This holiday wedding story is a gentle reminder of what happens when we fail to recognize how important our contribution is to the customer, a teammate, and our organization.
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effective leadership (Page 1 of 3)
Are Your S.M.A.R.T. Goals Really Smart?
If you have ever experienced KPI overkill or S.M.A.R.T. goal setting processes that simply re-wrote the status quo, you’ll want to read this post. Learn to be smart about your smart goal setting process.
Embrace Your Pessimism
Pop culture bombards us with “the glass is half full” messages and scolds those that refer to anything that resembles “a half empty glass”. Yet we owe our existence, in part, to the survival strategies that kick in when we view things pessimistically. How do you encourage both pessimistic and optimistic conversations in your team?
Engulfed in Escalations?
Are you engulfed by escalations because others ask you how do things or to take on uncomfortable tasks instead of developing their own ideas and actions? Here are three ways to ensure that you aren’t on the receiving end of every escalation that comes your way.
Strategic Decisions
What is the most strategic decision that you have made in the last 60 days, personally or professionally? When you look at the decision or decisions you selected, why did you consider it a strategic decision?
Artificial vs Natural Challenges
Teams that spend too much time on artificial challenges do not perform as well as those that focus on natural challenges. Keep your eyes and your ears on the artificial – natural challenges balance in your team.
Own the Dog®
The costs associated with, “It’s not my dog”, run in the millions, maybe more. It is the terrible (and avoidable) cost of what happens when you do not have a culture of ownership throughout your organization. Learn how to create an ownership culture througout your organization and “Own the Dog”.
The Road to Intellectual Integrity
Intellectual integrity is the ability to see the world as it is, not as you want it to be. This means not doing what you WANT to do, but rather what NEEDS to be done, serving the interests of your organization first.
The Preacher’s Bike
It is easy to blame others for inconveniences, injustices and events that make our life difficult. Responsibility, accountability, and ownership are the foundations of our personal influence and power. When we step up, accept, and own the challenge at hand, we strengthen our self-confidence, resilience, and ability to improve things around us.
Use the Environment Around You
Organizations use sophisticated tools such as 360-degree feedback processes and multi-rater feedback inventories, yet none of these work as well as someone speaking to those people in the leader’s immediate environment and playing that feedback back to the leader, in some cases, anonymously, yet concretely.