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After getting yourself squared away, the next item on the agenda is to learn how to properly treat a team. If you’re still nursing a “me first” mentality, think of it like this: your life is much easier, more pleasant, and your outcomes far better when you treat people right. Here is the utterly sobering power of leadership: you literally hold your team’s well-being and their quality of life in their hands. Take a moment to let that sink in. You have a massive ripple impact on their family and every community of which they are a part. Your reputation accompanies them everywhere they go. They can and do talk about you. Whether what they have to say is positive or negative is entirely within your control. If you’re a jerk, that gets reported far and wide. If families incur medical bills because you’re such a nasty boss that people get sick from the stress, your name appears in medical records as the cause. If marriages are being damaged, kids are being abused, or the family dog is getting kicked because you have driven someone beyond their breaking point, it will be all over social media. If you’re unstable, or a drunk, or corrupt, or a thousand other variations of dysfunctional, that’s getting shared like wildfire. Would you be proud to have your mother or your pastor read the reports on how you’re conducting yourself at work?

Bad leaders made the mistake of not looking beyond the narrow boundaries of their own manipulations. They think they are in control because they are not yet fully facing the consequences of their actions. Consequences are cumulative. Those who don’t make course corrections are not savvy or humble enough to realize that the entire time they are behaving with impunity, there is a large and growing groundswell of disapproval and opposition that will one day knock them off their self-appointed pedestal and out of power. Resistance does not have to be visible to be effective. Some of the most trajectory-altering battles take place behind the scenes with the quiet resolve of those committed to a healthier path. The clock of accountability is ticking whether you deny it’s existence or not.

Until next time, take a serious look at how you’re treating the people under your command and ask yourself this question: will I be happy to harvest the spiritual consequences of how I am taking care of my people?

I’m praying for your wisdom, action, and growth!

Toxic Workplace Impact on You

Welcome back! For the next few weeks we’ll shift our focus from leadership of the self, to leadership of the team. Teams are awesome! One of life’s greatest experiences is working synergistically with a group of people towards a common goal for the greater good. Exponential results become not just possible, but probable when everyone is driven by the same vision. Taking a quantum leap forward together is an amazing experience. If you have never known the sheer joy of leading a team to victory you are missing out.

Teams can bring about the very best in a person, inspiring them to dig deeper within themselves to succeed than they ever would have had the strength to achieve on their own. As a leader, you bear a sacred responsibility and privilege to get your part of the equation right. You owe the team your very best. As we learned previously, having your own self in order is the bedrock upon which your leadership will be built. If you’re dysfunctional yourself, you will never see the dysfunction of other people or situations in the work environment, and you will be an unmitigated disaster. There is no such thing as neutral leadership. You are either good enough, or you are having an adverse impact. The perils of abdicating responsibility are almost as bad as the perils of mistreating the team. If you are parked on your hiney refusing to listen to issues, make decisions, or be proactive in creating a great environment for your team, you will quickly earn people’s contempt. One of the most ridiculous phrases a leader can ever utter is “if you don’t do anything about it, the problem will take care of itself.” No! The problem most assuredly will not take care of itself! In fact it will get worse. Much worse, until one day it blows up in your face. In the meantime, people will accurately see you as weak, spineless, and a whole lot of other adjectives that aren’t fit for print. Resentment towards you will grow until you are viewed with total scorn. You’ll also be taken advantage of by those under your command who will sniff out and exploit your weakness every chance they get. Toxic workplaces are allowed to gain traction every time a leader fails to lead.

Until next time, do right by your team and know that I’ll be praying for you!

How Healthy Is Your Workplace

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A sustainable pace is as important for your team as it is for you. Your team is made up of real people, with real lives, and all the joys and challenges that are part of the human experience. Never forget that. People’s lives today can be highly stressful. You not only want to ease that stress because it’s the humane thing to do, you also want to protect everyone involved by not pushing people to their breaking point. We all have one. Your job is to monitor your people’s stress level and help them keep it in check. Don’t push people so hard that their health, emotional equilibrium, or family life breaks down. Some days, someone showing up and doing their basic job may max out what they’re capable of. Other days – lots of other days – they’ll be solid performers and sometimes superstars. You have to give them the breathing room to have fluctuations in their performance. They are only human.

Spend time getting to know your people well enough to know when they are off kilter. Talk with them and encourage them. Offer them information on community resources if they are struggling with issues outside of work. Some people face personal situations so daunting that they need a little extra help to get through it. It’s your job as a leader to balance accountability with compassion, and care about people on a human level. Helping them find outside assistance can resolve any workplace issues that might have cropped up, especially if you suspect that one of the major issues we discussed before might be impacting their performance.

Your people deserve you at your best, and a work environment that allows them to be at their best as well. Setting a sustainable pace is the secret ingredient to maximizing performance over the long haul.

Until next time, enjoy this week with your team and know that I’ll be praying for you!

Welcome back!

There is one last critical element of setting a sustainable pace for yourself that we need to consider. Setting reasonable expectations for ourselves regarding how quickly we’ll achieve our goals can prevent a lot of unnecessary mental strain. We need to take the long range view and focus on steady forward progress rather than overnight success. We can do everything else totally right, but if we mess up in the area of setting expectations, we’ll end up demoralizing ourselves. We can have the best attitude, support, and plan, but if we crush ourselves under the relentless pressure to succeed immediately, we’ll end up quitting. If we quit, we guarantee our failure. Don’t stress yourself out unnecessarily. You’ll perform at your best when you take the excessive pressure off. The only truly sustainable pace is measured and relaxed. So if you are methodically putting in your best good faith effort, that is in fact enough. 🙂

Next week we will turn our attention to setting a sustainable pace for your team.

Until then, don’t overdo it, and know that I am praying for your success and wisdom!

Toxic Workplaces Categories of Trouble

Toxic Workplaces Key Question

Toxic Workplaces Sources of Trouble

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One essential way to conserve energy is to ignore distractions. You don’t have time anymore for other people’s pettiness or squabbles. If you’ve been involved in drama, exist stage left on the run! Nothing will throw a person off course quicker than drama. Some people lose endless amounts of time because they are entangled in problems that aren’t even their own. Unless it involves a beloved friend or family member and your direct involvement is absolutely necessary, let people fight their own battles. We do bear a responsibility to protect our loved ones. However, if the person’s crisis is self-generated and there’s no real danger involved, it may be best to just stay out of it. Some people will never learn to make better choices until they begin experiencing their own consequences. We actually do them more harm than good by bailing them out of their endless scrapes. It is not your job to fix other people’s lives, it is your job to fulfill your destiny. Just like you can’t do other people’s exercise routines for them, you also can’t do other people’s emotional or spiritual work for them either.

Another major distraction is general negativity. You don’t need to hear all that’s wrong in the world right now. You need to be thinking about the positive. Better yet, this can be a vibrant time of celebrating all that is going well in your world. You can’t afford to have someone put doubts in your head, tell you that you’re crazy, or try to subtly convince you that you’re in the wrong for even trying. Attitudes are contagious and you want to make sure you aren’t unintentionally adopting anyone else’s discontented worldview. You’ve carefully crafted your thinking and approach to your dreams, so guard that well by not hanging around negative people or situations and absorbing their unhappiness. A few people enjoy the attention that stirring up trouble brings them, but they don’t realize that their reputation spirals further downwards with every incident that takes place. Others love to gossip, and live for the wagging of their own tongue. You can end up in the middle of a mess before you know it. Don’t take this particular form of manipulative bait, or you’ll fall into the trap like prey.

Until next time, stay focused and know that I’ll be praying for you!