Do you remember the story about Goldilocks and the Three Bears? I can’t exactly recall how she got into their house, or even why she was in the area to begin with, but I do remember that she was tired and needed a nap. In trying each bed in the place, she found that Papa Bear’s was...

I truly believe that one of the most essential qualities of leadership is serving the team we’re leading. Unfortunately, the idea of serving those team members is often mistaken for catering to those team members, which doesn’t serve anyone!

As we worked through that quality of...

Think back to the mission statement I shared as I opened the last post; “Delivering customer satisfaction with empowered employees using continuous improvement to get it right the first time, every time.” The piece about empowered employees sounds warm and fuzzy, but what does that...

As we look at this group that represents the final 25% of our equation, it’s unlikely that quality will be the issue. The folks with this Reserved and Task-Oriented behavioral style are very CONSCIENTIOUS about performing everything they do with accuracy and precision. The work that they do...

Now that we’ve covered some things we can do to apply The Platinum Rule when we have those candid conversations with our folks who have those first two primary communication styles, our more Outgoing and Fast-Paced team members, we’re doing to need to dial it down a bit as we prepare...

As we move from the DRIVEN folks we looked at last time who only make up about 10% of the population to this next group who are just as Fast-Paced and make up around 30% of everyone we’ll ever interact with, there are some very key differences we need to consider as we prepare to have a...

Through the last several posts, we’ve taken a hard look at just how important it is to have candid conversations with our team members when they’re not keeping it between the ditches rather than ducking the issue and hoping things will get better on their own. While we’ve looked...

We’ve been looking at different scenarios where team members aren’t performing to the level they’re capable, whether that be through their words or their deeds. In some cases, it can be very intentional. But there are certainly times where they’re just not aware that more...

In the last blog post, I shared a story about a fellow who thought the owner of the company rigged the soda machine to squeeze a few more nickels out of him. Then I shared a little bit about how the negative comments he made about the owner openly in front of his supervisor and many of the team...

Over the last decade, I’ve seen dozens of situations where a senior or incredibly skilled team member has chosen not to exceed expectations. The challenge in most of those instances really boiled down to that team member actually choosing to not even meet the expectations the organization...