Michael Nichols | Leadership Made Simple
Leadership Made Simple
Today, you will make one fundamental decision that will singularly determine the outcome of your day.
You made the same decision yesterday. And the day before. In fact, you have made this one decision every day of your career.
At some point every day you decide…
We’ve received some great feedback on the NEW One-on-One Meeting Template since we released it.
If you missed the announcement, you can read it here – One-On-One Meetings that Work – NEW Template!
WOW! Super helpful! Great guidance and practical strategies. As someone who participates in a weekly meeting with my supervisor, this will be a powerful tool to help me guide the meeting better from my side of the desk. Chad Miller, Finance Manager
I like the structure that the template provides – meet at a regular time and 30 minutes maximum. This requires both parties to prepare for the meeting and keeps it from being a time waster. I love the challenge to prepare to listen and follow-up after them meeting. Todd Linder, Executive Director
The perfect study guide before you have a meeting with your boss. You’ll be prepared for anything! Lee Tomlin, Associate Director, BBFI
I really like the meeting agenda for team members that you provide as a part of the guide and template. And love the idea of more frequent one-on-one meetings, especially for the purpose of assessing work flow. TJ Ward, Lead Pastor
Can I help you?
Just one moment, I responded as I waited for Madison to make a selection.
Madison (our 8-year-old) and I have a standing breakfast date every Saturday morning. It’s one of my favorite parts of the week. We’ve learned so much about each other and from each other during these special weekly moments.
Today would prove to be the same…
Can I help you? The manager’s voice raised slightly, almost pleading. No one else was standing in line – glancing around, the restaurant was mostly empty. She was talking to us.
The phone began ringing. The manager calls back – Someone answer that! Two rings. Three. Will somebody answer the phone?! – borderline yelling.
Madison paused a few more moments as crew members shuffled around cleaning floors, doors, air conditioning vents, walls, trash cans. It was cleaning day.
The manager sighed then shifted. Then one last emphatic attempt to coax me into ordering – I’m ready to take your order.
A young lady who was close to my wife, Sarah, was murdered in a domestic dispute a couple of weeks ago.
I don’t recall ever seeing Sarah so emotionally shaken by a life event. For several days, she quietly processed the events that led to the tragedy.
During that time our 8-year-old daughter, Madison, noticed something was different and began to ask what was going on. So I took her to breakfast one morning and spent some time talking to her about what her mom was experiencing.
After gently explaining the situation, I asked Madison if she understood. She quickly replied, “But mom’s a counselor. Why doesn’t she just tell herself what she tells her clients?”
Most teams struggle because they don’t know whether they are a team or a family.
Often they’re an intriguing mixture of both.
After spending several years studying executive leadership teams, interviewing scores of executives and managers, analyzing thousands of data points, and writing hundreds of pages on the topic, I found that most working groups truly believe that they are a real team.
Yet most of these “teams” struggle because their leaders and members are not functioning as a real team.
There is ONE fundamental question that you must answer to be effective in your work…
