I believe the most vivid memory I have of someone in a leadership role answering cries for help was that of President George W. Bush at Ground Zero just days after 9/11. As he was addressing the crowd, someone yelled that they couldn't hear him and he responded, “I can hear you. I can hear...
Make no mistake, knowing what our team members are looking for from us is not terribly complicated! They will definitely make a point of telling us. That will generally (but not always) be direct and/or verbal early in our process of working to earn leadership with them, but it will get harder...
In so much of what we’ve worked through in addressing each of the profitability killers to this point, I’ve referenced studies listing facts and data emphasizing the specific impact each one has on our bottom line. As much as I want to do that again here, contrasting the overall...
If you think back to one of the first things I called your attention to in this process of addressing these profitability killers, one of the things we covered as we looked at how it all starts at the top - or at least the best returns can be captured when that’s the case - was the...
I completely understand how many issues demand the attention of a business owner, an executive, a manager, and even front line supervisors every single day! But if we’re going to be the leader that truly does provide our team members with what they’re looking for - and deserve - from...
After a couple of references to a song so new as 2016, I feel like I need to mix in something from the hair band era to maintain my street cred so let’s think in terms of Shelter Me by one of the most talented bands ever included in that genre, Cinderella. After naming a list of vices...
As we’ve worked through each of these individual profitability killers, my goal has been to provide you with some basic, practical steps you can take in applying specific behaviors that help you communicate with and lead your team members more effectively, making a measurable difference in...
One of the first people I remember meeting on an assembly line, when I finally made it to the shop floor after nine full days of orientation, was a fellow named Phil. He was the day shift lead on that line and had been for long enough to have earned a reputation that even a hard headed and strong...
In addressing this profitability killer, we’ve worked through the real costs of disengaged employees, we’ve looked at how effective leadership can drive (read: earn) an increased level of engagement, and we just covered three relatively simple (but not necessarily quick or easy)...
When I searched the phrase “results of combining leadership and management” the vast majority of the results I found were articles comparing and contrasting the two. While I make it a point to be as loud as I possibly can in emphasizing that adding manager to a title does not...
One of the most powerful lessons I learned in the fifteen or so years I worked in behavior-based safety had nothing to do with safety and was only indirectly related to human behavior… That lesson was in how much the act of serving others impacted the influence an individual could have on...
You will never hear me say that leadership, especially the kind of leadership that’s necessary to effectively run a large organization, is easy. What you will hear me say from time to time is that it’s actually damn hard! In fact, I’ve often heard John Maxwell joke about the...
