As part of the Acronym blog‘s Leadership Inspiration month, I wanted to share some of my own reflections on leadership. I know the Acronym blog initially wanted to keep it focused on business leader-types, however, I think leadership is a fluid term with a different definition for each person.

So how do I define leadership? For a base, I looked the word up at Merriam Webster.com.

Leadership (noun)
1. the office or position of a leader
2. capacity to lead
3. the act or an instance of leading
4. leaders (the party leadership)

Now, I don’t know about you, but I was always taught to define a word without using other forms of that word. So, I moved to the trusty thesaurus.com, which defined “leadership” as guidance and gave me synonyms such as administration, authority, command, control, direction, domination, influence, management, power, skill, supremacy and sway.

Alright. I hope we can all agree that leadership goes beyond exercising your power and supremacy over others, and has a lot to do with inspiring others to be the best they can be, whether it’s on an athletic field or in an office or classroom.

I’ve had many people inspire me throughout my life … parents, coaches, teachers, professors, bosses. The common denominator among each person was passion.

The editorial adviser at my college newspaper was passionate about newspapers and working with young journalists, guiding them to produce one of the best student newspapers in the country. I’ve had a handful of teachers and professors who were so supremely passionate about young adults and children that they made me want to learn and excel even more than I already did (yeah, I may have been a bit of a “teacher’s pet” as a kid). My high school swim coach was able to combine three of his passions — working with young adults, sports and teaching — and as a result, became like a second father to many of us on the team.

To me, leading and managing are two very different things. Managing people can be learned; good leadership is a little more difficult to come by.

There’s an intangible quality to good leaders that inspires those who work around them (no matter where they fall in the “corporate ladder”) to be better, to do better and to aspire to better things. They motivate us through their own work, through their words and, most importantly, through their actions.

Gaining the confidence and self-awareness to make difficult decisions comes with time, but I don’t think having “leadership qualities” matters where you are in your career. You’re never too young to inspire others.

There are a lot of qualities that make someone a good leader (remain humble, be open to new ideas, ask tough questions), but without passion, you won’t be able to fool anyone into doing their best.

Who has inspired you most during your career?

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Happy Friday! Who’s ready for baseball season (not just the spring training games) to begin?! I actually scored some tickets to the Atlanta Braves’ home opener on Monday evening, and I’m psyched to see them play the Chicago Cubs. Any other baseball fans out there?

Anywayyyy … as a lot of people know, there was lots of excitement (err, controversy?) this week in the association world, which was spurred by the removal of a blog post from ASAE’s Acronym blog. I chimed in on Wednesday, and there was certainly a thoughtful discussion going on elsewhere, too. So, without further adieu, here are a few of my favorite blog posts from this week.

1. Gotta start with the post that prompted so much discussion. The Acronym post informing everyone that a previous post on consultants was removed has 18 comments at the time of writing this, and they’re all worth reading. And I’m curious to know: How would your organization handle a similar incident?

2. After moderating a lively Association Chat (#assnchat on Twitter – transcript here), KiKi L’Italien posted her thoughts on the removal of the Acronym post. She thoughtfully considered each side of the issue and filled everyone in on the facts in case they weren’t caught up. Be sure to read the comments on this post, too!

3. Deirdre Reid wrote a great post for SmartBlog Insights about her thoughts as a new CAE. There’s lots of great info for anyone thinking about taking the exam, and Deirdre has a great attitude and perspective about the whole thing. She asks, How many times have you scribbled great ideas down on a notepad in the dark? A must-read!

4. At the aLearning blog, Ellen Behrens wrote a great post called Life Support Can Be Expensive. With all the talk about how conferences have to change for anyone to get any value from them, Ellen pointed out that overhauling them can be expensive, and wonders if conferences are even the ideal places to engage members.

5. Jamie Notter wrote this week about three new leadership models for association professionals to consider. He succinctly discusses “Ecosystems, not machines,” “Innovation as a staple, not a luxury” and “Clarity over control” and asks leaders to consider each one in their own organizations. How could you adapt these for a small-staff organization?

If you’re curious about the original post about consultants that was removed from Acronym, feel free to contact me and I can e-mail you a PDF, along with the original comments.

Have a fantastic weekend, everyone!

When I was the editor at my college newspaper, I got tons of hate mail. (OK, most of it wasn’t directed at me personally, but at a particular news story or — more often — an opinion column or editorial.) I sometimes had to write retractions or corrections, and they appeared in both the print version of the newspaper and online.

When I was the opinions editor at the same newspaper, I received even more “hate” mail. The Opinions section was one of the most widely read sections (second to Sports) and it was also a pretty polarizing one. My university was home to 35,000 students with diverse opinions and backgrounds, and often a column or editorial would stir up the masses. It was always my goal to publish columns on both sides of an issue, and I loved having point-counterpoint columns on the Opinions page.

Opinions columns are similar to blog posts; they share the author’s opinion with facts to back it up, but not every reader has to agree with every word.

Because of this background, I was extremely interested in Tuesday’s Association Chat (#assnchat on Twitter), which discussed the Acronym blog’s decision to remove a post from last week titled “Consultant Wasteland.” (Check out the transcript here.)

Just like you can’t delete something from a newspaper once it’s been put into print, you can never truly delete something from the Internet once it’s been posted. You can, however, publish an official apology, a column (or blog post) reflecting a different viewpoint or letters to the editor (blog comments) disagreeing with the original post.

I always made an effort to publish letters disagreeing with columns (yes, even columns I had written), or columns responding to previous ones. It creates a dialogue in the community, pure and simple. It lets people know their opinions are appreciated and their contributions are welcome.

Of course, at the top of every opinions page, there was a disclaimer: “The views expressed here do not represent the views of the newspaper.” Although not all readers understood that and I often got letters asking how I could publish certain columns and if the newspaper had any standards, there was nothing I loved more than starting a good healthy discussion on a controversial topic.

However, the Internet allows everyone to be a columnist and espouse views on whatever they’d like. Now more than ever, it’s crucial to allow a dialogue and conversation to take place. By deleting the post about consultants, ASAE unintentionally conveyed that it is not willing to stand by what it publishes. Will people think twice now before submitting a comment or blog post? Perhaps.

I hate to use ASAE as an example because I truly think the Acronym blog is a wonderful resource for everyone in the association community. And I don’t know the conversations that took place in its offices or all of the complaints they received about the posts. But I do know that now, after the post has been deleted, even more people are talking about it, and not in a good way. I’m willing to bet that wasn’t the intent when the post was deleted.

Like the true journalism geek that I am, I have a bumper sticker from the Newseum (located in Washington, D.C.) on my car that reads, “Talk is cheap. Free speech isn’t.” Some may say that’s just the idealistic journalist in me, but I don’t want to live in a world where we can’t speak out freely and (politely) disagree with others in an intelligent conversation.

What do you think? How would you handle criticism of a blog post? Or, how have you handled criticism in the past?

It’s time for the weekly grab-bag of association and social media blogs. Here’s what I found especially interesting on the interweb this week.

I Upgraded to HootSuite 2.0 Because It Works by Chris Abraham at socialmedia.biz. My Twitter stream was abuzz with this message Thursday as HootSuite, a popular Web-based Twitter service, released a new update. HootSuite lets users track multiple accounts and mentions, and the new release has a powerful monitoring feature. In the interest of full disclosure, I upgraded MemberClicks‘ HootSuite account, but haven’t gotten around to playing with it yet. It’s on my weekend to-do list!

Transitioning from Young to Young Professional by Aaron Wolowiec for ASAE’s Acronym. Aaron’s post really resonated with me — I think the dilemma he describes of young professionals trying to be taken seriously is a common one. Some of his tips are common ones (e. g. find a mentor, develop a network), but they’re suggestions we’d all do well to remember. “Being persistent” is the key.

10 Insights Gained From Spending 7,280 Hours on Social Networking Web sites by Heather Mansfield for Nonprofits 2.0. Heather is the nonprofit community manager for change.org, so she’s spent a lot of time on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Her insights are extremely valuable and are backed up by her many years of experience.

Google rules by Jeff De Cagna for SmartBlog Insights. Jeff, the editor at large of SmartBlog Insights, asks associations to question whether their point of view lines up with Google’s core beliefs about how the company should run. Google’s best practices referenced: “Google doesn’t need to control everything,” “Google doesn’t need to be evil” and “Google doesn’t need to be evil.” Great stuff here.

ASAE’s mobile hub for the annual meeting and expo is freakin’ awesome. Direct your mobile phone’s browser to http://asae09.org/m for the mobile version. Basically it aggregates information about the conference from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social networking sites. If you log in with your ASAE info, it connects to Twitter and will automatically add the #asae09 hashtag. Plus there’s a schedule of events and you can add stuff the “Contributions” tab to share with everyone.

Social Media Mavens: An Interview with Kodak’s Tom Hoehn by Mack Collier at The Viral Garden. Mack interviewed Kodak’s director of interactive marketing and convergence media about the company’s social media strategy and some of its best practices. There are some great thoughts here from a huge company’s “social media maven” – and many of them can be applied to smaller organizations.

Share your favorites blog posts or news articles in the comments, and have a great weekend!