HUMANITY IS MY RELIGION

There is no Humanity B

Hi All, See this interesting article about how new technology is being created to enable humans to communicate better across species. So we can now look forward to communicating better with honeybees, dolphins, and elephants. It’s all very fascinating. Are there others out there working to create new methods (technological or otherwise) whereby humans can communicate qualitatively better with…

Hiring for Healthcare Security

Hi All, Please see this nice post by Alex Goldfayn. How true this is! Hire for attitude, instead of aptitude. As Alex points out, there is training for the latter. For those of us seeking to recruit Contact Professionals into the world of Healthcare Security (a never-ending task and even more challenging in today’s labor landscape), let me add some points. I contribute these for your…

How to Disagree with Someone more powerful than you

Hi All, Read this excellent article from the Harvard Business Review entitled, How to disagree with someone more powerful than you. Life is brief. Make a difference. You’d better make it now, as your life may be gone any minute. If you don’t speak up (appropriately & effectively) to stop the train wreck, the train may indeed wreck. Ego (that whispers in your ear to be afraid) is the enemy.…

Become a Samurai of Conflict Communication

All Contact Professionals training/needing to be experts in conflict communication (aka: de-escalation) should immediately notice the validity of all these 6 points (attributed to Morihei Ueshiba). If you don’t, then you’re likely only familiar with less-than-complete, check-the-box type trainings that attempt to boil things down to a few simplistic techniques. Conflict communication has its own…

Security Theater: Avoid It

Those of us in healthcare security leadership must do our best, based on best practices and industry standards (as well as our own innovative, forward-thinking, ideations) to create safer workplaces. We must both create safety AND help people feel safer. The two sometimes do not arrive together. We may do something very fundamental such as assess an area and then, for instance, based on the…

Taking Things Too Personally

Hi All, See this quote by Robert Greene: In our own inner turmoil, we tend the exaggerate the negative intentions of our opponents. In general, we take conflicts far too personally. ~ Robert Greene In life, such as the workplace, it is often the case that people presume the worst intentions of others and thus contribute to their very own hostile work environment (in their own heads). It’s…

Active Shooters: Upstream work to be done

Hi All, We watch cameras in a Security Operations Center (SOC) to capture footage, hopefully, left of bang, of bad guys planning to do bad things. And it’s good. We should keep it up and indeed we should grow our SOCs into ever more sophisticated centers. Yet, we still, collectively, as a society, are not going far enough upstream to sustainably stop the next active shooter. We should be…

General Powell’s Perennial Rules

According to me, no leadership library is complete unless crowned with the classic book by General Colin Powell, It Worked for Me (Enhanced Edition): In Life and Leadership. I will go so far as to say that your library is deficient unless this book is present (and, of course, read and absorbed). I was originally gifted this book by a former leader who exemplified the best leadership I had ever…

There are no good or bad organizations

Hi All, See this quote by Field Marshal Sir Bill Slim. In the British Army there are no good units and no bad units – only good and bad officers and NCOs. They make or break the unit. ~ Field Marshal Sir Bill Slim, 1949 (in the foreword to the first edition of the British Army Review, then called the British Army Journal) I would argue that the same can be said of any organization,…

Field Marshal Sir Bill Slim on Leadership being not management

Leadership is of the spirit, compounded of personality and vision: its practice is an art. Management is of the mind, more a matter of accurate calculation, of statistics, of methods, timetables and routine; its practice is a science. Managers are necessary; leaders are essential. ~ Field Marshal Sir Bill Slim, Governor General of Australia, 1957

Leadership is something more than management

We never lost sight of the reality that people, particularly gifted commanders, are what make units succeed. The way I like to put it, leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible. General Colin Powell, 1995

What Makes a Good Leader

Let us look briefly at what makes a good leader. One can see many lists of qualities and traits of leaders on sites such as LinkedIn. Go there and explore. These lists are all potentially useful, as long as we all remember that what may be good for one person may not be that useful for another. And that’s perfectly fine, as we are all different. Lists of leadership qualities are fine, but it’s…

Leadership must be based on Goodwill

050706-N-0000X-004 Navy File Photo – President of the U.S. Naval War College, Vice Adm. James Bond Stockdale, USN. U.S. Navy photo (RELEASED) “Leadership must be based on goodwill. Goodwill does not mean posturing and, least of all, pandering to the mob. It means obvious and wholehearted commitment to helping followers. We are tired of leaders we fear… What we need for leaders are men of heart…

Be on the Lookout for Ways to Help Others

Go here for a nice post on LinkedIn. The folks over at Leadership First always put out great posts in reference to leadership. Seek them out. Now let me add another side to this particular image. Certainly, when someone is being inappropriate, mean, rude, or belittling, you need not listen, unless it is your duty to do so. If it is your duty, then, as a Contact Professional, you should be well…

There are no innocent bystanders

There are no innocent bystanders. When wrong-doing occurs in this world, your silence is tacit approval. If you witness inappropriate behavior, wrong behavior, unjust behavior, Assist othersFix thingsStop something that is wrongMobilize yourself to intervene It’s not just so-called Protection Professionals who should be adopting a protector mindset. It is equally important for us all, as World…

Respect at all Times

Hi All, Contact Professionals familiar with the teachings of Verbal Judo should immediately reflect on George Thompson’s great teaching on this point and the difference between respect and RE-spect. If you’re not familiar with it, go here for a perennial classic. If you actually follow the discipline of Verbal Judo, then you know that there are, literally, no times in life when you’re not…