Sometimes you gotta get “Prickly”

The biggest threat to a team or organization is complacency. The minute a team is okay with the status quo, all growth, innovation, and improvement stops. One symptom of complacency is groupthink. This situation occurs when everyone sits in a meeting in silence, and the robotic bobble-heads begin to bob with every agenda item. We’ve…

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Quiet, Is it Selfish or Scared?

When leading a team and a decision is needed, what happens? Is it silence or negotiation and debate? Let’s assume that you have assembled the right people for the team; you have the subject-matter experts to be able to make the right decisions. But just having the right experts at the table does not guarantee…

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Change Leadership in 8 Steps

All teams have three participants: change agents, change neutrals, and change resistors. The key to leading change is empowering the change agents, influencing the change equivocators, and helping the change resistors understand the WIIFM (what’s in it for me). Here are the critical steps to leading change. First, identify who fits into these categories because…

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Leading with Good Intentions

A coworker does something we don’t understand or agree with, what do we do? We write a story in our head. We create scenarios on what we think the intentions of this person were. We create a story with little real evidence, only perception, “intuition,” or assumption. Typically these stories are negative. Usually, these perceptions…

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Meetings Leadership for Effectiveness and Efficiency

Often leadership is fraught with perils, and timing is everything. A successful meeting requires the following: An agenda Time management Quality discourse Conflict resolution Defined next steps with firm deadlines Since a leader’s schedule is heavily weighted with meetings, knowing meeting skills can make the difference between walking out of a session frustrated, feeling like…

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Managing your Boss – Risky Business

One of the toughest jobs a leader can take on is leading horizontally and leading up. Leading without authority or the power of title is a critical skill that all great leaders have learned. Even a CEO has to, at times, lead the board of directors or the Chairperson needs to lead shareholders. To develop…

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3 Steps to Leadership Transition

There are several triggers why you may want to transition to a new leadership style. One trigger might be the organizational needs have evolved, and a unique leadership style is required to move the organization or team to the next level. Maybe you have learned some skills to become a better leader but need to…

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2020, Don’t Wimp Out Now

Are you a resolutions person? I’m not a big fan of resolutions. It seems they are just another way to procrastinate what you should have done days, weeks, months, or even years ago. What I prefer to do to celebrate a new year is to evaluate, reinvent, and re-energize my focus and attention. How do…

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