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Communication – Great North Dynamics https://www.greatnorthdynamics.com Empower and inspire to lead and succeed Tue, 18 Apr 2017 03:02:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://i1.wp.com/www.greatnorthdynamics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/cropped-favicon-1.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 Communication – Great North Dynamics https://www.greatnorthdynamics.com 32 32 The Deprioritization of Creativity and Imagination in North America https://www.greatnorthdynamics.com/2017/03/10/deprioritization-creativity/ Fri, 10 Mar 2017 18:31:21 +0000 http://www.greatnorthdynamics.com/?p=1993 A lot of people have asked about my recent audition for TEDxChilliwack, a TED-sanctioned speaking seminar being held in Chilliwack, BC. This year’s theme is “Future Shapers: The Minds of the Next Generation.” My talk is about fostering imagination and creativity in young people, and my audition focused on the systemic deprioritization of creativity and […]

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A lot of people have asked about my recent audition for TEDxChilliwack, a TED-sanctioned speaking seminar being held in Chilliwack, BC. This year’s theme is “Future Shapers: The Minds of the Next Generation.” My talk is about fostering imagination and creativity in young people, and my audition focused on the systemic deprioritization of creativity and imagination in North America.

As we prepare for the official TEDxChilliwack event (at which I will be speaking), I thought I would share my four-minute audition with you. So, without further delay, here it is.

Deprioritization of Creativity and Imagination

Good evening, everyone. My name is Kyle Wierks. I am talking to you tonight about something that is very important to me: fostering imagination in young people.

Fostering imagination and creativity is a hugely important topic, and one that is very important to me, especially as it concerns the shaping of the minds of future generations.

Not only am I a millennial, but I also run my own leadership blog called “Great North Dynamics,” and I have self-published three works of fiction over the last 18 months. In my day job, I work for a local public figure, but I have also spent the last eight years volunteering in a youth mentorship program working with teenagers and young adults.

There are many ways to measure the priority given to imagination and creativity, but one factor that I want to highlight tonight is public spending on the arts. The National Endowment for the Arts is an American government organization that funds arts programs. In 1980, the National Endowment had a budget of just over $154 million. In 2017 dollars, that’s almost half a billion dollars. The Endowment’s budget for 2017 is less than $150 million. That is a 70% decrease over 37 years.

There is much more to imagination and creativity than public spending on the arts, but this is a crucial indicator in the habitual deprioritization of imagination and creativity over the last 30+ years. This is a huge problem. Why? Because at the same time that the US has been deprioritizing imagination, the American business environment has been deteriorating.

Since 1980, the National Endowment for the Arts has seen its funding levels drop by 70%. Over that same period of time, according the US Census Bureau, the number of new businesses started in the USA has dropped by 50%. Even more troubling is that 86% of all new businesses started in the USA today are started by people aged 36 and up.

I do not think that it is a coincidence that while America has deprioritized creativity as a society, fewer businesses are being started and fewer millennials – MY GENERATION – are becoming entrepreneurs.

I want to shape the minds of our future generation to be thought leaders, entrepreneurs, academics, community leaders. And I firmly believe that the way to do that is to foster imagination in them at a young age. This is what I hope to bring to TEDxChilliwack. Thank you.


Books that influenced this article:

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson

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How to Drive Consistency in Communication and Expectation https://www.greatnorthdynamics.com/2017/02/28/consistency-in-communication-and-expectation/ Tue, 28 Feb 2017 20:17:39 +0000 https://visionandexcellence.wordpress.com/?p=473 Communication and expectations are a key part of a leader's role in a team. Leaders foster an open line of communication and maintain expectations to which the entire team (even themselves) are held accountable. A team requires consistent communication and clear expectations in order to achieve set goals.

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Communication and expectations are a key part of a leader’s role in a team. Leaders foster an open line of communication and maintain expectations to which the entire team (even themselves) are held accountable. Consistency in communication and expectation is critical.

We have all worked with someone — or for someone — who was inconsistent in their communication or expectations. Not only is it annoying, it can also hurt morale and undermine your team. A team requires consistent communication and clear expectations in order to achieve set goals.

While we can all think of someone who has failed in consistent communication and/or expectations, we are all guilty of it too. Whether stress, apathy, lack of vision, lack of time, or otherwise, we have all been inconsistent at some point or another in the way we communicate with others or in our expectations of others or ourselves.

This post identifies three important areas of communication in which leaders must be consistent (and how they can achieve consistency), and then discusses how to set consistent expectations for your team and for yourself.

Consistent communication

I have met many leaders who are strong communicators — and some leaders who are not. Communication is a key to your success as a leader (more on that in another post).

The problem is generally not that leaders do not communicate, it is that they communicate inconsistently.

There are a few areas where leaders communicate with inconsistency. As a side note, these communication tips are good for mass communication as well.

1. Messaging

You need to use consistent messaging when interacting with your team. What you say to one team member does not need to be verbatim what you said to another, but the message should be identical. In the same way, the message you tell a team member on Monday and what you tell the same person on Friday should be the same. If your messaging is inconsistent, you will give mixed messages to your team, which leads to confusion and distrust.

2. Transparency

Leaders should always seek to be transparent with their team, except under circumstances that require confidentiality. If you commit to being transparent with your team, that is all the more reason to act with transparency. Again, with the exception of confidential or secret information entrusted to you by others, you should not give some information while with-holding other information from your team. Be consistent in your transparency so your team can trust you.

3. Timing

If you commit to regular communication your team — whether it is a project update, a check in, or anything else — you need to be consistent. As a leader, you should be checking in with your team members regularly anyways, so the commitment should not even have to be made. Be consistent in the timing of your interactions with your team. Don’t meet with each team member individually once every two weeks for a month and then wait three months before scheduling another meeting. Your team is judging you as a leader, and it is far more professional to have a consistent meeting schedule than not. If, on the other hand, you commit to only holding meetings when they are necessary, then do just that. Don’t waste your team’s time with unorganized meetings.

 Consistent expectations

All leaders should have clearly defined expectations from their team. If you expect your team to behave in a certain way or meet a certain goal, that should be made clear to them. If you, as a team member, are given a set of expectations, you should work hard to meet those expectations.

Leaders should also have expectations for themselves. These expectations should be higher than those they have for their team. If you expect your team to achieve excellence in their work, your work should be more excellent; if you expect your team to be punctual, you should be early. The same goes for leaders who are not in a leadership position (what I call “everyday leaders”). If you are a leader among your peers or wish to become a leader, you need to have very high, yet realistic, expectations for yourself.

In order for your expectations to be effective, they must be consistent.

Whether you have expectations for your team or for yourself, you must keep them consistent. If your team (or you) meets your expectations, they deserve congratulations. Don’t ignore their achievements; doing so will undermine the importance of your expectations.

Let me put it this way. Your expectations exist only because you make them so. It is your words that have created these expectations in your mind and the minds of your team. But words have a shelf life. You need to reinforce them. You could choose to continually remind your team of your expectations, and you probably should; however, it is far more effective to congratulate excellence when you see it. At the same time, if someone continually fails to meet your expectations, you need to address that.

No matter what, your expectations should be consistent. Your team needs to know exactly what is expected of them. If your expectations are not concrete, your team will suffer for it, because they don’t know what defines success for them. It is also important for you to have consistent expectations for yourself. You cannot expect excellence for yourself and then shrug it off if you miss that goal; on the other hand, you cannot expect yourself to put in three days of overtime in a week and then get upset if you reach three but fail to meet four.

There will be times when your expectations have to change. This is okay. When the time comes, make these changes very clear to your team (and yourself). If possible, give a reason for the change in expectations.

You may realize after you set out your expectations that you expected too much (or too little). You can change the severity of your expectations as well, but again make sure that your team is fully aware of these changes. They need to know what is expected of them, and in return they will expect that you will inform them if anything changes.

Dynamic Lessons

Even though leaders and their teams must be flexible and adaptable, people still thrive on a certain amount of consistency. As a leader, your communication with and expectations of your team should be consistent.

When exercising consistency with your team, you use the same principles that you would use to ensure consistency in mass communication with the public. First, ensure you have consistent messaging; the message you give to your team should be consistent (unless circumstances change, then you should communicate that change to your whole team). Second, you should have consistent transparency; your whole team should know the same thing (unless confidential information pertains to only a select group). Third, be consistent in your timing; check in regularly with your team members and ensure constant flow of communication.

It is also imperative that leaders keep their expectations consistent, both for their team and for themselves. Your team needs to know exactly what is expected of them. On the other hand, you need to know exactly to what standards you are holding yourself, and ensure that you hold yourself accountable to those standards.

Have you ever worked with or for someone who was inconsistent in their communication or their expectations? How did you handle that?


Books that influenced this article:

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell

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Three Steps to Inspiring Vision in Your Team https://www.greatnorthdynamics.com/2016/12/14/inspiring-vision/ Wed, 14 Dec 2016 17:30:18 +0000 http://www.greatnorthdynamics.com/?p=1277 Are you, your team, or your organization struggling with maintaining or developing a vision? The good news is that you're not alone; thousands, if not millions, of individuals and organizations are going through the same thing. The better news is that there is a solution.

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Vision sustains an organization, and inspiring vision is a critical part of leadership. When vision falters, the organization loses focus and can wander from its original path. If your team loses their vision, they can lose passion and enthusiasm for their work. Even worse, if a team or organization has never had an inspired vision, they have been wandering with neither direction nor meaning for their work.

In leadership, the value of inspiring vision cannot be overstated. Time and time again I will mention the importance of inspiring vision because it is crucial that leaders, teams, and organizations be purposeful in maintaining a solid vision. However, it is common that a team can lose or outgrow its vision. Sometimes a vision needs to be re-envisioned, re-purposed, or reinvented.

The process of re-imagining your vision is so important that I have dedicated this post to three steps on how to inspire your vision back into your team (or inspiring your vision for the first time).

1. Stop everything

It is vitally important that you fix this, and that might mean stopping everything. In his book Creativity, Inc., Edwin Catmull describes a vitally important measure that Pixar had to take: they closed their campus for an entire day and paid their staff to attend a workshop that would design their corporate vision for the future. In order to get Pixar’s staff on the same vision, they stopped everything and made that vision their number one priority.

Starbucks did something similar in 2008. Business Insider has a great article about how Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz turned the company around. One of the ways he did that was by closing every Starbucks store in order to retrain their staff. The purpose was to rediscover Starbucks’ vision for perfection. According to this article, this cost Starbucks over $6 million, but it was worth it to perfect the vision that would make Starbucks excellent. This is a good example of how vision and excellence go hand-in-hand.

If your team has lost its vision, it is imperative that you, as a leader, make regaining that vision a number one priority. Stop everything and make vision your focus.

2. Dare to dream

If you were a Canadian hockey fan in the late 1990s and early 2000s, you probably remember the Kokanee beer commercials featuring the Sasquatch (if you haven’t seen these, I highly recommend them). One such commercial is firmly imprinted in my memory. For those who don’t know, these commercials feature a forest ranger and his assistant, Arnold, who protect the Kokanee Glacier from the Sasquatch. In this commercial, the ranger hires three beautiful women to help protect the glacier from the Sasquatch. Arnold turns to the ranger and says, “But I thought the Sasquatch wasn’t real.” The ranger’s classic response was simple: “Dare to dream, Arnold. Dare to dream.”

When it comes to your vision, you have to dare to dream. The grander the vision, the greater the accomplishment. There are a few ways to produce such a vision.

  1. Corporate vision. The case of Edwin Catmull and the Pixar vision seminar is a classic example of this tactic. The Pixar organization engaged their entire staff, from their accountants to their executive, to produce a corporate vision that included participation from their entire staff.
  2. Team vision. I worked with an organization that saw a marked decrease in enthusiasm and ownership in their team (I’ve written a separate article on ownership). It was decided that the problem was in the communication of the vision to the team; they forgot why they did what they did. This particular organization decided to create a team vision that would reinvigorate the team. To do so they took a select number of trusted team members — in their case six — and together we created a vision for the rest of the team to follow.
  3. Personal vision. If you are an entrepreneur, chances are that you have a vision that you want to realize. This is not a vision that you have created with others; it is yours. It is perfectly acceptable to use your personal vision as the head of a team.

Regardless of whether your vision is the result of corporate consultations, a small team brainstorm, or your own brain child, the creation of your vision is only the first step (steps on creating this vision will be discussed in a later post). Now you have to communicate that vision.

3. Insane communication

A vision is only a picture in your head if nobody else can see it.

That means that once you have your vision established, you have to sell it, and not to your customers. Before anything else, you have to sell your vision to your team.

If you are an executive, that would mean selling it to your executive team. At you’re at a lower level of leadership, that could mean selling it to your own team, or even to your peers. If you want someone else to carry that vision, they need to  be sold on it. I have a couple tips for the initial sale of your vision.

  1. Keep it simple. If you over-complicate your vision, you will kill it before it has a chance to take root. There will be plenty of time to go over the intricacies and the individual steps to success later. But to inspire vision, keep it simple.
  2. Focus on the why, not the how. Another way to put it is focus on the result, not the process. Again, you will have many opportunities to lay out your fifty-step plan to achieving your vision, but people don’t buy into a vision because they love the idea of the process; they own a vision because they desire the end result.
  3. Make it personal. People are, deep down, selfish creatures, and the question burning in the back of our minds is, “What’s in it for me?” We will all deny that, of course, and sometimes we aren’t even aware that we’re thinking it, but there is a selfish lens that we all use. So make it personal. Tell your team exactly what the realization of your vision will produce for them, personally. Will stakeholders get a financial return? Will staff be able to be a part of a revolutionary industry that changes the way the world works? Can the volunteers at your non-profit be able to change lives? The more people you are selling your vision to the harder it is to make it personal, but at the end of the day, you want your team to have a personal stake in the realization of your vision.
  4. Be realistic. Don’t try to sell anyone a unicorn. Your vision is going to take a lot of hard work to realize. It will probably call for a lot of sacrifice, both in time and money. Be realistic with your team. Let them know that it will be tough. Give them a taste of what is to come. If you sow your vision in reality, your team won’t be surprised when things get tough a month down the road. There won’t be a mob at your door complaining that it’s too hard. They need to know exactly what they’re getting themselves into. And they need to know that it is all going to be worth it.

Speaking of realistic, it is not an easy thing to sell your vision. But it is necessary, and it will be worth it when your team buys into it.

Communication does not end when the vision is sold. You will need to be in constant communication with your team to ensure that your vision does not die. Remind your team regularly about why you’re doing what you’re doing. That vision will empower everyone.

Dynamic lessons

Are you, your team, or your organization struggling with maintaining or developing a vision? The good news is that you’re not alone; thousands, if not millions, of individuals and organizations are going through the same thing. The better news is that there is a solution.

I gave you three simple steps to reinspiring vision in your team and organization:

  1. Stop everything. Vision is vital to your organization’s survival and success. Take the time to get it right.
  2. Dare to dream. This is the time for big dreams and aggressive goals. If you want the comfortable route, get out of leadership.
  3. Insane communication. Once you’ve developed your vision, you have to communicate it. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary.

If you want more help in developing vision for you or your team, there are resources available for that. I have published a workbook dedicated to helping you develop a personal vision for yourself. To inspire vision in others, first you must inspire vision in yourself.

Have you ever struggled with developing or maintaining a vision? How did you make it work? I’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment below.


Creating Your Personal Vision

Check out You Can’t Reach What You Can’t See: Developing a Personal Vision for Your Life. This workbook will help you create a vision that will guide your career planning.

Career Planning

Books that influenced this article:

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell

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Why Leaders Must Be Teachable to Succeed https://www.greatnorthdynamics.com/2016/10/25/why-leaders-must-be-teachable/ https://www.greatnorthdynamics.com/2016/10/25/why-leaders-must-be-teachable/#comments Tue, 25 Oct 2016 16:03:46 +0000 https://visionandexcellence.wordpress.com/?p=765 The willingness to be taught, or "teachability," is an important trait for everyone, but it is vital for a leader. A leader should be searching for learning experiences in every situation.

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I have worked a few different front-line customer service jobs spanning over a decade. If you ever want to have a bottomless pool of entertaining party stories, just work in front-line customer service for a few years.

One spring afternoon I was working alone in our front office and had to help an elderly gentleman who introduced himself as “the smartest person you will ever meet.” This customer told me that whenever he walks into a room, he is always the smartest person in that room. Apparently, all of his friends call him up whenever they have a problem they can’t solve, because he always has the answers.

Here’s a free tip:

The best way to get an arrogant person to like you is to let them brag about themselves.

Deep down, we all have an ego that loves to be stroked, so I let this guy go off about how much of a genius he is for over ten minutes before we finally got down to why he needed my help. It turns out that this self-professed genius had created a rather difficult legal problem for himself because, rather than follow specific instructions on a government form, he had knowingly chosen to put incorrect information on the form.

I explained the simple fix to this gentleman, and I advised him that though it might take a few weeks and a couple pages of paperwork, he would be able to rectify the situation without too much headache. The client’s response was that he was smarter than any bureaucrat, and he wasn’t going to do anything to fix the problem because it wasn’t his fault.

My client experienced a long period of difficulty due to his unwillingness to take advice from someone else; he wanted someone else to fix the problem, because he was positive that he was in the right. His behaviour is symptomatic of a deeper issue that has become prevalent today: an unwillingness to be taught.

People are often ready and willing to learn, but being taught is a different ball game. Learning is an action to be proud of because you are bettering yourself; being taught is a humbling experience because it means that someone else knows something that you don’t.

You must always be ready for someone to teach you something.

The willingness to be taught, or “teachability,” is an important trait for everyone, but it is vital for a leader. A leader should be searching for learning experiences in every situation.

1. You are not the smartest person in the room

No matter how much education you have, how well you scored on your exams, how much random knowledge you have, or how long you have trained in your field, there will be people who are smarter, have more education, more training, and better test scores than you.

It is important to have knowledge; after all, knowledge is power. It is equally important to not equate knowledge with prestige.

Just because you know something does not mean that you know everything.

Whether you are a high school drop out or a PhD, you have some knowledge that you can share with other people, but there is still so much that you can learn from other people.

One of my mentors and good friends, Mike Mannes, once said, “If you find that you’re always the smartest person in the room, you need to find new friends.” This is key.

Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.

You should be seeking to learn new things, and you can only learn things from people who know things that you don’t. If you want to be a leader, your friends should be able to teach you stuff. Their knowledge might be about different topics than yours (maybe you’re a geologist and your friend is an English major), but they should be in a position that they can teach you.

Learning from friends or the people around you does not — and should not — have to be a formal affair. You can learn so much from people in general conversation, if you are open and willing to be taught. Whether they agree with you or not (more on this in point number three), you can still learn so much from someone just by listening to them speak.

Before you can learn from someone, you have to humble yourself and admit that there is something that they can teach you.

2. You can learn something from anyone

As much as you should be learning from your friends and the people you spend time with, you should also be learning every day from, well, anyone.

If you are willing to admit that you are not the smartest person in the room, the next step is to admit that, just possibly, the person who you consider to be less smart than you might still have something to teach you.

I have met too many people in academia who equate their degree or level of education with a position on the totem pole of intelligence. The higher your degree or level of education, the smarter you are, and if you have a higher degree of education than the next person, that makes you automatically smarter than that person.

The same is true, however, outside of academia. People with less education tend to discriminate against people within academia. They assume that academics are being brainwashed by the education system and that Regular Joe can learn far more by reading stuff on the internet than Doctor Don can learn at school.

The truth is that neither person is correct. Yes, you have to work hard and learn a lot of information to earn a degree in college or university, but that does not necessarily make you more intelligent than if you never went to school; it just gives you a wider breadth of knowledge. It is true that by going to school, academics are learning what other people want them to learn, but that does not mean that their education is any less valuable for it.

No matter how much education or self-led learning you have, you still have so much to learn. You cannot prejudice who you learn from based on your judgement of their intelligence.

Everyone can teach you something, even if it is simply how not to do something.

I was once volunteering with a group that was putting on a weekend leadership conference. A couple of hours before the door opened, the technical crew was doing a final check of the sound, lights, and visual aids. In their check they found a glitch in one of their programs that would not allow them to run one of their video files.

With the clock counting down, the tech team was working frantically to fix the glitch and get the program running. I know next to nothing about these sorts of errors, so I was observing but not getting involved. Standing next to me was a young woman who, like me, knew very little about technical errors, but she had seen this error before and she had an idea on how to fix it.

When this young woman suggested her solution to the tech team, she was told in a polite manner that it wouldn’t work and to leave the fix to the experts. For another twenty minutes these experts continued to work on the bug with no progress. Finally, after trying everything they could possibly think of, the tech team allowed this young woman to attempt her fix. Five minutes later, the program was debugged and the file ran perfectly.

Like I said, I am no technical expert, so I can’t tell you how this young woman fixed the error, but she did. Even though she had no technical training, she had seen the bug before and remembered how to fix it. The problem was that the so-called experts refused to believe that an untrained person could have the knowledge to fix such a problem.

We can all be like this team, blinded by our own knowledge, or at least our perception of our own knowledge.

Never assume that someone cannot teach you something useful.

3. Debate is about learning

With both an academic and a professional background in politics and political science, you can be sure that I have experienced my fair share of debates. I found that debates among university students — especially political science students — could get fierce. It’s easy to dig your heels into the ground and give up no ground when you’re engaged in a passionate argument.

I had a professor in university who loved debate and always prodded it along. If someone was on the fence, he would force that individual to take a side. The same was true of presentations: the professor would ask you to research a topic, present both sides of the debate, take a position in the debate yourself, and then open up the floor to the rest of the class for their ideas. More than once his classroom devolved into a chaotic maelstrom.

My professor’s tactics were not, however, designed to foster disunity; rather, he promoted debate and arguments because this forced the exchange of ideas. He would urge everyone to keep an open mind and actually listen to the opposing arguments. The purpose of his debates was not to convince the opposing side, but rather to learn or consider something they hadn’t before.

I am not entirely certain that my professor’s tactics were the best-guided, but the theory behind them was true:

You can learn far more from someone with whom you disagree than agree.

Imagine two people discussing a controversial topic. Both people have the same opinion on the topic. How much critical thinking do you think will occur? Not very much. Sure, one person might bring up a fact that the other person never knew, but with no one to counter their points, how are they going to learn? If two people discuss opposing views on the same topic, they will be exposed to arguments and facts that they may have never considered before.

I am not suggesting that you should enter a debate with the intention of changing your mind. In fact, I am suggesting that you should enter debates with the willingness to learn something from your opponent. There are very few debates in this world that have one side completely correct and one side completely wrong.

Be willing to learn from your opponent; their knowledge may surprise you.

Dynamic lessons

Teachability is one of the most important attributes of an upcoming leader. There are three things to remember in order to be teachable.

  1. Remember that you are not the smartest person in the room. There are always people who are smarter and better trained than you are; be willing to learn from them. You should also surround yourself on purpose with intelligent people so you can continually learn from them.
  2. No matter how intelligent you are, you can learn something from anyone, even someone you might consider to be less intelligent than you are. People can surprise you.
  3. You might like to argue, but debate is about learning. When you exchange differing ideas with someone, be willing to learn from them, even if you disagree.

Share in the comments section about a time that you learned something valuable from someone unexpected. Or if you disagree with me, tell me why!


Speaking of becoming teachable, if you want to learn more about how to be a strong leader, improve your creativity, succeed in life and business, or just become a better communicator, make sure you check out my page of Leadership Books That You Should Read. I have a lot of good material there that you should read.

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Welcome: Leadership, Creativity, and Success https://www.greatnorthdynamics.com/2016/10/17/welcome-leadership-creativity-and-success/ Mon, 17 Oct 2016 17:33:25 +0000 http://www.greatnorthdynamics.com/?p=1675 Leadership development and creative processes are both integral to success. Leadership teaches you how to inspire others, while creativity teaches you to think outside the box. Together, they can help you succeed.

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For the first post on my new blog, I wanted to take a moment to explain the intersection of leadership, creativity, and success. Leadership development and creative processes are both integral to success. Leadership teaches you how to inspire others, while creativity teaches you to think outside the box. Together, they can help you succeed.

Leadership and creativity are both of particular interest to me. With over seven years of experience of developing leaders, I have a passion for helping young and rising leaders succeed. At the same time, as a creative and a highly-imaginative person, I also have a passion for creativity and the doors it can open.

There is no exact formula to either leadership or creativity, which fits my personality perfectly; I’ve never been one to find formulae all that interesting in the first place. Leaders and creatives are constantly learning and growing. The purpose of my blog is to help others who are wanting to learn and grow as leaders and creatives.

Whatever your path, I want to help you succeed. You don’t need to be a manager or executive to find leadership development useful in your life; similarly, you don’t have to be a writer or a musician to understand the importance of a creative mindset. The Great North Dynamics blog is all about pushing the boundaries, challenging the status quo, and inspiring people to succeed.

So, welcome to the journey. It’s going to be a wild ride.


 

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