You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Leadership’ tag.
If you started your company, or are the owner, you know what I’m talking about.
You’ve put your heart and soul into this venture, and it’s consumed every waking moment. For years. That passion and commitment has driven you to whatever success you’ve had. And hope to have.
But your team? Well, it seems like it’s just a job to them. You feel like they could walk away at any moment.
Read the rest of this entry »Perhaps it’s time to look at things anew.
This comes to mind, of course, because it’s the start of a new school in the US. But there are other reasons why it might be good to get rid of some of that old stuff which isn’t really serving you anymore.
Perhaps you have a change in leadership. Or have just completed a big project. Or your business cycle just got you past the busy phase.
Read the rest of this entry »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 »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 »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 »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?
Read the rest of this entry »OK, THAT was a mistake. We don’t want to have THAT happen again.
As the leader, what’s your role in addressing this? Well, the top priority is to fix it as best we can, whether that means with customers, regulators, partners, employees, or whatever. But fixing it for THIS time is much different than getting to the root of the problem so we can ensure it doesn’t happen again. Or at least that recovery is a lot less painful.
Read the rest of this entry »Humans don’t live in the present very well. We’re always looking forward, anticipating.
It’s usually a good thing, but there’s times we can get into trouble.
As a leader, part of your job is to make some tough decisions. Things which will sting for you and those around you.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Values-Based Business 