Developing Leadership Character at Work

Recently I was delighted to become an "aardvocate" of a Q&A site call Vark.  It rings the bells of Yahoo! Answers, but it's fresher, easier-to-use and more social network friendly. (Again, this is probably something my GenY groupies would agree with)  Basically you ask questions and knowledgable people of that topic answer. A question was sent to me "How to develop leadership character at work?"  I refuse to write "how to" articles particularly when they involve self-growth, but I will spread some great young professional advice that I received from a professor/now friend while completing a MSc in International Business Development at the University of Neuchâtel in Switerland. He told me to:
  • Continue sticking out of the crowd
  • In meetings, be the last person to add something interesting to the conversation
  • Be the person who takes initiatives and take them in front of your superiors
  • Speak concisely and follow with actions
  • Never disappoint, and if it's unavoidable, take responsibility and fix it
One thing I would add particularly being in the IT world is to be human when possible!  Rather than emailing your colleagues sitting next to you, approach them....talk human-to-human...be old-fashioned, and look up the word "old-fashioned" if you have no clue what it means.  When a colleague looks stressed, approach them with sincerity.  And for goodness sakes, let people know that you're alive as opposed to disappearing in the corner or staying behind the computer. Do NO ordinary please!! Lead and stick out! Companies and the world continually needs leaders. And if you need some motivational music, click the music note [caption id="attachment_612" align="alignnone" width="107" caption="motivation music"]
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Artists have BIG balls

Artists have BIG balls in my opinion. Why?  Because they are themselves. Nothing more, nothing less. When we're kids, we're free to be ourselves...free to jump, free to scream, free to pee!! (sometimes gladly on ourselves :) As we get older, however, freedom diminishes.  Society continually stuffs our lives with sets of rules, parents, teachers, and more rules devoted to building us into people that can live within society with acceptable character traits.  "NO!!", "Don't do that, do this", "What are you thinking?" "Your boss is going to be pissed"..........all said and done....bye bye peeing-on-yourself days. It stings the first few times being told NO, (you cry), but eventually you get less emotional, (few tears), to even unaffected (rock face). In the corporate world, it's very easy to fall into a trap of achieving what is expected.  Nothing more or else it looks like you're unfocused.  Nothing less or else it looks like you're not working hard enough.  I think many fear hearing someone say "NO!".  That would imply still being a kid, and obviously that will not accelerate our career paths. That's why I love artists.  They take large amounts of criticism, back lash, rejection, disappointment, .etc...and yet they continue doing what makes them so unique.  It's almost as if they said, "I don't care what you think.  I care what I think." Well many of us may dream to be artists.  We commonly think of being a painter, photographer, or the next Justin Timberlake (sorry ladies, but Justin Bieber is before my music generation).  But I like to think of an artist as simply being "a person whose work exhibits exceptional skill" (oddly the fifth definition).  For me, this is something that anyone can be. We are all artist if we believe it. A side note, next time at work when you get knocked down or frowned upon for trying to push your creative ideas that you feel passionate about, maybe you should consider whether or not you want to become such a person.