If you finish meetings confused or distressed, you’re likely experiencing symptoms of a deeper problem within that team. That confusion might be caused by you, but more likely it’s a leadership problem. There are 2 types of confusion – Passive and Active. Passive confusion is simply not knowing what the…
50. Meeting with Danger.
How many people do you know who are true daredevils? One of those people who deliberately take real risks? Chances are that you don’t know many, or even any adults who happily take real risks. Risk takers are rare. Despite all the hype about heroic entrepreneurs, conscious risk taking is…
49. Meeting with your Fears
It takes courage for most people to speak up in meetings. It doesn’t take much to convince them to not say anything. It’s easy to not be truthful, when telling the truth needs courage. To pretend that everything is ok when it’s not is the most common lie in meetings.…
48. Why Meet?
The Leadership Industry has a lot of complicated and confusing models about “Meetings” – categories, types and why they’re held. Most of these are about as useful as the instruction manual for your microwave oven. There’s only one ultimate purpose for Meetings in organizations. The ultimate and only true purpose…
47. Meeting your Culture…
Meetings get bad press – for good reasons. They’re useless or unproductive or boring… They’re a necessary evil… They waste my valuable time. Meetings are a useful window into the actual culture of a team and a great way to see real leadership style in action. They’re also incredibly important…
46. Why are you Chasing it ?
Creative people must be open to new ideas. Chasing a new objective can be exciting for the leader but also damaging or even harmful for their team… A leader’s job is to keep the team on track, by discerning what to chase and what to ignore. Often by not chasing…
45. “Keep your Friends close, and your Enemies even closer…”
Staying close to your enemies is not an easy or natural thing to do. Enemies are dangerous. Our subconscious wants to avoid them, so we feel better when we can’t see them. Leaders need to understand that urge and actively resist it. When we understand that our objectives have enemies…
44. What are you hungry for?
Are you and your team hungry for the same thing? It seems an obvious question. Sadly, it’s surprisingly common for leaders to have different objectives from their team members.. It’s useful to think of targets as prey. Something you want to catch. Something you’re hungry for. An effective team works…
43. Friend or Enemy…?
A key testing point for leaders is when their team fails to deliver. One way to look at failure is to see it as a defeat by an enemy. If your team are pigeons, one of them just got eaten by a cat. Another way to see it is as…
42. Know your enemy..
It’s dangerous to think of yourself as just a hunter. No matter what you’re trying to achieve as a team, there are forces which will align against you. You need to assume you’re being hunted. A leader’s job isn’t just to set targets but to know where the team’s enemies…