Kathryn D. Cramer's Blog, page 5

Whose Story Are You Telling? Lead Positive Tips from Robbie Vorhaus

I interviewed Robbie Vorhaus, renowned crisis expert and communications strategist and author of One Less. One More. Follow Your Heart. Be Happy. Change Slowly, to find out.

According to Robbie, your story is not what happens to you, it’s what you do with what happens to you. Defining your own circumstances and following your heart are the keys to a successful, fulfilled life.

Today I published Part 1 of my Lead Positive Profile with Robbie on my Psychology Today blog.In the profile, Robbie dis...

Why Intuition is Crucial to Leadership

Intuition is what keeps us in alignment with our true selves and our true purpose. The way intuition plays out in leadership is a cultivation of what I call the Third Way.

AThird Way presents itself when leaders step out of the narrow, binary thinking, for example, good or bad, right or wrong, win or lose. It is a redefining of a situation that allows for a larger, more expansive view. Besides the good or the bad, a Third Way rises above to see what else is also true. Because we are so often c...

The Leader as Hero: 5 Essential Daily Acts

I often talk to leaders about putting themselves in the role of “Hero” as they tell their stories. Using the Hero’s Journey as a framework for explaining your vision and how you and your team will get there is a powerful tool to get people on board and start feeling the excitement of taking on a new challenge.

This post is about how you as a leader can be a Hero in your everyday life. Heroic leadership is about inspiring andserving your stakeholders—your team, coworkers, managers, and customer...

Expand Your Capacity for Wisdom

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

In Thrive, Arianna Huffington writes that wisdomis a deeper awareness and connectivity that “frees us from the narrow reality we feel trapped in.”

In one ofPsychology Today’smost popular blog posts, Adam Grant, author of Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, defines wisdom as an ability to “embrace nuance and multiple perspectives.”

I like to think of wisdom as moving from black and white into color....

Be The Anthropologist of Your Life: Finding Your Passion

A few months ago, Virgin founder Richard Branson wrote in Entrepreneur about finding your Passion Project. For him, the answer was simple: First,make a list of what you love. Then, make a list of what you hate. Last, see what pops out from those lists, and if nothing does, think about what on those lists can make the world a little better and how you can act on them a little each day. Test and plan until you land on the right thing: Your passion project.

Well,as you can imagine, for a lot of p...

Knowing Your Pitfalls (More Tips From Sally Hogshead)

According to bestselling author and branding expert Sally Hogshead, knowing your pitfalls is freeing. Once you know where you fall short, then it ceases to be a surprise. Rather, it’s a relief because you’ve freed up that mental space to focus on where you can really contribute.

Today I published Part 2 of my Lead Positive Profile with Sallyon my Psychology Today blog.

Sally is abranding expert, bestselling author of theFASCINATE: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation,and natural Asset-...

What is the Best Way that I Can Add Value? Tips from Sally Hogshead

I interviewedSally Hogshead, branding expert, best-selling author of FASCINATE: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation,and natural Asset-Based Thinker to find out.

Sally leads by focusing on her assets—she believes the greatest value you can add is to become more of yourself. In fact, she created the Fascination Advantage Assessment, to help others in discovering their own natural advantages of persuasion and to gain a better understanding of the world sees them.*

Today I published Part...

What is the Best Way that I Can Add Value?

I interviewedSally Hogshead, branding expert, best-selling author of FASCINATE: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation,and natural Asset-Based Thinker to find out.

Sally leads by focusing on her assets—she believes the greatest value you can add is to become more of yourself. In fact, she created the Fascination Advantage Assessment, to help others in discovering their own natural advantages of persuasion and to gain a better understanding of the world sees them.*

Today I published Part...

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Pre-Mortems as a Strategic AND Motivational Leadership Tool

On a recent Freakonomics Radio podcast, the authors of that best-selling book—Stephen J. Dubner and Steve Levitt—decided to focus on a key Asset-Based Thinking principle: Failure is Your Friend. Of course, I was intrigued!

The topic stems from the authors’ new book, Think Like A Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain, in which they promote the view that failure is unfairly stigmatized.

“I always tell my students—fail quickly. The quicker you fail the more chances you hav...

Prime Yourself to Lead Positive with the Best Neural Cocktail

One of the key principles of Lead Positive is an asset-based focus on yourself: What do you bring to the party? What is uniquely true about you in terms of your skill sets and the competencies you’ve developed over time? I call that your signature presence.

Leaders in particular need to develop strategies for recognizing and reinforcing what they do well—this what primes you to be the most effective and inspirational version of yourself in any situation. Now you may say to yourself, “I don’t n...