Practicing the art of responsiveness can earn the kind of influence that enables swift, effective decisions - even under pressure. But the higher the stakes, the more important it will be to have made ongoing investments into each of those relationships. Like any sound investment strategy, the time ...
The art of responsiveness isn’t based on how quickly we can reply. There are plenty of people I respect deeply who don’t provide an immediate answer when I reach out. However, those folks have intentionally invested into our relationship - just like I have - in a way that’s built grace. When our sch...
The art of responsiveness will never be based on a cookie-cutter approach. If we start with listening, especially when we’re able to apply the DISC Model of Human Behavior to what we hear, we’ll be able to recognize what each individual needs and tailor a response that best serves that need. The art...
Practicing the art of responsiveness requires discipline, especially for a leader working to juggle all that demands their time and attention. Messages can and do come at us from every direction and some of the most critical, the ones that determine how the individual who sent it will feel valued at...
How often have you experienced someone listening to respond (read: recognize when they get to respond) rather than listening to genuinely understand what’s being shared with them? While they do indeed respond immediately, that has nothing to do with The Art of Responsiveness that we’re working throu...
Near the beginning of chapter six of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, titled “Time Hacker’s Handbook,” Daniel Pink challenges readers to “Reply quickly email” and shares this:
“Email response time is the single best predictor of whether employees are satisfied with their boss, acco...
As we closed our look at “The Strength of Humility,” earning “Influence Over Authority,” and the importance of “Knowing Our Worth,” I stressed the idea of creating a legacy that lives well beyond what we do individually. More than any other thing I’ve experienced, that’s how we can best leverage lea...
Over the last twenty-five years, Cindy and I have been extremely focused on building a knowledge network that would help us compensate for our leadership limits. Recognizing who knew what we didn’t know was the first step. Being willing to invest whatever we could, even if that was only our time, in...
Equipped with only a high school diploma, and having slept through far too many of my classes leading up to receiving that, I had no shortage of gaps to acknowledge - even if my ego was standing in the way early on (and maybe a little still today). Identifying the key experts I could learn from as I...
So much of what we do to leverage our leadership growth relies on building great professional relationships. Each facet we’ve worked through to this point plays a key role but to build on even the strongest qualifications, we’ll need to lean into all the humility we can muster by acknowledging our l...
I’ve often heard the phrase, “Your network is your net worth.” While I haven’t spoken to that from a financial perspective to this point, the strength we can each develop through great professional relationships will definitely yield success in just about any aspect of our lives that we’re willing t...
One of the biggest hurdles I’ve seen people deal with as they’ve moved into new roles has been coming to terms with how much they’re willing to share with the person filling the role they previously held. Far too often, there’s a perception that if their successor performs better than they did, it d...