Let’s go back to that less than engaging experience I mentioned before where a fellow not named Bret Michaels soured my opinion of every bit of music he and his band had put out during their entire career… He and his band released an EP and five full studio albums before 1983 & 1990 and they had qui...

I make no apologies for my taste in music. In fact, I’m convinced the 80’s hairband genre featured some of the most talented musicians and entertainers in the last century. You certainly don’t have to share this opinion, but I’m clearly not alone - as evidenced by the 30 to 40 thousand fans packing ...

Once we accept that it’s way more than what we say, there’s a lot more we’ll need to consider than just our tone and our body language. If we’re really leading the team members who are counting on us, they’ll be watching what we do when those words aren’t coming out of our mouths just as much as the...

Once we’ve charted the course for our organization and we’ve studied strategic leadership examples we can apply personally, we need to become very deliberate in how we lead our teams so we can reach the destination we’ve set our sights on! This certainly applies to how we approach the overall goals ...

Before we turn the corner and begin working through some skills we can each hone to lead our teams more effectively, and in turn yield higher engagement and stronger profit margins, let’s circle back to where I left off last time after my time on the ole soap box about being countable… 

Just outsid...

In The 17 Indispensable Laws of Teamwork, John Maxwell coined the idea of “countability” in chapter 9. He explains the Law of Countability by saying that “Teammates must be able to count on each other when it counts!” And if we ever want to be known as a bridge builder, the same thing better hold tr...

I closed last time with a less than stellar example of how influence, good or bad, can impact the overall direction of a team. And in that particular scenario I detailed, the person who had the influence and did more than his share of steering the ship carried no positional authority at all. If anyt...

If we were having this conversation face to face, I’m guessing you’d reply to what I shared last time by saying something like, “Alright Wes, if everything really does rise and fall on leadership, but you’re telling me it requires more than the carrot and stick status-quo, what else can I possibly d...

OK, so maybe teamwork can make the dream work with regards to helping drive profitability in our organizations… And maybe employee engagement and teamwork are directly correlated with one another… But how do these fairly fluffy ideas become reality and who’s responsible for making them so?

We’ll ge...

I can’t even count the number of times over the last 20 years or so that I’ve heard John Maxwell say that “the highest form of leadership is self-leadership.” Then he usually goes on to qualify that statement by emphasizing that it’s always more difficult to lead ourselves well than it is to lead so...

I closed last time by sharing a definition but not the word it was tied to… If you’re to play along with Jeopardy, maybe you’ve already figured it out - but did you phrase it in the form of a question???

We started out by looking at two ideas that are suggested frequently as what employers should b...

I remember a Friday evening phone call a few years back with a friend who was serving as CEO for a locally owned company that was experiencing almost unbelievable growth. He had been very tuned into the topline and bottomline revenue the entire time I knew him. I had also seen firsthand how effectiv...