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My friend Mark Schaefer tweeted over the weekend that his awesome blog {grow} has been added to the Advertising Age Power 150 marketing blogs at number 148!  He joins other luminaries such Brian Clark at Copyblogger, Dave Armano at Logic+Emotion, Chris Brogan, Seth Godin, Jason Falls and many others (full list).  They are lucky to have him and if you’ve come across his blog you knew that his skill would be noticed.

Mark is a gifted communicator and his experience is on display with every post he writes, turning out post after post of helpful and insightful thoughts. A special congrats is in order since Mark is also the first Ad Age Power 150 blogger in Knoxville, TN a title he will hold until the end of time. Congrats Mark, the moonshine’s on me next time.

Photo by Chris Inside

This is a part of the Tribes Group Blogging Project based on Seth Godin’s book “Tribes“.

Leadership is like a fire hydrant. Most people notice the brightly colored top because it’s what you can see. What they don’t always realize is the underground portion of the fire hydrant that connects to the water and it is what makes the top work.

One of the hardest things for a leader to do is listen. This is because we often see that leadership is making decisions and we often only see the outcome of the thought process, we never see the events leading up to that decision – we only see the top of the fire hydrant. On page 128 of Tribes, author Seth Godin refers to President Ronald Regan’s secret:

Regan’s secret, is to listen, to value what you hear, and then make a decision even if it contradicts the very people you are listening to.

Listening to those around you is important because it IS the lower half of the fire hydrant. Connecting you to the life of the organization, listening gives others the chance to share with you why they believe something. In most cases the people you lead will respect a decision made if they feel like their opinion was heard. Listening isn’t always easy to do, and the trick here is to really listen to people. You can’t just listen to them because it will make them feel like you care about what they think, because that will backfire in a major way. Chances are you’ll learn about the issue, you’ll learn about your people and you’ll grow as a leader.

You need to listen because you need buy in from the people around you because leaders without followers aren’t leaders.

So plan time in your day to listen – you’ll be better and your organization will be stronger.

As a fairly young business person I often toy with the idea of going and getting an MBA, and most people I know will ask me at least once if I am planning on getting one. My answer normally surprises them, I say “probably not.” I realize that most people equate MBA with business success or at least career drive and ambition, but right now I’m just not sure it’s for me.

I do not claim the no-MBA route, for that I give full credit to Seth Godin who writes about how needless and costly it is unless you need it to get into a field, e.g. investment banking. Godin mentions that for the cost of 30 books one can learn just as much.

Also, my interests are in new media and the Internet. I’m sure there are classes in the US about these topics, but can’t I learn more by engaging with the technologies as they grow? Coupled with the seasoning of sage business wisdom via a hearty selection of books I think I will learn a lot.

One site I’ve frequented recently is the personal mba.com which is a formatic method of Godins above. It also has forums and tips and tricks to add some discussion value. The only thing I’m not sure of is the booklist. It seems to have a lot of “trendy” business books, and I think I’d be more of the opinion of taking a classic route with a couple cutting edge books.

Another take is the MBA on the Run similar to the idea from above but doing it audibly via audio book, which I’m sure helps use some of that down time while exercising or commuting.

So in the end one could end up with a lot of business knowledge at a much lesser cost. The only downside is the lack of MBA credentials, which depending on what you do could be unimportant.

Is this a hokey idea?

Everyone knows about YouTube. That’s a basic assumption. I want to talk about online videos. First off I prefer videos I can learn from. Now, videos of funny things are, well they are funny. But most of the time I enjoy watching a video I’ll learn something new from.

Which leads me to YouTube. Within the deep fortress of YouTube there is a series of videos that I find very interesting. It’s called @Google. From their YouTube account, “@Google events–such as the Authors@Google and Women@Google series–featuring everyone from newsmakers to bestselling authors.” Google in their wisdom (and infinite budget) brings in well known people to talk to their employees. They bring in all types of people. My favorite version is Authors@Google.

My fab four.

Chris Anderson

Michael Bloomberg

Marci Alboher & Tim Ferriss

Joseph Stiglitz

Ironically I had the idea to search for “authors” at YouTube after watching a Seth Godin video of him speaking at Google, although the video is on Google Video.

So that brought me to the wealth of information on YouTube. I’ve got that feeling I’m late to the party, but better late then never.

Also, a video on the Stanford Design Thinking Process

So those are the gems I’ve found. What are yours?

@Google Talks – http://youtube.com/user/AtGoogleTalks

Chris Anderson – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibzF_7gSjyI

Michael Bloomberg – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsRpYXJMGIg

Marci Alboher & Tim Ferriss – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcqcWVZJPb0

Seth Godin – http://tinyurl.com/yr8rfs

Joesph Stiglitz – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzhD7KVs-R4

Stanford Design Thinking – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZH70qhmEso

I saw Seth Godin’s post on apologies, which jogged my memory about an experience I had. Recently my family and I went out to dinner. We normally go to a play, and dinner but because of some time factors we could only work out dinner this time

So we chose to go to dinner at the Melting Pot. Which is a fabulous fondue restaurant if you haven’t ever been. It’s somewhat of a dinner and event rolled into one, since you’re actually cooking your own food. Plus, you get your own colorful fondue skewers. It can’t be beat.

It really was a great experience with a couple courses of food and fondue combos. Our server was excellent, part entertainer with great service. Until we got to dessert. They were out of dark chocolate, unfortunate since about half of the dessert options use dark chocolate. We just substituted milk chocolate and moved on with life.

The manager came around and asked how our meal was, we responded “great, except you’re out of dark chocolate” his response was classic, and ultimately ruined part of the dinner for me.

“It’s not our fault.”

According to Yehuda’s list (which Seth linked to) this is a 2. Out of 10. Next to last on the options when apologizing. Now please allow me to rave for a moment. In a zero-sum world, it’s someone’s fault. The truck may have been late, or the order bad, or whatever but when it’s between your fault, and my fault, it’s ultimately your fault. Not that the chocolate isn’t in, but that you’re not giving me the experience I expect (and paid for).

This is also a botched chance to take a bad situation and make it spectacular. What if, instead of, “it’s not our fault” it’s “we are going to give you free dessert because we messed up” or “come back for a dessert course next week, on us” or really any other sentence choice other than, “it’s not our fault.” If I was the Melting Pot, I’d rather have positive chatter about the experience and create a happy customer, even at a higher short-term cost, because in the long-term I’ll come back, and spend more money and with an product like the Melting Pot I’ll go with my friends, and they’ll spend money and have a good time.

Next time, maybe his words should be, “I’m sorry, how can I fix this?” Ok, so that’s seven words. But at least I’d tell my friends about the GREAT experience.