For those of you who were unable to attend the webinar yesterday: Coaching for 2010 and Beyond: 5 Critical Strategies for Leading During Uncertain Times, the video presentation is here courtesy of Free Webinar Wednesdays.

Edge is amazing! I honestly believe that I am going to pick up more pointers from this book to enhance my success coaching than from any other book I have read to date.

–Jeff Simpkins, Book Yourself Solid Certified Coach

Community Bank Consulting

www.CommunityBankConsulting.com

I want to extend many thanks to Mike Michalowicz and Scott Bradley for including me in such a well respected group of women entrepreneurs in their TPE post today:  Women Entrepreneurs:  The Next Wave of Leaders.  I encourage you to check out the post and the biographies of the women posted…as I said…indeed an honor to be included in this group.

Mike Michalowicz has a great post today on The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur blog:  163 Ways How to Become an Entrepreneur.

This is a great list…and I will add one more:

Develop and strengthen your leadership skills.

As an entrepreneur, you are going to be faced with hundreds of opportunities and challenges to get people to go with you in the direction of your vision, which will require you in one way or another to be a great leader.  People will be much more likely to follow you if you are role model, persuasive and if you live in integrity.  And…as an entrepreneur, you will quickly see from Mike’s list that flying solo is not the approach.  You have to be willing to network and collaborate with others, which again…can be tricky if you are not honing your leadership skills.

So, check out the list today…and work on your leadership skills.  Mike suggests working with a coach…I could not agree more!

I am a news junkie…I admit it.

But I have found myself recently not turning on the news…or should I call it the “olds?”  The same old, same old stuff.  Madoff takes off with billions of dollars, AIG is begging for million dollar bonuses, and Anna Nicole Smith’s boyfriend and doctor are in trouble for prescribing medications for her to the point of stupification.

As an executive coach, I am always looking for the bigger message.  From where I sit, the problem is not with the actions (although they are staggering)…the problem is with our DNA.  As Americans, we have this code being woven into our DNA that reads:

1) Do anything to get ahead

2) To be successful, you must be rich!

3) Go to extreme measures to either be a celebrity or be around a celebrity

4) Bend the rules…just this one time, becuase you deserve it

5) So what if I get a $1 million bonus while the economy is falling apart…you HAVE to have me, so PAY ME!

You see, the issue is that we don’t have integrity sewn deeply into our DNA.  Even our government is having problems with integrity, and it is like a twisted maze to see how to get out of this.

We are going to have to start practicing some behaviors and holding people accountable to:

1) Telling the truth

2) Following the rules

3) Being transparent

4)  Disclosing information to our customers and constituents

5) Doing the right thing when no one is looking

6) Enforcing consequences when the above 5 are broken

Sounds simple, but this is so difficult to follow.  Somewhere along the way, we went down a path as a nation that was built on greed, sex appeal, power and manipulation.  And, the more we have of these things, the more we crave them.

Today, as you are reading this post, I encourage you to take one step…a step in the direction of walking closer to the line, telling the truth and disclosing more of what you need to.  If each person in our world just took one step to get back to some strong core values of integrity and doing the right thing, our world would be a much better place.