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Personal development: Evaluating non-traditional leadership criteria March 8, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development, Leadership.
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If developing the attribute or character trait of leadership capability or potential is part of your personal growth program, you may be pursuing that goal from an overly traditional viewpoint.

Particularly in a business setting, the requirement for demonstrating leadership capability may often be limited to a number of perhaps stereotyped and oversimplified traditional criteria.

Criteria that may be out of sync with the qualities of leadership required in today’s fast-evolving (even revolutionary) world of interpersonal relations.

In an article by Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times International Weekly edition, titled: “How to Get a Job at Google”, the author discusses Google’s hiring criteria. One of the criteria is leadership.

Friedman interviewed Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google. Bock emphasized that Google is particularly interested in emergent leadership as opposed to “traditional” leadership:

“Traditional leadership is, were you president of the chess club? Were you vice president of sales? How quickly did you get there? We don’t care. What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you’re a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else? Because what’s critical to be an effective leader in this environment is you have to be willing to relinquish power,” Bock says.

Something to think about.

Personal development: Take ownership of your individual growth discoveries March 5, 2014

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development.
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In developing the potential of your personal growth program(s) to higher levels, you might want to start paying attention to your own self-generated creative ideas on the general topic of self-improvement.

Because personal development is as much about the journey as it is about reaching the destination, you are bound to have creative reactions and make personal discoveries as you travel the road of your specific program.

This is particularly true when you are focussed on achieving internal improvement rather than being focused on external practical skills development, such as learning how to play a particular musical instrument, for example.

As you study personal growth materials in more and more detail, you will find that you may not agree with everything you read. Or you may discover that you have a “different take” or an entirely new approach concerning a recommendation, or a general principle suggested by one  or more personal growth writers.

It is important to write your ideas down, such as in a notebook, and to review them from time. Gradually you may find that this helps you to personalize your growth program, which is important.

One size does not fit all within the concepts and teachings suggested in self-improvement materials.