Topics related to leading others as well yourself.
There are a lot of good reasons why people can suck at their jobs. One of the biggest may be you, their manager. Yet it is very possible that the entire rest of your team may have had a fantastic year for the very same reason – you, their manager.
So is the problem you or your poor performing employee? Yes and Yes or possibly No and No or maybe Neither. Some situations may require you to back away from assigning blame and instead look at the environment.
Did you know that Pittsburgh Penguins hockey star Sidney Crosby is one of the few players in the league that increases the average goals per game for those on his line no matter what line he plays with? Did you also know that the average goals per game of players on his former line decrease when he moves to another?
Lest you think he is just a great assists guy keep in mind that he currently leads the NHL in goals.
Simply put, Sidney makes those around him better. It’s a real life example of the old equation 1+1=3.
Continue Reading…
Did you ever consider that the pastor of a church could be one of the least influential people in the church? I say that after 14 years of being influenced by one of the most inspiring pastors in America, Andy Stanley.
The difficulty is that Andy is part of the church staff. Every staff member of a church has a vested interest in having others become part of their community much like every employee of a company has a vested interest in selling what they produce.
Continue Reading…
How good are you at your profession? Do you think you are the best person on your team? Top 10%? Above average?
If your team were large enough I believe that most of you could find someone else that was at least as good as you. I would also put money on it that the majority of you believe you are in the top 10% of that same group. From a leadership perspective this is important to understand.
A few interesting tidbits:
Nothing can kill employee morale more than a corporate performance review. Nothing can kill leadership morale then having to give them. It doesn’t have to be this way and I have a very simple solution.
The critical mistake that most mid to large sized companies make is that they confuse dollars with performance. Dollars are an economic scarcity – there are only a limited amount of them available and they must me applied judiciously when it comes time to offer raises.
Performance is not. In great companies performance is in abundance – it has no limits. It is absolutely possible that everyone on your team has done an outstanding job this past year yet due to the economic of the situation you may be forced to declare 10% of them “underperformers.” Sound familiar?
Continue Reading…
I once worked with a great friend that loved to pull pranks. Let’s call him Dave, um, because that’s his name. Due to the advent of caller id Dave has had to retire one of his longest running pranks – the 3 Way.
Dave would get the phone numbers of two people or organizations that were either competitors or often had passionate but radically opposing views. With his multi-line phone and very quick fingers he would put his phone on mute, call both numbers, and bridge them together. This left each side wondering why the other had called them and the ensuing conversation of discovery left us in stitches. I’ll never forget the day that he Continue Reading…
Several months ago I was on a phone interview for a job when the interviewer asked “How do you motivate your employees?” In a moment of mouth before brain I responded with my initial thought, “Why? Are your employees not motivated?”
Reality was that I wasn’t that interested in the position and I don’t think they were that interested in me otherwise I would have been more careful. But I was dead serious about the question. My reply was simply Continue Reading…
