That session on How to Deal with a Global Pandemic and Market Crash would have been handy right about now. In business - and in life - one of the primary skills you’ve learned is to break big problems down into smaller chunks. Pieces that are easy to understand and actually achievable.
So, let’s work together to start breaking your situation into actionable chunks.
Our culture tells us the person at the top is solely responsible for creating an organization’s vision. The approach out-lined here releases the pressure-valve. You have the vision. You aren’t going to accomplish it on your own. Follow this check-list to get people on-board with where you want to go next.
While there are lots of reasons people decide not to talk or share information with a leader, our experience shows the top two are:
People aren’t feeling psychologically safe - they feel what they say can and will be held against them, especially when it involves their current and future well-being
People aren’t seeing a better future - they feel stuck because they aren’t enjoying their current reality yet don’t see anything better nor any way to get there
Until you deal with the first item and get some communication going, you can’t address the second.
We hear from many committed leaders who set out to rally their people in the right direction and call us after their self-facilitated retreat with: “There has got to be a better way to do this year-end retreat thing!”
Here are a few fails we’ve seen people experience when running their own DIY retreats along with a few remedies to make your retreat work well for everyone.
The experience of receiving tough feedback about culture is common - even for leaders who feel they value everyone on their teams. How leaders respond to questions of inclusion—a sense of belonging at work—is vitally important for staff moral, workplace climate, AND the long-term success of your business.
As a leader, separating venting from important questions and concerns takes time and patience. It can be a drag to listen to people complain without solutions or bring you their concerns without seeing their role in the problem. Tune into three areas from Cy Wakeman’s work to decrease drama at your organization.
The old adage “There’s no such thing as a bad question” might feel like a slap in the face. Rather than good or bad questions, we like to think of questions as unhelpful or helpful. Some questions can help everyone get to a good outcome. Others do the opposite. Consider these subtle shifts to help you get the outcomes you are striving for when asking questions of your employees.
While Chris has been an active participant in the Summit for a few years now, Senior Business Advisor, Jana Sanchez , experienced her first Small Giants Summit this year. For those who are wondering if yet ANOTHER conference would really benefit them, here are a few of her observations that might help make your decision easier.
Thanks to the popularity of Jim Collins’ Good to Great book and his signature finger pointing, leaders everywhere wonder if they have the right people on the bus. We think his three-prong answer provides the direction you need if you find yourself asking the same question.
It’s easy for your department leaders to get painted into the corner of their titles, defending their territory with the skills for which they were hired. But leaders on a great team learn to come out of their department corners and engage with their peers to find solutions that work for the whole organization.
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