Disappointment Sucks. So, Now What?

• By Scott Eblin
• September 30, 2013
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Yesterday I found what is already one of my all time favorite New Yorker cartoons. I pulled the current issue out of the mailbox, started flipping through it and saw the classic guy on a therapist’s couch. The caption was “I did seize the day. But then it seized me back and used some kind of jujitsu move to flip me on my ass.”

I laughed out loud as I read it because I had just spent the day getting back up after getting flipped on my ass. Early in the morning, I’d gotten some critical feedback I didn’t expect on an important project. I was really disappointed. Disappointed with my performance, disappointed with my misperception and disappointed with the recognition that something that I thought was working well actually wasn’t.

Disappointment is a fact of life. Unless you’re on Facebook where, unless a pet or a relative has died, everything is always sunny, in real world land, disappointment happens.

Disappointment sucks. It can bring you down. As a leader, you can’t afford to stay there very long. You’ve got to get back up and bring everyone else along with you.

How do ...

Don’t Like Organizational Politics? Get Over It.

• By Scott Eblin
• September 25, 2013
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At the end of a Next Level Intensive workshop yesterday, I asked the participants for some ideas on topics they’d like to cover in future sessions or what they’d like to see me address in my blog. As people were leaving the room, one of the managers sidled up to me and said she’d really like to see a post on navigating organizational politics. That’s one that I have some strong opinions on so here we are. (And thanks for the request – you know who you are!)

Before I got on the plane, I looked up the root of the word politics on Wikipedia. Here’s the first line of the entry:

Politics (from Greek: politikos, meaning “of, for, or relating to citizens”) is the practice and theory of influencing other people on a civic or individual level.

To be honest, I already knew that the root was from the Greek for the citizenry. That leads to the first of two points about navigating organizational politics. If you want to have any kind of impact as a leader, you have to engage in the politics if for no other reason than organizations are made up of ...

What Obama Can Learn About Leadership From the Pope

• By Scott Eblin
• September 24, 2013
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A couple of days ago, in the wake of the zigs and zags of the U.S. response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria, I started thinking about writing a post on the points along the spectrum of clarity in leadership.

Anchoring one end of the spectrum is the last U.S. President, George W. Bush. One of the seminal moments in his presidency was when he said at a press conference, ”I’m the decider and I decide what’s best.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that. The problem comes when the decisions don’t turn out very well.

Anchoring the other end of my spectrum is President Obama who, over a year ago, declared that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government in Syria’s civil war would be a red line that demanded clear action from the United States. For a week after just such an attack, it looked like cruise missiles would be launched. Then, late in the game, the President decided to seek Congressional approval for the use of force. As it became clear that the President would lose such a vote, Vladimir Putin stepped in with the idea ...

3 Leadership Lessons from Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston

• By Scott Eblin
• September 18, 2013
• comments

I’m late to the party for what many claim is The. Greatest. Television. Show. Ever. Over the past couple of months, I’ve found myself really getting into Breaking Bad. Thanks to my iPad, it’s become my late night flight obsession on the way home from business trips. I’m about halfway through Season 2 and find myself thinking about bad guys like Tuco at odd times.

The show is extremely mentally sticky. The biggest reason for that is the masterful performance that Bryan Cranston gives as Walter White, the meek high school chemistry teacher who transforms himself into the evil meth amphetamine kingpin Heisenberg.

Trying to read around the late seasons spoilers, I raced through Tad Friend’s profile of Cranston in the latest issue of The New Yorker. My big takeaway from the article is that Cranston is a good guy who has worked very hard over the years to become the sensation he is today, playing TV's ultimate anti-hero.  In reading the article, there were a few vignettes about how Cranston has approached his career that struck me as instructive for leaders who want to have a long term impact (and, no, none of ...

3 Signs You Need a Break

• By Scott Eblin
• September 16, 2013
• comments

A few weeks back, I wrote in this space that I’d be taking a break from blogging and would be back sometime in September. Well, here I am – back to it and excited to be doing so.

A break was just what I needed to give some thought to what I want to do here over the next few years. As always, my main goal is to share practical and applicable ideas that can help all of us be more effective as leaders and people. Most of the time, I’ll be back to posting three times a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  The Mindful Mondays feature that I started earlier this year will focus on what we can do to be more mindful leaders. A few months ago, a good friend suggested that I should start a What the Hell Wednesdays feature. She was joking, but I think she’s on to something. So, the midweek posts will cover a wide range of topics and will often draw on a leadership lesson from current events. We’ll close the week out with a Friday Forum feature that will run the gamut from interviews with leaders and authors to ...