Unique Ground Rules for Effective Meetings
Handling meetings effectively today means that you spend only as much time as is necessary on the agenda, making decisions, and then adjourning. The best result from a meeting is full engagement, enhanced creativity and commitment to action from the team. Here are five unique rules we use among the other basic ones (e.g., issuing and closely following an agenda, providing data prior to the meeting) to ensure you get the most from your time. ELMO: this is not the […]
Surviving Success and Watching Failure
Have you ever seen a problem coming and not done anything to fix it? Was it someone failing at a project? Perhaps someone was ruining a relationship? A project where the team was not resolving the main issues? Someone was in great pain? Too often we see cultures in organizations where everyone stays in their own “box” very tightly. When they see an issue or problem coming, they do not say anything. (This is the “it’s not my job” or “not my […]
Changing The Patterns Of Thinking
Written by:  Don Hadley     As part of our ongoing effort to provide additional value to the business leaders in our community, everyone in our firm was “fired” on a recent Friday and given new titles and priorities beginning the following Monday. While it seems like a drastic tactic to try, the desired effect was achieved. As the newly appointed “Director of Continually Expanding Patterns of Thinking” my approach to things has changed.. Most businesses are struggling with issues […]
A Tale of Two Managers (The Reality of Up and Coming Leaders)
This is a tale of two managers.  One committed suicide; the other young up and coming leader is helping a 79 year old business man learn to use Facebook. Millennials are 41% of the current workforce.  By 2030, they will be 75% of the workforce.  If you look at yourself and those of other generations, we may point our fingers at millennials for being different, yet we have taken on many of their characteristics.  Most of this has been good, […]
Executive Coaching and Leadership Team Development
  The truth is there is no BEST way.  Regardless of the type of training, there is no one way to do it and one size definitely does not fit all.  Each of us has an overwhelming need to be understood.  When it comes to teaching people and you desire learning and communication to occur,  we have found that working from the inside out and utilizing all styles of learning is the most rewarding and is critical to achieving the […]
Leadership Coaching for Change Management
What do college athletes, Olympic gold medalists and smart business leaders have in common?  They rely on coaches to help them reach their greatest potential and teach them to overcome challenges.  Yet a study by the Stanford Business School found that nearly two-thirds of CEO’s and nearly half of senior executives do not receive any executive coaching or leadership development.  Almost all of them (69%) said they would like coaching to enhance their development. Imagine your college coach working with […]
Business Meeting Itinerary and Change Management
Meetings can cost a lot of money if they are not productive.  If your manager has put you in charge of leading an upcoming meeting, ensure it goes well by using these guidelines: Goals: have specific, tangible SMAART Goals for the meeting, as well as sub goals. Transform the goals into questions. Questions: ask questions that get them thinking about the whole organization. The objective is to get them to see, think about and consider the entire map and not […]
Change Management Process for New Managers
When my friend John moved downstate to take a new position, he was nervous. He was coming into a totally unfamiliar organization as a manager. Most of the people he would be managing were 20-30 years older than he was. There was an established culture with prevailing relationships and time-honored routines, yet part of his job was to shake things up. He and I both worried about his ability to tackle these challenges. How could he, a much younger manager, […]
Employee Retention by Building a Culture of Sincere Appreciation
During college, I worked in a used bookstore close to campus. The pay was low. The hours were often inconvenient. And yet, we were dedicated to our jobs. The only time a job in the store came open was when a former employee graduated and left town. (If they stuck around after graduation, they’d keep working at the bookstore.) I was lucky and stumbled into a job there my first week of freshman year, and I stayed. I worked overtime […]