Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the category “Vision and Goal Setting”

Does our Pursuit of Happiness hinder Getting Things Done?

Taking a bit of a flyer on this one. Not particularly thought through, but it struck me in preparation for a talk entitled The Science of Happiness.

In a line from Daniel Nettle’s great book ‘Happiness, The Science behind your Smile’   he states ‘…happiness, though, is not calculated by a simple summing up of all the positive moments and a subtraction of the negative ones. It also involves more complex cognitive processes, such as comparison with alternative possible outcomes (note: this quote refers to something he calls ‘level two happiness’ which is all about ‘judgements about the balance of feelings’. A hybrid of emotion and judgement about emotion.

Now it’s a very pop. psychology way of thinking about it, but could this element of our happiness ‘assessment’ also operate as a pre-assessment in advance of activities?

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Leaders Learning Skills from their Teams

The Open Book by Dan Christian Lavric

The Open Book by Dan Christian Lavric

Just something that occurred to me today as I was taking a note of what one of me client senior managers had said to me that I wanted to learn from.

How many leaders and managers consciously look to learn from their teams? How many are both open to the fact that they could learn from the people that they’ve hired and that work for them, as well consciously seeking out opportunities.

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The Role of Leadership Vision

I was thinking about the concept of leadership and the importance of the leader’s vision to the group of people being lead. Specifically, the multiple levels in which leadership vision works. I know a lot of this is well-trodden territory, but it helped my train of thought on something else to write this down:

  1. There is the obvious creation of a fully-sensory vision (if done well) of where that group of people are going. If the full group are engaged in the vision then there is a shared view of a successful future outcome. A shared goal.
  2. In being created by one person, the groups’ actions should have an extra degree of alignment. Aligned actions to achieve the goal.
  3. A leader’s vision enables the individual to fill in the gaps within a defined framework/ journey direction. It is this that enables the engagement and commitment required for major action. An engagement framework .
  4. It makes action towards the goal by the group easier. Sharing or signing up for a collective or corporate vision make it easier to focus on the doing, rather than worrying about where you’re going. Making actions easier.
  5. There is the need and specific accountability of the leader to keep on communicating that vision to the group he or she is leading. An important element of communication is the flexibility to communicate in a way that works for the recipients of the communication. The effort behind this communication re-affirms/ strengthens and makes more real the vision for the leader. A self-reaffirming vision for the leader.
  6. The act of constantly communicating and aligning execution behind the vision also facilitates a level of analysis, introspection and criticism of the vision against new facts and changes in the environment as they arise. This sets the stage for any potential tweaks to the vision, or strategies to deliver that vision, in closer to real-time. A self-adjusting mechanic.

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