Tip Tuesday ~ Leadership

Setting the Example

As a leader, Setting the Example means that your public and private lives are transparent and unified. Since we define leadership as a property of the group, and at its essence the act of influencing a group to achieve its goals, anyone is by definition a leader. Setting the Example is one way all members can influence the group.

While a very simple competency on the face of it, none is more important. Fail to demonstrate this competency to members of your group, and you are doomed to negative results. No matter how good a line you talk, if you don’t match it with your walk, you will earn no respect and find it increasingly difficult to get the group to work with you.

It may be more difficult under some circumstances to set a positive example, but that shouldn't stop you! Setting the Example is where your backbone shows. If you have character, if your character has integrity--that is, if who you are on the outside is lined up with who you are on the inside--you will accomplish far more than you might imagine possible. For this kind of leader, as long as he takes care of his follower's needs, he enjoys their respect, loyalty, and even love.

If you fail to set the example, why should you expect group members to do any better? To help keep the group together and get the job done, everything you do and say should line up with the best possible examples of leadership. When you set the example, you help facilitate the results you want as a leader.

Dreams

Why should you remember your dreams? Your dreaming mind has access to vital information that is not readily available to you when you are awake. Your dreams serve as a window to your subconscious and reveal your secret desires and feelings. In remembering your dreams, you gain increased knowledge, self-awareness and self-healing. Dreams are an extension of how you perceive yourself.

They may be a source of inspiration, wisdom, joy, imagination and overall improved psychological health. Learning to recall your dreams help you become a more assertive, confident and stronger person. By remembering your dreams, you are expressing and confronting your feelings.

Dreams help guide you through difficult decisions, relationship issues, health concerns, career questions or any life struggle you may be experiencing. Remembering your dreams help you come to terms with stressful aspects of your life. You will learn more about yourself, your aspirations, and your desires through your dreams.

Happy dreams and sleep tight! Don't let the bed bugs bite!

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High Five Friday ~ I Got You!

I got you. You are the sun in my window warming my skin!

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Eye of the Sun

On Monday the sky was mostly clear with temperatures in the morning of -31 F so the air cooled forming ice crystals and a full sundog was seen for most of the afternoon.  This photo was taken just outside my office window.

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Weather This Morning

Yup it is cold today... are you wearing your warm wool sweater? Me too!

Tip Tuesday ~ Leadership

Leadership Resources 101

Getting and Giving Information

Getting and Giving Information is probably the #1 competency required of leaders. If you cannot communicate effectively, then no other leadership skill that will compensate for this lack. First and foremost, you must be able to exchange information effectively and accurately.

Really?

Alaska bucks the global temperature trend

Photo by Ned Rozell
Fairbanks, seen here at minus 40 during January 2012, is one of many Alaska places that — unlike most of the world — leaned to the cold side during the first decade of the 2000s.
 
Written by Ned Rozell2/15/2013

This just in: 2012 was the coldest year of the new century in Fairbanks, and the second coldest here in the last 40 years.

Fairbanks isn’t the only chilly place in Alaska. Average temperatures at 19 of 20 long-term National Weather Service stations displayed a cooling trend from 2000 to 2010, according a recent study written up by Gerd Wendler, Blake Moore and Lian Chen of the Alaska Climate Research Center.

The rest of the world has not been going Alaska’s way. For the 36th consecutive year, the yearly global temperature in 2012 was warmer than average. That temperature, calculated from satellite data by researchers with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was about 58.3 degrees Fahrenheit (Fairbanks’s was 24.1 degrees F).

During the first decade of the 2000s, Alaska bucked the global warming trend, though the temperature variations were so slight you might not have noticed. Except during winter, when most of the cooling occurred. One example was the frigid January of 2012. How could you forget it in Bettles, where the average temperature was an all-time low of minus 35.6 degrees F? That’s a chilly month.

But January 2012 also featured record highs throughout the Lower 48. Almost everywhere outside of Alaska is warming. So why has Alaska been an island of cool?

“This trend was caused by a change in sign of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation,” Wendler, Blake and Chen wrote in their paper, “The First Decade of the New Century: A Cooling Trend for Most of Alaska.”

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is a mysterious pattern of sea-surface temperatures in the North Pacific Ocean that seems to flip-flop every 20-to-30 years. The PDO influences the intensity and location of the Aleutian Low, which spins just offshore of the Alaska Peninsula. When sea-surface temperatures are relatively high in the North Pacific, the Aleutian Low is strong, causing warmer weather patterns in Alaska. We were in that groove from about 1977 to about 2000. It seems the switch has flipped to cool again.

Despite our recent trend, Alaska has for the last century warmed at about twice the rate of the rest of the globe, “as expected by the increasing CO2 and other trace gases,” Wendler and his colleagues wrote. Regarding the effect of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, they wrote that warming “is sometimes temporarily modified or even reversed by natural decadal variations.”

How long the cooling of Alaska lasts is anyone’s guess, but if the Pacific Decadal Oscillation did indeed shift around 2000, cooler temperatures could persist in Alaska for another 20 years.

“From the ‘40s to 1976 was a cold period (caused by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation),” Wendler said. “So there’s no reason why not.”

More details from “The First Decade of the New Century: A Cooling Trend for Most of Alaska,” published in the Open Atmospheric Science Journal in 2012:

Barrow was the only station didn’t show a cooling trend, warming 1.7 degrees Celsius during the decade of study.

King Salmon was the other extreme, with 2.9 degrees C of cooling from 2000-2010.

Seventy-seven percent of the cooling showed up in winter temperatures, followed by spring at 17 percent. Summer and autumn cooled only slightly — not enough to be statistically significant.

Happy Birthday to You!

Have a great day!

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Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day to each and every one of you!

Remember everyday is a good day to share the love!

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Welcome Back Sun

Sunrise today 8:55 am

Sunset 5:17 pm

Gain of seven minutes from yesterday which is a big deal around here!

Hooray ~ welcome back sun!

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Tip Tueday ~ Leadership

Leadership Resources 101

Building Trust: There are some roles and professions where trust is critical.

For instance, can you imagine being a firefighter, and not being able to trust other firefighters on your team? Or a doctor, and not being able to trust certain nurses or physicians in the emergency room? Or the flight crew in the cockpit that have to work together to maintain the safety of the flight?

People who have jobs like this need to be able to trust the people they work with. Without that trust, lives can, and likely will, be lost.

When you trust the people you work with and do business with, you can work together seamlessly. You're more effective; you're happy to take worthwhile risks; and you can work securely, knowing that your co-workers will support you - just as you will support them.

Building trust with those you work with and supervise is a very important first step in being a good leader.  Works well in parenting too!

Lunch on the Go

We had a visitor in the neighborhood yesterday afternoon.

He had just stopped by for a bit of lunch.

By lunch on the go we really mean that we wish he was in our freezer.

Moose is quite tasty.

This shot is without the zoom so you can see just how far away he was or wasn't from our front porch.

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February Snow

February snowy days are the best kind of snow.  It is fluffy wet snow that adds white joy to our world and the warmer temperatures giving way to fun outdoors activities.  Activities like fat tire biking... I know right what the heck crazy people out riding bikes through the snow!

Enjoy your snowy February day!

Blank Stare

The more birthdays we have the more knowledge we gain, and life experiences that we did not have in our younger days. This might not be a new fact to you nor is it to me; however this is something that has become truer in my life now that I have celebrated a few decades of birthdays. I guess this is the point in the conversation when a few of you say to me “welcome to the club”! Well I say back to you “it is nice to finally be part of the wise club”!

It is not that I disliked being young and living in the clouds as oblivion is bliss. But there comes a time for us all to wake up and smell the roses for what they really are, sometimes they are sweet intoxication and sometimes those rose colored glasses are just make believe flowers.

A younger co-work of mine ask me a question the other day and my answer seemed to prompt a blank stare as if they just did not understand. They do not have enough life experience for true comprehension, no baggage that they carry and no past hurts to smooth over. Nothing gets dredged up from their past that they have to build a bridge over and there is only the blank stares of non-responsiveness.

This blank stare doesn’t necessarily mean they do not care ~ they just do not understand.

For all those people in my life who had to suffer me though my younger years of my blank stare ~ thank you for sticking with me and allowing me the birthdays necessary to be able to join the wise club.

Ol' Chair

The things in life that strike the heart are not always what you expect. A smile, a touch or an ol' chair.  A chair that frankly was a bit uncomfortable but it was his chair. You love him and so you love that ol' chair.

Long live your love for that ol' chair.  Long live his smile in your heart.


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Broken Heart

It is written that a broken heart crushes the spirit. How do you save the spirit and mend a broken heart when all the pieces cannot be found?

When dragons are allowed to fly through the holes in your heart and their fire fills the gaps consuming what is left. What then?

Are you suppose to let it burn?  Is there hope in the ashes that a phoenix will rise and your heart will once again be whole? That your spirit will no longer be crushed? That your heart will once again be merry.

Perhaps your kind words will lighten my anxious heart.

Best Day for a Birthday!

Happy Birthday dear friend!

You are a big part of my life now, then, and always!

Have a GREAT day!

Love you!

Snorkeling

There is one more story from our Hawaii adventure that I wish to share with you, the fact that I went snorkeling. Yup that is correct yours truly swam with the sharks, well we did not actually see any sharks thank goodness. If I would have seen even the smallest shadow of a shark I would have been out of there so fast the beach would have wondered what happened.

Do you have that one thing in your life that you are truly afraid of? Something that would make you break out in a cold sweat just to think about it? Well I do… sharks. It even borders on the irrational fear that sharks live in swimming pools. Needless to say it was a big deal for me to put the mask and fins on and stick my face in the water. It took a bit of time and kind words from my husband but I did it and here is the proof.

Keep in mind the photos are from a very inexpensive preloaded with film disposable underwater camera so the quality is lacking my normal flare.  But they tell a story of an Alaskan girl who, after 30 years living on the frozen tundra, had a fun time snorkeling and seeing all the beautiful fish.

Needless to say this is one adventure I can now cross off the list.

Hooray for facing a fear and trying something new!

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