7 Reasons Smart People End Up Failing

"Make sure your worst enemy doesn't live between your own two ears." ~Laird Hamilton

History is riddled with examples of once successful companies and organizations who made some critical mistakes and now cease to exist. Were their leaders stupid? Doubtful, especially considering the success they had attained prior to the failure. No, they likely fell into the trap of having a strength turn into a weakness, of being so smart they were stupid. We’ll explore this concept below.

Being smart would seem to be something that everyone aspires to (and most likely do), but while the upside of being smart is huge, as with every great thing there can be a downside if you aren’t on your guard against it.

In almost every case of smart people failing, they fell into the downside of intelligence and that is overconfidence and ego. Those two traits are what great leaders, and smart leaders, guard against regularly.

Now some may correctly mention that people who are overconfident and under the influence of their ego rarely notice or acknowledge the fact. Luckily there are some common ways that this downside of intelligence manifests itself. Smart people that are running the risk of failure demonstrate one or many of these attributes:

They think they’re the smartest person in the room – Now this may actually be the case, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things to be learned from others. Perspective and experience are gained through hands-on action and nobody can have the same actions and experiences as everyone in the room. The smart person can fall into the trap of feeling like they have better answers than everyone else in the room and ignore the expertise that everyone brings to the table, and when that happens they stop learning.

Remedy: Acknowledge that everyone in the room has a strength and a perspective that is superior to yours in some way. Use those to gain even more insight and wisdom surrounding the issue at hand. It may take more time and effort to elicit, listen to and process, but as John Wooden said "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, you need a team."

They fall in love with their old ideas – Just because they thought of it and it was a success never guarantees it will continue. Think about Kodak, Nokia, and Newspapers. Smart people often marvel at just how smart they were and forget to focus on how smart they are and need to be. The only thing guaranteed is change. Falling in love with your idea is sure to leave you obsolete the longer you hold onto it.

Remedy: Realize that great ideas and successes have a shelf life. The longer they are in place the more likely they need to be addressed. Like nature, those unresponsive to change go extinct. As Jack Welch said, "Success is less a function of grandiose predictions than it is a result of being able to respond rapidly to changes as they occur."

They quit when they fail – Because smart people are so used to winning and succeeding at what they do, they aren’t prepared to deal with failure in a productive way. Oftentimes, when something doesn’t work for them right they will assume it is “impossible” and disregard the goal entirely. In the worst of cases they will take actions that sabotage it in the future, a kind of “If I can’t do it nobody will” attitude.

Remedy: Realize that persistence is required for all great actions. Work beats talent when talent doesn’t work. Look to Edison and the 10,000 variations of the lightbulb before he got it right for an example of genius needing persistence in failure. Or look to what the paragon of intelligence, Albert Einstein, said, "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

They try to bully their way past challenges – Smart people almost always achieve some level of success, but that success can blind them to the uniqueness of the challenge in front of them. Often they will charge forward into a challenge without giving proper thought and preparation on how they are going to address it. This often leads to a lengthier process to resolution as well as some starts and stops as they discover the details surrounding what they are working on.

Remedy: Realize that every challenge is unique and there are degrees of success. It is good to come up with a process of defining and solving challenges where assumptions can be reviewed and possible solutions are explored thoroughly to avoid mismatching solutions to problems. As Bill Gates once said, "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.”

They use the wrong abilities at the wrong times - I get it, when you’re great at something you want to keep doing it and using it. This happens a lot in organizations where Marketing want to solve all problems with more marketing, or the Sales team thinks that they just need to sell differently. A smart person wants to stay smart, so they try to play to their strengths regardless of whether that’s the right fit for the task at hand. This leads to poorer products, lengthier project times, and sometimes failure.

Remedy: Look to all of the talents and resources of the organization. The more talent you leverage the better the product, service or solution will be in the end. Don’t fall into the thinking that Abraham Maslow identified when he said, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."

They don’t understand how to get help – Smart people often identify as being smart, this makes them embarrassed when they can’t be self-reliant. This leads to them getting into situations where they should be asking for help and assistance, but don’t because of their pride.

Remedy: There will be plenty of times when you need the assistance of others. The smarter those are around you the smarter you can be. And truly smart people keep the end goal in mind and align resources for themselves to reach those goals. Don’t forget what Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "I'm not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues." ~Franklin D. Roosevelt  

They think too much and act too little – In an effort to show off, the smart person will often spend extra time thinking in order to ensure there are no mistakes or to add more to the solution they are coming up with. This is similar to Project Scope Creep, where functionality and features keep getting added along the way and keep pushing out the timeline for completion. Striving for perfection in everything can stall all progress if left unchecked.

Remedy: Action and results are what matter more than anything. Yes, you want to take a requisite amount of time so that you are acting thoughtfully and not recklessly, but you need to have a bias towards action. As Pablo Picasso said, “Action is the foundational key to all success."

A truly smart person turns that intellect inward from time to time to put their own behavior under the microscope. From this reflection comes better application of their intelligence and better results. If they never go through this exercise of self-reflection they may find themselves prone to the mistakes outlined above and inviting failure. 

4 Reasons Why People Quit Managers, Not Companies

"Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence in how you react. If you're in control, they're in control." ~Tom Landry

"To be a leader, you have to make people want to follow you, and nobody wants to follow someone who doesn't know where he is going." ~Joe Namath

Recently I was involved in a vigorous debate on my Facebook page as the whether the popular saying, “people don’t quit companies, they quit managers” had any validity to it. As an employee we can all remember the horrible boss who made every day a nightmare, so we naturally see some truth in the saying from that perspective. For those of us who are leaders, however, this seems like an indictment of our competency as we have all had people quit and would hate to admit that it was because of us. The saying riled up some of those leaders who felt that most of these decisions were influenced by things out of their control.

Now let me first say that the organization must certainly have a part in any employee deciding to quit. Executive management sets the tone and culture of the company, sets the pay scale, and makes the policies that managers must follow and enforce (many of which may rub the employee the wrong way). And there are a number of external factors like relocation, family issues, etc. that can result in an employee needing to move on. Because managers do not have control over all aspects of the motivators of an employee quitting, this saying is obviously not an absolute.

But what I cannot escape when looking at this honestly is that while the organization has enormous influence over how everything runs, the departmental manager has just as much, if not more, influence over how these things are perceived by their teams. The manager is the face, and often voice, of the organization from the perspective of the employee. To think otherwise is to grossly underestimate the manager’s role in the organization. Managers can influence how bad news is presented, they set the tone by their behavior in tough times, and they can promote fairness and understanding.

Let’s take look at the four most common reasons that employees site for leaving an organization and some questions a manager can ask themselves to show their influence on the area in question:

Loss of trust or confidence – Does the manager set a fair atmosphere? Are they honest and transparent? Do they explain their decisions? Do they follow through on what they say they are going to do? Do they demonstrate a knowledge of the direction of the department and how to reach departmental goals?

Feeling undervalued – Is the manager listening to employee feedback? Are they giving constructive feedback to the employee? Are they showing appreciation and noticing successes? Are they empowering their employees to be able to do more than the basics?

Set clear expectations – Does the manager flip flop between priorities? Are there two or more sets of rules depending on who they are talking about? Do they decide things, or procrastinate on decision? Do they communicate the goals and vision for the department?

No path for growth – Does the manager help set career goals with their employees? Do they meet on those goals at regular intervals? Are they training their team on new things? Are they exposing their team to different areas? Do they have a succession plan?

As you can see, the manager has an enormous amount of influence on these four main areas that cause people to quit. Yes, the organization can fail in these areas as well, but the most immediate influence on an employee, the person who is standing right next to them, is their manager. This gives the manager the opportunity to make up for the ills of the organization by demonstrating the traits that the organization is not.

Lastly, this article isn’t meant as an indictment for every manager who has lost an employee (I have lost many myself), it is meant to be a wakeup call to just how much power and influence you as a leader have in your organization and over your team. So the next time you want to throw up your hands and say it’s out of your control, remember that you may just have a whole lot more control than you think. Don’t give it up, seize it.

Top 20 Ways To Get Out of Your Comfort Zone and Grow Your Career

"To succeed in life we must stay within our strength zone but move out of our comfort zone." - John Maxwell  

If you want to grow and develop in anything in your life, there is a fact you need to come to grips with: Expanding your comfort zone and accomplishing new things requires discomfort. It wasn’t comfortable for you to start walking as a baby; you fell down a lot. Starting a new grade in school wasn’t comfortable; you didn’t know everybody. Going on a job interview isn’t comfortable; you’re being judged. Presenting in front of a huge customer isn’t comfortable; your livelihood is riding on it.

Then why do we do these things? What forces us out of our comfort zone?

THE PAYOFF

You learned to walk because you wanted to get places, you pushed through the discomfort of a new class because you didn’t want to get left behind, you went through the interview because you wanted the job, and you made that presentation because you wanted to be successful.

As much as you logically understand this, it is emotionally counterintuitive to your subconscious. People typically seek out comfort and routine, and hold on to it whenever they find it. That’s fine, but you are also at your best when you are growing and developing, so that comfort needs to be balanced with the discomfort that comes with that growth.

There are lots of ways to encourage yourself to get out of your comfort zone; focusing on the benefit you’ll receive, plotting a logical path to reach the result, focusing on the pain of your current situation, etc. But each one of those has a common obstacle, and that is your habit of seeking comfort. Overcoming that habit is essential to expanding your comfort zone and thriving in your personal and professional life. And it is something that you can more easily overcome if you simply practice putting yourself in situations that give you discomfort.

It’s time to step forward and get some of that practice through these simple techniques that will mix up your routine, establish new habits, and get you ready for growth in your career and personal life:

Read a book – For many people this doesn’t sound uncomfortable at all, in fact it’s one of their comforting activities, but here’s the trick; Read a book from a genre you wouldn’t usually pick up. If you read fiction, make it non-fiction. If you read business books, try something on sports. If you read all of those, try science fiction or the latest vampire series in the young adult section. Reading is one of the quickest ways to deeply expose yourself to different ideas, cultures and lifestyles, but you need to mix it up to get all the benefit out of it.

Ask somebody for help with something – One of the most uncomfortable things for anybody to do is admit they don’t know something or can’t handle all the tasks they’ve been assigned. Luckily for you, it’s pretty much impossible to know everything in your organization, so you have more than enough opportunities to address this. The next time you don’t know the answer to something, ask for help. The next time you’re over-committed, ask for help. You could ask a peer, a subordinate, or even your boss. You’ll not only get practice with discomfort, you’ll also be more knowledgeable and productive.

Learn something – Whether it is physical or non-physical, it’s always uncomfortable to struggle at something new, but the benefits are usually obvious. The classic physical example is dancing or a martial art, but it can also be trying a new piece of equipment at the gym or hiking a trail you’ve never been on. For the non-physical, the classic is learning a new language, but you can also make this hyper-practical by learning a new program at work. I used to hate using Excel, until I was forced to really learn how to use it. Now it is my “go-to” program for most everything (each one of my books started out as an outline in Excel before moving over to word processing software). The key is to learn something new and exercise your acknowledgement of the progress and accomplishment that can be gained.

Create small goals that work towards a big goal – Want to do something big and outlandish? Don’t obsess about the big goal, break it into smaller goals that may be uncomfortable to reach, but show the path forward. If you want to run a marathon, plot a path through your discomfort by focusing on running a 5k (3 miles) first, then focus on a 10k, then a half-marathon, and so forth. Many times, there’s no need to tackle all your discomfort at once, you can do so bit by bit.

Cook something new – Whether you cook currently or especially if you don’t, exercising some creativity where you aren’t sure of the outcome is a great way to get more uncomfortable and relatively harmless (depending on the pickiness of anyone joining you). You have to eat anyway, so try something new and get out of your regular preferences.

Get lost intentionally – Take a break from your GPS and instead get the cross streets to your destination, or a general idea of the area, and go. Maybe you ask for directions at a gas station. Maybe you drive around until you find it. Maybe you set a time limit on your searching, then break out your phone. Not knowing how to get to the destination you are going is exactly how we feel with a lot of the goals that we have.

Change your routine – Have something different for breakfast, eat lunch with a different person every day, park in a different place at work, sit on the other side of the couch, switch around your meeting schedule. Routine is comfort, the more you can fight against routine, the easier it will be for you to embrace the discomfort of growth.

Try a food you don’t like – Our tastes change. If you took 10 foods that you didn’t like in the past and tried them now, I’d be willing to bet that you actually like one or two of them.  This risk or “leap of faith” is not unlike that first step through discomfort. Getting out of your comfort zone is a BIG DEAL, and similar to that old grade school joke, “How do you eat an elephant?” the answer to making it easier on yourself is “one bite at a time.”

Don’t just give to charity, serve for charity – Giving instead of receiving is good for so many aspects of your life. In the case of charity, the greatest benefit is serving instead of just giving financially (which IS still important). The reason is that the environment is different than your work. Often you are called upon to exercise talents that you don’t get a chance to in your day-to-day, or you are asked to stretch out into something new. Either way, you are making a difference to yourself and others.

Listen to different music and try to find a song you like – It isn’t just about switching genres, it’s about sincerely trying to find a song you like. Music influences itself across genres, so if you listen to a new station for a couple of hours, you’ll likely find at least one song that resonates with you. Maybe you take the next week and listen to a different station every day on the commute into work and the commute home. Again, breaking up the routine by discovering something new creates a positive correlation with discomfort.

Smile – Smiling to everyone you pass in the hall, see at a meeting, run into in the breakroom is something that opens you up to conversation and interaction with others. You may choose to steer clear of these interactions by avoiding eye contact and smiling. It keeps you in control, which is far more comfortable than being out of control. Since you don’t know which passerby will take you up on it, it creates a sense of suspense throughout the day.

Go offline for a day – OK, now we’re talking about “next level” stuff! In this day and age, if you really want to get uncomfortable, leave the internet alone. Maybe you go to a movie instead, just watch TV, or even read a book. Taking an internet break is VERY uncomfortable for most of us, but can reap a whole host of benefits beyond just stretching your comfort zone.

Take a different route to work each day – Fight the routine whenever you can. There are a myriad of different ways to get to work, why not explore some. Get off at the exit before the one you usually take, get off at the exit afterwards, take a different freeway, take the surface streets all the way in. Switch things up, just leave a little extra time to find your way.

Change your look – It can be drastic like shaving/growing a beard, coloring your hair, or it can simply be dressing up or down a little more. Adding color to your wardrobe, wearing your hair differently. We are all caught up in appearances and regardless of how enamored we are with a change to our looks, it isn’t the most comfortable thing to walk into the office and face everyone’s opinions.

Break a bad habit – Perhaps the most useful way to practice getting out of your comfort zone is to break a bad habit. Whether it is smoking, swearing, slouching, or whatever. Use this as an opportunity to break a routine you want to break, not just because you want to practice getting out of your comfort zone, but because it’s good for you as well.

Visit a place you’ve never been – Travel is an amazing way to get out of your comfort zone, but it doesn’t take going to Tahiti to activate that sense of exploration (though by all means, you’re welcome to try Tahiti). It could be visiting a park you’ve never been to before, a mall on the other side of town, a shop you’ve always been curious about, anything at all. New places equal new experiences and that is the essence of growth.

Watch a foreign film – If you can’t visit France, you can at least sample some of their entertainment. Same goes for Japan, Australia or India. Pick one in a genre you like with good reviews. Feel free to leave the subtitles on. It will be amazing the differences you see, as well as what looks familiar. Discovery and discomfort don’t need to be painful, you can stretch your comfort zone in entertaining ways as well.

Act first – Being the first person to say hello, the first person to raise their hand, the first person to initiate contact in any way is an enormous show of confidence. It’s also a leap of faith. That you’re right, that you won’t be rejected, that you both share the same opinion. It’s also often uncomfortable, and it’s not like more time makes it better (just think back to the last uncomfortable silence you were a part of in a meeting). Being the first to act exercises the often-painful act of deciding. Before you can climb a mountain, you need to take that first step up the trail.

Build something – It could be Ikea furniture, it could be a gardening project, it could be a Lego set with your child. Anything where there is an opportunity for you to make a mistake is an exercise is getting out of your comfort zone, especially where that mistake will be tangibly displayed to you.

Learn about someone who has been where you want to go – You’d be surprised at some of the difficulties and challenges that people go through that you are unaware of. If you want to put your excuses to rest, just look at someone who has achieved what you want in life. You’ll likely see whole other levels of discomfort than you are facing right now, you’ll see greater weaknesses, you’ll see unformed strengths, and you’ll see people who moved past all those. You aren’t alone in needing to step outside your comfort zone, and to prove it you just have to look around.

Getting comfortable with discomfort can be one of the most important factors in your career success. Luckily for you, it is a skill like any other, and if you practice, you can develop this vital trait and make all of your efforts to grow easier.

The REAL Reason Promoting The Wrong People Destroys Companies

"The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership." ~Harvey S. Firestone

"First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people." ~Leo Rosten

There is a huge amount of focus on hiring the right people in most organization, but an area that is just as important yet often gets little attention, is promoting. Time and time again leaders who may be great at hiring, marginalize their leadership by promoting the wrong people. In fact, promoting the wrong person can result in even worse repercussions than hiring the wrong person. The main reason?

Its effect on the team

Hiring the wrong person generally impacts a small part of the organization. You also have ways of recovering from it through extra training, flexibility in duties, or just hiring someone else if it comes to that. When you promote the wrong person into a leadership role, it has a far wider effect on the organization and can have disastrous effects. Nowhere is that more apparent than the effects it has on your team:

Insulting – Your best people generally want to move forward in their careers. They want the recognition, the development and the money that goes along with it as well. They have a lot invested in seeing that promotion from a practical and emotional perspective. When you promote an inferior candidate over them that emotion can easily take over and result in them being insulted. The feeling is that you do not recognize, appreciate or care about their efforts.

Lack of Trust – If they feel that you have made the wrong decision on something as important as selecting leaders, then how many other poor decisions have you made? This may put the first crack in the foundation of trust and as they take a closer look at past and present decisions from the emotional standpoint noted above more cracks are likely to be created (rightly or wrongly).

Productivity – With the demoralizing feeling of being insulted and the creation of a lack of trust it opens the door to sometimes dramatic productivity decreases. If they feel that their hard-work isn’t being recognized or rewarded, then they may wonder why they should bother to put forth the effort. Couple this with the fact that you now have an inferior leader in your department and you have the worst of both situations: a poor coach and poor players.

Turnover – The final and costliest result of poor promoting is when team members decide to leave because they feel they have better prospects elsewhere or they have lost faith in your leadership. This costs you in losing their expertise, shaking up the team dynamic, the time and money to hire a new person, and the time and effort to train the new person

The first key to stopping this is of course to promote the right people. Focusing on getting a clear understanding of the role you are promoting into, the skills required to be successful, and not bowing to outside pressure from people who aren’t as informed as you. The second, and most important thing, is to talk it through with each of the candidates who did not get the promotion. You may be lucky enough to have several great team members who would do well in the role, but you could only choose one. It’s important that they know what went into your decision and where they need to improve so that they get the next promotion. You don’t need to justify your decision; you simply want to be transparent with them so that they don’t mistakenly go down the road noted above.

So take your promotions just as seriously, if not more seriously, than your hiring decision. Their impact on your existing operation can be immense.

7 Reasons to Fire Your Toxic Employees

“A chain is only as strong as its weakest link” ~Unknown

"One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested." ~E. M. Forster

Letting someone go is one of the worst things any leader faces. As leaders you are supposed to develop the people in your charge, and if necessary mold positions to suit strengths and weaknesses. For this reason, firing an employee is not only uncomfortable and results in the need to go through the effort, time and expense of hiring and training a new person, it is also an indictment on your own leadership capabilities.

That all being said, as a leader you live in a reality where your best efforts will not necessarily end in the results you desire for any number of reasons. When that happens, when you’ve expended the energy to improve the employee’s performance, when you’ve given the re-training, when you’ve had the one-on-ones and when you’ve given the warnings, the best thing you can do for the good of the organization is to let that person go.

Nowhere is this more important than with an employee whose behavior and performance is toxic to those coworkers around them. This added degree of negativity is something that all leaders face at one time or another and how they deal with it can define how their team views their leadership and overall performance. A recent Harvard Business School study titled Toxic Workers and authored by Dr. Dylan Minor and Dr. Michael Housman found that it is actually more beneficial to eliminate toxic employees from your team than it is to hire in superstars.

It is a very common weakness among leaders to despise letting employees go so much that they don’t, even when it is in the best interest of everyone involved. But while firing an employee, even a toxic one, is something that a leader looks to prevent, it can yield some very positive results:

Sets the right example for others – Poor performance should never be allowed to become the status quo either within the whole department or at the individual level. Your high performers are watching those around them and if they see others performing poorly on a consistent basis, and see that behavior being tolerated, they may adjust what they view as the expectations they should be held to. Where toxic and poor performing individuals have the worst impact on an operation is with newly hired employees. In these cases, their example immediately lowers the bar for performance expectations and impedes the performance of the new hire.

Improves motivation – Toxic employees are almost always “glass half empty” individuals who will find fault in even the best successes of an organization. One of the biggest benefits of eliminating these people from your workforce is in the area of overall motivation and morale. What’s more, when other employees see an individual performing poorly yet in many cases being paid the same, they may rightfully ask why they are working so hard and are so concerned about performance. It’s this area where a poor performer can start derailing the performance of an entire organization.

Replacements boost results – While just eliminating the poorly performing and toxic employee from your operation likely will yield an improvement, as noted in the Harvard study above, it doesn’t mean you can’t replace the individual. If you have learned from the hiring mistakes of the past there is an enormous opportunity to take what was a detriment to performance and replace it with something that accelerates performance yielding twice the benefit.

Performance often worsens – You often get more of what you tolerate. Once the employee knows that they can get away with giving less and disrupting operations, they are likely to continue getting worse. It isn’t just how bad they are, it’s how bad they can become that should encourage action on your part.

Establishes trust – When expectations are clear, when you make the difficult decisions, and when you take actions that support the overall goals of the organization it builds trust between you and your team. They know that you mean what you say and that you will back it up, they know you will be fair in your assessments and you know you are working to provide an environment where they can excel. This trust speeds decision making, buy-in and overall process flow.

Let’s you use time more productively – Your time as a leader is valuable and you need to be spending it constructively working with each member of your team (high-performers as well as low-performers). While you have a duty to spend extra time when needed with an individual, you need to see results. Assuming that you have been spending more time with the toxic or poorly performing employee, by letting them go you are able to rebalance that time allotment between employees.

Opportunities for empowerment – Those duties once done by a poorly performing or toxic employee need to be done by someone. In many cases this is an opportunity to give another team member some new experience. At a bare minimum it is an opportunity for a trainer or mentor to exercise these essential skills.

Now it should go without saying that you need to follow the correct procedures, documentation and discipline before firing any employee, and this takes time. Time you can use to correct the issues with the employee so that it doesn’t come to a firing. What this list is meant to do is to encourage you to do the right thing when it comes time to. 

12 Signs of Weak Leadership (and what to do about it)

"You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case." ~Ken Kesey

"To be able to lead others, a man must be willing to go forward alone." ~Harry Truman

We are faced with an epidemic of weak leadership in this day and age. Part of it is that leaders are rarely trained on leadership practices. Part of it is that leaders are overburdened with responsibilities which leads to some areas atrophying. And part of it is that we have taken few strides in organizations today to stem the tide of hiring the wrong person into a leadership position to begin with (for a variety of reasons).

What this has left us with is a workforce crying out for strong leadership. My hope through this article is that you’ll be able to get a better awareness of where your leader may be coming up short, but even more than that, I hope you’ll take a look at your own behavior and notice some areas where you may be demonstrating weak leadership and take to heart the recommendations for correcting them.

Safe decisions - Not surprisingly, weak leaders don’t stand up for their own opinions. They pander to public opinion, they manage the routine rather than lead the extraordinary, and they are more concerned about being right than achieving the right outcome. The funny/sad thing is that safe decisions become riskier and riskier as they accumulate.

What to do if this is you – Realize that as the leader of your department you have access to better information with which to make a decision than almost anyone. You are also charged with improving operations, not just maintaining the status quo. Both of these together mean that you should regularly be making changes in your operation and going “against the grain” of the current thinking and what is currently in place. Some will work out, some won’t, but you aren’t doing your job if you aren’t risking failure occasionally. Start small with a project exclusively for your department and an idea all your own. After this one select one slightly larger to implement. As you continue to make these decisions you will get more and more comfortable with your own ideas.

Makes others decide – Slightly different than “safe decisions” is actually deflecting leadership onto the team. Have you ever had a boss tell you to, “Just do what you think is best” or “Just handle it” when you came to them with a not so trivial question about something? That’s a leader who is ceding their control over the department to others, not for employee empowerment or employee development reasons, but because they are overburdened, don’t know the answer themselves, or are afraid of making a poor decision and getting blamed.

What to do if this is you – When your team members come to you for help, this is when strong leaders shine. This is an opportunity for engagement, trust building, and coaching and it needs to be a priority. Listen to their concerns and let them know what you’re thinking. Try at first to come up with a mutual decision, which can be the segue to making the decision for them once you’re more comfortable. If you are bold in your decision making while working with them, they will be bold in their own decision making which will over the long term reduce the questions you will see.

Doesn’t want feedback – A weak leader is generally so afraid of being wrong or being put on the spot where they would need to say “I don’t know” that they generally shut down feedback before it begins, or they claim to have knowledge that others don’t and request that the team member just trust them. These leaders also tend to always be in a hurry, ensuring that they don’t linger any longer than absolutely necessary so as to avoid the time to ask questions.

What to do if this is you – First of all, it’s OK not to know something as long as you’re able to find the answer. Questions are an essential part of your team understanding what you told them to do. If you don’t allow them time to ask questions, you’ll need to answer for mistakes later. So plan on answering questions every time you give any direction. You don’t need to plan an exorbitant amount of time, but a minute or two to answer a few questions should give your team the reassurance to move forward in the direction you intended.

Uses authority not respect – Much of a weak leader’s behavior comes from an inherent insecurity. Even if they have the capability to earn the respect of their team, they won’t feel like they are worthy of it and they will default to intimidation. This usually comes about with continual reminders that they are the boss and that everyone needs to follow their direction because they are the boss.

What to do if this is you – Utilizing authority is the worst form of motivation. Get in the habit of briefly explaining why you are making the decision you are.This gives your team a window into your thinking, helps them develop the same thought processes and ultimately leads to respect. Give the “why” as often as you can and you’ll find you need to use authority much less.

Doesn’t communicate – Leaving people in the dark is an exercise in control. If your team doesn’t have the information, then they can’t formulate their own opinions and they become completely reliant on you for direction. This comes about based on a need for control, but often because the weak leader is uncomfortable communicating in general (and wasn’t mentored in how to do it effectively).

What to do if this is you – This is the information age and people demand information of what is going on around them that effects them and their work environment. If you don’t communicate the information, then they will likely jump to conclusions and flat out guess to fill the void. For the leader who isn’t terribly comfortable communicating, a monthly team meeting or weekly “stand-up” is usually all it takes to field questions and convey what is going on.

Blames, doesn’t act – When a problem arises, a weak leader will go on the defensive first and try to find who to blame instead of acting to resolve the issue. Only when they are satisfied that they have a scapegoat will they move forward with action.

What to do if this is you – Flip your tendency and act to fix the issue right away. There is always time to find out the root cause of issues after they have been addressed. So even if you still feel the urge to blame, you can at least act like a strong leader at the start. Focus not on blame, but on cause when doing the analysis, and address the cause.

Doesn’t follow through – Meeting deadlines and goals that you set for yourself in front of employees are difficult because they always meet with resistance at some point. Weak leaders buckle in the face of this resistance, and it prevents them from doing the right thing and finishing what they said they would accomplish. While their projects from their boss get done on time, it’s the projects from peers and employees that get relegated to the “To Be Completed” pile.

What to do if this is you – First of all be careful what you promise. Practice saying “I will do my best” if you are unsure of whether something can be done or not. Next, where appropriate enlist the help of the person you are doing the follow through for. Anything worthwhile isn’t usually done easily, so know that you will naturally face resistance. Strong leaders push through that resistance to the finish line.

Waits in a group setting to express opinion – One of the easiest ways to spot the weak leader is in a group setting. Those who wait until everyone has spoken, then jump on the bandwagon of popular opinion or still don’t commit are likely weak. The other way this surfaces is that they wait, then simply reiterate or rephrase what was popularly said before.

What to do if this is you – Your opinion is valuable and required. You need to be able to assert your feedback to the group so that everyone has as much information as possible. Since you may have a natural fear of the criticism your thoughts may inspire, focus first on giving your opinion in the middle of the discussion. If there are six people, shoot to be the third or fourth to speak. This exercises that “assertiveness” muscle.

Avoids confrontation – Whether calling out a team member for falling short in behavior or results, or avoiding settling conflict between two employees, the weak leader can’t be found anywhere when tensions escalate in the workplace.

What to do if this is you – De-escalating conflict isn’t too difficult for a leader actually. All you need to do is change the venue and allow 10 or more seconds of time for the parties to think and it will be much more comfortable. The most common way to do this is to simply call both parties into your office, or a meeting room. This pause allows somewhat cooler heads to prevail and ease your discomfort at helping facilitate a mutual understanding.

Cries on the employee’s shoulders – Expressing your fears and concerns to peers or bosses is acceptable. Expressing all of these to an employee is breaching decorum. It isn’t that your team shouldn’t see you rightfully concerned, but when personal issues, fears and concerns are brought up it often diminishes the effectiveness of directives you make in the future by undermining their respect for you.

What to do if this is you – Leaders are human too, but I recommend finding another outlet. Whether that is taking a walk and thinking it through yourself, talking to a trusted peer, or venting to a friend or spouse.

Excuses – It takes a lot of guts to admit you are wrong. Not taking ownership for your failures is the opposite. Of course there is a reason for the shortfall or failure, but making excuses instead of planning actions to address it shows not only weakness, but immaturity in leadership.

What to do if this is you – Excuses are often founded in truth, but they don’t go the extra needed step. It’s this extra step that you should take. Go ahead and continue giving the excuse (for the time being) then immediately follow it with what you are going to do to address the issue. As you get practice with this, you can begin to leave out the excuse. And after some more practice, replace the excuse with “I’m sorry” and give your planned course of action.

Poor emotional control – It takes strength to deal with the pressures and frustrations of leadership. Weak leaders succumb to outbursts of anger, sadness, and hopelessness right in front of the team. Yes, even that “Titan of Industry” that you have exposure to. Giving in to too much emotionality is a sign of weakness. All leaders are human, but the strong ones balance the emotional and the logical at all times to keep focused on the results they desire and charting the course to get there.

What to do if this is you – There are often some common triggers that you have that set off the emotion. Identify each of these triggers. If you are aware of it ahead of time, you have a better likelihood of controlling it. And in cases where you feel that you can’t get ahead of it, that’s one of the only times I would recommend leaving the department, even if just for a couple of minutes. Better for the team to see that than have the negative repercussions of an outburst.

As mentioned in the introduction, people are desperate for strong leadership to lend them a layer of security and to develop their talents to the fullest. If you are able to develop some strength in your leadership you will be able to not only help yourself in your career, but will likely help your team as well.

10 Proven Ways to Turn a Bad Day Around

"My responsibility is leadership, and the minute I get negative, that is going to have an influence on my team." ~Don Shula

"If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree." ~Jim Rohn

Sometimes your day just goes bad. It might have started out that way when you rolled out of bed, or it could have taken a turn for the worse once you got into work. The key for high performers is that you turn it around and not wallow in it. Studies have shown over and over again that positive people are more productive and more likely to get promotions. But here’s the dirty secret they don’t always tell you: They aren’t always positive.

Great leaders and great employees know how to turn a bad day around when they run into one and today you’ll see 11 ways that you can do it too:

Accept it, it happens – Acknowledge and move on. We’re all human, which means we’re going to have bad days. The most amazing people you know have bad days, so you’re in great company. Don’t let it get you into a negative mindset where you start thinking it only happens to you and you’re doing something wrong. The only wrong thing is to let yourself stay there longer than absolutely necessary (which isn’t that long).

Pinpoint the problem – What happened? Did your boss come into your office and yell at you? Did you get too little sleep? Did someone resign? Were sales bad last quarter? Did the barista screw up your latte? Not only does knowing what went wrong help you address it right now, it also helps you discover your “triggers” so you can get ahead of a bad day in the future.

Take action – One of the most constructive things you can do when faced with a bad day is to take action to address what got you there. Too many times a bad day can spiral out of control and you are left wallowing in everything that is going wrong and how uncontrollable the situation is. When you take action, you take back that control and you are forced to look forward to a goal, not back at everything that’s wrong.

Change your routine – If you want to change the momentum of your day, you’ll likely need to change…well, something. Go outside and take a few deep breaths. Take your laptop and go work from a conference room for a while. Jump up and go to the break room for a coffee. Take lunch early. A great way to snap yourself out of your “funk” is by doing something different.

Find your latest success – Switch your focus from the bad to the good. What successes have you had recently. If the boss is berating your performance on something, think about other things that he/she praises you on (or that you know you’re good at if they don’t tend to give positive feedback to anyone). One of the best ways of preventing a bad day is to nurture enough positive momentum so that when something happens that would usually tip your day into a “bad day” you already have so much good momentum going on that it rolls right off your back.

Find a way to laugh – Laughter is healing to the soul. Maybe you look up SNL skits, stand-up comedy, or funny cat videos on Youtube. Maybe you just head to the web and look for jokes. Ask the office funny man for a joke. Laughter is a great way to break yourself out of the rut.

Get a few quick wins – Winning is almost as good as laughter for getting you in a good mood. Remember that action we talked about above? If it is difficult to take action against the cause itself, sometimes just getting a few little things off your plate in a successful way can help.

Gratitude – A little perspective can turn a bad day around. Listing out the things that you are grateful for is one of the best ways to get that perspective. Yes, you’re having a bad day at work, but do you still have a great job? Are you still providing for your family? Do you have good health? Good friends? If you can focus on the great big things that are going right, you might find what spun your day “bad” really isn’t that important.

Talk to a friend – Pick up the phone or go walk over to someone’s office and just shoot the breeze with them. Spending time around people you like and conversing about topics you enjoy will calm you down and bring a smile to that face. We don’t do life alone, and this is a great reminder of that.

Learn from it – Lastly, try to learn from the experience. Bad days often occur because of mistakes, and mistakes are some of our primary material and motivation to learn. When you have a bad day, realize that you’ve been given an opportunity to learn something, so take advantage of it. Turning a bad day into an opportunity turns around the end result.

There’s no need to let a bad moment effect the whole day, there is always a way to turn it around so that you can maximize your productivity and enjoyment of work. If you start taking the actions listed above you’ll find what works for you and what doesn’t, and from there you can more easily manage your day on an ongoing basis.

The Top 10 Ways Great Leaders Deal With People They Don't Like

"We build too many walls and not enough bridges." ~Sir Isaac Newton

"Thinking too well of people often allows them to be better than they otherwise would." ~Nelson Mandela

For most of us, it was around some point in Elementary School where we realized for the first time that there were just some people we didn’t like. As time went on and we developed our own sense of self, those numbers slowly expanded. In today’s work world you are going to “bump-heads” with more than a few people. The more people you interact with, the more likely that number is to jump higher. For leaders this can mean suppliers, employees, peers, customers, or their boss.

Your productivity and effectiveness as a leader often requires you to work alongside individuals you don’t particularly care for in the interests of your organizational goals. How you deal with people you don’t care for can tell you a lot about your maturity not just as a person, but as a leader as well. Below are 10 ways that great leaders look past their own dislike of an individual so that the organization can keep moving forward towards its goals.

They accept that they are not going to like everyone – There are as many personalities and competing agendas as there are people in the world. Some of those are going to conflict. Just because you don’t like a person, doesn’t mean that you or they are “bad”. Some people are just “oil and water” to each other, but that doesn’t make the oil or water bad. In fact, both of those things are essential. Accept that you don’t need to be friends with all of your employees.

They bear with (not ignore or dismiss) those they don’t like – When you need to work with someone you don’t like, it’s best to just jump right in and start working. Great leaders focus on the goals, not the people they will be forced to collaborate with to get there. They also realize that dismissing, ignoring or trying to work around that person not only strains the relationship further, but also makes everything harder which is counterproductive to their personal goals.

They treat those they don’t like with civility – “Don’t poke the bear” was something my father would say when wanting to have me exercise caution with someone or something. Showing kindness and remaining positive in the face of someone you dislike allows for you to make the most of the situation, not tear it down further. Giving in to dislike in your interactions with the particular person is a destructive trait and great leaders recognize this.

They check their own expectations – In many cases where you don’t like an individual, your own issues can be a contributing factor to that dislike. Maybe you are expecting an unrealistic level of productivity/contribution or maybe you disagree with an approach they use with their work. Regardless of what the specific reason, our own “baggage” for lack of a better word can make matters worth. The fault never lies solely with one side and you can only change yourself.

Figure out why they bother them – Being able to deal with an individual you don’t care for is made MUCH easier if you can identify what it is that bothers you. When you can identify that, you can identify all of the areas where they don’t. This allows you to better focus on the positive side of the relationship and help you to deal better with those times when they do bother you by focusing your energy on those times when you may need more of it.

They pause and take a deep breath – The 2-3 seconds it takes to take a deep breath can be the difference between further straining a relationship and pushing forward. It gives you time to think instead of react and a chance to calm yourself in the face of frustration. While it is a good habit to get into before making any decision, it becomes especially important when working with someone you don’t particularly care for.

They allow space between them – While you don’t want to ignore an individual you need to work with, you don’t have to pretend you are best buddies and hang out with them all of the time. Establishing boundaries and space is a responsible way to manage the relationship. Maybe some communication is through e-mail that you would usually come visit their cube for, maybe you can take your lunch at separate times or pick a workspace further away. Any of these can be a great way to cope with a situation so that you can be constructive when needed.

Focus on how they benefit your team – Attempting to find a reason to like them may be pushing it in some instances. What great leaders really want is to be able to work effectively with the person they don’t like. By focusing on how the individual benefits the team (and there is almost always a reason that they do) the leader reveals a “like” in a constructive way. This also helps create a respect for the individual where it may have been eroding by recognizing their talent in a particular area.

Observe how others handle them – In many (if not most) cases, you won’t be the only one that has an issue with a person. Noticing how others handle their interactions with this individual will give you an idea of what works, what doesn’t and give support to the idea it isn’t just you.

Help them – Extending the olive branch by helping out an individual you don’t like has enormous benefits. You will feel better about yourself, the person in question will feel better about you, and this action could be the spark that creates a mutual understanding that repairs any rift between the two of you. Relationships go through ups and downs and just because you don’t like someone now doesn’t mean you won’t like them a great deal at another time. Helping them out when they need it can be a great catalyst to this shift.

There will be a whole buffet of situations that come up in your career that are difficult, confusing, uncomfortable and senseless. Great leaders find ways to move past all of these areas to maintain productivity and to reach their personal and professional goals. People they dislike are just one more thing they find ways to work through.

Top 10 Reasons Even The Best Employees Quit

"The employer generally gets the employees they deserve." ~J. Paul Getty

Organizations today face one of the toughest environments they have ever had for hiring and retaining top talent. It isn’t that top talent is difficult to find or that there is a shortage in any way, it’s that the top talent wants to be satisfied and fulfilled in their careers and they realize that they have options.

What this has done is leave leaders susceptible to losing their best and brightest if they. Luckily, the steps needed to retain the best aren’t excessive. In fact, you might consider them some of the basics of leadership. Unfortunately, it’s easy for a leader to slip in some of these areas. So be mindful of your own leadership when looking at the below reasons your best employees might choose to go elsewhere:

There’s no career development – High achievers want to achieve. That achievement can take many forms, but primarily encompasses career progression and acquiring new skills. If you don’t have a career path planned for your team members and a plan for learning the skills necessary to get there, then you leave them little choice but to carve their own path elsewhere.

Overwork – Emails on evenings, weekends and vacations. Random emergencies that require everyone to stay late. Turning down time off for “business reason.” Dropping the work of three people in their lap after layoffs. Your best employees are likely to have a better attitude towards this than most of your team (they at least like being busy and having the opportunity to be relied upon and learn new things), but what they require in trade is flexibility. The workforce of today expects to have a better work/life balance. The greater the work expectations, the more flexibility they require in working from home, appointments during the day, and time off when needed.

No recognition – Your poor performers require coaching and training; your best performers want recognition. Poor work and great work need to be treated differently. They aren’t “glory hounds”, but they do expect to see some acknowledgement of their great work. If they don’t get that acknowledgement, then they might rightly wonder why they don’t just slack off like others. Treating all employees the same regardless of performance has limits, and this is one of them.

You don’t follow through – Often the employee will tell you what they want/need to feel fulfilled and to grow in the department and organization. When a leader says they are going to do something about that, but doesn’t follow through its destroys the trust that the employee has that you are looking out for their best interests. Leaders who don’t follow through don’t care, and not following through has been the “straw that broke the camel’s back” for many employees.

Not fostering passion and purpose – More now than ever, high achievers attach self-identity to their job. Your team wants to feel like they are making an impact on the organization, and preferably the community as well. If you aren’t in an industry that could be classified as helping the community, you can always do volunteer work and team building. The most important thing is actually within the walls of the organization. Does each of your team members feel like they are vital to the success of the whole? If you paused at all, then you need to get this addressed.

No challenge – Your best and brightest will get bored very easily if you don’t engage them with challenging work occasionally. This can be a new project, some cross training in another job function, being a relief supervisor, anything. Boring jobs aren’t fulfilling or interesting.

Toxic environment – Life is too short to deal with a workplace that leaves you defeated, drained and demoralized at the end of the day. Your best employees are likely to do something about this sooner than your other team members, because they know that they have options. Whether it is a member of leadership or another department you need to shield them from, a particular coworker who brings everyone down, or just a general feeling of toxicity in the culture, your ability to deal with these successfully will go a long way to retaining employees good and great.

Nobody is held accountable – Taking pride in your work is something that great employees expect of themselves, their coworkers, and their leadership. There is no better way to undermine this sense of pride than not expecting excellence and holding everybody in the organization to that standard. Poor performers need to be held accountable or you drive your team to the lowest common denominator of performance.

No trust with boss – High achievers have little tolerance for a boss who micromanages their work, refuses to delegate tasks that could help them grow and blames the team for mistakes that were clearly their own. All of these behaviors destroy the trust between the employee and leadership. If you continue to move forward in your leadership with these traits, you likely don’t deserve your best employees.

No communication – This is the information age and people expect to be able to find answers to their questions and to receive updates on what is occurring in the organization. Your best employees are no different and because they have aspirations and goals for their career they feel a higher need to know what is going on so that they can make the correct course corrections and decisions. If you are keeping them in the dark you are starving them of the information they need, and making a smart employee stupid by forcing ignorance on them.

Organizations don’t need to lose their best employees, it really shouldn’t be that hard to keep them. But you need to address the things that make them leave. If you don’t you will not only lose employees, but you’ll likely find your own job in jeopardy as your workforce erodes and it gets more difficult to fulfill your responsibilities.

Top 10 Ways to Spot a Boss Who's Lying

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” ~Abraham Lincoln

“The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.” ~Stephen King

Trust is something that all of us should have with our boss, but we aren’t always lucky enough to have it or there is a time where we are forced to question that trust. While we all have an instinctual “radar” for lies that has been built up over the years, there are some clues to look for when you are concerned your boss may not be as truthful as you’d like.

Now a quick disclaimer that your boss is human like everyone else, and as such can have A LOT of things that play into how they behave from one moment to another. While we would all like a “silver bullet” which could tell us when they are lying, it doesn’t yet exist. So please don’t take these as definitive proof of a lie, they are something to be taken into account when formulating your opinion of the truthfulness of what was said.

So what should you look for?

Avoiding “I” – When someone is lying they typically attempt to distance themselves from the lie itself, or give themselves some other form of “out” if the lie is discovered. When it comes to manner of speech, one of the indications is avoiding the first person “I” in their statements. Boss’s routinely take ownership of statements, opinions and directives, but in the case of lying, they will speak in a more academic or factual manner as opposed to taking ownership over the subject matter.

Uncomfortable & fidgety – Even the most consummate liar is uncomfortable doing so, it’s just not natural and there is always the fear of being caught. While generally uncomfortable subject matter can be part of the cause, when the subject matter is more routine, yet they are still showing signs of discomfort, this can be a concern. This is a particularly good clue for your boss as they are generally more comfortable within the walls of their department, so they should be at ease.

Avoiding eye contact or too much eye contact – The discomfort of telling a lie can also show in eye contact if they are avoiding it, but not always. Sometime your boss may hold eye contact for an uncomfortably long time as a means of trying to convince you of their sincerity. In both cases it is when it seems awkward that there should be concern.

Verbal/Non-Verbal disconnect – The subconscious mind is the enemy of a liar. Where this can come up is when the words that are spoken convey the opposite of the body language or emotion with which they are said. Think about your boss nodding their head, but saying “No”. The most common place this shows up is when anger seems to come out of nowhere surrounding a topic that shouldn’t really be warranting that emotion. This can come about because of your boss’s guilt/discomfort at a lie, or as a means of bullying their way to making you believe the lie.

Just different – What most people are seeing when they “get the feeling” that their boss may be lying to them is something different than what they usually see from their boss. It could be facial expressions, body language, different manner of speech, or any number of other “different” behavior. I guess if you have a boss that constantly lies, perhaps this could be indicative of truthfulness.

Avoiding questions – When they quickly change the subject after answering a question, or find a way to escape the conversation when pressed for clarity, that’s a good indication of discomfort. Again, this is part of the fight or flight instinct.

Proclaiming honesty – Why do you feel the need to reassure someone that you’re being honest? When you know you aren’t being honest, otherwise why would you feel the need to reassure. This can be particularly telling when the proclamation is made after the lie as they are subconsciously recognizing what they did and need to reinforce it.

Delay – The truth is easy to remember and easy to convey, lies take effort. When you see a delay that is just a little too long from your boss, you know that they are either uncomfortable with what they are thinking about, or need slightly longer to double-check how believable their planned response is. Either way it is a sign of the answer you receive being more contrived.

Filler words – The other way that the effort it takes to lie shows is when your boss uses a lot off filler words like “um.” This is indicative of the brain taking extra time to come up with the words to believably explain their point.

Backward leaning – The next time your boss leans back in their chair and away from the desk or conference table, ask yourself what was just said prior. Leaning back away from you is a way of subconsciously distancing themselves from what was just said.

Again, while all of these can be indicators of lying, they aren’t conclusive. Furthermore, living your life in constant suspicion is stressful and unfulfilling. So the last bit of advice for spotting a lying boss is to keep an “innocent until proven guilty” attitude towards them. It’s healthier and, with the exception of the absolute worst bosses, most often to be the correct finding.