Why aren’t companies getting more bang for their leadership development buck? Our latest research suggests it’s likely because most leadership development efforts overlook a specific attribute that is foundational to how leaders think, learn, and behave: their mindsets.
I bet you have seen this firsthand. How a leader or manager ‘normally thinks’ about work, or whomever they are managing, dictates their success.
To Be a Great Leader, You Need the Right Mindset
Many vision statements sound more like long-term goals. And they are pretty egocentric. To be the biggest, most respected X kind of company in the industry by X date. To offer the greatest value with the highest-quality products. That is not a description of the world we want to live in. That is a description of the company you want to build. That kind of stuff is fine and good. But it is not visionary. A good vision statement would be to create a world in which the vast majority of people wake up inspired, feel safe at work, and return home fulfilled at the end of the day.
I think Simon Sinek is brilliant. His movement to inspire people is just that…inspirational. In the Navy, leaders are often urged to write down a “vision” or “mission statement”…and like Simon, I think that can be dangerous if that vision is too goal oriented and thus short sited.
Simon Sinek: The Best Way to Run a Business Is Without an End Goal in Mind
There is no such thing as winning an infinite game, since it has no end. It occurred to me that business meets the criteria of an infinite game.
Like the previous link, this concept of the ‘infinite game’ in leadership is great.
Simon Sinek advocates ‘infinite-minded leadership’ – Director magazine
Many thinkers have been killed for their ideas. Some got away with exile.
Most of the ones we’ll look at here were driven out by the government, but others fled for their own safety.
The fact that some of these thinkers are still famous centuries after their exile suggests they might have been on to something, even if their countrymen disagreed.
I was curious to read this article at first because I wanted to see what philosophers were named and shamed for their work back in their day. Then it made me think again about how lucky we are that we (in the US) don’t live in a place that would do that.
7 philosophers who were exiled from their societies
Scott from California 