Hat attack
Wear your hat with pride (Jez Colborne)
Jez Colborne is a Sync Member and part of our Sync Intensives programme. Here he talks about why hats are such an important part of his leadership journey.
Sync Intensives is a training and coaching programme running from April to November, 2010
Over to Jez.....
Hat tricks
Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way.
(Dr. Seuss)
Being a leader you have to wear different hats for different parts of your life
Wearing different hats and knowing when to wear them and when to take them off takes a lot of time.
This article is about hats and leadership and what I’ve been learning as I climb my mountain with my leadership coach, Sarah.
Cat in the Hat
From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere. (Dr. Seuss)
Do you remember the Cat in the Hat books? I first read them when I was a boy
Dr Seuss made them to help people read and learn and to have a good time too.
The Cat in the Hat books are very funny and a little bit different. You don’t forget them in a hurry - with their rhyme and their rhythm.
As leaders, we want people to remember our rhymes and rhythms - what we say, whoever we are - musician, a writer, a storyteller.
Comfort zone
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter won't mind.
(Dr. Seuss)
We know that sometimes people feel uncomfortable around us because we are disabled people.
Whatever we do, people still don’t take us seriously. It doesn’t matter what hat you wear and how hard you try to fit in, people just see what’s wrong with us.
Hats have always been about saying something about yourself but they are also about you feeling good when you do different jobs too.
You need to get in your own comfort zone with your hats and feel good.
Just like that!
Practice what you preach
(Titus Maccius Plautus, Asinaria
- Roman comic dramatist)
It’s important to practice what you preach, so here are my 3 favourite hats to share with you and why I wear them and when
My Stetson When I'm wearing this I’m like a cowboy going from town to town.
I like watching the different scenery around me. Leadership is a journey from town to town and sometimes you can take your hat off to wipe your brow and not be on the leadership road and sometimes you can let someone else be leading with their hat on.
My baseball cap This cap is more everyday and I feel comfortable in it. It’s my creative hat. Wearing it, is for my time: when I make music and just be myself.
Everyone needs to take time to think, even leaders.
My fedora This is my professional hat.
I feel important when I’m wearing my fedora and it means business. When I wear this, some people think I’m going to be bossy and other people think I’m going to tell a joke, like Tommy Cooper.
Tommy Cooper died wearing his hat on stage, with the sound of people laughing in his ears. I’d like to die with my music playing and have people remember me for being a good leader.
Putting on your thinking cap
The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas.
(Edward de Bono)
A good leader has to keep on thinking all the time and not care too much about being right all the time.
Edward de Bono was a thinking man and he used hats to get people to think in different ways
Here are the hats and what you need to think about when you put them on.
Red Hat - Putting on the red hat means thinking about what other people will think and feel.
Black Hat - The black hat, means looking at what might go wrong.
Yellow Hat - The yellow hat is about thinking about all the good things that could happen.
Green Hat - The green hat is about using creativity to help spice things up.
White Hat - This white hat is about having the facts and the figures in front of you as part of making your decision
Blue Hat - Wearing the blue hat means you have to see the whole picture! A bit like being head chef .
Why don’t you try one of these hats on for size when you’ve got a big decision to make? You don’t have to do it alone. You can hand out different colour hats to your team.
Hat chat
Cock your hat - angles are attitudes. (Frank Sinatra)
I’m interested in what people do to show who they are and what they do to help them feel in their skin for the road ahead. Hats can be a big part of leadership thinking.
I hope to have a lot of hat conversations with Sync people after this article goes out. Let’s get our hats on together....
