My Weblog

Family First Leadership (Part 2)

Leadership starts at the home first.  Work on your own family first before working on others.  Thirty years from now when all other groups of people have all but forgotten who you are your family will remember you.  Your wife will remember when you refused to drag her across the finish line; instead, you encouraged her and walked with her every step of the way while she grew as a person.

Now don’t misunderstand me.  We have a responsibility (men and women) to protect our families and keep them from harm.  But never let our responsibility to protect them interfere with their need to grow as individuals.  The world has little use for people who are never progressing.  Success is a combination of opportunity and experience.  Never give the people you love a false sense of what it takes to succeed in the world while shielding them.  Shield them from the negative influences but give them room to grow and above all else make sure they know you love them and are there for them.

God Bless,

Mikhail

Life Variance

(From my old blog at today.com)

It is impossible for life to hold down smart, humble people who consistently make good decisions.  I’ve been working on an idea that I’ll call life variance.   For those of you unfamiliar with the term variance, it’s simply another way to say that there are upswings and downswings in any activity. 

For example in business it might mean there are times when everything is going right, followed by times where you have to work extra hard to dig out some results (or deal with things that are going wrong).  In our own personal lives I’ve come to see this term mean there are times when everything we do seems pretty easy and good and times where we need to work extra hard just to keep our relationships and our mindsets in the right place.  

Many people try to do something about this.  I wouldn’t suggest trying to fix the cycle.  Instead, understand that it’s just the way things work in life. It’s normal.  It does not reflect poorly on you and it’s just another chance to grow.  The key is to stick to the above statement: Be smart and humble. Focus on making good decisions consistently.  That way when the storms of life begin to hit your house, your foundations are strong enough to wait on the next upswing that’s sure to come your way. 

What are you doing to fix your own life variance?  Are you in a place to recieve more when the upswings hit?  If not why not and what will you do about it?

 Mikhail H.

http://twitter.com/mikhutt

The Danger of Influence

Recently I sat down with a group of College Pastors to follow up on their results for the past few months of ministry.  I worked with them a few months back to help provide some guidance for their 1 year goals of the ministry.  I was trying to work with them to figure out how to tackle some of their tough problems.  It was in this group of meetings that I began to identify the different types of killers who are involved in meetings.  So as a quick reference here it is.

For lack of creativity in naming I made them very strait forward [edit: I now have names ].  In the future I'll find a catchy name for the groups.  But I realized how important it is to identify these people because meetings are the place that teams and organizations come to either thrive or die.  A bad or tense-filled meeting will typically mean a sort of death by personality.  But here they are.

Killer 1:  (Typically the main culprit) The NCO's aka Sergeants

This is great if they can bring people together and get ideas going which Sergeants typically do. The danger is when they are unable or incapable of pushing the organization in a positive way.  Could be a result of pride or simply could be a result of lack of training.  I'm idealistic and like to think most times it comes down to lack of experience and training in this area.  They are hard workers but need outside instruction or leadership if they can't handle the responsibility of making decisions for everyone. It's very important to stifle their control in meetings unless they are truly equipped to make the bulk of your decisions.

 
Killer 2: The Assassin

This person may or may not have good ideas but we can never know without them opening up.  A lot of the time they provide some of the best ideas considering their careful, well thought out analysis.  It's up to the rest of the leadership/team to draw the opinions and beliefs of this type of person out to get their input in the decision making process.  It's also important to stifle the assertive types so that they fee like they can contribute.  The killer here is the lost ideas that never get put on the table.  They may feel like a part of the team but functionally they are not performing at their best.
 
Killer 3: The "I dont know's" (Still no name here, Ideas anyone?)

This type of person doesn't feel like they are eye to eye with everyone else.  Typically comes from being new or having a lack of confidence.  Understanding their roll and directing them towards tasks will typically help keep them involved.  This group is best dealt with be giving them confidence in their credibility.  They will need to hear it frequently and will typically turn into one of the above once they get comfortable.  The death here is that often what happens is they will begin to feel resentful or out of place.  Over time they begin to question whether they are actually contributing to the team and never get the chance to open up and confidently contribute.

So where does the danger come? It comes when these people begin to interact with other members of the group who aren't leaders.  When this happens the people they impact will pick up the same problems/habits as they do and can work as a slow poison to your growth.

Another way it hurts is that the organization never gets the benefit of having all ideas out on the table.  It kills innovation and momentum and can create big problems without having them dealt with as soon as possible.

That's it for now.  Be good kids ;)

Mikhail

theHILgroup

Why Can't I Make a Decision?

Decisions! Decisions, decisions, decisions! People are afraid to do it, and leaders are afraid to make the wrong types of it. How does that work? I recently heard a Pastor make a passing statement about people today and the way they make decisions. It was a very powerful and simple statement. As I Christian I trust that I have what it takes through God to make both right decisions and make decisions right.

 

In other words I have faith that through my faith and belief system I can either make smart decisions or trust in my ability to fix an incorrect decision so that it can be for everyone’s benefit. What about the person who doesn’t believe in God? I’m sure some of you reading this may not. How then do you make smart decisions and better still how do you fix the bad ones. 

 

Here is an observation and 2 tips to help you figure this out. 

 

Observation 1

The average person is afraid to make a decision. How do I know? Think about what you do when a salesman comes knocking at your door whether it’s for the latest Insurance Policy or Kirby (not sure you spell it) vacuum. The husband looks at the wife and the wife fidgets before she looks back at the husband. The other outcome is that the wife looks at the husband who stutters and thinks before he says “I don’t know.” You then provide an excuse that is most likely false. Such as “I have plenty of vacuums,” or “I’ll think about it.”

 

Tip 1

If you suffer from this common fear of making a bad choice then you must first decide not to be average. Average people don’t know how to commit, so learn to commit and trust yourself to do what’s best given all the available information.

 

Tip 2

If others are involved get their feedback quickly and efficiently. The longer your wait to make a decision the more likely you are not to make one. If you make a habit of gathering information as quickly as possible you will make a habit of committing to a choice.

 

Scary as it seems, it’s actually not the worse thing in the world. So learn to do it and learn to do it well. Happy hunting.

 

Mikhail
www.thehilgroup.com

 

How to stop making Stupid decisions

            I can sum up what it takes to be successful in two sentences.  Make lots of really good decisions.  Make very few bad decisions.  Sounds simple enough but how often do many people follow this rule and isn’t a “good” decision subjective anyway?  So let’s break down each one of them and see. 

            I will define a good decision as making a move that would likely give you a favorable outcome.  Obviously then anything that would not be likely to give you a favorable outcome would be a bad decision.  All throughout my formal education for example, I excelled in anything dealing with conceptual leadership/management, communication, history, and other social sciences.  If I took a class dealing with a hard science or higher level math I usually didn’t do too well.

            So I remember being particularly ambitious about starting college and deciding that I was going to take physics and trig my first semester along with German, English, and a class on French History (I can stop here and do a case study that would prove my point, but I quiet like France and would prefer to one day return there for a vacation so on we go). 

I remember my sister telling me to take classes that I was strongest in because your GPA the first year sets the foundation for the next 3 years of ones college life.  Had I followed this “make many smart decisions” principle I would have done very well my first year.  That first semester I went from a 3.5 mid semester to a 2.75 GPA by the end of the term. 

            Determined not to be defeated by sound (and very logical) advice I then took 17 credits my second semester of college that involved a very hard bio course, another math course, and a full spring season of division one rugby (I played for Penn State).  I did this against the good advice of a team mate who suggested 12 or 13 credits because of our spring travel schedule.  Doing marginally better I scraped by with a cumulative of around 2.9 by the end of my first year in college.  While it was better it was also very stupid.  While I agree a 2.9 could be a lot worse I made several mistake that we will take a look at here.

Mistake 1

I made the same mistake twice expecting different results.  I should have focused on my strengths and stayed within that realm, feeding my mind and my GPA with information I was passionate about and knew I could do very well.  After noticing that I needed some other foundational materials to excel in the other classes I should have kept my ego in check and swallowed a bad decision from the previous semester.

Mistake 2

This is actually a result of mistake one and more of an observation.  I have kept my overall GPA around a 3.0 since then but because I didn’t lay solid foundations in the beginning, I hurt my potential to have my GPA be an accurate reflection of my capabilities.  So in the future I need to make sure that my current life is a result of many smart decisions that reflect not only what kind of decisions I have made but what I am also capable of.

Mistake 3

I got my ego involved and wasn’t able to accept the hard facts that I just didn’t do enough in the previous years to have success in a higher level bio course or calculus class.

So how does this affect our lives?  Think about the many different ways that you have made consistently bad decisions that have led you to where you are today?  How could you change them and as a result change your life?  I suggest starting small and improving bit by bit.  Set goals and create direction for yourself.  If you can start to do that, you will be well on your way to a happier, simpler life. 

Mikhail

http://thehilgroup.com/