Spark

Spark teaches you how to become an influential, un-fireable asset to your team at work by taking on the role of a leader regardless of your position, utilizing the power of creative thinking to make better decisions, and learning how to be more self-aware and humble.

Typically, leadership training is reserved for those with higher-up job titles like managers. But what would you think if an organization started offering it to every employee– salespeople, janitors, or mail clerks? Many people would say it would be a waste of company resources.

This is why most businesses only do this training for people who are promoted to managerial positions. But what they’re missing is that leadership skills aren’t only useful for managers because there can be leaders on any level of an organization.

These true leaders are what the authors call sparks because they create sparks that inspire others within the organization. These people take action and want to make things better. Sparks are at every level.

Angie Morgan, one of the authors, tells a story of a woman she worked with at a pharmaceutical company. She had great communication skills, knew what she was doing, and exceeded sales quotas. People loved working with her and saw her as a role model.

When Morgan complimented her on her leadership, the coworker said she was an employee. But Morgan felt that a spark like her was much more than her job title. She was the kind of spark companies need more of. If companies want to stay competitive and innovative, they need to have employees that ignite inspiration on every level.

Imagine you get in an argument with a coworker. Are you likely to sit down next to him in the break room that day? Probably not because most of us avoid awkward situations like the plague. But a spark would make the most of the situation. A spark employs cognitive flexibility when fixing a problem. Instead of avoiding confrontations at all costs. Cognitive flexibility means altering your typical thinking patterns to find new solutions to problems. An example of cognitive flexibility would be thinking of other ways to toast your bread if your toaster breaks, such as using the oven. The author struggled with a colleague who she thought was overly sensitive and stubborn. One day, she decided to see the colleague from a different angle. She realized maybe she was communicating with the colleague too harshly when she gave feedback. So she changed the way she spoke to the colleague, and they formed a successful workplace relationship. Another quality of a spark is that they have cognitive discipline. This means slowing down your thinking and halting instinctive reactions to have a…