You are Enough
Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash In trying times and ordinary times alike, it’s all too easy to go to extremes and miss what is right in front of our eyes. Face it: it’s easy to see the big stuff. The win, the loss, Recession, COVID-19, the big sale, a bad grade on a...
Managing peers can be stressful. Remember the “F” Word.
Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash Here’s a scenario: You are in a group of peers, no one is the defined leader, and someone needs to take charge. You’d like to step forward, but you don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. How can you show yourself as a leader? How can you...
Delegation is Like Magic
Photo by Almos Bechtold on Unsplash MAGIC! That’s how you get someone to do something you don’t want to do yourself. Not the abracadabra kalamazam stuff, but the art of magic stuff. Think about it. What makes magic work? Distraction, right? The magician gets...
How to Develop Workplace Skills that Aid in Leadership
Leadership is not a title, it’s a behavior. So if you want to be a leader, what skills should you be developing? We all think of the basics: confidence, delegation, people skills, communication — all good, of course. Often, however, the most important leadership skill...
The Right Kind of Conflict
Imagine for a moment your team walking away actually feeling excited about having had a conflict. Or, better yet, there’s a contentious issue on the agenda — and people show up early, excited to tackle the problem. Fantasy, you say? No one likes conflict, you say?...
You Control the Pace
Clients in law enforcement and the health industries provide me weekly reminders that business is anything but usual. Old ways simply don’t work, new ways aren’t yet established, and everything feels like it’s changing by the minute. Beyond the everyday mechanics of...
The Call to Lead, The Courage to Yield
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” “Be the hero you've been waiting for.” “Find the courage within!” “Be the change you wish to see in the world...” How many ways have we heard that sentiment expressed? And what can that possibly mean at times like this? We are...
What Your Team Most Needs Now
COVID-19 is playing havoc with everyone’s lives and businesses — even my cats have had enough! They keep looking back and forth from me, to the door, back at me, and then back to the door, as if to say “Enough is enough, get ooooout!” It is their house, after all. My...
COVID-19 Is Calling For Better Questions
I apologize. The unfortunate release of last week's article on the hand-shake was humorous if not uncanny — and profoundly poorly timed. That’s what I get for scheduling ahead. But this week, things are more serious and even less humorous as COVID-19 gains...
What Handshakes Can Teach Us About Communication
When I ask my organizational clients what their greatest challenges are, one of the most common answers is communication — but that’s a 10,000 foot answer. What is the specific problem? Is communication poor, non-existent, incomplete, sometimes aggressive, wishy-washy…? What’s the problem? While there’s a hundred different ways in which communication can be a problem, one thing is consistent: bad communication destroys trust and causes people to pull back rather than reach out. How do you get that trust back…
