Environment must be safe for dissent and as a leader you must be accepting, even welcoming of criticism and different ideas. As long as these ideas are presented professionally and courteously, you need to accept them with humbleness and give them serious thought and consideration. After all, be mindful that people on your team and other teams may know a …
Don’t chase perfection, chase progress
Perfection is elusive and frequently unattainable. This is why it is important to focus on making daily incremental advancements towards the ultimate goal. Rome wasn’t built over night and neither will most of your projects or strategic and operational services. Collaborate, communicate and work together with your colleagues to advance your current state into what you all believe it can …
Why avoiding conflict can hurt you and others
Avoiding conflicts is generally a solid advice to follow. However, at times, disagreements (perhaps a better term) are unavoidable. By this I refer to those moments when someone needs to speak up in support of others and with collaboration and progress in mind. However, even during these disagreements one needs to remain professional, respectful and polite, but the points of …
Prerequisite for success: transparent leadership
In order for a team to work well together, leadership must be transparent. Leaders need to keep the entire team on the same page; have them collaborate; back each other and move in unison towards mutually agreed-upon goals. Transparent leadership where vision, mission and decisions are clearly communicated and supported with valid facts and arguments is a must for all …
Leaders empower people, they don’t micromanage
Micromanagement demonstrates lack of trust in the abilities of your staff and that is never the right thing to do. Enable and empower people to make decisions, take actions and move forward without the need to constantly come to you for every single detail. Obviously, levels of empowerment and decision making abilities will vary based on experience and your familiarity …
Lead with your heart
Treat others the way you want to be treated. Show compassion, empathy, understanding and support. Now, this doesn’t mean be a softy all the time and let others take advantage of your kindness, but it means don’t go out of your way to make lives of others miserable and unnecessarily difficult. As a leader, one of your primary responsibilities is …
Managing stress of your team
As a leader, your reaction to stress and challenges speaks volumes to others around you. Your team looks up to you for queues and guidance of how to handle and resolve stressful situations no matter what they may be. So keep that in mind next time your are dealing with a challenging project, process, partner, client or an under performing …
Office drama must end, today
The moment you notice negativity, arguments and drama in the office you must do whatever it takes to end it as soon as possible. You must learn from it as well, but negativity and fighting among team members is not acceptable and has no place on high performing teams. Diversity and differences in opinions should be welcomed, embraced and celebrated, …
Managing massive enterprise projects
Large enterprise projects can be daunting and seem insurmountable at times, but we all know that that is not true. It is not true as they have been done before and if others have completed them successfully, who says that you won’t be able to do the same. And when going gets tough, breathe and remind yourself of these four …
Leverage available expertise
Work with your colleagues, peers and counterparts across different functional areas in order to produce contributions of the highest quality. None of us know everything so it is time to act that way and leverage available expertise within our organizations and invite others to contribute and share both the work and rewards.