I hope you all enjoyed the Labor Day Weekend. I know we call it the unofficial end of summer, but I personally am not ready for what comes next! For those that don't know, I live in Michigan - our winters are sometimes 8 months long! At the end of a recently completed team building session, there …
Communication
Hit me with your best shot
The famous Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had an Intern working for him. On one random Thursday morning, Secretary Kissinger asks the Intern to write a position paper on a particular topic. If you would rather listen to a podcast version, CLICK HERE, otherwise continue reading The Intern is …
3-2-1 Grow
Most of us can't remember what we had for breakfast yesterday; how can we be expected to remember all our victories and challenges? So this week's blog is a short and simple exercise that I've used for years. I call it the 3-2-1 Grow Program. I usually do this on Saturday or Sunday morning, spending …
The 3-steps to any type of sale
In last week's blog "What type of Pencil do you use", we mentioned the sales process. To refresh your memory, we wrote: "Sales come to those that have something someone needed when they needed it. They offered value, a solution to a problem, a service that was missing. Success comes when you rinse …
Quick tips on how to build trust in teams
Identifying the issue Last week we discussed staying in your lane. In the article, we mention that trust and respect are some of the causes. For example; if your engineering manager doesn't trust the sales manager to follow through, you may see him butting in to this area of the business. Why isn't …
Does your team remind you of a 5 year olds soccer team?
Johnny! Run a LAP! Somehow I was voluntold to become a soccer coach when my daughter was 5-years old. Mind you, I knew nothing about soccer having never played before. After going to the library and reading up a bit (yes, the library - Google had not yet been invented), I figured out the basics of …
Balancing the needs of the organization and team in the post-pandemic era
In last week's blog, Motivators vs Consequences, we showed a pre-pandemic list of what employees value. Since the pandemic, the needs for autonomy, work-life balance, and flexible scheduling have moved up the list in importance. As leaders we must always keep the goals & objectives of the …
Motivators vs. Consequences!
You layout the new policy … your team will adapt their daily work habits and put it in place. If they do this the company will have; higher efficiency, more effectiveness, improved customer satisfaction, and they all will be treated to an additional week off with full pay after the results are …
Do you know what you want?
I was approached by a coaching client getting ready for a job interview. Their main concern was to come up with a narrative of what they could do in a position that had become vacant within their current employers' organization. My questions to the client: What do they need? How will they measure …
What’s the oxygen level in your organization?
I want to first apologize for missing Friday's Blog. For all the money you are paying me I should be at least consistent, right? If you saw last Tuesday's blog, I mentioned that I had pneumonia, which actually became double pneumonia and some type of multi-organism infection. If you are wondering, …