Ahhh, it’s that time of the month (no, not that time) again. The first Monday brings you all kinds of leadership, management and all-around useful information and advice from some of the most common-sensical people on the planet. What’s not to love?

And thanks to Jason Seiden for being such a gracious host this month.

How can I not love Laura Schroeder’s post? The 7 Habits of Highly Effective 5-Year-Olds is pitch perfect. Thanks, Working Girl, for a delightfully simply reminder of just how complicated we tend to make simple issues. (Elle would agree.)

From Amy Wilson: Why Business Leaders Should Conduct Talent Reviews. Amy has a unique ability to see around corners and figure out what’s coming in the talent development space. Here, she tackles the resource allocation that accompanies big change. At Wilson Insight.

“I hate doing these yearly performance evaluations.”
“What is it you hate so much?”
“They are nowhere near accurate and often times I feel forced to use recent information to determine employee performance.”
“What would be better?”
This: Michael “I know a thing or two about performance reviews” Cardus’s Yearly Performance Reviews SUCK! Managers Can Change That. posted at Team Building & Leadership Blog: Create-Learning.

Innovation is a challenge because it is largely a right brain activity. But once this is understood, innovation can become a personal leadership skill as well as a corporate one. Dana Theus talks playtime, the boredom that precedes the brilliance, and the risk of looking foolish in Why Is Leading Innovation So Hard?, posted at Reclaiming Leadership.

Read Wally Bock’s The 97% Solution right now. The Army says that there are “toxic leaders” in its ranks, and that’s a problem. But 97 percent of officers and sergeants have experienced an exceptional leader, and that may be part of the solution. Wally’s use of statistics demonstrates how to find the good.

Art Petty suggests Respectfully Speaking, Let’s Cure Respect Deficit Disorder at Management Excellence.

Utpal Vaishnav presents a very common corporate challenge in a clear and compelling (and non-alliterative) way. The title is a bit over the top, but the article itself is dead on. This is one to hand out to your employees. In Corporate, Non-communication Equates to Crime… posted at Utpal Writes.

Confused about which change model to pick for your organization? This post from Dan McCarthy’s Great Leadership will point you in the right direction. Dan McCarthy presents Which Change Model Should You Pick? at Great Leadership.

How do you talk to a CEO? Mark Stelzner nails it with his hard-won advice to anyone who may find him- or herself in that position. Take a moment to read How To Talk To A CEO, posted at Inflexion Point.

Sometimes, it’s good to have someone remind you that it’s not all complex conversations and deep thinking that drives success. Sometimes, it’s  the basics like getting out of bed early enough to get a jump on the day. Not a morning person? Follow Jon Milligan’s tips on how waking yourself up in his post How to Wake Yourself Up at Simple Life Habits.

The demand for innovation requires creative genius. But where and how do we find it? Genius is closer than you think. In fact, the path to your genius starts right here in this post by Anne Perschel: Knock Knock ? Who?s There? Genius posted at Germane Insights.

Jim Logan has seen his share of business plans. In this post, he lays out the questions few entrepreneurs prepare for but that every entrepreneur needs to have a good answer for. According to the case he makes in The magic sales plan that can’t be explained, “if you can’t convince me you can be successful now, your chances of being successful later are slim to none.” At Saleskick.

If I had an award for Most Profersonal™ Post, this would be it. Hats off to Michael Lee Stallard for Starbucks’ CEO’s Broken Heart, which demonstrates the power that comes from doing business with a heaping serving of humanity. Posted at Michael Lee Stallard.

Ben Brabyn offers an important lesson in how to bring a group together in How to boost team performance without increasing costs posted at Brabyn.com.

Here’s one surprising tip for leaders to help them maximize their message. Steve Roesler presents Be A Presentation Pro: Do This at All Things Workplace.

Not sure how social media can help (or hurt) your business? Click over to the Bret L. Simmons – Positive Organizational Behavior blog and read his post, The Most Important Social Business Metrics. You’ll be glad you did.

I love Joe and Wanda on Management. In this post, Nick McCormick shares Russell Bishop’s perspective on decision making (from his new book, “Work-arounds that Work”), and Joe and Wanda respond. It’s a well-framed discussion of framing: Managers and Decision-Making.

In this straightforward and compelling post, Eric Pennington explains why your life is to be managed and cared for before it’s taken away: Getting Your Life Back. Gotta love a blog called Epic Living!

Organizations should market the great things they are doing to educate the public on internal best practices. Kathy C presents 7 ways to do this in Leverage What You Do Right in Your Marketing Plan! at The Thriving Small Business.

A short post on love in organisations? Check! Jon Ingham presents Leading in the Love Shack at Management 2.0 developing social capital.

Giving feedback as a leader can be challenging, especially to the employee who is highly sensitive to criticism. Lynn Dessert tells how to do it right in Can leaders deliver feedback without someone taking it personally? at Elephants at Work.

Have a laugh and learn something about the uneasy relationship between HR and managers. Wayne Turmel presents The Cranky Middle Manager Show #290 Why Does HR Hate Us The Evil HR Lady posted at TPN :: The Cranky Middle Manager Show. It’s funny because it’s true.

Mike Haberman delivers a fastball down the middle on the Omega Solutions Blog with The Key to a Successful Team: Lessons for HR. Mike says, “I got these lessons from John Schuerholz, the former GM and now president of the Atlanta Braves.”

For all you TEDTalk geeks, Adi Gaskell presents a good one in Is your chief exec suffering from the God Complex? | Chartered Management Institute, posted at The Management Blog | Chartered Management Institute.

Guy Farmer delivers a 2×4 upside the head of the management status quo in Leaders’ Obsessive Focus on What Employees Do Wrong, at Unconventional Training.

Charles Chua C K presents 10 P’s To Be Successful posted at All About Living with Life.

Jane Perdue offers a quick mid-year checklist for leaders: The 7 C’s – A Mid-Year Leadership Checkup at Get Your Leadership BIG On!.

Any one can develop skills to become a good leader – and here Malik Mirza presents tips from Jim Rohn, one of Malik’s favorite inspirational and motivational speakers. Jim Rohn’s advice on leadership is posted at WisdomfromBooks.com.

Many leaders seem to be having difficulty finding employees who care. Miki Saxon finds a solution to the problem by flipping the issue on its head in Ducks In a Row: Who Cares? at MAPping Company Success.

Patrick Bradshaw presents The Name of the Integrated Talent Management Game posted at TrendWatchers.

S. Chris Edmonds covers The Five Disciplines of Servant Leadership at Driving Results Through Culture—a simple post that left me thinking hard about how to recalibrate my time each week.

John Chappelear wrote: When you focus on making your people great, the result is a great organization.
Jailan Marie presents There are no great companies, just great people, who happen to work there. Live at Innovative Solutions For Positive Change.

Hey, tough guy: get your a** in gear and embrace those “touchy-feely” management techniques that science keeps showing works. Robert Tanner tackles the big issue head on in Not More Of That “Touchy-Feely” Stuff! posted at Management is a Journey.

Anecdotally, we all know that micromanagers are a headache to work with. But what are the actual business problems that they can create? Here we look at two reasons why they can be so damaging to companies. From Andy Klein and the Fortune Group Blog: The perils of Management OCD – an undesirable management malady.

Ah, leadership & ethics. Linda Fisher Thornton presents Ethical Leadership Context at Leading in Context. Regardless of where you ultimately shake out on the issue, this is always a good topic to revisit.

Jim Taggart sideswipes the time-honored tradition of the strategic off-site with his suggestion that leaders “co-create” organizational vision with employees. The VISION Thing at ChangingWinds is quick, light reading that squares perfectly with the headiest research on effective leadership.

Juliet Jones presents 10 Successful CEOs Who Failed at Politics, which is a helpful ego check for those delusional to think that success in one area automatically qualifies them for success elsewhere.

Finally, there’s 4 Ways to Become a More Emotionally Mature Leader. This one’s mine. And here’s a clue: it is impossible to say the words “I’m taking the high road” from the high road.

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Yammer started in 2008 and now has 100,000 companies and organizations, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500, as customers.

But that isn’t why I’m writing about it.

I read an interview with David Sacks, Yammer’s founder, chairman and C.E.O. Of course, the interview started asking all the standard ‘leadership’ questions, but Sacks responses were all about culture. (Fantastic information, I hope you take time to read it.)

“You’ve really got to create a company culture that people want to work at. And so you try to give them a voice, give them a sense that they influence the direction of the company, and try to avoid unnecessary process and hierarchy — things that might frustrate employees. … I think you’ve got to create a culture in which dissent is valued.”

Sacks’ responses forced (my interpretation) the interviewer to focus on Yammer’s culture as opposed to Sacks and his ‘leadership’.

I find these interviewers interesting. They seem always to focus on the person, looking for the accepted responses and attitudes towards ‘leadership’ and comments that have ‘I’ in multiple places.

When the responses don’t fit that profile the interviewers seem a bit incredulous—or maybe it’s just me and my own prejudice on the leadership thing.

Watch this interview with Tony Hsieh (sorry, the Washington Post doesn’t provide embed code), but keep your eyes on the interviewer as you listen to the questions and responses, especially at 4:09, when Hsieh says, “I think of myself less as of a leader and maybe more of a protector.”

Check out the interviewer’s facial expressions and then tell me if it’s my imagination or does he register surprise tinged with disbelief.

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There is a sizable difference between accepting positional leadership when a company is at the bottom and there is no place to go but up and taking over when its at its height—even more so when what was the growth engine and source of extraordinary profits disappears from the economic landscape.

It is one thing to maximize what you have, wringing out every last possible dollar, and investing in innovation for sustainable growth in the future.

It is one thing to create a culture where public shame and the likelihood of termination for missing your numbers rules and changing that to a culture that encourages appropriate risk-taking and never kills the messenger when the risk doesn’t pan out; a culture that understands not every innovation will be a home run, but encourages and applauds the effort anyway.

These are the differences between Jack Welch

But Welch had taken over when the company was in the bottom of an economic cycle. He took over GE in a recession, not the height of a bubble. Immelt got the job right after the end of the high-flying 1990s, an era which crowned CEOs with mythical, God-like crowns, and Welch was bestowed the biggest of them all.

and Jeff Immelt.

Immelt had known before the meltdown the company needed to ween off the leveraged risk from finance that was begun under Welch. … He admitted mistakes, as any good leader must do, and GE more quietly if not humbly went about its business in making the company a 21st century sustainable and reliable profit engine.

The differences are worth noting.

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How ’bout that; the Fourth had the courtesy to fall on the first Monday of July, so along with your beer, buddies and BBQ you can enjoy the 2011 July Leadership Development Carnival.

My best wishes for a safe and happy holiday!

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Jennifer Miller, author of The People Equation, is host for the June edition of the Leadership Development Carnival. She tagged it Commencement Edition in honor of the potential represented by the Class of 2011. My quick sampling of the different categories tells me it offers a well-rounded meal no matter what you are looking for.

First up, it’s regular Leadership Development Carnival host Dan McCarthy, with 10 Ways to Get More Candid Feedback (and 5 ways if you really can’t handle the truth) from his blog Great Leadership.

Management

Sharlyn Lauby from HR Bartender serves up solid advice on a way to enhance your company’s performance review process in Should Employees Do Self-Appraisals?

I’m not sure what the trophy would look like for this award, but Jane Perdue at Get Your Leadership Big On has a great list of what a manager would need to do to earn top honors in 10 Ways to Win Bad Boss of the Year.

Over at Learning Curves, Lakshman Rajagopalan asks the tough (but necessary) questions of prospective managers in Why do you want to become a Manager?

Robert Tanner finds that he’s gleaned wisdom, emotional intelligence, and leadership lessons from Colin Powell in Revisiting Colin Powell’s 13 Rules of Leadership . As Robert says in the post, “The truth never goes out of style!” Read it on his blog Management is a Journey.

Miki Saxon from Mapping Company Success takes on the issue of Positional Deafness, remarking, “I’ve never understood why managers expect workers who were consistently ignored and shut down to suddenly start contributing because they receive a promotion.”

From the Fortune Group Blog and Andy Klein comes this thought: are some managers too wrapped up in being “needed” to properly develop their people? Andy says, “The best managers don’t make people dependent on them; they create an entity that will function in their absence”. See his thoughts on Effective Managers Must overcome the Emotional Need to be Needed.

Enda Larkin gives us a list of 7 typical managerial mistakes in What are the Most Common Mistakes that Managers Make? on his blog HTC Consult.

Adi Gaskell uncovers research that doesn’t paint managers in a very good light, so he offers a balancing perspective with In Defense of Management at The Management Blog | Chartered Management Institute.

Team Development

Mary Jo Asmus of Aspire –CS highlights the process of a leader skilled in developing his team.  See the guidelines he used to launch a very creative, hands-on team development project in Six Tips to Help Your Team Learn.

At John Spence’s Achieving Business Excellence blog, John outlines the HPT competency models he uses when working with teams. See more via How to Build a High Performance Team (HPT).

Dave Doran, who is an executive coach and writes at The S4P Blog , offers How to Develop a Pre-Coaching Ritual. This post is geared towards external coaches, but could easily be used for leaders coaching an employee in a one-to-one setting.

Rosaria Hawkins draws an interesting connection between being “lost” and developing leaders.  In her post Lost: The Key to True Learning, she says: “It’s been said that true learning occurs when we are lost—in a liminal place, where nothing works, where old methods, strategies and knowledge just don’t cut it. How can we, as leaders, tap into this potent developmental space?” See more at The Mindful Leadership Blog.

Michael Cardus explores the 4^th phase of building high performance teams, inquiring, Accountability to the Team; When does that happen? on his blog Create Learning Team-Building Blog.

Using an analogy of tending plant life, Will Lukang identifies five things leaders must do to “grow” future leaders in Planting the Seeds for Leaders of Tomorrow at Will’s Blog .

“The use of the word team has greatly diluted what teamwork is really about. And along the way, the cult of teamwork has created skepticism, mistrust–and even guilt–among employees.” Because of this, Jim Taggart wants to rock the teamwork boat in his post Rethinking Teams: Getting Over the Guilt Complex. See more at the ChangingWinds blog.

Over at Management Excellence, Art Petty gives us plenty to contemplate about the challenges of developing a high-performing team in It’s Time to Start Teaching Your Team to Succeed.

Organizational Culture

In his travels Mark Stelzner meets some interesting people. Fortunately for us, he gleans wisdom from these unlikely sources and shares it in 4 Reasons Change is So Damn Hard at Inflexion Advisors.

Linda Fisher Thornton asks, “How are curiosity and imagination related to ethics and business leadership?” Read Curiosity and Imagination Necessary Ingredients in Ethical Business on her blog Leading in Context to see her answers.

John Kotter contributes to a Forbes.com blog called Change Leadership and submitted the post Throw Out Your Strategy? Not So Fast. It’s about how leaders can preserve a strategy they’ve worked hard to develop while they take a step back and focus on getting people in their organization to feel a renewed sense of urgency about the strategy.

Weaving social media use into an existing company’s culture is still presenting a challenge for many, even if they have a policy in place. According to Mark Bennett of Talented Apps, it’s because Social Media Policy: Only Just the Start. “The more you can determine a specific business performance measure that you can connect to the purported benefits of social media, the better” offers Mark.

Bob Lieberman likens executives resistant to a change initiative to encountering an elephant on the road– “if it wants to block the road, you’re sunk”. And this, he asserts, spells trouble for a change effort that’s not supported at the top of the organization. His post The Elephant In The Road appears on his blog Cultivating Creativity – Developing Leaders for the Creative Economy .

Read how Chery Gegelman of Giana Consulting was inspired to write the post Discover THE Solution after hearing presentations from executives from Coca-Cola and Chick-fil-A. Chery’s post highlights the value of strategic partnerships.

Leadership

You’re Not the Boss of Me is the name of Gwyn Teatro’s blog and in Going First Gwyn discusses what it means to be a leader and (bonus!) offers up some of her favorite leadership blogs.

The post Spotted: A Leader Without Title narrates a short encounter with a leader who needed no title to lead, causing Tanmay Vora to wonder, “what if well-bred, educated professionals stop looking at their jobs as a ‘transaction’ and start treating it as a ‘service’?” Learn more at QAspire Blog.

The post It Takes Courage and Character to Unify People by Don Shapiro appears on the multi-contributor site Lead Change Group Blog – Leaders Growing Leaders. In it, Don writes about the importance of unity and courage contrasted against division and fear. “The crisis we face today isn’t about techniques, methods and attributes of good leaders. We face a crisis of courage and character.”

Lisa Petrilli of C-Level Strategies shares insights from the recent CEO Connection Boot Camp regarding the most pressing issues on CEOs’ minds today in her post Four Priorities Keeping CEOs Up at Night.

In Leadership Guru Reality Check, Brett Simmons of Bret L. Simmons – Positive Organizational Behavior implores us to be wary of the impressively packaged books touting the next leadership “guru”. To be serious about the practice of leadership, he advocates getting to know the true heavy-hitters in the leadership development discipline.

Jason Price draws upon lessons learned in carpentry to define the two key aspects of leadership in Cutting Boards and Building the Leader Within at his One Money Design blog.

David Burkus of Leader Lab muses about the merit of making the distinction between “leadership” and “management” in Toward a New Kind of Distinction.

Personal Effectiveness

Miriam Gomberg sees a connection between customer service and leadership. She writes “I believe that great leaders do what is right without asking for anything in return and the post The Meaning of Customer Service: Pay it Forward embodies the sentiment well.” Find out about the leadership/customer service connection at Miriam Gomberg.

David Wentworth contributes to the Institute for Corporate Productivity’s TrendWatcher site and offers up ways that leaders can incorporate mobile learning into their daily practices in Mobile Learning Anywhere Anytime

Jason Seiden’s 10 Great Ways to Get Focused… Fast! is a quick hit-list of ways to help you “get yourself grounded, focused, and ready to crush”. See it at My blog is profersonal (yes, that’s the correct spelling)

On Utpal Writes, being open and willing to admit what you do (and don’t) know is the way to being “self cognizant” says Utpal Vaishnav . He urges readers to Know Thyself Better! to develop their leadership skills.

In his post Why Going Back Doesn’t Work Eric Pennington explains why going back is rarely a good plan of action-in work and life. “Revisionism gives us the luxury of telling ourselves lies”, he tells us on his blog Epic Living and gives us 7 reasons why he believes this to be true.

The entry by Bill Matthies is succinct, yet thought-provoking: “Management is often thought of as one telling others what to do but do we give enough thought to what we should do?” Check out his unique blog format at Business Wisdom: Words to Manage By in the post Personal SWOT? in which your comments form the bulk of the post.

Steve Roesler of All Things Workplace wonders Is Everyone Coachable? See his list of 5 traits you must possess to be a viable candidate for coaching.

So there you have it— yet another excellent round-up of leadership essays. Oh, and one more—my entry is Following. It’s the New Leadership, which was inspired by my first in-person attendance at a TEDx event.

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There is much talk these days among what Jim Stroup calls the modern leadership movement (MLM) that leadership is all about influence.

What I’ve never seen is any mention that influence is about control.

Influence moves you in the direction desired by the leader, essentially controlling your choices.

Also faulty is the assumption that the influence ‘leaders’ exert is always for ‘good’; as I keep saying, assumptions are bad.

In this case the assumption is that a ‘leader’ you like/trust/respect won’t lead you in a direction that encourages you to do something you wouldn’t do on your own if you thought of it.

That is a faulty assumption at best and a destructive one at worst.

To paraphrase an old saying that has served me well in my life, consider the source of the influence sans assumptions before allowing it to affect you.

In other words, listen objectively to the words and consider what they mean.

One trick to doing that is to pretend someone you would never allow to influence you said the same thing. How would you react?

If you would pull back and say, ‘no way’, then it should be ‘no way’ even if the source is someone you like/trust/respect.

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Whether a company has 10 or 10,000 people the right people reporting directly to you and whether you call them vice presidents or something else they are critical to your success.

For convenience I’m going to use vp to refer to the top people in your company; those who report directly to the CEO and are responsible for the different functions (with or without staff).

They are the people the CEO relies on

• as a sounding board;
• for both tactical and strategic intelligence;
• to tell it like it is—even when she doesn’t want to hear it
• to see and understand the big picture;
• to lead the effort in employee acquisition, motivation, and retention;
• to support and strengthen the culture she envisioned;
• to not sabotage another group or start a turf war, and
• to help stamp out politics whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head.

And more, but you get the idea.

The first item on your agenda when creating a senior staff is to determine what parts of your business/company (beyond the standard ones of finance, development, marketing, and sales) need to report directly to the CEO for peak performance.

You never want a truly critical function reporting through, and responsible to, someone else (agendas do get in the way).

It may be customer service (or whatever it’s called); it could be IT; if you are large enough to have a real HR department (not just a benefits admin) it should definitely report directly.

Support functions are often left to report to the CFO, which can prevent them from being used fro real strategic advantage.

Where does one find talented VPs? Now and then you’ll be lucky enough to actually hire one complete with all the bells and whistles, but more likely you will find a current VP, or talented director, with some of them, or with the right potential.

Be aware that one of the main things that sets great VPs apart from merely good ones, as well as other managers, is a strong strategic ability, which means they see the entire team and understand how their department fits into the whole.

It’s not a given, I’ve known many C-level executives who never grasp this, as well as director level (and lower) managers who get it.

Every member of your staff needs a real understanding of business, including financials, and it’s your responsibility, as their manager, to make sure they get whatever training and information is needed to do their job as a member of your senior staff.

Further, if you want the most powerful senior staff possible cross train them in each other’s functions and challenges.

Think of the phenomenal value of a CFO who understands the intricacies of manufacturing as more than a set of numbers; a VP of Engineering who understands financials and inventory turns; an HR head who understands what actually happens in the different departments, etc.

Think of the power inherent in a senior staff that understands what it takes to turn an idea into a product and a product into revenue.

And if you still have doubts about hiring all that power, don’t focus on the difference it would make to the company, but rather the difference it would make doing your own job.

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It’s May Day and it was actually sunny all day long. This is a big deal here in the great Pacific Northwest, where we are having our second cool, rainy, late spring. I spent the day in my yard, moving a few plants, but mostly pulling weeds. It was great. Dan McCarthy spent a few hours of his day putting together this month’s Leadership Carnival. Guess who had more fun?

So without more ado, here is The May 1st Leadership Development Carnival; Thanks, Dan!

We’ll start off with a post from Jennifer Miller, called “8 Ways for CEOs to Tap Thier Insiders“, posted at The People Equation, saying “Management by walking around gets a fresh look with this research that touts productivity gains for CEOs who build relationships with company insiders”.

Next up is Wally Bock, with “You don’t “build” people, dammit!”, hosted at his Three Star Leadership blog, saying “People are living things. You don’t build living things, they grow.”

Steve Roesler presents Real Change: Add Behavior to Your Vision posted at All Things Workplace, saying, “Leading Change means getting beyond the vision and impacting behavior.”

Mary Jo Asmus presents Reflecting On Your 360 Degree Feedback posted at Mary Jo Asmus.

Art Petty presents Trying Not to Fail Is Not the Same As Striving for Success posted at Management Excellence.

Sharlyn Lauby presents If You’re Not With Us posted at hr bartender, saying, “Part of management is being able to help employees manage their workload.”

Mark Stelzner presents Will I Fit In? posted at Inflexion Point.

David Burkus presents The Designful Leader posted at LeaderLab.

Anne Pershel gives us Power: How to Build it over Time & Lose it Overnight, posted at Germane Insights, saying “I learned the hard way to respect the dynamics of power in organizational life. In this post you will read the story and lessons learned.”

Eric Pennington presents The Giving Up Thing posted at Epic Living – Leadership Development , saying, “In this post I address the crossroads of “giving up.” The reasons we’re tempted to give up and the key reasons to keep going are addressed in this timely piece.”

William Matthies presents A Macro Business Plan? posted at Business Wisdom: Words to Manage By, saying, “Life guidance will hopefully be grounded in positive ethics.”

Bret L. Simmons presents Employee Empowerment: Why It Matters And How To Get It posted at Bret L. Simmons.

Mike Henry Sr. presents a post from Deb Costello called “Inspiration vs. Perspiration” posted at Lead Change Group Blog, saying, “You are a leader in your work whether you have that title or not. People see you do your job. Do you do it joyfully or are you working for the weekend?”

Miki Saxon presents Ducks In A Row: Are You Well-Put-Together? posted at MAPping Company Success, saying, “Based on today’s definition, well-put-together is the last thing you want to be.”

Erik Samdahl presents Dance With the One What Brung Ya posted at Productivity Blog, saying, “Howard Schultz’s focus since returning to the helm of Starbucks has been to remind the company of what made it great from its beginnings and, in effect, re-teaching all levels of the company how to execute against its original brand promise.”

Jon Ingham presents John Lewis’ Co-Ownership Model and The Royal Wedding posted at Management 2.0 developing social capital.

Anna Farmery presents Connecting Bill Clinton, music, Elvis and business! posted at The Engaging Brand.

Utpal Vaishnav presents Entrepreneurship 30 posted at Utpal Vaishnav, saying, “30 thoughts to know whether Entrepreneurship is for you or not.”

Adi Gaskell presents Do entrepreneurs think differently? | Chartered Management Institute posted at Do entrepreneurs think differently?, saying, “New research into the type of behaviour differences between entrepreneurs and managers.”

Michael Cardus presents 2 Kinds of Workplaces. 1 of Paranoia 1 of Trust posted at Create-Learning Team Building & Leadership Blog, saying, “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.”

Meg Bear presents Bring your whole self to work posted at TalentedApps, saying, “Encouraging employees to be full and complete people — with a wealth of experiences, ideas, commitments, values and thoughts to offer your company, is a linchpin for most engagement strategies.”

Laura Schroeder presents Top Ten Tips for Managers posted at Working Girl.

From Guy Harris, “Three Clues You Can Use to Find Out What Motivates Another Person.” The key to motivating others is understanding what they view as rewards.

From Becky’s own blog, “Share What You Know.” Leaders can make a difference by freely sharing their ideas, wisdom, and insights with others.

Debbie Owen presents How to Bring About Sustainable Change posted at Online Doctorate Degree.

Chris Edmonds presents The Leader’s Primary Contribution: Discretionary Energy posted at Driving Results Through Culture.

Jason Price presents The Biggest Lie of Leadership posted at One Money Design, saying, “This post shares an important ingredient of good leadership which is most often not what people see when thinking of leaders.”

Joe Tichio presents Inspirational Leadership Quotes posted at Inspirational Quotes Blog, saying, “A collection of inspiring quotes on leadership and being a leader.”

Robert Tanner presents Leading Change (Step 5): Empower Broad Based Action | Management is a Journey Blog posted at Management is a Journey Blog, saying, “This article provides strategies on implementing Step 5 of John Kotter’s Leading Change Model–empower broad based action.”

Andy Klein presents A leader’s dilemma: What’s the best way to influence action? posted at Fortune Group Blog, saying, “Leaders are confronted with two options when trying to influence people to act. To us, picking between the two is an easy choice.”

Bob Lieberman presents Nobody Wants To Know Me Anymore posted at Cultivating Creativity – Developing Leaders for the Creative Economy.

Alicia Arnold presents 5 Ways to Get Out of a Creative Slump posted at Daily Creativity, saying, “Around the globe, innovation is cited as one of the top three leadership skills for the future. This article provides easy to implement tips for increasing personal creativity as a building block for harnessing creativity and innovation with the workplace.”

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Another month another Leadership Development Carnival hosted by Sharlyn Lauby at HR Bartender. It’s the perfect way to start your weekend. Click around and you’ll start Monday with great new tools and knowledge to jumpstart your week and your future.

Many thanks to our Carnival Leader, Dan McCarthy from Great Leadership, for allowing me to host this event for a second time.  Be sure to check out his latest post I’m Your Boss, Not Your Friend: 10 Reasons Why Your Boss Shouldn’t be Your Friend

Leadership

Need a little energy to get started on this month’s carnival reading?  Art Petty serves up some Leadership Caffeine: 5 Ideas for Creating a Tenacious Culture

Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership tells the story of when Susan was promoted to team leader, it was the highlight of her career, for about 12 hours in his post A New Boss who Shouldn’t Be One

At times, leadership can be less about your circumstances, what you were born with or what you’ve learned.  Benjamin McCall at ReThink HR explains Leadership is about what you have…

Tanmay Vora from QAspire Blog provides 10 Key Lessons on Leading Virtual Teams Effectively

Leaders shouldn’t just go along with the crowd, according to i4cp’s Productivity Blog.  They should be a positive irritant, as explained in the post Thank You for Being Irritating

Linda Fisher Thornton discusses Judging and Bullying: Are They Different? at Leading in Context

Changing Winds blog shares their thoughts for dealing with the rapid advancements in telecommunications technology in Leading in a Virtualized World: 10 Traits of a Cyber Leader

Jane Perdue at Get Your Leadership BIG On! talks about All the Broken Leaders

Guy Farmer at Unconventional Training discusses Leadership Training: Are You an Effective Leader?

Jesse Lyn Stoner tells us the story of what happens When Leaders Don’t Lead

Elegant Leadership blog gives a first-hand example of one of the most difficult patterns to change in the post Splitters Cause Mayhem

Erin Schreyer at Authentic Leadership blog asks Are You a Win-Win Leader?

Anna Farmery at The Engaging Brand outlines the 5 Pitfalls of Democratisation

Should a CEO seek to destroy their office?  That’s the question Chartered Management Institute asks in their post Do You Need a CEO?

Mike Henry at LeadChange Group gives us a list of the 13 Bad Excuses for Letting Poor Performance Slide

Do the Team a Favor – Get Rid of the Loser is Trent Cotton’s advice on his blog, A Driver Minded Guy Living in a Passenger Minded World.  He draws comparisons between toxic organizations and the phases a neoplasm must go through to becoming a life threatening malignancy.

Management

The first job of a manager is to provide clarity.  Explaining what “not” to do is one natural approach. Steve Roesler cautions us in offering direction with Management Direction: Does “Don’t” Mean “Do”? at his blog, All Things Workplace

We’ve heard the cliché that managers should hire slowly and terminate quickly.  The Thriving Small Business blog explores Why Hiring and Firing Decisions are Difficult

Working Girl Laura Schroeder shares her experiences on managing more experienced workers in Project Social: Young Manager

Over at Joe and Wanda on Management, Dr. Todd Dewett explains When Managers Should Address Performance Issues and provides a framework for intervening

Middle Managers Get No Respect! discusses the challenges of being middle management over at Management is a Journey blog

Guy Harris, The Recovering Engineer, says You Cannot Punish People into Good Behavior

Andy Klein at the Fortune Group Blog reminds us Think creating value is only the sales team’s responsibility? Think again

Want some useful tips from Tina Fey’s experiences on SNL?  Check out Alex Drexel’s post, Lessons in Management from Saturday Night Live, over at Talented Apps

Executive Development

Jennifer V. Miller offers 5 Tips for Creating a “Speak Up” Culture over at her blog, The People Equation

David Burkus at LeaderLab discusses the potentially faulty assumptions of Jack Welch’s favored “rank and yank” method in his post The Topgrading Dilemma

The Bud to Boss blog reminds us of the 10 Common Mistakes Leaders Make Delivering Feedback

Is it really possible to “think outside the box” or is something else going on?  Miki Saxon shares her theory in Entrepreneur Creativity Grows in Boxes

All About Living with Life blog tells us Effective Ways to have a Successful Personal Brand

Mark Anthony McCray shares a great exercise for keeping a positive attitude in Get Some Balls!

Leaders can prepare for the future when they see emerging waves before they hit the shore.  But where are those secret clues?  Anne Perschel tells you the answer in The Future: All Upside Down & Inside Out

With technology distractions chipping away at our everyday productivity, it’s little wonder that so many people are looking for ways to get more work done.  The personal finance blog, MoneyedUP, offers 5 Ways to Get More Work Done

Succession Planning

Dr. Bret L. Simmons tells us why Leaders Invest In Their Employees

Developing Talent is the message from The CEO’s Desk blog

Richard Bosworth ponders the question What if…you appointed more women to senior positions?

Becky Robinson’s Weaving Influence tells a story about leadership, Spring and Hatching

Coaching

Meg Bear shares the secret to success in Want to Enhance Your Career…Get Happy on Tahlent blog

Mary Jo Asmus distinguishes between Compete, Cooperate, or Collaborate? at Aspire CS blog

Want to know The Forgotten Key to Effective Feedback?  Kevin Eikenberry tells us at Leadership & Learning blog.

No team in business or life could perform at a high level without a few unsung heroes.  Eric Pennington at Epic Living explains Sometimes It’s Better to be a Role Player

Louise Altman talks about Why Neuroscience SHOULD Change the Way We Manage People over at Intentional Workplace

Ken Klaus from Talented Apps writes Abandoning Successful Careers to Embrace Our Vocations: A Less Than Historic Lesson from the Life of Vincent van Gogh

We always want to share our experiences and how we solved problems.  Michael Cardus at Create-Learning blog explains why Your Solution Will Not Work For Me

Business Wisdom’s Bill Matthies says what’s more important than knowing you can’t do it all is determining what you won’t do.  Check out his post What You Won’t As Much As What You Will

And last but certainly not least, Lynn Dessert at Elephants at Work lists 20 Ways to Help Today.  It’s a resource for helping a family member, friend, or colleague who is dealing with job loss.

Image Credit: MykReeve on flickr

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People, especially those in management/leadership roles, have advisors, mentors and other people they consult; they read blogs, attend seminars, access company training and all these sources constantly inundate them with management advice.

Everybody listens, especially when the technique is coupled with a brand name, usually a CEO.

And that’s OK as long as you remember that you are not a copy of the person giving the advice.

Their advice is a result of their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) as formed by their upbringing and their experiences.

If the shoe fits, wear it.

You have different MAP, different upbringing and different experiences, so to use what you learn to your best advantage you need to know you.

Duff Goldman, who parleyed his passion for cake into a multimillion dollar business, including a show on the food channel and celebrity status, knows he is fallible, but has turned that fallibility into an asset.

“I kind of know what works, and I kind of know what doesn’t work. I have a good idea for how to make money and how to hold onto it — how to hopefully not make too many mistakes. But I know I’m going to make mistakes. My confidence comes from the fact that I’m very comfortable with being nervous. I’m very comfortable with my fear, because my fear comes from a very real place. It comes from a place that will make me perform above and beyond what I think I’m capable of doing.”

Duff Goldman knows himself.

If the shoe fits, wear it.

Along with the personal aspect of advice is the cultural one, both local and company.

Just as you don’t manage in China as you do in the US as you do in Russia you don’t manage in Groupon as you do in Apple as you do in Intel.

Management ranks (and divorce courts) are littered with those who tried to lever themselves into situations that didn’t fit or force everyone else into their worldview.

If the shoe doesn’t fit you get blisters and bunions; if the fit is bad enough you end up lame.

The take away is simple.

If the shoe fits, wear it; if it doesn’t fit, adjust it; if it isn’t adjustable, find shoes that fit.

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