Posts Tagged ‘Listening’

The Right Solutions

Friday, November 18th, 2011

Coach Steve Scan­lon and I recently facil­i­tated a lead­er­ship con­fer­ence for a great national, long-time part­ner of ours. The desired end result for this con­fer­ence was that all man­agers would con­nect with one another, get clar­ity on what the cur­rent real­ity looked like (both for their com­pany and indus­try) and recon­nect with the company’s vision. Then, the front line man­agers would cre­ate new strate­gies to bridge the gap from their cur­rent real­ity to what they see for them­selves in the future. This would be no small feat!

Well I am happy to report that the lead­ers of this firm stated this was by far, the best lead­er­ship event they had ever had. Bulls­eye! Here is what took place that cre­ated the magic for this com­pany.
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The Key to Effective Marketing

Friday, May 20th, 2011

I recently had the oppor­tu­nity to meet with the head of mar­ket­ing for one of the larger orga­ni­za­tions we coach. He has led mar­ket­ing for this now multi-billion dol­lar firm for the last three decades. When he started, they had less than 100 team­mates and today they have more than 60,000.

They have expe­ri­enced rad­i­cal growth — and their mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives drive a lot of that growth. One key take away that really stuck with me was how focused he was.

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Questioners and Truth Tellers

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

One of the biggest chal­lenges teams have is engag­ing in group thinking.

The prob­lem often begins when a leader is so strong or charis­matic that he influ­ences the rest of the team to think just like he does. To fur­ther com­pli­cate things, if this leader is in charge of all hir­ing deci­sions, he prob­a­bly hires peo­ple who are just like him. They think like him, speak like him, and some­times even look like him!

In this envi­ron­ment, “group think­ing” looks like this: the leader poses a ques­tion, the leader sug­gests a course of action, and every­one nods in agree­ment. The final deci­sion is based on one sin­gle, unchal­lenged idea.

Per­son­ally, I have always ben­e­fited from hav­ing peo­ple on my team who think dif­fer­ently than I do!

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There is No Substitute for One on One Time

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Today has been a won­der­ful day!  It began with an early morn­ing meet­ing with a friend who has been men­tor­ing me for the last 13 years.  Recently, my time with him has been less fre­quent, but when­ever I am with him I learn and grow.  Our meet­ing took place at my favorite local cof­fee house here in Lake Oswego.  He was pour­ing into me.

Father and DaughterAfter an hour and a half, he left, and one of my sons came by.  He is 17, and is fin­ish­ing up his senior year with some classes at our local com­mu­nity col­lege.  The pur­pose of our one on one time was to con­nect and take a look at his plan for the next quar­ter.  It was an oppor­tu­nity for me to lis­ten to him and to con­nect at a deeper level.  I was able to pour into him.

The rea­son I wanted to share with you about my morn­ing is to chal­lenge you to think about how you will spend your time this year. 

Are you proac­tively sched­ul­ing one on one time with those you care for most?

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Presents or Presence?

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

I think I am start­ing to fall into the social net­work­ing groove.  I tweeted ear­lier today ask­ing those who fol­low my posts this Lead­er­ship and Life Ques­tion: What is the most impor­tant thing for you to expe­ri­ence or accom­plish between now and the year end?  I was really ask­ing myself this ques­tion, and I thought I would throw it out there for all of you to pon­der as well.

So, here is my response:  I want to expe­ri­ence pure and com­plete pres­ence dur­ing this Christ­mas and New Years’ break.

Presents

What I want most is to cel­e­brate this very spe­cial sea­son by being absolutely present in each and every con­ver­sa­tion, and in each and every moment.  I am a total men­tal spaz so this can be very challenging.

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