Don’t Just Check the Box!

We’ll soon start working through the tangible benefits an organization can expect from an effective employee orientation program but before we go too far into the HOW, we have to nail down the WHO and the WHY! Otherwise, any steps we take won’t likely make the impact we’re...

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Our Actions Have to Answer These Questions!

When we’re intentional about delegation and openness, especially in a way that truly develops the strengths of each team member we lead, we’re well on our way to providing them with the answers they’re already asking to three very important questions. Without answering these...

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Nobody’s That Good By Themselves!

Two of the most important team leadership skills we need to create an atmosphere the people can be excited to be part of and actively engage in our organizational objectives are communication and emotional intelligence - but it doesn’t stop there! According to the Harvard Business School...

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Sweet Emotion? No, Managing Emotions!

We couldn’t argue the impact communication has as a team leadership skill if we really wanted to, but we’d need to be OK with being wrong! Since everyone I know who takes their leadership responsibilities serious doesn’t have time for such stuff, let’s push forward to what...

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Team Leadership Skills

To this point, we’ve dug into HOW teamwork really can make the dream work in our organizations and we looked at a few core competencies we’ll need to develop for effective team leadership. Now it’s time we really hash out exactly what skills we need to apply on a daily basis if...

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Life, Liberty, and Equal Treatment?

Before we turn the corner and begin working through some skills we can each hone to lead our teams more effectively, and in turn yield higher engagement and stronger profit margins, let’s circle back to where I left off last time after my time on the ole soap box about being countable...

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Are You “Countable”?

In The 17 Indispensable Laws of Teamwork, John Maxwell coined the idea of “countability” in chapter 9. He explains the Law of Countability by saying that “Teammates must be able to count on each other when it counts!” And if we ever want to be known as a bridge builder,...

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1,000 Bridges…

I closed last time with a less than stellar example of how influence, good or bad, can impact the overall direction of a team. And in that particular scenario I detailed, the person who had the influence and did more than his share of steering the ship carried no positional authority at all. If...

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Good or Bad, Teams Rally Around This…

If we were having this conversation face to face, I’m guessing you’d reply to what I shared last time by saying something like, “Alright Wes, if everything really does rise and fall on leadership, but you’re telling me it requires more than the carrot and stick status-quo,...

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Everything Rises and Falls On…

OK, so maybe teamwork can make the dream work with regards to helping drive profitability in our organizations… And maybe employee engagement and teamwork are directly correlated with one another… But how do these fairly fluffy ideas become reality and who’s responsible for...

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Serving Specific Needs - Perception is Reality

With a solid foundation of Defining Servant Leadership in place, we can now focus our attention on making sure we’re serving the team we’re leading in a way that really matters to them! This WILL NOT be a one-size-fits-all approach…

Before we start down that path though,...

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Defining Leadership Development

Through the last several posts, we worked through just a few answers to the question Why is leadership development important? In that process, I share some statistics from a few different studies citing costs organizations encounter when they don’t put a priority on developing the...

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