The Biggest Hunger: Appreciation

A fundamental quality of ‘The Leader as a Mensch’ is the appreciation of others – seeing others not as a problem to be fixed but as a reservoir of skills, talents and ideas to be nurtured and developed.

Practice seeing others, truly seeing them in their utmost potential and remind yourself, every day, of the power of appreciation. It will help you create a culture where people are willing to share their ideas and insights for the success of your organization.

Mother Teresa said, “There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation than for bread.” This applies to everyone, at every level, in every corner of the world.

Praise has a limited “best before” date. Don’t delay its expression or wait until performance review time – when you see something that is worthy of praising, do so promptly after the event.

Make you genuine words memorable for your constituents by being specific about the achievement. Not many of us remember the perfunctory “job well done” but we all remember someone who tells us “This was pure genius!” or “I would have missed this if you hadn’t picked it up.” Praise does not have to be elaborate. It just needs to be genuine.

Encourage others to appreciate themselves. Be conscious about creating opportunities at work for others to appreciate themselves. You will be fulfilling one of the noble goals of leadership which is to help others become leaders themselves.

‘The Leader as Mensch’ is the epitome of authenticity. The hallmark of this person is candor – the avoidance of all deception. When we are in the presence of a Mensch, we cannot help but notice the absence of artificiality. We sense that we are confronted with a real person, one who doesn’t set out to make an impression. A Mensch just is.

Leadership is difficult work and it can be easy to stray from who we are at the core in order to satisfy the business imperatives. We cannot always trust that others are genuine with us. Even with the best of intentions, even when we strive to do our very best, others will sometimes betray us. Much happens in the course of our careers as we climb the achievement ladder and we can sometimes, slowly and imperceptibly, wander off from our authentic selves, the core of who we are.

Despite all of this, we need to make every effort to stay true to who we are. Find the way to yourself. Or, as Howard Thurman eloquently said, “Find the grain in your own wood.”

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The Basics of the Newsletter

Whether you’re writing a newsletter, an article or copy for a web site, you are communicating something to your audience. Your audience has chosen to read your words – either because they want to learn something or because they want to be entertained – so you need to live up to their expectation. That means communicating well.

Here are some points to remember:

Good communication is relevant, focused, timely and readable.

Identify your target audience: consumer press, trade press, professional journals or specialist press for articles; internal, trade or special interest newsletters; paying or ‘free’ audience for web sites. Look at their age, gender, socio-economic group and lifestyle factors.

Look at what your audience wants – news, information or entertainment.

Use the five Ws and an H to focus your work – what (subject), who (audience, case study and expert), where (tone and angle),when (topical, up to date), why (what’s in it for the audience), how (your approach).

Your language (tone and vocabulary) needs to be consistent with that of the publication where it appears.

Keep it simple and relevant.

Avoid bias and stereotypes.

Check your spelling and grammar.

Remember that editors, publications and web sites change – widen your fields of interest to avoid becoming too reliant on particular publications by finding new angles on regular topics and finding new topics that interest you.

Unless you’re an acknowledged expert in your field, you’ll need to contact the editor for the first time. Look at what sort of article you want to write, the sort of subjects you can write about, which publications cover that sort of topic and whether they use freelancers.

Look at your target publication’s style – length, use of case studies and experts, layout, length of paragraphs and sentences, tone and vocabulary. Identify the topics that haven’t been covered (and remember how far in advance the publication works!)

Ring the features department to find out if they accept freelance contributions and, if so, who to send your ideas to, how much detail they want, whether they’d prefer email or post, which issue they’re planning next, which categories they want to cover (broad terms).

Prepare your submissions package – a covering letter, your CV (contact details and list of articles published), cuttings, ideas, (brief paragraph or longer outlines) and SAE (or, for email, a truncated CV and a couple of web site article URLs).

If you haven’t heard within a month, assume a rejection – send in more ideas and don’t pester. If an editor asks you to write something, stick to the deadline and discuss any problems straightaway – it’s OK to refuse a commission but come up with an alternative!

The commissioning form will tell you your brief, fee, payment details, appearance date and deadline. Don’t take rejection personally – the topic’s either not right at that point or may have been covered by someone else (remember lead time!). Try the idea elsewhere and come up with new ones for the editor who rejected you.

Recycle topics by changing your angle or combining elements from several articles.

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