The knack

All the pieces fit together

He didn’t tell me where to put the pieces but showed me how the pieces worked together.

There is a reason I kept a folder in my email inbox titled “stuff to keep”. It was a collection of things that I believed were important.

Due to issues beyond my control we are changing our internet service provider at home. As a result, I am cleaning out old emails, saving again what is valuable and trashing what isn’t. Powerful right?

You bet.

Reading the emails is like reliving old conversations. But you (I) hear it in the voice of the sender. And it’s like they are right here with me.

One I kept is especially dear to me. I reached out to a friend for advice and instead of giving me answers, he gave me more questions. The nerve of some people!

He didn’t just give me answers, he gave me tools to discover solutions on my own and taught me so much more in the process. He has a knack for doing that. I think it’s a part of his DNA.

Like with a puzzle, we may know what the finished product looks like but we don’t know the order of the pieces. Thankful we can discern the shapes and the relationships of the pieces to complete the puzzle.

My challenge for you: Teach someone today how the pieces work together. Don’t do it for them.

Posted in Leadership, Learning, Teaching | 9 Comments

Empathy

IMG_0983How good are you at guiding your team through challenges?

You may be a forward thinker, always looking ahead to how the current situation can affect the bottom line of your business.

Or you may have the capacity to see beyond the current problem and can remain focused on the big picture.

Either way, you can empathize with your team because you’ve been there, done that and you’ve got the t-shirt.

As a leader, you don’t make the challenges personal by assigning blame. You find solutions and move forward.

Posted in Empathize, Leadership | 2 Comments

Lead

Just lead.

Just lead.

A quick internet search on leadership and millions of websites are referenced in under a second.

Where do you start? You could check out this page. Or you could just look at the word for a moment.

You can’t spell leadership without the word lead. Or leaders. Or hip. 🙂

So just being hip or cool doesn’t make you an effective leader.

Nor does just reading books or websites or attending how-to training.

Leaders motivate, inspire and influence. They go beyond tasks by leading people instead of managing work.

Posted in Leadership | 1 Comment

Before you leave

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Target House. . . an apartment style building built by Target for families of children whose treatment at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is scheduled to last longer than 3 months.

Each apartment is fully furnished. Other amenities include:

  • Free laundry facilities
  • Music room
  • Arts and crafts room
  • Game room specifically designed for children and teens
  • Workout facilities
  • Playground
  • Communal dining room

You think they know who their customer is? They heard the needs of the patients and families and they responded by meeting those needs.

Target House was designed so that routines can stay as normal as possible. Hospital life can be sterile . . . pun intended. Target wants to keep you home.

So before you leave home, be sure to respond to the needs of your customers.

Posted in Bottom Line, Customer for Life, Dedication, Extra Mile, Home, Listen, Needs | Comments Off on Before you leave

Zoinks – an endless cycle

Zofran zounds zuper

Zofran zounds zuper

The body has something foreign that needs to be gone. So you take a foreign substance (chemo) to eradicate the foreign object (cancer) and it causes havoc.

Thank God for modern medicine. It can be a vicious cycle.

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a test that discovered the root cause for all cancers? It sounds so simple. Yet it’s so complex.

 

 

Posted in Hard Work, Innovation, Learn, Moving on | Comments Off on Zoinks – an endless cycle