Take Your Life For A Test Drive

The new Leadership Development Carnival #1 is up and running at Great Leadership, hosted by Dan McCarthy. This month’s Carnival is presenting a leadership development advice and commentary from over 30 leadership blogs, including my own article, Is Becoming A Leader Actionable And Attainable For All?.

There will be a brand new Leadership Development Carnival every month. If you’d like to submit an article, use the carnival submission form.

Enjoy the festivities!

What it makes the job to be a dream one? How can I find out the gap between what I have and the dream job?

I found the answers in the book by Marcus Buckinghamand  Curt Coffman - First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently.

by Duke LeNoir

The book is “Based on in-depth interviews by the Gallup organization of over 80,000 managers in over 400 companies – the largest study of its kind ever undertaken”.

In the book the authors share 12 questions that in my opinion should provide very sharp answers to the questions – “Do I have The Dream Job?” or “What must be done to make it one?”. They group the questions according to the employees “maturity” – new on the job role, on track, up-and-running, thirsty for growth [my interpretation]. The authors compare this journey of career development to mountain climbing thus dividing it into 4 camps. 4 camps toward the summit – the dream job.

Below are the questions.

Base camp – “What do I get?”

• Do I know what is expected of me at work?
• Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?

Camp 1 – “What do I give?”

• At work, do I have the opportunity to do my work best every day?
• In the last 7 days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?
• Does my supervisor or someone at work seem to care of me as a person?
• Is the someone who encourages my development?

Camp 2 – “Do I belong here?”

• At work, do my opinions seem to count?
• Does the mission or purpose of my company make me feel like my work is important?
• Are my co-workers committed to do quality work?
• Do I have a best friend at work?

Camp 3 – “How can we all grow?”

• In the last 6 months have I talked w/someone about my progress?
• This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

Ask yourself. Ask your employees. Most of the answers you already know. If the answers are YES – you or the employee being asked have reached the summit, the dream job. Those questions that answered NO are the gaps. Take a look at the gaps? The most important question to ask is – “Can these gaps be closed?”. If the answer is YES, you have exciting times to come. If the answer is NO here is what happens next:

• If you are the employee… my advice to you – find another job.
• If you are the manager, it should explain this turnover thing you have. You may want to read The Dream Manager book right away.

Would you like to see how your blogodream might look like? Would not you like to know how your eBook feels like?

I am not a magician but I think I might be of help.

by Bohman

Below are sample eBooks I’ve generated automatically from the few blogs I read. I did it using my gold nuggets collection method. All I needed is subscribe to the blogs’ RSS feeds and then press the “Magic” button. This type of modeling is useful for me in order to test wether I am ready to publish a book or not. Are you? Do you like what you see? No? Tell me, please. Be honest – help me to improve.

The quest

If you want to have such sample eBook – just leave me comment with the link to your blog. I’ll add your eBook generated from your RSS to the list below.

The right prices of the service - FREE

No strings attached. I’ll do it for free – ABSOLUTELY free, so the price is just right. It is limited time offer. Hurry up

Ask

If you like what you see – spread the word on your blog. If you do not like it – leave me a comment on what to improve – no obligations. I might consider insightful suggestions as a next version feature set ;).

Why?

Why I am doing it? I just love experiments (blogrdoc must know the feeling). I am testing the technology, I am testing myself for effectiveness. Once I test it I know what to improve and where to take it next. I need QA (quality assurance) team. I ask You to be my QA team. How do I reward you? I produce the eBook for you .

Disclaimer

If you would like me to remove the PDF file of your blog – please let me know and I will do so. Only good intentions.

The eBooks

Below is the list of eBook I’ve generated automatically from your blogs. Click on the <<file name>>.pdf below and the download will start immediately. If you click on the image, it will take you to my Sky Drive where I host the eBooks. You can grab there the script and embed it on your blog so it shows exactly the way it looks below. Have fun.

What do you, me, John Lennon, and Gerald M. Weinberg have in common? Short answer – we all writers.

Longer answer – we collect materials for our writing in very similar way. John was stuffing his pockets with papers, Gerald collects fieldstones, and I dig[g] for gold nuggets. What about you?

by Ryan McD

Most of the bloggers are after writing a book. I am sure you too. I am no exception. Then how do you build up your book?

John Lennon’s way of writing a book

I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book. — John Lennon

Gerald M. Weinberg’s Fieldstone method

Gerald M.Weinberg has written a great practical book - Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method. He compares collecting materials for your writing with collecting fieldstones for building a fieldstone wall. The book packed with practical exercises and with healthy dose of humor which makes it very enjoyable for reading that gains results too. It is hard to argue with Gerald’s success– he wrote ton of books…

My gold nuggets collection method

I am no different from John and Gerald (ha-ha-ha-ha!!!). Well, may be a bit – I use different tool for collecting gold nuggets for my writing, I use Outlook 2007. There are primarily three sources of gold nuggets:

• Blogs. I use Outlook 2007 as my RSS reader. The following posts outline how I set up Outlook for gold nugget hunt and the hunt itself:
  • How to Use Outlook 2007 RSS To Effectively Aggregate And Distill Information
  • How To Stay Up-To-Date: 15 Minutes, 150 Posts Scanned, 3 Gems Found
• Emails. Review “Rule #3 – Knowledge nuggets go to personal KB” in Keep Your Inbox Clean , Stay Focused And Productive – My 4 Simple Rules. This ensures I’ve captured emails with gold nuggets for further reuse.
• Personal ideas. First set up the Outlook 2007 shortcuts as outlined in Email Processing On Steroids – Use Built In Shortcuts And Set Up Your Own. Then use “Post in This Folder” to create and categorize notes in order capture your ideas.

The result is well ordered  pipelines of items that can be quickly processed for any purpose, including writing books.

I took my Outlook 2007 even further and developed Outlook 2007 add-in that grabs all the items and generates a document of it - Generate Documents Out Of Mail Items Directly From Outlook 2007.

Too freaky? Guess so… checkout the book I generated from several latest blog posts of mine - download PDF file and see yourself. Does not it look like a book? Few clicks-to-done. [I am aware of few freaky characters in it – call it a bug that I need to fix].

Self Test

• Are you collecting your stones?
• Are your stones easily can be fit into a book?
• Why didn’t you write a book yet?
• Want clear answers and prescriptive guidance on writing a book?

Read Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method and implement the techniques that suits you best – papers in your pocket, Outlook 2007, or other habit.

Why becoming a leader? What does it take to become a leader? What’s leadership anyway? Is it attainable by anybody? Is there actionable guidance to become a leader?

I found the answers to almost all the questions in Gerald M. Weinberg book - Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach.

My favorite is how he defines leadership.

by JessicaFairchild.com

Leadership is the process of creating an environment in which people become empowered. – Gerald M. Weinberg.

I found out that this definition can be easily applied not only to technical leadership but to any kind of leadership.

Family

Are you creating an environment in which your kids and your partner become empowered? 

• Is your home a place where your family members long to be? Or each one seeks a reason to sneak outside if it?
• Are your kids passionately share their experiences they had in kindergarten or in the school? Or when you ask “How was your day?” you hear just “Fine”?
• Is you partner shares her deepest feelings, thoughts on life and work. Do you discuss a deeper meaning and then make love? Or you have transactional conversations and actions that sometimes concluded by just sex?

Work

Are you creating an environment in which your colleagues, managers, reports become empowered?

• Do you like coming to your work? Why?
• Do you like your office? Why?
• Do you like your colleagues? Why?
• Do your colleagues like you? Why?
• Are you writing emotionally intelligent emails that build rapport?
• Did you receive “Thank you!” email privately lately?
• Did you send “Thank you!” email privately lately?
• Are you genuinely interested in listening to what you colleague has to say?
• What’s your “street creds”?
• What nickname your co-workers gave you?
• What significant change you drove lately? How many followed?
• Are you “go-to” person for any subject of your interest/expertise?

Blogging

Are you creating an environment in which your blogofriends (real and virtual) become empowered?

• Are you commenting on other underdog blogs?
• Do your comments encourage discussion or are they self centric and self promotional?
• Are you giving link love?
• How many comments you get?
• Do you get link love back?
• Do you have loyal readers? How do you know?
• Did you get recently emails from your blogofriends asking for advice or help?

Self

Are you creating an environment in which you become empowered?

• Do you carve time for your life projects?
• Do you give priorities to do what you passionate about?
• Can you quickly list your goals?
• Can you quickly list your latest achievements in life and work?

Footnote

Becoming a leader looks actionable and attainable to me. I think you can easily become a leader. It is all about developing skills of creating environment that empowers people.

Mr. Universe doesn’t have more muscles than I do, just better developed ones. – Gerald M. Weinberg.