Cheryl A. Bachelder's Blog, page 4

My Favorite Quotes for the Dare to Serve Leader

I get asked often to share my favorite leadership quotes – so I thought I would close out 2016 with some inspiring words for the Dare to Serve leaders working to be a better version of themselves! Here we go:

“Consider others more significant than yourselves.” – Ancient Literature

This quote sits at the top of my calendar on Monday-Friday. I haven’t found any quote that is more challenging to me on a daily basis. It is the essence of servant leadership – to set aside self-interest in favor o...

Ethics Q&A with Bob Doll

Leaders have many balls to keep in the air: staffing, profitability, safety. The list goes on and on. But one item that can never be left off the list or ignored is ethics. Companies that don’t make ethics a priority create needless problems and challenges for their businesses, staff, and customers. Bob Doll is a senior executive at Nuveen Asset Management. He’s graciously answered some questions about ethics, and he offers some advice for putting ethics back on a leader’s ‘to-do’ list.
1. B...

The Power and Opportunity of Accountable Leadership

Leadership apart from personal accountability is detached superiority.

Lack of personal accountability on the part of leaders results in isolation, artificial interactions, and shallow relationships.

Leaders who stand aloof from personal accountability:

Lean toward authoritarian exclusivity. Practice hypocrisy, if they expect others to be accountable to them. Exude arrogance. Stay isolated and detached. Accountability is essential to authentic relationships. Lack of accountability produces...

The Honor Code of Business

Recent events have once again reminded us of the impact of unethical business practices on a famous, trusted brand and company – this time the name is Wells Fargo. The banking giant was fined $185-million dollars after an investigation determined more than 2-million bank and credit card accounts were opened or applied for without the customers’ knowledge or permission. The events are being investigated by lawmakers. The CEO, Division head, and 5,000+ employees have been terminated. The CEO h...

Leadership in Challenging Times

A lot of businesses are having a difficult year—and it has raised this question to the top of my list: What does leadership look like in challenging times? What does a servant leader do when facing trials at work?

Here are some thoughts and questions to help you when you face the inevitable challenge that comes with the mantle of leadership.

Reflect, Listen, & Learn

When business circumstances change, our first emotions are often anxious and overwhelmed. Our brains rush to urgent, panicky i...

Interview with John Beckett

Some say that you cannot be humble and confident at the same time.How would you respond to that statement?

So much depends on how we think of these two qualities. If humility means being easily dominated, or weak, there’s not much incentive for a leader to be humble. If we think confidence is being domineering or arrogant, always needing to be right, there’s little appeal to this trait.

Set aside these distorted views. Think of humility as bringing out the best in others, seeking their vie...

The Hidden Power of Humility

Previously published on BecomingMinimalist.com.

“We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.”– Rabindranath Tagore

Humility is a funny thing. In fact, my grandfather used to tell us that he won a medal for his humility, but it was taken away when he began to wear it.

Humility is the act of being modest, reverential, even politely submissive. It is the opposite of aggression, arrogance, pride, and vanity. And on the surface, it appears to empty its holder of all power.

But on...

Humble and Confident Leadership? Is that possible?

One of the more interesting servant leadership questions I am asked is this: can you be humble and confident?

This question stems from inaccurate assumptions about these two words.First, the assumption that humility looks weak.Second, the assumption that confidence looks like self-centered pride. Both are wrong.

Humility is acknowledging that you are not better than other people. When you see it in action, it is a person who simply thinks about others more often than themselves.

Humility is...

Create Millennial Servant Leaders, 1, 2, 3

“3 Rules to Being a Leader, Give, Give, Give!.”

Millennials—currently and most commonly described as lazy, self-interested and entitled—will make up 75% of the workforce over the next decade. The shift is inevitable… but you have the power to really be a leader and influence how millennials will evolve as leaders in the workplace. In order to create and empower millennials to be leaders that Give (Servant), the focus must be shifted from “me” to “we.” Here are three strategies you can teach...

A Fresh Take on Leadership Transparency

Great leaders are transparent.

Statements like this, or any others involving the words leader and transparent, have become so common or in vogue by those who write or speak about leadership (in other words, people like me) as to be cliché, and transparency in this context is now seen as a buzzword.

As is usually the case with cliché’s. there is truth there, but it has been lost through overuse and familiarity. I’ve written in the past about , but today I want to take us past the word to some...