Staff Management

Leading for Results: How to Define, Align, and Track Your Team’s Goals

Being a leader in any organization means taking complete responsibility for the results, regardless of your team size. Whether you lead a team of 10 or 1,000, you are ultimately responsible for their performance. As President Harry S. Truman famously said, “The buck stops here.”

There are two distinct leadership styles that CEOs and managers use when focused on strong results. The first is a compassionate style that aligns, inspires, and positively develops team members to enable them to achieve shared goals. The second approach is a results-at-all-costs style that micromanages, stresses, and demeans team members. Technically both leadership styles will get results, but the former is a healthier long-term solution. In the book The Speed of Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey summarized, “Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust.”

You Get What You Celebrate

Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway and many other legendary products, once said, “You get what you celebrate.”

For many results-oriented leaders and entrepreneurs, it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind of the business. The marketing team has campaigns to roll-out and blogs to post. The sales team’s focus is on capturing new clients and attending the next tradeshow. The operations team has an endless list of tasks and assignments to complete. And accounting, well, there’s always another bill to pay and another month to close. When is there time to stop and celebrate? And, is it even necessary in terms of your bottom line?

5 Ways to Show Appreciation for Remote Team Members

A critical component of any healthy organization is regular appreciation and recognition of team members. During normal business conditions, it’s easy for leaders to get distracted with the day-to-day operations and forget about this task. The current COVID-19 crisis forced most teams to work from home. These team members are out of sight, which makes it even easier for leaders to get complacent with the critical responsibility of appreciation and recognition.

The Essential Business Meeting: A Leader’s Guide to Implementing the Daily Huddle

A biological clock inside us establishes a natural rhythm to life. The circadian rhythm repeats every 24 hours and influences our sleep, body temperature, and organ functions. Additionally, we adapt to the changes in our natural environment caused by the cycles of our planet. Humans understand and depend on rhythms.

High-functioning businesses also have a rhythm that aligns and synchronizes team members with their environment. To establish this rhythm, your organization needs a daily meeting to set a cadence similar to our body’s circadian rhythm. This critical meeting is called the Daily Huddle, and hundreds of thousands of organizations around the world conduct the meeting every day.

During these times of uncertainty and daily changes to our work environment, this meeting is even more critical, especially if your team has people working remotely. A traditional office environment has a built-in daily rhythm based on when team members arrive in the morning and leave in the afternoon. The workday rhythm is natural to see, align, and utilize. But when team members work remotely, it’s easy to lose connection with the company pulse.

7 Tips for Better Conference Calls

If you’re like the rest of the business world, overnight, you found your calendar filled with video conference calls. The nature of the COVID-19 crisis has many of us working from home. While the long-term impacts of the coronavirus are unknown, I’m confident that the increased usage of video conference tools will be with us for a long time.

Whether you’re hosting a video conference call or participating in one, these seven tips will help you have efficient and productive online sessions.

5 Tools to Improve Any Meeting

People have a love-hate relationship with meetings. On the positive side, we all know it’s essential to meet and share information, identify challenges, and brainstorm solutions. But on the flip side, most team members view meetings as a distraction from being able to get “real” work done.

Where’s the disconnect? We know we need communication, but nobody wants to meet. Maybe it’s because your meetings are ineffective and don’t satisfy the needs of your team. Here are five simple tools to improve any meeting.

Actionable Strategies for a Remote Workforce Due to COVID-19

Leaders define themselves in difficult times, and we are experiencing difficult times like no other. COVID-19 is a severe threat, and I support public officials who are taking the necessary steps to avoid a catastrophic loss of life. Unfortunately, that means business leaders must manage the impacts of social-distancing – a new concept that is negatively impacting almost all businesses.

Disconnect Your Accounting Rhythms From The Annual Calendar

The “year” defines the amount of time it takes the Earth to make a full orbit around the sun. During this lengthy journey, we experience 4 seasons, 12 months, 365 days, 8,760 hours and 525,600 minutes. But what does our planet’s trek around the sun have to do with the accounting rhythm of your organization? The correct answer, unless you are a farmer, is: Nothing.

The calendar year is simply a construct made by humans to help explain and predict the seasons of our planet. It shouldn’t have as much impact on business as it does. Frequently I hear business leaders talk about their annual budget, or this year’s sales goal. Many bonuses and incentives are based on annual targets. But why should a sales goal be based on the amount of time it takes our planet to travel 92.96 million miles? They have no direct connection.

Recruiting Team Members During Full Employment

Business leaders enjoy the rising tide of a hot economy, but it also comes with unique challenges, including inflationary prices and a tight labor market. We are in the midst of the third-longest sustained expansion in the history of the U.S. economy. But we are also seeing dramatic demographic changes that are creating a shortage of skilled workers to hire.

7 Ways To Run A Better Meeting

Do you ever recall a time during childhood when you thought, “I can’t wait to grow up and attend meetings for the rest of my life?” I know I didn’t have those thoughts as a kid, but the reality is that meetings are the necessary “evil” of business. Getting stuff done usually involves communication and planning, which leads to the need for meetings. Unfortunately, many organizations hold ineffective and often demoralizing meetings. The following are a collection of best practices to host better meetings based on years of attending and leading meetings.

Category: Staff Management