Leadership in my Second Brain #51 #cong21

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1. Deep thoughts about leadership are on my book shelf.
2. There’s a visual dimension of leadership I can see in photos, screenshots, and whiteboard snaps I’ve saved.
3. I’ve learned a lot about leadership by culling flows of social media.
4. I make my biggest impact with leaders when (1) I share high quality snippets (2) I can suggest and track action steps.

Bernie Goldbach is an American in Ireland who teaches creative media for business in the Technological University of the Shannon.

Find Bernie Goldbach on all good social networks as @topgold. He posts regularly on Twitter and LinkedIn. For deep thoughts, head over to Inside View.

By Bernie Goldbach

Since #cong21 is very public, I asked my bookshelf about leadership and I fell into a rabbit hole about ancient history. Deep thinking about leadership is a good thing.

While in university, several professors revealed the important role of leaders in military campaigns. I read part of Edward Gibbon’s seminal work on the Roman Empire and heard Robert Paterson cite the legions during his opening address at reboot9 in Copenhagen. Ten years ago I recorded a podcast that combined elements of Paterson’s speech along with some thoughts of my own about fraternity and literacy that complement leadership. I wish I had a better audio library because that podcast segment included some very deep thoughts. Fortunately, one part of my second brain (Flickr) has a note from the podcast session.

Leading with Data

I know I’m lucky to occupy a senior role as a university lecturer. I have taught students since the early 80s and should be retired but instead I want to soldier on through the next iteration of the creative multimedia degree programme that I helped articulate in 2002 in Ireland. To ensure I can lead from the front of the classroom, I continue to refine and share information that I cull from my second brain. When reduced to its core essence, it’s just a set of trusted sources. I plan to share these sources during a virtual huddle with people connecting in the Congregation.

Some of these trusted links extend back to webmaster-shoptalk, boing boing, slashdot, and boards.ie. I don’t actually visit those sites regularly. Instead, I listen to musings on those sites and then ask AI to surface the most interesting snippets.

Working with the data

It means nothing to gather information if you don’t intend to master elements of the data you trust. In my working world, a lot of important data points surface inside email threads. As much as I abhor email, I know it’s important to master its flow or I am relegated. So I’ve started setting up alerts that push to my mobile phone and I’m using “focus” as an essential service inside Microsoft Outlook. Best of all, I’ve convinced university students to circumvent email and use Teams chat or direct messaging to reach me fastest. And I’ve totally removed the whack-a-mole sequence of “when can we meet” by using Calendly to book time to chat.

Leading with Data from Second Brain

I realised something very important while locked down during COVID when my main channel of conversation happened only during virtual meetings. I realised I made my biggest impact by sharing (1) qualified snippets with (2) suggested action steps. This realisation has become a hidden aspect of leadership for me.

How this works for me and how someone might borrow the workflow is something I intent to share during the 2021 meet-up in Cong.

The Rest of the Story

To follow more thoughts about leadership, you could visit InsideView.ie, my Old Skool Blog.