Category Archives: Self Help

Leadership For Kids Highlights Lessons For Adults

Over the years I have had the good fortune to have been asked to provide some leadership development sessions for children. I usually work with adults and many of those adults are highly educated so we often go into quite complex areas when we facilitate leadership programs. Working with children therefore poses a considerable challenge. How do we distil quite complex information into an easily understood format for children?

The answer lies in having the capacity to understand leadership in such a way that it can be focussed into some simple concepts. Through some trial and error I have discovered some concepts that seem to work, with interesting feedback from the adults who have witnessed the programs.

Three key concepts have emerged as being the ones that children seem to be able to embrace:

1) Everyone is a leader
2) The Figure 8 of Leadership
3) Being responsible for your choices

1) Everyone is a leader
Over time I have found some interesting trends when working with children. When I have asked them to raise their hands if they believe that they are a leader or could be one in the future, virtually all the children raise their hand. When I then ask them, “Who are leaders?” they unanimously respond, “We are!”.

What response do you think that I usually hear from adults?

Very few adults raise their hand to indicate that they think that they are a leader.

For children, the concept that everyone is a leader and they have to lead themselves seems relatively natural, yet for adults it seems (for many) quite foreign. When we facilitate leadership education for adults one of our key themes is that you can’t lead others if you can’t lead yourself. My experience has taught me that children understand this idea, so we adults have a responsibility to continue to help them understand this concept by re-enforcing that they are, in fact leaders. To do this, find them making positive choices and recognise them for it. The importance of choices is explained in the second lesson below.

2) The Figure 8 of Leadership

While my experience with adults is that it takes them a while to comprehend that leadership can be for bad reasons (equalling poor leadership) just as it can be for good reasons (equalling good leadership), children seem to understand this concept quite easily. This raises the important issue of self leadership, which feeds off the first concept above, that we are all leaders.

In simple terms self-leadership starts with choices. Some choices are good choices and lead to good behaviour, while other choices are poor choices and lead to poor behaviour. The good choices represent good leadership, and the poor choices represent poor leadership. On many levels this is quite simple. And it is! Children seem to understand it and can easily provide many examples of good choices and poor choices which result in good leadership or poor leadership.

The simple power of the model lies in the fact that children have the capacity to start making good choices even if they have made some poor ones. In other words, the start of good leadership is only a choice away. Clearly the reverse is also true; poor leadership is only a choice away as well. I recall a child in one session raising his hand and saying,

“I’ve been making lots of bad choices at school such as not listening to teachers and picking on other kids. I thought that I was a bad person and I didn’t realise that I was a leader. But what you’re saying is that I only have to start making good choices and I can be a good leader. I like that idea. I can do that.”

None of us are perfect. We will all make poor choices. Overall leadership is dependent upon the balance of our choices. Are they generally on the good half of the model, or the poor half? Over time we can consciously develop positive habits to enhance our good leadership through making good choices. Maybe this leadership stuff isn’t so hard after all, which leads to the third and final concept.

3) Being responsible for your choices
Rather than blaming other people or circumstances for our choices, personal responsibility for our choices increases the probability that we will make good choices. Once again children seem to easily understand such a statement. Maybe they see the consequences of their choices more clearly than we adults do because they have so many adults around them monitoring their behaviour. Yet when we become adults often we stop getting that sort of feedback because of many complicated reasons. What if we adults were to actively seek out feedback on the choices that we are making and our resultant behaviours? Maybe such feedback would assist us in better leading ourselves. And we never know, the better we lead ourselves the more likely others may be to follow.

In summary, the key features of Leadership for Kids that may provide some lessons for adults include:
1) We are all leaders;
2) Our choices lie at the heart of effective leadership; and
3) Personal responsibility for our choices will enhance our capacity to lead ourselves and others.

How do these lessons apply to you?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

How to master the four quadrants of time management

It always causes me to have a small laugh to myself when I conduct time management programs and people turn up late! It really doesn’t bother me if people are on time or not – they are the ones who will miss out if they are not there. For a lot of people it does highlight an important issue – their lack of capability to manage their time. Many people leave little room for error with regard to their time management – everything is ‘cut so fine’ that if one thing goes wrong, then they are unlikely to be ‘on time’.

Many people have often suggested that they need to ‘make time’. I know what they mean, but can anyone really ‘make time’? The challenge is to use your time wisely so that you don’t ‘waste time’. Stephen Covey’s Urgent and Important Matrix is a useful tool for determining the wise use of time. The matrix works as follows:

URGENT and IMPORTANT Tasks (Quadrant 1)
These are the tasks that require immediate attention. A presentation, a meeting, a speech, a performance (as in a musical, theatrical or sport performance) the majority of the work that you do in your job, answering exam questions, a critical issue or crises. Time matters in the performance of these tasks. In short, if you don’t take effective action ‘right now’ you fail.

NOT URGENT and IMPORTANT Tasks (Quadrant 2)
These are things like planning, preparing, reading, clarifying your values and other personal development activities, capturing and preparing your stories for interviews, retreats, health and fitness activities, developing relationships etc. All these things could be completed at another time. In this sense, time is ‘not urgent’. As such, many of the tasks in this quadrant are simply left alone and they aren’t attempted. What people don’t understand is that there is a direct relationship between the quality of the tasks performed in Quadrant 1, and the quality time that you have spent in Quadrant 2. In short, time spent in Quadrant 2 improves your performance in Quadrant 1. It is therefore worth prioritising your time so that some of it, at least, is spent in Quadrant 2. Think about your performance when you have prepared for a presentation as compared to when you have ‘winged it’. I have heard some people boast about how well they can ‘wing it’ and make presentations without preparing. While it may have the appearance of working these people are in for a big let down – one day. The reality is they don’t ‘know their stuff’ and because of a ‘gift’ may be able to bamboozle people with their presentations skills. That can be a lot of extra pressure to carry around with you after a while. The majority of us, however, know that if we don’t prepare our performance suffers, so we prioritise our time beforehand to ensure that we are prepared.

Another example of Quadrant 2 activities is attending personal development workshops, particularly when you are a volunteer. Ideally the lessons that you learn, when applied, will help your performance in Quadrant 1.

So where does the time come from to enable you to spend more time in Quadrant 2 activities? The following quadrants provide that answer.

URGENT and NOT IMPORTANT Tasks (Quadrant 3)
These are things like many emails, some meetings (when you really don’t need to be there), text messages, the behaviour of some people when they demand your time ‘right now’ (you know the person, they ask if they can have five minutes of your time and they always seems to be talking 30 minutes later). Tasks in this quadrant have the appearance of being urgent, which is why they draw your attention. The problem is that you really could deal with them later (or not at all). By focussing on them ‘right now’ all you are doing is taking your attention away from Quadrant 1 or Quadrant 2 tasks. It is Quadrant 3 tasks where effective prioritising can ‘free up’ a lot of time; time that can be better used in Quadrant 1 or Quadrant 2.

NOT URGENT and NOT IMPORTANT
These are wasteful activities that often relate to addictive type behaviours or are behaviours that are undertaken to deliberately avoid the Quadrant 1 or 2 tasks. Time spent in Quadrant 4 has a DIRECT impact on your performance in Quadrant 1. You have a presentation tomorrow that you have not prepared, yet you spend the whole of the previous night watching the Premier League football on the television. You eventually arrive for your presentation underprepared and very tired. It is no surprise that you performance is poor. Ideally Quadrant 4 activities need to be completely eliminated from your life – all they do is detract from where you performance really matters, and that is your performance in Quadrant 1.

This is just one example of many approaches to time management. What are yours? What systems work for you? What questions do you have about time management? What templates do you use that could be useful for other members of our network?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

An Introduction To The Discovering Your Personal Values Activity

As a result of an impromptu request from audience participants after his TEDx Talks ‘Plan For Personal Success’ keynote, Gary Ryan facilitated an exercise to help staff identify their personal values.

This short video includes the introduction piece to this activity.

Please Contact Us if you would like to speak with Gary regarding discovering more about personal values or facilitating a program for your staff.

The complete exercise is included in Gary’s new book What Really Matters For Young Professionals!

Length: 6 mins

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

TEDx Talks Plan For Personal Success by Gary Ryan

Keynote speech for TEDx Talks at NAB, Docklands Australia on Thursday 21st October 2010.

Gary Ryan, founder of Organisations That Matter explains the underlying concept and five principles and six vital strategies for creating a Plan For Personal Success.

Please visit here to discover more about our options for creating a Plan For Personal Success.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com