Musings on Leadership

 ( This post is inspired by an article I read on the Trello blog. If you're not familiar with it, Trello is a web-based collaboration tool. At one glance you can see what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process. Think of it as a white board, filled with sticky notes, with each sticky note being a task. ) If you're not familiar with them, one-on-one meetings are meetings between a manager and a team member to discuss how things are going. Do we really need more meetings? Let's face it, most meetings could have been better handled by an email. In fact, 67% of employees say that excessive meetings get in the way of them making an impact at work! One-on-one meetings CAN be very helpful - and not just for the team member! They can also help YOU improve YOUR performance. For the team member, use them to discuss priorities, challenges, and professional development. For you, the leader, these meetings provide an opportunity to: build...

I've said before that leadership, at its very core, isn't that difficult. It's having a vision of where you'd like to go and being able to communicate that vision to others so that they buy into it. With that in mind, here are four "ations" you need to be a good leader. Delegation As a leader you have a lot on your plate. You should make it a priority to delegate EVERYTHING that you don't absolutely, positively HAVE to do yourself. This doesn't make you lazy. This doesn't mean you're trying to get out of doing your job. As a leader, your job is to make decisions, to make sure your team is doing their jobs. Your scarcest resource is time. Delegating that which you don't HAVE to do, frees up time to do the things you must do. Not only that, it helps build new leaders by giving them greater responsibilities. Communication Communication is probably the most important part of being a leader. Your team wants to do a good job for you. In order to ...

I’ve said before that leadership, at its very core, isn’t that difficult. It’s having a vision of where you’d like to go and being able to communicate that vision to others so that they buy into it. With that in mind, here are four tips to being a good leader. Delegation As a leader you have a lot on your plate. You should make it a priority to delegate EVERYTHING that you don’t absolutely, positively HAVE to do yourself. This doesn’t make you lazy. This doesn’t mean you’re trying to get out of doing your job. As a leader, your job is to make decisions, to make sure your team is doing their jobs. Your scarcest resource is time. Delegating that which you don’t HAVE to do, frees up time to do the things you must do. Not only that, it helps build new leaders by giving them greater responsibilities. Communication Communication is probably the most important part of being a leader. Your team wants to do a good job for you. In order to do that, they need to know exactly what it is you expect...