Brad Smart isn’t a household name . . . at least, not in my household. But he holds a PhD in management psychology and is the author of “Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People.” In that book, Dr. Smart advocates a system whereby a company identifies its “A-Players”
A good customer/supplier relationship is essentially a partnership
Life is all about relationships, not the least of which are business relationships. We must build relationships with business peers and advisors, with employees, with our vendors and suppliers, and of course, with our customers. But what sort of relationship do we enjoy with our customers? While many like to think they’ve forged a “partnership”
“You can manage things, but people need to be led.”
John Maxwell, who has written many books on leadership and who teaches courses in it, talks about “The Five Levels of Leadership.” (NOTE: If you want to watch Maxwell’s entire 27-minute presentation, you can view it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPwXeg8ThWI ). In it, he describes the “Five Levels” as a pyramid whereby all of us start at
Solve Problems with Ignorance, Not Experience
“When you’re a little bit dumb and naïve, things get done that no one believed could be done.” We don’t know who said that, but it’s true. Consider the new, fresh-faced young salesman who marches into an account we wrote off long ago as a waste of time. We all laugh at his innocence and
“Outstanding performance is inconsistent with fear of failure.”
In today’s business environment, change is inevitable. It’s all around us . . . new government regulations are thrust upon us, new competitors enter our market as old competitors leave, and new technologies make current technologies obsolete. Yet our instincts are to resist change. After all, we perform well doing things the way we do
Everyone is accountable
Accountability. Everybody talks about it, but few really practice it. In its purest form, accountability is a contract to carry out a specific responsibility, and if the responsibility is time-sensitive, to carry it out within a specific time frame. The problem is, for many people, accountability isn’t viewed as a contract, but more of a
Using DISC for fun and profit . . . and did I mention it’s FREE?!
Would you be interested in a behavioral assessment tool that can help you: Strengthen your communication skills? Build your leadership abilities as well as your coaching and mentoring skills? Reduce personal and organizational conflict, stress, and turnover? Make better hiring decisions? Learn to appreciate behavioral strengths, challenges and differences in yourself and in others? Increase
“The toughest thing about the power of trust is that it’s very difficult to build and very easy to destroy.”
Renowned business author Patrick Lencioni likes numbers. You can tell by the way he titles some of his books: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family, The Five Temptations of a CEO, and The
“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
Today we have more ways to communicate with one another than ever before. Of course, we have face-to-face spoken communication which we have had for thousands of years (although we seem to be doing that less and less). We also have old-fashioned written communications such as letters, newspapers, magazines, books, etc. These too we’ve had
“How High Is Your XQ?”
Earlier this year, Eliza Gray, a staff writer for Time magazine, wrote an article about the “era of optimized hiring.” In it, she explains that many companies today are requiring job applicants to submit to personality tests. And we’re not talking about just applicants for upper management jobs, we’re talking about everybody from the executive
