Since we can’t realistically expect others to just be patient indefinitely and maintain any level of leadership with them, or any respect for that matter, let’s look at what we can each do to make sure we’re sending the message we intend to - knowing that failing to reply completely often sends a lo...

If you’ve ever been in a session where Cindy and I teach on communication and behavioral styles, you’ve likely heard me share that my dad has told me for years that I’d get more patient as I got older. So far though, only one of those two things have happened. When I tell that story in person, I ask...

Not so long ago, a gentleman who had recently joined a civic organization I’m a part of sent an email to several other members of the group inviting them to catch up over lunch or coffee individually with hopes of getting to know each of them better since he was relatively new to the area. After a f...

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’m gonna stress this one more time… There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach to promoting within an organization. And therefore, offering our team members with career development opportunities (that are indeed appealing to them) and building a busin...

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 internal promotions ...

As we look at ways to be intentional about providing growth opportunities for the folks on our teams so they experience true career development, we have even more reason to include them as we create our long range succession plans! One thing is for sure though; it’s no longer as simple as giving our...

If we really want to be sure we’re providing our team members with career advancement opportunities, in an actual pursuit of happiness, rather than making them feel like no good deed goes unpunished by promoting them into a role that they have no interest in, we’d better be intention about knowing w...

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 predicta...

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 most effectively, we need to kn...

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 looked at last ti...

Career development is critical for each and every one of us! And like I shared last time, 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 individual...

Right on the heels of our eighth annual LIVE2LEAD:Harrisonburg event, I noticed a social post from a large manufacturing company that we do a fair amount of work with, calling attention to “National Career Development Month.” Seeing that from quite a few organizations I’ve been employed with over th...