As your leader, your job is about so much more than checking tasks off a to-do list and telling your staff what to do. You have the power to make a real difference in the business and in the lives of your employees. You need to always be thinking about the big picture and how you can move the team and organization forward. You need to come up with ways to make things run … [Read more...]
The New Leader’s First Team Meeting
We recently received this question: Do you have any tips for communicating with my team as a new leader? In today's video, I'm going to answer this question from a slightly different angle by helping leaders lead their first team meeting - providing ideas and solutions for how to communicate and what to communicate in this very important … [Read more...]
10 Ways Meetings Drain the Life from Your Team
We've all attended meetings that were a big waste of time. There are many ways meetings can go wrong, but as a manager, you can prevent many of those problems. Check your meeting behaviors against the following list, and make changes if you’re guilty of any of these sins: Meeting for the sake of meeting. Don’t fall into the rut of scheduling a marketing meeting for Tuesday … [Read more...]
Get Employees Pumped to Attend Training
Because you are reading these words, I am confident you are a believer in ongoing learning and development for yourself and those you lead. So you may find it hard to understand why your team members dread the training that you make available to them. Many leaders who have attended my leadership training courses through the years have asked me "How do I get my employees … [Read more...]
Helping Without Doing
On today's video, I'm answering a common leadership question and providing five actionable tips to help you be more successful. How can I help others without doing it for them? https://youtu.be/X1nw4rptMqY?rel=0&showinfo=0 As a leader, be helpful but don't do it for them. @KevinEikenberry … [Read more...]
5 Tips to Ensure You Don’t Botch Your First Hiring
Hiring is stressful, especially when you've never done it before. Hire the wrong person and you can cost yourself and your organization time and money. However, "when you adopt proven hiring strategies, you can retain a steady flow of talent to fill open job positions and replace underperforming employees quickly. And when your hiring is fast and accurate, you get to focus … [Read more...]
Prioritization Means Choosing What Problems Not to Solve
This is a guest post by Nat Greene, author of Stop Guessing: The 9 Behaviors of Great Problem-Solvers Business leaders face a constant burden in their organizations: They have too many problems to solve and not enough resources to solve all of them. A good prioritization system is critical for any business leader, and our relationship with it often resembles a car. When … [Read more...]
7 Things You Should Have Done When You Were Promoted
You are several weeks or even months into your new leadership position, and you are struggling. You can't figure out why, but you don't feel like a leader (or your employees don't treat you like one), and each day brings challenges that you weren't quite expecting when you accepted the promotion. If that is the case, or even if you just want to become a more effective … [Read more...]
Nitpickers Usually Cause More Harm Than Good
By Jaimy Ford, business writer and editor. Having high expectations is certainly not a bad thing. However, when high expectations translate into nitpicking, it is a problem. When you or your employees are detailed-obsessed perfectionists, it puts unrealistic demands on everyone else, it wastes time, slows progress and leaves people feeling overwhelmed, annoyed or even … [Read more...]
The Most Critical Thing You Can Do During Your First Week as Leader
No doubt you have so much going on when you take over a team for the first time. Still, how you spend your time during those early days sets the stage for weeks, months or even years to come. Use it wisely by taking the time to build rapport and form relationships with your new employees. In your first week as a leader, sit down with employees individually, and ask each the … [Read more...]