When my flight home began loading, I thought, “We’re only 8 minutes late. That’s pretty good for a Friday afternoon.” Unfortunately, that wasn’t the whole story. For the next two hours we sat on the tarmac in a very hot plane. For the first hour there was almost no communication about why we were waiting. In the second hour, we ...
Stephen M.R. Covey in his book, Speed of Trust, wrote, “Trust is equal parts character and competence... You can look at any leadership failure, and it's always a failure of one or the other.” Leadership failure comes when a gap exists in character or in competence. Character and competence working together build trust amongst a team and give the leader ...
As the Chief Lending Officer of a small bank, I was trying to clean-up a lot of problem loans made by the previous CEO. My focus was on collecting the business loans we had, rather than trying to make questionable new ones. So, when a guy I knew from high school asked for a new loan, I was skeptical. When ...
According to Wikipedia, St. Patrick’s Day originally celebrated the priest who returned to Ireland in 432 AD to bring Christianity to his homeland. Ireland had been a polytheistic culture. One way Patrick introduced them to Christ was by using the 3 leaved shamrock to describe the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. He made a difference by communicating in cultural and ...
For weeks, a friend was not responding to my text messages or voicemails. I began making assumptions about his motives for not calling me. When we finally met, we discovered that his phone was broken, and my number was blocked. In Joshua 22, the Israelites that lived east of the Jordan built an altar. The rest of the Israelites assumed ...
Christmas Eve is a day when the spirit of generosity pervades many organizations, leading bosses to give gifts, food and/or bonuses to their staff. Everyone loves to receive gifts and be on the receiving end of generosity, but sometimes it leaves confusion and unrealistic expectations in its wake. Christmas is so close to year end that sometimes employees view any ...
Fletcher’s friend was not accomplishing the job responsibilities he was hired to complete. Fletcher was considering firing his friend, but they went to the same church, making the situation even more complicated. I asked Fletcher, “If you fired this man today, would he be blindsided?” When Fletcher answered, “Yes,” it became obvious that Fletcher had some more work to do. ...
At an event I attended the speaker had some great stories, but they were all sports related. As I looked around the room, I realized that most of the attendees were female. While leaving, I wondered if the speaker’s stories connected with the entire audience. Then I heard several women complaining about the sports analogies. Story telling is a very ...
Sally began by sharing, “I have an employee I need to fire.” After gaining understanding, I asked Sally if her employee was aware of her concerns. She said “no.” Finally, I asked, “If you terminated him today would he be blindsided?” Sally thoughtfully answered “yes.” Sally owed it to her employee to clearly communicate her expectations for his job and ...
One challenge for our team working remotely has been our bookkeeping processes. We tried to use Zoom to resolve these issues but didn’t make much progress. Finally, I met with our bookkeeper in person. Our meeting resulted in creative solutions to develop a more streamlined system. Many companies are calling workers back to the office realizing that innovation has been ...
Equipping Others to Do Work Differently
