Leadership | It's Worth Noting

Leadership

Do you have a family bucket list?

February 16, 2011

A movie entitled “The Bucket List” popularized the idea of creating a bucket list of things to do before you die. Do you have a bucket list? Reflect upon what’s on it. If it’s like a lot of the lists I’ve seen, it includes individual accomplishments like running a marathon or maybe visiting a beautiful place or landmark. An individual bucket list can be a great motivator. It can influence some decisions and provide certain direction in your life. Have you considered a similar list for your family? What about sitting down tonight for dinner and asking everyone what they would like to pursue or accomplish as a family during your years together? Depending on whether you have children and their ages, you may have to revisit this conversation several times over the years to capture everyone’s input, Maybe your family’s list includes visiting Disney World, hosting an exchange student,…

Leadership

The power of unprompted giving

February 2, 2011

Want to have an immediate impact on a few people today? Anyone can give when they’re prompted or a need is staring them in the face. What about giving without being prompted or without a need being known? What about doing this at work? Here’s a three step beginner’s guide: Think of 2-3 people in your sphere of influence, whether colleagues, vendors or customers. Take a moment to reflect on their unique interests, needs or impact on your life. Identify one thing you can do or say today to give to them, whether that means supporting their interests, meeting their needs or affirming their impact on your life. Regular, unprompted giving might happen in a healthy home or church, but it’s too rarely seen in the workplace. While prompted giving is great, unprompted giving is even better because you are the sole catalyst. This makes the thought more meaningful and the…

Leadership

Misson and Values: Taking your team’s pulse

January 26, 2011

If you ask members of your team to describe the mission and values they witness being lived out in your organization day after day, would the results differ from what’s written on the plaque or in the handbook? Do they know how their daily work furthers the mission and embodies the values? Would they give you blank stares or an earful? Try taking your team’s pulse by asking the question. Give them complete freedom to respond candidly without repercussions. The results could be really encouraging or make you sick. You won’t know until you ask. Regardless of how it turns out, you’ll know where you stand. You’ll know whether your team is cohesively pursuing the desired mission, embodying the values and relating their work respectively or whether your actions fail to match up to your words. If the latter, your customers are probably experiencing the same, so there’s even more urgency…

Leadership

You have to be inquisitive to lead

August 29, 2010

Wondering if you’re an effective leader? A good gauge to consider is how inquisitive you are. The best leaders are insatiably inquisitive. They keep asking why. They dig for answers. They’re keenly aware of what they do not know. They are disciplined learners. I believe everyone is a leader. While reach and effectiveness vary, everyone leads to some extent whether they want to or not. We lead by action or inaction, by speaking up or remaining silent and by pursuing knowledge or remaining ignorant. If you do a gut check and find you’re not inquisitive anymore, chose to change course. Make a list of what you don’t know and begin to learn. Dig for answers. Keep asking why. Become insatiably inquisitive to become an effective leader again.

Leadership

Don’t be selfish – pursue inconvenient moments

January 18, 2011

If you’re like me, you avoid inconvenient moments. You hustle to get there, go here or finish that. Along the way, people and situations that should get your attention are completely missed simply because you are not interested in being interrupted. It doesn’t fit your plan or schedule for the day. The trouble I’ve found with this mindset, at least for me, is that it is entirely self-centered. I fall into the trap of only wanting to give or care when it’s planned and convenient for me. If it’s unplanned and inconvenient, I keep moving barely noticing what I’ve decided to ignore. If you want to have a significant and unexpected impact on the people around you today, pursue some inconvenient moments that cross your path. Have the conversation you do not have time for. Assist the person broke down on the side of the road. Help the mom in line in front of…

Leadership

Explaining why is more important than when or how

January 13, 2011

If you just share what needs to get done, you’re giving orders. If you explain when it needs to get done, you’re prioritizing and scheduling for someone else. If you explain how it needs to get done, you’re micromanaging. What if you always explained why something needed to get done, focusing on the importance and impact? Saying why provides guidance that empowers the people around you to solve problems, make decisions and accelerate delivery. Your team can figure out the when and how if you explain the why. Are you leaving it out?

Leadership

Allow for unscheduled conversations

January 11, 2011

I avoid unscheduled meetings at the office. If someone wants to meet to exchange information, collaborate or whatever the occasion, I usually ask that they add the item to the agenda for the weekly meeting I have scheduled with most of my team. What I do make time for are unscheduled conversations. For me, this is one of the chief gains of being focused on efficiency and productivity. I create room for conversations about life, relationships and matters of consequence without fretting about what I’m neglecting. Unscheduled meetings are a distraction and are usually the result of poor prioritization or time sensitivity on the part of the requestor. Impromptu conversations are part of the healthy cadence of life and present wonderful opportunities to invest in relationships. Say no to the meetings and say yes to the people.

Leadership Productivity

It’s time to change how and why you do meetings

May 19, 2010

Most people will tell you they hate meetings. They’re left over from the days of only being able to share information by being in the same room together. We have so many more options today, but people insist on pretending it’s still 1940. People are checking their email, intranets, wikis, dashboards, twitter, etc. while in the meeting, but whomever calls the meeting isn’t thinking about how to use those tools to eliminate the need for the meeting in the first place. So do meetings still serve a useful purpose? I’d say so, when strictly limited to gathering people to leverage their experience, knowledge, creativity, etc. in real time to collaborate and solve a problem together. If you’re booking conference rooms and blocking everyone’s calendar just to share information, give status updates, etc., you’re wasting everyone’s time. If you don’t care about wasting time, try calculating the accumulated wage cost for…

Leadership

What’s your family story going to be this year?

January 4, 2011

What’s the strategic plan for your family this year? You do it for your business or organization. You map out the year ahead, month by month, team by team or role by role. You reflect on what the accumulated effort and focus will need to be to achieve some very specific goals. Do you do the same for your family? Your children? Your marriage? Why are we so less strategic with our families compared to our businesses? Try sitting down with your family in the next few days and decide where you want to end up when the coming year is over. Work backwards to figure out what everyone needs to do to achieve individual or family goals. Be strategic, be intentional. Choose your family story. Do not just let the year happen. Plan, pursue and adjust along the way.

Leadership Productivity

Do the difficult work first

December 29, 2010

Think about all the things you need to get done, whether at work, home or another context. Now think about the things on that list that are quick or easy and the things that are time consuming or challenging. Compare the two lists. Consider which is populated with tasks that are more transformational for you and others, will have a bigger impact or will help you leap, rather than simply step, ahead. Inevitably, the list with time consuming or challenging tasks stands out, but it’s not where most of us spend our time. The gravitational pull when we awake each morning is to be attentive to the quick or easy stuff. As the day goes on, we struggle to fit in anything else. If you want to consistently leap ahead, have an impact and be transformative, start your day doing the difficult work first.