If you’re one of the many executives struggling with finding and keeping the right people to propel your business forward, you’ll find these insights helpful. If you’re frustrated by trying to motivate people, work instead to develop a company where people are self-motivated – where they do things because they want to. When we’re inspired, [...]
Decisive Executives Have a Hard Time Being Effective
Most of us have developed our leadership style by observing the leaders, executives and managers we worked with or for throughout our career. Of course, we inject our leadership style with our own take on the world including our values. However, these are usually modifications of the model we’ve observed and been a part of [...]
Dealing with Difficult People
You know, this would be a great business if it weren’t for having to deal with people all the time… OK, so maybe I’ve exaggerated things a bit, but we’ve all certainly heard that saying before. Why does that sentiment ring true for so many folks? Obviously it’s because of all the people challenges we’re [...]
On the Importance of Gratitude
There are very few things more influential in our success than the practice of being grateful – having an attitude of gratitude. It affects our perspective, our energy, our ability to see the good, and our effectiveness at creating the future we want. Being grateful means enjoying and being appreciative of the things we have [...]
The Key to High Productivity
One of the issues most often raised by my clients is better time management. People have tried prioritizing tasks, blocking out parts of their day for certain tasks, implementing new systems and getting better at delegation. While all of those things can make a difference, there is something else that will have an even greater [...]
Stop Interviewing Potential Agents!
There’s no question that an important key to business success is building a productive team of agents or advisors. This, in fact, is a three-step process. The first step is to find good candidates to begin with, the second step is to properly select the candidates who are most likely to succeed, and the third [...]
Leadership Finesse: The Art of Asking Questions
Whenever I ask people what they feel the biggest leadership problem is, I always get the same answer. It’s not lack of integrity, poor decision making, or lack of vision (although that’s #2). Poor Communication is cited as the number one shortcoming of leaders. Poor communication is often the cause for unnecessary conflict, improperly done [...]
Reinvention is a Key for Success
Whether your business has faltered or is still going strong, “reinventing” your business can provide an enormous boost to your results. I’ll offer some specific ideas to consider in a moment, but first let me help you appreciate the many benefits of reinventing. By “reinventing”, I don’t mean abandoning the business you’re presently in (although [...]
How to Retain Agents in a Tough Economy
Finding good agents is always a challenge. It’s time-consuming and usually requires some financial investment as well. So it just makes sense – after going through all the effort to bring them on board – to invest a bit more time and money to retain them. Many organizations approach this task from the wrong perspective. [...]
Emotional Intelligence in Leadership
I’ve recently had some discussions with clients regarding whether employing the competencies of Emotional Intelligence in their leadership style will accelerate or decelerate their productivity and progress. Study after study has shown that leaders who sharpen and employ EI skills consistently outperform peers who lead through variations of the stereotypical Command-Control model. Additionally, companies which [...]







