Your Mentor May Not Be Helping Your Career: Find a Sponsor
Great mentors prepare you for the next level by challenging, teaching, sharing stories, and offering perceptions. However, many people assume that their mentor is also their sponsor. This is not necessarily the case. Mentors prepare. Sponsors promote. Your mentor can...
7 Ways to Ensure Your New Hire Has a Great First Day
Jack and Jill are both new hires who started their new jobs today. Both of them are nervous. Both of them had other offers. Both are looking for validation that they made the right choice. They both still have lots of logistics questions that they were too embarrassed...
The Biggest Recruiting Mistake
The recruiting process for my first job was intense. The sales pitch began with shiny brochures and a promise that once I “graduated” from this “elite” and “intense” management training program, I could move to any aspect of the...
3 Easy and Practical Team Building Activities
It’s been a rather heavy week on Let’s Grow Leaders, talking about Courage, Fear, Transparency, and Chaos. So I am going to end the week on a lighter note. I had my team in town this week, working on business strategy and plans. We also made time the day...
Chaos Curtailed: How To Shield Your Team
I am a big believer in transparency. Transparency builds trust and creates a trusting and respectful work environment. Share vision. Share rationale. Share decision-making processes. Don’t share chaos. Trust me. I’ve learned this one the hard way. Sharing...
To Tell The Truth: The Problem with “Positioning”
Framing. Positioning. WIFM (them). Spin. If you are a leader, you have sat in one of these meetings. How do we explain this to them… in a way they can hear, understand, and feel good about? How you position a change matters. A lot. And yet, If you find yourself...
10 Ways Fear Slows Us Down
Back in November, Dan Rockwell wrote 4 words that have stuck with me. “Fearful leaders need certainty.” Try walking around with that in your heart for a month or two and observe. Watch leaders you admire. Observe leaders you don’t. Consider how you...
Courage Today and Tomorrow
I’ve been thinking about fear and courage more than I care to these days. I am watching my mother handle a poorly timed and devastating cancer diagnosis with grace, optimism and courage. We are all scared. We are following her lead. Everything is suddenly put...
