As I closed Leveraging Leadership Growth, I stressed the importance of constantly working to grow and strengthen every professional relationship possible. When Cindy and I left our roles in large organizations, we both had extensive networks internally but found ourselves starting from scratch exter...
Late 2017 and early 2018 provided us with the opportunity to run the gamut of highs and lows as new mostly self-employed business owners. The public events were successful overall, and full of learning experiences. Locally, it was our third year and the most successful to that point. The other being...
In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill shared that “Unwavering courage is based upon knowledge of self, and of one’s occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long.” When Cindy left...
The grind of rebuilding required many things; I had to earn the respect of my coworkers while learning as much as I possibly could (as fast as I could) about the operations of that new company, and I needed to intentionally invest some of the off-time this role provided into my relationship with Cin...
I had a few things going for me leading into the interview for the behavior-based safety facilitator role: a tremendous work ethic, a willingness to jump at any opportunity that was even mildly offered, and a hunger to advance. That said, there was very little polish to any of it. Couple my rough ed...
I’ll be completely transparent here, the only things I had going for me leading up to that interview for the behavior-based safety facilitator role was that I was willing to work hard and I had been actively involved in a few aspects of the process. I hadn’t touched a text book since high school, an...
My senior year of high school was a whirlwind. While I did the bare minimums to skate through my required classes, I was working as hard as I knew how in what turned into a full time job before I even graduated and dove in head first to every other kind of shenanigan I could find as soon as I clocke...
I’ve often heard the phrase, “Life is tough. It’s even tougher if you’re stupid.” As harsh as that may be, here’s some context: I could share dozens of difficult situations I fought through in my teens and early twenties, most of which were self-induced, that could have provided me with far more val...
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...
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...
In June of 2000, I was only about a month into my new role facilitating (I’m intentionally not calling it leading and you’ll see why shortly) the 5S implementation across 200,000 square feet of the facility I worked in. In case you’re familiar with the idea, Sorting everything in a work area, Settin...
To lead with influence over authority, to fully utilize the strength of humility, to ever begin to develop others, or to even capture the slightest return on investment from our relationships, we’ve got to realize that we are indeed capable and worthy of all those things. Without knowing your worth,...
