In the most recent LinkedIn article I published called If You Want It Done Right…, I shared a comment I heard John Maxwell make recently, “A leader who empowers their team isn’t someone who believes they have to do it all themselves for it to be done right.” While that’s not necessarily as easy as it may sound, it’s absolutely something we have to begin doing at some point if we have any hope at all of moving beyond that busy-ness we’ve kicked around over the last several messages to a place where we’re building a team that accomplishes what it’s really capable of!

I closed the last blog by challenging you to really think into how much it really matters when someone on our team makes certain mistakes. If it’s a true life or death scenario, we may need to stay in complete control of the situation. But let’s be brutally honest, those are few and far between! There are far more situations where a mistake here and there...

As we continue digging into the idea that all of us are going to make mistakes and that can’t be what completely stops us from delegating tasks to our team members, there’s one big thing we’ll need to be able to answer: How much does it really matter?

Before we get wrapped up in answering that question, let’s make sure we’re on the same page… Some mistakes come with a higher cost, and none are more expensive than the ones that are covered with excuses! Learning from a mistake is often part of the price of learning, but making an excuse rather than accepting responsibility and finding the lesson means there will never be the slightest chance to pull value from the mistake!

Whether it’s a team member who we’re developing as we begin providing them with new opportunities or a politician who’s “set up” by a salon owner, making excuses for this mistake limits (and sometimes completely removes) our chances of trusting them...

It was a bit shocking to learn 95% of all people never take action on their intentions. And many of the remaining 5% that do take action, never take action on the things that will get them the results they're after!  I remember soberly thinking, that is nearly everyone.  Wait a minute...that is me!  There were plenty of things I was not taking action on that I knew would move me forward in life.  I was the person holding me back. 

When I (Cindy) learned there were simple step’s I could take to bridge the gap from good intentions to taking intentional action, my results started changing.  When I learned to identify the right actions to take that would give me the results I was after…I started seeing faster growth in areas that not only helped me accomplish my goals but first increased my awareness which grew me personally and professionally in the process.  When your awareness increases you grow in many ways! 

Remember the stat I...

I’ve been a baseball fan for as long as I can remember. I played little league for a few years and thought I had real potential. I could do everything except run, hit, and catch! Well, I guess that doesn’t leave all that much does it…

My great-uncle taught me a love for the game. And since he was a huge fan of the Boston Red Sox, I was too. Even as I child, I remember recognizing just how bitter the rivalry was between the Red Sox and the New York Yankees - and that rivalry often carried over between their fans too!

Looking back on that rivalry, I always viewed it as a competition to win the American League East and hopefully even the World Series each year; both very finite goals. If you follow baseball at all, you know that the first 25 years or so that I was cheering on the Red Sox were filled with utter disappointment…

Here’s what I never recognized since I viewed that rivalry from the perspective of a fan who wanted his team to win it all: while...

Originally shared in A Daily Dose Of Leadership on January 16, 2017.

Smokin’ Joe Frazier once said, “Champions aren’t made in the ring, they’re merely recognized there. What you cheat on in the early light of morning will show up in the ring under the bright lights.”

In chapter 3 of Leadership Gold, John Maxwell makes a similar point. I realize I’m a bit biased, but I think his may apply to a wider group of people. In this chapter on defining moments, John offers his thoughts on preparing for the ones you’ll face in the future. He says, “One of the most valuable things I’ve done in my life is to make major choices before times of crisis or decision. That has enabled me to simply manage those decisions in critical moments of my life.”

So how does that apply to you and me? I’ll take a shot at answering the second part of that question. I’ll leave answering the first part up to you…

For me, Smokin’...

Originally shared in A Daily Dose Of Leadership on June 17, 2020.

British polymath, Bertrand Russell once said that “many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.”

And this is the second piece of A Cycle for Success in Any Endeavor that we started looking at in the last blog; our THOUGHTS!

There’s clearly some level of importance in this since it’s specifically referenced in two of the most influential personal development books written in the last hundred years; Think & Grow Rick and The Magic of Thinking Big. We could go back even farther with James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh… And more recently, John Maxwell has written two books dedicated to it; Thinking for a Change and How Successful People Think.

Okay, Okay… Maybe it is kind of important. But Russell’s statement seems a bit far-fetched… Possibly, but even Thomas Edison is quoted as saying “5% of people think, 10% of people think they think, and the...

Originally shared in A Daily Dose Of Leadership on July 7, 2020.

In a recent Leading At The Next Level lesson called Different Name, Same Challenge, we took a look at how easy it can really be for any of us to get overwhelmed by fears or concerns when everything we see and hear from the media points to the world spinning out of control. When I shared that lesson, we were just a few weeks into what became the global pandemic we all now refer to as COVID-19. The real intent of that lesson wasn’t to mock the threat that virus has been to so many people but to challenge your thinking with regards to how much control you allow fear to have over your daily routine. I also referenced some great work by Napoleon Hill that dug into where that fear is really coming from…

A few recent posts in A Daily Dose Of Leadership looked at how our actions as leaders ultimately impact the overall culture within our organizations. While we closed that loop by looking at how the example we set...

Originally shared in A Daily Dose Of Leadership on July 17, 2020.

I remember hearing a story about a college football coach who was training someone new to help with the team’s recruiting efforts. He gave a scenario of a few players he had recently scouted. One was getting pushed all over the field, knocked down over and over, and eventually left the game. Another was also getting knocked around but was very quick to jump back up for the next play and give it everything he had. When he asked his new scout to guess which player he was most interested in recruiting to play for their school, the scout immediately picked the player who kept getting back up each time he was knocked down. The coach explained that while that was definitely the better choice between those two players who were being knocked down, he was even more interested in the player who kept knocking them down!

Yeah, I know it’s corny… And this blog isn’t about knocking other players down. I...

Originally shared in A Daily Dose Of Leadership on July 16, 2020.

OK, action can truly cure a lot of what ails us… And the action we take in a leadership role has to be very different than the action we would take if everything depended on us alone. But as we discussed in the last blog, that ship sailed when we accepted the responsibility to lead!

Now with that in mind, here’s something to consider: Have you ever seen someone take massive action for a short period of time then completely fall off the map for the weeks or months that follow? There’s another one of those rhetorical questions…

I think it’s pretty safe to say we’ve all seen that happen at one time or another. It’s especially easy to see if you have a gym membership; just open your eyes during the first few weeks every January!

As easy as this is to picture with the New Year’s Resolutioners, this happens just as often in just about every other area we can imagine. How...

Originally shared in A Daily Dose Of Leadership on July 15, 2020.

More often than not, I’ve heard folks say that Action cures FEAR… I’m not about to argue with that; I truly believe that the majority of folks spend more time worrying about all the things that could possibly go wrong from taking action on something than it would likely take them to just do it, make some mistakes along the way and learn from them, then do it better the next time. And even when that entire cycle requires more time, it isn’t likely to require much more energy! Worrying is hard work!

While taking action really can cure fear, that’s not what I was referencing with Action Cures… in the subject line!

Action can cure quite a bit more than just fear… I believe action can go a long way toward curing poverty. I also believe taking action plays a significant role in curing a ton of health issues that bog so many people down. And just as importantly, action can help...