Leadership

Why Your Kid Needs A Side Hustle

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
Kids side hustle

This year, my son gave me the best gift an entrepreneur could ever ask for. Of course, my second grader, like nearly every other eight-year-old in America, has mastered the ability to influence others to get what he wants. With summer kicking off in full swing, these talents typically revolve around spending an inordinate amount of mental capacity figuring out how to get more screen time. Last week, rather than vying to get a few extra minutes of screen time or finding creative ways to get out of practicing his guitar, my son convinced his friend that they should start a business.

After some cajoling, his friend agreed and they went through the process of deciding what type of business they should embark on. A short while later, the boys settled on a car cleaning business (interiors only mind you). After dedicating their attention to touting the virtues of such a business and the benefit that it would bring to the local community, the boys turned their attention to creating posters and fliers that they attached both to their wagon as well as the community mailboxes in our neighborhood.

Loading up their wagon with their (read my) supplies: a shop vac, dash cleaner, leather cleaner, Windex, paper towels, and rags and were ready for business. They quickly realized that not only did they need something to keep their millions in as they moved from house to house but that they needed a pricing structure. Without missing a beat, they immediately dove in and made it happen.

In order to make sure they had their act together, they asked if my wife and I would be willing to let them practice on our cars, something we promptly agreed to. And then it happened. Something in my son sparked. While I intentionally minded my own business, all the while keeping a rather close eye on them as they worked, I could see a sense of pride swell up in the boys. They were doing something for other people. They were taking great pride in ownership and they were making sure we were satisfied with their work. As they worked, they chatted and their conversations were both surprising and inspiring.

After a short while, our cars were clean and the boys added their first revenues to their kitty, a mason jar with a handwritten sign on it sitting haphazardly in their wagon. With beaming smiles, they began their trek from house to house, knocking on doors and pitching their potential customers. With the confidence only an eight-year-old can have, they let rejection slide off their backs with ease, they took future appointments (which they noted on a small pad), and they moved on to the next house- each stop an opportunity to perfect their pitch.

We’re now a few days into their business and they are still going strong. They have made a surprising amount of money and with summer vacation rapidly approaching, they are already strategizing how to expand their operation into other neighborhoods as well as hiring and training new employees in order to expand.

Why am I telling you this?

It is not uncommon for young children to start a business. Lemonade stand. Mowing lawns. Manicures. (Yes, manicures). It almost seems like a right of passage for many kids in America. I recall multiple businesses that I myself ran as a child with fond memories. All of them, opportunities to develop skills and practice new behaviors that I could take with me the rest of my life.

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Masterful Leaders – The Leader as Coach, Mentor and Teacher

By gothamCulture
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Graphics Courtesy of Fuller Design

Among the many attributes a leader must possess, the most important is the ability to effortlessly transition from one leadership approach to another, in effect gliding between styles that best serve the developmental needs of those individuals they serve.  Truly masterful leaders know how and when to bring those approaches to bear.

A leader can be a mentor some of the time, a coach on other occasions, and a teacher when it is useful.  Think of the three attributes – Mentor, Coach and Teacher – as some of the most powerful tools in your leadership toolbox.

Each can serve the needs of others.  And notice that I intentionally don’t use the word “subordinate,” because we often are serving the needs of colleagues or team members and even bosses that have a desire to grow.  It’s an important distinction, especially considering that sometimes those we serve end up being in positions that might later have a higher “rank” in the chain of command.  In effect, we take turns leading others, but if the habits are there to help others on their developmental journeys, does it really matter what position she or he holds?  In that regard, I often use the famous Chaucer quote, “And gladly would he learn and gladly teach,” to remind myself and clients of that philosophy.

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Courage For Brands 2.0

By gothamCulture
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Courage

Our current principle Run Farther Together represents how valuable it is to bring others along with us on the journey unified around a clear purpose. The benefit is not just better results, but a deeper, positive impact on the people and the world around us. But it takes courage and uncommon sense to expect more and define the destination beyond the normal measures of success.

Courage for brands

Without courage, leaders of companies today, like individuals, live in a place of permanent uncertainty and weakness. Without bravery, perseverance and honesty there is little hope for change in circumstance and zero chance of achieving one’s full potential. Those who live in a state of fear wait endlessly for others to make the next move and operate with uncertainty, reacting to others. They are relegated to miserable vulnerability and insecurity.

Courage is the essential ingredient for both survival and growth, and as Winston Churchill so eloquently put it, “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all others.” It’s evident at birth and embedded into the first steps that an individual or a company takes, or it’s found as a result of hardship and circumstance. Without courage, we go nowhere.

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Leadership is The Sum of All Parts

By gothamCulture
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Leadership

According to the dictionary definition “leadership is the action of leading a group of people or an organization”.  Perhaps we should look at leadership from a different perspective. Leadership is the cooperative action that is demonstrated through the talents and skills of people either in a family, community or by employees at all levels of a corporate organization.

Without the collective performance of an orchestra, a conductor has no music and an audience is cheated out of a symphony.

When people think of a leader, generally pictures of a single person appear. Some are feared while others are admired. Shifting perspective to view leadership from the group or the team—in which each person, member of a company works to achieve an overall goal through individual contributions using their talents, skills to innovate or serve others—creates incredible results every day. Both the leader and the team share a more expanded view of what leadership is and is more likely to consider the contributions of all members of the enterprise.

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Assume Capability Not Intent

By gothamCulture
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Assume Capability

“Assume capability, not intent,” is part of a military maxim used in intelligence.  While somewhat more arcane when employed in intelligence, its shortened form can serve as an effective and simple reminder of how to approach those with whom we interact in the business world.

Have you ever sat in a meeting and watched the people around the table and started writing your own narrative about them? Your thoughts range from:

“He doesn’t care,” you say about one person.

“She has an agenda she’s trying to push,” you smugly say to yourself about another.

And then there is the inevitable, “He’s lazy and doesn’t want to get the job done.”

What’s the common denominator of such narratives?  They are all judgment based and blindly come to conclusions about the intent of each individual, based on nothing more than opinion and feelings.  As such they do nothing to enhance our personal and professional relationships and thus materially contribute to distrust, making them detrimental to how a team operates.

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Chris Cancialosi on Imparting Knowledge to Younger Workers

By gothamCulture
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Tony Lee and Chris Cancialosi discuss imparting knowledge to younger workers, viewing knowledge as intellectual capital, the variables to consider when preparing for a transition in a company, pre-emptive knowledge transfers and what Chris’ deployment to Iraq taught him about the process of transferring knowledge. Listen to the podcast below and read the article here: How to Prepare for Leaders Leaving

Working With Difficult People

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog, Recommended Tags:
Working With Difficult People Podcast

In every organization, there will be people that you find to be “difficult”. The question is how to navigate these people in a productive way and that doesn’t cause excess stress for you or your team. What can you do? What you do say? What do you ignore? gothamCulture’s Chris Cancialosi discusses this topic with Wanda Wallace on VoiceAmerica Business Channel. Click here to listen!

Preventing Potential Dysfunction in the Boardroom

By gothamCulture
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corporate culture

There is no shortage of research on the impact that boards can have on the performance and profitability of the organizations they serve. In today’s business context, boards face higher expectations, increased scrutiny by the community, press, politicians, and the street, and significant increases in the velocity of demands of their attention. These realities create a need for boards to be as effective as possible in driving profitability for the firms they serve. Board inefficiencies and lack of effectiveness are simply not something that organizations can afford. Setting up boards for success starts during the recruitment process and some recent research sheds some light on how to make this process have greater positive impact. Read More…

Knowledge Transfer: The Key to Organizational Resilience and Agility

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , , ,
ATD

Chris Cancialosi’s article was just published in July’s issue of TD at Work.

How do organizations not only survive, but thrive in today’s new operating environment? By developing resilience and agility. Knowledge transfer is critical to this, and talent development practitioners are positioned to help companies prepare. In “Knowledge Transfer: The Key to Organizational Resilience and Agility,” Chris Cancialosi details:

  • what knowledge transfer is and why it is critical to organizations’ resilience and agility
  • the role of effective knowledge transfer in the future of work
  • ways to develop and strengthen an organization’s ability to effectively transfer and manage knowledge.