies are on the precipice of chaos, countries are teetering on the brink of war, and political uncertainty and turmoil roil across all the continents as unemployment edges up higher and higher, patience wanes, and tempers run hot. In one poignant indicator of the state of the world, here are the titles of all the top stories on the front page of the New York Times this morning: “As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe,” “Christians Fear Future in Syria Beyond Assad,” “Health Insurers Push Premiums Sharply Higher,” Rights Collide as Town Clerk Sidesteps Role in Gay Marriages,” and “Even Those Cleared of Crimes Can Stay on FBI’s Watch List.”
Scorn, Contempt, Protests, Fear, Upheaval, New York Battle Looms, Terrorist Watch List – these are the stories, the words, the sentiments that slap me in the face as I start my day. What are we doing to ourselves? (more…)
Tags: bad is stronger than good, bad news, crisis, positive leadership, positive psychology, recession, story
Posted in Courage / Empowerment / Initiative, Creating Opportunities, General | 7 Comments »
Monday, July 4th, 2011
–By Schon Beechler
On Friday and Saturday I posted two blogs regarding my recent failed teaching experience in India last week. I shared this story for two primary reasons. First, I shared my story to solicit input from others that I can use to help me understand what went wrong this time so that I can use it in the future. I plan to return to India to teach and making the experience a valuable one for the participants is the most important objective I have.
But I also shared my story for another reason – I think that it’s important to talk about our failures to help others benefit from our mistakes. (more…)
Tags: courage, ego, executive education, positive leadership, steve jobs, teaching
Posted in Courage / Empowerment / Initiative, Creating Opportunities, General, Leadership Education and Development, Learning, Lift / Fundamental State of Leadership | 1 Comment »
Monday, May 9th, 2011
By Ryan W. Quinn
Last week, Schon wrote an entry on this blog asking whether the killing of Osama Bin Laden was an act of positive leadership or not. Some of our readers left a number of provocative comments in response to this entry, which we appreciate. This week, I would like to follow up on Schon’s post with a different question: Now what? (more…)
Tags: Bin Laden, future, Osama, peace, positive leadership, transformational leadership
Posted in Creating Opportunities, General, Leading Change | 4 Comments »
Friday, May 6th, 2011
– By Schon Beechler
We are drawn to the successful men and women in our field. We watch them. We ask them and others the secrets of their success. We analyze and emulate them in the hopes that we, too, can be as good (or better) than they are. What we don’t usually get to see, however, are the failures that helped fuel the successful role models we so admire. (more…)
Tags: courage, courageous leadership, executive education, executive programs, failure, positive leadership, self-confidence
Posted in Courage / Empowerment / Initiative, Creating Opportunities, General, High Performance, Learning | 4 Comments »
Friday, March 11th, 2011
– By Schon Beechler
The theme of my blogs this week is values and leadership. Today, I’d like to share a simple tool to help you discover (or re-discover) your own values in the context of work. It’s an approach developed by my colleague, Manny Elkind, which he’s used with thousands of executives around the world (see one executive’s leadership story in Wednesday‘s blog). We hope you find it useful!
(more…)
Tags: leadership, leadership tool, values
Posted in Agility / Adaptation, Courage / Empowerment / Initiative, Creating Opportunities, Crisis, General | No Comments »
Monday, March 7th, 2011
-By Schon Beechler
Almost every day you can read about a crisis of leadership. A quick read of today’s March 7th, 2011 New York Times reveals (1) the resignation of the Japanese Foreign Minister, Seiji Maehara, for illegal campaign donations; (2) a full-length article on Charlie Sheen (need I say more?); and (3) the trial of Raj Rajaratnam, one of “Wall Street’s savviest investors until accused in the biggest insider trading scandal in a generation.
Whether it is politics, Hollywood, business or education in the US, Japan, Germany, China, or South Africa, research and pundits agree that we desperately need leaders. (more…)
Posted in Creating Opportunities, General, Learning, Lift / Fundamental State of Leadership | 5 Comments »
Monday, February 28th, 2011
- By Schon Beechler
I was recently traveling to India for business and boarded my flight from JFK, not looking forward to the 16 hour journey. I arrived at my seat and saw that my seat-mate, a man in his 50s or so, was already there. I smiled and said hello as I put my carry-on baggage away and settled in. But the man never looked up or acknowledged me in any way. I immediately thought,”What an ass! Why do I have to sit next to an unpleasant guy all the way to India?”
(more…)
Tags: decision making, judger, judgment, learner, positive, positive leadership, Positive organizational scholarship
Posted in Communication, Courage / Empowerment / Initiative, Creating Opportunities, Diversity / Leveraging Difference, General, High Performance, Learning, Positive Relationships and Networks | 8 Comments »
Friday, February 11th, 2011
In the last five blog entries I have illustrated the leadership potential in changing how we introduce ourselves. We can choose to greet people as we normally do, or we can choose to do it with an increase in heart-felt positivity. I have shared examples of how this unusual choice can result in surprising outcomes. The question is why?
Imagine a competition in which a group of business executives must make proposals to a set of judges. Alex Pentland, a professor at MIT, gathered such a group. One week before their competition he collected data on each executive. Then without, any information on what they actually presented, he predicted who would win. His predictions were 87% accurate. How is this possible?
[Read more]
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Posted in Collaboration / Teamwork / Breaking Down Silos, Communication, Courage / Empowerment / Initiative, Creating Opportunities, Energizing the Workplace, General, High Performance, Innovation and Creativity, Leadership Education and Development, Leading Change, Learning, Lift / Fundamental State of Leadership, Positive Relationships and Networks, Social Responsibility and Virtue, Teamwork | 1 Comment »
