Does someone who has a healthy bank account seem like they are successful? Perhaps you see famous people or someone who has made it to the top of their profession as successful. How do you define success? That might seem to be an easy question to answer at first. But take some time to really think about it. What does it mean to you to be successful? Different people define…
The beach was getting farther and farther away. My arms were starting to hurt, but no matter how hard I swam, the beach continued to get smaller and smaller. I realized I was headed out to sea and panic was beginning to build. There’s a phenomenon in the ocean called a riptide which is a fairly narrow channel of water that is moving away from the shore faster than a…
Introvert or extrovert. Most psychological tests apply this label and in popular definitions, extroverts are seen as outgoing, fun-loving, and gregarious. Introverts are seen as inward-focused, quiet, and maybe even standoffish. The Daedalus Group uses the My HardWired™ Leadership Styles Assessment and like most such instruments, it identifies introversion and extroversion. While this is a legitimate identification, it sometimes leaves people, especially those identified as introverted, with a feeling that…
Do you keep information from your team? How much should you share with them? It’s a topic that always generates lively discussion in our workshops. Many leaders lean toward sharing minimal information; or at least sanitized information. I’ve always appreciated bosses who will tell me what’s going on. I remember years ago during a major multinational military exercise, our commander sent an intelligence analyst to give us lowly aircraft mechanics…
If you look up the definitions of responsibility and accountability you’ll find they are used interchangeably. But there is a subtle yet important difference between the two words. A good way to separate them is to consider responsibility as ownership of a task, and accountability as ownership of the results. Consider this example. Jack leads a team on which Jill is a member. Jack assigns Jill a task. It’s a…
