“All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.” — Aristotle

Now there’s a fine question to start you day with, isn’t it? Take heart, this post just might let your inner-kid out to play and make your day more meaningful, in whatever you do.

“There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” — Winston Churchill

To predict explosive change before it occurs, you need to be able to distinguish a “spider” from a “starfish.” A starfish can replicate and spread a fluid set of ideas, beliefs, values, and norms. This is the hidden power behind things like Wikipedia, craigslist, Skype, and even the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous.

“Peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable.” – John Wooden

John Wooden was a living legend. He was also one of the most successful basketball coaches of all time and he lived a simple life focusing on personal excellence, personal integrity, love, and balance.

“Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde

A few years back I went on a tour around Microsoft, asking various executives a brief set of questions. I wanted to know what what their day is like, what drives them, and what holds them back. I wanted to know what do they know now that they wish they knew back then, when they first started. Mostly I wanted the benefit of their hind-sight and school of hard-knocks.

“The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.” — John Mason Brown

Holding people accountable is a skill you can learn. In a world where you get results through teams and teamwork, enforcing accountability plays a key role to success. Even if you’re just holding yourself accountable to some results you want in your life, it helps to know the ways to enforce accountability and why there can be a lack of accountability. A lot of it comes down to clarifying the outcome, setting expectations, and then addressing motivation, skills, and feedback.

“Success is not a destination thing, it’s a daily thing.” – John Maxwell

When I think of leaders and leadership, I think of John Maxwell. He is a speaker and author, and leadership is his super skill. He leads by example but more importantly, he’s created an amazing knowledge base of leadership patterns and practices by way of his books and his speaking engagements

“Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.” — Tao Te Ching

Not all power is created equal. If you know the six sources of social power, then you can influence yourself and others more effectively.

“What do I say when it’s all over … And sorry seems to be the hardest word.” — Elton John

Mistakes happen. People fall down. What’s important is how you get back up. This is really geared towards leaders and pro-active repair, but I think the frame below is useful in many everyday situations. It’s powerful because you’re owning your mistake, you’re acknowledging it, and you’re finding a way forward. What you resist persists, and dwelling doesn’t help.

There are more books coming out every year than I can read in a lifetime. One of the ways I filter for great books is, I ask the most effective people I know, which books had a significant impact on how they think, feel, or act. I like to find the books that really made a difference, not just in theory, but in practice.

Recently, I reached out to several Microsoft leaders, past and present, and up and down the ranks. The beauty of Microsoft is the extremely high concentration of smart people and I like to leverage the collective brain. In this case, I posed a simple question to find out which business books actually made a difference:

One of the most helpful frames we’ve found at work for focusing meetings or presentations is:

Know – What do you want them to know?
Believe – What do you want them to believe?
Do – What do you want them to do?

Editor’s note: Meet Noah Blumenthal. His super skill is heroic leadership. Noah is the author of the nationally bestselling book, Be the Hero: Three Powerful Ways to Overcome Challenges in Work and Life and was named by Leadership Excellence Magazine as one of the world’s “Top 100 Minds in Personal Development.”

I asked Noah for a guest post after reading Be the Hero, because I liked his approach. Be the Hero is a simple framework for effectiveness.

Here’s a lens you can use to lower your anxiety and lead yourself and others more effectively.  It’s balancing connection and conviction.  It’s a good, simple model, with a lot of depth behind it.
The key is to be able to take a thoughtful position while staying connected to others who disagree.  I learned this model a few years back during my Doing Leadership @ Microsoft training.  While I liked the model right from the start, I came to appreciate it more, as I put it into practice.  It’s also a …

My manager shared Colin Powell’s lessons in leadership with our team today. I had seen Powell’s leadership lessons before, but it was a great refresher and a perfect reminder that some leadership practices never go out of style. In fact, I would argue that Powell’s leadership lessons are actually timeless principles. The beauty is that you can take his core principles and adapt them to your own situation.

How can you become a leader in your field?  A colleague shared a link to How to Be a Leader, which I found interesting.  In the article,  Philip E. Agre presents a six step recipe for becoming a leader in your field:

Step 1. Pick an issue.
Step 2. Having chosen your issue, start a project to study it.
Step 3. Find relevant people and talk to them.
Step 4. Pull together what you’ve heard.
Step 5. Circulate the result.
Step 6. Build on your work.

I think the key takeaway is that to be a leader …

During my Influencer training, one of the key concepts we drilled into was “clarify meaningful results.” What are meaningful results? Well, before you waste time on the “how”, clarify the “what” you want, the “why” you want it, and the “when” you want it.

This is a follow up to my previous post, Influencer Training Day 1. These are my notes from day 2 of Influencer training. It turned out to be way tougher to write up than I expected. I had a lot of notes and we covered a lot of material and I wanted to boil it down as simply as possible. This is actually my third variation and I think it’s the cleanest so far. Why would I spend so much time trying to get this right? Because I think it’s some of the most powerful information for changing you, your environment, your team, your work, or the world.

I have the privilege of taking some extreme training on influence. It’s a pilot class based on the book, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. Influence is about changing hearts, minds, and behavior to produce meaningful, sustainable results. The beauty of the model is that it scales up and down from personal life style changes, such as losing weight, to global changes, such as eliminating diseases. I like it because it’s a simple lens to look at those persistent problems where change seems impossible. Rather than bump your head against a glass ceiling or spin your wheels without traction, it’s a systematic approach to diagnose and implement change.

What’s your story? No, not once upon a time … what’s your story of who you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going? Your stories package and share your experience. They help you stand out if you share the right things. What are the right things? Share your unique experiences, your values, and your strengths … and even relevant flaws. Your human after all and everybody has flaws. It’s not what happens to you, but how you respond and you’re the author of your life. Choose your adventures. Write your stories with might. Lead yourself first and use your stories to guide yourself and others.

As a leader, you need to tell 3 stories: 1) your personal story, 2) a group story, and 3) the dream story. Your personal story communicates your beliefs and values. The group story helps create a shared sense of destiny. The dream story inspires people to a better future. Whether you’re a leader of a small team or large group, have these stories under your belt. If you lead a family, you can use the 3 stories too. If you just need to lead yourself, then have a personal story and dream story to remind yourself who you are and to inspire yourself to where you want to be.

One of my favorite training sessions this past year was called “Why Should Anyone Be Lead By You?” One of our exercises was to figure out our unique differentiators by looking at our life experiences. In other words, what unique skills or experiences do we bring to the table, that are relevant for this particular situation? Everybody has a story–hopes, dreams, wins, losses, and lessons learned. We write our stories a page at a time. Ultimately, it’s not how the stories end, but what we carry forward that matters.