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We use mirrors all the time to check how we look to the outside world.
My question is: How often do you hold a mirror up to your leadership skills?
As a leader, it’s tough to know how others perceive you. One useful tool is the 360° assessment, where you ask for formal inputs from employees, partners, and those above you in the organization. I’ve even seen those who ask for inputs from customers.
Read the rest of this entry »Some of us think about making repeatable processes, others don’t. I’m in the former camp.
You see, it can drive me crazy when I see something that’s repetitive and boring and could be made more efficient. I guess it’s the engineer in me.
Making a process isn’t the same as automating. For instance, I have my beginning-of-day routine which includes checking my calendar, email, app notices, and texts. It’s pretty straightforward, and within 4-5 minutes I feel like I’ve got my head around what the day’s going to look like.
Read the rest of this entry »It’s fire season in Colorado, which gets me thinking about conversations I’ve had with my business clients.
I know that seems like a little bit of a stretch, but let’s explore for a moment.
When disaster happens, our natural instinct is to run away. Get as far away from the danger as fast as possible. With that distance, we’ll have a bit of safety to examine the situation and figure out what to do next.
Read the rest of this entry »Last week I talked about giving in and bringing things to a close. But most of the time we don’t want to do that, right?
We want to be the cheerleader to bring everyone to that wonderful vision of the future. That’s such an important part of your role as leader, to help bring everyone together, align their actions, and help them commit to doing all the hard work.
The challenge may be that the team isn’t emotionally there yet.
Read the rest of this entry »I saw reports today that three national retail chains are shutting down or severely cutting back.
That puts me into a more reflective mood. I realize that there are indeed times where it’s appropriate to given in to the painful reality.
This has happened especially in the context of volunteer organizations. Sometimes there just isn’t enough heart and momentum to continue – like we saw many times during the pandemic.
Read the rest of this entry »When disaster strikes, some are affected more than others.
We saw this with the pandemic, with local fires and floods, and with the recent Crowdstrike failure. Every organization has exposure to things outside their control. The image of “fragility” seems appropriate to me.
Some people are super-organized and like to put plans in place for every contingency. Great, I suppose, but the Return on Investment can be very low. Most of us don’t have the time (or willpower!) to plan for unlikely things.
So what’s the right balance?
Read the rest of this entry »You’ve been cranking away for YEARS now. It never seems to end.
So when are you taking time to bring back your energy, your passion, your soul? Are you instead spending half the weekend worrying about work or vegging out in front of TV or social media?
That’s not rejuvenation. A renewal means stepping away for long enough that it makes a deep difference.
Read the rest of this entry »Hire them for their attitude, then train them for their skills.
This is a truism that I find very powerful, and explains many of the employees who worked out well or … didn’t so much. The fact is that we’re acquiring new skills all the time, and the need for certain job skills is constantly changing.
In the end peoples’ attitude is what means they’ll thrive in your organization or not. But there’s more subtlety to this than I first expected.
Read the rest of this entry »Sometimes things just don’t go right, and it can feel a bit lonely.
I find that this loneliness tends to come from pulling inward and not wanting to “burden others.” That’s understandable.
This seems to be especially true in our current age, where we share good news and hide bad news – at least at the personal level.
Read the rest of this entry »As the leader, your job is to push the goals forward, whether you created them or they came from higher up in the organization.
The challenge comes from what your team needs and expects.
It would be typical that your needs for revenue and customer growth would end up working your people harder than they can accept. There’s a gap. So what do you do?
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The Values-Based Business 