Listen Now

What does Change mean to you?Change is one of those words, like leadership, that has many different definitions depending on who is discussing it and the context around it. For me, I’ve come to realize that Change is the intersection of discernment, discovery and determination, or for my accountant friends, Change = Discernment + Discovery + Determination.It is human nature to dislike change and to avoid it at all costs. Regardless of human nature, change is a necessary reality and without it, crisis will occur. Not only do our teams need bold leaders to help them through the internal and external forces of change, it is one of the reasons you were hired or placed in a leadership position. As leaders, we are expected to Affect Change in our organization and within our teams. Leading an organization through change, positive or negative, will be one of the most challenging things you do as a leader, but can also be one of the most rewarding. How can we make change happen? It would be nice if we could just have a meeting, send an email or set a date on the calendar, announce the change we need and everyone would say, “Yes, I’m in,” and change happens. Unfortunately that’s not how it works.  Change happens when we are committed to these three things:1.     Operational Excellence2.     Courageous and Bold Decisions3.     TimeTune in to find out what makes change so hard, and more importantly,  HOW we can lead our teams through it on a daily basis.Leaders affect change.

The Red Light Green Light Decision Matrix and the Crossroads 2 x2 graph are practical and useful guardrails for quality decision making and will help you and your team execute strategy. These tools will give you the courage, the platform and the support you need when the answer is no, and they will also give you the confidence and courage you need when your answer is yes. 

When it comes to executing strategy, one of the challenges or road blocks we can encounter is that we spend our precious time and resources doing the wrong things. How does this happen to good leaders? 1) We get distracted by good ideas2) We are often unwilling or unable to pull the plug when a project isn't performing like we thought it would3) We get off-track and aren't sure how to find our way back

The second reason we fail to execute strategy is we let the day-to-day priorities, fighting fires and too many meetings steal our time. We need to protect our time by not ignoring the reality of our day-to-day needs and the impact and load on our resources, reacting appropriately when fires do flare up and limiting the amount of time we spend in meetings.

Megan Ahn, President and Founder of an Executive Search firm based in San Diego, CA, gives us her insight and expertise into the Interview process with practical tools to help you nail your next interview and get the offer!In this episode we learn that a successful interview is all about asking questions and listening in order to find out how we can apply our experience and skills to resolve the needs of the organization. They have pain and we have the skills to treat it. We also learned how to answer those tricky questions that can trip us up, and we learned that the number one goal of any interview is to get the offer. Then, and only then, do we bargain or negotiate personal terms. So much good stuff in here. 

Resist the urge to do too much. One of the reasons leaders fail to successfully execute strategy is because we try to do too much, which will overwhelm the resources of an organization to the point where nothing gets done.

Make sure your leadership avoids the fate of the fancy living room!

Develop your own elevator pitch of leadership.

What's your definition of leadership?

Introduction to Here to LEAD and Kelly Bargabos