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I want you to think about some of the employees that have left your organization, and not the ones that you're like "oh praise God they left because we can't deal with that anymore!" because that's a reality, right! That happens sometimes. Think about those, and I want you to consider: How would more effective leadership have impacted that? Would that have maybe played a role in them sticking with you over time?Everything rises and falls on leadership! Every time we work with a group, whether it's front line employees where we're sharing our "Developing Effective Trainers" course, our "Emerging Leader Development" course where we're working with supervisors and newer managers, or we're working with business owners and high level executives, my question to them is about how their behaviors impact everybody around them... How do your behaviors impact the people on your team to where they feel like, "Hey, I'm a part of this organization!" or they feel like "This Stinks! I wanna go find something else to do. I'm gonna take my kickball and go home!"??? Learn more about how we can engage your audience at https://www.dove-development.net/speaker-press-kit

If we’re gonna lead our teams effectively we really need to understand what they need as individuals. We hear so much in society about diversity and inclusion but it’s not just specific to age and color and creed and religion; inclusion is something that we can make sure that we do for everybody and it really becomes… When we understand what they need as an individual, based on their experiences, where they’re at in life at that point in time, and we provide it for them, now we can make sure that we’ve got people of all different backgrounds that feel included in the team that we’re working to build! Links to share with shorts and videos Learn more about how we can engage your audience at https://www.dove-development.net/speaker-press-kit Learn more about how we can provide your organization with tailored solutions that will increase YOUR profitability by building better leaders at https://www.dove-development.net/total-leadership-solutions

Systems We Can Each Sustain - Starting with Ones that Get Results! We started down this path by looking at How to Be More Productive - at Work and at Home then we worked through some Personal Productivity Tools that Support Great Systems. As I mentioned before though, we’ll each need to develop our own unique approach if we want to create systems in our lives that we can stick with over the long haul to achieve our goals and avoid burning out along the way. What works for you may not work for me - and vice-versa! A few millennia ago, a fellow named Confucius suggested the importance of knowing ourselves… If you’ve read any of my articles prior to now or you’ve been part of just about any training session that Cindy and I have done over the last several years, you’ve likely heard me stress the importance of being able to recognize the communication style of each person we interact with on a daily basis so we can communicate with them like they need us to rather than just how we prefer to communicate. The DISC Model of Human Behavior has been the most effective tool I’ve ever used to be able to do this! But that’s not where the value of William Marston’s work ends… Understanding how to apply The Model of Human Behavior to communicate more effectively is critical for anyone in a leadership role. But when it comes to building systems in our lives that help us be as productive as we can possibly be, working from a foundation we can get from a scientifically validated DISC assessment can provide us with insight on what we need to consider so the systems we adopt actually fill our tank rather than leave us on empty. Moving forward here, we’ll take a look at some things that will help fuel each of the four primary behavioral styles. Keep in mind though that none of us are just one style; we all have our own unique blend of the four and being familiar with that blend can play a key role in how we create systems that we can stick with long term without running out of gas… Placeholder Image Let’s start by considering what keeps fuel in the tank for those of us who have a primarily Outgoing and Task-Oriented behavioral style - the more DRIVEN folks… It could be because this is my primary style, but I find this to be the easiest to build systems around (and with any luck, you’ll feel the same way about your primary style too). These often DIRECT and DEMANDING individuals nearly always get excited about one simple thing: GETTING RESULTS! When the group with the primary style is able to see things getting done and have a reasonable degree of control of the process, sustainability is rarely a concern. While only around 10% of the population has this primary style, they are the ones who can seem to go on and on without stopping to recharge; more often than not, accomplishment is what recharges them! For those of us who have this primary style, or even if you’re helping build a system for someone who does, we’d do well to put some checks and balances in the process to make sure the massive results we’re working to achieve are accurate but we should also take care to avoid placing painstakingly detailed steps into the system since that will tend to wear us out rather than fuel us up. We should also make sure we set specific times to stop and view our progress. Many of us with this DETERMINED approach can get caught up in the DOING and lose sight of just how much we’re getting DONE. Taking note of what we’ve accomplished will serve to boost our spirits as well! But remember, 90% of the population does not have this primary style so there’s still more we need to consider!

I heard John Maxwell say, “Anyone can find a problem, but it takes a leader to find a solution,” (or something along those lines) for the first time nearly twenty years ago. In fact, I remember him sharing a story about the time he started requiring anyone on his team bringing him a problem to present at least three possible solutions to that problem. He went on to explain that there were a few team members who never brought him a problem again! Whether we’re leading a small group of people or an entire organization, we’ve likely all experienced something similar to what prompted John to take that stance. As a supervisor, manager, or owner, our team often expects us to have all the answers! To that end, have you ever heard anyone who wasn’t in a leadership role say “they don’t pay me to think”? Each time I hear something like that, I’m flooded with a mix of frustration that anyone is willing to accept such a low level of responsibility and concern that this stance is taken so often in society today! For most problems our organizations face on a daily basis, who is likely to have the most knowledge of the intricate detail that typically leads to a solution? The supervisor, manager, or owner who has to keep an eye on the big picture or the individual who’s dealing with the issue directly? That’s a bit rhetorical… In talking with Carly Fiorina while back, she addressed that question this way: “The leader certainly won’t have all the answers but they would absolutely be the one to empower the people closest to the problems, who almost always have the BEST answers, to take action.” As a quick side note on this idea of any one person having ALL the answers, I remember seeing my sixth grade science teacher’s head almost pop once when a classmate told her that since she was the teacher, she was supposed to know everything. Her response was pretty intense for me to have such a vivid memory of it nearly 35 years later - and no, I wasn’t the one who made that particular wisecrack! While Carly’s statement is powerful when it comes to solving the technical problems our organizations encounter any given day, that can leave us facing a different issue when it comes to building a strong leadership culture for the teams we’re leading. That responsibility often lands squarely in our laps and there might not be anyone else we can look to for support internally - especially when the buck truly does stop with us! When Cindy and I developed the structure for the quarterly sessions we host with our Executive Leadership Elite Think Tank group, we were very intentional about building in time for the business owners and executives who participate to share the most effective leadership practices in their respective organizations as well as time to get input from other members on any issues they’re facing. This is where some powerful interaction begins to happen! Leading up to this point, we’ve looked at several reasons for having access to some type of executive leadership council. As with anything though, the results we achieve can be so much better when we have a strategic purpose and structure for how we use it! Sharing those best practices gets the ball rolling, but we’ll look at the importance of an intentional progression as we move forward.

Changing the Approach If we want to have the exponential impact I referenced recently, I don’t believe there’s any other option than to buy into the idea that it all starts at the top! While there will certainly still be plenty of hard days, changing the approach we take will be one of the most critical things we do in addressing our profitability killers - especially the highest risk areas! In mid 2018, Cindy and I had decided to build an “executive summit” onto the tail end of what was already a fairly full day leadership development event we were hosting. This session was to be geared at putting local business owners and high level executives in a small room together where we facilitated round table discussions around very specific leadership topics that had been addressed throughout the day leading up to that point. We were very intentional about who we invited to be part of this session. The main event had around 200 participants from 70 or so companies but this final 90-minute segment would be paired down to no more than 50. We worked through the complete list of attendees and identified the ones who had the level of responsibility we were targeting for this type of interaction. In talking with each of them one on one about the value that exclusive session could provide them, the most common response we received was that they had never seen an opportunity to be with a group of their peers where the sole focus was on leadership. Many of them were part of industry focused peer groups but none of those had carved out specific time to dial in on developing how they led their organizations. From those conversations, and that first “executive summit” session, our Executive Leadership Elite Think Tank (ELETT for short) was born! Placeholder Image Based on a clear need we saw in putting together that executive summit session, we went to work immediately in crafting the criteria for something we could do for local business owners and executives that would help them key in our building best-in-class leadership cultures in their respective organizations, showing measurable return on the time and money they invested to be part of the group, while creating stronger business relationships with their peers in other industries. I’d love to go down a rabbit hole here and tell you all the amazing things we’ve seen come from this group since, or even how it’s grown into a model we’re able to offer on-site for our larger clients, but I won’t… What I will stress is one of the primary things we’ve held as a core principle for membership in that group; a strategic focus on leading rather than just supervising or managing the teams each member is responsible for. We set some criteria to serve as a baseline for the size of team each participant has, largely based on a scene from The Princess Bride where there’s a comment that goes something like this, “You can’t fight five men the same way you fight one man.” Quite frankly, we were far less interested in the size of the organization or total revenue than we were in ensuring each individual in that group had a heart for leadership. I’ve been around folks who managed facilities with hundreds of employees and did hundreds of millions in annual revenue who couldn’t lead silent prayer! The team members in those organizations were there for a paycheck and when a comparable paycheck was offered somewhere else, that’s where they went. I’ve also had the pleasure of watching individuals with a primary goal of serving their team and the clients who did business with them, and I’ve seen many of those organizations grow exponentially! If we want to have the best possible impact throughout our organizations and effectively deal with the things that kill so much profitability, we’ll need to change the approach from just managing the processes and procedures to leading the individuals who are engaged in those processes and procedures! I’m certainly not advocating that we no longer need to manage, but a healthy mix can make all the difference…

Great Teams Depend on Great People! Career development is critical for each and every one of us! And like I often share, a poor leader will never build a great team. Great people may be part of that organization, at least for a while, but poor leadership will never change a group with great people into a great team. As individuals, we cannot assume we’ll continue to develop just by doing what our role requires of us each day; we must be intentional about that. The same is true for how we work to provide career development options for the people and team members we’re responsible for leading. Since you’ve invested the time into studying information like this, I’m going to assume that you’ve eliminated the chance of being lumped into that poor leadership category. And for the sake of time, I’ll also assume that you’re being intentional about providing the leaders on your team with the tools they need to be successful. While I believe that’s a critical piece for any organization to thrive in the short term, it’s not always enough over the long haul. In fact, the future has an uncanny way of sneaking up on us! I've put together some solid things for you to consider in this video!

If we’re genuinely interested in achieving quantifiable results by dealing with the profitability killers that are having the biggest impact on our bottom line, the simplest solutions can often make the most difference but it’s critical that we start at the top because that will set the tone for everything else across the organization.

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It can be frustrating enough when we hear “I’ll get back to you on that” from a friend or family member who we know likely won’t follow through, but how much more frustrating is it when it happens with someone in a leadership role? Let’s be honest, we hold the folks in leadership positions to a higher standard - or at least we should! It’s one thing for my childhood friend to continually drop the ball on responding but it’s a whole different ball of wax when it’s someone we report to or someone who has accepted responsibility for providing us with some type of service, even if that service is in the form direction and guidance with how we do our job. Cindy and I do a fair amount of work with teams that provide different types of services through their business model, rather than physical products. When we work with them, I always make the case that while they may not have positional authority with their customers and clients, they absolutely have a level of leadership (that comes with influence) with each individual or business they serve. We recently heard an example of how much responsiveness matters in cases like this where the individual providing the service thought everything was in good standing but hadn’t been in communication with the customer for a few weeks. That customer apparently felt like they were left hanging and found someone else to provide the same service. By the time the service provider contacted the customer to finalize the transaction they had been working on, that customer had closed a similar deal elsewhere. The business certainly lost revenue in that specific transaction but I’m guessing the lifetime value of that particular customer would have been far greater than just this single transaction… So how does that translate to a scenario where we report to the person who isn’t responsive? In the nearly twenty years I worked in a manufacturing facility, I never had direct supervisory responsibility over anyone. I did, however, go out of my way on a routine basis to respond to and to support the majority of the folks I interacted with on a daily basis. Be it good or bad, that often resulted in a whole bunch of folks bypassing their supervisors altogether and coming straight to me when they had an issue. While I appreciated the trust and respect they showed me through doing that, they often came to me at times where I was already juggling more than I could handle… And although I didn’t have positional authority to force many people to follow my instructions, I rarely had trouble getting support from anyone when I asked for it! With those two very different examples in mind, why do you think responsiveness is so important in leadership? And what message are we really sending someone on our team if we’re not responding at all? I believe that whether it’s our intention or not, we’re making a statement as to how much (or how little) value we place on the individual. Knowing that showing we don’t value someone on our team is rarely the goal, I believe there are some simple things we can do to avoid that… visit us at www.dove-development.net for more videos and blogs on responsive leadership and how to lead at the highest level.

It's Expensive! What flashbacks do you have when you think about your most miserable job ever? There was an NCIS episode where Abby and McGee go back and forth with one another sharing their worst jobs before joining Team Gibbs. It started out with the boring ones and rapidly morphed into the most disgusting ones - but that’s not what I want you to consider right now. I want you to think about that job where you just felt empty; one where you were all but sick to your stomach when the weekend was almost over. Are you picturing it? Before I completely ruin your day, let’s think about WHY that particular job was so stinking miserable… Was it boring? Was it disgusting? Was the hardest work you’ve ever done? Maybe, but I’m guessing something else was driving the misery factor even higher! For me, it certainly was one of the most physical jobs I ever had - but that wasn’t the part that sucked the most. It was a combination of slapping up a building with no real sense of pride in the finished product, a group of coworkers that didn’t come close to resembling a cohesive team, and a supervisor that was one of the most intolerable humans I’ve ever been around. Add those things to the physical demands that come with construction, plus the $8 per hour wage, and I think I could make a solid case for it actually costing me money to show up! But those aren’t the only reasons I think being miserable at work is expensive… If you’ve hung with me through the process of digging into Why Employee Engagement is Important, Onboarding That Gets Results, or The importance of Organizational Culture, you know that each of those things have a direct, tangible impact on a company’s overall profitability. And while I truly believe we can have an immediate impact on each of those things regardless of where our position falls in the org chart, there are indeed times where our impact only goes so far. That said, we can still play a key role in whether or not the folks on our teams - the ones who work with us the closest - have that sick feeling in their stomachs on Sunday evening or look forward to picking up where they left off the previous week! Don’t tune me out! I haven’t completely lost my mind… Moving forward here, we’ll work through some things we can each work to avoid as well as some simple steps we can take action on right away to begin building an environment that doesn’t make our team members wanna throw up! And just maybe we’ll eliminate the cost of misery in the process… Visit us at www.dove-development.net for more on leadership!

Considering how tough it’s become for what appears to be every single employer to find talent in this market, taking care of the great employees we do have has moved to the forefront - or at least it should have! Unfortunately, far too many organizations have had to focus so hard on filling open positions that they’ve left some of their most senior and most talented team members feeling a bit taken for granted. I constantly see social media posts from folks who have been with their companies for long periods of time asking why there are sign-on bonuses but no stay-on bonuses… Hey, I get it! Regardless of the seat you or I are in through this process, there rarely seems to be a right answer… I recently found a blog post from a company marketing their employee performance measuring software titled Why Employee Happiness Should Be a Top Priority. Early in the post, the author shares four statistics that point to just how important employee happiness is: Happy employees stay in their job four times longer than unhappy employees; Happy employees are 12% more productive; Happy employees commit twice as much time to their tasks; Happy employees have 65% more energy than unhappy employees As a quick side note, three of those four stats were cited from the same source… And while I understand the intent of each, I’m not convinced employee happiness is the actual driver of any of those - at least not happiness alone… Come on over to www.dove-development.net and even check out our blog on Are You Considering Your Employee's Happiness for more! With all this in play, how can we make sure we’re doing all we can to keep our best folks from leaving for the highest bidder - and trust me, the good ones are being approached routinely - and make sure they’re dialed in on the productivity our organizations need? Wouldn’t it make sense to pay close attention to how happy our employees are?

Areas Impacted by Poor Communication

Learn why soft skills training in the workplace matters, a working definition of soft skills training, and a clear picture of HOW. All right here!