Teamwork is not always a happy and harmonious endeavor. But a certain level of disagreement and tension is good. We all know what conflict aversion looks like: ballooning priorities because no one says “no;” meetings-after-the meeting to “take if offline” for fear of debate; and inefficient workarounds to accommodate an under-performing team member. Frustration festers …
Judgment
Good judgment – using relevant knowledge and experience to form opinions and make decisions – is the core of great leadership. Good judgment is often attributed to gut feeling or acquired instinct, combined with analytic skills that produce an insight or recognition of patterns. Sir Andrew Likierman is a professor at London Business School and …
Solitude
Being by yourself once in a while is good for you. Though it can feel uncomfortable at first, it calms you and helps you engage better with others. It allows you to recharge, take stock and face the day with more confidence. It’s not loneliness. That’s different. This is about choosing to spend time alone. Being alone allows …
Culture
Company culture – what a team believes and how it acts – is easy to neglect. We sometimes get so hyper-focused on sales, marketing and operational plans to feed the pipeline, that we forget to feed the soul. According to Frances Frei and Anne Morriss at Harvard Business Review: “Culture guides discretionary behavior and it …
Intellectual humility
Intellectual humility seems to be in short supply these days. We all like to think of ourselves as being smart, and we rarely want to admit we don’t know something. We’re concerned about appearing weak or lacking confidence. We don’t want to be a pushover. We want to be right. But intellectual humility is really …
Prioritizing
As Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, says, “If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any.” And while it may seem productive to tick off a long to-do list, it’s not the best the way to make progress against your biggest goals. Here’s a 3-step process that I’ve used to help …
Thank you.
I’d just like to extend a simple and sincere thank you. Thank you, Our Readers, for letting me share an idea or two each Sunday. Thank you, Our Clients, for trusting us with your businesses, and your clients, and your important sales and marketing projects. Thank you, Our Friends and Family, for the love and support that energizes us. …
Bullets
Cascading bullet points on pages of PowerPoint presentations don’t work very well. They’re hard to read, hard to understand, and most importantly, they’re hard to remember. Sure, we all do it and it seems to work okay in thousands of companies around the world. But it’s not the best way to deliver and process information. If you …
Civility
It’s crunch time. The end of the year is near. Deadlines loom. And the holidays drive increased levels of stress. Somedays, it can be hard to muster a smile, much less a kind word. Rudeness can rear its ugly head. But abrasiveness, insensitivity and bullying take a huge toll on productivity and quality of work. …
Greatness
My first boss and mentor in sales and marketing communications had a wonderfully simple, yet very motivating, approach to every communication challenge. Whether it was an article, ad copy, or a presentation, he would remind us to start with the same presupposition: “Imagine the world is screaming at you ‘WHO CARES?!’” It’s a jarring, but …