Insights

The following is adapted from The Irreverent Guide to Project Management.

Any time you get enough people together, you are likely to encounter friction, and work is no exception. It’s wonderful to have a supportive, sympathetic, open-minded, egoless team, but realistically, there are few cohorts that can measure up to that Utopian dream. 

When the inevitable bumps and glitches arise, it’s best to already have an idea of how you can get them under control. If they aren’t managed right away, interpersonal tensions have the power to derail an entire project, and what’s worse, they can foster grudges and animosities that linger amongst team members moving forward. 

The following is adapted from The Irreverent Guide to Project Management.

It takes mere seconds to jot en email and blast it across the aether. Meetings, on the other hand, are better measured in minutes—or even hours! That’s why it’s tempting to ditch face-to-face contact altogether and opt for the more efficient means of communication. 

Yet efficiency isn’t everything. Professor Albert Mehrabian has shown that the written word can only convey 7 percent of the intended meaning, while 93 percent of our message (the part that conveys our tone, emotion, gestures, and nuanced feelings) gets lost. That’s why you should never use email to diffuse complex information, communicate, or solve a problem.

The following is adapted from It’s Never Just Business.

There’s a major difference between authority and leadership. Can you articulate it?

Many people can’t, but almost everyone knows the difference when they see it.

What is authority? Telling others what to do. Why? Because that way you win.

People in authority are the top dog and get the big paycheck. They’re amazing because they’re the boss. But, just because an executive has authority over their employees doesn’t mean their employees will follow them. Here’s a great example.

The following is adapted from It’s Never Just Business.

Ask any organizational leader how their team members would react to a big change, and they’re likely to say that fear would be the default reaction.

Here’s what’s funny: I don’t think people actually fear change.

The following is adapted from It’s Never Just Business.

When your team sets a goal at work, how do you track progress to see how you’re doing? Are you more prone to using a lag measure or a lead measure?

Uh oh, did I lose you?

The following is adapted from It’s Never Just Business.

What does leadership mean to you? To me, it’s about creating a culture of listeners, collaborators, challengers, and decision makers. Leadership is about enabling your team to self-actualize by giving them a voice and engaging their creativity.

Great leaders are the proverbial sounding board. By creating a culture of leaders, team members can provide the same support to each other and their leadership.

Encouraging everyone on the team to be a leader is good for the team, and it opens the door to let others’ expertise show the leader where growth and change can occur.

I recommend that you invite your team on this leadership journey with you. In this article, we’ll explore reasons to turn followers in your organization into leaders.

The following is adapted from It’s Never Just Business.

Leadership will frequently require giving critical feedback in the form of coaching, and this article will help you get the results you are hoping for from coaching sessions.Pick a team member you feel could improve in some way, but not the problem child.

It’s better to practice on a high performer, someone who gets positive feedback and because of their performance is usually overlooked from a coaching perspective.

The following is adapted from It’s Never Just Business.

I don’t know anyone who gets excited when the topic of accountability comes up.

Most of us see it as a chore, a burden, or a necessary evil because we start out lives with a negative perception of accountability. When we are toddlers, our parents set boundaries to keep us alive. However, as toddlers, we can’t possibly see those boundaries as anything other than a punishment. We want to do something, and they won’t let us! So, we keep pushing, and the third time I try to put my hand on the hot stove, my dad smacks it in an attempt to deter any further exploration.

The following is adapted from It’s Never Just Business.

If you’ve been a leader for very long, you know leadership is not about you. It’s about developing the potential of your team to solve problems and enable success.

This is just one of the principles that effective leaders hold dear. If you’d like to develop your leadership even further, this article has five ways to do just that.

The first step that will guide all the others is to determine your values.

The following is adapted from It’s Never Just Business.

If you’re an organizational leader, here’s a truth I’d like to share with you:

Leadership isn’t about coming up with the best idea or solution to a problem.

Leadership is about helping your team come up with the best ideas.

Early in your career, you had a ton of ideas. You took risks, advocated for your ideas, solved problems, and moved the organization forward. You were the go-to person, and you were rewarded for coming up with and advocating solutions.

Then you got promoted to manager—now what? The shift can be difficult, so to help you deal with it, here are three actions you should adopt as a leader.