Can I Vent A Bit?

I understand that not all leaders have type-A personalities and that rah-rah speeches don’t always come natural. Really…I get it.  But can someone please explain to me why leaders are so reluctant to reach out to the troops, cast vision and rally them toward greatness?  Whether you’re in middle management or occupy a seat on the executive team, it is part of your job to open your mouth and motivate your teams.  I honestly don’t care if you are multiple levels above the people executing or if you are in a relatively flat organization.  Your people need to SEE and HEAR you.  They need to know what matters to you.  What keeps you up late at night?  What do you talk with your spouse about as it relates to your team?  What do you dream about? They need to know YOU – not some pathetic, cellophane likeness.




I am sick and tired of leaders sitting up in their corporate offices and not truly engaging with the people who give them a job. This is part of the reason that the show Undercover Boss has been so popular. Leaders are figuring out the truth that Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan communicated years ago in their book Execution. The only true way to lead, motivate, and execute at the highest level is to be engaged in such a way that you understand reality across the business and can use your knowledge, people skills, and leadership to drive it in the right direction. In the book 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John Maxwell calls this “The Law of Connection”. He says that you’ve got to touch a heart before you can ask for a hand. Craig Groeschel talks about the same thing in ministry and calls it “The Pastor’s Mystique”.  God forbid you actually connect with people in a real way!  Connection will never happen if you continue to choose to disengage from those who matter most.



I challenge each one of you to reach out to one person, a team, a department, a division, or even your whole organization today and do something which will create ripples in the pool.  Cast vision, motivate, encourage, share your heart and truly CONNECT…and then do it again next week and the week after that and so on. Now walk out of your office and make it so!

To Annihilate or Not to Annihilate - That is the Question!

As leaders, everyday we face the challenge of negotiating between giving grace and driving accountability. Let’s face it; it’s hard to figure out when to let someone’s mistake slide and when to drop the hammer. I believe that once you understand that they can both co-exist, you can begin to use them advantageously.




Pretend that one of your crew members makes an honest mistake and goes too fast or gets too distracted and their error ends up costing you money. Your first option is to take them aside and completely berate them making them feel embarrassed and stupid. This type of approach obviously leaves a lasting memory, which unfortunately costs you a fair amount of chips of trust from the leadership poker table. The error-maker will clearly understand that you could care less about them but more their result. Is this bad? It surely is debatable because this is a play in many leaders’ playbooks. The only motivation stirred up in this example surrounds not getting yelled at again. There is no real change – only temporary improvement.



Let’s start this crazy train over. Johnny Too-Fast makes a mistake and instead of completely burying him you choose to take him aside and ask some questions surrounding what happened. “Tell me what happened.”, “What prevented you from catching the mistake?”, “Are you aware of how this type of error affects the team?”, or “How could we change our system to avoid this type of shortcoming in the future?” Some may say that this is a weak approach, but look at what happens. The employee sees that you care about the error and you respect them enough to treat them like a human being to dig deep through the layers uncovering real issues while partnering with them to create a solution.



In our business we call this “training money at work”. Good employees will not make the same mistake twice, and we all know that we learn more from failure than from success. Regardless of what bucket in the P&L you realize the loss, whether gross profit or training expense, it is still an opportunity to learn and grow.



I would argue that this type of approach also shows grace. Grace is giving someone something they don’t deserve. Johnny didn’t earn nor deserve this type of response, but you can still give it to him anyway. People usually feel bad and embarrassed when they make a mistake. Addressing issues like this are always golden opportunities for the leader to build greater leadership equity.



Part two is the next challenge because accountability can never end. If problems continue to repeat themselves, I believe there is a different problem. It’s either a bad internal system or a mismatched employee. Either way, you will be faced with a handful of tough decisions as you look at your business. The point though is to drive grace-filled accountability. Therefore the next time you have a chance to really light someone up, push the pause button, think it through, sprinkle some grace on it, and see if you get a different result. The outcome may surprise you.

I Have a Gift!

So my last post had something to do with the enjoyment of sitting up front while flying in a plane. I knew I was flirting with disaster by putting that in writing, and last week the disaster struck. It started snowing in Atlanta and I was headed to Phoenix. Our flight was delayed about 30 minutes, which wasn’t a big deal. Upon checking in at the gate I found that my wonderful junior first class seat (a.k.a. the exit row) was somehow reassigned and I was given a normal seat on the aisle - don't ask, I don't know. Honestly I was a bit perturbed because I wasn’t feeling too hot and was looking forward to attempting to sleep it off. I found myself next to two large guys and my knees were digging into the back of the seat in front of me. I was trying to figure out if I had just won the lead roll in the remake of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
It was time to take off and the captain advised us that we were delayed another 30 minutes due to needing to de-ice.  I didn’t quite understand this as the snow was not sticking to the ground. Over time he pushed our time back farther and farther while opening and closing the boarding door to let people off. We finally closed it once and for all and headed toward the de-icing area. Oh happiness!

Upon arriving to de-ice we were told it would take several minutes….it only took 3 – no joke. I am forced to pause and ask a question, “What type of ice did we have that could have made us waste an inconceivable amount of time to be melted in 3 minutes?” I digress. We finally took off four and a half hours after we boarded and flew four more hours to Phoenix.

When we got in the air we found out that the plane didn’t fully stock their for-purchase food and that there wasn’t going to be enough for everyone. AWESOME!!!! Needless to say, I was relieved like a lion having a splinter removed by a mouse when it was time to land.

In the midst of this lovely aerial ordeal I couldn’t help but think about my dad.  When I was growing up and unplanned bad things would happen, he consistently had a phrase to sum it all up – I have a gift!  My brothers and I would either laugh at him or just roll our eyes in that “here-we-go-again” style. The phrase is still used to this day and those closest to him can sense it coming from 1000 miles away.  Please understand that he is a positive person...most of the time :)

On the plane I started breaking down the choices that had led me to that moment in time. We had just closed a large deal and needed to meet with our client…that week…in Phoenix. We were having dinner with them that night and chose to fly in early to head off any potential travel delays (if we would have waited for another flight it would have been disastrous). I didn’t control the snow, nor did I control the de-icing procedures or the fact that ATL traffic control was diverting and delaying flights for hours. What I did have control over was my ATTITUDE. I had to choose to distract myself and smile at the people around me.  I had to choose to treat the flight attendants with respect – not sarcasm. Would I have dealt with it better if I had been sitting in my original seat or better yet been upgraded to first class? Do cows advertise Chick-Fil-A?

Regardless of what happened I had to choose my attitude. You too have the same choice to make each day and to choose to at least pretend you sit in first class. You can decide to be buried by unplanned issues and let everyone know about this amazing gift you have, or you can choose to overcome the obstacles and do what my high school English teacher Lynn Rudd used to say, “Proactively choose your attitude.” Therefore I challenge you to let someone else lament over their gift of unfortunate circumstances while you choose to share your bag of smiles, laughs and contagious attitude.