Last week’s blog talked about the value of vision as a leader. With vision, you have a clear destination; a clear destination can aid in motivating your team. But with vision, comes goals. Goals serve as checkpoints on the way to your vision. But how do you know you have a goal worth pursuing? Enter: … Read more
“Employees want to constantly be better at what they do. If not challenged, they will look for challenges elsewhere.” –Ilya Pozin As a leader, you have a job to do: lead people (sounds simple enough, right?). Where you lead them requires vision. Knowing your destination makes it possible for you to challenge them in a … Read more
Clumsy attempts at self improvement are better than smooth successes at nailing the status quo. A good, and immediate, example is feedback. We know (really, proven scientifically and anecdotally time and time again) that this is how to engage employees: Provide frequent, specific, behavior-based feedback that is more often positive than negative. I’ve never met … Read more
An email I received yesterday: I would be interested in your thoughts about too much communication. It has been happening that with all the communication outlets, Facebook, Twitter, text, email, that keeping track of getting the word out is becoming overkill. I have some members that say they only check Twitter or Facebook and … Read more
Let’s make the assumption that, as a leader, you’ve taken a number of human behavior assessments (like the Leadership Practices Inventory, Everything DiSC®, Strengths Finders or Myers-Briggs), and therefore you have some sort of description (or two or five descriptions) as to what kind of leader you are. What happens to those analyses after you … Read more
I do quite a bit of work with youth organizations, with an emphasis on true empowerment of youth leaders to contribute to the organization’s work. It takes effort, so I was recently asked “Is it worth all the effort to have student leadership?” I said yes, and here is my full answer: Many would agree … Read more
Last fall, I spent two blog posts discussing how effective leaders stay organized. At that time, I was referring to your actual to-do list, which typically won’t have the actual words “pay attention to John on Monday.” But maybe you should consider it. A colleague of mine was telling me about a car salesman who … Read more
I ate in a London pub with a group once, and the server made a mistake when calculating the bill. Unfortunately, he didn’t believe us, and our argument kept escalating. I got a little, um, animated myself. He was in the wrong (I have witnesses), but now he had a service issue with an obviously … Read more
Happy Anniversary to the most important book on leadership on my shelf. Not only is it compelling, research-based, comprehensive, elegant, immediately applicable, and timeless; it changed my life. Research ought to be relevant, right? So, when it was time to pick a topic for my master’s thesis, it was easy. I was a band teacher … Read more
The brilliant folks at Manager Tools–specifically, Mark–have recommended this book highly for years. I read much of it a while ago, and recently picked it up to re-read it. In 300 words, here’s why it’s worthy of attention; read at least chapters 1, 2, 16, and 20. (Those chapters recommended by Luther College professor Schweizer — … Read more