leadership

Where Do You Belong?

Where Do You Belong?

Where did you come from? Who are your people? Who do you look like in your family?

If you can readily answer these questions, congratulations. But for some people, these questions evoke anxiety because they have little to no contact with their family of origin.

Many non-profit organizations around the country take on the herculean and important work of meeting the needs of children in the child welfare system who require interventions to support their well-being. In the past, this frequently meant residential stays in group homes. (more…)

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Inspecting the Expected

Inspecting the Expected

I love looking at HGTV shows. It’s interesting to watch the variety of homes people purchase and their excitement to describe how they’ll use the new space. In some cases, they want a “move in ready” place where they don’t have to do a thing. The layout and basic décor should already suit their style.  In other cases, they want a blank palette where they can move walls, change the paint and flooring, update the kitchen and bathroom to “make it their own.”

More unsettling though is when their excitement over their new home is interrupted by a friendly inspector with bad news. Close examination uncovers things like termites, asbestos, water or mold damage, cracks in the foundation, roof leakage, faulty electrical wiring, old plumbing…the list goes on.  The cost for repairs eats into the homeowner’s savings or impacts their renovation budget. (more…)

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Tackling the Hard Assignments

Tackling the Hard Assignments

Have you ever started cutting up vegetables and finally realized that it was taking longer than expected? Maybe you’ve gone outside to trim your hedges only to find the job harder than you anticipated. Or in a burst of energy, you picked up your ax to chop wood, and were quickly out of breath as you realized how much effort was required.

Then it finally occurred to you that if you simply stopped to hone the edge of your tool; whether a knife, trimmer, or ax, that the job would be much easier. The sharper your implement, the more you can accomplish, very quickly. (more…)

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Building Meaningful Leadership Relationships

Building Meaningful Leadership Relationships

“The leader of the past was a person who knew how to tell. The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.”
Peter F. Drucker, management consultant

This is a profound quote that made me think of another difference between leaders of the past and leaders of the future.

The leader of the past was a person who had a hierarchical relationship with their team. The leader of the future will be a person who has a warm and meaningful relationship with their team. (more…)

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Leading a Remote or Hybrid Team

Leading a Remote or Hybrid Team

It’s no secret that many companies are struggling to find the right balance between remote and hybrid work policies for their knowledge workers. After over two years of forced remote work, announcements and retractions of return-to-office dates, remote local hires who have never stepped foot on site, and remote countrywide hires who will never be expected to work on site, many hope there is light at the end of the tunnel. They just don’t know if it’s sunlight or a train headlight. (more…)

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The 4Rs of Organizational Self-Care

The 4Rs of Organizational Self-Care

The past 19 months have provided an abrupt recognition to many people about the importance of personal self-care. It’s been a wake-up call for individuals to make decisions that support their mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health needs. And while many organizations have adopted new policies and practices to support this, the whole topic of organizational self-care is an opportunity to strategically plan how leaders can support their current and prospective team members to provide an environment where they can thrive.

The reasons for its importance should be clear by now. With attrition rates rising (The Great Resignation), reports on increasingly aggressive behavior in public places (airplanes, stores, and schools to name a few), and a general unease in the workplace (as reported by a variety of leaders with whom I’ve spoken), we have to approach work differently in the future. Worker shortages along with high unemployment, are evidence of a great reset on the number of people available and interested in the types of jobs that are open. The proof of that is our recognition of the difficulty in finding a salesperson in a store, a server in a restaurant, and a delivery date for a desired item; along with employers dealing with increased time-to-hire.  (more…)

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10 Core Responsibilities of Leaders: Understanding Your Role

10 Core Responsibilities of Leaders: Understanding Your Role

As the leader of your team or organization, are you experiencing any issues similar to the ones on the list below?

  • Product quality is declining, and costs are increasing due to rework.
  • Delivery timetables aren’t being met as staff struggle to prioritize projects.
  • Leaders are competing for limited budget resources and quibbling about the value of their different initiatives.
  • Cybersecurity attacks have hindered your organization’s ability to deliver programs and services as planned.
  • Employee engagement is lagging, and turnover is increasing.
  • Communications initiatives are more focused on overcoming negative press than touting the value of your brand.
  • Ongoing customer complaints center around several core areas, and the proposed solutions aren’t working.
  • Your recently released, long awaited product is floundering in the market, unable to gain a foothold with the targeted demographic.

(more…)

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Shifting Work Motivations: Employee Well-being Takes the Lead

Shifting Work Motivations: Employee Well-being Takes the Lead

As a leader, do you care more about employee well-being or business performance?

You want both of course because you know that you can’t have one without the other. But employee well-being has taken on a new level of priority in organizations. It’s never been more important than it is now, and it’s never been more challenging for employees to be and stay well. (more…)

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Blind Spots: Learning to be Self-Aware

Blind Spots: Learning to be Self-Aware

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Cornell left work early today, which was unusual for him. He was frustrated.

Before and during the pandemic, whether working from the office or home, he was used to putting in long hours. His company’s business was growing, and he was in the thick of their new product development and launch. He made regular presentations to the executive committee, spoke frequently with Rosemary his VP as they were working through thorny issues, and knew the technical details inside and out. (more…)

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Sight or Vision: A Collective Effort

Sight or Vision: A Collective Effort

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article about a young man named Liam McCoy.1 Liam was born with albinism, a diagnosis characterized by lack of the pigment melanin in his hair, eyes, and skin. His eyes were overly sensitive to bright light, they moved involuntarily to the point that he was unable to make them look at any specific object, and he was extremely nearsighted. He could only see something in a field three inches from his nose and had a visual acuity of 20/2000. Though he had sight, his visual perception was extremely poor, and he learned to experience and understand his environment using cues that were different from those born with normal vision. (more…)

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