Leading Spaghetti – How to Use Your Noodle to Lead Your Team
“If you’re a leader, you don’t push wet spaghetti, you pull it.” – Bill Mauldin Bill Mauldin was a famous cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the newspaper widely read by American GIs during World War II. It’s easy to get his metaphor about leading spaghetti, and it makes sense, sort of. But since Bill was […]
Why You Should Value the Nonconformist
I’m not paying you to agree with me. I’m paying you to think. That’s Colin Powell’s approach to leadership. When it’s time for planning and problem-solving, the best leaders aren’t looking for unity and agreement. They want the opposite. They want dialogue, a clash of ideas. It’s not the time to get comfortable. It’s the […]
Waiting for the Light to Change
Are you waiting for permission to proceed? Traffic signals organize and coordinate the flow of traffic. They keep things safe and orderly. We wait for the green light to proceed. Organizations have managers and supervisors. They direct the traffic too. Most people wait to be told what to do, then do it. But leaders don’t […]
Is Your Team Due for a Spring Cleaning?
There’s something about “new.” Somehow the idea of new gives energy, enthusiasm, focus. Yet so often we find ourselves stuck in “old.” Same job, same house, same routine. Just as winter transitions to spring and the world outside renews itself, maybe it’s time to look at your leadership and your team and take a moment […]
Spotlight the Support
My daughter is a big fan of Lin Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton. She was home on spring break recently, so we took her to see an earlier production of his: In the Heights. Our seats were good, the actors were talented, the lyrics were clever, and at the end the crowd gave the […]
How to Build Team Culture From the Ground Up
Every team will develop its own distinctive culture. A good team culture can be positive, supporting, and contribute to greater productivity, employee engagement, and satisfaction. A bad one can have the opposite effect. The thing is, you don’t have to leave it to chance to see which way your team culture will go. If you […]
Who are the Real Stars?
We like to focus on the star – the one person who always seems to get it done. But if we zero in too closely on one star, we lose sight of the other points of light in the sky. The Chicago Bulls put five people on the court, not just Michael Jordan. Somebody has […]
3 Ways You Might be Sabotaging Your Team’s Culture on Day 1
Your team’s culture is it’s life-blood, its soul. It’s who you are and how you interact as a group. If it’s a good one, your culture can directly contribute to increased employee engagement, rising productivity and decreased turnover. But if you are not careful, from the very first day someone new joins your team, you […]
Mind the Gap: 9 Ways to Close the Trust Gap on Your Team
People will only willingly follow you if they trust you, and believe in your destination. But like boarding a train, there comes a moment when they have to step from the platform into the passenger compartment and join you for the ride. Crossing that gap is a leap of faith: It requires trust. Yet a […]
How to Build Team Culture One Test at a Time
We all recognize that building team culture is important We know a strong team culture can have a huge positive impact on team effectiveness, employee engagement, and overall productivity. The question is, where does it come from? How do we build it? To me, the short answer is that culture is shaped most powerfully by […]
Why You Might be Turning Your Wolves into Sheep
Are you teaching your people to be sheep or wolves? Many of us are spending too much time corralling our co-workers instead of pointing them in the direction we want them to go. Today we’ll take a lesson from nature about positive reinforcement, and give you three tips to help get your pack moving in […]
No Car, No Phone, No Clue: 10 Life Lessons from a Treasure Hunt
It was anything but a normal way to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. But despite many unexpected trials, it was also one of the best days we’d had together in a while. Here’s the very unusual way we spent our anniversary, and ten Life Lessons we’ll be sure to keep mind for the next 25 […]