Each Friday I present something inspirational here and try to connect the dots to our leadership role – and aid in our personal or even our organizational leadership development. Today that takes the form of a simple couplet that I first read in David Schwartz’s classic The Magic of Thinking Big. What kind of world

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Several days while passing through the Denver airport (with at least two books in my bag), I stopped in a bookstore to browse. I left with two books, including, How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein. Because I like American history (thanks to my Grandma) and geography (thanks to my Dad), I was sure

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As has been reported widely in the past couple of days, President Obama has been in office for 100 days.  If he is in office for one term (all that can be guaranteed at this time), his total time in office (depending on how you count the two Inauguration Days) will be 1460 days. In other

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Your Friday leadership inspiration comes from Susan Boyle. You may not know her name, but you’ve heard the story (and well over 60 million views of various versions of the video prove it that you likely have) of the nondescript, 47 year old woman who sang recently on the television show “Britain’s Got Talent” If you haven’t

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Twitter, if you don’t know, is a micro-blogging or instant updating social media tool, that is growing at expontential rates (even before Oprah joined the party).  I’ve been on Twitter user for over a year and now have over 4100 followers, which probably puts me in the top couple percent of all users. But it

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I’ve been writing my Powerquotes Plus newsletter for nine years (and it’s predecessor Powerquotes for 13 years).  In every issue there is a quotation, questions to ponder, and action steps. Because of this, I have written 1000’s of questions over the years, hopefully many of them very good. But a question I wrote the other day, while

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In a casual conversation this morning, Jenny Pratt told about her daughter Madison’s current third grade English assignment, which included writing Cinquain poetry*.  Not knowing anything about this type of poetry I was intrigued and thought it might be fun to write some for a blog post. Leadership responsibility opportunity communicating inspiring encouraging Making a

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Many of the challenges we face as a leader seem tough, unusual, and perhaps unsolvable.  Many puzzle enthusiasts, working on puzzles as diverse as Sudoku,  crosswords, video games (and more) thrill for puzzles with those same descriptors. Perhaps our leadership lesson from them starts from recognizing their attitude and it’s important to ultimate success.  Rather than procrastinating or

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I’ve long loved reading inspirational materials. I find them not only edifying, but tremendously valuable personally and professionally.  I truly believe part of our role as a leader is to inspire others through our words and actions. I recently wrote a post called Creating Leadership Inspiration that shares my perspective.  Part of that post encourages

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Members of our Remarkable Leadership Learning System were treated to a great Guest Conversation call this week.  My guest was Bruce Tulgan, the author of many books, including his newest Not Everyone Gets a Trophy: How to Manage Generation Y. Because our members are focused on being more effective at giving feedback, (Bruce also wrote a

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