In The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John Maxwell explains The Law of the Mirror by simply saying “We attract who we are, not who we want.” I had never seen a more obvious example than the organization I just referenced; initially as I became familiar with the company and even more so as the su...
Make no mistake, turnover is always going to happen. Part of our responsibility as leaders is to plan for that. And in planning for each type of turnover we’re sure to experience at one point or another - be that a retirement, a termination due to unacceptable performance, or someone leaving for a c...
In the final lesson of our Emerging Leader Development course, Cindy opens by challenging participants to consider the real driver behind why they’ve accepted leadership responsibility. She goes on to compare things like power, position, money, and prestige with influence, growth, opportunities, and...
To sustain the effort required by our high expectations, accountability must be built into our culture - at all levels. But detailing what our team members need to do and how that needs to happen is only part of that process. Even the most ingrained habits supporting the simplest behaviors can still...
From nearly the beginning of this look at how values serve as a foundation for any organization, I’ve stressed the critical role habits play in everything we do. I introduced the idea of helping our team members connect their behavior to core company values by sharing that it would require a slight ...
Creating a legacy through our core values requires us to set clear (and high) expectations for our team members. Maintaining accountability, consistently and across the board, around the behaviors that model those values is an absolute necessity for ever sustaining those expectations. But accountabi...
As I shared in the next to last chapter of Leading With A Clear Purpose, the compliance side of human resources absolutely drains the life out of me. And putting together an employee handbook, ones where values are often listed in the first few pages but have little relevance to anything else afterw...
To have a real shot of our core company values creating the legacy we hope for, the expectations we set must be sustainable. Realistically, though, we wouldn’t place unstainable expectations on anyone we truly care about - and that should cover everyone we’ve earned influence who’s following us, reg...
I remember a time very early in my behavior-based safety career when Terry Ward (who I’ve mentioned several times in this look at values and throughout my first two books), stopped by my office to chat about something. When he stepped in, I had an email pulled up from Cindy. I can’t recall what the ...
One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned from John Maxwell over the last decade or so was from a short session I had access to just before the larger event where I completed certification to teach and train on his material. John shared a brief lesson before fielding questions for the small grou...
Building consistent team behavior that’s based on our core company values will require removing any possible variance around what each value looks like in practice - in each individual role. But having a clear understanding of the necessary behaviors is just part of the process. It will take at leas...
In chapter eight of What’s KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!), I detailed how much confusion costs an organization and emphasized how significant the need is for leaders to set crystal-clear expectations. Chapter nine fell right in line by outlining how much profitability...
