When I started working many years ago, I showed initiative, solved problems and got things done. I was rewarded for it, so I continued to work a lot of hours and do those same things throughout my career. When I started to lead a team, I should have realized that my job had changed and I needed to do things differently. This happens to a lot of new leaders, but even to…
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It is a huge challenge to juggle everything that needs to be completed between work and home. Our to-do lists continue to grow, no matter how many things are crossed off. This creates that feeling of being overwhelmed. Being able to create boundaries in your life can help reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed and allow you to take back the decisions about where you spend your time. Here is some advice that I received in my career to help…
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I was thinking about stress, balance and how sleep impacts your life. Thanks to the world of electronics, you can track your sleep now. I started using an app on my iPhone called Sleep Cycle to track my sleep. (you can try the free trial version.) I can see how much sleep I am getting, how often I wake up in the night and how that compares to averages and trends….
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Creating a vision is an important step for a leader to communicate to their team or organization. Leaders need to be able to confidently articulate the vision for their team or organization in such a way that people believe in it and see that it is possible. A vision is defined as a high-level outcome that you want to attain and should be shared in a way that people feel inspired by it, connected to it and want to reach…
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I have talked about trusting your gut in some of my other posts when it comes to decision making. There are times where you are dealing with such an ambiguous situation that you may not have anything else to go on. We even had buttons in our office that said “ambiguity is my friend” on them because we had to deal with so many unknowns. These type of situations will force you to make decisions with what you know at the…
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If you have ever seen a picture of an iceberg you know that there is a portion of it that rises above the water and the rest is below the water. This is the perfect metaphor for a leader. Above the surface it is calm and everything appears to be good. Below the surface, however, there are the unknown things occurring that we can’t see. I have been told that I am a very calm person. I try to be calm…
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For the rest of the week, I am going to dive a little deeper into the leadership traits that were covered in the post that I did yesterday. If you missed it, you can read it here. Initially, there were two leadership traits that were very challenging for me to learn. This could be because they seemed to be in direct conflict with leading to me. What I didn’t realize then was that instead of “leading others”, I was actually…
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My first role with direct reports was a new role that didn’t exist before. I had three direct reports and oversight of the daily activities of 22 indirect reports. It was a little overwhelming at the time. The great thing was I got to make up what the role would do, how it would work and define it all as I went along. For a first time leader of people, it was a little scary. There was no one else…
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Part of why I enjoy writing this blog is that I get to learn new things as I research topics to write about. One of my strengths is a love of learning so this fits in perfectly for me. What is even better for all of you is that I share the ones that I think you will find to be the most valuable. I hope that you agree and will find at least one take away from what is…
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Opportunities come along every day, but are you ready for them when they happen? It would be great if you could predict what to know and when to be ready, but you can’t. All you can do is to prepare yourself as much as you can, be ready to learn on the job and from others who can mentor you. Let me share a story with you that illustrates this point. A football player named Jordan Howard played the…
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