Mr. Gary Lee is running another contest at his site where he writes about internet marketing and other topics.

He is actually giving away a free iphone. It is a pretty expensive prize. What he gets out of it is links back to several of his sites with his desired keywords. So to enter the contest you have to link to BunkersParadise.com with “golf equipment” and to PinkDeals.net with “free online coupon“. Depending on your page rank at the next update you may get one or two entries.

Leadership Links

Leadership Links
from Concordia.

Code Craft » In software no good deed goes unpunished

Code Craft » In software no good deed goes unpunished: "All of this confirms a theory I have about some companies. If the culture is broken, the fastest way to make enemies is to do more than everyone around you."

If this can be said about your organization, then you are in trouble. It is probably true in more places than anyone would care to admit. I've seen this happen before. The really good people get tired of fighting everyone else and leave. It is kind of the opposite of GE's plan to replace the bottom 10%. It ends up replacing the top 10% with people who are less adept.

Concepts of Leadership

Concepts of Leadership: "Good leaders are made not born. If you have the desire and willpower, you can become an effective leader. Good leaders develop through a never ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience. This guide will help you through that process."

This is the introduction to an online leadership training course. I agree that leaders are made, but there is a certain amount of inborn skills and abilities that come into play. Not enough to keep you from trying to become a better leader, but enough to keep you from trying to force someone else from becoming a leader if they have no interest or aptitude.

Five Most Important Leadership Traits | Leadership501

Most Important Leadership Traits

Leadership requires followers. This article looks at the five traits that people say they are most looking for in someone they would follow. By practicing these traits you can make it easier for people to follow you

Concepts of Leadership

Concepts of Leadership: "Good leaders are made not born. If you have the desire and willpower, you can become an effective leader. Good leaders develop through a never ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience. This guide will help you through that process.

"

This is from one of the better leadership resources on the web. It is worth checking out. There is a "shareware" leadership training course and a bunch of articles and free information for leaders. There are also a few leadership assessment tools that are pretty interesting.

Leadership - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Leadership - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Some cultures, especially those with a reverence for age and wisdom, see leadership as a standard part of the life-cycle of a person. Just as a youth becomes initiated into adulthood, so an adult may gain initiation as a leader. Such societies may require special reinforcement of the respect and kudos due to such senior members in order to maintain their position. If aged adults can no longer hunt or fight or play a full part in physical labor, for example, those adults' positions in society must rest on respect and implied wisdom and teaching roles, whether or not they show identified 'leadership traits'."

This section from Wikipedia is interesting because it talks about how people in some culture see leadership as part of the human development cycle. I tend to think this is a bad idea, but it is probably because the traditional cycle in the US doesn't prepare people for being leaders. You can just expect someone to be a leader when they turn 50. They have to be prepared and taught along the way.

Without guidance many people will learn lessons that are the exact opposite of what they need to know. Just expecting people to learn from their experience is a pretty dangerous way to train leaders.

Slow Leadership » Why most “communication problems” aren’t

A look at why communication problems are usually just an indicator of something deeper.

Slow Leadership » Why most “communication problems” aren’t: "With all the current emphasis on communications training and techniques, you might reasonably expect this to be a problem in decline. The fact that it isn’t makes me believe that, in most cases, people aren’t addressing the right problem. Difficulties with communications are just the symptoms of a more fundamental area of difficulty. They are not the source of the problem itself."

The secret word is strategy » Slacker Manager

You probably can't get by with using this all the time, but I thought it was a funny and creative idea.

The secret word is strategy » Slacker Manager: "If you are having a discussion, argument or other conversation in a business context, you will gain immediate credibility from all bystanders if you are the first to claim that your point of view is, wait for it, strategic."

Teaching Teamwork

Teaching Teamwork | Leadership501:

"Teamwork is not something that is easy to teach. While you may know certain teamwork principles it is something that needs to be developed in each team on its own. If you take 5 people from separate organizations and try to put them together into one team there will be a certain amount of learning that takes place regardless of how skilled each individual is at teamwork."

Teamwork isn't something that just comes naturally for most people. Especially in todays competitive environment, you aren't going to get good teamwork unless it is something you specifically pursue. It doesn't happen by accident.

When a lot of people think of teamwork training they think of the type of exercises where you fall backwards and people catch you or jumping from tall places at a ropes course. These types of exercises are sometimes useful, but only when they are solving specific issues. If you just do them for the sake of doing them you'll have a good time, but you are unlikely to really improve anything in your team other than just building familiarity with each other.

Teaching teamwork involves looking at where your team is currently in their interaction and then deciding where you want them to be. You then have to plot a path from the present to the future goal. Sometimes this may involve some offsite training, but often it can be accomplished simply in the course of regular work.