Five Lessons Learned from Leadership

Not only do leaders teach their employees lessons, they learn from their role. Leaders play one of the most essential roles in business; they’re directly responsible for the success of others. Here are five valuable lessons that will aid you in your journey towards being a better leader.

 

Embrace change

Leadership needs to be fluid to be effective. The same methods will not work for every employee or every situation. As your business expands and grows, so should your leadership. For some people, this is intimidating. Change is a scary part of life, but one that is necessary for growth. As a leader, you should be driving change, not just embracing it. When you become too set in your ways, you don’t see the problems in your work or the areas that need attention, which sets you up for failure.

 

Be empathetic

As a leader, you learn how vital of a skill it is to be able to put yourself into someone else’s shoes. Leaders spend a large part of their day on people management. If they aren’t able to empathize with those people, their leadership will not be effective. Your team members want to feel valued and understood, and you as a leader need to be able to fulfill that. Before making significant decisions, think about how it affects the people around you.

 

Never stop learning

Throughout your professional career, you should always aim to keep learning. Whether it’s about business, or leadership, or something entirely separate, learning helps you to be a better leader. Make a personal goal to read a set number of books each year. Try to pick books across different categories to broaden your horizons further. Learning helps to keep you curious and rely on yourself to find answers to the questions that plague you.

 

Seek out advice

No one has all the answers on leadership. There are so many different styles of leadership and case studies and books on the subject that you can read and learn about, but those won’t always be effective for you. Seek out advice from someone close to you that you trust. Ask them how you’re doing and how you can improve. Ask them what isn’t working and what is. Feedback is how we learn and grow. Without it, you’re destined to stay stagnant in all areas of your life.

 

Walk the walk

It doesn’t matter how many inspirational speeches or business best practices you share with your employees if you’re not adhering to them yourself. While people do listen to what you say, they’re much more focused on what you do. If what you’re doing isn’t what you told them to be doing, they aren’t going to follow your advice. Leadership is also about proving results. Back up your advice with proof of its effectiveness.

 

This article was originally published on JimmyLustig.com.

Advertisements

How to Build a Strong Community

Community relationships are an essential part of our social lives. A community relationship becomes a safety net for those who live far away from their friends and family and allows us to become close with neighbors, friends, associates and other community members. When we form relationships within our communities, we learn to increase understanding, mutual respect and our fear of things decreases.

 

Remember, not everyone can put forth the same amount of time when it comes to building relationships and community. Be sure to identify what works best for you and then allocate your time and skills accordingly. The following tips will allow you to find ways to build great relationships with members of your local community.

 

Neighborhood involvement

Get involved. Anyone in a local neighborhood has the opportunity to get involved in a wide variety of activities. Not only is it a way to get to know the people in your area, but it’s also a way to get involved with what’s going on in your community.  This can be as simple as building a community garden or being a member of the planning committee for the neighborhood yard sale. You can even get your children involved in things going on around the neighborhood to help them to start building friendships and communities.

 

Find a cause and volunteer

Volunteering is the perfect way to get your entire family involved in a cause that means a lot to you. There are volunteer opportunitieswithin your neighborhood, but you can also volunteer at hospitals, clinics, community centers or nature centers. Reaching out to your community in this way allows you to become an integral part but also gain a sense of personal fulfillment.

 

Business Outreach

Local businesses play a significant role in helping build a community. Not only do they help build communities through the people they hire and the additional businesses they work with, but they can also build successful communities through one-day-events. These types of events can be held for a specific cause or organization or can be something that is community-wide. This is a way to get the staff involved with people they might not interact with on a regular basis.

 

Make it a regular thing

Setting aside a few extra hours a week or even a whole day that you can devote to doing things with your community can go a long way. Not only does this let you become an active member, but it also allows other members to see that you are committed to being involved and are a reliable person.

 

This article was originally published on JimmyLustig.net.

Nonprofit Spotlight: The Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance

The Museum of Tolerance (MOT) opened in Los Angeles in 1993. Beyond an institution devoted to the preservation of objects, artifacts, and documents, the MOT is designed to be an experience that immerses the audience in the knowledge of tolerance and what it means, a Museum that encourages individuals of all backgrounds to examine their assumptions and value systems and to engage in a dialogue that facilitates growth and change.

 

The creation of the Museum of Tolerance

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a respected and internationally renowned Jewish human rights organization, named to honor the late Simon Wiesenthal, a famous Nazi hunter, began to plan for The Museum of Tolerance with input from the representatives of the world’s most influential and prestigious museums and cultural institutions.

 

These think tank sessions proposed a fresh perspective, a Museum that would provide a unique experience to the museum-goer by encouraging thought and conversation, molding attitudes, and offering information on the arena of tolerance and human understanding.

 

Simon Wiesenthal believed that the idea of preserving the past was imperative, yet, as necessary as that honoring and recording is, it must motivate and inspire us to take action in the present. The Museum of Tolerance should serve to prevent hatred and genocide from occurring to any group, both in contemporary times and in the future.

 

And the winner is tolerance!

The MOT has been honored as the recipient of the Global Peace and Tolerance Award from the Friends of the United Nations. This accolade has underscored The Museum of Tolerance’s role as a human rights laboratory and educational center which turns on the fulcrum of inviting guests to understand the Holocaust in its historical context and as viewed through the lens of today.

 

Holocaust education is vitally important because studies had shown that when the MOT was being planned, young people, even as early as the 1980s, were debating if the Holocaust had occurred. This added to the imperative for MOT to present the phenomena of the Holocaust in a way that encouraged the audience to explore, expose and to energize a dialogue that began with one expression of prejudice and genocide and then to extrapolate ideas of tolerance from the lessons learned. To start the work of confronting and uprooting all forms of discrimination is the role that the MOT hopes to instill in viewers.

 

This article was originally published on JimmyLustig.org.

How to be a Leader in your Community

Being involved in your community is a great way to give back. It helps you feel more connected to the place you live, and can also help you meet other, like-minded individuals. If you’re looking to take your community involvement, consider adopting a leadership role.

 

Why should you be a community leader?

There are many benefits that come with being a leader in your community. People will look up to you as a reliable figure who cares about their community. Being a leader in your community gives you the chance to make a difference. You get to see the impact you are having on others with the programs you help to support.

 

Leadership gives you an opportunity to grow. Leading groups of people can be very challenging and requires strong people skills and confidence in your abilities. Becoming a leader in your community will help you develop your leadership skills which will benefit you in other areas of your life.

 

One of the strongest reasons for becoming a community leader is because they’re needed. The more people who take on leadership roles, the more problems that can be solved. Community leaders help to tackle issues such as youth development, crime, and economic development, among others.

 

How do you become a leader?

Most people aren’t born natural leaders. Instead, they learn how to become strong leaders.

 

Listen to the people in your community and learn what’s important to them. They want to feel that their thoughts and input are valued. If they feel that they’re being listened to, they will trust your leadership and in turn, become more engaged with their community.

 

Most likely, no one is going to approach you about taking on a leadership role. You need to put yourself into that role. Understand that you have valuable things to offer and put yourself in the position to showcase those. Put yourself in a place where you are able to step out as a leader. Attend town hall meetings and speak up and share your thoughts.

 

Set goals that you would like your community to meet. Then, decide what meeting those goals in the short- and long-term will look like, and how you can make that happen. Come up with an action plan for making your community a better place, and follow through with it.

 

This article was originally published JimmyLustig.net.

Charity versus Philanthropy: What’s the Difference?

Often, the words charity and philanthropy are used interchangeably. Both have to do with giving and helping others, so it’s easy to conflate the meaning of the two words. But, the two words have distinct meanings and deal with different areas of world change. To put it in simple terms, charity is giving, while philanthropy is doing.

 

Charity is a short-term response focused on relief and rescue. It addresses an immediate need for a community or a cause, such as food, shelter and medical care. Giving a meal or a coat to a homeless person would be charity, not philanthropy. While it’s addressing a need and is necessary, it doesn’t tackle the root issue.

 

Philanthropy focuses on finding a long-term solution to a problem. Philanthropy aims to solve problems, instead of providing temporary fixes to them. Philanthropy is a more strategic plan of giving that’s built around past success and has a strong focus on the community. While charity often only benefits one or a few people, philanthropy aims to reach a much broader group of people. By tackling the societal roots of these problems, philanthropy seeks to change the world in the long-term.

 

Another common misconception is that only the rich can be philanthropists. While those with money can tackle larger humanitarian issues, like donating money to build a new hospital wing, everyone can be a philanthropist. Everyone can make changes in small ways with some planning. Speak to the people in your community and learn what their needs are. Then, learn how to use the skills and resources you have to contribute to a solution to those needs.

 

This is not to say that charity is useless or should be done away with; it solves a purpose and gives us a chance to make small impacts on others. Both charity and philanthropy are necessary, and one isn’t better than the other. Another way to look at it is that philanthropy and charity are two different approaches to solving the same problem. They’re overlapping strategies that both are vital to the nonprofit sector. The two work in tandem with each other and the hope is that the practice of philanthropy eventually eliminates the need for charity.

 

An example of how the two work together can be seen in dealing with addiction. Philanthropy may fund a study that looks into risk factors of addiction or provides preventative education that works to prevent people from becoming addicts in the first place. These are long-term strategies, and ones that may take years to make any difference in addiction rates. A charitable organization would deal with the right-now of drug addiction, perhaps in the form of starting a detox center, to handle the immediate need.

 

This article was originally published on JimmyLustig.org.

Nonprofit Spotlight: The Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes

The Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes is one of the largest diabetes institutions in the world. Located in Aurora, Colorado, the Center specializes in type 1 diabetes research for both children and adults. Through the Center, treatment is provided to pediatric and adult patients through the use of clinics.

 

The Center also focuses on educating families and patients about type 1 diabetes and its treatment. The center also focuses on education for medical professionals. Physician assistants and medical students can choose elective rotations at the Center.

 

In 1978, the center was funded by Marvin Davis and opened in 1980 in Denver. The center is supported by the Children’s Diabetes Foundation, which was founded in 1977 by Barbara and Marvin Davis. In 1980, the Center opened at the Ninth Avenue campus in Denver and moved in 2005 to the Anschutz Medical Campus, where it’s still located.

 

Barbara and Marvin Davis were inspired to start the Foundation and Center after their daughter Dana was diagnosed with diabetes when she was seven years old. Though the Davis’ had the money to get the proper care for their daughter, there was no way to cure her disease. After seeing how diabetes affected Dana, Barbara wanted to create a center where no one would be denied care.

 

The Center provides care to 80 percent of children in Colorado with type 1 diabetes, and 2000 adults living in the Rocky Mountain Region. Since it was founded, the Foundation has raised almost $100 million to support diabetic research and treatment.

 

Donations to the Foundation go directly to supporting care and research at the Center. Currently, the Center is working on 81 research projects that are aimed at increasing knowledge about diabetes and its effect on the body.

 

One current research project at the Center is stem cell researchers making insulin-producing beta cells that are derived from human stem cells. The Center is one of only a few labs in the world that are capable of this.

 

One of the Foundation’s largest fundraisers is the biennial Carousel of Hope Ball. Founded in 1978, the event is black-tie and invitation-only. In 2017, the 31st Ball was held and raised $1.65 million and featured a performance by Lenny Kravitz.

 

This article was originally published on JimmyLustig.org.

Four of the Best Books for Leaders

Most great leaders aren’t born knowing how to lead others. Leadership is a skill that can be taught, and one that should continually be worked on. No one will never know everything there is to know; it’s a constant process of improving and being better. While there are thousands of books on leadership, and each serves a purpose, these four should be required reading for everyone currently holding a leadership role, or those looking to step into a higher position.

 

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

In Drive, Pink examines the most common form of motivation used by leaders, incentives, and why it isn’t the most effective. Instead, he proposes that people respond best to being given a purpose. The best motivation is feeling like you’re working towards something, whether it’s learning something new or improving the world. He uses four decades of scientific research into motivation to illustrate how businesses have been approaching motivation wrong for years.

 

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: The Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni

In this book, Lencioni dives into teams and how to successfully lead one. A good team leader has to learn how to get the most out of each team member, which begins with trust. It outlines the cause of five common problems that occur when working in team settings and provides practical advice for solving them.

 

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier

Stanier has made a career out of teaching leadership skills to over 10,000 managers, making him the perfect person to write a leadership book. In this book, he takes essential leadership skills and applies them to seven core questions. With these seven questions, he demonstrates how to unlock people’s potential by saying less and asking more.

 

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke

Very rarely does a leader have all of the information when making crucial decisions. A former World Series of Poker champion and current business consultant, Duke teaches the key to long-term success is to think in terms of making bets. By using examples from business, politics, sports and poker, she illustrates that great decisions don’t necessarily lead to great outcomes, and a bad decision doesn’t mean a bad outcome.

 

This article was originally published on JimmyLustig.com.