Sense making and Serendipity among the Business Blogs
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Earlier this week I found two posts on the same topic by thoughtful bloggers I read regularly. They led to a chain of events that describe why I like the way things work amongst the business blogs.
Bret Simmons posted "Strength-Based, Individual Leadership. How Does It Affect Your Team?" on Monday. The same day, Erin Schreyer posted "You Are One of a Kind, and I’ll Lead You that Way!"
Seeing those posts so close together got me thinking. I've written about strengths and weakness in career development ("Leadership Development for Apprentice Leaders") and the work of bosses ("Being a Boss is Two Jobs in One"), but I've never devoted a post to the idea of managing by building on strengths.
So I did some thinking and a little research. I wrote a post titled "Strengths, Weaknesses, Your Team, and You." At that point, I had been inspired by two other bloggers to dig deeper into an issue. It was fun, but the fun was just beginning.
Bret commented on the blog, and his comments reminded me of a post I'd read a year ago by Dr. Ken Nowack, "HRD Shams #3: Leveraging Your Strengths."
Tanmay Vora, who blogs a lot about project management, added his comments. He got me thinking about the issue in the context of project management. And that reminded me of a recent post by Art Petty titled "Learning to Lead in a Project-Focused World."
There were other comments, too. They added richness to the discussion.
There's a saying that "The customers always complete an innovation." In the world of business blogs, we could say, "The comments always complete the post."
This is what's great about quality business blogs. We inspire and inform each other. Posts inspire comments that inspire other posts and comments. And in the process of posting and comment, we all get better.
As Ken Blanchard said, "No one of us is as smart as all of us."
Boss's Bottom Line
When you read a blog post that makes you think, read the comments, too.
Whether you blog yourself or not, share good posts with others.
Comment on blogs you read. That will add to the conversation and help you sharpen your own thinking.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Categories: Leadership Reading, blogs
Tags: Blogs Leadership Reading
Wally,
Good post. After seeing situations in which the intelligence of individuals drops when they operate in a group, I've never entirely agreed with the "No one of us is as smart as all of us" notion. Sometimes the group is as dumb as a post.
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Fair enough, counselor. Let me amend my comment slightly. I think that when you've got knowledgeable bloggers and commenters, you expand both knowledge and insight. Of course, if you are like some gurus and don't respond to comments, then no conversation happens. And if the only comments are "Great job!" not much learning does either.
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Thanks once again for referencing my work, Wally. Really appreciate it, especially coming from you.
The strengths stuff never passed the smell test with me. I saw Kaplan speak at an American Psychological Association national meeting a few years back (the room was packed) and I was glad to hear someone take issue with the strengths stuff.
The research I cite in my blog I just stumbled upon. If you look at the title of the article, it would be hard to discern it had strength based counsel in there. I had to look at the actual questions the researchers asked respondents to know they were tapping something akin to a strength based approach to leadership in one of their measures.
I was glad to find some peer reviewed evidence to support my thinking.
Thanks! Bret
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Thanks for finding the research and sharing it with the rest of us, Bret.
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Wally, I was really pleased with the first recommendation in your "Bosses Bottom Line."
"When you read a blog post that makes you think, read the comments, too."
I recently read a Wired story about digital money online and a new application utilizing Twitter. The story was fairly one sided (pro digital money and micro applications). However, when I got to the comments side of the story, I received the good, the bad and the ugly side of the equation - from individual contributors. Granted many of these contributors may have had a vested interest in their viewpoint, yet it did add to the objectivity of the story. And most important - it made me think just a little bit deeper.
Thanks
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Thanks for adding to the conversation, Rodney. You can sure learn a lot from the comments, no matter what the topic.
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