In the last LinkedIn article I published, A Great Customer Experience!, I referenced being tied up in customer support calls for more than twelve hours over the course of four days. Here’s where I need to be very transparent… For years, my dad has told me that I would become more patient as I got older. To this point, only one of those two things has happened - and it hasn’t been an increase in patience! For me, fifteen minutes stuck on a customer support call is cruel and unusual punishment… After twelve hours, I wanted to fight someone! (Ok, I was ready for that after two hours…)

With that in mind, it gave me some perspective on just how important providing a great customer experience is in maintaining and strengthening relationships with the people we serve - whether they’re our direct customers or they’re members of the team we’re responsible for leading. And we have to be honest with ourselves; there are going to be times when...

Through the last several blogs, we’ve taken a look at some of the things we need to be prepared to do as leaders in order to develop and empower our team members to reach their full potential and help us carry the load as our organizations grow. That requires a significant degree of trust, confidence, patience, and investment on our part. Before I share something with you that John Maxwell and Mark Cole challenged me to consider recently, there’s one quick thing I’d like to call your attention to…

On Friday, October 9, we get to host the first ever live, virtual LIVE2LEAD:Harrisonburg experience! In addition to the world class content from John, Steve Harvey, Kat Cole, Alan Mulally, and Craig Groeschel, there’s a TON of bonuses. This includes a full 72 hours to access the 2020 content, access to content from all of the 2019 Live2Lead speakers, a lesson that Cindy and I are building just for this year’s event, and complimentary access to one of...

As I wrapped up the last blog, I referenced a study that showed how many organizations lose as much as 17 hours per week to miscommunication. Unlike the Salesforce.com study, I couldn’t put my find on any of the additional details that study covered or who conducted it. That said, I found it! We typically share these statistics during the second lesson of our Emerging Leader Development course, Critical Principles for Effective Communication… Here you go:

According to an SIS International Research study, the cumulative cost per year due to productivity losses resulting from communication barriers is more than $26,000 per employee. Not only that, the study found that a business with 100 employees spends an average downtime of 17 hours a week clarifying communications. Translated into dollars, that’s more than $530,000 a year.

I go on to detail out that math for companies half that size and twice that size, just so participants have a chance to relate it to the...

On April 23, 1910 in Paris, Teddy Roosevelt gave a speech called Citizenship in a Republic. In full disclosure, I’ve never read or heard the entire thing (but that may no longer be true by the time you’re reading this). However, that speech is where one of my favorite quotes of all time - commonly referred to as “The Man in the Arena” - was first shared:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at...

I closed the last blog by referencing something I heard John Maxwell share recently, “Not investing in your team is short-cutting yourself as a leader,” then I challenged you to think about what tasks you’re still hanging onto that could really be passed on to someone on your team AND would serve to empower them in the process.

Once we begin delegating with the intention of developing the people around us, we need to also consider what tools could help those same people most to truly master those assignments we’re handing them. While it’s not quite across the board, most companies tend to have solid systems in place for helping team members improve their technical skills. Those hard skills, as we often call them, apply directly to the task at hand and typically have an immediate and visible impact on the final product we’re working to produce.

But the higher the level of responsibility for leading a team, the more we’ll find ourselves...

In the most recent LinkedIn article I published called If You Want It Done Right…, I shared a comment I heard John Maxwell make recently, “A leader who empowers their team isn’t someone who believes they have to do it all themselves for it to be done right.” While that’s not necessarily as easy as it may sound, it’s absolutely something we have to begin doing at some point if we have any hope at all of moving beyond that busy-ness we’ve kicked around over the last several messages to a place where we’re building a team that accomplishes what it’s really capable of!

I closed the last blog by challenging you to really think into how much it really matters when someone on our team makes certain mistakes. If it’s a true life or death scenario, we may need to stay in complete control of the situation. But let’s be brutally honest, those are few and far between! There are far more situations where a mistake here and there...

As we continue digging into the idea that all of us are going to make mistakes and that can’t be what completely stops us from delegating tasks to our team members, there’s one big thing we’ll need to be able to answer: How much does it really matter?

Before we get wrapped up in answering that question, let’s make sure we’re on the same page… Some mistakes come with a higher cost, and none are more expensive than the ones that are covered with excuses! Learning from a mistake is often part of the price of learning, but making an excuse rather than accepting responsibility and finding the lesson means there will never be the slightest chance to pull value from the mistake!

Whether it’s a team member who we’re developing as we begin providing them with new opportunities or a politician who’s “set up” by a salon owner, making excuses for this mistake limits (and sometimes completely removes) our chances of trusting them...

Know this: I was VERY intentional about the title of this message! I’ve often heard that there are only two certainties in life; death and taxes. Not true!!! We can easily add a third certainty to that list by simply admitting that we’re all going to make mistakes, and the vast majority of us will likely make at least one yet today… If someone suggests otherwise, they’d probably lie about other things too!

Before we take a look at a recent example of why it’s so much easier to accept responsibility for mistakes and move on than to make excuses justifying the mistake, please allow me to call your attention to the FIRST EVER live virtual LIVE2LEAD:Harrisonburg experience on Friday, October 9! In addition to the live content from John Maxwell, Kat Cole, Steve Harvey, Alan Mulally, and Craig Groeschel during the event you’ll get to circle back to all this for 72 hours following the event! You’ll also get access to bonus content from each of the...

Before closing the loop on the busyness issue we’ve looked at through the last few messages, here’s a quick reminder that registration is now open for the LIVE virtual LIVE2LEAD:Harrisonburg experience on Friday, October 9. Not only will you get immediate access to some special material from the 2019 Live2Lead speakers, we will also be providing everyone who participates at any point in the 2020 LIVE2LEAD:Harrisonburg SEASON with a code for complimentary access to our digital course on Build a Reputation as a Servant Leader!

Now, on with the show!

We started down this path by looking how most of us are Busier Than We’ve Ever Been and I referenced the quote from Tim Ferris in The 4-Hour Workweek I had previously shared in a my LinkedIn article called Busy, Lazy, or Undisciplined? where Ferris stated that “being perpetually busy is akin to being sloppy with your time and is ultimately a form of laziness.” As I pointed out in the two...

It was a bit shocking to learn 95% of all people never take action on their intentions. And many of the remaining 5% that do take action, never take action on the things that will get them the results they're after!  I remember soberly thinking, that is nearly everyone.  Wait a minute...that is me!  There were plenty of things I was not taking action on that I knew would move me forward in life.  I was the person holding me back. 

When I (Cindy) learned there were simple step’s I could take to bridge the gap from good intentions to taking intentional action, my results started changing.  When I learned to identify the right actions to take that would give me the results I was after…I started seeing faster growth in areas that not only helped me accomplish my goals but first increased my awareness which grew me personally and professionally in the process.  When your awareness increases you grow in many ways! 

Remember the stat I...