As I am working each day in my business role, I am encouraged by the sense that our management team members are beginning to connect more and more to one another and have a shared vision.

As a result, I am seeing more and more teamwork and stronger relationships among the team. I think one reason this is happening because our management team members feel valued and appreciated. I celebrate that progress.

The next step will be to cascade that feeling of being valued to your team members as they interact with each other. How?

Ask yourself that question- HOW can YOU make others feel valued and appreciated? And HOW can you then teach them to do the same?

I promise you that your staffing and retention challenge will get smaller at the same pace that you improve in this area.

• Greet people when they come to work- do they know you are glad to see them?
• Thank people for the little things- and the big things.
• Smile at your team members- smile at your team members- smile at your team members……
• When you have to talk to someone about an issue, think about it, and develop your words to match the outcome you are working for. Know where you want to end up before you start the conversation.
• Make constructive critical conversations short but caring
• Include the idea that you value the person in EVERY conversation
• Make it okay to make mistakes and screw up- by the way you respond to the issue
• Choose to respond- not react
• Value people by treating them well- even when they mess up.

Last thing- remember that you were once significantly less capable than your are today- and how did you get to where you are? Someone invested in you!

We are all on our way somewhere and our choices and decisions will either help us get there- or slow us down…..

If you have spent much time working in the business world, you have heard the phrase “company culture”. This isn’t exclusive to the business world, and you often hear the phrase in the non profit sector, in churches, and anywhere else where people are a central focus. Some of my thoughts apply to all of those, and some don’t.

Culture is not what you say, it is what you do.

Often there are endless amounts of communication, vision statements, posters, etc. designed to create “culture”. But all the words and posters mean nothing if there are not actions that back them up. As leaders in any environment where we want to create culture, people will watch what we do, long after they have heard what we have to say. So, we have to be intentional about giving our values real substance that our teams can feel on a regular basis.

Hire for culture.

If we hire people that already reflect our culture, then the desired culture grows in a healthy and natural way. With very little input or coaching, people who “get it”, just do things each day that line up with the culture we want in our space. When we hire people that don’t reflect our culture, we introduce conflict and create tension between the desired culture and the people in our circle.

Value culture.

When we value something, our actions show that it is important to us. The amount of time and energy invested is proportionate to how we value it. We have to teach culture, live culture, and make decisions based on culture. When we as leaders choose things in opposition to our culture, we are sending a message that what we value and how it relates to our culture has changed. Keep the two in alignment.

Reading this week, I came across this idea that I see as a valuable life principle. I want to share it because it has value in so many different ways.

Don’t focus your energy on all the reasons you have to quit, to give up, to throw in the towel. Instead, focus on the one reason you can find to keep going.

This has application in relationships, in your work, in finishing well at whatever you start.

It is easy as a leader to forget that being a leader is both a privilege and a responsibility.

Webster defines Stewardship as “the activity or job of protecting and being responsible for something”. When you are a leader, you have a stewardship that you have been given.

You have a duty of care on multiple levels.

You must care for the PEOPLE that you lead, the THINGS that are under your care, and the NEEDS of the larger organization that you are a part of as well. These are the measurements that define your leadership. What does that look like?

For me, it means that I have to constantly remind myself that I need to speak into the lives of the people that I lead – first by getting to know them, understanding who they are, and what makes them “tick”.  Then I have a responsibility to lead them in a way that modifies my leadership based on what I have learned.

With regard to the things under my stewardship, I have to role model for others the care that I want to see in them. I cannot ignore the responsibility that I have to leave things better than I find them as I lead.

And for the good of the organization, I must act in favor of the greater organization by knowing and understanding the needs, and casting a vision to meet those needs. Then, I have to go work to help do whatever I can to facilitate and lift things to the next level.

I have been thinking recently about the role that leaders play in either developing followers or developing leaders.

Whether you lead a department, a business, a non profit, or a church the issue of “who” becomes very important. Who is going to take on that new project? Who is going to be the next leader? Who is going to fill that role?

What I have noticed most often is that leaders who develop other leaders always select better people to start with, and because of that they have a deeper “bench” to choose from.

So remember to choose carefully. It will impact everything in your business.Posted by Doug