July Management Journey Carnival

Originally published July 2012.

Welcome to the July edition of the Management Journey Carnival. This month’s Carnival provides tips on emotional intelligence, self development, change, career management, communication, organizational productivity, human resources, problem solving, customer relationship management and other topics. The Management Journey Carnival is published on the third Monday of each month. Each Carnival consists of insightful articles from the web that contributors submit or that I select for inclusion.

Let’s begin with this month’s featured podcast.

Featured Podcast

The podcast for this month comes from the Center for Creative Leadership and it deals with important topics that define this new millennium: uncertainty, change, and leadership.  The podcast, Becoming Resilient: Leadership, Uncertainty, and Learning to Thrive in Times of Change,  explains how two different executives deal with the loss of their jobs.  One thrives and the other drowns!  The key difference between them is four critical traits.


 

man typing on a laptop

Articles

Featured Articles

Once described five years ago as a social media tool that would change the news media and how millions of people access information, today Digg has been sold for a fraction of its value. How did this happen and what could its leadership had done differently? Jason Fell of Entrepreneur makes some thoughtful insights in his article, From $200 Million to $500K: Lessons from Digg’s Slow Demise.

The ability to influence others is a critical skill for leaders. Influence requires action and reflection–with the key being action, however. Colin Gautrey of Learn to Influence provides a list of effective actionable steps in his article,  23 Things You Could Do Today to Increase Your Influence.

The success of Google cannot be denied!  It has entered our regular vocabulary when someone tells us to “google” a search term. Why not get the best of all that Google has to offer? This is the focus of Thorin Klosowski in his Lifehacker article, The Best Google Features You’re Probably Not Using.

Adults spend a great deal of time teaching children. We spend less time learning from them, however. It turns out that they are the natural masters of creativity and innovation. They also know something about problem solving too as I explain on my blog in my article, Five Whys – Act Like a Child and Improve Problem Solving.

Technology continues to move at an accelerated pace.  This makes it difficult for general business managers to keep up with all of the tools available to them for functions like customer relationship management or project management.  Eric Siu of Mashable provides needed help in his article, 3 Stellar Productivity Tools You Need to Try.

The first job of any manager is self-management. A person cannot manage others effectively if he cannot manage himself. Self-management often involves committing to internal change. What does it take to make conscious self-directed change? Athena Staik of PsychCentral provides a useful tool in her article, How to Create a Timeline: The Power of Re-working Your Life’s Story, 1 of 2.


 

ribbon award winner editor pick

Editor’s Pick

Editor’s Pick

My Editor’s Pick for this month comes from Whitney Johnson of Harvard Business Review.  Stories are powerful tools for teaching what is important and Whitney does not disappoint in her article, Bullying is a Confidence Game.

Whitney starts by describing our usual understanding of the childhood bully.  The big kid who enjoyed making the lives of smaller kids miserable by exercising total and unreasonable power over them. Not everyone has lived in fear of a childhood bully but as Whitney explains many professionals have at some time been bullied by a workplace equivalent.

In an article rich with personal application to her own experience and to characters from the Wizard of Oz, she expertly explains how workplace bullying works. More importantly, she explains how the person most to blame is not the bully himself (or herself) but the person who looks back at us in the mirror everyday. Here’s an example in her own words:

In my experience, bullies don’t storm the fortress. Instead, we fling the castle gates wide open, inviting bullies to sup with us, perhaps even to sit at the head of the table. They tend to appear full of confidence, selling themselves as some kind of savior, so we let them in.

But it’s just a confidence game. And whether you are a young professional seeking out a mentor, an entrepreneur looking for a co-founder, or mid-level employee in search of a superb senior manager, you are vulnerable to the manipulations of workplace bullies.

Whitney provides the perspective that comes from real world experience. She reminds us that important business and life lessons can come from painful, interpersonal experiences if we are committed to finding the wisdom in them.  Her article is a great read that is full of insights on self development and emotional intelligence.

This concludes the July 2012 edition of the Management Journey Carnival.

Robert

Written by Robert Tanner | Copyrighted Material | All Rights Reserved Worldwide

This article is accurate to the best of the author’s knowledge.
Content is for informational or educational purposes only and does not substitute for professional advice in business, management, legal, or human resource matters.

Robert Tanner, MBA

Welcome to my leadership blog. I'm the Founder & Principal Consultant of Business Consulting Solutions LLC, a certified practitioner of psychometric assessments, and a former Adjunct Professor of Management. As a leadership professional, I bring 20+ years of real world experience at all levels of management.

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