Leadership is a funny thing. We all “know” what it is… but have a hard time explaining it. We expect it from our boss… but it’s probably not in their job description and almost certainly not in their job title. So what IS leadership, who shows us how to do it, and why is it such a hard concept to wrap our heads around?

I suppose the precepts of leadership were first impressed upon me during my stint in the army, and as any good veteran can tell you, the first place to look is to the regulation…

The Army defines leadership as influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation, while operating to accomplish the mission and improve the organization.

Army Regulation 600-100

For the non-military types out there, lets look at the complete compendum of human knowledge for a definition…

the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”

Wikipedia.org

Do you see the common element? That’s right, its influence. But its more than that, it is influence toward accomplishing a task.

Ok, great. Now we have a book knowledge of what leadership is… now for the hard part. How do we apply that knowledge to our vocation, advocation or the task at hand?

But I’m Not In Charge

Funny, I don’t remember seeing that as a requirement in any of the definitions. It didn’t say, “influence of the person in charge to accomplish a task,” did it? Too often we limit ourselves by believing that leadership is reserved for those with some sort of “leadership” position. We assume our managers, directors, or VPs will be the leaders and that we are just here to follow their instructions.

The reality is many managers simply don’t understand leadership and the ones that do can’t do it by themselves. They depend on members of the rank-and-file to “step-up” and “get the job done,” euphemisms for leadership. Think about it for a second. Think about work and who has the greatest influence over the members of your team. Truth be told, its probably not the first line supervisor. If you can’t figure out who it is, ask some of your co-workers… the answer may surprise you!

Ok, But Why Me?

So if that previous exercise pointed a finger back at you, guess what… you’re a leader. (I’ll pause here so you can complain about “not asking to be a leader” and how its “unfair”…). You are a leader if you make things happen. If people come to you for your opinion, you’re a leader. No, you never ran for the position of leader… it wasn’t pinned on you like a name tag… but everyone knows it, even you.

I think its one of the great ironies of life that most leaders don’t (or didn’t) want to be leaders. On my Kindle right now I’m reading the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant. Wow, talk about a reluctant leader. And yet, when it comes to influencing others in the accomplishment of a task, you’d be hard pressed to find an example of someone who was a greater leader than Grant. (In the interest of equal time… I’m reading Robert E. Lee next…)

You may not have asked for the role, but you have it. You have it because people respect your opinion, value your input, and most importantly, because you will make a decision. See, the vast majority of people out there are followers. They’ll be more than happy to fall in line behind anyone who is willing to lead the line. Its safer that way. You, on the other hand, are frustrated following the lead of others, feel stifled by indecisiveness or a lack of direction. You’d rather make a wrong decision than no decision at all. One of the great philosophers of all time once said

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

Roy Rogers

Embracing The Leader Within

So before you run off to change the world, excited that you’re a leader, I have one more thing for you to think about. If people value your input, respect your opinion and follow your lead, where does that leave you on the responsibility scale? Yes Spiderman, its true… with great power comes great responsibility! You’ve been a leader for some time now, you don’t have to change a thing. Accept your role, be confident, and lead.

HaHa, You’re Wrong

Ok, maybe I was. Maybe those fingers didn’t point back at you as a leader. Why not? So what if you weren’t put in charge, we already established that being in charge doesn’t matter. (BTW, you don’t have to have a single person who “works for you” to be a leader either… nice try). Who cares if you’re not the boss’ favorite, you will be if you start getting thing done! Oh, you must be afraid that your co-workers will make fun of you for being a “company man.” Remember the part about wanting to feel safe by following someone else?

The bottom line is you owe it to yourself, not your employer, to do the best you can at your job. Would you be proud to reply to your kids, nieces or nephews, or the kid next door when they ask you what you do, and you have to answer, “I do a half-hearted job at filing widgets for the Acme company… you know, the bare minimum.”? I hope not.

Step up your game. Whether you’ve accepted the role of leader or you’re putting on the mantle now, be the best you can be at what you do, encourage others to do the same, and get things done! It will put you in front of the pack, and quite possibly make you your boss’ new best friend!!

Your Turn

What do you think a leader is? Why do some people emerge from the crowd while others remain safely in it’s midst? What obstacles do you see holding you back from being a leader? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

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Confirmed Internet junkie, blogger, and marketer pursuing the digital nomad lifestyle. Oh, and I LOVE a good debate, Shiner, and my Bride!

Much to my surprise, when I looked to that pervasive compendium of human knowledge that is Wikipedia,  I discovered that… well, let’s just say I think I’ve found something it doesn’t know! (I’ll fix that right after I finish this post!)

So I set off on a quest. Surely someone somewhere has undertaken the arduous task of defining this thing we seek…right? I did manage to find DigitalNomads.com, a site dedicated to the lifestyle… awesome find, but still no concrete definition. So I did what any good social media practitioner would do, I tried a little crowdsourcing and put out a Tweet.

“The world is a digital nomad’s office.”

Mitch Cantor, StudioNashVegas.com

For me, a digital nomad is one that is not tethered to a certain spot by technology but is rather emancipated by it. In one of my past entries, Repent! Repent! The End of the Personal Computer is Near! I looked at how technology used to relegate us to that designated corner of the living room, the spare bedroom, or in my case the laundry room at one point. Now however, we are freed as connectedness in incorporated into sorts of cool devices including Tivo, my phone, and just about every other device in the house. This new found freedom breaks the bonds of the PC in the corner, but is that all there is?

Being a digital nomad is more that just extending your connected existence. Sure I can write a blog post at home or the coffee shop, or on the bus, but do I have access to the same resources in those places? Are all my files, pictures and drafts available everywhere work might find me? Answering THAT question is the definition of the digital nomad lifestyle for me. I guess the simplest way to say it is,

“I don’t sit in one spot to work, I work where I sit. “

Well, I don’t WANT to sit in one spot to work… like my bio says, I’m pursuing the digital nomad lifestyle, haven’t quite achieved it yet… but there’s hope!

So how do you achieve that level of freedom? Well there are many fine articles across the expanse of the Internet giving all sorts of great advice on how to do just that, many of them on my new found resource, DigitalNomad.com. It most likely boils down to what works for you and what you need to do. I’ve been very diligent over the past two years to move everything I do into the cloud. With my digital existence in the cloud, accessing the requisite data and tools becomes easy from where ever I happen to be. Granted, this hasn’t been easy and it has been necessary to write a few of my own tools, but its coming along.

A few of the key tools and services that are helping get me there include GMail, Google Docs, Google Apps, Zoho Apps (see, I’m not TOTALLY sold out to Google…yet), and Dropbox. And of course, we cannot leave out WordPress! There are a few stragglers including a good online development environment and some hobby specific things.

So for the most part, where ever I happen to be, what ever laptop I happen to have… as long as I can access the Internet (yeah, I know… comment it!) I can get work done. I work where I sit… and that is a digital nomad.

@jtrigsby

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Confirmed Internet junkie, blogger, and marketer pursuing the digital nomad lifestyle. Oh, and I LOVE a good debate, Shiner, and my Bride!

Enjoy,

 @jtrigsby

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Compromising Function for Form

I know, you’re not supposed to lead with a negative… so sorry… but its true. The single most shocking thing for me was that I made the decision to switch from an AWESOME network (Verizon) to a pretty ok network (AT&T). Even with all the traveling I did, driving all over the South, I didn’t have dead spots or dropped calls with Verizon, it just didn’t happen. Now, I can’t get out of the city limits before I’m dropping service!

And if that’s not bad enough… I knew it would be that way BEFORE we made the switch! Why make the switch then? Simple, to get the phone. It is simply a matter of pretty wins out over works almost all the time. (Now before you castigate me over the “pretty” comment, read on!) We sacrificed function over form. And don’t even get me started on me owning an Apple product!

Function Over Fight

My second observation about the iPhone is that it is not just a pretty toy, the dog-gone thing work pretty dog-gone well! See, its kind of like my relationship with Microsoft. I’ve never been a big Microsoft fan (in spite of the fact they kept food on our table for a very long time) but I am a HUGE fan of how well their apps work together. Learn how to use one office product and you know how to use them all kind of thing. The iPhone and most of the apps designed for it seem to fall into the same category. They just work, and in most cases work pretty well. The interface is intuitive and integration is simple to setup. It literally took me less than two minutes to integrate my iPhone calendar with my Exchange AND Google calendars… I couldn’t even do that with my BlackBerries.

The New PC?

Speaking totally in the metaphorical sense of course! Try this argument on for size though. With the majority of what we used home PCs to do now contained in this nifty little form factor, doesn’t that take a great big bite out of the role of the PC in the home? Is there enough left for it to do for it to survive? Is multi-touch going to be the demise of the keyboard and mouse? Check out this theory from my earlier post, Repent! Repent! The End of the Personal Computer is Near… and I wan’t even talking about the iPhone at the time!

A move away from the dedicated, sitting in the corner, all-purpose personal computer to more task specific appliances. Case in point, Tivo. I quite accidentally stumbled over Tivo’s cool integration with Netflix. Movies viewed on demand from Netflix via my Tivo. Or if I can’t find anything good there, I can watch YouTube videos or rent a download from Amazon…all through the Tivo. Great example of a task specific appliance. Oh sure, the interface is pretty weak, but hey, its still young.

Are there problems with this theory, only one I can see. The interface!!! The keyboard & mouse have worked well for the dedicated use computer, but as anyone who has tried to compose an email on their cell phone / PDA can attest, it doesn’t work nearly as well away from the desktop. Will it be speech to text, gestures, sub-cutaneous implant behind the ear? Don’t know but I do know, sooner or later, it has to change.

The simple fact is that the iPhone and iPhone apps have changed the way I go about my daily routine. I have instant access to information about movies without having to drag over the laptop or get up and head to the computer. Vickie can email a link to a recipe to Casey while she’s at the grocery store. Facebook and Twitter no longer require me to sit behind their screens to get my daily fix of what everyone else is doing.

But its only been three months. What is going to happen in the next three months that might change my opinion? Right now, I’m thinking not much… but who knows. And while this might not fit the definition of unconnected I’ve talked about in the past, being able to slip such a powerful little device in your pocket and head out to the beach…. well that’s just cool!

What has your experience been with the iPhone? Like it? Wish you hadn’t switched? or Don’t have one and don’t see what all the fuss is about. Leave a comment and get in the conversation!

- Thom

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Instead we found out that those Confirmed Dead where in fact the passengers and crew from Flight 815. We even saw pretty dramatic video as Remote Operated Vehicles or ROVs combed through the wreckage. Good enough in fact for “officials” to be able to identify the bodies of at least the pilot (although thats in question, more later). Now is it just me or…If the wreckage is so deep that it can’t be recovered (as they said) shouldn’t the bodies be crushed by the weight of the water?

We also met the four members of the “rescue” team from the freighter. First is Daniel Faraday, played by Jeremy Davies, he’s the one we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks saying, “I can’t really say rescuing your people is our first priority…” Daniel is some kind of physicist (so he says). Also of note, he’s been added to the regular list of actors in the credits. I presume that means we’ll see a lot more of him.

Next we meet Miles Straume, played by Ken Leung, some kind of ghost whisperer and definitely trigger happy wanna be mercenary. You might remember him from the first Rush Hour movies as the freaky blond haired henchman. Anyway, both of these guys were found by Jack (Matthew Fox) and Kate (Evangeline Lilly).

Next we meet Charlotte played by Rebecca Mader. (I knew I recognized here from somewhere, she was on another show I liked called Justice!) Anyway, she’s a pretty head-strong anthropologist with some kind of knowledge or connection with Dharma. We know that because she shows up on an archeology dig in Tunisia and finds the skeleton of a polar bear with a Dharma collar and seems to recognize it. She runs into Locke and company (including Ben) and hangs with them at least through this episode.

Finally, we meet Frank Lapidus played by Jeff Fahey. Simply, Frank is a drunk (albeit pretty good) pilot who was supposed to be the pilot on flight 815. We know that because he said so in his flashback where he questioned the identification of the actual pilot from Flight 815.

Now for the big news. No, we don’t find out any other members of the Oceanic 6 but we do find out what the “rescue” team’s primary objective is. They are on the island to get Ben! We also find out that Ben knew they were coming because (he says) he has a man on their ship! What the crap?!?

We also find out that the creepy black dude, (told Hurley his name is Matthew Abaddon) that visited Hurley in the Santa Rosa Mental Hospital is behind the “rescue.” Naomi is shown talking with him where he insists that there are no survivors from flight 815. Does he say this with such authority because he arranged for the fake ship to be at the bottom of the ocean? Hhmmm…

Finally, we also know from creepy black dude’s conversation with Naomi that the four members of the “rescue” party were specifically chosen for a purpose, and that they are to go to the island and return, all of them, safe and sound. Her job was to protect them…guess she should have thought about protecting herself!

All in all a pretty good episode. Certainly laid the groundwork for future episodes. I’d recommend a watch! Stay tuned to jtrigsby.com for more updates…only eleven more episodes this season!

Got a theory or an answer! Share it with us in the comments below!

*** NOTICE ***

I’m moving all my LOST episode recaps and LOST information to a new website. The New Site is What Happened On LOST! Please bookmark the site, subscribe to the feed, and continue to visit for all your LOST on ABC interests! Thanks.

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Although it’s probably stretching the “connected” theme just a bit, tonight is the night many TV fans have been waiting eight months for…

…a 2 hour Lost event tonight on ABC starting at 7:00 pm central! Yeah! But alas, there is a problem…

First you win…

I’ve watched Lost from the very first episode (by accident but hey). Maybe its just that I’m tired of all the “reality” junk on these days, maybe its because it reminds me of Lost In Space (the series with June Lockhart and Bill Mumy, not the movie with Mimi Rogers and William Hurt). Or maybe its just I like the multi-threaded mystery drama action stuff. Either way, its back! And now for the problem.

…then you lose!
My favorite distraction away from the InterWorld is ham radio. In fact, I’ve got a blog about it called Adventures in Amateur Radio. Anyway, in my local area here we have a meeting on the air ( a “net” ) every Thursday night at 7:30 and because of tonight’s 2 hour Lost event, it’s going to be a conflict. Wait, I can hear you now saying, “No problem, skip the net and watch the show!” Well, normally I would, but last week I volunteered to be in charge of the net this week! What’s a guy to do? I mean, I simply don’t watch much TV so I hardly ever run into this kind of situation so now what?

Then you win again!
Tivo to the rescue! That’s right, Tivo! It has become my lifesaver in situations like this one. This will kinda work out better anyway. I’ll finish my net around 8:00, that will give us about an hour of Lost already recorded. That way, when we start watching it, we can fast forward through the commercials and still not “catch up” with live TV. It’ll be GREAT! If you don’t already have Tivo, I strongly recommend it, I bet it will change your life the way it has changed mine!

PS – If you live anywhere close to Huntsville, Alabama and have a scanner, tune it to 146.94 around 7:30 and listen to our net! It’s sponsored by Huntsville/Madison County ARES and the repeater is courtesy of the North Alabama Repeater Association.

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Late night coffee has to be the fuel that drives the Internet. Here’s the story of one perfect cup!

I was only about 10:00 pm. Yeah, it had been a long day, but not a hard one. Lots of time on the keyboard, dinner encouraging me to nap, and a few more  social media chores to be done before bed all contributed to this cup of coffee.

Vickie was up working on CulinaryClique.com, trying to get a few more awesome recipes posted. As she often does, she had already setup the coffee maker for tomorrow morning, so that all that would be required was a stumble into the kitchen and click the button. But that was a couple of hours ago. With at least another hour or so to go we both wanted a cup. The challenge was on.

A few months back I picked up a press pot while I was on the road. The spartan accommodations I had that trip left me in a hotel room without a coffee pot. I’ve only used it a couple of times and had not been all that excited with the outcome… but my nagging craving for caffeine was calling and I had to answer. Not wanting to ruin it, I did what all good web geeks do… I Googled it.

Well, lets just say I hit the mother lode! Over at CoffeeGeek.com (isn’t that a perfect name!) I found How to Use a Press Pot! It not only gave me step-by-step instructions but pictures to boot! (One of which I borrowed for this article. Thanks guys!) With the exception of using the “right” kind of grinder, I followed the instructions to the letter and man, did it come out great! Well, great enough for me to sit down and write about it!

So a big, hearty, energized thanks goes out to Mark Prince, the Coffee Kid, over at CoffeeGeeks.com. Next time your over there, tell him Thom and Vickie sent ya! And try a press pot, you might just like it!

@jtrigsby

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Ok, here’s a little UNconnected life. This is a video of Raider and her latest trick, unlocking her kennel to get her toy out! Carly taught her this one!

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