Effective Leadership: The secret to happiness...

I had the opportunity to attend the ASTD national conference in Washington DC this past week. It was a great experience and I'll try to get a few posts up specific to what I learned. One recurring theme reminded me of a comedian I heard a few years back. His bit went something like this: "Hey, you want to know the secret to happiness? Lower your goals!" He may have meant it as a joke, but there's a nugget of truth in his statement; though I would rephrase it a bit. I wouldn't say to lower your goals but to have fewer goals.

One of the conference sessions I attended featured Ken Blanchard, author of "The One-Minute Manager", who applied this take on the Pareto principle: 20 percent of what a person does accounts for 80 percent of their success. Think about that. Most of our success comes down to just a few key behaviors! This concept lines up with the findings in an awesome book called "Influencer" which says the key to changing behavior is to identify the few "vital behaviors" instead of trying to change a laundry list of behaviors.

In managing the performance of our teams we will likely have much more success focusing on a few rather than many behaviors. It's no different on a personal level - we can't beat ourselves up over a litany of behaviors. Instead, we should focus on those vital behaviors that will have the most impact.

More to come....