Grolistic

Leading with Attitude

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A leader’s attitude is always on display; but during a crisis, people pay closer attention.  While no one can control the virus attacking us, every employee is watching to discover how their leader is reacting to the challenge. Effective leaders focus on what they can control, and that includes their attitude. It’s a choice they make every day. Acting with a positive mindset provides a model for their personnel, a direction to follow.  Life does not arbitrarily impose itself on us. Rather, we choose …

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Controlling the Price Discussion

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Price is obvious to all customers. It’s clear, direct and easy to evaluate. It simplifies, and so expedites, their buying decision with minimal consideration. It’s why they like to hear the numbers as early in your discussion as possible.  But talking price too early, without first learning more about the customer’s need and why its resolution is important, just confirms their initial perception of your offering as a commodity. And like every other commodity supplier, …

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The Impact of Observation

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Having signed 52 baseball prospects who would later become major league players, Tony Lucadello is known as baseball’s greatest scout. His discoveries included Hall of Famers Ferguson Jenkins and Mike Schmidt.  The number of his signees making it to the big leagues is far greater than any other scout. And he accomplished this with a territory that included Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, rather than the good weather states of Florida, Texas or California where more opportunities to …

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Practicing Productive Conflict

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The quest for improved results dictates the need for change. It’s a journey filled with conflicting opinions that require resolution before commitment to the change can be secured.  In his latest book, “Thriving in Conflict,” Doug Johnston presents his definition of conflict as “a gap between what we expect and what we experience that leads to deeper understanding and better results.  The “deeper understanding” described in Doug’s definition is enabled by ensuring that the exchange of differing opinions remains …

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Investing Your Irreplaceable Time

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With the holidays behind us, the routine of our life returns, bringing its heightened awareness of time. The digits we use to measure it will dominate once again, and since time is irreplaceable, the choices we make about investing it will dictate results. Before your routine reasserts its impact on your life, consider how you invested your valuable time last year. What did you accomplish? What worked, and what didn’t? Why is that? Did your accomplishments fulfill your purpose as a business? What unmet goals or objectives …

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The Hard Part

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When I was a CEO, one of the lessons I learned over and over again, was that our business lived on the street, with the customers…not in our facilities.  While our Operations personnel made essential contributions to the success of the business, delivering on promises made by our marketing, sales and customer service folks, they operated primarily with established expectations and known variables around product, process, and due dates. They challenged the status quo to make us better, …

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3 Ways to Strengthen Emotional Intelligence

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The better a leader relates to and works with others, the more successful he or she will be in building teams that collaborate, take ownership and deliver results. A leader’s strong interpersonal skills enable the creation of connections and the development of trust necessary to help teams achieve goals and drive change. Understanding how their emotions and actions affect those they lead, and engaging openly and transparently with their team, enables these leaders to guide, challenge and sustain their people. These …

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Doing Work That Matters

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Doing work that matters is about being vigilant for opportunities to make a difference…for your customers, your associates or your organization. Making something better for one of these groups often creates value for the others.  Doing work that matters is about leading by example… taking ownership of an issue, without authority, in order to make it better. Acting to resolve a problem, rather than complaining about it, demonstrates commitment, generosity and shared accountability that encourages others to contribute.  …

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Improving Innovation Success

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Significant time, energy and money are invested in the pursuit of innovation so organizations strive to improve their success rate. Optimizing the efficiency of their innovation process begins with their expectations about the outcome.  Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the renowned quality and management expert, observed that every process is perfectly designed to deliver the results it gets.  If an organization expects its pursuit of innovation to be imperfect and unpredictable, then its innovation process will …

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3 Ways to Help Leaders Coach

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Leaders who invest time to coach their team strengthen the company’s culture, elevate performance and improve results. But in our dynamic, highly competitive economy, it can be challenging to carve out time for the deliberate, sometimes tedious, work of mentoring those we ask to follow our lead. And the process itself can become complicated and prolonged, raising concern about failing. Yet, for leaders, coaching is a crucial priority, and an essential driver of improved performance. Here are …

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