Everything’s Overrated…Except For This
How many articles have you read where someone says something is overrated? Leadership is overrated. Talent is overrated. Your sense of self worth is overrated. Athletes are overrated. I agree with every sentiment that has ever been written on something being overrated. I will tell you why in a minute. What I don’t hear about being overrated is doing work. So back to my point about agreeing with every article that has called something overrated. Think about the amount of information that we are exposed to. The depth and breadth of the information as well as the speed with which we get it almost guarantees that we are going to
Be Unprepared and Treat Your Customers Like Idiots- The BP Oil Story
I get a little miffed when people just outright bag on business, capitalism and suggest that business enterprises are inherently out to screw the public. This is why the BP Oil fiasco saddens me, specifically how the fiasco has been handled after the fact with such utter lack of emotional intelligence. The fact is that BP Oil had a breakdown in their process and equipment which led to the current situation that we are currently in. If you want more on the spill details go here. Companies are run by people and people make mistakes. It’s how you deal with the mistake that matters. Two big problems are evident in
Your Employees Are Not You
Bringing people together in a group and getting them to work together is never a very simple, straightforward practice. The main reason for this is that we all have different set of experience as well as a different set of values that we utilize when working. This is especially hard for business owners who wonder why their employees aren’t the same as they are. If you have ever been or are currently in a leadership position or run a business, you know how exciting it can be. We want to get started and change the world. We’re smart, we work hard, we care deeply etc. Things get difficult for us
How Can You Do Better?
Ever sat back and asked yourself that question? I’m sure that you have at one point and time. I ask this question today as it pertains to leadership and your role as a leader to get the best out of the people around you. The central question in leadership is how can we do better? When looking at doing better the first thing you need to examine is how you are being as person. Before you can change your actions you have to make a commitment to yourself to change the way you are and also be willing to see your world through a different lens. Leadership can be a
It’s Business and It’s Certainly Not Personal
The groundbreaking hip hop group EPMD was onto something when they named one of their albums Business Never Personal. When it comes to confrontation, it’s important to ensure that your conversation does not become personal. Today I am going to outline just a few important points on how to confront and why keeping it business related is important. When it comes to confronting someone about a specific issue my number one rule is to keep it business. What do I mean by keep it business? I mean that no matter what situation I am confronting or person that I am confronting, I am following some of the basic guidelines listed
4 Reasons to Be Timely With Your Confrontation
When you are in a situation where you need to confront an employee about their performance, the first step to proper confrontation is to handle it immediately. Being timely with your confrontation drives four important results: Employee morale, performance, impact and mission. Employee morale is a sensitive thing and your leadership will go a long way to dictating if the morale is good or bad. Yesterday I gave two scenarios of confrontation to illustrate what can happen when we choose to confront or not to confront. The bottom line is that when we confront right away, it sends a message to your team that you care about doing the job
The Benevolence of Confrontation
I know it’s not often that you hear confrontation referred to as a gift but when used properly it is a powerful management tool. If you are in any type of leadership position, you know there are times when confrontation is essential to your business. So with all the talk about avoiding confrontation, why is confrontation good? We spend a lot of time talking about how to avoid confrontation. On the flip side, we rarely talk about how to confront people to create positive outcomes in the workplace or in your business. We fear confrontation so that we don’t hurt people’s feelings or rock the boat. When it comes down
Delegation Vs. Relegation – What Are You Doing?
When we are building high performance teams it’s not only important to set expectation for performance, it’s also important to be able to properly delegate certain assignments to your staff. Many entrepreneurs mistake relegation (the act of giving a task for action) with delegation (the assignment of responsibility or authority to another person). Why is this even important? Initially, if you are serious about building high performance teams, you want to have the people on your team take ownership for the assignments that they are given. When we relegate those duties to people they just do what they are told and that’s it. With delegation, you can give the assignment
4 Guidelines For Setting Expectations In Your Organization
One of the trickiest things for leaders and new business owners is to set the proper expectations for their team and then ensure that those expectation actually happen. We must think about what the end result is that we have in mind and how well we can follow up any actions that we implement. These are just a couple of concerns however and I am going to give my breakdown on how to set expectations for your organization. The are a few things to consider when you are setting expectations for your team as you look at what the end result will look like when everything is complete. Will you
Increase the possibilities for your Team
As entrepreneurs/leaders, we sometimes fall victim to the curse of knowledge when we are running our teams. The curse of knowledge being that we understand what’s in our heads and expect everyone to know what we are thinking and what we need. Communication of specific goals is so critical to our team’s and businesses’ success. Effective communication is an easy way for to increase the possibilities that exist. In Setting SMART goals , http://www.bnet.com/2422-13731_23-262557.html?promo=713&tag=nl.e713 , Ed Muzio, President & CEO of Group Harmonics, talks about the need for setting SMART goals and the increase efficiency while also increasing the morale of the team as well. Being specific with your
