Leaders Purposely Influence

John Maxwell defines Leadership with one word: Influence. What I know is that influence is the currency of achievement. The more influence you have, the greater your ability to achieve your goals, personal or professional. The reality is that unless you live on an uninhabited island, you are influencing others. Check out the short video below for more on this:

 

Excel Tip – Chart from Filter

I always love learning new tips in Excel that can help me communicate data in a way that contributes to better decision making. Just having a lot of data is relatively useless unless you can present in such a way that it makes sense.

In this tutorial, I have used the filter and sort procedures I shared in other tips as a foundation for charting my data.  Hope you enjoy.

Add Value to Everything You Do

The uppermost thought in your mind as you approach any task, position, or responsibility should be “How can I add value.”  This applies to every part of your life. You should always be asking yourself, “How can you take my skills, experience, education, resources and add value to the lines of others.”  Check out the short video below for more on this:

Personal Reflection

Benjamin Franklin said, “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” Proverbs 22:1 states, “Choose a good reputation over great riches; being held in high esteem is better than silver or gold.” Be aware of your personal reputation with the various areas of your life. Check out this short video for more on this:

 

 

Leaders Take the Initiative

If you had to reduce leadership to one word, what would it be?  I’ve heard a lot of different answers to that question; influence, innovation, domination, manipulation, persuasion, problem-solver, etc.  For me, I would have to say that leadership, in one word, is initiative. A leader is one whose nature compels them to take action . . . .  Check out the short video below for more on this.

ENGAGE!

Captain Piccard on the Starship Enterprise gives the order “Engage!” and once again they are all moving into another adventure.

In the classroom Engage is also the beginning of an adventure. Sure, it doesn’t involve the Borg, nor does it come down to life and death, BUT, it is the starting point for change that could very well spell the difference between success and failure.

Engaging in the classroom is an action that students choose. When the choice is to engage you can see it in their willingness to ask questions, to respond to questions when called upon and to actively volunteer to demonstrate their grasp of the material. These are the students who actually read the assignments and ask questions about what they don’t understand . . . and keep asking until the Instructor can make it clear. Those who engage always demonstrate a better grasp of the course material and are better able to make the leap to higher orders of creative thinking.

Contrast this with those who just show up for class, sit quietly, and wait to be “filled-up” by the Instructor. Sadly, they are usually disappointed in the class and the Instructor, leaving the class having checked off a box, but gained very little in actual knowledge or the ability to use the information to better themselves or their situation.

You get to choose – sit in the back or the front, sit quietly or speak up, doodle or take notes, skim the material or actually read the assignments, fluff your writing or actually strive to answer the questions at depth.

So, I’m going to encourage you to engage!  To apply yourself in the classroom and see what a difference it makes.