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Good Leaders Are Easy to Please But Hard to Satisfy

Leaders who are easy to please but hard to satisfy motivate others to produce their best work. The healthy balance of positive reinforcement and continuous improvement creates a dynamic work climate that team members want to be a part of. People feel appreciated but know they must continue to strive for more. That’s the reality the best leaders most want to create. Burnish the words “Easy to please but hard to satisfy” next to the other great maxims in your head.

Building a Better Teacher

Elizabeth Green’s Building a Better Teacher is about the “complex craft” of teaching. She argues that teaching is a skill, and great teachers are made, not born, contrary to the philosophies behind many of the initiatives and rationalizations for how to run better schools. Green reviews education research and training, pointing out which models work and which do not, ultimately arguing for methods that help teachers improve their process in the classroom instead of leaving them to their own devices. Classroom teaching and learning is referred to as the “black box” of the education process. This is a major issue with education today because teachers are abandoned and isolated in their classrooms and often do not discuss their teaching with anyone. There needs to be more professional development opportunities for teachers, including coaching, observation, and learning from each other so they can develop critical skills and behaviors.

When Processing Email Stands for Productivity

Email overload is all too real for many leaders. But setting boundaries regarding when to check your inbox and how much time you’re willing to commit to do so is essential for fighting overload. Consider mastering the use of email filters and templates to assist in your effort. The bottom line is that processing emails is important, but not nearly as critical as the roles and responsibilities of leadership. How you spend your time defines who you are as a leader. Never confuse a required activity for productivity. Make a better choice.

The Pain of Leaving Your Team for Another Opportunity

Good leaders feel a deep responsibility for the team they have helped to create. Loyalty to individual team members and the team itself is top of mind when new opportunities arise.  The idea of leaving colleagues who have sacrificed for the team leader and were often recruited by them appears particularly self-serving and disloyal. So how should leaders think about their responsibilities to the organization, the team, and individual colleagues as they consider their own personal and family interests?  To

Good Leaders Help Others to Recognize Harmful Patterns in Their Behavior

If the ability to discern patterns is a source of wisdom, then leaders are most wise when they make those patterns explicit for those they lead. No one gets better without understanding the patterns that get in their way. Good leaders call them out, knowing all the while that patterns are created by behavior and actions and can be interrupted or changed with different choices. To paraphrase Mark Twain, harmful patterns and diapers must be changed for the same reason.

When Was the Last Time You Used a Decision Tree?

The decision-maker starts with a presumptive question that serves as the foundation for the tree. For instance, the initial variable in the dessert example may be cost: Do we have an unlimited budget for the dessert? The answer Yes might take us to the next branch question: Do we have more than 24 hours to create the dessert? A No answer to the foundational question might take us to a branch that asks: Do we need to make the dessert as cheaply as possible? You get the idea.

The more complex or highly variable the decision, the more useful a decision tree would be. Try it the next time you face a decision with a host of possibilities at nearly every point in the process. A decision tree might paint a more manageable and vivid picture.

People Want to Be Part of Something Special

Waiting for the next notable experience doesn’t prevent good leaders from creating distinctive and remarkable relationships with team members. By gaining a deep understanding of who people really are and creating the connections all people desire, leaders can forge thick relationships with team members that make them feel extra special. 

Leaders Who Own All of the Key Decisions

Some leaders can’t give up control or don’t feel comfortable unless they own all the important decisions for the team or organization. Even when they delegate less critical decisions to others, they maintain “veto power” over the decision. If they don’t like the decision, they get involved and change it. The idea of owning or controlling all the significant decisions is not limited to individual leaders. Senior leadership teams can exert the same control and veto power.
In one well-known organization where the management team controls nearly every call, the senior team is known as “the deciders” by their colleagues throughout the enterprise. It is a vivid label team members use to describe the senior team’s decision-making status. It is not a compliment.

Good People Like to Help Good People

The idea you want to learn from this person and would do anything for that chance acts like a magnet to attract positive affect. Of course, sincerity matters most. If done just to create goodwill, the request will usually backfire. Most people are good souls. They hold positive values, stand for quality, and act with good intentions. Better yet, they have a real desire to help good people, even relative strangers. Using this to your advantage is never deceptive or manipulative. Asking people for help is a relationship intensifier. If the request for help is sincere, everyone wins.

Dying for a Paycheck

Keeping employees healthy is completely consistent with economic performance. Yet modern workplace culture and managerial practices value monetary gain and status over the physical and mental well-being of employees. Pfeffer’s philosophy is that “the success of an economy and of a society cannot be separated from the lives that members of the society are able to lead” (p. 26). Dying for a Paycheck evaluates the detrimental management practices organizations maintain that are quite literally killing employees from every tier of society and offers an approach to business that prioritizes the individual.

The Kiva Method for Inclusive Decision-Making

The tribal elders of the Hopi nation knew a thing or two about inclusive decision-making. They originated a decision-making process that is all but forgotten but is poised for a comeback.  The so-called Kiva Method, drawn from the structures in which the decisions were made and devised generations ago, allows minor voices to influence more experienced views.  The process begins with three circles of decision-makers in a bullseye setup. The most experienced and senior leaders form the center circle, followed