Leaders become better leaders when they experience a defining moment and respond to it correctly.  John Maxwell

How often do you think about the defining moments in your life and whether your choices took you in a positive direction?  The more we learn from these moments the better...

Some of the benefits of promoting from within are how we show the individual being promoted that we value their contribution, that we’re willing to invest in their career development, and that we see them as part of our business succession plan. But don’t think for a minute that...

Near the end of a recent lesson in our Leading At The Next Level program, I shared something I had found in a Bloomberg.com article that ties right in with what the point we closed with last time; career advancement is not a one-size-fits-all proposition!

Certain jobs attract people with...

There’s one important thing we’ll have to do if we want to have any hope of creating a succession plan where the right people are in the right seats on our bus… We’ve got to know our team; I mean really know them! We need to understand how we can communicate with them...

Did you read the subject line and sing the next phrase in your head? I kinda still am… But unlike the wheels on the bus that go round and round, the seats on our organization’s bus absolutely should not! And if we want to get really serious about the business succession planning we...

Sharing best practices with other business owners and executives, then bouncing around ideas on how to solve current issues, can provide resources few in these roles ever have access to. When this happens within a group that’s been built strategically to ensure there’s no conflict of...

A new coaching client asked me (Cindy) recently what my favorite book on leadership was.  Without hesitation I shared the single most impactful book for me other than the Bible is, 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth.  As leaders, we must lead ourselves well before we have any hope of leading...

Recently, we provided our Emerging Leader Development training to a group of 15 or so managers and supervisors.  One of my (Cindy) favorite parts we’ll land on next week with this group is on the topic of having a growth plan.  With this, we explain some of the gaps each of us...

Leading up to this point, we’ve looked at several answers to Why is Professional Development Important? and we’ve worked through several key things we each need to consider as we set our Professional Development Goals. While that should serve as a reasonable foundation that we can...

Through the last few messages, we’ve taken a look at some data answering the question Why is Professional Development Important?... I closed last time by emphasizing that there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach and promised to work through some things each of us need to...

I closed the last post with a quote from Benjamin Franklin, “an investment in knowledge always pays the best interest,” and I promised to circle back with a look at how we can each expect to get a solid return on what we invest, personally and in our organizations. Interestingly...

We’ve recently looked at the importance of recruitment and retention and we’ve dug into some key recruitment and retention strategies. Since much of that was focused on how much getting good at retaining great people can eliminate much of the pressure to fill a position with nearly...