This weekend my daughter was a terror. On the one hand, that’s to be expected.  She’s 7.  On the other hand, every parent wants a perfect stress-free kid.  (And if you ever figure out how to get one, let me know!)  The problem is, in the moment it’s so hard to remember she’s 7, or that what she really needs is to learn the subtle difference in adult conversations verse kid conversations.  It’s frankly much easier to yell, get angry, or put her in timeout.

I wish I had taken my own advice from my most recent Upmarket Column, posted for Seth Godin’s newest online magazine.  Because that would have framed my weekend in a very different light.

So if you want to know how you can lead teams (or kids) in the midst of change, check it out!  And to tease you, here’s a blurb:

There was a time when people knew what was expected of them.  Their father had been a carpenter. Their grandfather had been a carpenter.  And they were going to be a carpenter.  They probably lived in the same village, if not the same house, for generations.  This is the way life was done.  It was predictable.  And expectations were set over generations.  People knew how to behave and how to fit into the group.

Today, this isn’t the case.  Factories close.  Employees quit.  Organizations relocate.  Change is the nature of the game.

Which means that virtually every day someone new is coming into your organization, your team, or your sphere of influence.  The problem with newcomers isn’t’ a lack of skill, but rather a lack of knowing the rules.  In almost every social context there are different rules.  Sometimes these differences are subtle (like who gets to eat first at the dinner table), other times they are obvious (like a suit and tie culture vs. jeans and a t-shirt.)

So how do you keep leading when everything keeps changing?  (Read More…)

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