"Last month we asked "Do you use all of your allotted vacation?"
I recently heard syndicated radio host, Mel Robbins, report that one-third of Americans feel "stuck" on a regular basis. In my experience, feeling stuck is usually connected to these thought patterns:
I recently found myself having one coaching session after another with front line managers and team leaders on the virtues of being more vulnerable with their team and colleagues. It seems that this is one of the leadership qualities we miss in our supervisory onboarding efforts. They get stuck trying to be more authoritative and show everyone why they are now the manager. Some feel compelled to know everything and cover up mistakes with justifications. In their efforts, many end up alienating the very people who once believed they would make a good manager.
Listening to customers and delivering truly “mind-blowing” service can be a very effective way to engage your team . The following anecdote has been relayed countless times as a story of great customer service, but the untold story is the one of how a phenomenal team mobilized to make it happen.
Bite the lemon
What if you walked into your office every morning and there was a lemon sitting on your desk? And what if, every day, you knew that you would have to take a bite out of that lemon before you left for the day? Like most people, you would probably spend the entire day pushing the lemon aside, finding one reason after another not to bite that lemon.
Over the 20 years that we've worked with both dysfunctional and highly functional teams, my colleagues and I have seen a key behavior surface as a difference-maker consistently. Accountability.
Unfortunately, it has become another buzzword, overused and with so many different interpretations that it has lost much of its meaning. According to Patrick Lencioni, author of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, “When it comes to teamwork, accountability means the willingness of members to remind one another when they’re not living up to performance standards and results.”