Before you show your team members compassion, you must first show them the most basic form of respect: acknowledging them and their perspectives. Simply acknowledging someone and their challenges can make things better even if it cannot make things right. Many well-intentioned leaders often fall short in this area. It’s not that they don’t want…
Words of gratitude can also change your world. Try this twist on a gratitude journal. Each day for the next two weeks, write three good things that happened and how you contributed. If you do the following gratitude challenge, you will experience positive benefits, including increased happiness and decreased depressive symptoms that can last up…
Another habit that healthy leaders adopt to demonstrate respect is one that is harder than it seems: listening effectively. Leaders who listen well make it a priority to listen first. They listen to understand rather than to respond. This allows them to truly discover what is important to the other person, which should in turn…
I was meeting a colleague at a local bakery/café recently and arrived early. I typically arrive early and wait for the other party to arrive, but this time I was enthralled with the 50+ framed quotes that defined the walls of this quaint eatery. So, I wanted to share a few of them with you…
A business is not simply a collection of people doing individual tasks. The glue to any successful business is the way employees coordinate their work with others, communicate expectations and updates, collaborate on ideas to innovate, and share customer insights. Looking for the simplest way to perform job tasks to gain efficiency and maximize employee…
As I anticipate cooking on my outdoor grill for a traditional Labor Day barbeque, I also ponder why Labor Day is, well, Labor Day. I love living during a time when any answer is just a Google and a click away. Labor Day has been celebrated on the first Monday in September in the United…
Seeing the human behind the employee starts with empathy and compassion. These are two fundamentally different but closely related concepts. Empathy is an awareness of others’ emotions and feelings. Compassion is an emotional response to empathy and creates a desire to help—it converts a feeling into action. A healthy leader taps into these two sides…
It is important to be human with your team, but it is just as important to see the human behind the employee. The late Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was once asked by TV journalist Charlie Rose in an interview: “How many kids do you think are out there who in 30 years you’ve…
Healthy leaders choose to meet the needs of their teams first. When leading with love, the needs of others come before our own, and the team’s health and success are a healthy leader’s true measure of success. It reminds us of our son’s former high school football coach, Chris Cunningham, who preached this same leadership…
A few years ago I had my first skydiving experience. Yep, that's me in the photo free-falling at 14,000 feet. I don't like heights at all, and would not be disappointed if I never rode another tall roller coaster again. So, it was an adventure in overcoming my fears. The keys for me were feeling comfortable with…
