Cheryl McLaughlin on Coaching, Leadership and Life

60 Ways to Lead and Make a Difference #7: Be Curious - Seek to Know what you do not know. Seek to Understand what you do not understand.

"I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity."
Eleanor Roosevelt

Film Director, Ron Howard, said that as a child actor, he was incessantly curious about everything that was going on at the set of The Andy Griffith Show. When the show was over and the career of most child actors would have ended, Howard's curiousity led him to films and then to directing movies in all sorts of genres beginning in his early twenties. Many of those movies went on to earn Emmys.

Cokie Roberts (Senior Analyst, NPR, News), Nina Totenberg (Correspondent, NPR, Legal Affairs) and Linda Wertheimer (Senior National Correspondent, NPR) -- three ground-breaking women journalists who were just presented with the prestigious 2006 Ford Hall Forum Louis P. and Evelyn Smith First Amendment Award -- talked of the importance of understanding different people, perspectives and cultures even though you may not agree with them, that they had to seek, and tell, "the story" and that you must engage in conversation even with your adversaries to foster understanding and find solutions for today's complex problems.

Great leaders are driven by their curiousity. It is a gift that infuses them life. But they aren't just curious. They ACT on it. Once a week, they might have lunch with someone they don't know. They might stop in at a new art exhibit, read a biography about a competitor, or take a teenager to lunch and ask what they love about certain music or the experience of doing certain drugs.

Check out your Curiosity Quotient. Are you acting on it? If not, choose one thing to do this week to honor this essential gift.

60 Ways to Lead and Make a Difference #6: Keep a Notebook and Write Down What you Learn Each Week - A Tip from Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay

"The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of a mistake." 
Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay

Great leaders often record their experiences. They are students of their own game. Mark McCormick, the founder of IMG, one of the most successful sports management companies, kept a 20+ year diary of his sleep behavior to figure out how much sleep he needed and when he needed to sleep, to perform his best. Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, records the lessons she's learned each week.

One of the lessons Whitman learned during her more than eight years at the helm of eBay was that inaction was much more costly than making a mistake. At eBay, the culture encourages action and allows you to make mistakes as long as you recognize and correct them quickly. For more leadership lessons you can learn from Meg Whitman, see this great article from Stanford Business School.

Are You a Worrier? Would You Like to Worry Less?

I just heard this from Alex Mandossian and thought I'd pass it along. (My paraphrase)

If you are worrying about a problem you CAN'T solve, stop worrying. If you are worrying about problem you CAN solve, stop worrying.

My tip: If you are worrying about a problem you DON'T KNOW how to solve, get help!

Worry is wasted energy, but you can turn it into a gift if you understand its purpose.

At its best, worry alerts you that you need to prepare. You need to decide how you want to handle potential challenges in an upcoming situation, such as having that difficult conversation with your teenage daughter, taking a certification test or playing a tennis match against a better opponent.

The key to breaking the worry cycle is deciding  - specifically - how you want to handle the situations you are worrying about. For example, instead of worrying about having that conversation about boys with your teenage daughter, imagine how you ideally would like that conversation to go. Imagine her potential responses and how you would respond. Worry stops when you decide how you want to act. The best news is, you'll free your energy to enjoy your life.

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