Seth Saunders Uncategorized

Do You Have the Heart of a Leader?

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Ken Blanchard's avatarHow We Lead

teach, inspire, motivate - a collage of isolated words in vintaI’ve worked with thousands of leaders over the years and the most successful ones achieve results while acting with respect, care, and fairness for the well-being of everyone involved. Many companies put pressure on leaders to reach or surpass goals at any cost. But wise companies realize that leaders who can achieve results by creating a motivating work environment are the leaders who will sustain future success.

What’s the secret behind this kind of leader? I think truly effective leadership begins on the inside—with your heart. Leading from your heart is about leadership character and intention, which form the backbone of servant leadership. As a leader, you must ask yourself why you lead. Is it to serve or to be served? Answering this question in a truthful way is so important. You can’t fake being a servant leader. I believe that if leaders don’t get the heart right, they simply…

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Seth Saunders Learning

Connecting through Communicating

We are always communicating, that should come to no surprise to anyone. However, ifConnect 1 you look at the world we live in today, the majority of the problems, situation, issues, challenges and trials that the human race in general are facing are directly connected to communication.

The great John Maxwell stated in his book Connected, “People cannot succeed in life
without communicating effectively.” I love this this quote, not just because it is simple and to the point but because it is 100% true. Our ability to communicate will directly impact everything we do.

Not sure when the last time I completed a Connect the Dots but I do remember completing many of them in my earlier years. Why is this activity so intriguing to kids? Because once you connected all the dots, you had a complete picture. You felt like you accomplished your goal. Wow, a powerful lesson that the majority of us learned early on in life. If we connect theConnect 3 dots in the proper order, we have a clear picture at the end. On the other hand, if we skip, go out of order or do not finish that connect the dots, we are left with an incomplete picture. There is no excitement in this; in fact we may feel like we failed. So it is with our ability to connect with others through communicating effectively. Understanding the impact of what we are communicating, either directly or indirectly, is absolutely vital to ensure that we reach out goals.

We do not all communicate the same but we all do communicate. It is important to understand that communicating is both sharing and listening or receiving. If we feel that we are good communicators just because we can talk a lot, we are only good at throwing up on people. If we feel that we are a great listener but never share anything, we are simply a wall. The ability to communicate means we know how to balance our talking and listening. It means we strive to hear what is being said or communicated.

I can tell you from personal experience that people will make a connection with you only after there is has been some type of quality communication. When I talk about connection, I mean a relationship passed the initial introduction. They will reach out to you and/or they will respond to you when you reach out to them. The key to ensuring this takes place is your ability to communicate effectively.

I will share more about ways to communicate in the future but for now, I want you to ponder about the relationship’s you have with others and how you communicate with them. This may be at work, home, church, school or just within the community. Are you making the connections you want? Why or why not? How is your communication impacting this?

Now, time go make some lasting connections through effective communication.Connect 4

Seth Saunders Learning

Learning through Stories

We all love a good story, especially if we can take something away from the story. When we learn through stories and experiences, we tend to utilize that knowledge more often. The more we use our knowledge, the great opportunity we have to develop our training-logostrengths.

The best leaders and public speakers are those that can share a story that illustrates what they are talking about and then create the motivation to take action. Here is one such story that I really like as there are many lessons to learn. As you read it, take some time to ponder what lessons there are to learn, write those down and find ways you might be able to improve.

Two sons work for their father on the family’s farm. The younger brother had for some years been given more responsibility and reward, and one day the older brother asks his father to explain why.

The father says, “First, go to the Kelly’s farm and see if they have any geese for sale – we need to add to our stock.”

The brother soon returns with the answer, “Yes they have five geese they can sell to us.”

That father then says, “Good, please ask them the price.”

The son returns with the answer, “The geese are £10 each.”

The father says, “Good, now ask if they can deliver the geese tomorrow.”

And duly the son returns with the answer, “Yes, they can deliver the geese them tomorrow.”

The father asks the older brother to wait and listen, and then calls to the younger brother in a nearby field, “Go to the Davidson’s          Farm and see if they have any geese for sale – we need to add to our stock.”

The younger brother soon returns with the answer, “Yes, they have five geese for £10 each, or ten geese for £8 each; and they                can deliver them tomorrow – I asked them to deliver the five unless they heard otherwise from us in the next hour. And I agreed t        that if we want the extra five geese we could buy them at £6 each.”

The father turned to the older son, who nodded his head in appreciation – he now realized why his brother was given more                        responsibility and reward.

Great little story right? So what are some of the lessons that you can take away?

Instead of providing my thoughts on this one, I will leave it up to you. I would love to have you respond to this post as I always want to learn from others.

Hero Helpful Hint (H3):

Think of personal experiences or stories that you have heard that can help you teach key principals. Make a list of those so you have them ready when you need them.