Chris's Conversations

Currently I am in the middle of holding exit interviews for a group I finished up with right before Thanksgiving. Over the past eight weeks this group of twelve has met once a week for three hours while we worked through a leadership workbook and addressed an assortment of professional development topics.  At the beginning of the experience they completed a behavioral assessment on leadership behaviors and had observers complete the assessment about their behaviors to provide feedback.  This meant they asked supervisors, peers, and underlings to assess them (anonymously) on how often the observer felt the participants engaged in the asked about behaviors.   While the assessments are completed at the beginning of our time together, I held the results until the exit interview.  Prior to going over the results with the participants in the exit interview I would ask them reflective questions on what they had hoped to learn when they entered the training, how...

“A leader’s job is not to do the work for others, it’s to help others figure out how to do it themselves, to get things done, and to succeed beyond what they thought possible.”                                                                                           -Simon Sinek Companies love 'Do-ers'.  Managers love Do-ers.  We tell them what to do, hint at it really, and they DO it.  Life is great when you have Do-ers.   Then you promote the Do-er, to recognize them for all the Doing, and have them keep Doing even bigger Doings.  Give the Do-er a team and tell them to create other clone Do-ers and lead the others in the Doings.  You can trust them to get those bigger, better Doings done because they are the Do-...

"There's no need to be perfect to inspire others. Let people get inspired by how you deal with your imperfections." An author who has sold more books than I ever will talks about how we let perfection be the enemy of good.  We don't accept the victory, the baby steps, and we forget the journey because we aren't where we want to be and in all our fuss we have devalued the very wonderful thing that is where we are right now.  If we waited for perfect leaders to inspire us, we would still be sitting around.  Your leadership shouldn't be a Snapchat filter that smoothes away the imperfections and leaves a pretty picture.  There is value in the struggle, in the frustrations, and in the catastrophes.   Don't keep waiting till you are good enough or perfect enough.  Be inspiring with your determination to get there.