Personal Leadership – Dan Greer

Stop Ghosting And Start Saying No

Dan Greer — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 14:32:22 +0000

All of us want to help other people and so we usually commit to things we have no capacity or intention in really following through with later. This causes serious problems with our reputation when we over promise and under deliver. When it happens to us we always take an emotion hit and have to process all our negative thoughts.

Having the emotional intelligence to say No on the front end is the key to sustaining trust with other people. This HBR post is excellent: “I’ve been ghosted more times than I can count. There was that time a senior leader enthusiastically offered to introduce me to the chief marketing officer of one of the largest tech firms. That never happened. There was that time I went through eight rounds of interviews with a large financial institution, and the executive search firm never called me back. And finally, there was the time a public relations firm reached out with urgency because they wanted me to host a podcast for their client. One year later, I’m still waiting to hear back about the next steps.”

3 Strategies For Holding Yourself Accountable

Dan Greer — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 15:22:31 +0000

As I prepare for my coaching this week, I am reminded of an extremely important truth. We must never forget that we are personally our most important client. We get trapped in all the drama of the other people and projects that demand our urgent attention. Then we let them become the excuse for not prioritizing leading ourselves well and our families.

This post by Diana Kander is excellent: “At the beginning of your career, you were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. You asked for help and soaked up the wisdom of your mentors and managers to climb the mountain. But once you experienced success, you found yourself scared to look down. After all, it’s intimidating at the top, when you think of everything you could lose. At this point asking for help begins to feel a lot less like a learning experience and a lot more like proof that you might not be cut out for the job at hand.”

Five Tips To Be An Authentic Leader

Dan Greer — Sun, 09 Jan 2022 20:39:29 +0000

Great leaders always lead from the inside-out. They value their character more than competency. As a matter of fact, they realize that their inner values and passion directly impact the outward results they can accomplish.

When I enlisted an accountability mentor everything changed for me. I now had someone who was willing at all times to tell me what I needed to hear not what I wanted to know. This post by Anne Phey is an excellent resource for personal improvement:

“Here are five things I have learned about becoming an authentic leader through observing leaders and, most of all, through my own journey from being a boss from hell to being a boss from heaven, as a teammate described it.”

3 Reasons Why Time Management Strategies Never Solve Your Problem

Dan Greer — Sun, 02 Jan 2022 14:46:03 +0000

I still have my leather calendar with all the tabs and different sections that were going to solve my time management problems. They helped getting things done but it never asked me if all those things should be done at all? I became very efficient but sadly never effective.

Today with all of our project management software and the corresponding apps that drive them, we are no better off in solving this core leadership problem. This post by Carey Nieuwhof is an excellent read:

“Time famine is a big challenge for leaders.

No matter how much your organization grows or declines, how many staff quit or join, how many upset people you have to deal with, or how insane the world gets, you only get 24 hours in a day to solve everything that comes your way as a leader.

Unfortunately, this leaves most leaders with a nagging sense that they can’t get it all done.

As a result, as things grow or problems escalate, most leaders respond by working more hours, usually at the cost of their health and the well-being of the people they love the most.”

Make Learning A Part Of Your Daily Routine

Dan Greer — Mon, 08 Nov 2021 16:14:01 +0000

Jim Collins warned us that one of the greatest dangers of success is complacency. This lets leaders think that we are really good now and we should be able to sustain success with what we are doing.

The day you stop learning as a leader personally is the die you and your organization start the downward spiral to failure. Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis have some excellent recommendations :

“Our capacity for learning is becoming the currency we trade on in our careers. Where we once went to work to learn to do a job, learning now is the job. Adaptive and proactive learners are highly prized assets for organizations, and when we invest in our learning, we create long-term dividends for our career development.”

How To Say “No” After Saying “Yes”

Dan Greer — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 14:13:04 +0000

All leaders have an extremely hard time saying No to something that is urgent but in reality not that important. Unless you have clearly defined what your “Yes’s” are it is almost impossible to say no to the things that should never be done.

This gets a hundred times harder when we know we need to say No but we have already committed to do something. It takes real courage and conviction to pay the price to risk damaging the relationship and your reputation. This post by Melody Wilding is very helpful:

“Picture it — a colleague asks if you can chair a new committee they’re starting. Without even pausing to think, the first words out of your mouth are, “Sure. I’d love to!” Flash forward, and you’re looking at emails piling up in your inbox and a flurry of appointments on your calendar. It suddenly hits you that you’re spread too thin. You know you need to say no after saying yes, but you’re hesitant to back out of the obligation after you’ve already given your word.”

6 Strategies For Exhausted Working Parents

Dan Greer — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 14:57:28 +0000

When there are never ending demands placed on our lives that in reality are mostly out of our control, then margin is lost and discouragement really sets in. This pandemic has put an incredible burden on all of us both personally and professionally.

The one area that must be prioritized above all others is our responsibility as parents to help our children navigate all of this stress in the best possible way. This HBR post offers some very practical advice:

“Ever had one of those tension nightmares where you’re getting chased by bad guys and desperate to run away, but somehow your legs won’t work? It’s like running in slow motion, through a thick syrup. As the villains get closer, your tension soars. You know you need to move, but just can’t find the momentum.”

Be More Realistic About The Time You Have

Dan Greer — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 15:16:47 +0000

I do a lot of executive coaching around personal leadership. Everyone is struggling with a lack of margin and the ability to get everything done on their list.

The major problem is our unwillingness to say No and reduce the number of demands. The primary reason is that we have not taken the time to clearly define our Yes list first, so may busy but not important things get added.

One of the great lies we believe is that one day this will get better and when things slow down I will make all the changes needed. This HBR post brings some serious truth to the mind games we play:

“We are master storytellers. We tell ourselves fanciful stories to motivate ourselves to get vast amounts of work done in small amounts of time. We jot down task after task after task, sure that we can complete them all within a standard workday. And yet, at the end of the day, we’re stunned to find that work remains unfinished and we have to dash to the finish line. We’re not deliberately deceiving ourselves about what we can do with our time. But despite past evidence, in the moment our predictive engines gum up, and we’re convinced we’ll be able to achieve the extraordinary in an ordinary day.”

How To Thrive When Everything Feels Terrible

Dan Greer — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 15:57:41 +0000

I lived through the 1960’s which was an unprecedented time of social and global disruption. This is worse than that. I am sure the first 50 years of the last century could have been the most difficult time of all.

The power of technology and the way we get our information today has exponentially caused this time to at least feel like absolute chaos every day. Personal leadership demands that we lead ourselves well if we are going to have a chance to lead others. This HBR post will help:

“We’re surrounded by negativity everywhere we turn. The news we read, social media we peruse, and conversations we have and overhear. We absorb stress from our family, friends, and coworkers. And, it’s taking a toll.

Negativity can have toxic effects. In fact, Christine’s research has shown over and over that we falter when exposed to negativity or rudeness. Witnessing rudeness interferes with our working memory and decreases our performance. Mere exposure to rude words reduces our ability to process and recall information. We tend to shut down, stop communicating, and cease being helpful to others. Dysfunctional and aggressive thoughts (and sometimes actions) skyrocket.”

Anyone Can Be A Better Leader

Dan Greer — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 15:18:40 +0000

The greatest leaders realize that they will have to continue to improve their leadership abilities throughout their entire life. The priority for improving your self-leadership through character development should always be at the top of the list.

However, as these uncertain times have shown, unless you continue to develop your competency skill set you will be setting yourself and your team up for failure moving forward. This HBR post is excellent:

“When you’re an individual contributor, your ability to use your technical expertise to deliver results is paramount. Once you’ve advanced into a leadership role, however, the toolkit that you relied on to deliver individual results rarely equips you to succeed through others. Beware of falling into the logical trap of “if I can do this work well, I should be able to lead a team of people who do this work.”