Yearly Archives: 2017

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Leaders you must hold yourself to a higher standard than anyone else on your team. Whatever areas of immaturity you have are going to be exposed. Whatever secret sins you have will ensnare you. Whatever liberties you are taking with your position will come to light. I have known far too many leaders who had no moral compass and no shame. Some of the gems from those misguided souls were:

“I like to take people out and get them drunk, get as much dirt as I can, and then use it against them later.”

“I sell a little bit of my soul everyday. I find it really helps.”

“If you don’t do anything about the problems, they will fix themselves.”

“I don’t ever want anything to be looked into, because I don’t ever want anything to be found.”

“I like to destroy relationships between people. Then I can do what I want with them.”

“Dumb it down, you’re making us look bad.”

As was inevitable, the deficient strategists who uttered the nonsense above are no longer in their leadership positions. When you sell your soul, the devil eventually shows up to collect.

Leaders you MUST have your own robust self-development program to avoid the temptation (or for some the seductive siren call) of abusing your position for personal gain. If Jesus came to serve and not to be served, what makes you think you are entitled to anything different than that? Work to fix your own dysfunction, pray to have any blind spots revealed to you, and take your responsibility to protect your team extremely seriously because it is, in fact, that important. Do NOT be the leader who refuses to address any issues, because their hidden transgressions are greater than the entire rest of the team put together. If dirty backroom deals are your specialty, be prepared for the day the light gets shined on your mess. You might as well get yourself together now while it’s still voluntary. Get your self-respect back.

When you have the courage to immerse yourself and your team in an environment of growth, it builds esprit de corps and momentum. People show up every day excited to be working on their goals, rather than dreading or resenting coming in. They are focused, and get their regular responsibilities taken care of so they can get to the fun stuff. Pretty soon they encourage, support, and correct each other as they pursue their goals, and what that happens it is a thing of beauty. The best environments I have ever been a part of are all about doing the main job well, while aspiring to greater heights. Together.

Until next time, I’m praying that you’ll go take a good long look in the mirror and face the truth about what changes you need to make. You already know. It’s time to grow a set and get on with it!

Welcome back!

Strategically developing others sometimes means helping someone rehabilitate their career. It is your job to lead the way in assisting those who have messed up with regaining their equilibrium and restoring good relationships with the team. If termination is not possible or appropriate, then it falls to you to help make the situation right. You need to teach and practice forgiveness. Mercy is required. This is a non-negotiable aspect of a healthy environment. It doesn’t mean that you condone bad behavior or allow it to continue. It doesn’t mean that everyone will like or trust each other. It does mean that once the offense has been dealt with, people don’t hang onto it so they can move forward. If someone has really messed up and hurt the team, let people voice the impact the transgressions had on them. Making them stuff their thoughts and feelings will only serve to further entrench the problem. It’s also part of taking full accountability for the offender to realize the impact of their behavior on other people. Quite frankly, the offended need to be heard, and the offender needs to hush up, listen, and work to make things right.

Don’t settle for a fake peace. Do not allow undercurrents of bitterness, resentment, or animosity to exist on your watch. You’re the leader, this is part of the job. Do the hard work necessary to help offenders mend fences. Do the hard work necessary to help the offended process and move past the problem. Your goal is a team who works professionally together. If someone has breached trust, it is going to take some time to build a new normal together, but it can be done. Reconciliation is possible for a manager with the backbone to face the issues head on and lead the team through the mess. There are a lot of incredibly valuable life lessons inherent in the process, and it will serve your team well in their professional and personal lives, for the rest of their lives. We are only human. Mess ups are inevitable. Moving past them is often not done, and is rarely done well.

Until next time, I will pray for discernment as you detect undercurrents and deal with offenses.

Welcome back!

When you are seeking to develop others, leverage your power and connections for their good. If you have the ability to help someone get ahead, do it. Introduce people, set up mentoring relationships, assign staff to special projects together, and use your influence to open doors. Power was made to be used for good, not evil!! For the sake of the whole, not for self-serving motives. Delegate power as much as you possibly can. Put people in charge of initiatives and events. Give them the chance to see what you do all day, or let them shadow someone else who does what they aspire to do someday. Give people as much special responsibility as makes sense for them and for you, then help them succeed in their new role. When you share your power and connections, you do not diminish them. You exponentially expand them. It is a grace filled way to lead.

Another key skill to include in your team’s development plan is stress resilience. First, you have to model it! Get your own stress under control and then teach others how to handle their stress by your example. Life moves at an increasingly fast pace with ever widening global implications. Stress management is essential regardless of the field of endeavor. On a daily basis our brains are bombarded with information and our emotions have to navigate a maze of experiences that can leave us exhausted, frazzled, and weary. Learning how to deal effectively with stress is a critical skill for all life stages. All of us have a frustration tolerance beyond which we cannot cope. We are having a lot more serious health problems at younger ages because our bodies just cannot keep up with the demands stress places on them. Stress resilience can be trained, and everyone benefits from learning it. You will have a good start down the road of building a healthy work culture if everyone is working on handling their own stress well.

Until next time, I’ll be praying that you find a stress resilience plan that works for you and your team!

Welcome back!

When you are strategically developing others, be sure to include specific job competencies, plus generally useful skills like public speaking. Certain personality traits are key when you are looking to develop others, such as assertiveness. You can check out a blog post on assertiveness if you are looking to apply this characteristic to your own work. Increasing people’s value to the organization is always a smart choice. Create a plan in consultation with each individual. Find out what they are interested in learning. Challenge them with goals that stretch them as people. I’ve seen amazing results from this type of process. For example, if someone has great leadership potential but struggles with being shy, make overcoming that a goal. For example, give them opportunities to help you lead meetings with a small number of people. Then have them work in a group to deliver training to a small number of people. Then have them work in pairs to deliver training to a significantly larger group. Then finally, have them deliver training to a large group on their own. This process will help them incrementally build a new level of confidence, and shyness will no longer hold them back from pursuing or landing new opportunities. Once your people experience success with this process, your team will be invested in continually learning, growing, and improving.

Make this fun! You and your team can have a lot of fun together setting, working towards, and attaining new goals in a variety of areas. You know you’ve gelled as a team when everyone is all-in and working towards the best possible results for themselves and each other. That’s what it’s really all about. Business, sports, academics, family life, whatever sector you’re in is just a vehicle for learning how to accomplish something great by working together with a team of people for the common good. This is one of life’s most valuable lessons.

Until next time, I’ll be praying for you to have fun while deciding what is a strategic development plan for each individual on your team.

Healthy Relationship with Family of Origin

Healthy Relationship with Friends

Healthy Relationship with God

Healthy Relationship with Your Partner

Healthy Relationship with Yourself

Welcome back! By far, strategically developing others is the best part of leadership. You’re not there just to help people meet production goals like robots on an assembly line. You’re there to help people grow. The best leaders I have ever known are as passionate about helping people evolve to the next level as they are about achieving results for the organization. Whether I know someone personally or professionally, it has always been one of my greatest joys to watch people grow into more of who God called them to be. That’s a critically important part of my purpose on this earth, and an area of enormous stewardship that God has entrusted to me. It is a sacred responsibility that I take extremely seriously.

When you’re a leader, you don’t want some haphazard plan for helping people develop skills. You want to be strategic about it. Keep the main thing you are there for the main thing you focus on. Never compromise meeting goals and fulfilling the mission for developmental activities. Use skills building opportunities as a supplement to what people are already doing, in a way that’s appropriate for each one of them. Match people’s skills and needs with the organization’s operational and cultural needs/gaps. This is a great way to shore up skills for those who are struggling, and is highly motivating for your high performers. It also breaks up the monotony for middle-of-the-pack workers, and might just throw struggling workers a lifeline that reengages them.

Make developmental activities a fun diversion from the norm for everyone. This is a wonderful way to help prepare people for promotion or greater opportunities in their outside lives. It is a highly strategic way to position people for success. It is a win-win for everyone. The organization and the employee both benefit from enhanced skills that add value in real time and in the future.

Until next time, I’ll be praying for you as you start thinking through how to strategically develop each member of your team, whether they are in your living room or the board room. 🙂