There’s no app for this
Busy leaders may wonder how we ever got along before Apple. We have a device in our pocket that replaces the alarm clock, the sticky note, the stopwatch, the CD player, the daily planner… and oh yes, the telephone. It has never been simpler to save time and create accountability. BUT… There is one thing that no app can replace. And it is the cornerstone of your company’s performance. This last week, I read a post from Gary Vaynerchuck about sales that said something thought-provoking… A stunning amount of people are not going to be successful in sales, because they’re not willing to work hard enough. They love automation. They love all these tools, bots, auto-replies and apps and services, and startups and CRMs that they think are going to solve the problem. Automation is not the answer, sales is about people. You have to build relationships first. You have to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and empathize with their position. No app is going to teach you that. And I thought...
When was the last time you washed a rental car?
When was the last time you washed a rental car? It’s a funny thought. Probably, your answer is, “Well, never!” Most people do not go the extra mile to take care of things that they only have a transactional relationship to. You have probably also never bought decorations for a rental car or had its oil changed, and you have definitely never paid to have its repairs done. After all, there is no reason to. It is not your car! You have no inspiration to spend your own resources on its well-being. Now that we have gone through that little thought experiment, let me ask you another question… Do your people see your company as a rental car? Are they invested in your organization? I am not asking if they have invested in it financially or if they have equity in it. I mean, do they have a sense of belonging to your organization? Do they feel connected to its mission and vision? Do they feel like they are an integral part of a larger whole? Are they leaning in and applying themselves as...
The greatest way to spend your time
I was wondering… are you free on Thursday, April 28th? Because I want to talk to you about a great investment opportunity…. Wait! Don’t go! Before you stop reading, know I am not asking for your money. Just a little of your time. One of the first things any organizational leader or business owner learns is that you must be intentional with your resources. And your time is one of the most precious resources you can invest. It is limited and irrecoverable, so you must spend it where it will pay off the most. And I can promise you that the time we spend together on Thursday, April 28th, will pay you permanent dividends. I want to talk to you about the greatest way to invest your resources as a leader: your team. The employees are the first customers of any organization. In fact, billionaire businessman Richard Branson says that “Customers come second, employees first.” How you take care of your team is how they take care of your clients. Their direct relationship with your end user...
Most leaders don’t know the answer to this question
Tell me if you see what is wrong with this scenario… A leader notices that many of their team members are disengaged. They perform their roles, but they are not achieving their real potential. Because of this, results have been muted. The leader has already tried to inspire their team with flexible hours so that they can spend their time as they wish as long as they meet their deadlines and goals. Then, the leader decides on a new plan: a monthly challenge week where team members compete to hit the best numbers. The leader thinks this will surely spur his team to action. And sure enough, two or three team members rise to the challenge. But the next month, the leader finds the same few employees are leaning in and winning - and the month after that, and the month after that. The rest of the team remains listless. What seems to be the problem? And what would you do next? One important thing to keep in mind is that a team is a group of people working toward a common goal. In moments of...
Feedback: how to give it and receive it
Imagine with me for just a moment… (if you have been leading long, it won’t be too hard - you have probably been in a similar situation before…) You are managing a team that is working on a critical project. Your team is heads-down, all-hands-on-deck at all hours. One team member, Jim, approaches you and asks to be removed from the project. When you ask why, he tells you that he does not like working with another team member, Mary, because they do not get along well. Then, at the next team meeting, you notice Jim and Mary’s dynamic. They are not cooperating and others on the team take notice. You know morale will suffer if you do not act. How do you proceed? It is an age-old problem that leaders face. Confrontation feels like conflict, so we think it is awkward and we often like to avoid it. But for the sake of our team member, our team, and our organization, we must engage. But how? How can you empathetically, but effectively, communicate feedback to your team? Keep these...
5 Steps to Masterfully Handle Conflict
As leaders, we celebrate the differences among our team members. A well-performing machine needs all kinds of parts to function properly. If the world only had one way of thinking, communicating, working, problem-solving… nothing would ever get done. Variety is the spice of life, as they say! But wherever there is difference, there will eventually be conflict. It is unavoidable. And in fact, it is not even a bad thing! We consider conflict an obstacle to overcome, but it can actually be an incredible opportunity to model your organization’s core values and even improve team morale. But in order for that to happen, conflict must be managed properly. Otherwise, it is more likely to be what we all usually think of when we think about conflict… messy and morale-killing. So, if you want to manage conflict to your advantage or avoid it to begin with, how should you approach it? 1. Set the tone for how your team should interact with each other. Leaders connect their teams to the...
The first thing high-performing teams need…
As a leader, you have no doubt heard it said that your people are your greatest asset… but that is not true. Your people at their most engaged are your greatest asset. Your team is the hands and feet of your organization, as well as its eyes and ears. They represent the traction toward your company’s strategic vision, and they offer a unique perspective about the organization’s day-to-day. Equipment ages and breaks down; software goes out of date and needs replacing; but when your people lean in, they not only bring insight to the table you cannot get anywhere else… they can only increase in their capacity to contribute. Needless to say, your team is well worth taking care of! Does your team have the number-one thing they need in order to function at their peak? According to one major study at Google, major factors for high-performing teams included team dependability, structure, clarity, and meaning and impact of work… but the most crucial thing teams needed? Psychological safety....
A leader’s least favourite part of the job
In a way, leadership is like parenting… It has shining moments when we get to inspire our teams – motivate them, speak into their growth, watch them succeed, and then celebrate with them. And then it has not-so-shining moments… difficult conversations, disciplinary meetings, and – especially these last few years – moments of crisis where they need us more than ever. This is one of those moments. Militaries, economies, and businesses worldwide are responding to the war in Ukraine. As they plan their support, leaders are beginning to ask themselves, “How does this situation affect us at home? How do we discuss this with our teams?” These moments that are not just uncomfortable, but crucial – and for many, dire, even – are when our leadership truly reveals itself. Your next step is a very telling one. Max De Pree said, “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality” – and that is exactly what leaders must do now. Personally, I tend to be too optimistic. It is my nature as a...
5 Things Leaders Must Do In Crisis
On February 24th, Putin made history. Since then, the world has been off-kilter, and the people of Ukraine have been fighting to keep their homes and defend their lives. All our eyes are on the news now for daily, even hourly updates. It is like we are on the edge of our seats, waiting to see which way it goes from one moment to the next. As we think of and pray for and support those in Ukraine, our thoughts begin to slip toward our own homes, jobs, and futures, and we wonder what is in store for us. In times like these, leaders have a distinct responsibility to their people. We must do more than just lead as we would any other time; we must lead our people through crisis. The situation cannot go unacknowledged. When the world is watching so closely, to fail to discuss it with our people would communicate that we are not concerned - and that would convey a denial of their own concerns. As you bring up the tense situations unfolding in the world right now, keep in mind the 5 things...
The supreme leadership ability
If you have heard of Mark Cole, you probably know that he is John Maxwell’s successor and right-hand man. They have been working together for more than 20 years now - wherever John goes, Mark goes. And within the last few years, John has begun passing the baton to Mark in different areas of John’s legacy. When the time came for Mark to take over the John Maxwell Team, one of John’s main areas of focus, Mark says that he had to exhibit the “supreme leadership ability.” The JMT’s numbers were in decline. Trends were not looking good. John said to Mark, “This is your ability test as a leader - to turn the momentum of the company around.” John challenged Mark to overcome one of the leader’s most daunting obstacles: lack of momentum. I wrote to you about this idea a few weeks ago: the Law of Big Mo. It is one of John Maxwell’s 21 irrefutable laws of leadership: momentum is the great exaggerator, and it is more difficult to start than it is to steer. Momentum is the driving force behind...
Is your leader limiting your growth?
Last week, I wrote to you about “bad leaders” - or, the symptoms of bad leadership. We covered the three big indicators of growth-limiting leadership and I asked you to look in the mirror to see if you found any in yourself. But our own “bad leadership” is not the only thing limiting us and our team. John Maxwell’s Law of the Lid says that everything rises and falls on leadership. The leader’s lid limits the growth for all those who follow them. That means that unless you are the CEO of your organization, someone else helps set the standard for your growth. That can spell bad news for you if you see symptoms of “bad leadership” in your leader! It can be easy to get frustrated when we are in that position. Maybe we start thinking we could do better and imagining all the things we would do differently if we were sitting at their desk. But, there is good news: if you are experiencing that right now, there is something you can do about it! Remember the three ways that leaders hinder...
Three Behaviours that Keep Any Team from Growing
Have you ever been led by a “bad leader”? I know the term can be defined many ways, but just think about it based on what you think a “bad leader” is. Have you ever been led by someone who you felt was a “bad leader”? It’s beyond frustrating to be in that position. And yet, most leaders at some point will deal with something internal that limits the growth of their team - most leaders will at some point exhibit the qualities of a “bad leader.” In that moment, their team will be put in an awkward position: do they reach out and offer to help and risk upsetting the balance, or do they move forward with a kink in the works that limits their potential? It serves your team well for you to perform some hard self-analysis. Take a look at this list of ways a leader can hinder their team’s growth and see if they sound familiar: Desire for Control There was a time when I thought “leadership” and “control” were basically the same thing. I thought my job description involved directing and...
The leader’s best friend
Have you ever seen a so-so team play an unusually good game? It catches you off guard - you think to yourself, “Wow! They really came out in full force today.” You rarely hear about this team doing so well, but that day, they were peak performers. It reminds you of that saying, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” There are other times, though, when a great group of players have the worst game ever. Maybe something feels weird with their chemistry and they are just not working in sync. Maybe they are having an “off day,” but whatever it is, it is not serving them well. It may seem like a fluke, but really, both teams are experiencing the effects of momentum. Inspired by a series of wins, an average team can play beyond their level of skill. The positive energy makes the team greater than the sum of its parts and the players work with great synergy. But a streak of “bad luck” can sap the life out of even the most talented team. Newton’s first law of motion says that an object...
What leadership is NOT
As you know, my leadership article series is known as Leadership for the Now. As the title implies, my goal in writing is to give leaders like you some things to consider about the nature of leadership. I love leadership. Leadership capacity is my whole life’s focus. So, I have written many articles on this topic, and I could (and will!) write many more discussing what leadership is. But today, my purpose is to tell you what leadership is by telling you what it is not! We describe many things in view of what they are not. There is no way to describe darkness without mentioning the absence of light, and we cannot define cold without bringing up a lack of heat. It stands to reason that we can better understand leadership through this same lens. There are many things that leadership is not. But most often, leadership becomes confused with these 5 things: 1. Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs, innovators, and inventors have the remarkable ability to see something that does not yet exist...
What are you doing for the health of your organization?
It has been said that if one student fails a test, the student is to blame, but if the whole class fails, the teacher is at fault. An individual performing very differently from the rest may show that they alone were not prepared, that they have not been paying attention during lessons, or maybe that they were simply too hungry to concentrate on the day of the exam. But if the whole class does poorly, more than likely, something is wrong with the test itself. This is just one expression of a law so fundamental, it may as well be a law of nature… Ailing sports teams hire new coaches. Countries in trouble elect new presidents. And businesses producing less than their potential hire new leaders. In every industry, and in every organized group, we see that the health of the whole is determined by the leader. If the leader is doing well, they lift up those they lead; if they are not, they reduce the ability of the group. My mentor and associate, leadership expert Dr. John Maxwell, named...
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