Leadership

In The Box Podcast

Episode 28: Team Trouble, Leadership, Memory And More – Podcast

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we talked about the point of reflecting on memories, how to address a team member who is doing something that bothers you, leaders playing bad cop, what one makes art special and knowing the best timing for a decision.

Enjoy the episode and remember to download on iTunes here.

Episode 28: Team Trouble, Leadership, Memory And More

Memory – How much emphasis do you place on reflecting on memories from the past?

Team – One trick to addressing a team member / co worker who is doing something that bothers you?

Leadership – Do you think leaders ought to ever play bad cop?

Art – What is one thing that makes something art?

Bonus – One method to recognize when the timing is right for making an important decision?

 

Stay Positive & Now Now Now

Interruption Status

Garth Beyer

Are you high status enough that you can interrupt someone’s presentation?

Naturally, that’s the role of a high status person, is it not? To butt in when something needs to be flushed out?

Have you stopped to think of the many ways they got to the status of being able to interrupt a meeting, a presentation, a conversation and everyone is okay with it?

We live a lot of days looking up to people and not realizing how many times they’ve failed, said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and made fools of themselves in front of others before they got the status they have now, the one you admire, the one you wish upon yourself.

 

Stay Positive & Speak Up

Becoming A Great Leader

Becoming A Great Leader

Garth Beyer

Great Leader

Keeping up with trends on Twitter is too difficult. Keeping up with the new, in general, is damn near impossible. And the news of the world? News outlets can barely keep up. (The amount of information we should be seeing trumps what we actually see.)

It’s hard not to be a bad follower, hard to stay in sync with our online dinner parties and the digitalized world around us.

On the other hand, it’s quite easy to become a great leader because it’s hard not to be a bad follower.

When we start creating our own news, doing work that matters and connecting with people at real dinner parties, we thwart the concept of constant synchronicity with the online world.

Great leaders strive off the beaten path; they can’t create a trend by following one.

 

Stay Positive & Do What Followers Aren’t

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Unlocking Potential: Interview #7 With Dana Arnold

Unlocking Potential: Interview #7 With Dana Arnold

Garth Beyer
Dana Arnold

I’ve ran into a handful of linchpins since my last segment of Unlocking Potential, and I am ecstatic to be sharing these interviews with you again. Remember, linchpins are people who are essential to business success.

One of the easiest ways to check if you are doing work that matters, if you’re a linchpin is to ask yourself if your business and the people you work with can continue without you around? Are you essential?

Dana Arnold is a linchpin at Hiebing, an integrated marketing and brand development firm in Madison, Wisconsin. She is remarkable. While typically we start by giving some background, I’ve jumped the gun and wrote a profile feature on her already.

In short, she’s a Public Relations guru, mentor, and a woman who started her first PR business at 25. Without further ado, welcome Dana Arnold.

Q: What are three main skills you need to do what you do?

Dana: Strong communication – writing, listening, speaking; empathy helps on two fronts – understanding a target market and counseling clients; creativity – I’m in the idea business and finding new angles and opportunities moves the brands I represent forward.

Q: I have my own reasons, but what do you think makes you indispensable, a true linchpin?

Dana: This is a tough one! On my best days, I hope that it’s my constant pursuit for what’s possible. I think that any team (including mine) wants to be inspired and pushed. I think I do that on a pretty consistent basis. It makes the individual better, the team better, the work better and ultimately our clients better.

Q: Where do you find inspiration to test new waters and walk past boundaries?

Dana: I can’t help but want to push past boundaries… fiercely independent and really curious (just ask my mom!) Daily inspiration I find most often in reading, which I do constantly – mostly digital reading at this point of articles, blogs, tweets. There are some people I read who are in the business – but most of what I find inspiring is reading things on leadership.

Q: What are a few habits that are critical to becoming a remarkable PR pro?

Dana: Reading, daily. Getting out from behind the computer to TALK to people: co-workers, clients, media, vendors.

Q: In one sentence, what is your life calling?

Dana: In every interaction, live positively.

Q: What are four life lessons you have learned from following your calling?

Dana: 1. You can just go with what surrounds you – or influence it. I choose to influence it. 2. Perseverance.  3. Everything matters – every word, every gesture, every piece of interaction has an impact. 4. LAUGH – a lot – and surround yourself with people who want to laugh along with you.

Q: How do you push your client’s or your team’s imagination and motivation?

Dana: With clients, I regularly share new ideas, opportunities and approaches to what we’re doing – and being sure to connect those items to why their target audience cares about it (and how it can move the needle for their business). I hope that I inspire my team’s motivation and imagination by leading by example… and asking a lot of questions (not giving them the answers)

Q: What do you do to continue your growth as a PR pro?

Dana: I’m a member of PRSA and Counselor’s Academy (a sector of PRSA for PR agency leaders); I read voraciously; I surround myself with a really smart team that pushes me; I attend key conferences such as SXSW

Q: What motto do you live by?

Dana: As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. (An excerpt of a full quote that I LOVE from Marianne Williamson)

Q: If you got to write a test for those who want to go into heaven, what is one question that would be on the test?

Dana: How much did you love?

Q: What couldn’t you live without?

Dana: Coffee (you’ve got this!) + Wine (hey, you gave it your best shot!)

Q: What is a project you’ve wanted to create, but haven’t had the time to do?

Dana: Something that helps set up young, professional women to succeed in the workplace.

Q: Where can people find you and your art?

Dana: @BigKitchen and www.hiebing.com/blogworthy

 

Stay Positive & Let Your Light Shine

Where To Find Your Muse

Where To Find Your Muse

Garth Beyer

Find Your Muse, Stay In Your Flow

The feeling of boredom comes to every linchpin, artist, and entrepreneur from time to time. The reason is quite clear: actions have become easy, challenges are few and far between, and there is less need of a growing skill.

As a result, the impresario seeks out larger challenges that require focus, additional connections, and an incessant need to learn new skills to accomplish the goal.

But once the artist sets down that path, she realizes she has set too lofty of a goal, too large of an expectation of herself, too tough of a challenge, so she returns to the start of this post, desiring a calmer path, a quieter challenge, an easier goal.

As Peter Turchi writes, it’s a cycle of satisfaction and frustration. To find our muse we must find the flow between the anxiety of a difficult practice and the boredom of an easy task.

The real problem isn’t doing what it takes to stay within your flow, your muse; it’s noticing when you’re outside of it, when a task is too easy or a challenge too large. Both of which are slippery slopes that lead to failure and resentment.

 

Stay Positive & Be Aware Of Your Flow

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One Thing Employees Want Most

One Thing Employees Want Most

Garth Beyer

Mopping Leader

is to know their leader understands them.

And the only way to understand them is to step in their shoes, to do the grunt work, to have experience doing what they’re doing.

The best place a leader can be for quick profits might be in the office, but the best place a leader can be for building a remarkable business, for increasing the chance of surviving longterm, for doing what really gets talked about is out on the floor.

 

Stay Positive & Same Can Be Said For His Target Audience

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Take The Time To Provide Feedback

Take The Time To Provide Feedback

Garth Beyer

You're Doing It Wrong (Feedback)

Feedback is one of the many practical, but often difficult practices of a leader, manager or the alike. It’s often ignored because it’s an uncomfortable practice to criticize someone’s work meaningfully; to provide legitimate advice that doesn’t pain the emotions of the one being critiqued.

To sit down with a person and carefully show them all that they’ve done wrong is not something anyone – whether  they are in a leadership role or not – looks forward to, which is why so many resort to sending an email instead. I plead you refrain from that method.

Providing in-person feedback is vitally important for the future success of those needing the critique. Not only do you both work through being uncomfortably vulnerable and leave having learned from mistakes, there’s also a behind-the-conscious interpretation of feedback on the receiver’s end.

By receiving feedback, they know they can keep improving, that you believe there’s more to them than what they’re showing, and it gives them something to strive for.

Consider this perspective: What are you telling them when you don’t provide feedback? When you don’t provide feedback, you communicate that you don’t think they can do better, that they can’t learn from their mistakes, that you don’t see them as capable of improvement. Is that how you want your employees, partners, friends to feel?

Feedback. Provide it.

 

Stay Positive & It’s Time Well Spent, It’s An Investment, It’s Worth It

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