Transforming yourself into a good leader

Paul Glen writes in a ComputerWorld article on April 5th:

"Great leaders start out somewhere else and have to move into leadership roles. Becoming a leader poses transitional challenges that can be met only with emotional flexibility. One of the great challenges for a new manager is to transform his view of himself, to change how he measures himself and his success. Early life and career work is judged by personal productivity. In school, we're judged by the quality and quantity of our papers, tests and quizzes. Young workers are judged by the quality, quantity and speed of task completion. Our self-images become tied to our personal productivity. Moving into management requires a fundamental shift in how we view ourselves, a shift in the emotions about self and work. Leaders are judged not by their personal productivity but by their effect on the productivity, morale and effectiveness of others. Managers must be able to derive their personal satisfaction from helping others be productive rather than being productive themselves. This is a difficult transformation that's poorly understood and rarely discussed.

The ability to adopt a new self-image is critical to the transition into a successful leadership role.

Comfort with ambiguity: Beyond mastering their emotions, leaders must be able to cope with the chaos and confusion of reality. The world is a complex place filled with facts, provisional facts, lies, opinions and emotions. A large part of the leader's role is to help interpret the turmoil and bring order, sense and meaning to daily work. Successful leaders must transform ambiguity into clarity and create compelling narratives out of complexity.

They also bring a high tolerance for the continuing existence of confusion. They're able to hold contradictory ideas in their heads simultaneously without experiencing undue stress. Strong leaders aren't impervious to new facts and information but are comfortable revising their interpretations to meet changing times.

Ability to communicate: The ability to cope with ambiguity means nothing without the ability to communicate. If leaders and managers deliver value through their effect on others, communication is their primary tool. Whether leaders communicate verbally, in writing or through their actions, their ability to connect with those they lead is of prime importance."

FutureMe.org

write yourself a letter to be delivered at a later date. it's sorta cool to receive a letter from yourself about where you thought you'd be a year (two years? more?) later.

Skype

This software is amazing - phone calls over the internet suddenly work. Forgotten are those times where the voice quality was awful, and it did not work with firewalls, especially with NAT on both sides. Skype simply works, and the voice quality will blow you away.

Frankfurt Germany - 360° City Panoramas

Really cool - try the "Cinemascope" version ...

CeBIT to premiere USB Swiss Army Knife

For real men only ...

Ansturm auf Jesus-Schocker-Film. Die Passion Christi von Mel Gibson

"das seit Monaten heiss erwartete Leinwandepos über die letzten Stunden im Leben Jesus Christus verzeichnet in den USA die grösste Startkopienanzahl aller Zeiten und übertrifft die bisherigen Spitzenreiter „Herr der Ringe“ und Harry Potter“ deutlich. Trotz immenser Vorverkaufszahlen bildeten sich landesweit lange Schlangen an den Kinokassen.

Filmstart in Deutschland: 18. März 2004

Die Passion Christi - deutsche Website
The Passion of the Christ - english website

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." --Thomas Paine

Certified email with delivery receipts, silent tracking, proof-of-opening history, security and timestamps.

This is a very interesting service:

- reliably find out when your email gets opened, how long it gets read for, whether or not it gets forwarded to someone else or published on the internet, where the reader is located

- Certified Proof of posting, delivery, and opening. Get digitally signed certificates to prove when you posted an email, when it got delivered, and when it was opened and read.

- Send self-destructing emails or use ensured-delivery messages, both of which guarantee that you will always get a notification when your email gets read, and both of which will allow you to retract your email after you have sent it.

Comment: while these are impressing features, they rely on questionable technology: embedding hidden objects in html email. This is the same stuff thats used by spammers to track if their email was read by the recipient. In Outlook 2003 this does not work any more ...

Life-TV

Wohlgemerkt "Life" - nicht "Live" :)

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