I am an optimist. If you have read my blogs in the past, you know this. Few people follow pessimists anywhere. Pessimists usually keep themselves and those around them from making any progress or experiencing growth. I understand that past experiences may cause some people to be pessimists. But I do believe being an optimist […]
I know why you said what you said! I know why you did what you did! I am able to diagnose your motives. Because I believe I know your motives, I am sure you are the problem and not something else–like me! These are all lies. But, they are lies that we easily fall into. […]
5 years experience. 10 years experience. 20 years experience. Which one is better? There are many times when no experience may be better than 20 years. An employee with 20 years of tenure can help or hurt a team. That’s why I hate the idea that tenure alone is used in making employment decisions. Tenure […]
At 2:30 in the afternoon, I took a risk. An audience of 700 people had been listening to best selling leadership gurus since 8:00 AM. Now I had 10 minutes to make an impact on this group. I decided to change the first half of my talk and ask the 700 attendees to actively participate […]
In my fifteen years of leading sales people I rejoiced with my new hires when they had a great first year. But, experience also taught me that early success could be the worst thing for some people. Success in sales or in any aspect of business is often determined by a person’s response to failure. […]
What if we did not allow early failure to become enduring failure? We all try. But do we try long enough? Do we persevere? What makes some persevere and others quit? For a lot of us, it is the habit of making excuses. The willingness to make excuses stops many people from going past Plan […]
I started my first team from scratch and it took us over two years to hit our stride. My second team had a mix of experienced and novice members on it. We took about a year to begin to fire on all cylindars. The next team was pieced together from other teams. The individuals were […]
Two companies competing in the same market can have wildly different results. One company will thrive and the other will flounder. Why? Does one company have smarter people? Or better information? That is unlikely. There is not a shortage of smart people in business today. The people available for businesses to hire have never had […]
Many people are not prepared for leadership because their leader has not prepared them. Some leaders fail to develop the people around them because they don’t allow them to make decisions. When a leader prevents people from making decisions at lower levels, the organization is creating an environment where low potential followers flourish and future […]
It’s like a sad Dilbert cartoon. A leader sitting in his office shooting email after email off to people he can see through the glass window of his office. It’s sadder when he has set up a culture on his team that he expects an immediate response to his emails. Is this a Dilbert cartoon […]
