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My Dad used to say, "it doesn't matter what they say about you as long as they spell your name right." I have spent my life saying "ar" not 'er" in the spelling of Ungar. In college when I was running for student body president, my own T-shirts had my name spelled wrong. My campaign T-shirts said Ung "er" instead of Ung "ar." What to do since it flew in the face of everything my Dad had always said?
As Amazon peruses different locations to build their headquarters I came across this story.
"We wanted to make sure Mr. Bezos and his team notice us" -
An Arizona CEO
who sent Jeff Bezos a 21-foot cactus as part of a bid to have the new Amazon HQ built there. I suppose the intent was to make him feel all warm and prickly . . . and be remembered.
Bezos donated the 21 foot cactus, but I imagine it helped TUCSON make an impression. A Georgia town offered to annex land and name a city after Amazon, Birmingham installed three massive delivery boxes around town during the Amazon tour, and three cities enlisted Alexa's help to come up with ways to attract Amazon.
As I took my dad's advice and evolved that philosophy into BE MEMORABLE, I give kudos to the person who thought of and found this 21 foot cactus.
What are you doing to stand out in your crowded field?
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We have created a new
Ask Leslie
video series we named
The Horsey Version of Ask Leslie
. This is a series of 2-4 minute videos using a horse to teach a point about communication and leadership.
This video titled Walking with Confidence is featured in this month's newsletter. Walking with confidence could be speaking with confidence, networking with confidence or doing anything with confidence. You need to keep your eye on your goal and keep moving forward. Watch as Penny identifies when a leader is confident.
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Reflections on a Season* of HorseTalk Events - Lessons Learned to Apply to Life
We have completed what I believe is our 9th year of HorseTalk: Lessons in Leadership. The following are 5 lessons that stand out from this season. * We do the "round pen" exercise one-on-one all year long!
1. Your Own Kick Zone
Every animal including humans is either a flight or flee animal. When scared they either stay and fight or flee to a safer place. A horse is a "flee" animal, they run from danger. People need to stand at the side of a horse, not in front, in case the horse gets scared and flees. A horse won't mean to run over you, but you will be just as run over.
Lesson Learned: At one HorseTalk, participants kept putting themselves in harm's way - in front of a horse moving forward. Over and over again I kept reminding people to not stand in front of the horse. When adrenaline goes up, learning goes down . . . we just don't hear what is being said. In what ways do you not hear what someone or the world is telling you?
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 In the round pen I saw a horse totally disrespect the human standing feet away holding a really long whip. Usually a horse will respect the whip if not the human. Not in this case. The horse totally dissed the whip and the human. I also saw a less-than-100 pound-less-than-5 foot-tall participant lead a horse for the first time with maximum confidence.
Lesson Learned:
The importance of lessons from the round pen is to apply them to life outside of the round pen. It's not just about the props you have. Props help. A prop alone, whether it is a whip, high heels, a college degree or a BMW, may help. But it is not a guarantee of success. It's what you do with a prop not the prop itself. Confidence even with a horse has verbal, vocal and visual components. Can you emulate what confidence looks like?
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For the afternoon challenge we use two horses, Richard and Finn. They are two boys that like to graze and play together. Finn actually likes the obstacle course so much that sometimes he takes himself through it all my himself. Sometimes, I will put one of the "boys" away so the participants have the other horse's sole focus.
Lesson Learned: The final HorseTalk I kept both Richard and Finn in the pasture. They were more interested in each other than the humans who came to play. This made the exercise more challenging because it's hard for two legged participants to be as interesting as another four legged participant if you are a horse! Are there distractions that you can remove in order to successfully complete your task, or help your team successfully complete their task?
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4. When is a Team a Team?
 Two of the exercises are done as a group. All participants form one group. At one HorseTalk, I saw something I had never seen before. During the exercise called Obstacle Course, the group casually broke itself into two groups. Instead of one team working together to get one horse through the obstacle course, the team became two, each trying to get a different horse through the course
Lesson Learned: Literally, they were two teams with different goals. Which begs the question, what makes a team a team? Because you are in the same place at the same time, are you a team? It was easy to see this in the pasture. But it made me wonder, do your teams have the same or different goals? Are they working together or working on competing goals?
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5. When a Prince is Really a Prince
 I used to use a horse named Prince for the round pen. He was perfect for this activity. Responsive and patient yet capable of communicating frustration in acceptable ways. He was sold to his forever home. So this year I needed to use a different horse for this part of the day, the part that most think is the highlight of the HorseTalk experience. In a stable of over 30 horses, you would think a replacement would be easy to find. In my list of usual suspects, Penny was OK, Sunny was OK for one direction, but not the other, Finn was physically out of the loop. I was looking for spectacular, not just OK. This horse will have to work in the round pen for 6, 8, or 10 consecutive participants. One day I went out to the barn to find my next "Prince". I took one horse after another to the round pen to find a great replacement. No luck.
Lesson Learned:
Finally I asked one of the "barn girls" (who never spoke unless spoken to) for a suggestion. She offered Grey Lady. Grey Lady, an Arabian mare, is amazing to work with, for participant after participant. She doesn't get ill-tempered, she is consistently sensitive to instructions -verbal, vocal and visual - she has a lot of energy but not too much, she listens but still tests each person. Sometimes you have to ask the right person for help. That person may not be the obvious choice. Who could you ask for help?
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In Person - October was a busy month!
October 5 Rockwell Automation
October 12 Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
October 13 Akron Public Schools
October 24 Sixth District Educational Compact
Forum 360 with Leslie as Moderator
Upcoming Shows:
Title:
Cuba by the Pictures
Guest: Aimee Lambes, photographer
Title:
The New Schlichim
Guests: Gili and Uri Hershkovitz
Watch/ Listen to Forum 360:
Western Reserve Public Media, PBS-TV, PBS Fusion Channels 45 & 49 (Time Warner channel 993) - Mondays at 8 pm and Saturdays at 5:00 pm. After the show airs, you can download it
here.
WONE FM 97.5 Sunday 6 am
WAKR AM 1590 Sunday, 5:00 pm, Monday 12:30 am For online streaming go to
http://akronnewsnow.com/ and click Listen Live.
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Benji and the doggy cardiologist. When my regular veterinarian Dr. Chris, heard a heart murmur, I immediately called doggy cardiologist Dr. Hitchcock. Her number was still in my contact list from my Tim's time as her patient.
Moshe and I have different takes on the best course of doggy health care. He thought I should do nothing until I have to do something. I thought the best defense is a pro-active offense. So I made an appointment. Business is so booming at the doggy cardiologist I had to wait two months to get in.
Finally the day came. The good news is that I would find out how serious the murmur was. The bad news is that I would find out how serious the murmur was - on its sliding scale.
Once there Dr. Hitchcock got on the floor with Benji. The murmur was so slight she struggled to hear it. So the next step was the echocardiogram. I know Moshe would have waited until the murmur was stronger. I opted to take advantage of all the medical innovations available.
Benji got an almost clean bill of health. His health would be the same with or without the tests. Be purposeful on the route you choose on your journey whether it is canine or human.
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October 24 and December 7 - 5pm - 7pm
Come and see how much you can learn in two hours!
Email us at
[email protected]
for further information or to RSVP to one of our events. For more information visit our website:
Ask me about my 10 in 10!
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