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Leadership & Performance Articles
When Last Becomes First
Guest Post by Bob Burg Law #3, The Law of Influence, from John David Mann’s and my book, The Go-Giver, says that “Your influence is directly proportional to how abundantly you place other people’s interest first." Please understand, from being self-sacrificial, it’s actually the key to building successful business and personal relationships. Recently, I cam across the following quote from one of my heroes, High Point University President, Dr. Nido Qubein: “People...
Engagement – Most Companies Have It Backwards
I had the good fortune early in my career to work with some extremely talented problem solvers. One of the most important lessons I learned in solving problems is to properly, and accurately, describe the real problem you're trying to solve. When you get that right, they say you're 90% of the way to the solution. Employee engagement is rarely an employee problem. It's a management problem. Over the last few years I've been asked to consult to over 35 Fortune 500...
4 Simple Tips to Building Cohesive Teams
Are You Building 'Adhesive' or 'Cohesive' Teams? Are you the ‘glue’ that holds your team together? If so, sorry, you’re NOT creating the right environment for building and sustaining high-performance teams. Adhesive teams require that the leader – or the ‘adhesive’ team member – is present for the team to come together and work effectively as a team. Cohesive teams naturally come together due to the environment in which they work (including their attitudes about the...
Money, Money. What does it mean to you?
Money. Money is neither good or evil. Most Americans want more. Not because they like hold pieces of paper with pictures of former presidents on them. (In fact, today it's mostly just a number in some account out there in cyberspace.) But because of what money represents. What’s interesting about it is that we rarely think about what money represents to us; or the role it plays in our life. And understanding the role that it plays in our lives may well allow us to...
Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life
Once upon a time, the animals decided they should do something meaningful to meet the problems of the new world. So they organized a school. They adopted an activity curriculum of running, climbing, swimming, and flying. To make it 'fair' and easier to administer, all the animals took all the subjects. The duck was excellent in swimming, in fact, he was better than his instructor was! However, he made only passing grades in flying, and was very poor in running....
Leadership Without Assumptions
There’s a wonderful story about how Pat Summit, the great Tennessee Lady Vols basketball coach, would handle halftime with her team. She would let the team, led by their captain(s), go into the locker first without her. The team would go to the chalkboard and make 3 lists: What Went Right, What Went Wrong, and What Needs to Change. Then Pat would come in and look at their lists. She might make some changes and provide a few comments. But she never did this before...
The Goal Isn’t Power, it’s Influence
Titles are good for stroking egos, but they don’t mean much as far as leadership. As Margret Thatcher, the former British prime minister observed, “Being a leader is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” Many misguided leaders aspire to gain power and positional authority. After all, that’s what was taught…in the 1970’s and 80’s! But power isn’t leadership, it’s control. And today’s best leaders are realizing that power is an outdated...
The Truth Behind Stars, Heroes and Superheroes (No Capes Allowed!)
I often get asked about 'the whole superhero thing’ and how I get so many ‘otherwise relatively normal’ people so excited about this program. So I figured I’d just finally explain it in writing so everyone can read it. (This is not a promotion for the program. It is an explanation of the thinking that went into the design and development of the program and why people connect with it on such an emotional level.) So let’s look at what each of these categories of...
The 6 Levels of ‘Thinking for Success’
Many of you know that I base much of my coaching on the foundational law of human performance, and human behavior, that ‘our thinking drives our behavior which determines our results – the conditions, circumstances and outcomes in our lives...(therefore, to change our results we must change our thinking).’ This is often a new concept for people and they want to get a better understanding of how it works. I thought I’d share one of the frameworks I use with my...
Personalized Goal Setting – So It Works for the Rest of Us!
Of course, we’re getting close to New Year’s Resolution time. We might as well go back and grab our list from last year. Because if we’re like most folks, the list this year will be exactly the same as last year’s. I love getting all the great information from people on ‘the importance of goal setting’, ‘how to set effective goals’, ‘how goal-setting can change our lives’, etc. And don’t get me wrong…learning to set goals has helped me accomplish more than I would...