How much effort do you invest in identifying how you like to receive and share information? I have found that one of the basic tenets of clear communication is to know our individual preferences.

Why?

Because then we can share them with our colleagues, which will prevent misunderstandings, eliminate confusion, and lead to clarity.

Here are six fill in the blank phrases for your consideration, including some ideas designed to get your creative juices flowing:

1. The most effective way to communicate with me is:
   
   
2. The least effective way to communicate with me is:
   
   
3. My favorite way to give information is:
   
   
4. My least favorite way to give information is:
   
   (Ideas for questions 1 thru 4 are email, face to face, text message, phone, bottom line, lots of detail, lists, and diagrams)
   
   
5. The best time to communicate with me is:
   
   
6. The worst time to communicate with me is:
   
   (Ideas for questions 5 and 6 are time of day, last minute, in advance, scheduled meetings, and on the fly)

This is not a pop quiz. There are no right or wrong answers, only ones that are specific to you.

Take some time this week and think about these questions. You may find that identifying and sharing your communication preferences with your team will make life a lot simpler!

Looking to further develop your communication skills? I can help. Fill out the consult form below, and we can schedule a time for a free consultation. Together, we can find ways to help you better communicate!

A handyman has a toolbox because the problems he encounters can’t all be fixed with the same tool. He needs a variety of tools for a variety of problems.

The analogy applies to leadership teams.

Leadership teams in entrepreneurial companies need to lead and coach people efficiently and effectively. Trying to use the wrong tools for the problem is a waste of time.

As a Certified Pinnacle Business Guide, I am focused on your growth and will bring you a world-class set of tools designed to help you be successful.

For example, if you need to build the right team, we will discuss the structure of your group. This starts with addressing leadership, followed by the other departments and teams within your company.

Once you determine the best structure for your team, we can figure out how to ensure you have all the right people on board. We will look at the best hiring practices, and how to lead and coach so progress is managed consistently.

And building the right team doesn’t end there – depending on the challenges your team is facing, there are more than a dozen tools that can help.

The great thing about your toolbox is that each tool is unique for your team.  It is not one size fits all!

It is important to be relentless in helping your team achieve the results you envision.  Using the right tools can help you to fall in love with your company again.

If you’re interested in learning how to best utilize your leadership toolbox, I’d love to work with you. Fill out the consult form below, and we can start improving the way your company looks at leadership!

One of my most perspective-busting workshops is about being a coach vs. being a leader. I provide this workshop to all my leadership teams and the objectives are straight-forward: understand the difference between leading and coaching; sharpen your leadership and coaching skills; and create an environment for accountability.

Wondering what the difference is between the two?

Leading is about articulating a vision, providing a strong sense of purpose, and creating a powerful culture.

Coaching focuses on keeping communication open, creating a shared accountability, identifying potential, and providing feedforward.

You read that correctly – I love teaching people how to “feedforward.” I am not sure where I heard or read about this term; however, I immediately embraced this concept.

Feedback, which is a concept with which we all are familiar, tends to focus on what has already taken place. Feedback often leads people to shut down, become defensive, or simply initiate an argument.

Helping people envision a positive future is one of the pillars of feedforward. Feedforward helps people focus on this positive future rather than a failed past.

This doesn’t mean we have to accept an error or missed opportunity from an employee. For example, say an employee botched a presentation. Our first inclination may be to point out everything the person did wrong. However, this could lead them to shut down.

What if instead we discuss the presentation in terms of improvements for a future presentation? We can cover all the same material of feedback; however, we can help the employee focus on a positive future.

In my experience, people tend to listen more attentively to feedforward than feedback. Why? Because we helped the employee debrief their work, and provided an opportunity to identify where they can improve rather than simply listing all the places where they failed.

To embrace the coaching mindset, I encourage you to try feedforward the next time one of your direct reports misses the mark. Doing so will help you identify the person’s potential for growth, and allow you to offer practical guidance to position them towards their future successes.

Interested in my leadership and coaching workshop, or any of my other offerings? Fill out the consult form below. I’ll be in contact to set up a time for us to talk. I can’t wait to meet you!

I recently saw a great cartoon. With 3 seconds to play, a scoreboard shows the home team behind by one point in the fourth quarter. It’s fourth down with the football on the 10-yard line.

The home team is huddled and the captain says “OK team. It’s crunch time. Let’s get fully distracted by noise and pressure. Forget the fundamentals and throw out the playbook. We can do this!”

Yes, the cartoon is funny. Or is it? How many times have you seen a business take this approach when the next coolest idea surfaces, even though that idea is completely outside the company’s purpose? Perhaps this crunch-time tactic takes over when multiple challenges arise without any readily available responses.

What does your company do in these situations? Recently, one of the leadership teams with whom I work described their previous quarter as “crazy.” They then described all the things that went sideways, leading to multiple challenges.

What did they say when I asked them how they managed the quarter -– “we looked back at the foundation you helped us establish.”

Here is what that foundation includes:

Build the Right Team – Starting with the leadership team, get the right people in the right seats on each team within the company.

Align to the Right Vision – Build a compelling vision with 100% clarity around the company’s core values, purpose, and #1 goal.

Create the Right Plan – Bring that vision down to the ground with a clear and accountable roadmap to get there.

Execute with Consistency – Execute your playbook, meeting structures, scoreboard, and people practices to facilitate growth.

Their results?  They accomplished 100% of their Rocks, made every business decision with their purpose in mind, and focused on the processes that allowed everyone to do what they do well. These actions yielded consistent results, and they ended the quarter stronger than they started. I can hardly call that crazy!

When things feel out of control, it is a natural human response to want the issues to be resolved as soon as possible. We can get caught up in the chaos of the moment and forget the larger purpose behind what we are doing. This is why a strong foundation is essential to survive crunch-time scenarios. Taking the time to collaboratively form these blocks with your team will help you in the long run.

Interested in working together to help your team thrive through growth and uncertainty? Fill out the consult form below. I’ll contact you with a choice of times to connect, where we will instantly start building the foundation that will support your organization for years to come.

I have been thinking about core values recently. Why, you ask? Because I heard about an occurrence in which a team blatantly disregarded one of their values. The situation caused me to wonder under what conditions the team ignored the core value.

Core values are not a marketing slogan; they are not a list of “feel good” words written by a group of employees. A company’s core values represent who they are, and show how they treat each other, their customers, and their business partners.

So, here is a test that can help you determine if each of your core values truly defines your company’s culture:

1. If you were to start a new organization, would you build it around this core value regardless of the industry?
   
   
2. Would you want your organization to continue to stand for this core value 100 years into the future, no matter what changes occur in the outside world?
   
   
3. Would you want your organization to hold this core value, even if at some point in time it became a competitive disadvantage – even if in some instances the environment penalized the organization for living this core value?
   
   
4. Do you believe that those who do not share this core value – those who breach it consistently – simply do not belong in your organization?
   
   
5. Would you personally continue to hold this core value even if you were not rewarded for holding it?
   
   
6. Would you change jobs before giving up this core value?
   
   
7. If you awoke tomorrow with more than enough money to retire comfortably for the rest of your life, would you continue to apply this core value to your productive activities?

These are tough questions that require soul searching and deserve considerable thought.

However, your company and its core values deserve this level of scrutiny and must serve as a light to guide all of your decisions. You cannot make a “just this once” exception. Staying viable and valuable as a company requires that everyone in your organization live and breathe your core values from the moment they step on the job (and, ideally, when they are off the job, as well).

Interested in how to determine what your company stands for, and how to integrate your values into all your decisions? I can help. I have years of experience guiding organizations towards making more sustainable aligned decisions based on what they see as truly important. Contact me using the consult form below to set up an initial consultation. I can’t wait to talk!