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5 Characteristics of Effective Leaders

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In You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader: How Anyone, Anywhere, Can Make a Positive Difference, Mark Sanborn highlights five core characteristics of effective leaders. Effective leaders:

  1. Believe they can positively shape their lives and careers.
  2. Lead through their relationships with people, as opposed to their control over people.
  3. Collaborate rather than control.
  4. Persuade others to contribute, rather than order them to.
  5. Get others to follow them out of respect and commitment rather than fear and compliance.

Read!

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If you read (which is everyone), I would highly recommend my friend Tony Reinke’s new book, Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books. It is well written, enjoyable, incredibly practical, and on a subject (reading) that it is very interesting and helpful to read more about. So often we just read, without thinking much about how we do it. Tony’s book helps us correct that, so we can read better and know better what reading really is.

Here’s what Randy Alcorn had to say:

“I read many books, but seldom do I enjoy one more than I did Tony Reinke’s Lit!. Many of my greatest childhood adventures, and much of my growth after I was converted as a teenager, came through reading imagination-expanding and life-changing books. Tony’s writing is thoughtful, perceptive, concise, and God-honoring. He upholds biblical authority, and offers helpful guidance, while allowing for a range of tastes. Lit! rings true to my own lifetime of reading experience. As a reader and writer of both nonfiction and fiction, I appreciate the breadth of Tony’s treatment, which includes a variety of genres. For book lovers, this is a treasure and delight. For those who aren’t book lovers, it makes a great case for becoming one.”

In part one, Tony gives a theology of books and reading, and in part 2 he gives practical advice on books and reading. He covers how a biblical worldview equips us to benefit from books, seven benefits of reading non-Christian books, six priorities for deciding what to read (and what not to read), 20 tips and tricks for reading nonfiction books, six ways to find the time you need to read, and much more.

So if you read, I highly recommend getting Tony’s book!

Does Anyone Know a Good Way to Sync Bookmarks Between Firefox and Safari?

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The reason I’m asking is because I use Firefox on my Mac, but want my bookmarks to be synced with my iPhone — and, at least until recently, the only way to do that was to sync them to Safari first. Then, Safari syncs them to your iPhone via Mobile Me.

I have traditionally used XMarks to accomplish this, but I’m having trouble with it and want to stop using it.

Does anyone know either (1) if there is now a way to sync bookmarks directly from Firefox to your iPhone/iPad or (2) if there is a better way to sync your bookmarks between Firefox and Safari on the Mac?

6 Steps to Becoming a Great Place to Work

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A helpful column by Jack Welch from a few years ago. Here are the six points, with some of Welch’s comments as well:

  1. Preferred employers demonstrate a real commitment to continuous learning. No lip service. These companies invest in the development of their people through classes, training programs, off-site experiences, all sending the message that the organization is eager to facilitate a steady path to personal growth.
  2. Preferred employers are meritocracies. Pay and promotions are tightly linked to performance. . . . People with brains, self-confidence, and competitive spirit are always attracted to such environments.
  3. Preferred employers not only allow people to take risks but also celebrate those who do. And they don’t shoot those who try but fail. As with meritocracies, a culture of risk-taking attracts exactly the kind of creative, bold employees companies want and need in a global marketplace where innovation is the single best defense against unrelenting cost competition.
  4. Preferred employers understand that what is good for society is also good for business.
  5. Preferred employers keep their hiring standards tight.
  6. Preferred companies are profitable and growing.

“The best thing about being a preferred employer is that it gets you good people, and this launches a virtuous cycle. The best team attracts the best team, and winning often leads to more winning.”

How to Run Your Organization

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If you get this, you have almost everything you need to know. (Almost.) Tom Peters in In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies:

Any well-functioning organization is neither centralized nor decentralized but a wonderful combination of both. Around most dimensions the best companies, then and now, are loose. They give people exceptional freedom to do things their own way.

At the same time, the great companies are highly centralized around a few crucial dimensions: the central values that make up their culture, one or two (no more) top strategic priorities, and a few key financial indicators.

Note: The key point is not simply that organizations need to be centralized in some areas and decentralized in others. If you say to yourself “great, the fact that every organization ought to have certain non-negotiable realities means I should micromanage my people and tell them what to do in whatever area I want,” you’ve missed it.

The key point is exactly where a company should (and should not) be centralized. It should be centralized in its core values — they are not up for grabs and are not negotiable. It should be decentralized in relation to letting people find their own way to accomplish the objectives of their roles.

In other words, precisely because the mission and core values of an organization are specific and tightly defined, employees are able to have great freedom in almost every other area.

I know of some organizations that get this backwards — they stray in relation to their core values, but are tightly controlled according to the leader’s wishes in almost every other area. That’s backwards. The key to a great company is unleashing your people, which is possible from making your mission and values clear — and meaning it.