Here you’ll find a Table of Contents including links to all The Essential Intangibles* entries.
*The Essential Intangibles are qualities you won’t find on a resume, but are still so very important to your leadership life. These are the intangible things that make or break you. The bad news is they are essential, and if you’re missing them you’re gonna fail. The good news is each intangible can be learned.
The Essential Intangibles
PART 1 - Leadership books, seminars, conferences, and consultants provide us with a wealth of information to make us better leaders. We learn how to better manage priorities, how to focus on a few narrow goals, how to cast vision, how to lead meetings, how to get the right people on the bus, how to lead down, how to lead up, and how to lead sideways while standi…
Selfless Ownership
PART 2 - If you only care about yourself, you will be the only one who does. Selfishness is more common in your typical office than post-it notes. Most people are driven, even if they don’t admit it, by their own need to advance and get ahead of others. But the first essential intangible is
The Fine Art of Showing Up
PART 3 - A film director once said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” This is the essence of one of the essential intangibles: the fine art showing up. People spin around on the hamster wheel of success but still undercut much of their work by simply not showing up when it counts. Showing up at just the right moment can make you, and missing it can brea…
Having Fun and Showing It
PART 4 - When you look at a résumé you can get a sense of what someone has done in the past and you can be reasonably sure that they can do it again. When you interview someone you’ll find out about certain situations that show their resourcefulness and their ability to think on their feet. Early on when hiring a new person to your staff you get a sense of what …
Being Real and Transparent
PART 5 - Images are edited to ensure no flaws are seen. Ads are created to lure customers into a false sense of security. Simple truth is manipulated. Proper clarity becomes blurred. Fake futures are foretold. Reality characters are cast, story lines pre-programmed, and then it all gets televised.
Keeping Secrets and Being Loyal
PART 6 - “So why do you think you and Chad don’t connect well in ministry,” I asked another pastor who had troubles with a young leader that worked for him (I’ve changed the names in this story).
Faithfulness
PART 7 - Faithfulness may seem like a strange inclusion in the list of intangibles. Certainly, there are fewer obscure nuances to faithfulness than many of the other intangibles. Faithfulness is even listed as a fruit of the Spirit, for goodness sake (now that I think about it, goodness is also listed.)
Reward-Sharing
PART 8 - Perhaps no intangible is less present in a resume or interview than this one. In fact, in a resume someone almost always merely touts their own accomplishments. They don’t say, “I couldn’t have accomplished this without the great team around me.” And in an interview you’re often looking for that person’s individual accomplishments and skills, what they …
