People have an innate desire to be respected, heard, understood and appreciated. Once they reach out to those of us in customer service (READ: we are all in customer service) they want to feel that their concerns and problems are important to us, that we will take them seriously and be of assistance to them. Even when we are not …
Excuses don’t matter, your work does
Excuses are frequently irrelevant, cheap and everyone has at least a few. While it is important to learn from previous decisions and actions, it is equally as important not to spend too much time stuck in the past. Learn from the past, assess your current state, communicate present outcomes, but spend all of your time, effort and energy on moving …
No bad apples allowed
One bad apple can spoil the rest so please remove them from the basket. As a leader you must establish, promote and support an inviting, comfortable and respectful working environment and as such you can’t allow any single individual to jeopardize your workplace. No matter how good and valuable they may be from a functional perspective if they can’t cooperate …
Focusing on success and managing project expectations
Project management is an acquired skill, one that doesn’t come over night and is certainly not for everyone. As you are joining new project teams it is essential to do so with an open mind without any prejudices or preconceived notions. Listen to all ideas, think about them and consider them seriously. Learn from past collective experience, but leave any …
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 …
Productivity depends on energy, not time management
We would all like to be more productive and accomplish things with ease. However, frequently, there is not enough time to do everything that we need to do and there’s even less time for everything that we want to do. Is this the truth or is this something that we like to tell ourselves (and others) as a justification, an …
Leaders ask questions
As you get an opportunity to meet with people who are tasking you and your team with a project or an operational or strategic need please remember to ask relevant, clarifying questions. Clarify all that isn’t clear and ask questions as soon as you have an opportunity. Don’t make assumptions that someone else sitting around that table will ask the …
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 …
Build diverse teams
Build teams that are as diverse as possible. Hiring carbon copies of yourself is counterproductive and provides no value to you, the team or the organization as a whole. You want and need people of different races, ethnicity, education, experiences…as you never know where that next great idea may come from. You want originality and uniqueness to be embodied in …
Respect employees’ personal time
Respect your employees personal time. Please do your best not to “bother” your staff (except in rare, emergency situations of course) outside their work hours with work related questions and responsibility. If you find yourself consistently contacting people outside work hours chances are that there’s a big problem at play. You may have “bottlenecks” within your operations and you should …