In What’s KILLING Your Profitability? I referenced how I frequently caught flack from our plant operations manager because employees across his areas routinely bypassed the chain of command by taking issues to behavior-based team members for resolution rather than their immediate supervisors. Throug...

I reported to Kevin for longer than any other supervisor I’ve ever had (not counting Cindy). Praise God he was so patient! I was just shy of 25 years old when I accepted the role working directly with (as I mentioned before, he was very intentional about never making me feel like I worked for him). ...

As we worked through the process of investing in mentorship for exponential returns, I made a brief reference to how long-time supervisor, Kevin Arnold (no, not from The Wonder Years; he heard that shit all the time…) was always so quick to me praise for successes he and I achieved together - even w...

One of the most fulfilling things I’ve had the privilege of experiencing in professional career (and personal life, too) has come as a direct benefit of the power of paying forward the many lessons mentors have provided for me, specifically in seeing measurable growth with those that have latched on...

Teaching others across North America what I had been applying personally in our local behavior-based safety process sharpened every aspect of how I understood the methodology it was based on. Further, it forced me to learn those concepts so well that I could explain them to people with varying backg...

I had been extremely consistent in completing the expected weekly observations, became a member of the steering committee, and got somewhat involved in the training sessions during the two years leading up to accepting responsibility for facilitating the behavior-based safety process at our plant in...

Prior to me starting at that manufacturing facility in early 1996, and for the first fifteen years I worked there, one of the largest and most reliable sources for identifying new candidates was a referral from a senior employee. As you can likely imagine, the referrals from the best employees dried...

I’ll say it again: even the most talented individuals rarely form a great team without clear values serving as the foundation. For more than two decades, I’ve heard John Maxwell emphasize how “everything rises and falls on leadership.” When it comes to building a foundation on those values, those of...

Highlighting our own behavior to provide examples that define our values certainly helps us build those values into the conversations we have with our teams, but don’t mistake this as a suggestion to be boastful about how amazing we are; it’s anything but that! 

Not long after starting our business...

We’ve looked at how things can go really wrong without strong organizational values in place and how easy it can be to fall short of providing a picture of those values for everyone on our teams. We’ve also dug into how, even with specific values listed in various places throughout our office, we ca...

Before we walk through a few steps we can take to remove every bit of ambiguity we possibly can from the core values our organization operates on, let’s tackle an issue every leader faces at one point or another: even when we detail exactly what “doing good” looks like for each of our team members, ...

As Cindy and I worked to learn and understand what each member of our Executive Leadership Elite Think Tank had as core values for their organizations, we had intense conversations with all of them regarding how they kept those values in front of their teams; how often and in what setting did they c...