Still far from being the most talented in the workforce, or even in my home department for that matter, I built some solid career momentum through 1998 and into 1999. My role as bouncer for my former coworker’s sister had turned into far more than that initial evening of her driving and me being a h...

Working from 3:30p to 1:40a, at least Monday through Thursday with frequent Fridays and Saturdays scheduled for mandatory overtime, for most of my first two years in manufacturing was clearly part of God’s plan; I certainly wasn’t doing much planning of my own and that point. Any planning I had a ha...

To this point, I’ve shared intentionally basic high-level scenarios and I’ve purposefully shied away from anything remotely adverse. Not only am I sure you’ve experienced similar situations, I’d bet you’ve been through far worse - and I’ll bet you’ve found yourself back in that headspace as I allude...

I’ve mentioned barely graduating high school several times to this point. I also shared that neither Cindy or I had graduated college when we started our leadership journey (and still haven’t). While my less than stellar performance in high school was more a factor of me being bored, our lack of col...

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to interview Mark Cole (CEO of Maxwell Leadership) for our Leading At The Next Level podcast and to promote him as the wrap up keynote speaker at our 2025 LeadershipLegacy Experience. Cindy and I have received some amazing mentorship from Mark over the last decade...

Let’s face it, leaders have plenty of stress.  But it’s how we recover and how often that makes or breaks our effectiveness.  And us!

This is a two-way shift.

We have to go back and forth between stress and recovery. And they can both provide an essential opportunity for development and learning. ...

An article from Forbes.com called Promoting Wrong People Hurts Employee Retention and Productivity opens by stating “Managers are key to employee retention and productivity. But many companies don’t promote into management the people who would do the best job as managers.” 

A separate article from ...

Leaders face problems every day.  Some are mere challenges to overcome and be better for it.  Many times they are problems to be appreciated and solved.  As leaders, we know solving problems is a skill we need to continually hone and develop because there will always be a need! 

When we learn to a...

The definition of opportunity from the Oxford dictionary goes like this:  a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something. 

Going back to my (Cindy) message titled, Defining Moments, Pivotal Decisions, we are reminded our character and values will be revealed as we continue to meet d...

I believe we all know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.

Our actions can be the very definition of insanity if we’re not taking the time to reflect on the choices we make in our defining moments of leadership.  

Considering man...

There’s one important thing we’ll have to do if we want to have any hope of creating a succession plan where the right people are in the right seats on our bus… We’ve got to know our team; I mean really know them! We need to understand how we can communicate with them most effectively, we need to kn...

We’ve recently looked at the importance of recruitment and retention and we’ve dug into some key recruitment and retention strategies. Since much of that was focused on how much getting good at retaining great people can eliminate much of the pressure to fill a position with nearly anyone who has a ...