An Aussie in Boston

Leadership - Instilling a Sense of Duty.

Florence Nightingale - thanks to www.usefulwisdom.blogspot.com

 

Right, so it's been a long time between leadership posts but here's the final one.

 

So you've heard how to make people interested in a project before (ages ago, admittedly) but this post about getting people interested in projects that they have no interest in.

 

One question you'd have to ask yourself is, "Why did they even join a project in the first place?". Well, there has to be one thing that made them want to do it? Right? Maybe they were forced into it, or they are doing it for work, or something.

 

But one of the best things about volunteering is also one of the things you can use to keep people motivated.

 

The power to chance things for the better.

 

Case in point, with the breakfast challenge that the students from the first John Curtin Leadership Academy completed, they were able to help improve the lives of 20,000 people through giving them breakfasts.

 

The students that decided to support the Red Cross by getting people to donate were able to save the lives of 75 people.

 

If stories like those don't get you revved up to do some volunteering, check your heartbeat. Are you alive?

 

When you are trying rev people up over projects, show them what they are doing is important for the greater good. Inspire some passion in them, show then how what they are doing will make a great impact on other peoples lives.

 

It's a fact that the reason people do volunteering is to make them feel better about themselves. Heck, I write this blog so that hopefully people moving here learn a bit about how to make their move better.

 

In closing, to get people interested in your project, inspire them to make them feel their project is making a real difference in the world. Everyone wants to be a part of change for the better. It was even Barrack Obama's campaign for most of the democratic nomination race.

 

And now, one final quote to try and inspire you to good today.

 

"all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke.

GQM Update: Sept 15th.

It’s that time again, the GQM update time. Here’s the post I did on GQM, if you want more information. I’ve put this post up to show JCLA students how the GQM process can be useful for them, and their posters. Hopefully it will prove useful.

 

The same one from the JCLA talk I did in Australia

So, actually getting these metrics was pretty easy, just about 5 minutes of remembering what I’ve been doing and checking LinkedIn. The easier you make the metrics you are collecting for yourself, the better.

Since my excel file was set up, it was just a matter of putting some numbers in, and my graph was made automatically.

 

Pay rises: 0. Well, this won’t change much.

#chaired meetings: 1. Not really chairing any meetings, but I am getting work done with the new Medical Director.
#successful software developments: 2. Luckily enough, some of the stuff that was to be released last month is being released this month. Got the data migration to do soon, and some software to put on SharePoint.

#new people added to LinkedIn: 5 so far – Networking meetings have been good for this. Feel free to add me. Here's my LinkedIn Account.

#community meetings attended: 2 – 1 Boston Networking Club one, 1 Fundraising one. Going to a MBA tomorrow night, and a workmates bands gig as well. Got this in the bag.

#drinking buddies: 4. +3 easily. Heck, had three at a quiz night last week.

$ in bank account: Not enough. But the Aussie dollar is going down, so my flight back to America after going to Australia should be cheaper.

# of financial planning seminars attended: 0. I’m not seeing many of these around. Not many free ones anyway.

Do I have enough to get an MBA: HAH. No.

 

Will put up the graphs in the next GQM update.

 

Hope that helps,

Nathan

Quick post - Leadership

Ok, so I planned this to be my final post on leadership, but a late meeting came up and I'm not home yet. Hence the iphone post.

If some one was to ask me what the most important book for me in terms of leadership, I'd say it was "how to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie.

And the most important quote to me is, "what determines where you will be in five years is not your grades, not how much money you have, not what you know, but who you know."

And that's it for tonight.

Thanks,
Nathan

Leadership - GQM Update - September

Here's another update on how my GQM is going. Here’s the post I did on GQM, if you want more information. I’ve put this post up to show JCLA students how the GQM process can be useful for them, and their posters. Hopefully it will prove useful.

                      

The same one from the JCLA talk I did in Australia

So, actually getting these metrics was pretty easy, just about 5 minutes of remembering what I’ve been doing and checking LinkedIn. The easier you make the metrics you are collecting for yourself, the better.

Since my excel was set up, it was just a matter of putting some numbers in, adn my graph was made automatically.

 

Pay rises: 0. Didn't ask for one at my 6 month review. But the yearly review – you bet it'll come up.

#chaired meetings: 2. Didn't end up doing that leadership talk at the tech chat, but did do some talks on the IPhone. Hopefully the tach chat comes up soon.
#successful software developments: 3. THe latest software I've been doing has taken much longer than I thought it would, and the IPhone stuff has put me a little behind.
#new people added to LinkedIn: 17 - Met 5 pretty easily this month. Feel free to add me. Here's my LinkedIn Account.

#community meetings attended: 3 – 1 GoTo Group one, 2 Aussie expat ones. Just need one more. -Edit, didn't make it though.

#drinking buddies: 4. +3 easily. The not drinking didn't really affect this.

$ in bank account: Not enough. Gotta start saving for the flight to America after going back to Australia. Gah, so much saving to do.

# of financial planning seminars attended: 0. Didn't fix this, I don't think there is a seminar for not spending money.

Do I have enough to get an MBA: HAH. No.

Quiet Leadership - Keeping people interested in your project

Do you remember last weeks post, where I waited ages until I told you the point of the post? Did that annoy you? Do you hate it when you don’t know why you are doing something?

 

Well this post is nice an easy to say, but hard to do. To keep people interested in your project, have a clear vision of the outcome of the project, and make sure you let each group member knows why that outcome is good for them. Then act in the best interests of your team members.

 

For instance, with the previous group, you’ve got some people that like graphical design; their interest in the project is producing a magazine that makes their graphical design well known. The people in your group with diabetic siblings will definitely know why they are doing this project, and people that are interested in medical research or preparing to be doctors will be interested to find out the best way to word advice on how to manage sugar levels, in case they will have to teach others about Diabetes.

 

Just making it clear to people why the project they are working on is useful for them, and make sure that when there an opportunity for you to show how doing the project will help them with what they want, you do. For instance, if you were able to meet doctors during your time promoting your magazine, introduce them to the medical researchers in your group.

 

It’s pretty easy to keep people interested in a project when they want to be.

 

What do you do when they don’t want to be in the project? I’ll talk about that next Wednesday.

Quiet leadership – The Easiest Way to Find Your Teams Strengths.

A favourite quote of mine from Lao Tzu,

“The leader is best…

When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,

and the people say, “We did it ourselves.”

Honestly, with this post, I feel kinda bad for building up to it, as its so common sense, yet no one actually does it...

Still I'm not going to tell you about it yet.

Isn't it really annoying that I know the only reason you are reading this is to find out how to identify strengths, but I'm not doing it yet? – I’ll be writing about this in my next post.

My last post left our diabetic magazine group like this:

“Your group were just assigned the task of designing a magazine that would be sent to overweight people about diabetes and how to avoid it. You are the group’s leader.

You discover that you have people who like medical research, people with friends or siblings who are diabetic, people who like statistics and using math to extrapolate data, and people that like graphical design.”

So how did you find this out?

 

Simple, you just asked them why they want to do this project. What is the reason why they are putting their time into this? I bet you’ll hear some interesting stories.

Easy, huh? Then, why don’t people ask this? In all my project first meetings, this is the most important question that I ask. But that is not all, I also ask what people consider what their strengths and weaknesses are. You can learn a lot from people that way.

You know why this is so effective? Who is the most important person in the world to you?

You are.

How long are you willing to talk about yourself for?

As long as anyone will listen.

How often are people willing to listen about your life story? I mean, really listen?

Not much right?

So, can you imagine how flattering it is to have a whole group of people listening to your life story intently? You instantly build repour between team members this way. Be sure you are supportive of everyone in the group when they are mentioning their weaknesses, as it can be very daunting to talk about it in front of strangers.

 

Make sure to take notes on why the person is doing the project, their strengths and especially their weaknesses. My favourite definition of leadership (and there are about 190,000,000 out there) is “to empower others to become leaders by helping them lead themselves.”

Try and pair people’s strengths up with other people’s weaknesses, when the weak people are willing to learn.

That’s enough for today. My next post on leadership is going to be on making sure people stay committed to your project.

Leadership - Quiet Leadership - Background, Synopsis.

So if you're not outspoken, don't like bullying people around, and don't feel the need to be in the centre of the action all the time. Does this mean you can't be a leader?

 

Of course you can be a leader. There are many different leadership styles, just as there are many different people.

 

Also, different people like to be managed differently.

 

In order to be a leader of a group, you need to have one of three things.

 

1.         You must command the most respect out of all the people in the group. (This could be through age, status, being the boss, degrees, etc.)

2.         You must have the most knowledge in the group about the project your group is working.

3.         You need to be empathetic (i.e. Understand what they want) to the most people in the group.

 

Quiet leadership works with points 2 and 3. Knowing the most about the project you are working on, and what the group members want from a project will generally lead to the best outcome, and easy success.

 

Basically, the sentence explanation of "Quiet Leadership" is giving people the tasks they want, without them knowing it. Let them think that they came up with the idea to take the task on.

 

Now imagine you are the leader of a group of volunteers that had a task to be done.

 

The task is "design a magazine that would be sent to overweight people about diabetes and how to avoid it."

 

If you were the leader for this, you would want to know a lot about magazine editing and diabetes. So you either research those topics, or find an advisor.

 

In your group, you discover that you have people who like medical research, people with friends or siblings who are diabetic, people who like statistics and using math to extrapolate data, and people that like graphical design.

 

First things first, how did you find out what they were interested in, and how do you assign tasks?

 

That's what I'll be talking about in my next leadership post.

 

Thanks for reading, and if you liked this post, please leave a comment, or stumble me. Stumbling me means I'll get more people reading this, which means more posts for you!

 

Leadership Info - My GQM update

A couple of weeks ago, I did a post on my own GQM that I showed the students I taught GQM back in Australia. Here’s the post I did on GQM, if you want more information. I’ve put this post up to show JCLA students how the GQM process can be useful for them, and their posters. Hopefully it will prove useful.

                      

The same one from the JCLA talk I did in Australia

So, actually getting these metrics was pretty easy, just about 5 minutes of remembering what I’ve been doing and checking LinkedIn. The easier you make the metrics you are collecting for yourself, the better.

Setting up Excel to track it against graphs took a little bit longer. About half an hour. If anyone wants the excel sheet I used, leave a comment here and I’ll upload the excel file. It’s very easy to use. As the graphs right now are  Underlined are fails, for the moment. Still got two weeks to fix some up.

Pay rises: 0. Didn't ask for one at my 6 month review. But the yearly review – you bet it'll come up.

#chaired meetings: 0. No training meetings have come up for me to talk at. Will be doing a small Leadership Academy talk in the Tech Chat coming up.

#successful software developments: 2. Release updates to Reporting Server reports. Another update coming with automated releasing, and installing a web part is coming up as well.

#new people added to LinkedIn: 12 - Met 5 pretty easily this month. Feel free to add me. Here's my LinkedIn Account.

#community meetings attended: 3 – 1 GoTo Group one, 2 Aussie expat ones. Just need one more.

#drinking buddies: 4. +3 easily. Don't know if the not drinking has affected this though.

$ in bank account: Not enough. But that's always the case. Spending is down though, mostly due to the not drinking.

# of financial planning seminars attended: 0 . Ooo. Better fix this.

Do I have enough to get an MBA: HAH. No.

 

Actually had my own initiative and self-management congratulated at the 6 month review, so that just proves how useful it is to be able to manage yourself in the workforce. If you are a JCLA student and you are reading this, I hope it helped in some way. Feel free to send me emails with questions.

The JCLA: What is it?

 

At the launch of the JCLA in Miri, Malaysia, Sorry about the glare, I didn't take the photo.

 

This post is mostly serious, and is about something I’m proud of, so bear with me.

 

The JCLA (John Curtin Leadership Academy) is a program that I founded, with the help and ideas of Ian Fairnie, Dave Platt, Troy Hendrickson, and Maureen Meredith, and is currently (as of the 23^rd of July) being introduced into Curtin University of Technology’s Sarawak Campus in Miri, Malaysia by Ian Fairnie and my successor, Jarrad Brown, who is doing an excellent job.

 

While creating this program, I (rather selfishly, I guess) thought “What would I want if I did a program like this?” – To put it simply, I would have wanted:

 

1. To make a lasting change in the community.
2. To make some great connections.
3. To have a dream job – straight out of university.

 

I am sure that these three goals are being achieved.

 

The main vision of the JCLA is to “To inspire the values of LEADERSHIP, VISION, and COMMUNITY SERVICE in the future leaders of today” and I firmly believe that this goal is being achieved. The main component of the JCLA is the community service based projects that the students complete. We used to set the project for the students, but we found that we could emphasise vision more and get students more interested in the project if we let them set up their own projects. Some of their projects were amazing – for instance, the Red Cross Bloodathon project had 250 people donate blood, enough to save 700 lives! After hearing stories like this, I realized that the JCLA program can have a far reaching impact on people’s lives.

 

Another major part of the JCLA is ensuring that students that run clubs, organise societies, etc. have the chance to make some powerful connections with each other, and with some very influential people in Perth. The JCLA now has an advisory board that decides how the JCLA will grow in the future, and this board meets the students fairly regularly. Lately, students will also be mentored by members of the Western Australian Rotary Club.

 

 The JCLA also has a Poster presentation using GQM (see above) each semester, with the last semester having over 120 professionals reviewing posters. For students, this is their chance to get essentially 120 interviews in 2 hours. From this poster presentation, we’ve had a student be offered a scholarship to do a rotary project that takes him all the way around the world.

 

Only after these two weeks away from work, and doing the JCLA have I realised how much this program has changed people’s lives, and I am glad to have been a part of creating it and helping it grow. Thanks to Ian Fairnie, Jarrad Brown, Dave Platt, Troy Hendrickson, and Maureen Meredith for being a part of the JCLA. Looking forward to hearing about what happens next!

 

Next time – I’ll be returning to my previous types of post – relocation tips, and if no one has any objections, I might start writing some leadership posts soon.

 

Cheers for reading.