Michael Nichols | Leadership Made Simple
Leadership Made Simple
If you’re a leader, more than likely you have a ton of free time. And I’ve noticed that, when it comes to free time, the most effective leaders give it away.
Leaders like Michael Hyatt, Seth Godin, Jeff Goins, and Jonathan Milligan (and there are many others) do two things with their free time:
A number of years ago, I purchased a commercial property that needed significant renovation. The entire project took about five years to complete. During those five years, I made approximately 24,352 trips to Home Depot. Ok, I made that up – but it seemed like that many. It was so many trips that I could get in my truck, put my mind on auto-pilot, and eight minutes later be getting out of my truck and walking into Home Depot.
It was a great system until one night my wife and I were going out to eat. We left the house and eight minutes later…Home Depot parking lot. Before I realized what I had actually done, Sarah assured me that we were NOT going to document trip number 24,353 prior to our dinner date.
To effectively communicate I occasionally have conversations with our team leaders about two critical components of teamwork – communication and structure. Recently, I had the opportunity to see effective communication at work…
One evening our office sent out a carefully drafted email to several thousand prospective students. Within hours, students began responding to the email resulting in three straight days of record applications. I was reminded of several principles of communication that are critically important to any organization seeking to accomplish its mission and vision…
Jim Collins‘ book, Good to Great, profoundly impacted my life. But I’ve always wondered, Why did he use the bus illustration? On a bus the only person working is the driver – that doesn’t seem fair! And even though Collins emphasizes figuring out where you want to go after all the right people are on the bus, the driver still has sole discretion as to whether you head there or not. (I think we’ve all worked for a boss like that.)
Several months ago, I came across a video of the Canadian rowing team. It’s only a couple minutes long – watch it real quick. Within the first few seconds of watching the video I realized – This is it! This is a great illustration of team leadership!
Check out these six secrets of great teams…
Having been involved in organizational leadership for more than 20 years, I am always intrigued by those things that either hinder growth or support it. It’s true – every organization is moving ahead or its falling behind.
The primary focus of my work has been organizational development. In fact, the companies and institutions where I served each experienced significant growth while I was there. Several experienced record growth. And more importantly, some have continued to grow since I transitioned to a new place of work.
There are two things that have the most profound influence on whether an organization grows or declines…
