Applying Expert Insights

Over the last twenty-five years, Cindy and I have been extremely focused on building a knowledge network that would help us compensate for our leadership limits. Recognizing who knew what we didn’t know was the first step. Being willing to invest whatever we could, even if that was only our time, in...

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Asking the Right Questions

Equipped with only a high school diploma, and having slept through far too many of my classes leading up to receiving that, I had no shortage of gaps to acknowledge - even if my ego was standing in the way early on (and maybe a little still today). Identifying the key experts I could learn from as I...

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Identifying Key Experts

Earlier as we looked at maximizing the return on investment in relationships, I stressed the importance of choosing them wisely and nurturing those relationships to ensure everyone involved had ample opportunity for growth. While identifying the key experts we’ll need in our lives in order to compen...

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Knowing Who Knows What You Don’t: Acknowledging Your Limits

So much of what we do to leverage our leadership growth relies on building great professional relationships. Each facet we’ve worked through to this point plays a key role but to build on even the strongest qualifications, we’ll need to lean into all the humility we can muster by acknowledging our l...

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Sustaining Qualification

As I closed our look at Knowing Your Worth by sharing a few steps for crafting a lasting influence, I mentioned how something as silly as a complimentary email series (known today as A Daily Dose Of Leadership) that was initially meant to help our new business stay top-of-mind with the executives an...

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Influence Over Credentials

Throughout this look at the strength we can each gain by building great professional relationships, I’ve referenced several of the amazing leaders I’ve had the privilege of learning from. I’ve also worked with some absolutely brilliant people over the years. That said, those two traits didn’t always...

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Investing in Practical Growth

While working with a client’s leadership team about a decade ago, we were discussing their opportunities for improving processes, and by default, their overall profitability. One of the most senior team members commented on a specific function, saying “We’ve done it that way for thirty years, that’s...

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Reflecting Through Guidance

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...

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The Tradeoff: Growing Yourself to Lead Others Well
Leadership isn’t a destination; it’s a journey that demands intentional growth, sacrifice, and a commitment to becoming better every day. For Wes and me, the pursuit of leadership development started humbly with books but quickly evolved into something bigger—attending conferences, often out...
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