Confidence for Hard Conversations    Communication is everything.  Our current societal environment can make communication hard; Can I say that?  How do I say that?  Should I say that?  How will they react?  Successful communication skills are one of the most important parts of being a good leader. They are especially necessary when having hard or difficult conversations. Here are some tips to navigate them today. Get prepared-Know Your Goal  When approaching a stressful conversation, leaders need to come prepared.  First, acknowledge and understand your own thoughts and feelings so they won’t interfere with an open, honest dialogue.  This allows you to be fully present with the other person.  Second, clearly articulate what [...]

Give Your Team Every Advantage It takes a lot of energy to keep up these days, both personally and professionally.  We are living and leading in what some call a “VUCA world”.  The United States Army War College originated the use of the VUCA acronym which stands for: Volatile – fast, unpredictable changes without clear patterns or trends. Uncertain – frequent disruptive changes where the past is not a good predictor of the future. Complex – many different, interconnected factors come into play, with the potential to cause chaos and confusion. Ambiguous – there is a lack of clarity or [...]

Break Through the Rhythm Have you been living your life in autopilot mode? Our everyday tasks and duties become routine. Eventually, we go on autopilot mode, no longer do our routines require us to think, we simply do them. It can be easy to get lost in the routine and comfortable with no need to break the pattern of our everyday lives. However, doing so can stop us from reaching our maximum potential and we find ourselves feeling stuck.    It’s difficult to break away from something that makes us feel “safe”, especially because it is normal to fear change. [...]

Lessons Learned During a Crisis As I reflect on our world today and what the future holds, I am cautiously optimistic that our world can heal itself if we are all willing to look inside with deep introspection and look outside with deep empathy. As a small business owner, there are some key lessons that this crisis has taught me that are lessons that I will carry with me forever.   1. Core Values are the soul of your company I knew this before to some extent; we’ve had strong core values from the beginning that have guided us on tough [...]

Does Overnight Success Exist? Many of us find ourselves looking at the highlight reels and success of the people who inspire and motivate us, but what about their struggles? It’s easy to assume that success came easily to them if we don’t see “behind the scenes” or know about the fights they had to go through to get to where they are today. This can apply for each of us individually too, many of us continue pushing on to our next project and accomplishment without thinking about our struggles and what has gotten us where we are today. I have [...]

Take a Break I had a great reminder of my need for clarity breaks this morning.  I also had the realization that working remotely when you are used to 60 hours a week and a lot of travel might have seemed like a break in the beginning but it really isn’t a break.  It’s just a different kind of crazy. I woke up this morning and realized I had hit a wall.  I have spent the last six weeks dealing with four teenagers who are distance learning and also grieving the loss of a lot of things in their lives.  [...]