In a previous life, I delegated a lot more than I do now. I had to. I was responsible for more than 2,300 employees who depended, in one way or another, on the decisions I made, and there was no realistic way I could personally handle everything that came with that. On a normal day,…
Star Wars gives us two leadership extremes that are easy to recognize. The Sith rely on fear, control, ambition, and personal loyalty. The Jedi value discipline, restraint, duty, and service.At first glance, the lesson looks simple: don’t be a Sith. I think the more useful question is what both sides get wrong when otherwise useful…
I don’t expect everybody in my small town to agree with me, and I’d probably be a little suspicious if they did. I’m more interested in what happens after we disagree. In a place this size, the person who thinks I made a terrible decision today may be standing beside me at the store tomorrow….
I’d rather see someone start this job believing they can make it than arrive already convinced they can’t. But when somebody tells me they’re ready, I want to know what they’ve done to prepare. Believing you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you’re prepared to do it. Take somebody getting ready for the academy. He…
One thing about working in a small town is that very few decisions stay at the office. The person you dealt with this morning may be standing behind you at the grocery store that afternoon. The person you had to tell no may be sitting a few rows away from you at an event that…
It’s easy to look like a committed leader when something goes wrong. A complaint comes in, somebody misses a deadline, an employee makes a mistake, or a problem finally gets enough attention that it can’t be ignored. Now there are meetings, new expectations, closer supervision, and plenty of conversation about what needs to change. For…
Most organizations don’t keep bad employees because nobody realizes there’s a problem. They keep them because everybody realizes there’s a problem and dealing with it is harder than working around it. The supervisor knows who isn’t carrying their weight. The coworkers definitely know. Sometimes customers know, and in government the public probably knows. Yet the…
Most of what I call experience started out as questions. I ran into situations I hadn’t seen before, slowed down, listened, asked what happened, and tried to figure out what I was missing. After enough years, some of those questions turn into patterns. I recognize certain problems faster now than I did early on. That’s…
I like the idea behind Cal Newport’s Deep Work. There are certain things I do better when I can shut everything else out and concentrate on one problem long enough to actually think through it. Writing is one of them. So is working through policy, reviewing a complicated issue, or making plans that affect the…
When I’m trying to decide whether somebody is coachable, I don’t put much weight on whether they nod, agree with me, or thank me for the feedback. I’ve seen people handle a correction perfectly in the moment and then do the exact same wrong thing on the next call. Coachability shows up after the conversation….