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leader practicing holistic health focusing on mind, body, soul
Featured

What are Holistic Health Benefits for Leaders – 5 Proven Benefits

The concept of holistic health has gained popularity in recent years. It’s one of the latest buzz words that conjure images of sitting crossed legged, meditating with your eyes closed in a lush green field. Or the woman standing on one foot in an impossibly unbalancing yoga pose as she looks out at sea. As these images cross your mind, you are probably wondering, what in the world does this new age Tom Cruise foolery have to do with making me a better leader. Well, I’m hoping to shed some light on what are holistic health tips for leaders. By the end of this article, you understand the importance of holistic health and how it can help you maximize your leadership skills.  Before we begin, leaders should understand What is holistic health? What are holistic health benefits?How can you start incorporating holistic health into your life? Holistic health is not any…

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Leadership Books

Leadership Book Challenge 2022

Are you ready for our 2022 Leadership Book Challenge? If you follow Unlit Leadership, you know that I am all about leader self-development. A key to self-development is increasing your knowledge. What better way to enhance and expand our expertise than to commit to reading and learning more during 2022?  Why is reading so important to leader self-development? Great leaders know that they are seldom the most intelligent person in the room. If they are, then that leader lacks the experience to recognize the importance of surrounding themselves with brilliant individuals. We understand that we should always look for ways to better ourselves, whether through surrounding ourselves with those that challenge us, taking on tasks that place us out of our comfort zone, or taking time to improve on our own. Reading is one of the secret weapons of the leader striving to self-develop. Reading makes it easier for your…

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Featured

Introverted Leader: 4 Tips to Help Avoid Social Exhaustion

I consider myself an ambivert, equal parts introvert and extrovert. Though this may sound ideal, having the best of both worlds, I also experience the drawbacks of both. I get that itch to be around people, as well as the social exhaustion from too much socializing. As the U.S. attempts to work their way towards the new normal and social engagement have increased, I am beginning to feel the effects of my introverted side. If you are anything like me when returning from a social engagement, you need recovery time. So for the morning’s quickie, I will provide my fellow introverted leaders four tips for dealing with social exhaustion. Quickie Round-Up What is social exhaustion? You may have read or heard terms such as social burnout, social exhaustion or even the introvert hangover. In essence, these terms are all the same, but what do they mean? In a recent article…

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Emotional Intelligence

The 7 Habits of Emotionally Intelligent Leaders

Why do I focus so much on the concept of emotional intelligence or the emotion quotient (EQ)? Increasing your emotional intelligence and learning to harness EQ to better yourself, your team, and your organization is critical to your success as a diverse leader. However, for leaders to increase and capitalize on EQ, they must regularly focus on and practice specific habits. EQ and Diversity For the slightly different leader, whether it’s the young executive that’s ten years junior to the rest of his work peers, the one female programming lead amongst the group techies or one of the three minority leaders out the group of 100 leaders managing insurance firms. We must learn how to maximize our unique backgrounds, talents, and experiences to guide, influence, and motivate others. Emotional intelligence is the diverse leader’s key to success in maximizing the potential of their team and their own. There are four…

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How to Run a Successful Working Group – 6 Proven Tips

Working groups are a great way to bring together professionals with similar interests and collaborate. The nature of working groups means they can often lack structure and clear goals. The goal is to have everyone bring in their unique expertise and knowledge so that together they can develop a solution that fits your needs and the needs of those who signed up for it. My experience with working groups Recruiting and retaining quality cyber warrant officers are just a couple of my many responsibilities. When I first arrived at my current job, my office tasked me to provide solutions on acquiring and then retaining the best cyber talent for the Army Cyber Warrant Officer Cohort. I knew that I could not accomplish this task in a bubble, and despite my expertise, I decided to reach out to several leaders who would help develop viable solutions. I set up a working…

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Self-Awareness

Self Awareness for Leaders – 8 Critical Qualities

If you read, follow or subscribe to any leadership or business blogs or magazines, you know that there is a common consensus that organizations understand the importance of self awareness for leaders. Former Forbes contributor, Victor Lipman, states that “you can’t be a really an effective executive if you’re not fully aware of the effect your actions and personality have on others”. Though Lipman focuses on executives, his statement applies to leaders in the home, work, and community. As mentioned by Randy Grieser from The Ordinary Leader, “Strong leaders must know and understand themselves.” If there is a consensus that organizations require self-aware leaders, then we should assume that most leaders out there are genuinely self-aware. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, at least not according to Tasha Eurich, who discusses self-awareness in her book Insight. Her studies and research found that 95% of people think they’re self-aware, but only 10-15%…

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5 Must-Reads For New Leaders

My twin sons are entering their 3rd year in the Army, and as a result, they are receiving their first glimpse of leadership. If they both properly prepare, they should both be selected for promotion to Sergeant within the following year. The Army first promoted me to Sergeant in the Army over 20 years ago, and now ten ranks later, I look back at all the experiences and lessons I chose to learn the hard way. Specifically, I think about how I can save my sons and other new leaders some bumps and bruises along the way. If I were to give my younger self a critical piece of advice, it would be to start reading early and often. In an article for Harvard Business Review, John Coleman discusses how reading can make you a more effective leader by increasing verbal intelligence, improving empathy, and understanding social cues. Though I’m…

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Emotional Intelligence

5 Benefits of Having Emotionally Intelligent Leaders in Your Organization

Organizations need emotionally intelligent leaders. As a leader yourself, you want to employ other leaders who possess high emotional intelligence or EQ in your organization. So, what benefits should your team or organization expect to reap as you hire more emotionally intelligent leaders? Here are five benefits of having an emotionally intelligent leader within your organization First, you must understand what emotional intelligence is and how it can benefit your organization. Next, what characteristics should you expect to see in an emotionally intelligent leader? What is emotional intelligence? In the recent blog, I explore what emotional intelligence or EQ is. Many leaders believe emotional intelligence (EQ) is limited to the ability to control and manage your emotions. Though this definition is technically is correct, Daniel Goleman, a bestseller author on numerous books on EQ, breaks emotional intelligence down into five key components of emotional intelligence. So what are the characteristics…

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Weekly Team Meetings: 3 Steps to Revive Them

Weekly team meetings are a necessary evil for most organizations, both small and large. When leaders run them correctly, they can benefit and foster consistent progress and actionable items within the organization. Unfortunately, too often, they began to fall by the waist side as time goes on. However, here are a few tips that can help you breathe life back into that dying meeting. The way a leader handles the life cycle of the weekly team meeting is similar to how many of us handle our computer life cycle. When you first buy a new computer, everything runs smoothly, just as it should. The laptop starts up lightning-fast, your files are neat and orderly, and the programs perform at their optimal levels. Initially, you try to do all the little things to maintain this high level of efficiency. You regularly empty your digital trash, you keep your files and folders…

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emotionally intelligent leader reading book
Emotional Intelligence

Become a More Emotional Intelligent Leader – 8 Must-Reads

An emotional intelligent leader is critical to the success of any organization. Therefore, an emotional intelligent leader must continue to sharpen their emotional intelligence or EQ through lifelong learning and application. Emotional intelligence plays a huge part in our personal emotional growth but is also vital in leading teams effectively. There are various ways to increase your emotional intelligence. I list some of those methods in my blog article, “4 Tips to Increase your Emotional Intelligence Skills”. However, for most of us, the easiest way is to learn from books. As an emotional intelligent leader, you should think out of the box, especially when it comes to your intelligence applied to many situations such as home life, relationships, parenting, work-life balance, and so much more. Therefore, I’ve listed 8 “Must Reads” for the emotional intelligent leader. 8 Books for the emotional intelligent leader As an experienced leader, there is a…

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