We learn best when we step out of our comfort zone and into the learning zone.  Here are some tips on how to open yourself up to new learnings.

Unlike in sports where the competitions are scheduled, in business the competition never stops, unless your team calls a TIMEOUT.  When was the last time your team called a timeout.

Do you have a daily ritual?  Something you do every day just for you.  Forget servant leadership for a minute and understand that selfish leadership can be important at times too.

Companies and their needs evolve, they get acquired, they move their offices, they shift their business models and all too often their employees end up as casualties.  Career transition is nothing to be ashamed of.  It has become incredibly commonplace. 
 

Are you “always recruiting” for your company, and are you asking your team to do the same?  The best people can be found in the most unlikely places.

The decision to hire someone with a different work style and approach is the easy part. The harder part is flexing your style as a manager to allow someone with a different work style than yours to be themselves and excel. Too often we try to change people to fit in to an organizations culture. The best companies leverage diversity as a strength. They try to hire people with diverse work styles, and backgrounds and most importantly they create space within the organization for people to play to their personal strengths.
 

When working with senior leaders one of the biggest hurdles is to get them to see constructive feedback in a positive light. Too often leaders think feedback is an attack on them.   Referring to feedback as a gift opens their eyes to the positives.

Why does the word conflict get a bad rap and how to turn conflict into a tool for better decision making.

One of the most difficult tasks of a leader is to maintain a team of A players.  Steve Jobs once famously said “A players hire A players and B players hire C players.”  Research has shown that A players outperform B players 2x on essential tasks and 10x on creative tasks.  So why do so many leaders live with mediocre talent on their teams?  

As a former leader that I worked with always said using the military term, you want “Fewer soldiers, better fed”.  A headcount freeze is an opportunity to increase hiring not freeze it.  The problem is that too many organizations mix up the intent versus the impact.  It is important to be very clear on the goal.  If the goal is to freeze employee expenses (salaries and benefits) at their current level, then a headcount freeze can achieve the same result as a hiring freeze, but in a much more effective manner. 

The key to being a great actor is to be yourself.  Acting is not about impersonation, it is about originality.  The same concept holds true in the business world.  As a leader, the most important attribute you can bring to your job is your authenticity.  There is no one else like you in the world and that is what makes each of us special and different.  Too many people spend their working lives trying to be like someone else or adjusting their personality and approach to “fit in”. 

Cost cutting has become a standard operating procedure for many organizations, but there are hidden costs in cutting costs.  Culture suffers the most and the cost to a culture might be ireparable.

Valuing talent is the key to achieving sustainable results. With the right team in place an organization’s opportunities can be boundless. A focus on talent must start with the CEO, as she or he needs to show their commitment to hiring, retaining and developing their people even in the face of market headwinds.

Stop trying to block the exit door. Instead, focus on getting your employees engaged in opening new doors within your organization.

One of the biggest issues facing many our Groove Management’s clients is employee retention.  Turnover is up across the board.  Voluntary attrition rates continue to climb because the job market has heated up.  Employees are recognizing that there are a lot more opportunities in the marketplace than have existed during the past eight years.  With the aid of LinkedIn and other socialrecruiting tools, recruiters are doing a better job of identifying passive job seekers.  The end result is that companies are struggling to hold onto their top talent.

 One helpful activity I ask my clients to do is to create a visual career timeline.  On the X axis I have them create a timeline listing years from the time they graduated from high school to the present.  On the Y axis I have them create a legend for career growth.  The next step is to plot points on the graph that show each job or pivotal career cross-roads that they have faced. 

"Life might be finite, but one's legacy can be eternal".  Dr. Fromme, or “grammpa” to me, was a psychologist, teacher and writer.  He taught at City College of New York, Sara Lawrence and Columbia University, wrote seven books and practiced psychology for over fifty years. He is also remembered for his popular lecture series at New York’s 92nd Street Y. A graduate of the City College of New York and Columbia University, Dr. Fromme was a life-long learner.  He firmly believed in the never-ending quest for knowledge, which is one of the most important leadership lessons he taught me. 

The toughest interview question I ever faced was frustrating at the time, but turned into one of my greatest career learnings.  

Whether you are looking for a new job, driving sales for your organization, building your business or looking for love try leveraging your connections for introductions to their connections.

Rather than seeing the top leadership role as being the person to provide the answers, he saw his responsibility as asking the right questions.  Too many leaders today think that leadership is about having the right answer and showing how smart you are, when in fact leadership is about bringing out the best in others.