Are Your Priorities Out of Whack?
After I left the military, I went to work for a Fortune 100 company. I was doing well, climbing the corporate ladder. The company moved us from Georgia to Ohio, from Ohio to St. Louis, and from St. Louis to Florida, all within five years. This was good. This is what you do when you work hard for yourself and your family. You get promoted, and you bounce around to move up. For my family. To give them a better life.
Here’s a typical work trip that I would have done back then. I would arrive in Orlando for a regional sales manager meeting on Tuesday afternoon around 3:00 pm. The entire time I was traveling to Orlando, I was on the phone, working – making things happen.
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Great leaders know how to delegate effectively and empower their people.
Every leader needs to know that when it comes to delegation, you're either going to get it right or get it wrong. You are either going to get it right and give your people the correct amount of responsibility and authority so they can feel empowered, or you will do the opposite, and they will feel disempowered.
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I Need Help
It was a super hard season. There was a ton on my plate, and my health was not in a great state for a variety of reasons:
I had a lot of responsibility at work concerning personnel and budget; there were a lot of tension points within the people that I was leading.
My kids were super young; and, therefore, super needy – as they should be as young human beings.
I was volunteering in a number of different areas in the community, and it felt like I had to follow through on these commitments – even though I volunteered for all of them.
It was a weekday evening, and the family dinner was done. My wife was going to go out with a girlfriend, and I was going to quarterback the kids’ showers, toothbrushing, and bedtime.
But I couldn’t. I was empty – I was out of gas.
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Leadership Challenges in the Digital Age
This evening, about five hours ago, I was talking to a peer – a very close friend, a confidante, and a fellow coaching consultant. He said these very true words, “You can get a lot of things wrong in your business and survive… but if you don’t get leadership and loving and developing your team, you will fail miserably.”
This is a hard truth. And, to state the obvious, it’s good to talk about what is true – even when it’s hard. It’s good to be talking about what is real and what really impacts your team and your business.
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I'm SOOOO Sorry
It was a big event. That means a handful of people were coming together to do one event collectively. I was working with another sales manager to not only make the business blow up in a good way for our individual units but collaterally, and with equity, for all regional teams.
Our individual duties were assigned and delegated based on strengths, experiences, and giftings.
After weeks of planning, the day of the event finally came. As we showed up to do the finishing touches before the "start time" that would take place in a couple of hours, one guy called me and said, "I got a bit behind because of normal blocking and tackling today… I'll be a bit late…I hope it's not a problem?" It turned out to be a problem… Because not only was he going to show up late, but he also hadn’t crossed the T's and dotted the I's that he needed to. We got into a bit of a tiff.
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I Love Failing
It was after 9/11. We had been in Afghanistan for a while and conducted hundreds of missions. But we hadn't had a mission this big yet. We were going after a Tier One target (also known as an "at the top of the list" terrorist).
A Navy Seal Team was planted on a mountaintop not too far away from the location where the terrorist was. The Seal Team was on a "special reconnaissance" (SR) mission. An SR mission is where they are not expected or ordered to engage the enemy. Instead, their specific mission is to stay hidden in camouflage, not move (literally, not move a muscle to avoid being detected), and report back to headquarters as more intelligence is gathered. The intel they were collecting and providing was a mixture of video, photo, audio, and their best-educated guesses as a team of the actual situation on the ground.
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Some Key Tenets in Adaptive & Transformational Leadership
At the end of every calendar year, I read my top five leadership books. These books have been transformational in my thinking about leadership; and, thereby, have been transformational in my leadership behaviors. Each book and each author has provided something critical to my growth as a leader – in my position in the marketplace, in ministry, in my community, and at home.
One of those books is called "Canoeing the Mountains" by Tod Bolsinger.
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Order and Chaos
I was sitting in this exact spot four years ago, almost to the day. The "haystack" is right outside my window (this is a beautiful rock formation at Cannon Beach, Oregon). The Pacific surf is crashing on the beach; seagulls are darting back and forth. There's a feeling of both order and chaos. Order in the sense that nothing has changed; the haystack is still a formidable rock, unmoved and predictably looking just like it did back in 2019. Chaos in the sense that there is a wildness to the wind, temperature, waves, and ocean.
And I know, because it's the Oregon coast – and because it's January – that the blueness of the sky will fade quickly and turn to a steady downpour of rain (order). But I don't know exactly when that change will happen (chaos).
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Eyes on the Target
It was a top-secret mission. I was put in charge of leading eight aircraft with hundreds of elite special operations forces into another country. We were going to cross an enemy border that was “non-permissive” – meaning the host country not only didn’t want us there, but they would fight to keep us out. The intelligence officers were projecting we would lose up to 35% of the aircraft, and people, as we crossed the heavily fortified border.
But the orders were given: our mission was crucial – we were going in despite the risk to aircraft and personnel.
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How To Avoid Biting Off Heads
I was recruited by a large church to lead a revolutionary and pioneering team. It was an adventure, it was exciting, it was new. The church’s mission, vision, and values completely aligned with my personal beliefs. The executive member that was bringing me on was somebody I could really click with. I respected him deeply and knew that it would be a great arrangement.
I was on fire as I had ever been about starting a new job.
Nine months in, I was as cranky as I had ever been. I was walking around feeling like there was this low to medium grade crankiness going on. I was so on edge, I felt like I wanted to bite off the heads of my kids, my wife, and a lot of other people that I was coming into contact with. I didn’t follow through on it and start lopping off heads. But I felt I wanted to, deeply.
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Are you bringing people down or calling them up to be the best version of themselves?
I was at the at 0650 in the morning. So was the rest of the crew, except the test pilot. I was there, the avionics repairmen were there, the engine mechanics were there, the fuel team was there, and the flight crew chiefs were there. But no test pilot.
We were supposed to jump in the helicopter at 0700.
0655 comes, 0650 comes, 0700 comes, and the test pilot is not there.
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Cracking the Communication Code
Part of being a great leader is connecting with those you lead by communicating effectively. It sounds simple, but miscommunication is almost always at the heart of any conflict we encounter.
For effective communication to happen, you need to align "what I think I said," what you heard me say," and "what I really meant to say." The space between the transmitting and receiving of information leaves room for error or miscommunication. If we are not on the same page, there is room for mixed messages and misunderstandings–all of which create drama and gossip that impacts the performance and culture of a team.
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“Of all the skills of leadership, listening is the most valuable – and one of the least understood.” –Peter Nulty
Everyone knows that listening is a core component of leadership. But have you ever tried to rate your listening skills? How do you think you would do? If you’re anything like me, the results might just surprise you!
Early in my leadership journey, I would have given myself a solid score. I was confident that listening was a skill I had mastered in my youth, growing up in a very loving but very opinionated family. My dad used to tell me, “Son, there are two sides of an argument – my side, and the wrong side .”As you can probably imagine, this fueled a passion in me to prove him wrong. Like a prosecutor shooting holes in the testimony of the star witness, I learned to listen carefully so I could relentlessly rebut the opposing view. I got so skilled at this technique that I started using it in all my relationships. I genuinely believed that listening was measured by how well I could remember the other person's words. By that standard, I was an exceptionally good listener.
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"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours." –Richard Bach
I wanted the extra pay; I wanted the increased level of leadership and responsibility. I wanted to have the ability to manage all of the business in Missouri, and most of it in Illinois. It was a big job. It was a big responsibility. So, I talked myself into taking the gig. I moved my family three states over.
Buckle up. Here we go.
Then came the negative, inhibiting, prohibiting talk from peers, subordinates, and a few key leaders above me:
"There is no way that you can turn this territory around."
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Seek Power For The Good
Is power bad, and is it bad to seek power? I have pondered the answer to this question in my own life; by temperament, I am driven, and that sometimes leads to overpowering people. But there’s also another side to power; it’s a part of being an influential leader. The book Making Room for Leadership: Power, Space and Influence by MaryKate Morse and Leonard Sweet has insight into the question of whether power is good or bad.
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Disgust and Influence
As leaders, like everyone else, we have beliefs about what is true and right. We have bold opinions around those beliefs. Culture also purports current trends and thinking as examples of what it thinks is true and right. When there is a difference between the beliefs these two groups operate by, a gap is created. This gap creates distance. How leaders view this gap drastically influences how they treat people on the other side of that gap. So, how is this tension navigated? And what is it that limits a person’s ability to engage with someone who believes differently than they do?
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Let’s brainstorm, but my idea goes first
I became that leader. The leader that was surrounded by a bunch of “yes” people. I was the leader surrounded by a team of smart people who didn’t have a lot to say.
I didn’t really understand it. I was always saying to the team, “common…let’s hear some good ideas! This is a brainstorming session!” But we had reached a point where my team didn’t have much to say. They were quiet. They were more than quiet. They were timid. They were disengaged.
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Do You Have The Guts To Turn Down Business?
I never…I mean, I NEVER will go into a project or client relationship unless I feel/know it’s going to be anything but hitting the mark on solving their true problem. Their true pain-point.
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Performance and production are peripheral; people and passion are primary
What a miss. What a waste. What an absolute departure from keeping the main thing the main thing. Which is: connecting and inspiring with the people who were there to hear your message. That’s why they are there. They are not there to be mesmerized by production and pomp. Production is adjunctive. Connecting the audience with your passion, your vision, and your message, is primary.
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I wanted him fired, I wanted him out of the unit... I was wrong.
As the engines were spooling down on the helicopter, it sounded like there was…yelling. I was confused. I'm thinking to myself, "we just made it back to base, safely, after a pretty harrowing mission. Why is there yelling going on?!"
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