Who Am I and Why Am I Here?
Government Executive readers who have been around for awhile may remember those two questions from the late Admiral James Stockdale when he participated in the 1992 vice presidential debates with Al Gore and Dan Quayle. They strike me as two good questions to answer as I begin blogging for Government Executive.
I'm a leadership strategist and executive coach who focuses on supporting successful leaders who are charged with getting different results. The change in desired results usually stems from a promotion to a new role or from a big change in the external environment. Either way, different results usually require different actions on the part of leaders. That's where I come in. My job is to help my clients and readers in the public and private sectors to get clear on the results that are expected and what they need to change to achieve them.
My goal in this blog is to provide you with news you can use to be a more effective government executive. I'll usually peg the coaching advice to a lesson that can be learned from a leader in the news. Sometimes the lessons will be from positive examples and other times they won't. Either way, I look forward to hearing your comments and thoughts. In addition to supporting you as a leader, my goal is to start a conversation about leadership from which we can all learn and benefit.
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ABOUT THIS BLOG
Executive coach Scott Eblin’s goal is to help you succeed at the next level of leadership. Throughout the week, he’ll offer his take on the leadership lessons in the news and his advice on your most pressing leadership questions. A former government executive, Scott is a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and is the author of The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success.
Best of luck to you in this new endeavor. I'll be pulling for you and I'll be reading also.
Perhaps you'll be comforted in knowing that I'm part of the demographic that I think you're trying to reach out to. I'm not a "Senior" executive but I have been a Supervisor, Manager, Team Leader, and most recently a Program Manager. I've always taken pride that in all cases my primary goal was to contribute to the "success" of my project, group, organization, or administration, with the underlying hope that my actions would ultimately speak louder than my contributions. With regret and a fair amount of hind-sight, I have come to believe that this approach is flawed. While I consider myself a leader, those who are far more senior have one or more different views;
1) either they simply have no desire to assist others in advancement because it will threaten their own private corner of success or ...
2) the agenda in todays world relies on a workforce that is both skilled and Lemming like at the same time ...
As an example would be that much lip service is played to developmental plans (succession planning) and strategies all across the Federal Government yet little or no actual committments or funding ever seems to be formally alloted.
Ever the optomist I say "no matter" as I will not be cast aside (in either view point or deed) and I will not allow others to "control" my future. I fully realize that the journey is my responsibility and that the destination is an entirely different story.
My strategy so far (as you might tell) has been focused on tenacity, dilligence, knowledge, and experience. Much like the subject of your next blog (Mr. Gates) I've done my level best to beef up, show up, and give it all I have only to be thwarted by those in more senior positions who will simply not acknowledge that their success is in large part due to the efforts and accomplishments of those who both work for me and my contemporaries who surround me.
It is my hope that some of what you share will provide me with the tools I need to influence those perspectives and push down that recognition so that it can be used to promote advancement, development, and growth.
If that's not a desire seeking "change" and an attempt to get different results, I just don't know what it is. Maybe I'm just grumpy today ?
JF Posted Friday, April 17, 2009 2:18 PMI stand here today humbled by the task before dofus kamas, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our cheap dofus kamas. I thank President dofus for his service to buy dofus kamas, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Barack Obama Posted Sunday, September 20, 2009 12:50 PMI stand here today humbled by the task before dofus kamas, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our cheap dofus kamas. I thank President dofus for his service to buy dofus kamas, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Barack Obama Posted Wednesday, September 23, 2009 12:44 AM