Stretching and Growing

How Much Hand-Holding? Onboarding and Situational Leadership

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Hersey and Blanchard’s concept of Situational Leadership dictates that we provide a level of leadership and attention that is appropriate to a follower’s levels of expertise and motivation. Often, leaders believe they are “empowering” and “granting autonomy” by being hands-off, and letting people learn on their own. While that sounds good, it only works in cases … Read more

Two simple ways to determine “right fit” for new employees…

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Is this a typical small-business hiring process? (…is it limited to “small” businesses?) -You’re too busy. You need someone to do some things, so you advertise and hire someone who seems good. -You hire that person, and get that person up to speed on the tasks right away so he/she can start making your life easier as quickly as … Read more

Leaders know their audience

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  Recently I was asked to be a guest blogger for a business leader focused blog. (www.upatdawn.biz) I provided an older post from this blog that I’m pretty proud of, but Jeffrey Kirk over at Up At Dawn helped me understand that his audience was different from mine. Nonsense! My audience is also business leaders, … Read more

Leaders create a cohesive team with these five behaviors

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Last week we dipped into Five Dysfunctions of a Team; this week we dive. I take you through a high-level overview of the Five Dysfunctions, and tell a short story about their accidental impact. This is a touch longer than 90 seconds, but I’ve gotten feedback that folks are hungry for more on this topic, so … Read more

Crunch-time Management for Leaders: Permission to Delay

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Leaders are always fairly busy. That’s okay – if we really truly finished our entire to-do list by the end of the day, we probably aren’t stretching enough.

In previous posts, we’ve explored some time/task management ideas for busy leaders in normally busy times, and in overly busy times.

In a personal post that I sometimes recycle, I shared my priorities when things get hectic; you may have even noticed I didn’t blog last week. (That’s only the 3rd time in the last 3 years, I think, that I’ve skipped a week.)

It’s true that I’m currently wrapping up a couple big projects, planning a new major project, and have some team-building and leadership training work coming up over the next couple of weeks in Florida. It’s also true that in the last couple of months, there has been much extra work on changing my business to a corporation, adding staff, and moving to (and fixing up) a new house.

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Being easy to work with! When your leader is an “Influence” type!!! :)

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So, you’ve read your leader as an “I!” And, you want them to read this post!  Of course you do!!! But – things go better when we work to adapt ourselves, rather than trying to force others to change!  In fact, our adaptation can inspire others to change. (Have you read Leadership and Self-Deception yet?) [Are you getting tired of all the … Read more