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Latest Posts By: Richard Crist / Tony Pantello | July 7, 2010 All too often when we try to decide what nonprofit organizations to volunteer for or even what we want to devote our lives to, we start with questions like "What do you love to do?" or "What are you good at?". While these vocational types of questions are certainly helpful to consider, there's another question we can ask ourselves that cuts to the heart of what we truly care about. This question is "What makes me angry?" No, I'm not referring to the petty anger that arouses afte... Read More »
By: Tony Pantello | May 16, 2010  There's an age-old debate on the difference between leadership and management tasks. And the argument is valid. Each requires a distinct set of professional skill sets. But contrary to popular belief, both are equally important for an organization's or community's success. An exploration into their differences indicates why this is the case.The DifferenceWarren Bennis, author of Becoming a Leader, describes the difference between leadership and management better than I ever could. He says this: ... Read More »
By: Tony Pantello | May 10, 2010 After listening to the stories and advice of the recent leadership panel in LEAD Session 5, I think it's pretty clear that there is no one right way to lead others. We all have different strengths, different talents, and different passions that influence our leadership style. Conversely however, I also learned that there is one thing that all leaders, regardless of personality or industry, simply cannot do if they want to effectively lead others. In other words, while the reasons and methods that make leaders successful are very different, the reasons why ineffective leaders fail to gain a following are very much the same. Think about the most influential leaders you know or have read about. Think about what we recently heard from a few of East Central Indiana's most respected leaders. In my opinion, the one thing that they've all refused to do, more so than anything else, was to consider themselves more import... Read More »
By: Tony Pantello | May 3, 2010 Has the following ever happened to you? You're behind the wheel in gridlock traffic and you courteously let someone merge into your lane. And then that same person you graciously let in doesn't even acknowledge and thank you for it. How rude, right? Most people, including myself, get offended when this happens. What's this situation have to do with empathetic listening and LEAD Session 4? Everything. It exemplifies the exact opposite attitude you should take when you're seeking to empathetically listen to others. When you're truly seeking to understand what another is saying, the key is to be genuinely interested in their welfare, their situation, and the message they are communicating, regardless of whether there is anything for you to "gain" or take away from it. ... Read More »
By: Tony Pantello | April 26, 2010 So much so that psychologists have even coined a term for it.
They call it the fundamental attribution error. In layman's terms, it means that when we look from the outside in on a conflict, we have the tendency to think that something in an individual's personality and in their direct control is to blame for it. And to make matters worse, we then underestimate the effect that situational influences (things that we can't control) have in the cause of that same conflict. A story from Dr. Stephen Covey's popular "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" illustrates the fundamental attribution error powerfully:
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One Sunday morning on a subway in New York, people were sitting quietly -- some reading newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. It was a calm, peaceful scene.
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