Bill Zipp's Top Three Blog Posts from 2020
It's a year we'll never forget. Here's what you found the most helpful on leadership.
2020 comes to a close this week, a year we’ll never forget.
Words and phrases that rarely entered our minds prior to 2020 are now part of regular conversation: social distancing, asymptomatic, contact tracing, flattening the curve, and, of course, Zoom (as a verb and not a noun).
Here are the words you found most helpful as my readers seeking to grow in your leadership: My top three blog posts from 2020. Before the year is out, why don’t you read them again (or, perhaps, for the first time).
Warning: Don’t Let Escalation Destroy Your Leadership
Weehawken, a weird word to be sure, doesn’t mean much to anyone but an unemployed history major.
Weehawken is a spit of land along the Hudson River where the careers of two prominent leaders of the American Revolution, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, met their ends, one by death and the other by banishment.
Why Hamilton? Why Burr? Why Weehawken? Why such waste? We need only look at our own leadership duels to discover the answer. Escalation.
READ MORE HERE
Is Your Team Just A Committee? Five Fatal Flaws
What do these numbers have in common: 38, 53, and 72?
Before you pull out a calculator, their shared identity doesn’t emerge from a mathematical equation but from a historical event.
38
It was thirty-eight degrees on January 28, 1986 when Challenger flight 51-L launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The region had been experiencing unseasonably low temperatures, repeatedly delaying the shuttle’s launch. Pressure was mounting, both from the press and from within NASA, to get on with the show.
38 … 53
The problem was, the O-rings on the Challenger’s fuel system had been designed for launch with external temperatures of fifty-three degrees or higher. Design engineers were concerned the rings would fail to seal at the lower temperature, leading to a catastrophic breach in the fuel delivery system.
38 … 53 … 72
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The One Critical Question that Determines Your Success as a Leader
What kind of a person are you?
Are you a day person or a night person? Are you a dog person or a cat person? An introvert or an extrovert? A beer person or a wine person?
My wife is a day person, a dog person, and an introvert who enjoys the occasional glass of wine. This means we wake up at roughly the same time and are amused by the same two silly mutts, but she’s someone I don’t have to share my IPA with nor my stupid jokes (which is just fine by her).
None of the answers to these questions, while they may contribute to marital harmony, will determine your success as a leader, however. But there’s one critical question that will. Here it is: Are you a window person or a mirror person?
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Number One in Leadership Training!
In spite of the challenges, 2020 will be a special year for me because the Kindle version of my book, The Ultimate Sales Manager Playbook, became a #1 New Release in Leadership Training on Amazon.
A BIG thank you to everyone who helped make this possible.
What’s that you say? You weren’t able to pick up your Kindle version? No worries! Just follow the link below, and it can be yours.
To get your copy, go to: Buy Bill’s book for Kindle
Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2021!