Cultivating Leadership
Unhappy and poorly served staff passes how they are treated to their customers. In today's workplace, a management style of pushing people around often pushes the highest performers right out the door.
Read article »Resources: Articles
Creating High Energy Environments
We can't really motivate others, but we can create a high-energy environment that dramatically magnifies and expands the energy of individuals, teams, or organizations.
Read article »Control Your Own Destiny
Although we cannot control every circumstance, we can control how we deal with the uncontrollable. Amid confusion, we must learn to recognize what can be changed and have the courage to change it.
Read article »Communication Strategies, Systems, and Skills
Effective communication is no more a natural skill than leadership is a born trait. However, strong communication strategies, systems, and practices are necessary to keep everyone focused on goals and priorities while providing feedback on progress.
Read article »Clarifying Personal Purpose
Thinking about death can produce a passion for life. Once defined, the determination to live out your personal purpose and dreams can be a strong personal motivator.
Read article »Clarifying Our Core Values
To clarify our core values, we need to develop a comprehensive list of all our possible values, rank their importance and concentrate our improvement efforts.
Read article »Choosing Our Reality
Am I an optimist or pessimist? Which view is reality? Since we see the world as we are, either view becomes our reality. We choose our outlook.
Read article »Choosing Our Poison or Choosing to Let Go
Holding on to destructive emotions is slow suicide. For our own health and happiness, we must exercise our choice to let go.
Read article »Choice More than Chance Determines Our Circumstance
Dwelling on our problems rather than our possibilities comes all too naturally. Too often we choose to curse the darkness rather than light a candle
Read article »Cheer Leaders Inspire Others
Effective leaders understand the power of sincere recognition, genuine appreciation, and celebration. These are what provide the atmosphere of encouragement that develops confidence and builds on strengths.
Read article »Changing Me to Change Them
"We must be the change we wish to see in this world." — Mahatma Gandhi, Indian nationalist and spiritual leader who developed the practice of nonviolent disobedience that forced Great Britain to grant independence to India in
Read article »Change or Be Changed
Failing to respond to inevitable change, results in being victims of change.
Read article »Change Management is an Oxymoron
Change can't be managed. Change can be ignored, resisted, responded to, capitalized upon, and created. But it can't be managed and made to march to some orderly step-by-step process.
Read article »Change Management Can Lead to Rigidity and Resistance to Change
"Change Management" is an oxymoron. A successful change/improvement path will evolve as we approach each fork in the road and take advantage of the unforeseeable opportunities that quietly present themselves along our journey.
Read article »Change is Life
The faster the world changes around us, the further behind we fall by just standing still. If the rate of external change exceeds our rate of internal growth, just as the day follows night, we will surely be changed.
Read article »Change Checkpoints and Improvement Milestones
Many paths lead to higher performance. By using change checkpoints and improvement milestones we can chart our path's success as we blaze our own trail toward ever-higher performance levels.
Read article »Celebration is the Pause that Refreshes
The relentless drive for ever-higher performance often leaves us too exhausted to enjoy what we have achieved. We, as leaders, must learn to break the endless improvement journey into a series of short exciting trips by celebrating and savoring our successes
Read article »Casual, Moderate, and Intense Levels of Customer/Partner Focus
To make our teams or organizations into high performers, we need to "intensify" our service/quality levels. This can begin with management team exercises and comparing ratings from customers and/or internal partners.
Read article »Building Passion and Commitment the Wal-Mart Way
Committing to your business is essential for its success. According to Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, "If you love your work, you'll be out there every day trying to do the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you – like a fever."
Read article »Bringing Values to Life
A key test of whether core values are alive and real in an organization is to ask team members at random to recite those values. If they can't do it without referring to a piece of paper, there are either too many values or they aren't being used in daily operations
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