Archives For Leadership

Give Me Time To Recognize Your Genius

joe —  Mon 21-Mar-11

Football HitI never really understood the obligatory post-game handshake between two football teams. Here are two teams that just finished the last three hours beating the snot out of each other and now they are expected to raise a smile and say “nice game”. While they will eventually get to that point, I am pretty sure that they don’t feel it at that moment.

Don’t get me wrong, I totally believe in sportsmanship and dealing graciously with winning and losing. I just don’t know how one can expect such a dramatic change in two minutes.

That’s because you can’t – and it is no different in the business world or any other part of life. We all have what a friend of mine calls “take-up time” If you want to lead others with a new idea you have to really understand this simple piece of human psychology. Continue Reading…

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They Won’t Budge

joe —  Sun 13-Mar-11

Fireplace reading
If you can’t help people grow you aren’t likely going to be worth much as a leader.

Unfortunately it is one of the areas that I see managers most often fail. Growth is one of the critical components that separates the two.

Developing people is hard; it often involves taking someone from a place of comfort to a place that is very unfamiliar. It’s like trying to convince someone reading their favorite book in a big comfy chair next to the roaring fireplace that they need to put on a blindfold and go for a car ride in the dead of winter. Why would anyone want to do that?

There are two parts to helping someone grow. First you have to understand the natural loss they will feel leaving the comfort of their chair. Second, you have to convince them that where they are going is of value to them.

One of the reasons people have a hard time moving from one stage to another is that we all have a built in psychological equation that values loss twice as much as gain – this is called loss aversion. In a well known study by Amos Tversky it was shown that people feel twice as much unhappiness from losing $100 as they do joy from winning that same $100. Continue Reading…

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It’s Not You, It’s Me – or not

joe —  Sun 9-Jan-11

Unhappy.jpgThere 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.

Continue Reading…

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Just an Average Joe

joe —  Tue 21-Dec-10

Average Joe.pngDid 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…

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Smarter Than The Average Bear

joe —  Sun 12-Dec-10

How good are you at your profession? Do you think you are the best person on your team? Top 10%? Above average?

Above Average Children.pngIf 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:

  • In 1981 University of Sweden researcher Ola Svenson did a study of US drivers to find out how they viewed their driving skills. A surprising 93% of the participants thought they were “above average” drivers.
  • In a Wall Street Journal poll earlier this year, 79% of those polled disapproved of the job Congress was doing and thought we should “throw the bums out.” Only 16% thought their congressman should be one of them.
  • In the town of Lake Wobegon all the children are above average.

Continue Reading…

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Kill Them With a Performance Review

joe —  Sun 14-Nov-10

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…

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Stuck in the Middle With You

joe —  Sun 3-Oct-10

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…

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