ALL POSTS
Getting Them to Listen: How to Get People to Hear What You are Saying
Why should anyone listen to you? If you’re trying to lead people, one of the first challenges you face might be just getting them to listen. This can be doubly challenging if you happen to be newer to the team
Refining the Plan: Hamburgers on the Tennis Court?
How do you know if your plan will work? Having a solid plan is one thing; knowing that it will work is something entirely different. In the transition from idea on paper to success in the real world, refining the
14 Ways to Make People Feel Important
She started her own business late in life and turned it into a multi-million dollar enterprise. She donated millions to worthy causes. She was once named the most outstanding business woman of the 20th century. Much of her success was
Leading When Things Go Wrong: Playing Soccer on the Ice
What do you do when things go wrong? Leading can seem fun and easy when things are going our way, but it’s when things go wrong that true leaders emerge. In this example from an Antarctic expedition gone disastrously wrong,
Could Your Incentive System Be Hindering Performance?
What if that carrot we offer actually slows them down? In the effort to motivate our teammates, we are quick to offer carrots we think will incentivize them to greater efforts. But as this story of the Soviet Union’s most
The Leader’s Triple-A Club: How to Navigate the Hazardous Highways of Leadership
Not long ago, my son called me from Oregon. He was driving some friends to the airport when his car suddenly quit and wouldn’t restart. Beyond attempting to diagnose the problem over the phone, there was little I could do
Running 50 Miles: 6 Lessons in Perseverance
What’s it like to run an Ultra-Marathon, and how do you motivate yourself to finish any great challenge? Today’s post will be a little different. In 2014, the year I turned 50, I somehow came to the notion that I
Unstoppable: 12 Ways to Find the Courage to Continue
“How do you find the courage to continue?” Teddy Roosevelt once reminded us that “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.” But in our struggles to achieve, that difficulty can be
The After Action Review: A Leader’s Guide
How do you improve your team with an After Action Review? The After Action Review (AAR) is a deceptively simple yet powerful way to stimulate the growth and performance of any group of people. As an organizational learning tool it
Who’s in Your Canoe? 5 Things to Consider When Building a New Team
I’m building a new team; who should be on it? Often we just inherit the teams we lead, but occasionally we have the opportunity to build a new team from scratch. How do you know who to pick? Here
15 Pretty Good Virtual Team Building Ideas
What kind of virtual team building can I do with my distributed team? We all know that teamwork is critical to getting things done through people. Building cohesive teams is already a challenge when everybody is face to face. But
The Leader Apprentice: 5 Ways to Master the Learning Mindset
Kennedy said that “leadership and learning are indispensable to each other,” so how do we make sure we keep learning? It’s easy to get caught up in the daily business of getting things done. But if we’re not careful, though
The Ransberger Pivot: How to Win an Argument By Not Arguing
“Do you ever really ‘win’ an argument?” When someone says something that we don’t agree with, our first impulse is often to contradict or correct them. They are wrong. We are right. Then they argue back. The debate becomes heated,
Optimization: Surprising Lessons in Efficiency from the Ant World
“How can you optimize a system that’s error-prone?” As humans, we are fallable. In our efforts to achieve, produce, and progress, we make mistakes, we misjudge, we stumble. Any enterprise that involves humans will, by definition, be imperfect. But is
Problem Solving Steps: 3 Steps to Take Before You Take Any Steps
Is the first problem solving step really ‘Identify the Problem?’ If you’ve ever watched someone who is tired or emotional struggling to solve a problem, you know that somebody forgot a step in the problem solving process. People can get
