In my early teens, I failed to earn my Environmental Science merit badge as a Boy Scout because I wasn’t willing to follow through on the required 500-word essay. Most of my struggles throughout high school were due to having no interest in similar writing assignments and a complete rebellion agains...
I don’t think there’s been a topic we’ve worked through in this look at Leveraging Leadership Growth that hasn’t tied back to trust; finding a mentor, having candid conversations, maximizing the return on investment in relationships, mentoring others, displaying humility, and definitely with earning...
Uncovering our hidden strengths so we can get to a point where we begin to comprehend our true worth can be a grueling process. Without overcoming the self-imposed limits we’ve placed on our own value, often for years or even decades, there’s little chance of genuine modesty being involved in situat...
I frequently share how, through all the years I worked indirectly for Rod (Kevin was my immediate supervisor and Rod was his), there was always an expectation for me to focus on how any action I took would impact productivity in each business unit we supported. While safety and human resources are g...
Cindy and I recently adopted two (more) rescue dogs. We’ve had dogs since we got married, all of which have been rescues for the last fifteen years. The one that has been our most heartwarming success story to date had been dealing with several health issues and we had to put him down. As tough as t...
I mentioned earlier how difficult it’s been to establish appropriate cost structures for the services we provide, especially as we first got started. Although we were building a level of confidence in our area of strength, coming to terms with our worth - even after reflecting on guidance from our c...
To lead with influence over authority, to fully utilize the strength of humility, to ever begin to develop others, or to even capture the slightest return on investment from our relationships, we’ve got to realize that we are indeed capable and worthy of all those things. Without knowing your worth,...
Uncovering my own worth and uncovering my hidden strengths have likely been the biggest challenge I’ve had to work through in my career, maybe in my entire life. My work ethic and drive to keep up as best I could regardless of who I was competing against certainly helped offset some of my self-impos...
Every title and position has its limitations; for our investments into relationships to have a lasting impact, the influence we earn will always trump any authority we hold. That influence, especially when balanced with a healthy dose of humble confidence, can produce a ripple effect that reaches fa...
In wrapping our look at the strength of humility, I stress the need for a confidence-humility balance in order to earn trust and buy-in that rarely comes through the sheer force of authority. With that being tied predominantly to the importance of developing and maintaining humility when our title t...
I realize I’ve shared it several times already, but I don’t believe it’s possible to overstate John Maxwell’s comment that “Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less.” As I detailed how having the humility to ask our son to change his behavior (while still explaining the potential results ...
As we looked at both fostering a mentorship culture and how humility serves as a counter to firm positional authority, I was very intentional each time in using the term “leadership legacy.” John Maxwell opens the final chapter in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, “The Law of Legacy,” by saying...
