Learn what a commit goal is and what you should consider when creating one.
When you set goals, I encourage you to set two kinds of goals. The first is a commit goal and the second is a stretch goal.
A commit goal is something you’re committing to do for the organization. If you miss it, you can get fired. There should be extreme consequences for missing a commit goal. To build your commit goal, work from the bottom up. Work directly with your team and have them make commitments to you as far as what they’re going to deliver for their goals. You’ll then need to reconcile the team’s commits and make sure they all add up to your commit to your organization.
At one point I had three different teams and we were tasked with a major cost reduction project. My boss came to me and asked me how much cost reduction would I commit to removing from the system. I went to my teams and I asked them how much cost they could take out, and I asked them for their goals. They gave me commit goals of one and a half million, two million, and three million dollars, for a total of six point five million dollars that they would commit to.
When I went to my boss, I hedged on that number a little bit and I told him I could commit to six million dollars. Now, he knew better and he knew I was hedging a little and he pushed me on it. He eventually got me to a point where we negotiated and I committed to six point two five million. Over the plan period, we exceeded that goal and we hit seven million dollars of cost reduction. Obviously there were no negative consequences for the team, but the result of having that commit was the entire team was focused on delivering six point two five. We tracked it over the course of the year. It was something that was at the top of our priority list because we knew we had to deliver it to the organization. Our commit was fed into the budgeting process at the beginning of the year and by doing so we ended up with a very accurate budget that people could plan for.
When you’re creating your commit goal, sit down with the team and make sure they understand what they’re committing to is going to have implications. The organization will plan based on that number and if they miss that number, there will be consequences for them and for you. Having that clear commit will drive the focus you need in terms of achieving a goal and making sure that the rest of the organization can plan for what you’re going to deliver.
Want to learn more about setting team and employee goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to create a culture of strategy execution. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Avoid these three behaviors to improve your next brainstorming session.
Today’s post is by Samuel Sanders, author of Your Next Big Idea.
We’ve all heard of brainstorming, but what exactly is it? In a business sense, brainstorming is the process of coming up with creative ideas and solutions to problems using rapid freethinking. Brainstorming is critical in problem solving, creativity, ideation, and innovation. While in business, many imagine brainstorming as a group activity; it can be done alone or in a group. There are many tips and tricks that can help you have more effective brainstorms. However, there are three unique counterintuitive tips that many ignore. Following these tips can take your brainstorms to the next level.
The first tip is, “During a brainstorm, do not use cell phones, computers, or tablets.”
This is a tough ask for everyone. We take our laptops and phones with us almost everywhere we go. Many of us are addicted to our devices. You may even be wondering, what if I come up with an idea but need to look something up? Don’t. Write down everything that you want to find out more information on in a list during the brainstorm. Then after, look it up. Staring at a device or looking something up will distract your train of thought. It is better to minimize the distractions and get out all of your ideas before bringing devices into the process.
The second tip is, “Always add to ideas, don’t edit or compare ideas.”
Often when we hear a new idea, our first thought is to analyze whether the idea would work. In brainstorming, that is counterproductive. The goal of brainstorming is to get as many possible ideas out there, not edit and start checking the viability of ideas. When someone pitches an idea, it is not our job to rate, evaluate or edit that idea during a brainstorming session. Additionally, it is essential not to compare two ideas to each other. Remember, brainstorming is for getting ideas out there, not trying and figuring out what idea is best. You can feel free to add to ideas, though! Here is an example of the difference between adding and editing: if someone pitches an idea for a new sneaker, you may think, “Wow, that sneaker would go well with these laces.” That is not editing but instead adding more valuable information to the brainstorm. If you instead said, “Well, this sneaker won’t work with this feature.” That is editing. It is important that you or your team clearly understand the difference as editing will hurt a brainstorm’s effectiveness while adding can help grow ideas.
The third tip is, “Don’t have a rigorous schedule.”
In American culture, this one comes as kind of a shock. Typically meetings are set for a distinct amount of time, whether on the hour or half-hour, lasting an exact amount of minutes. A rigorous agenda or schedule can hinder people’s ability to think creatively. Say you need to brainstorm three topics, and you have one hour. Naturally, you’d think it would make sense to brainstorm each subject for 20 minutes. But to be the most productive, you should brainstorm each topic for as long as it is comfortable. It may take 35 minutes for the first topic, 15 minutes for the second, and 10 minutes for the third. If you run out of time, it is important to schedule another meeting or extend the current session to continue. Often ideas can start flowing near the end of a time limit, and putting a time restriction can add unnecessary pressure. During a brainstorm, you want to make sure your team comes up with as many ideas as possible. That way, when you go to evaluate the results, you have as much information as possible.
Today, brainstorming can feel like a lost practice. We are so busy getting work done that it does not seem fruitful or financially profitable to direct employees to brainstorm. However, the best ideas come from the workers in the trenches. Giving employees time to think over their experiences and ideas for innovation in a brainstorm may lead to high-quality cost cutting or profitability-growing results.
Samuel Sanders is an award-winning entrepreneur who has seen innovation, creativity, problem-solving, and ideation in action at many different levels: a Fortune 500 company, an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company, as well as incubators. He also co-founded the company Wundershirt, which at its peak, sold athletic training clothing to Olympic athletes preparing for the 2016 Olympics. Currently, he runs Heard, LLC, a software application that helps governments and large companies get targeted and reviewed feedback from their citizens/employees to improve decision making. His award-winning and highly-praised new book, Your Next Big Idea, is available for pre-order at www.yournextbigideabook.com and Amazon.
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Once you’ve established your commit goals, you should also set stretch goals. Learn how to use the one-third, two-third method to set a stretch goal.
In addition to setting a commit goal, you should also set a stretch. A stretch goal is what’s going to push people to achieve more. It still needs to be achievable when you go back and look at SMART goals, but it won’t have a guarantee of success. More often than not, you’ll fall short of your hitting your stretch goal. If you’re always hitting your stretch, you’re not stretching far enough.
So why should you set stretch goals? Well, if you only set a commit goal, the team might coast once you reach it. They’re going to say, “Well, we hit our goal. We don’t have to push ourselves so hard. Let’s just relax and get to the end of the year.”
A stretch goal gets them to continue performing. Once they hit the commit, there’s still something more that they can go out and achieve. A stretch goal can motivate and excite people. When they hit it, it creates a sense of shared achievement that’s going to build morale and team identity. Stretch goals force people to think differently.
Many times, a commit goal is based upon what people know they can do. They don’t challenge constraints or look for new ways of doing things. A commit goal is about getting things done and doing it the way we’ve always done it. A stretch goal gets them to challenge assumptions. They’ll look at the business differently. They’re going to be willing to make large changes and they’re going to take risks to achieve that stretch. A stretch goal helps them build new skills from trying new things.
So by combining a commit goal that they can achieve and they can deliver to the organization, and a stretch goal that pushes them to improve their performance, you’re getting the best of both worlds.
The one-third, two-third method for stretch goals
I often get asked, “How can I set a good stretch goal?” I like to tell people to use the 1/3, 2/3 rule. For the gap between your commit and your stretch, your team should have a good sense for how they might close 2/3 of that gap, and no idea for where the other 1/3 will come from.
Why 1/3, 2/3? Well, if it’s more than 1/3 that they don’t know where it’s going to come from, they’re going to give up and just say, “This is too hard. I don’t have any ideas.” If it’s less than 1/3, it may be too easy and they might coast. To create this list and understand what this 1/3, 2/3 is, gather a list from your team for ideas beyond the commit and add them up.
Let’s walk through an example. Let’s say we set a commit goal of X, and now we’re trying to figure out what the stretch is. I tell the team, “I need all your best ideas for how we’re going to drive revenue beyond that commit event.” The team goes off, they come back with their ideas, and they come up with $2 million worth of ideas. Now these will be hard, but they have a reasonable idea of how they can capture $2 million. That two million is my 2/3. What I need to do next is add another third beyond that. When you look at the math, you just divide that two million in half and add it. So I would add another $1 million, and then I’d have a total stretch goal of three million. Now let’s look at that 1/3, 2/3. 2/3 of that $2 million, they have ideas. 1/3 of it, $1 million, they don’t know where it’s going to come from. They’re going to have to innovate to find that incremental $1 million.
When you set your stretch goals, following this 1/3, 2/3 rule will help you identify ideas and make that stretch feel like it’s something they can get, but it will still push them beyond the ideas they’ve already got, and hopefully drive incremental innovation.
Want to learn more about setting team and employee goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to create a culture of strategy execution. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Do you struggle to get things done because you overthink your work? Try these three tips to overcome “analysis paralysis.”
Many times I’ve heard it said that perfect is the enemy of done. A big barrier to executing initiatives is analysis paralysis. The team gets bogged down on proving their case is 100% accurate and risk-free before they act. That slows down execution and leads to missed opportunities. By understanding the risks you face and making appropriate trade-offs between timeliness and accuracy effects, you can speed up execution and break through analysis paralysis. Read more
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How CEOs can stop confusing busyness with progress and focus on what actually moves the needle.
Today’s post is by Matt Andersen, Westlake Securities, CEO, author of Intentional Growth.
A few months ago I was sitting with the leadership team of a distribution company, conducting a review of everything they had on their plate. They pulled up a slide with 22 items on it. Each had a project leader, timeline, and status update. Each was color-coded and professionally formatted.
I asked them to set it aside and tell me without looking at the items list, what the company needed to look like in three years for them to consider it a success. Each person had a different answer. As alarming as this was, it is a problem we keep running into. It has become more common than most leadership teams want to admit. The list was real but none of it was connected to a shared picture of where the company was actually going. They were just executing, but not toward a common shared outcome.
I’ve spent over 27 years advising founders and CEOs through growth, capital raises, and transactions. The companies that achieve the best outcomes, whether that’s a premium sale, strong growth capital terms, or just sustained performance over time, almost never got there by doing more. What really moved the needle was being relentlessly clear about what they were doing and why.
The issue isn’t effort. Most leadership teams I work with are working incredibly hard. The issue is that the effort without a defined destination produces activity, not progress. And in a business, activity can disguise itself as progress right up until the moment you realize the needle hasn’t moved.
Start with the destination
Typically, a leadership team gets together, identifies a to-do list, assigns owners and timelines, and then spends the next 6 to 12 months executing against that list. Revenue stays steady, sometimes grows a little. People are busy. The quarterly updates look fine. Then at some point, someone asks whether the business is better positioned than it was a year ago, and the honest answer is no.
The reason is almost always the same. The list was built without a clear and shared destination. When you don’t know exactly where you’re going, everything seems like it might help. New markets, new products, new hires, new tools. It’s all potentially relevant, so it all goes on the list. But then the list becomes the strategy, which is not the same thing as having a defined short mid and long term plan.
A real growth strategy starts with a specific, honest answer to a hard question –
What does this business need to look like in three to five years, and what are the two or three items that will genuinely determine whether we get there?
Focus on what matters most
Not 22 things. Two or three. The key priorities that actually matter and will move the needle. That question is harder to answer than it sounds, and most leadership teams avoid it because the answer requires making real choices, which means ruling things out. It’s much more comfortable to keep everything on the list and let the team figure out what to prioritize. The problem is that when everything is a priority, nothing is.
The companies I’ve watched build real value in condensed timelines share a pattern. They spend time on the destination before they spend time on the tactics. They get specific about what success looks like, how to measure it, and what has to be true to get there. And then, they use that to filter everything else.
Stay focused on the outcome
This is harder to maintain than it is to set up. The pressure to add initiatives never stops. Someone reads an article about a competitor and wants to respond. A customer asks for something new and it feels wrong to say no. A smart person on the team has a genuinely good idea and it feels like such a shame to ignore it. All of that is real, and it doesn’t go away.
But the leaders who hold the line, who keep filtering back to the desired outcome, tend to end up somewhere specific. And the ones who don’t tend to end up with a very impressive to-do list and a business that looks about the same as it did two years ago.
The distribution company I mentioned eventually did the work. We spent half a day getting the leadership team aligned on the next three years and what it would take to get them there. The list went from 22 items to 4, and some attractive items came off the list. While it was uncomfortable, a year later, the business was meaningfully better positioned, and the leadership team knew why.
Matt Andersen is an award-winning CEO, investment banker, and internationally recognized keynote speaker who has spent more than 25 years helping founders, CEOs, and business owners build stronger, more valuable companies. Matt is the bestselling author of Completing the Deal. In his latest book, Intentional Growth: A Proven Guide to Higher Performance and Better Outcomes for Your Company, he challenges leaders to rethink traditional growth strategies by starting with the desired outcome and reverse engineering the decisions, resources, and execution needed to achieve it.
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Learn how to identify distractions and focus your team on the most strategically important initiatives for your organization.
In a fast paced world, there is no shortage of distractions. Side projects, interesting new ideas, and the crisis of the day can divert resources from key strategic initiatives. In isolation, pursuing these small ideas make sense, but when you put them in the broader context of your strategic initiatives, you get to see exactly how nonstrategic these distractions are. You have to remind people of their priorities. Eliminate these resource-draining distractions. Chasing these ideas prevents your strategy from being executed. Read more
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Before a global hire, look beyond experience. Three practical checks help CEOs assess whether an executive can adapt when familiar approaches stop working well.
Today’s post is by Steve McKinney, coauthor of ‘Global Mindset: A Guide for Cross-Cultural Leadership’ with Bryan McKinney.
Consider a manufacturing executive who had successfully led a plant with 5,000 employees before taking on a much smaller team in another country. On paper, the move looked straightforward. Why would someone who had managed that much complexity struggle with a smaller team?
But the executive’s direct questions produced polite agreement rather than candid discussion. Decisions announced in meetings stalled afterward. The executive pushed harder, interpreting the delay as an execution problem. What he had misread was how people raised concerns and built commitment.
That executive was me. The experience shaped a question I have returned to throughout two decades of building global teams and evaluating senior leaders across markets: What evidence tells us this person can adapt when the conditions behind their previous success change?
That question belongs alongside every discussion of an executive’s track record. Past results matter. But they tell us what someone achieved in a particular setting, not automatically how that person will perform in the next one.
Before a major acquisition, a leadership team examines the assumptions behind the numbers. An executive appointment deserves the same discipline. Beyond asking whether a candidate delivered growth or improved operations, we should ask what made those results possible. Which relationships, decision rights, resources, and working habits supported that success? Which will be different in the new role?
This is where I find Proactive Agility useful: anticipating changes in the operating environment and adjusting before they force costly correction. In hiring, the task is not to ask whether a candidate considers themselves adaptable. It is to look for evidence that they noticed a mismatch, questioned an assumption, and changed their approach.
I call these three checks the Proactive Agility Screen. They complement a rigorous assessment by examining behavior that a list of achievements can leave unexplored.
First comes the ambiguity test. Ask for two specific examples of situations in which authority, process, or expectations were unclear or contested. These should involve more than a difficult target or a demanding deadline. Look for situations in which the candidate had to work out how to proceed without a settled plan.
Then stay with each example. What did the candidate initially assume? Which signal challenged that assumption? What changed as a result? Listen to how they created clarity for others, not just how they personally coped. If every answer describes executing a plan someone else had defined, ask again for evidence of judgment under uncertainty.
The point is not to reward improvisation for its own sake. It is to understand how the person learns and helps a team move forward when the familiar approach no longer fits.
Second, reframe the reference conversation. Asking what a candidate accomplished is necessary, but it should not end the discussion. Ask the reference to describe a moment when a plan failed, or the candidate misread a situation. What was the candidate’s first reaction? What did they do next?
Did they dismiss the concern, investigate it, or revise their approach? Speed alone is not the test; a thoughtful adjustment matters more than a quick reversal. If a reference can describe results but cannot recall a course correction, seek another perspective before drawing a conclusion. That person may simply not have witnessed the relevant situation.
Third, put an insider in the room. Before the final decision, include someone who has personally operated in the destination market or function. Give that person explicit permission to flag a mismatch the rest of the panel might miss. Their task is not merely to endorse the shortlist.
Ask where this executive’s communication style might create misunderstanding and which relationships they would need to build. What support would help them establish credibility? Use those insights to guide further inquiry, not to make assumptions about how everyone in a country behaves. If no panel member has relevant operating experience, acknowledge that gap rather than assuming headquarters’ perspective is sufficient.
This is not a search for cultural sameness. A leader may need to challenge established habits. The distinction is between someone who understands the context well enough to change it thoughtfully and someone who assumes that previous success makes understanding it unnecessary.
Selection is only part of the responsibility. Even an adaptable executive needs clear expectations, candid feedback, and access to people who can explain an unfamiliar environment. The assessment should help shape that support, not create an expectation that the right hire will need none.
My experience leading 5,000 people was real. So was my difficulty leading a much smaller team in a different setting. When decisions stalled, pushing harder did not address what I had missed: polite agreement was not the same as commitment. The lesson was not to discard my experience, but to question how I was applying it.
At your next hiring committee meeting, look beyond the scale of a candidate’s previous responsibilities. Ask what they noticed when their usual approach stopped working, what they changed, and who can confirm it. I know why those questions matter. I was the executive whose track record did not tell the whole story.
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I’ve seen leaders make three common mistakes when investing in their leadership capital. These mistakes hurt both their efficiency and their effectiveness.
Do you work a 40 hour week or are you working 24/7? How much effort are you putting into your work? How much stress do you experience from the energy you’re putting in? Your time and energy are finite resources. You can squeeze more time out by taking away from other activities in your life but you can’t do that forever. That time isn’t unlimited. If you squeeze out too much, bad things can happen. I’m speaking from experience here. I’ve had two heart attacks because I was spending too much time and energy with my work. Something needs to change.
To reduce the time you spend at work, reduce stress, and improve performance, you need to approach how you spend your time and energy differently. Leadership capital is the time and energy you invest in leading your team. It needs to be invested carefully like any other scarce resource. When’s the last time you assessed where you’re spending your time and energy? Who are you spending it with? How are you spending it? Are you getting the results you want from those investments? These are all questions I want you to consider as you assess how you’re spending the valuable resource of your leadership capital.
3 Leadership Capital Mistakes
I’ve seen leaders make three common mistakes when investing in their leadership capital. These mistakes hurt both their efficiency and their effectiveness.
The Peanut Butter Approach
The first mistake I see is what I call the peanut butter approach. What leaders do is give everyone on their team exactly the same amount of their time and energy. They just spread it around evenly. They do this because it feels fair to everyone. What’s wrong with this approach is not everyone needs the same amount of your time. It’s not fair to those who need less. It feels like micromanagement. It’s not fair to those who need more of your attention. They feel like they’re getting slighted for time.
The Reactive Approach
The second mistake I see is the reactive approach where leaders give people time and attention whenever they ask in the order they ask for it. Just think about a queue of people lined up outside that leader’s door knocking on the door and asking for time and attention and that leader just calls the next number in line. This mistake happens because this approach requires very little thought. What’s wrong with this approach is it fails to prioritize the leader’s time and allocate it to the most important issues. It also encourages team members to constantly take up the leader’s time rather than solving issues for themselves.
The Path of Least Resistance Approach
The third mistake is taking the path of least resistance. Leaders spend more time with people who are easiest or most fun to work with. They avoid team members who give them trouble. Leaders do this because this approach is easy. It avoids conflict. The issues with this approach include not solving issues that need to be resolved and instead dedicating time and energy to low return efforts. Spending excessive time with high performers doesn’t contribute a great deal to delivering outstanding results.
When you look at these mistakes, I’d like you to ask yourself a couple of questions. What would you do if your chief financial officer allocated budget and investment dollars this way? Do you spend your leadership capital this way? Once you know what these common mistakes are, it’s easier to avoid them and instead be more intentional about how you spend your leadership capital to get better results.
Want to learn more about leading effectively? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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There are four major activities that will consume your leadership capital. Depending on your team, you’ll have a different mix of these activities.
There are four major activities that will consume your leadership capital. They’re directing work, doing work, delivering work and developing people:
Directing work
Directing including planning where you translate your vision into individual goals and activities. Prioritizing which is turning individual goals into team priorities. And coordinating using your position to provide broader perspective to the members of your team and help them see how their work fits into that broader picture.
Doing work
Doing is comprised of deciding where you as the leader have to make decisions that can’t be made by the members of your team. Motivating, inspiring your team members to do difficult things. And clearing, helping your team members overcome the roadblocks they’re going to face.
Delivering work
Delivering consists of monitoring where you’re tracking team progress against goals and objectives. Correcting where you’re fixing work that wasn’t done right the first time. And repairing where you’re repairing damage when mistakes are made. You’ll have to smooth over some relationships that get damaged when they make those mistakes.
Developing people
Developing includes training where you’re teaching new skills and building the capabilities of your team members. Coaching where you’re building their confidence and their capabilities by helping them understand how they need to grow. And promoting, advancing your team members’ careers by positioning them for growth.
Depending on your team, you’ll have a different mix of these activities but these activities comprise for the most part what’s expected of all good leaders.
Want to learn more about leading effectively? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to navigate politics as a senior leader. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Learn three signs that a process, commitment, or way of working may have run its course.
Today’s post is by Marc D. Kirshbaum, author of The Eleven Primal Spaces: Awakening Next-Level Leadership By Reconnecting To What Makes Us Human.
Leadership culture has a great deal to say about endurance.
We admire the executive who remains calm when things get difficult. The manager who holds a team together through an uncertain stretch. The founder who keeps going when the odds are no longer friendly. There is good reason for that. Resilience and commitment matter. People look to leaders, especially when conditions are hard, to bring steadiness and perspective.
Still, there is a point at which endurance can become something else.
A leader may continue carrying an initiative because it has been theirs for years. A team may keep a meeting on the calendar because it has always been there. An organization may cling to a process designed for a problem that no longer exists. None of this usually happens because people are careless. More often, it happens because the familiar has a way of becoming invisible.
That is where the Tenth Primal Space, Death, enters the leadership conversation.
The Space for Death is not about being morbid or dramatic. It is about recognizing that endings are part of responsible leadership. It asks us to see when something has served its purpose, to acknowledge what it gave us, and to decide what needs to happen next.
This can be difficult because leaders are often rewarded for holding on. They rescue struggling projects, absorb work that should have been redistributed, preserve traditions long after their original meaning has faded, and postpone decisions that everyone knows are coming.
At first, this may look like strength. Sometimes it is.
But perseverance and prolonging are not the same thing. Loyalty can become avoidance. Protecting what matters can slowly turn into protecting what is merely familiar.
The question is not only, “Can we keep this going?”
It is also, “Should we?”
Here are three signs that a process, commitment, or way of working may have run its course.
1. It survives by habit, not purpose
Most organizational practices began for a good reason. They helped solve a problem, meet a need, or uphold a value. But organizations change, markets change, and people change.
When no one can explain why a meeting exists, why a decision needs six approvals, or why a particular report still gets produced, that practice may be continuing on borrowed purpose.
The issue is not that old practices are inherently bad. Some traditions are worth preserving precisely because they carry memory, trust, or a standard of care. The point is to ask whether the original purpose is still alive.
A useful leadership question is simple:
What is this still in service of?
If the answer is vague, defensive, or based entirely on the fact that “we have always done it this way,” it may be time to take a closer look.
2. It consumes energy without producing meaningful movement
Many leaders know the feeling. A commitment demands more and more attention, generates recurring frustration, and somehow still does not move the work forward.
There may be a great deal of activity, but very little progress.
Capable leaders are especially susceptible to this trap. They can compensate for unclear roles, inefficient systems, and outdated assumptions for a surprisingly long time. Because they are able to carry the burden, others may stop seeing it as a burden at all.
That is why resilience needs a companion: discernment.
The question is not whether we “can” sustain an unsustainable pattern. The question is whether our continued effort serves something meaningful.
Ask yourself:
Are we persisting because this work matters, or because we have become accustomed to carrying it?
Sometimes the most responsible decision is to continue. At other times, the more courageous move is to complete, release, or redesign.
3. No one feels able to question it
Silence can be a signal.
People often know when an approach is failing, when a relationship needs to be reset, or when a commitment no longer fits the organization’s future. They may discuss it privately, but no one brings it into the room.
Why? They may worry about appearing disloyal, negative, impatient, or insufficiently committed. They may not want to disappoint someone who created the initiative. Or they may simply believe that difficult topics are best deferred until a better moment arrives.
That better moment rarely arrives on its own.
A leader cannot make every ending painless. Some endings involve loss, uncertainty, and real consequences. But leaders can create the conditions for honest reflection. They can give people permission to examine what is no longer working without treating that examination as betrayal.
Questions worth bringing into the room include:
What are we carrying because it is familiar?
What have we outgrown?
What needs to be completed, released, or redesigned?
What deserves to be honored before we move on?
What might become possible if we made room for something new?
Letting go is not the same as abandoning responsibility. In fact, a meaningful ending often requires more responsibility, not less.
It asks leaders to preserve what should be carried forward: the learning, the relationships, the values, the stories, and the dignity of the people involved. People deserve to understand what is ending, why it is ending, what mattered about it, and what the ending may now make possible.
Without that meaning, change can feel arbitrary. With it, an ending can become an act of next-level leadership.
The strongest leaders do not chase change for its own sake. Nor do they hold on simply because releasing something feels uncomfortable. They learn to distinguish between what needs protection and what needs completion.
In a world that constantly asks us to add more, do more, and carry more, that distinction may be one of the most courageous forms of leadership we have.
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Avoid these three common pitfalls when developing your team members.
Some common pitfalls I see leaders fall into revolve around not taking a personalized approach to developing their team members.
This includes spreading your time and energy equally across all your team members. I call this the peanut butter approach. Leaders give everyone exactly the same amount of time and energy. They do this because it feels fair to everyone. What’s wrong with this approach is, not everyone needs the same amount of your time. It’s not fair to people who need less of your time. It can feel like micromanagement. It’s also not fair to people who need more of your time. They’re getting slighted on how much attention they’re getting.
Another mistake I see leaders make is using a reactive approach and dealing with issues as they arise. Leaders give people attention whenever they ask, in the order they ask for it. This happens because the approach requires little thought. What’s wrong with this approach is it fails to prioritize the leader’s time and allocate that time and energy to the most important issues. It also encourages team members to constantly take up the leader’s time rather than solving issues on their own.
The final pitfall I often see is leaders taking the path of least resistance, where they only deal with people who are performing well. They spend more time with people who are easiest or the most fun to work with. They avoid team members who give them trouble. Leaders do this because this approach is easy—it avoids conflict. The problem with this approach includes not resolving big issues. You’re dedicating time to low-return efforts. Excessive time with high performers doesn’t contribute a great deal to improving results.
To see if you’re demonstrating these behaviors, ask yourself the following questions. Are you spreading your time equally across all team members? Are you only working with high performers? Are you reacting to people as issues come up?
Once you recognize these tendencies in yourself, you can be more thoughtful about how and where you spend your time with your team members. This means you’ll get better results from that time with them in a more efficient use of that time.
Want to learn more about developing your team? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to assess and improve your strategic plans. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Your domain masters are an invaluable asset—don’t take them for granted. Do everything you can to make them happy and keep them around.
You might be lucky enough at some point to have a domain master on your team. These people are in the upper right quadrant of the leadership matrix. You don’t have to put in a lot of time and energy and you get outstanding results. Your domain masters demonstrate a long track record of consistent, outstanding performance. They’re happy in their current role. They don’t want to take on dramatically different responsibilities. They tend to be your go-to person for information and assistance on specific topics where they have deep expertise. They’re some of the most valuable assets on your team. They require very little leadership capital from you. And they consistently deliver those great results.
There are some easy ways to spot a domain master. They have a quiet confidence. They tend not to complain. They’re not usually very self-promoting about their own work. They’re self-starters. They overcome obstacles on their own. People seek out their expertise, especially when it relates to an area that this person knows a lot about. People seek to work with them. A lot of times they’re highly recruited by other teams in the organization. And most of the domain masters I know tend to have a really good work-life balance.
I had one domain master on my team who knew everything about this business unit. When we had a question, we called George. He knew everything going back 15 years in this entire business unit. He was the true expert in this space. If you’re wondering who your domain masters are and how you can identify them just ask the people on your team, “Hey, when we have a question about this topic, who do we call?” The name you get back is probably your domain master.
How to Retain Domain Masters
With domain masters, your primary goal is to retain them in the organization. Their expertise is invaluable; you don’t want them leaving. The challenge with domain masters is you tend to rely on them for a substantial share of your teams results. It can be very easy to take these people for granted. Your goal with domain masters is to retain and nurture them. Make sure they know they’re valued for their contributions. Remove obstacles that frustrate them. Make their jobs easier to do.
I had a domain master on my team, his name was George. We gave him great performance reviews. We put him up for internal rewards for the awesome job he was doing. We got him out of a noisy call center environment and put him in a much nicer office space. We also increased his autonomy and authority to do his job. I wanted George happy, I wanted to keep him around. I took action to make sure that he was happy and stayed in the organization.
The benefits of effectively leading a domain master include you keep them on your team and producing great results. You retain them for the broader organization. You become a beacon to attract other high performers to your team because they see you treat your people well. This individual can also serve as an example for the rest of your team. They can train other people who come into the team. Your domain masters are an invaluable asset—don’t take them for granted. Do everything you can to make them happy and keep them around.
Want to learn more about developing your team? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to assess and improve your strategic plans. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!
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