Dog Thoughts on Living, Learning, Leading and Linking...

The Dog was recently asked to "speak" to a group of young professionals, whose group's Mission Statement includes the words Live, Learn, Lead, Link.   Obviously with words like that to draw on, the talk wrote itself.   So, in true ego-blogging fashion, here's the drift.  

Live.   We should encourage that.   One of the requirements to work with us is to live.   Seriously, work-life-family balance is just so much psychobabbly buzzword rhetoric unless we actually practice what we preach.   Do you think it's good for your career advancement or an example of how hard you work if you send e-mails before 6 a.m. or after 6 p.m. and on weekends?   I don't.  
If you think your value is measured by the number of hours you put in, I'm sorry for you.   You're in the wrong place or working with the wrong "boss".   Your value is in what you do, how you relate to your work, your colleagues, and your environment.  The difference you make is your value.   
If you are in a place where you're measured by the number of hours you put in, ask yourself if you REALLY WANT to come to work everyday.   Be honest.  

At this point, the Dog also suggested that if you're having a meal, or socializing, or visiting, or in a meeting, put down your damned iPhone, iPad, Android, or whatever and pay attention.  Don't be rude and don't think it's funny.   Unless you're a physician on-call, you're not that important.   But, of course, I'd never say that publicly.  

Lead.   Leading in any business, ladies and gentlemen, is not about giving speeches, or telling people what to do, or sending e-mails or directives, or writing mission statements or 99% of the trendy things you read about in whatever management journal you read.  I've been reading those journals for a long time.  If you ask me what is the one message I get out of them every month, I would say all the clever thoughts have been thought before, what matters now is to think them anew.  
The ability to lead comes through an understanding of where both you and your organization have come from.  You need to know that, and appreciate it, in order to know where you want to go, and how you want to get there.   Tradition became tradition for a reason, and if you ignore it, or denigrate it, you will fail. 
Leadership is knowing yourself and your organization personally.   We call that Personal Mastery.  (Google it.)   Leading is not talking one way in front of a group and another way when you're off the stage.   There is no "off stage" in leadership.    Leading is living your life with a vision in your mind of what you want to create, and having the courage in yourself, your convictions, your competencies and your capabilities to ask people to follow you... and to help you along the road.  
Leadership is very often taking people where they don't want to go, because in your heart, you know it's the right way to go. 
Not everyone can do that.   It makes leaders...and it breaks leaders. 
Lead with integrity above all else.   Authentic transformation of energy comes from integrity.  Integrity means that you come from a place of inner truth to relate to a similar place in other people.  The end never justifies the means if the means are not infused with integrity.  How you create the future is just as important as its creation.   

Learn.  We encourage that too.   Where I work we try very hard to be a learning organization, and we know that there is no end point in that quest.   By its very nature learning never stops and there is no end.   One of my favorite descriptions of this phenomenon comes in the words:  "in a time of drastic change, it is the learners who will inherit the future.   The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."    Eric Hoffer said that.   He was a longshoreman.   (Google him.)
All the degrees in the world won't make you smart.   Learning is not just taking in information.  Learning is not reading a book and then reporting on it.   Learning is not performing for approval or getting a good grade or a good performance review.   Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human.   Through learning we re-create ourselves.   We learn to do things we were never able to do.   We re-perceive the world around us.   We learn to understand the pre-conceived ideas that all of us have, which affect what we hear.  (Google Mental Models.)
If you are looking at a leadership development program, ask the person in charge of it about why it was created.   Ask about its purpose.   If the answer is, "to develop good managers/leaders" or some such rhetoric.   Look deeper into what it's all about.   Look for the difference between a program that is built on "teaching" and one that is built on "learning'.   The best programs are rooted in developing people, not employees.
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Link.   The thing that pulls it all together.   (Google Systems Thinking.)  A necessity for any success is knowing and understanding how your actions affect others.   Find a book by Meg Wheatley called "Leadership and the New Science".   It was written in 1992, but more than still relevant.   You'll like it.  You'll remember it.  AND, you'll be able to use the word "fractal" in an understandable sentence.   

Two final thoughts, because the Dog's out of coffee.  
First, the key to success in business, and in your life, is in your relationships.   That's not just playing golf or having happy hours (although those aren't bad facilitators...).   Relationships are built the same whether they're business or personal.   Trust.  Honesty.  Communication.   All of those soft and fluffy things that were formerly shunned in the world.   We finally realized that those aren't the soft things, those are the hard things... and not everyone can do those either.

Last thought to take with you.   
Live your life like you're writing a story for the next generation.  
Don't be afraid to share your life's learnings with others.   Through that linkage of the past, the present, and the future, you really can make the world a better place.