Leading Volunteers: How to Keep Them Coming Back
How do you lead people who aren’t on your payroll? Since moving to Minnesota, I’ve wanted to get engaged locally as a volunteer. Last month I signed up to help at a local agency, and it was a great experience. The way they worked with the volunteers made it fun, productive and has had me […]
Leading Virtual Teams: 12 Powerful Ways to Lead a Team You Can’t See
How do you lead a team that’s not there? It’s hard enough to be a good leader when your teammates are in the same room. But what about when they aren’t even in the same time zone? When you can’t look someone directly in the eye, things get much more challenging. Yet leading virtual teams […]
Everyday Winners – How to Build Mental Toughness One Day at a Time
How do you win the daily struggle to get out the door? Temperatures have been dropping lately. Now it takes more effort to get out the door for my morning run. Yesterday I had to analyze the weather. Contend with warm clothing decisions. Wrestle them all on. Shiver through the first mile until the blood […]
Building Influence – 6 Ways to Earn Respect
What’s the secret to building influence? Becoming more influential is actually a pretty simple matter. But simple doesn’t mean easy. One evening not too long ago, someone gave me a brief demonstration of how to go about building influence, and showed that any of us can do it, if we are willing to make the […]
Visionary Leadership: When Social Proof Fails
What is visionary leadership? In 1921, an explorer and naturalist named William Beebe was trekking through the jungle in Guyana. He came across a large colony of ants marching along a path that they had made. Curious, he followed the little ant highway to see where they were going. After a quarter mile of climbing […]
Delegating Effectively: It’s Not Tennis
If I’m delegating effectively, why do I always seem to have the ball? We all know that as leaders we need to delegate effectively. As one boss even told me, “You have to delegate or die!” But sometimes it can seem like that ball keeps bouncing back into your hands. You start to wonder, what’s […]
6 Powerful Ways Leaders Reflect, and how Reflection Makes Your Team Great
What is reflection for leaders? Reflection sounds like a passive exercise you do by yourself. It seems to involve sitting in a chair in a darkened room and journaling about the meaning of things. Maybe that’s part of it, but I think for leaders there is much more to it than that. Leaders reflect actively, […]
Keeping Your LeaderShip Afloat: 4 Ways to Get Your Head Above Water
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 keep your LeaderShip afloat, even […]
Stop Social Loafing: 6 Ways to Get Everyone Working
How come 1+1+1 does not equal 3? You would think that the more people on a project, the greater the output. Sadly, that’s not always the case. A phenomenon called Social Loafing leads some team members to do the minimum possible. They drag down group productivity like a boat anchor. Today we’ll look at why […]
Master the Habit Cycle and Achieve Your Goals
What if you could turn making good choices into a habit? It’s easy to set a goal. It’s much harder to actually achieve it. Part of the problem is that to make progress, every day you have to choose to put in the effort. If you don’t make that choice, failure is just around the […]
Secrets of Social Facilitation: Putting the Audience to Work
What happens to performance if someone is watching? The answer might surprise you. Performance isn’t just about the players, it’s also about the audience. Today we’ll unlock the power of social facilitation and show you how you can use the audience to get the best out of your team.
What is Your Leadership Legacy?
One of the greatest challenges for leaders is focusing on the invisible part of what we do. Even as we go about the business of getting things done every day, we are also doing something else. For better or worse, we are forming and shaping the people on our teams into their future selves; we […]
