5 Top Leadership Articles for the Week of November 7, 2016
Imagine that you’ve just completed your team meeting to wrap up the first quarter of 2017. You did it. You hit your goals. The team is energized. You look at your team and you see smiles, pride, even laughter. Then, as you’re packing up, the most skeptical team member, the one who started the year with their arms crossed, walks up to you, shakes your hand, smiles, and says, “Wow, I didn’t think we could do it. But we did—and we even had fun along the way. I get it now. Thank you.”
If you’ve ever dreamed of being a leader who gets results, that people respect, and who people want to follow, then this first ever Winning Well Impact live event is perfect for you. Taught by industry experts who wrote the book, you will learn how to learn the secrets of creating energized, productive teams who achieve breakthrough results.
Click here to learn more and register!
Each week I read a number of leadership articles from various online resources and share them across social media. Here are the five articles readers found most valuable last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think, too.
3 Important Lessons Leaders Can Learn from Success by Tanveer Naseer
If there’s one attribute organizations and leaders everywhere share in common, it’s the pursuit to achieve success in their collective efforts. Granted, there is quite a large variance in terms of how each organization chooses to define what success would look like for them. But there’s little question that – at the end of the day – all of us are driven by the need to know that we’ll one day achieve success through our contributions and efforts.
Of course, there’s another aspect to success that many of us share in common and that is what do we do once we achieve that success? And by this, I’m not referring to how we choose to acknowledge or celebrate this accomplishment. Rather, I’m referring to that moment when the dust settles and we look with pride at what we’ve attained and find ourselves stuck with that lingering question – so, what do we do now?
If you look at any successful organization, you can see the answer they share in common: the focus tends to be on how to replicate both the conditions and measures they took that allowed them to achieve this successful outcome.
My Comment: If there’s one place my clients and audiences frequently overlook when they’re looking for how to succeed, it’s their own success. It’s a common leadership blind spot. You can take success for granted rather than examining your success and what it has to teach you. Especially pay attention to things that went better than you thought they would – often there is very meaningful learning waiting for you there.
Firing Someone Is a Human Decision by Joe Badaracco
An unfortunate part of a manager’s job is having to let underperforming employees go. Knowing when and how to take that step with the best interests of all parties in mind—the company, the employee, and your own—is a difficult task. Professor Joe Badaracco discusses the best ways to make hard decisions and deliver bad news, pulling from his case “Two Tough Calls” and his new book, Managing in the Gray.
My Comment: In Winning Well we share our belief that termination for cause can (even should) be an act of compassion and an investment in another human being. It is often emotionally challenging because of our need to belong, be thought well of, and desire to be kind. However, allowing someone to continue underperforming or creating a negative workplace is neither kind, nor caring – not for them, not for the team, and ultimately, not for you either.
Is Your Team Too Busy To Make Good Decisions? by Jack Quarles
You’re busy; I’m busy; we’re all busy. That’s life in the big city — and the small town — and it’s not likely to change. But the way we perceive and handle busyness has a profound impact on our lives and success….The common claim “We’re too swamped to deal with that now” and how it costs time, money and opportunity. Paradoxically, this dodge often makes us busier.
My Comment: If you often find yourself overwhelmed with decisions, paralyzed by a quagmire of unresolved choices, or bogged down by fear of getting it wrong, Quarles article offers direct, no-punches-pulled advice to help you decide more quickly and move on. Making a decision is an exercise in optimizing your information and action. In this political season, I’m reminded of voters who remain undecided one day before the US Presidential election. No more information is going to help (or you should have sought it out by now). It’s time to make a choice and move forward.
Who Leads Next? What Every Employer Needs to Know to Develop Your Gen-Y Leaders by Michael Teoh, Karin Hurt, and David Dye
Your organization’s future depends on capable, motivated leadership. Even so, most middle level managers and executive leaders spend very little time cultivating their younger talent for leadership responsibilities.
My Comment: This video is the second in a series of webinars that Michael, Karin, and I are delivering regarding how to invest in and get the most productive millennial team members. The focus here is developing your younger employees into leaders. We give you specific techniques you can use to energize, maintain enthusiasm, and channel impatience into leadership skills.
Stop the Leadership Negligence by David Dye
This article was the most popular piece I shared this week. In it, I address one of the biggest problems we have with management and business leadership. We would never give a chainsaw to an employee without training them how to use it skillfully and safely. And yet – we do give leaders and managers the most valuable asset there is – often without any training at all.
David works with leaders to get results without losing their soul (or mind) in the process. Have David keynote your next event or deliver corporate training: Email today or call 303.898.7018!
The post 5 Top Leadership Articles for the Week of November 7, 2016 appeared first on Leadership Speaker David Dye.
Book David today for your event, workshop, or training: david@trailblazeinc.com or 1.800.972.582
