Want to stand out and win customers? Think beyond product and customer service. In today’s marketplace, quality products and services along with great customer service are the basics you need just to be in the game. The big question to ask is what is the experience your business creates? Your answer is a key to positioning, differentiation, and added value that can make your business a winner. Read More...

Tags: Uncommon Thinking, Taking Care of Business

“How do I motivate the people in my organization?” It’s a question I hear often; but what’s really being asked is how to get people to do more on their own – to be “self” motivated. Is there a way to get people to go beyond what is minimally required?

Motivation, like morale and loyalty, is not something you operate but a condition you cultivate. There is no magic lever to pull that turns on motivation. Rather, motivation is like a garden and will grow on its own with proper conditions, care, and cultivation. Read More...

Tags: Collaboration & Teamwork, Artful Leadership

In a time where increasingly the value we add comes from brainpower, thinking, and knowledge work, the culture of interruption reduces the value we can add to our businesses and organizations. When we allow firefighting to become a way of doing business we undermine our potential for success.

Like managing a current in a river, we cannot ignore the culture of interruption, rather we must persistently resist it. Key points for managing the mayhem...
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Tags: Top Performance

Empowerment is a concept easy to embrace and hard to execute. Any organization which relies on knowledge, creativity, and effective problem solving to achieve its purpose needs empowered people to be effective. Leaders are only likely to empower people they believe will make good choices.

So how do you assess the capacity to make good choices? At what point should leaders empower others? What should a person do to demonstrate to leadership that they are ready for higher levels of responsibility?

I coach leaders and high-potential professionals to pay careful attention to three choice points: what kind of action is taken; whose interests are served; and how dissent is managed. The way people handle these choice points are important indicators of the value that they can contribute and the readiness for high levels of empowerment. Read More...

Tags: Artful Leadership, Top Performance

NUTS!
Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success
by Kevin & Jackie Freiberg (1996)

Settling a legal dispute with an arm-wrestling match? Advertising that their meals – and fares – are peanuts? LUV as your NYSE stock symbol? NUTS! has been around awhile, and remains a good and relevant read about the airline that continues to defy the industry in profitability, safety, and on-time flights. With an emphasis on how Southwest cultivates profound respect, fun, and talent from their people – I pick it up from time to time just for inspiration.

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The quality of how others experience who you are and what you do either amplifies or interferes with what you have to offer in any role, position, or expertise. In seminars and coaching I often encourage the cultivation of three qualities that, especially in combination, form a powerful means to build influence with integrity, while demonstrating reliability, authenticity, and meaning. These qualities are consistency, congruence, and coherence. Read More...

Tags: Top Performance