New blog post on transforming power: psy

New blog post on transforming power: psychological and not just political transitions http://ht.ly/8IAo0 #power #leadership

Reflecting on sacrifice http://ht.ly/8v3

Reflecting on sacrifice http://ht.ly/8v31v #MLK2012

Innovating education http://ht.ly/8ohRc

Innovating education http://ht.ly/8ohRc

Why do we prefer the underdog position?

Why do we prefer the underdog position? http://ht.ly/8jR5F #conflict #power

What will your year be about? New post o

What will your year be about? New post on the year of living selectively http://ht.ly/8f0xY

Addressing global burn out – insights, e

Addressing global burn out – insights, experience and best practices from Worldwork and diverse fields IAPOP Conference 2012 http://ht.ly/821pd

Mismatch between #power and #status lead

Mismatch between #power and #status leads to abuse http://ht.ly/6GKhj

New Blog Site

Thank you for visiting my blog, A User’s Guide to Power. The blog is now hosted on my own site, www.juliediamond.net/blog.  I invite you to come and read my newest posts there. This will be the last post on this site. I look forward to your visits and comments at my new location.

Five Leadership Trends for the Next Decade

The last decade is a strong contender for the title “the decade of dubious leadership.” From the handling of Katrina to the collapse of the banking system, it was a disastrous decade for leadership. Ironically, it was also a decade during which more was written on leadership than ever before. I’m hoping for a better decade of leadership, and here are my top five leadership trends I’d like to see take off in the coming years.

1. Good enough leadership. Enough with excellence. We may be better off with ‘good enough leadership.’ Our infatuation with leaders and celebrities smacks of feudalism, and might even be at the root of leadership failures. When we overly estimate high rank, we don’t see those above us as needing help, dependent, or fallible. So rather than feeling it’s our responsibility to help leaders, we hold them to an impossible standard of behavior, and when a lapse occurs, attribute the fault to an abuse of power, rather than to their human fallibility. This deification of leadership is bad for organizations and bad for democracy. It furthers the idea that change happens from above, and serves as a disincentive for others to step forward to lead and serve.  And when leaders buy into their own deification they keep themselves isolated and out of touch with what’s happening. Good enough leadership recognizes leader’s limitations, fallibility, need for help and dependence on those below. Leaders can only be as good as the followers they develop.

Single, available hero seeking big messy problem

What’s the solution for solving the health care mess? Global warming? The economy? OK, these are bad examples, obviously if we knew, and if it were that easy, they’d be solved. But the question I want to ask is, why do we wait to tackle our problems until they are so complicated, so messy, so escalated that they require Herculean efforts?