“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”
– John A. Shedd
Rough seas are inevitable. Conflict and crisis will arise, and as the leader, you are the focal point for dealing with them. Posts on this page will help you deal with external threats, internal conflict, and everything that threatens to throw your team off course.
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, one leader achieved great feats of endurance and survival to …
Leading When Things Go Wrong: Playing Soccer on the IceRead More »
“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 enough to make us want to quit. Where can we …
Unstoppable: 12 Ways to Find the Courage to ContinueRead More »
“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, personal, and ultimately counterproductive. No minds are changed. If anything, …
The Ransberger Pivot: How to Win an Argument By Not ArguingRead More »
What should the leader do when he makes a mistake? Nobody likes to “step in it,” but leadership mistakes will happen. What you do when they occur makes all the difference. Do these three things well, and you may end up with a stronger team than you started with.
How can you stay optimistic in the face of failure? Failure is a natural part of doing business, of being human, and of attempting to do things you haven’t done before. And when we fail, there’s a natural tendency to want to give up. It’s hard to stay optimistic. But …
How to Stay Optimistic: 3 Questions to Ask Before You Give UpRead More »
Does it sometimes feel like your attempts at leading are like, oh, I don’t know, paddling a half-submerged pumpkin down a river? Last weekend I had the privilege of watching people attempt to do exactly that. Join me for a video of what happened, and some thoughts about how to …
Keeping Your LeaderShip Afloat: 4 Ways to Get Your Head Above WaterRead More »
When you all pull together, it pulls you all together. What happens if you have two groups of people who don’t like working together? How do you get them to function as one? In a strange experiment over 60 years ago that evokes images of Lord of the Flies, a …
Pulling Together: What it Takes to Build Group CohesionRead More »
It can be tough to handle criticism. As leaders we need to be open and ready to listen to the good, the bad, and the ugly. How we respond to that criticism after listening can take many forms. The story is told of a man out walking with Abraham Lincoln …
Do our reflexive reactions cause unnecessary fireworks? Conflict is inevitable in any human enterprise; how we handle that conflict is where leadership comes in. Too often we seem bound to react instinctively: voices rise, pressure grows, and soon it’s fireworks like the 4th of July. But to lead effectively requires …
Independence Day: 7 Ways to Defuse Conflict and Assert Your FreedomRead More »
“How can you prepare to succeed in the midst of chaos?” Much has been written about the big strategic decisions before the massive D-Day invasion of World War II. What sometimes gets missed are the thousands of little, tactical decisions made on the ground afterwards. And lots of those decisions …
Winning at Chaos: How to Succeed When it All Falls ApartRead More »
Nobody said he was a great mathematician. But he may be the greatest general you never heard of. His actions over 2,000 years ago are a great example of how you can influence your future by the way you react to what’s coming at you.
I hope you have problems. That’s a good thing, really. A book I read recently cast a whole new light on what it means to have problems as a leader, and what you should do about them. Today we’ll talk about why having problems can be good, and how you …