Monthly Archives: September 2015

Guten Tag

The Designing Leaders team may be offline, or otherwise slow to respond, until next week. We are currently in Vienna, Austria, exploring modern leadership methods in cafes (which is code for “we are getting all the coffee and pastries we can get this week”). Back soon!!

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Fooling Your Body

When you start to feel overwhelmed, or that things are moving out of your control, it’s common to get some physical reactions. You get that all-too-familiar tingling sensation, or rapid breathing, or general nervousness, or whatever is normal for you. That can often lead you to take an action that might not be best, simply […]

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Born or Made?

Retaining employees

Are leaders born, or are they made? The Designing Leaders crew had this discussion last month over dinner, and we have been thinking about it a lot since then. It’s an old question that we have all asked ourselves before, and plenty of people have offered up an answer, but nothing that seems to really […]

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The Military-to-Civilian Transition

Last week, Designing Leaders hosted a small discussion session in Singapore on the issue of hiring leaders and managers who have just left the military (looking here at the regular Singapore Armed Forces, not the National Service that is compulsory for males). Singapore has a long history of integrating retired and other long-term military personnel […]

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Be Open to Bad News

Online learning

The idea of “shooting the messenger” was first expressed by Shakespeare, or so says Wikipedia. But in a nutshell, the leader who lashes out at the poor subordinate who got tagged to report bad news is wasting time, and wasting messengers. Don’t be that leader. Many leaders say they want open communication in their workplace, […]

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