I remember learning the Law of Design which says, to maximize growth, develop strategies.  What a relief… I had strategies!  At the time, I had a system that allowed me to get two young children up each morning, safely delivered to school or childcare, as a single Mom and even get some form of exercise before they woke.  Granted, this was on days when no one was sick, had a bad night, or mornings when I faced a child who was attempting to be in charge of the house… and everything else for that matter. 

Life felt more like survival than a sense of thriving but at least I had a system, right?!  I didn’t say it was always pretty but it was always attempted and helped us have structure even on the tough days.  It wasn’t until I delegated responsibility to my children that we were able to create good habits and have a smoother transition each morning, not to mention more fun together!

The truth is…we all have a system. ...

Quite a few of the leaders I’ve known over the years also held positions where they were responsible for supervising a group of people, managing a process, or running an entire business. Let me be very candid before I move on though, filling those positions had almost as much to do with them being real leaders as sitting in a garage does with me being a car… Since condemning the misuse of the word leadership isn’t my intent (today), I’ll stick with the regularly scheduled program…

As a supervisor, a manager, or even a business owner, there’s often pressure from various directions to ensure we’re making the numbers. While I’ve been providing this blog and A Daily Dose Of Leadership for going on five years as a complimentary service to hundreds of people across the country, I like sleeping inside and eating food as much as the next person so at times I’ll reference some of the fee-based services Cindy and I provide as well;...

Why does professional development matter to you? For your future self? For those counting on you? For all the ways you can add value to others? For tomorrow to be better than today? For an edge in your career pursuits?  Don’t miss the opportunity at the end of this blog to access our complimentary professional development resources and create your own personal & professional development growth plan!

As I (Cindy) caught up with a group of friends we chat with at the gym, one of us asked “who is excited about a new year coming?!” Since we were wrapping up 2020, you can imagine the howls and cheers coming from that simple question! We had some good laughs and shared a few hopes for the New Year, then went about the serious work of strengthening ourselves.

I couldn’t help but think of the strength a simple decision backed with Intentional Action will add to anyone’s life who chooses it. It certainly has added physical strength and increased quality...

Wes and I just passed the one year mark of being back in the gym taking intentional action to be a healthier and stronger version of ourselves.  And frankly, I’m trying to ward off some of the aging process too!  A consistent routine at the gym was one of our intentional action commitments for 2020 at least 2-3 days each week. 

When the gyms closed down I was blessed to know some excellent coaches who provided virtual workouts, so I didn’t miss a beat.  Having some equipment at home didn't hurt either!  However, there were MANY things I wanted to be doing at 5:30 a.m. (like sleeping) and working out wasn't one of them! But, it was the right action for us to reach the goals and growth we wanted for 2020. 

Unfortunately for me, it took a back injury and other ailments before I made the commitment and took intentional action to create change in my life. I had good intentions toward better health and becoming stronger but I wasn’t...

As we consider each area that we can take responsibility for controlling that we’ve worked through to this point, there’s one thing that ties back to every single one… And without being very intentional about how we control this final thing, the control we’ve assumed for each of the others is likely to have a very limited impact!

In the last post, I referenced reaching out to the manager of the company to provide a heads up about our friend’s experience. I shared that he took responsibility for the issue, even though it wasn’t something that he had any direct contact with. I also mentioned that he asked me to pass along an apology on his behalf, which I did. 

Here’s where that final thing we need to control comes into play....

In his role, and with the issues that industry has dealt with over the last several months, he has an incredibly full schedule and I believe he works extremely hard. As Cindy and I teach on the 3 R’s and...

In working through the importance of controlling our delivery in the last post, I stopped just short of detailing the scenario in question. Without going into specifics and tossing anyone under the proverbial bus, I’ll touch on that briefly now as it tees up the topic we’ll look at this time…

A business associate who was doing some work for a friend we referred to them had been asked to make a few changes in some documentation. In a normal world, those changes may realistically take an hour or two to get knocked out. The request was made on Dec 1. On Dec 14 or so, our friend was told that the changes still weren’t complete but would be no later than Dec 21. That day came and went without the changes being made. On Dec 23, our friend received an email saying that the person responsible for making the changes had decided to close their office until Jan 4 without providing any detail on when the changes would actually get some attention.

Hey, I get it....

We’ve worked through some critical things we can each take complete responsibility for controlling in our own lives and with the teams we lead in the last several posts. Before we get the milk & cookies ready for Santa and prepare for New Year, assuming he’s allowed to travel this year as long as he’s wearing all of his PPE, let’s consider one final thing about Controlling What We Can Control!

I often reference the nearly 15 years I worked in behavior-based safety. And for good reason, I learned some amazing lessons then that have applied to so many other areas of leadership and life in general. The behaviors we studied so closely certainly tied directly to our overall safety performance as a company, but the same behaviors tie back to just about every other part of our lives too!

One of the things I don’t often reference from those years is the massive amount of data we collected regarding the safe and at-risk behaviors that were observed and...

In the last post, I referenced what I’ve always heard as the only two things we can control; our attitude and our action. That ties right in with something we looked at in this series a few months back regarding what I heard a mentor of ours call The Cycle of Success. He said, “Our beliefs drive our thoughts. Our thoughts produce our feelings. Our feelings are seen through our actions. Our actions yield results. And those results reinforce our beliefs.” 

So here’s the thing… If we neglect taking complete responsibility for controlling our attitude and our actions, we can’t expect to have any real say in where that success cycle leads us! When we do make a decision to take control of that cycle, then we back that decision with action, we’ll see that cycle have a compounding effect! Understand though, it won’t be an easy path to follow. Remember John Maxwell’s quote I shared before, “Everything worthwhile is...

Just a few days ago, I contacted a relatively new local restaurant to confirm their current business hours prior to setting up an appointment with someone coming in from out of town. I completed the form on their website, hit submit, and received a message saying that I would receive feedback at the email address I provided shortly. More than 72 hour have passed and still no response…

I know it was a simple question with the answer likely already posted on their website, but I’ve seen several other places operating on different schedules than they had listed simply due to Covid. I also wanted to double check this since the person I’m meeting is coming from an hour away and the time we were looking at is right as the place shows it will open.

While whether they’re open or not isn’t a big deal, the point I’m calling attention to here is that their messaging said I’d receive a reply soon and that hasn’t happened…

So what does that...

I worked with teams across North America for more than a decade, providing them with practical tools that would help them interact with their coworkers in a way that could lead to changing behavior and reducing the risk of workplace injury. Where safety was involved, it nearly always boiled down to choosing between the harder right or the easier wrong… I’d love to take credit for that statement, but it was something I heard one of my mentors say literally hundreds of times as I worked with him. Putting on a pair of gloves or safety glasses always took just a little bit longer and added at least a small degree of discomfort versus not wearing them at all. Going through the proper steps of completely de-energizing the equipment (LockOut/TagOut) always required extra time…

While skipping those basic steps may seem crazy, the constant pressure (actual or perceived) of meeting productivity demands often led employees to choose the easier wrong! And if a metric on a...