ALL POSTS
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
Micromanagement: 7 Signs You’re a Micromanager and What to Do About It
Could you be guilty of micromanagement? The micromanager has been called the bully of the business world, and micromanagement is responsible for killing motivation, eroding trust, and leading to waste and inefficiency. Yet the last person to recognize that they
Demotivation: 7 Ways You Might Be Killing Your Team’s Spirit
Could your efforts to lead actually lead to demotivation? A team’s spirit means everything when it comes to productivity, engagement, and satisfaction. But sometimes, despite our best intentions, the way we lead can become a source of demotivation. Here are