Welcome to “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” The most important factor to straighten out your situation is to interrupt the pattern as soon as you realize it’s there. The best place to start is with yourself.
I'm a leader. How the heck am I supposed to make people feel safe at work now?
Want to Change the World? Start with Your Team.
How do I lead my team through a global crisis when I'm also dealing with my own personal challenges? Asking for a friend ...
Everyone, everywhere is struggling in some way with the changes occurring as a result of this global crisis. Personal health, professional future, family tension, grief and loss ...or any of the above. What I’m about to share isn’t groundbreaking, and now is a time when friendly reminders can be very helpful.
What's on your Not-to-do list?
Why is it when I ask my people "How can I help?" I rarely get a response I can do anything with?
Tyranny of Expectations
5 Things We Easily Forget When in Crisis
The Dark Side of Niceness
I need to know what to do next, but I just don't. What do I do?
I'm struggling to hold things together, and people are looking to me for answers. How do I lead them through this storm?
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.
We created our 3-year plan but nothing’s changed. What am I missing? ….
My team isn’t getting my long-term vision for the company. What can I do differently?
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.
Would you like 2020 Vision?
My team said they won’t talk to me - what do I do?
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 are not living our values. Help!
Last year's DIY team retreat was a disaster - what do I do this year?
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.
I heard some staff don't feel welcome here - how can that be?
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.
My employees keep venting to me - how do I get the drama to stop?
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.
My questions to my staff at work are backfiring - what do I do?
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.
