Tuesday Dispatch: Issue #65

The Owl and The Beetle

This week we learn about being an effective leader, making meetings more engaging, and the etiquette of video calls. As well as perfectly worded holiday greetings and how to repair appliances.

This newsletter is evolving. The Tuesday Dispatch of The Owl and The Beetle won't change much for the free subscribers. Starting this week, there is a bit of extra content for paid subscribers. Choose your adventure, and let's get going!

3 Droplets of Leadership

On being an effective leader

Being an effective leader requires that you help others to lead. Leaders succeed by enabling others to do the right work right. Modeling the rules of leadership ensures that you lead well, but helping others master those rules guarantees future success.

Leadership is about getting the right results in the right way. Leaders who can achieve a balanced scorecard of employee, customer, investor, and organization results will more likely succeed.

Being an effective leader starts with the self. If you want to build leadership in your company, you need to model what you want others to know and do. When you can clearly declare what makes an effective leader and then model that behavior, your employees will have clear expectations of what they should know and do, your customers will be delighted to do business with you, investors will have more confidence in the intangible value of your you can make wise investments in finding company, and and developing future leaders.

Read more about effective leadership on "The Leadership Code" by Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood, Kate Sweetman. Check it out!

Skip the Introductions

Meetings can be painful. Distributed meetings are even worse. You get bored very quickly, and people tend to zone out in a matter of minutes.

One of the best ways to make sure everyone participates throughout your online gathering is to make sure they do so within the first five minutes or so.

But a round of introductions typically takes waaaaay longer than five minutes. So instead, use a warm-up activity: something quick and straightforward, ideally related to the content of the gathering.

If you want members of a large group to participate via the chat, or in an online tool, in the rest of the event, have them do that in the first five minutes.

Check out how to keep engagement during your meetings.

Video Calls Etiquette

The absence of video call manners is frustrating for everyone.

Working from home (or remote work in general) can trick us into being in too relaxed mode.

Check out a list of DO's and DONT's on this Twitter thread.

2 Grains of Technology

60 Perfectly-Worded Christmas & Holiday Greetings

They’ve got almost 60 perfectly-worded holiday greetings and messages that you can use for your emails, cards, social posts, texts, and more. Plus, holiday email headers you can use!

Repair Clinic

If one of your kitchen appliances needs repair, on this site you can search by model number, find the common issues, and videos on how to repair them, and eventually buy spare parts. You are welcome!

1 Atom of Reflection

"When you can't change the direction of the wind - adjust your sails." - H. Jackson Brown