The Journey of Self-Discovery Continues! #LinkageGILD | Day 2

We covered a lot of ground on Day 2 of Linkage’s Global Institute for Leadership Development^® (GILD). The excitement continues to build here in Palm Desert, CA and the energy among the 300 leaders here is contagious!

We kicked-off the day with Stephen Shapiro’s energizing Personality Poker game… we questioned how to avoid our Default Future with Dave Logan…. and closed with a fascinating session on how to focus our time each day to drive better performance and productivity.

We witnessed unforgettable moments from center stage, engaged in rich dialogue with our learning teams, and have made new connections that will last a lifetime.

If you want to follow the “live” experience from home or work, check out #LinkageGILD on Twitter and be sure to follow us on Twitter @LinkageInc, where we’re sharing in-the-moment nuggets from our faculty on the main stage.

If you missed our coverage of Day 1, check out highlights here!

Without further ado, here is a summary of today’s keynote presentations:

Stephen Shapiro on Innovate 

In this interactive, hands-on session, participants played “Personality Poker,” a unique card game which features a different personality trait on each card–like “creative,” “analytical,” “organized,” and “empathetic.” They had the opportunity to move around the room, exchanging cards to build a hand that perfectly describes them as a leader.

What we learned:

• The people who are most unlike you are the people you need the most.
• We’re often focused on ideas, instead of asking the right questions.
• Innovation is an end-to-end process that starts with an issue, problem or opportunity, and ends with the creation of value.
• Make sure that your team is playing with a full deck—that is, a nice balance of different styles and personalities!
• Ask: who else has solved a similar problem? Sometimes the craziest solutions will come from outside your industry.

Learn more about Personality Poker on Stephen’s official website, and follow Stephen on Twitter. 

Dave Logan on Innovate & Achieve 

As leaders, it’s our obligation to lead change and create realities that wouldnot otherwise happen. Dave Logan refers to this as the “Inventive Future.” What are you willing to commit to act on regardless of what comes along?

What we learned: 

• Every time you see a human interacting, it is because a situation occurs to them in a certain way. When we alter situations, people’s performance changes.
• Leadership is making something happen that wasn’t going to happen away. Leadership is all about change.
• Think about one minimum viable step that you can take to begin to create an Inventive Future.

To learn more about Dave, click here.

Daniel Pink on Achieve 

Timing is everything–and yet, we don’t actually know much about timing itself. As it turns out, timing is a science–not an art. When making major decisions, most of us rely on intuition and guesswork, but there are evidenced-based ways to make better, smarter decisions about what to focus on and when.

What we learned:

• Mood affects us in a number of ways—we need to be conscious of this—and understand that it impacts performance.
• The hidden pattern of the day profoundly affects our mood and performance. Data shows that our positive mood rises in the morning, dips in the afternoon and rises again in the afternoon.
• 3 ways to be more intentional about the timing of your day: 1) Be much more deliberate in scheduling individual and teamwork. 2) Move analytic tasks to your peak times, administrative tasks to your trough, and add insight tasks to the recovery. 3) Take more breaks… breaks that are social, moving, outside, and fully detached are more restorative.
• 5 takeaways for endings: 1) Shine a light on endings to energize yourself and others. 2) Consider short fuses rather than long fuses. 3) Always give the bad news first. 4) Use endings as meaning makers. 5) Highlight the last chocolate!

For more insights, follow Daniel on Twitter or visit his website.