Matt Paknis Leadership Development

During the past sixteen years, I've consulted with a broad spectrum of clients from individual contributors to senior executives, and from executive boards to hockey teams. The tools and applications my clients find most helpful are being compiled and published in a book to help people who influence: Manage Themselves, Coach Others, and Lead Their Teams. The next few blogs are planned to highlight some of these beneficial practices. Managing Oneself: Individuals are refreshed and productive after a good vacation, or energizing event. Life Balance allows people to maintain perspective and important relationships. Below please find life balance wheel components. Please note, these components are not used with my corporate clients because they are protected classes. Other than the career component, they can't be considered when hiring or promoting a person. However, I share this tool with my individual clients, so they can privately isolate areas interfering with their capacit...

Does your mind ever wander while you are supposed to be paying attention in a class or meeting? Do you ever feel "cheated" by apathetic teachers or managers who can’t engage and organize people? Between fifth and ninth grades I barely made it through school, partly due to clueless teachers, partly due to family problems, and partly due to my sense I lacked control. Then, when I started tenth graded, a light switch seemed to flip on in my brain. I started reading on my own, interested in learning vs. memorizing test material. Math made sense. I loved structuring equations and finding solutions. I loved learning. I read everything available about the power of the spirit and positive psychology. And, I was exposed to my first great teacher, beyond my parents, my head high school football coach, Ted Monica. Coach Monica was a Lombardi disciple. In fact, he helped the Green Bay Packers on draft day for years. He and his football program were highly organized. He was very...

At 1:30 AM Saturday morning a loud rustling in the woods behind our yard woke me. I went to the bathroom window and looked. I was still sleepy, so I shook my head to make sure I was not hallucinating. A large person, with a faint light, was trudging through the woods, just beyond our property line. Every few steps, he, and I knew it was a man by the painful noises he made as he fell onthe brier filled brush, rocks, logs, and stumps. He was moving from my right to left. Just about three feet to his left was our property line, a complete clearing. I know the area well. My back is recovering from clearing the one hundred foot by one hundred foot area between our grassed yard and this wooded nature preserve / wetlands. In 2004 I cut down about eighty scrub trees, grounded the stumps, cut the oak for fire wood, chipped the rest for paths, cleared all the brush with a "Gravely", a monster machine able to clear trees 3" in diameter and less, and herniated a disc. Before I yelle...

To help leaders influence and engage people, following please find the organizational needs family sitcoms depicted over the past fifty years. Family is a fundamental team unit. Family sitcoms show how leadership and team needs evolved and changed over the past fifty years. Dynamic units, like families, tend to change non-stop, while bureaucratic organizations like the United States Government, Ford Motor, and the Catholic Church, can become too focused on internal issues to meet audience expectations. When organizations respond to market needs with alacrity, they thrive. It's possible for organizations to change with the times by aligning members around shared values and principles, regardless of members' cultural and demographic differences. The most popular TV show in the 1950's was "I Love Lucy". Perhaps Lucy's popularity was based on her comic antics, and her manipulating Desi. These were welcome diversions from traditional, idealized, 1950's T...

Father's day is upon us. So much effort is dedicated to creating and finding the right father's day gift. Once I became a father, I realized the best gifts are unintended blessings from my kids. For instance, when our eldest daughter was learning to talk, she and I visited Thayer Street in Providence to pick up some gyro sandwiches at Andreas. Mohawks were popular amongst Thayer's crowd. A young man with foot long spikes walked in front of the car. I watched her eyes follow him up the street. She turned to me and asked: "daddy, is that a dragon?" Our son was going to bed one night when he was four. He looked troubled. I asked if anything was wrong. He said he had a secret. Assuming he'd hidden an accident, or had broken something fragile, I sensed this was my opportune time to build his trust. I said he could share with me. Everything would be OK. I wouldn't be upset. He turned, quietly, and said: "I love toys. I really, really love to...

Last week I attended mediation training in Boston. The timing was interesting, with the dates following mother’s day. My mom was a natural leader, and mediator. She stood just five feet, three inches tall. This, combined with her terminal illness, made her physical presence less than imposing. However, her will and spirit, and beautiful face, made her indomitable. She turned every incident into an opportunity to learn, or to help. Growing up in NJ, we had a neighbor named Andre Passamato. Andre drove his Harley Davidson to work when the weather turned nice. He left his home between 5:30 and 6:00 AM every morning, revved his engine, and shot out of the neighborhood like a bat out of hell. As a result, he woke everyone up along both sides of the street. The neighbors were up in arms, tired of waking early and losing an extra hour of sleep every morning thanks to Andre's motorcycle alarm. They feared approaching Andre. He had big tattoos and a Fu Manchu mustache. He looke...