Category: Leadership Skills

In 2001, the Smithsonian Museum of American History named the month of April National Jazz Appreciation Month to celebrate the heritage and history of jazz.

Jazz grew out of the deep south at the turn of the 20th century and influenced innumerable musicians, inspiring new methods and new styles of music. The impact of jazz on the United States was indeed profound.

Jazz, like leadership, combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals.

Interestingly, a jazz band is an expression of servant leadership. The leader of a jazz band has the beautiful opportunity to draw the best out of the other musicians.

Since it was first published to wide acclaim in 1992, the bestselling Leadership Jazz has firmly placed itself among the great business classics. Former President Bill Clinton called it “astonishing,” and as noted above, the late Peter Drucker advised, “Read this slowly. This book is wisdom in action.”

Click here for a summary of Leadership Jazz

25 years ago, Bob Nelson—author of Ubuntu!–and founding Recognition Professional International board member—created National Employee Appreciation Day, which is celebrated annually the first Friday in March.  For the Day, employee achievement and contributions are honored, thereby increasing employee job satisfaction (check out Gary Chapman and Paul White’s The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace).

Patrick Lencioni tells leaders, “When leaders fail to tell employees that they’re doing a great job, they might as well be taking money out of their pockets and throwing it into a fire, because they are wasting opportunities to give people the recognition they crave more than anything else. Direct, personal feedback really is the simplest and most effective form of motivation.”

In The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business, Patrick Lencioni provides leaders with a groundbreaking, approachable model for achieving organizational health. In fact, he proposes a new way of conducting business—one that maximizes human potential and aligns the organization around a common set of principles.

Lencioni points out that healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave.  In fact, almost no employees willingly leave an organization where they are getting the levels of gratitude and appreciation that they deserve!

Click here to learn more about The Advantage