Planners’ Picks
A collection of resources from CSN planning committee members worth mentioning
How are you allowing your body to lead your mindset? How are you broadening your perspective? Are you listening? This and more in our first PP installment of August.
:: Image of the Week
:: Resources on Self-Leadership Development
When we expand, we feel powerful
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anaïs Nin
A post from Amy Cuddy, Social Psychologist, Bestselling Author, and International Keynote Speaker:
When we feel powerful, we expand. When we feel powerless, we shrink.
But even MORE important:
When we expand, we feel powerful. When we shrink, we feel powerless.
And those feelings of power and powerlessness affect our entire mindset. When we feel powerful:
• we see challenges not as threats, but as opportunities
• we feel more optimistic and less pessimistic
• we see solutions, not limitations
• we see strangers as potential allies, not competitors
• we cultivate an abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset
• we take action, rather than passively watching and building resentment
• and we courageously approach life, others, and the world, rather than fearfully avoiding it.
And when we have the courage to approach life, as Anaïs Nin said, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” So today, open up. Breathe more deeply and slowly. Take longer strides and swing your arms. Practice an expansive yoga pose. Sit up straight. Allow your body to lead your mindset.
Amy has a TED Talk on how your body language may shape who you are:
https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_may_shape_who_you_are?language=en
10 Mistakes Smart People Never Make Twice
Everybody makes mistakes—that’s a given—but not everyone learns from them. Some people make the same mistakes over and over again, fail to make any real progress, and can’t figure out why. Repeating certain mistakes can have a devastating effect on your career. Travis Bradberry shows you how to avoid crossing that line in this article, because once you do there’s no going back. Leaders, this one is for you!
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-mistakes-smart-people-never-make-twice-dr-travis-bradberry
5 Questions To Widen Perspective
“Your ability to see will never broaden when you only see yourself.” – Shannon L. Alder
Broadening our perspective can really enhance our lives as we see beyond ourselves. We all hold our perspective and it’s limited by how much we know. We are unlikely to change our perspectives unless we listen to what others have to say, how they view a situation or look at the world. Read this short Linkedin post from Arati Sharma on broadening your view and the benefits you’ll gain from doing it.
:: Resources on Mental Health and Self-Care
Learn How to be Happier in the 10 Days of Happiness Program
10 Days of Happiness is a free online program to boost your wellbeing, through daily actions for happier living hosted by Action for Happiness. It is designed for challenging times, based on the latest research from positive psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral science. It is a self-study program, and it takes just a few minutes each day!
https://10daysofhappiness.org/
“We’re all fighting battles with both our past and our future. The hard part is figuring which is which.” – Mark Manson
10 Songs That Help Us Stay Calm When We Feel Stressed
Playing music we love when we feel overwhelmed can help us shift gears to a more positive mindset. What’s a song you listen to when you’re stressed?
https://thriveglobal.com/stories/songs-that-help-relieve-stress-joy-nostalgia-music/
:: Resources on Work Culture & Team Development
7 Practical Ways a Manager Can Boost Staff Morale
As a leader do you carry the expectation that every person who is a part of your team (paid as a direct employee) will be successful in their job? Do you build up staff morale in an effort to drive everyone’s success? If your answer to both of those questions is yes, this is great news for you, your people, and your organization. If the answer is no, why not, and what are you going to do to change it?
The Paradox of Success and How To Combat It
This from Greg McKeown’s weekly email on essentialism:
Many intelligent, ambitious people struggle to figure out what the priority is for them at this moment – and for a perfectly good reason.
It’s a reason I call the Paradox of Success, and it can be summed up in four predictable phases.
- Phase one. We have clarity of purpose, enabling us to succeed in our endeavor.
- Phase two. When we succeed, we gain a reputation as a go-to person, and we are presented with increased options and opportunities.
- Phase three. When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts as we get spread thinner and thinner.
- Phase four. We become distracted from what would otherwise be our highest level of contribution.
The effect of our success has been to undermine the clarity that led to success in the first place.
One easy way to combat this cycle is to start a “said no to” list. It’s simple to do. Just write down the things that you’ve said no to. This will have a couple of benefits.
- First, it will be empowering to discover you can say no.
- Second, as your list accumulates, you’ll be able to evaluate whether you are pleased with that decision.
The idea isn’t to say no to everything. As always, your goal is to say yes to the essentials and no to the nonessentials. Then you can reinvest your time, attention, and energy into the most important things.
A 1-Minute Strategy for Avoiding the Paradox of Success
- Make a “said no to” list.
- As the list grows, evaluate how you feel about saying no.
” When you say yes to others, make sure you are not saying no to yourself.” – Paulo Coelho
If you enjoyed this info, check out Greg’s great book at https://gregmckeown.com/books/essentialism/
How to Become a Better Listener, According to Science
High-quality listening is an underrated ability. How well and frequently you listen to others is a better predictor of your leadership potential than your actual intelligence or personality. As a recent review shows, good listeners tend to perform better at work, and to report higher level of wellbeing, as well as more meaningful and fulfilling relationships. We tend to trust them more, and they tend to be seen as curious, empathetic and emotionally intelligent.
The whole article from Fast Company is here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90749446/how-to-become-a-better-listener-according-to-science
:: Resources on Change Management
Note: in July CSN members Rich Gassen and Carol Hulland held a small group discussion on this topic, with definitions, examples, and resources for navigating change management as a leader. Find all of our notes and resources at https://uwmadison.box.com/s/4631iv85bksomhpl2ejbrwksdyh3q00i. Here are a few of the articles we shared:
How Change Happens by Seth Godin
For people who aren’t paying attention or actively involved, it can seem like cultural change is sudden. One big shift after another. In fact, cultural change always happens relatively slowly. Person by person, conversation by conversation. Expectations are established, roles are defined, systems are built. Who on your team is establishing expectations and defining roles? Are they the right people?
https://seths.blog/2022/05/how-change-happens/
Ten Tips For Effective Change Management That Puts Your Team First
More so than ever right now, teams are working in a fully remote or hybrid way. This means it’s more important than ever to have effective change management strategies in place, to suit this new way of working.
For leaders, an important part of this is making sure that we do everything in our power to make our hybrid and remote teams feel appreciated and listened to. When organizations take an approach to change management that is process-driven, systematic, and transactional, ultimately these essential ingredients can get lost.
Five Ways to Navigate the Messy Middle of Change
We’ve been through a lot the last two years. We’ve seen A LOT of change. And you know what? We were really good at it! We’re more resilient and capable than we ever gave ourselves credit for. So why do we *dread* change so much?! In #LeadingDisruption, Charlene Li shares how to navigate the messy middle – and how to come out the other side stronger and more resilient than ever.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-ways-navigate-messy-middle-change-charlene-li
:: Upcoming Events
[Webinar] Leadership Styles – Flexing with Confidence
Research shows that the most effective leaders are the ones who can diagnose and flex their leadership style based on circumstances. In this webinar, Wisconsin School of Business Center for Professional & Executive Development instructor Lisa Yaffe will review some of the compelling work by Daniel Goleman, a leader in the area of emotional intelligence, on how we can flex between leadership styles in order to be more effective and contribute positively to an organization’s climate.
August 11, 2022
2:00-2:30 pm via Zoom
https://www.linkedin.com/events/webinar-leadershipstyles-flexin6958068412933685249/about/