Min Work Max Life

The best way for a leader or manager to improve their skills for the 21st century culture is cognitive readiness.

How do you ensure your leadership skills keep up to date and improve as your career, business, industry, and world changes? How do you make the best possible decisions when dealing...

So what is a skill that new engineering graduates need as they enter the workforce?

Two skills, actually.

First: Listening Skills

Second: Teamwork Skills

In both cases, we should think about a new grad’s transition from academia to the workforce. They are going from one independent culture...

So, I’ve been watching ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’; just got through the first season.

And, Agent Coulson displays a lot of strong leadership characteristics. The writers did really good work here.

Most of us are surrounded by horrible leaders and managers, and that horribleness...

Is your team just going through their work; day in, day out?

Maybe your team is starting to make a lot of mistakes, miss deadlines or go over budget?

Sure they are getting things done, but you want your team to excel.

You’ve tried to give incentives and rewards, but you’re not seeing...

Your team wants calm.

People excel when things are known and the future is predictable.  Your team has confidence in what they are working on when they are left alone to work on it.  Folks put in time and effort if they believe that time and effort is worth something.

Think back to...

What are you willing to sacrifice to be a leader?  True leadership requires sacrifice.

Leadership can be exhilarating.  Watching other people be successful and accomplish amazing things is energizing.  Helping people overcome previous obstacles is incredibly rewarding.  ...

We speak a lot about supporting your team and giving your team the space and trust to work things out on their own.  We talk about being the pit crew versus the driver.  We talk about having the courage to lead.  We also need to talk about being firm with your team.

As a leader you...

What makes you comfortable?  What do you stick to?  Do you have friends or people at work that you tend to gravitate towards, while others you don’t see or talk with often or at all?  What about tasks and jobs at work, are there certain things you typically have no problem...

What do you do when there is conflict between people?

Do you walk the other way?  Do you get involved and join in as a heated participant?

This is your time to shine!  As a leader you get to help resolve the conflict.  No more running away, and definitely, no joining in.  You...

All the spokes are the folks

A leader’s role is to coordinate activities.  It isn't necessarily* to act on the activities.  (*check out our “Eat Your Own Cooking” post)

You need to get the right people to do the actual activities, specialists trained in the different...

Trust your team.  Trust then verify.

As a leader, it is vital to trust your team.  Your team is what helps your organization accomplish great things.  If each individual worked alone much less would get done and the quality of the work would diminish.

Trust keeps the team together....

People aren't always going to like you.  You need to be able to stand up for what you believe in and go after the things that you wholeheartedly want.

Being a new manager or being placed into a new leadership role comes with some downsides.  One of those downsides is that not everyone...