How are we doing this?

We’re giving away our powerful proprietary leadership tool, the Framework for (Enlightened) Leadership™ Worksheet and a 20-minute video on how to use it effectively.

Our goal is to give it away one million times and to invite people to duplicate it, watch the video, and use it all they want. You might be personally familiar with the power of the Framework for:

- turning around struggling projects or groups

-leading organizational change

-aligning dissenting groups toward common goals

-innovative problem-solving

-resolving challenging conflicts

-engaging employees for new levels of effectiveness

-inspiring performance reviews(organizational and individual)

-continuous empowered improvement

-breakthrough negotiation in tough situations

How can you help?

You can help by giving it away physically or by emailing it to key people throughout your organization, to friends who own or manage businesses/organizations, to your associations, to the leadership team of your place of worship, etc. It won’t cost you anything and it can make a big difference when someone gets the power of the tool.

The Framework Worksheet is attached as a pdf file on this blog post. Just click here to download it onto your computer. It will open in a new window.

To access the accompanying video, simply go the web address on the Worksheet, or click HERE.

We’ve got a long ways to go to reach one million giveaways, so we’d appreciate your sending the PDF file or the link (http://budurl.com/framework251) to at least TEN PEOPLE who could use it. Or you could duplicate and pass out the hardcopy Framework Worksheet. Whatever is easier for you.

We’re grateful for your help, and we’re excited to giveaway one of the most powerful leadership tools we know!

Here’s to making a difference in 2011,

Ed Oakley and the Enlightened Leadership Solutions team.

President Obama’s speech at the memorial service for the thirteen fallen soldiers at Ft. Hood, Texas, was exactly what I needed to hear to put me into a very special place of gratitude for all the women and men who have served and continue to serve our country and preserve our safety, our freedom and our ideals – our honored Veterans.

It is so easy to take our abundant and comfortable lives for granted, yet so many Veterans  have given so much of themselves, sometimes ALL of themselves, to assure our ability to pursue happiness and stay free. I’m grateful for their leadership!

As I now have two family members who are committing their remarkable talent to the service of our country, I am especially proud of these two young men. Forgive me for proudly pointing them out separately from the many who serve and have served:

John Robert Crowley III, who is in the early process of becoming a Navy Seal, something he has been clear about for years.

Blake Ensley Fisher, who is a Marine in training to fly the V-22 Osprey. Blake has been focused for years on becoming a Marine pilot.

Our country’s freedom could not be in better hands than with men and women like these two outstanding citizens – and the many more like them with such a clarity of mission and service. God Bless you guys! I’m so proud of you!

God Bless our Veterans and God Bless those in our armed services who continue to defend human rights, justice and freedom all over the world.

Do take time today to reflect and express your gratitude to our Veterans.

God Bless the United States of America.

With much gratitude,

Ed Oakley and the Enlightened Leadership Team!

Technorati Tags: ft-hood, gratitude, obama, veterans

Watch this six minute video to get that clarification!

Just three more days before we close registration.

Let us know any questions you might have below!

The Enlightened Leadership Team

Technorati Tags: DIFFICULT TIMES, leading change

I hope you’re thriving, or at least holding your own during these challenging economic times.

A week ago, we gathered 5 expert panelists to address management challenges sent in by our subscribers. The result was a webinar 90 minutes long of excellent ideas that likely address issues YOU are facing right now.

This journal post will give you access to the webinar recording, thanks to the suggestion of our Making Managers into Leaders Institute members. We’ve also made it easier for you to review the material without necessarily going through all 90 minutes. So before telling you where to go for the recording, here is what we have done to help:

- We have broken the webinar into segments by question. You can select the TAB with the question NUMBER of interest to you, or go through the whole webinar.

Here are some examples of questions:

1. My concern will be how to convince your non-qualified, conservative, rigid but senior (bosses) on many things that need reform or change? In Pakistan, there is a paucity of informed and qualified leaders in almost all the business and public sector arenas. We as junior managers find it very difficult to convince our pessimistic and non-professional bosses and have to take lot of heartburn in dealing with the organizational development, which is much needed in our scenario.

Shahzad

4. How does a leader who faces layoffs speak with his people without deceiving them, not give false hope but also not crush their hope? 

  What is the most important step(s) to take as we stumble or slide into this next difficult period?

Brian

8. How to minimize the RIF paranoia that seems to build as the economy continues to worsen?

Daniel    (RIF is Reduction in Force)

11. What have you found effective in helping others overcome fear of the unknown?

What works in overcoming the paralysis of analysis?

How do you help others (and yourself) stay focused on the high-payoff actions and avoid wasting time?

Tom

There are nine other sets of questions like these addressed on the replay! Go check it out!

OK, HOW DO I FIND THE REPLAY?

I’m glad you asked.

We put the replay on a new Management/Leadership community that we are experimenting with. It’s a great platform for creating some dialog around the questions and solutions – which can help everyone. Hope you’ll participate!

Go to www.managerstoleaders.com. You’ll need to do a very simple registration – (unless you happen to belong to any other Ning community).

When you’re in the community, you’ll see “Optimizing Your Teams’ Effectiveness in Difficult Times” in the middle of the page at the top. Just click on the title to see the entire article and video.

You’ll see the questions on the post, so you can selectively listen to responses if you choose. The question numbers can also help you remember how far you got in listening – and more importantly – pick up later where you left off.

Enjoy the excellent answers to tough questions, and share your thoughts or additional questions.

Best regards,

 The Enlightened Leadership Team

I have to work hard every day on not ONLY being aware of the little things going on around me, but also to take responsibility for taking action when the awareness is there. I often have realizations or awarenesses that are just a little too late. Staying conscious requires staying focused on it.  It is not automatic for me. Can you relate?

Here is an example that happened just this morning. I was leaving Starbucks when I ran into my friends Stephen and Leslie and their friend from Los Angeles, who was in town to sing at the opening ceremonies of the Democratic National Convention just started here in Denver, Colorado.  Now the DNC has absolutely nothing to do with this story, but putting in this posting might just attract some additional readers, so forgive me for that!

It is a bright, sunny day here, so I was chatting with them with my sun glasses on. I was sharing some things that happened over the weekend that I felt they would relate to. As I was talking, I was vaguely aware that their friend removed her sunglasses. Then, I was also vaguely aware that Leslie had removed hers. I had the thought – how thoughtful of them to do that so I can see their eyes and better communicate. And Stephen had his sunglasses off from the very beginning.

Can you guess the rest of the story?

Yep, I had left them and was driving away in my car when I realized that I had not returned the courtesy of removing my own sunshades. I was actually proud of myself for noticing their thoughtful behavior and never made the connection of what I could do to contribute to the communication – as well as just plain courtesy! Geez!

Probably no real harm done here, but if we were in a work relationship and discussing important work stuff, that little lack of awareness on my part could have led to misunderstanding, miscommunication and incorrect action.

I invite you to put some energy and effort into staying more conscious of the little things going on around you, as I promise to do also. The good news for me is that having this awareness – even late – is likely to help me improve.  Awareness is the key first step!

So, if you’re late in your awareness like me, don’t beat yourself up about it. In fact, acknowledge that you did have the awareness. Give yourself credit for it, and you’ll get better and better over time. Beat yourself up, and you’ll never improve!

To ever improving consciousness,

Ed Oakley   Making Managers into Leaders Institute

We would love to hear your comments after taking the tour.

Enjoy the tour! Come back and click on Making Managers into Leaders Institute for more information.

Please comment below!

The Enlightened Leadership Team  & Making Managers into Leaders Institute

Please VOTE now for the #1 Leadership Blog. While we hope you’ll vote for Leadership Made Simple, we just consider it a privilege to be on the same list as these others.

After scrolling down and experiencing some of the videos on our journal/blog, then go HERE to see the competition and VOTE!

We appreciate your support!

In gratitude,

The Enlightened Leadership Team

Before a formal announcement, however, we have some decisions to make and you can have a big impact on those decisions.

Please watch the video and make comments, or email us at contactus@enleadership.com with your input.

So, the four questions were:

1. What input do you have about any part of what Ed shared?

2. What would be the value to you if, as a member, you solved just 3 of your management challenges in the next 3 months?

3. Given that value, what would you be willing to pay on a monthly basis for the Silver membership?

4. What additional services for the premium level, the Gold level, would entice you to seriously consider upgrading to that?

Thanks for your continuing support as our team works hard to bring you the services you want and need!

The Enlightened Leadership Team

ps: Following is an approximate transcription of this video on”What are we up to?”:

So, just what are we up to? Thanks for your continuing comments and emails. They have had a profound effect on what we will be announcing, and I’d like to tell you more about what that will be. Here are some of the components:

1st, we have a 10-hour slide VIDEO COURSE on Making Managers Into Leaders that we are chopping up in a way that you could watch a 10 minute segment or a number of  segments and go back and pick up where you were by segment. Watch multiple segments for 30-40-60 minutes whatever time you choose to spend in a sitting. Your choice!

2nd, we have about 100 brief (1 ½ – 5 minute) AUDIO LEARNING points and stories from numerous Enlightened Leadership staff and clients. They are categorized by things like:

•    Bringing Out the Best in People
•    Conflict Resolution
•    Effective Meetings
•    Problem-Solving
•    Etc.

Next, we have 25 or so ARTICLES—also categorized. Some people like the written word so we’re considering transcription of all audio/videos…but we’ll wait and let the members guide that decision.

As for videos, wow! The feedback you’ve given us has profoundly impacted this project. Here are some general conclusions: 1.) Keep them short, even shorter is OK.

2.) Have a handout.

3). Blend seeing the speaker and slides when it would help the visual. You have said so much about videos that we are committing to our members to create 3 NEW VIDEOS per month, with slides & speaker and a handout. We listened and are excited about this.

Next, we’ll have an online FORUM that is also divided into categories. This is where anyone can ask questions and get answers from other members and from Enlightened Leadership staff. Once there is a critical mass of information, just
scanning a category could very well provide ideas for a solution. Initially, we will seed the forum with questions that invite comments. The idea is to start valuable conversations and develop a significant community.

We will also use these forum questions, comments and conversations to guide our video topics—with Just-In-Time learning in mind.

Next, we’ll have a monthly RECORDED WEBINAR of 45-60 minutes in length on a specific leadership/management topic. Some of these will be Enlightened Leadership staff. Some will be guest experts and organizational leaders.

Now, pricing has been our greatest stumbling block. Many of you have mentioned the challenge you realized that we have. Remember my passion—I want to make a difference in as many lives as I can… So, I want to provide a service for an
investment that can be pretty easily justified by anyone who wants to solve people issues and develop their management/leadership skills.

So, where we are leaning on the pricing issue is a two-tier approach—with some services available to the Silver Tier and some reserved for the Gold Tier.

Now, here is the plan, but don’t hold us to it. We are just talking with you about possibilities. We want you to join the conversation and help us.

The plan is that the Silver membership level will include everything we have mentioned so far. I want to be sure you heard that—the Silver membership will include everything discussed in this communication. That I’m pretty clear about.

So, please give us some feedback while it is fresh in your mind.
• What input do you have about any of this?
• What would be the value to you if you could use this membership & solve just 3 key challenges over the first 3 months?
• Given that value, what would you be willing to pay on a monthly basis for a Silver membership?
• What other services could we offer to the Gold members that would entice you to seriously consider investing in that premium level?

That’s it, please email us at contactus@enleadership.com with your thoughts or comment on the journal posting. Or, you could even call us at 303-729-0540 (in the U.S. 1-800-798-9881).

Thanks in advance for your continuing support in helping us provide what you need!

We continue to be grateful for all your feedback via email and comments. While it’s tough to respond to them directly, you can bet we’re reading them all and LISTENING!

This video in our “Experiment in Leadership Development” series addresses how we see management and leadership and their importance to each other. It might be familar to Enlightened Leadership clients, but the example story might be new to you.

The format of this one is VERY DIFFERENT. Please give us your perspectives on it!

So, please give us your comments, and if you haven’t already, fill out the survey. All of this will make sure our future products/services better fit your needs.And yes, we are working hard on something to announce. We’re not trying to hide that, but frankly your input has us scampering back to make changes and improvements. We’ve delayed the project for quite a while because of your input. And we’re not complaining, because we want the final “product” to make a huge difference for you!I’ve personally never known very much about marketing, but the feedback you’re giving us beats any marketing survey I’ve personally ever seen. It’s like you’re really engaged in determining what we release. What a concept!Keep talking to us about your management skills development needs, and we’ll keep listening.

Appreciatively,

Ed Oakley & the Enlightened Leadership Solutions Team