April 2012 Carnival of Leadership Development: Earth Day Edition

Namaste! Welcome to the April 1st 2012 Carnival of Leadership Development. I’d like to dedicate this edition of Carnival to Earth Day 2012, celebrated every year on 22nd April as a movement to protect the beautiful planet we all have inherited.

This month, we again have a great line up of posts on leadership, management and talent development. BIG Thanks to carnival leader Dan McCarthy from Great Leadership for allowing me to host this event. So here they go, in no particular order:

Dan McCarthy guides us on How to Discuss a Problem with Your Manager. Dan was recently reminded by a younger employee how intimidating it can be for an employee to bring up an issue with a manager. In this post, he explains why it’s important to be able to address a problem with your manager and how to do it.

Jesse Lyn Stoner outlines 5 Important Leadership Lessons You Learned in Kindergarten. Whether you are facing challenges as a result of changes in the economy, new opportunities because of advances in technology, or already have a good idea you want to implement, these five leadership lessons can make the difference between a successful outcome and a false start. The good news is: you already learned them in kindergarten. All you need to do is remember to use them.

Mary Jo Asmus tells us “Don’t Leave Your Heart at Home”. Many leaders feel they need to be serious and tough at work. This post is an argument for the importance of leading with your heart as well as your brain.

In her post titled “Of Money, Trust and Elephants” Miki Saxon points that focusing on profits doesn’t make a company more profitable, while focusing on customer service usually does. Great customer service rests solidly on a foundation of trust and its lack is the elephant many bosses choose to ignore.

Wally Bock has been training and coaching first-time bosses for more than a quarter century and has learned some things along the way. Wally shares this wisdom in his post “What I’ve learned from 25 years of working with first-time bosses”

At Lead Change Group, Kate Nasser helps leaders question their values via her post “Leaders, Do Your Pet Peeves Disengage Employees?”. Pet peeves masquerade as values giving them hidden power over your leadership style.

Tim Milburn presents “Three Traits Of A Lifelong Leader”

In his post “Leaders, Change What You Pay Attention To”, Blanchard’s culture guru S. Chris Edmonds outlines why leaders should apply time, attention, messaging, and reinforcement of BOTH performance expectations AND values demonstration.

David Burkus at LeaderLab presents “How Good Leaders Become Bad Bosses” outlining leadership burn out and entropy.

Bret Simmons takes a fresh look at leadership and management in his post “The Difference Between Management And Leadership”

Leaders often think that enthusiasm alone will help them get their teams lined up behind a vision. Jennifer V. Miller, in her post “How To Gain Buy-In from Your Team” outlines why this isn’t true and describes two other key components needed to gain buy-in from team members.

Gwyn Teatro presents Leadership Lessons from Ernest Hemingway’s story “The Old Man and the Sea”.

Robyn McLeod at The Thoughtful Leaders Blog presents “Bucket filling as a leadership competency”. Bucket filling technique is used in schools to teach children the value of compassion, respect and kindness. This post looks at how leaders can be more effective by practicing “bucket filling” in the workplace.

Mary Ila Ward at Horizon Point Consulting presents a post titled “Queen Bee Syndrome” with an interesting take on women and leadership.

Flashing back to his days in the headquarters of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, Michael Wade of Execupundit.com outlines 10 key qualities of effective staff officers (equally applies to great leaders)

Art Petty at Management Excellence presents “At Least 10 More Things to Stop Doing if You’re the Boss”

Jane Perdue presents “7 Ways to Maintain Momentum”. The next time you’re cruising down the highway and see the road sign that reads “keep moving, change lanes later” – smile and follow these seven tips!

It is easy to feel victimized when your ideas are rejected by your Boss. Soon, you will be in a leadership position and people that are following you will start feeling the same. Rajesh Setty offers a fresh look at the problem in his post “Is Your Boss Killing Your Ideas?”

Laura Schroeder’s post “Think Moneyball” emphasizes on important fact that the war for talent is won from within.

Lynn Dessert at Elephants at Work blog presents How to introduce an assessment to the team.

In his post, Sustainable Means More Than Recycling, Mark Bennet nudges us to think what can happen when leadership is focused on how they manage talent and shape behaviors to the same extent it is focused on strategy and structure.

In his post “The Truth About Your Time”, Kevin Eikenberry dispels the myth that leaders don’t have enough time and challenges us to have a proper perspective of time.

Utpal Vaishnav states that if we learn to look beyond what’s normal, if we learn to be unreasonable, we can enter into realm of new possibilities and make a difference. Check out his post: Want to Make a Difference? Be Unreasonable.

Linda Fisher Thornton writes about “The Adaptability Paradox” – difficulty we have as leaders staying current and “learning through” change.

Many leaders are afraid of change rather than seeing it as an opportunity to move forward and build a stronger organization. Are You Ready for Change? by Guy Farmer provides some signs to assess “change readiness” of your organization.

Kurt Harden in his post “On Reaching Out” suggests that we speak clearly in business world rather than succumb to the urge to fall in the herds of business men and women who speak jargon.

That’s it for this month’s edition. Thank you to all the bloggers who submitted their posts this month and I hope you enjoy reading/learning from these brilliant posts!