Unplug. It’s vacation for me this week. Though I intend to unplug, I don’t always succeed. As a small business owner, it’s rough to let go, unplug and truly let go. There are few of us and the demands are many. What I realize is the more I let go, the more my team steps up. It’s counter intuitive for…
Time to think. It feels like a luxury, and yet, it’s where you can solve the toughest of situations. When you create space, the space reveals what you need to create. When searching for a resolution to “too many” great opportunities, clarity on what to say “no” to, and what aligns with my vision for the future, I needed to…
When you enter into a conversation with strongly opposing views, how do you stay neutral? For me, it means I need to suspend what I know and believe during that conversation. The process of suspension means I hold my assumptions, beliefs and opinions out for examination with a willingness to be influenced. The critical words above are “willingness to be…
Questions are a leader’s most powerful tool. When you lead well, you learn to ask more than tell. There’s a distinction between teaching and leading. For the team, they can become blurred when the leader blurs those lines. Teaching means showing, telling, correcting, learning, and generating. Leading is involved, but the outcome is clear: transition competencies and accountability. For many…
Benjamin Franklin said, “tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” How many times do we as leaders tell or teach people and land in frustration when those we’ve told or taught don’t execute in the way we’d expected? If I was a betting person, I’d say it’s better than 80% of the…
How do you find the ideas that matter most? You need to have thinking time. Intentionally setting time to combine the ideas that matter most and connecting them in ways that are both actionable and new offers new opportunities everywhere. Too often, we settle for top of mind thinking. I see this weekly with teams I facilitate. They often state…
Often, when working with clients I tell them “less is more” or “do less better.” These two phrases are the bane of most entrepreneurs’ existence as we have an internal drive to do more sooner and often at the expense of doing more focused work on the “right” priorities. One team (representative of many teams) recently had a leadership team…
Every situation in life is transitory. We fall into a sort of comfort with life at times thinking it should be occurring according to our plans. When we can embrace and accept the changes with grace, we become nimble, creative, and resourceful. When we bristle, thinking life should occur on our terms, we are disappointed a majority of the time. …
Let me become a student of what’s possible. And let me become a student of what’s in the way. As the book says, the obstacle is the way. The question to ask is, “how do I become the kind of person to expect those results? What will it require of me: in my thinking, in my language, in my learning,…
How do you define success? We all measure it differently. Some say, it’s completing something, and you’d sign up to do it again. Others measure in money, material wealth, possessions, and stuff. Others measure by the accolades and awards they collect, and some measure relationships. How many and the quality are up to the person. Still others measure in the…