There's something about leadership we can sometimes forget, a line of paddling geese in a row I saw this morning illustrated that point perfectly.

The post Like Geese in a Row – What We Forget About Leadership appeared first on RapidStart 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 to help from where I was in Minnesota. The good news was that we were […]

The post The Leader’s Triple-A Club: How to Navigate the Hazardous Highways of Leadership appeared first on RapidStart Leadership.

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 are five action steps you can take when building a new team that will give […]

The post Who’s in Your Canoe? 5 Things to Consider When Building a New Team appeared first on RapidStart Leadership.

“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 that really such a bad thing?  When it comes to optimization and effiency, there are […]

The post Optimization: Surprising Lessons in Efficiency from the Ant World appeared first on RapidStart Leadership.

What should a leader do when they make 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. Stepping In It First, a word […]

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What skills does an introverted leader need to develop? Statistically, about half of us tend towards introversion (I’m definitely one of them).  That fact doesn’t exclude us from being effective leaders. In fact, many of the traits associated with introversion are actually strengths for someone who wants to lead well.  Often, we can lead very […]

The post Skills for the Introverted Leader: 6 Ways to Expand Your Comfort Zone appeared first on RapidStart Leadership.

How can 80% of people believe themselves to be above average leaders? One of the many challenges of being a leader is knowing how well we are doing.  Are we sinking or swimming? It can be hard to really know, and yet knowing is the key to becoming better at it. As I was surprised […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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She is a jet pilot, Ph.D., federal agent, and Amazon best-selling author.  And she is a leader. L.B. Johnson assumed her duties as a law enforcement agent at about the same time the Twin Towers were falling in New York.  In a world often dominated by the male of the species, she was not just […]

The post On Duty: The Meaning of Leadership in a Risk-Filled World appeared first on RapidStart Leadership.