The Hard Questions

If you've ever been in a leadership position, you may feel a bit uncomfortable answering these questions.

And guess what, nearly every one of us have been in a leadership position.

Think of the roles you play in life, as a parent, marriage partner, volunteer, not just your work title.

Here's the questions from Seth Godin:

Seven questions for leaders

Do you let the facts get in the way of a good story?

What do you do with people who disagree with you... do you call them names in order to shut them down?

Are you open to multiple points of view or you demand compliance and uniformity? [Bonus: Are you willing to walk away from a project or customer or employee who has values that don't match yours?]

Is it okay if someone else gets the credit?

How often are you able to change your position?

Do you have a goal that can be reached in multiple ways?

If someone else can get us there faster, are you willing to let them?

No textbook answers... It's easy to get tripped up by these. In fact, most leaders I know do.

Why Work?

Seth Godin is one of my favorite authors. Besides writing books, he also has a blog that he updates daily.

Recently on my Collective Wisdom blog, I started a Sunday Seth feature at 6pm where I feature some thoughts from his blog. Here's a sample:

Reasons to work

1. For the money
2. To be challenged
3. For the pleasure/calling of doing the work
4. For the impact it makes on the world
5. For the reputation you build in the community
6. To solve interesting problems
7. To be part of a group and to experience the mission
8. To be appreciated

Why do we always focus on the first? Why do we advertise jobs or promotions as being generic on items 2 through 8 and differentiated only by #1?

In fact, unless you're a drug kingpin or a Wall Street trader, my guess is that the other factors are at work every time you think about your work.

Why Keep Score

Sunday morning, I'm sitting at the Firefly Coffee Shop (in Fort Wayne), as I do most Sundays, talking with friends, reading email and writing blog posts.

Like this one.

My work world involves keeping score.

Yet I wish it didn't sometimes.

As a salesperson of advertising, I have monthly goals and this year has been pretty good for me.

But I'm always aware of the numbers and those sales figures are how we keep score. And my income is tied to that score, in real numbers.

The work I enjoy the most however is when I'm helping others with their marketing and advertising. I guess you would call it helping them increase their score.

It's not that I don't care about money, because I do know what it's like not to have enough to meet your obligations.

And it's not that I'm not competitive, because I have an excellent poker face that I use when racing go-karts, playing miniature golf, Frisbee golf, and euchre.

I just enjoy the process of life as much and sometimes more than the outcome.

Which helps me to create work that transcends what most salespeople do.

What inspired this post was the following words from Seth Godin's Blog:

Why jazz is more interesting than bowling

Bowling is all about one number: the final score. And great bowlers come whisker-close to hitting the perfect score regularly. Not enough dimensions for me to be fascinated by, and few people pay money to attend bowling matches.

Jazz is practiced over a thousand or perhaps a million dimensions. It's non-linear and non-predictable, and most of all, it's never perfect.

And yet...

when we get to work, most of us choose to bowl.