It may seem an act of fancy to discuss role enlargement at a time when organizations demand more of talent. However, acts of leadership require that others feel our presence, even when we feel stretched to near capacity. Role enlargement and leadership expansion require personal zeal for learning. The path to leadership learning — and ultimately cultural influence — begins with an identification and assessment of critical stakes and outcomes. From there, learning leaders can set in motion accompaniments to learning to include available resources, time-bound measures, and evidentiary measures of completion. Beyond this, leadership role learners verify learning through discussion and action with others.

In the quest to create learning, leaders reflect upon their humanity. Rather than place the leadership learners in exalted positions, learning leaders acknowledge and integrate the extraordinary promise and opportunity of learning. Could you imagine any leader quipping, "Don't bother me, I'm learning!" Leadership learners approach events and situations with patience and flexibility. They place trust in others while learning as opposed to waiting for others to approve their learning agendas. Learning leaders rearrange their interests and experiences by embedding and incorporating feedback into learning routines and opportunities.

Leadership learners are unique and we can create environments in which we cherish learning. We can admire leadership learners in several areas. First, they don't try to make the rest of us just like them; they acknowledge individuality and difference. Next, leadership learners don't judge others' needs because they act from a context of honoring others. Finally, leadership learners can be delightful because they never take themselves too seriously!

If you want to enhance your leadership learning and ability to create powerful culture change in organization, it's essential to find a pace and to vary the pace. Different learning vistas and demanding environments require a top-of-mind awareness and alertness to pacing. Pace variety contributes significantly to the structure and composition of learning. Through debriefing and experiencing new outcomes in leadership, we create renewing cycles to learn, to grow, and to create better organizational experiences for others.

Did you ever have a work situation where the primary performance impediment was a conflict with a boss, co-worker, or subordinate? At times, our interpersonal conflicts become or evolve into team performance issues. A great hope of affected teammates is that the feuding pair resolves their differences so that the entire team can leap to progress. Finding a venue to resolve pair-conflict can be an extraordinary challenge because performance is a group issue; team meetings are often inappropriate settings for pair-conflict resolution. If pairs are able to acknowledge differences and create spaces for conflict-resolution, the pairs only solve the interpersonal dimension of the conflict. When completely successful, the pair engages in action course that lets others know about the resolution of differences; the formerly feuding pair enhances the possibilities for sustained conflict resolution by involving others.

If you are in an interpersonal conflict affecting your leadership, begin by making sure that you are not the problem. You can do this by preparing yourself for feedback and then by asking members of your work team for appraisal. If the conflict is genuinely interpersonal, acknowledge it, and devise methods that create a time-out period. Acknowledge your interdependence with others in the creation of success. Seek new opportunities for close and frequent cooperation with others.

To achieve success in interpersonal conflict resolution, both people must acknowledge the results that they want to achieve. The results might be in the form of process changes or in terms of outcomes. Both people need to consider the question, "Can I truly behave differently?" Organizationally, both in terms of simple efficiency and authentic effectiveness, require resolution and some form of closure. Before engaging in the journey to resolve two-person conflict, ensure that the benefits of action outweigh the costs.

In the end, leaders who effectively solve interpersonal conflict believe in that collaboration is not only possible but that it is desirable. Leaders who embark to resolution question take a formal approach to change acknowledging that chance doesn't often produce results quickly. Willingness underscores every move away from unhealthy conflict and toward positive resolution. Willingness requires an open-mind and the possibility for opposing and new perspectives. Are you open-minded enough to risk a new future with someone with whom your interpersonal conflict impedes team performance?

Innovation stalls because of vanilla. Vanilla management, endemic in some organizations, hastens organizational decline. The primary condition that fuels vanilla management is sameness. You can identify it when you see the same people working on important organizational challenges. You can observe vanilla management when we engage in repeated discussion of the same things previously discussed. When others engage in decision-making and problem solving in the same ways that they have always done, you witness vanilla management. In a world of change, sameness both deters and defers creativity.

Leaders can design for creativity by creating inclusive and welcoming cultures. Bring new people into situations and develop pools of diverse talent to combat sameness. Rather than focus on the internal organization and its politics, leaders who support creative effort focus on externalizing the organization. Leaders supporting creativity create environments that give new ideas a chance to sprout and to flourish.

Several performance dimensions can assist leaders in reversing Vanilla Management. Among those dimensions are the creation of interest, the active use of encouragement, the distribution of rewards that acknowledge creativity, and increasing individual responsibility. Prudent exercise of these performance dimensions reduces fear and risk. If your environment is confusing, disorderly, and chaotic then it's time to replace regulations with new standards and values.

Today, even in fast-paced organizations, we can find pockets of professional boredom. There are many bright people in organizations bored silly by procedure and task repetition. Creating change through risk is at the heart of the leader developing the creative enterprise.

Competition exerts new pressures on organizational forms to change and to evolve. The emergence and deployment of technology now shapes the nature of competition. The new nature of competition affects nearly every aspect of organizational performance. We witness the emergence of the future in the growth of virtual teams, inter-organizational alliances and networks, and the revision of the social nature of the employment contract.

Environmental change is often at odds with human capabilities to change. The type of change we experience in the reconstruction of competition requires renewed flexibility and creativity. It demands that we leverage knowledge in new ways and w move from individual competency to group and organizational fitness. Increasing competition requires new skill in designing organizations for long-term success.

Effective leaders will focus on integrating human and technical activities to create success in new competitive environments. Integration requires deliberate use of communication channels within the organization to act upon environment demands. In the new environment, organizations will benefit from a new emphasis on planning and decision-making. Technology will fuel improvement strategies.

Our acknowledgement that work is dynamic underscores the search for new skills and new deployment of talent. Content will continue to shift in dynamic environments, challenging leaders to understand how historical tasks fit into tomorrow's activities. Leaders will move to results rather than observation as a method of creating positive organizational shifts.