Welcome... ...to The Enlightened Leader BLOG. For many years The Izzo Group brought you The Enlightened Leader Newsletter as a quarterly publication and we will continue to offer this publication. To view past editions click on the navigation bar to the left and you will be redirected.

Leaning into Discomfort

posted by Eric Klein under  BLOG   Dec 2, 2010

When I was six years old I loved Roy Rodgers. I wanted to be a cowboy. I longed to sleep out on the range. I lived in New York City... in an apartment. So, in lieu of nights under the stars, my mother let me set up a tent and “camp out” on the living room floor.

 The hardwood living room floor was uncomfortable, but, that very uncomfortable-ness was very satisfying. Whenever I felt my bones rubbing against the hard floor, I knew I was getting closer to being a cowboy. So, what does sleeping on hardwood have to do with leading change – for yourself or others?

Change is a learning process and often, great personal learning includes uncomfortable moments. When you are learning a new way of being in the world, it’s inevitable that you’ll be clumsy at first.

You’re out of your depths. Your nervous system is working hard to wire in the new way of thinking and acting.

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Discipline is What Drives Change

posted by John Izzo under   BLOG   Nov 10, 2010

What separates the great from the good? Is it vision, attitude, aptitude, luck? After twenty years advising over 600 companies and thousands of leaders, my conclusion is that discipline is a critical and overlooked factor in driving real change in our life and companies. My definition of discipline is simple: “Organizational and personal disciplines are practices that we hard wire into our routines to drive change.” Again and again, I have seen the power of discipline to create meaningful change.

For example, the Ritz Carlton has a great vision to be the leading service hotel in the world, but many other hotels have similar aspirations. But few have hard wired disciplines to drive service. At the Ritz, every department at every hotel in the world has a brief “lineup” meeting before every shift in which they share wow stories of great service, identify service issues that need resolution, and share strategic information about the hotel. It is my belief that this discipline, this hard-wired routine, explains a great deal of their service excellence.

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My Bad: generational differences

posted by Leslie Nolin under   BLOG    Oct 1, 2010

I often find myself in wonderful conversations with clients about the challenges that come with having a workforce that contains four different generations. The training challenges, language challenges, diversity challenges and  work ethic challenges are a few topics of conversation. I was born in the 1960's so I sit on the Baby Boomer - Gen-X  cusp however I am raising the next group we are already arguing about what to call. Many of these engaging  conversations are with other women (must be that social gene) and we often howl at some of the apparent differences between the generations. Often these differences are shrouded in language that clearly means something in-particular to a specific age group.  It isn’t that people mean anything different its just that the language chosen isn’t what one group understands, respects or prefers. Please allow me to illustrate with a couple of examples many of you parents can relate to.

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The Business of Kindness:part 2

posted by Olivia McIvor under   BLOG    Sept 18, 2010

In my previous blog” previous article, I planted the seed of ‘kindness in business’ as a simple concept to provide a solution to the complex and serious challenges we face daily in our work.   It is precisely this simplicity that allows kindness such power and magnitude to affect change at all levels within individuals and organizations.

Kindness is something that each person knows how to do and can appreciate across all cultures, religions, genders and age barriers.  Regardless of how independent our job description might state we are required to be, we are each still a colorful thread interwoven into the fabric of a team environment.   I assume no one reading this article, does not yearn for a deeper connection while at work, or to have the experience of joy and exuberance of seeing the positive results of a collaborative effort.

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The Business of Kindness: part 1

posted by Olivia McIvor under   BLOG    Sept 1, 2010

Author Bo Lozoff, leader of an organization called the Human Kindness Foundation, writes, “In the midst of global crises such as pollution, wars and famine, kindness may too easily be dismissed as a soft issue or a luxury to be addressed after more urgent problems are solved. But kindness is in the greatest of need in all those areas, kindness toward the environment, toward other nations, and toward the needs of people suffering. Simple kindness may be the most vital key to the riddle of how human beings can live with each other and care properly for this planet we all share.”

 This quote has resonated with me since I first read it because of my career in human resources and the “soft skills” dilemma that those in my profession understand as we struggle to promote these skills in the workplace. Soft skills, or people development skills, have not been given the same consideration as the harder operational skills, because of the belief that they don’t impact the bottom line as directly as the accounting and loss prevention departments do. We now know that recruitment, retention and training skills are reaching a critical mass. Businesses now believe that these so-called soft skills, these “luxuries to be addressed after the urgent problems are solved,” are becoming hard skills trained as a matter of expectation due to ongoing demands in the workplace being at an all time high.

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