HERE TO LEAD

Did you know troubleshooting is a skill? Because it is a skill, we can develop it. Also, it can be a lot like a game of Chutes and Ladders! You roll the dice and sometimes you get to the right place and climb a ladder, make progress, and sometimes you find yourself in an uh-oh moment, realize you’ve been wrong and slide down a Chute and have to go back to the beginning or to an earlier starting po...

It's not what you think. Common misconceptions and stereotypes will tell you that all our teams want is more pay, less work, and more vacation time. But is that really what people want to find work life balance? Tune in to this episode to find out 3 ways you can find the sweet spot of work life balance for you and your teams. The book is available!  Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadersh...

Counterculture advice to leaders and non-leaders: Go All In.  Just because corporate environments have an imperfect history or toxic track record doesn’t mean you should respond with an apathetic approach to your career.  Of course you shouldn't tolerate hostile work environments, discrimination or harmful leaders.  And yes, you can and should expect market-based pay in exchange for meeting w...

Have you ever had someone question you and your qualifications?  Did you ever go to a private event where people look at you like you don’t belong?  And the bouncer or security person walks over to let you know it’s a private event and only invited guests should be eating the caviar and drinking the champagne? It’s happened to me more than once, and I always love it when I can say, “I’m on the lis...

Have you ever wondered how you go from Controller to CFO? Or Director of IT to CTO? Perhaps, VP to Chief Operating Officer? In this episode we break down the three things you need to do to get to the next level in your career. The book is available!  Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadership In Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Change, and Drive Results is available in paperback, ebook and au...

Whether you need a way to get out of conversations you’re not ready to have or don’t have time to have, or you’re not done with that project your boss gave you, sometimes the best thing you can do is BUY TIME. Buying time is an authentic skill and tool that allows you to disappoint someone in your circle of influence with grace, maturity and professionalism. It saves face for you as a leader, prot...

In this series on communication, the first lesson is learning that the word (pronoun) you use to start a sentence matters and  determines how the conversation is going to end and most importantly, how the other person is going to feel when they walk away from you. You can choose to tear down or build up. Tune in to find out how we can leverage the four dimensions of I - YOU - WE - IT  on a daily b...

Leadership is an art and like most artists, our craft is a life-long study of trying different techniques that evolve with our experience, our situations and our culture. What works today may not work tomorrow. But the important thing is that we have tools, resources and examples to access when we need them.  HERE TO LEAD: Mastering the Art of Leadership in Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Chang...

Corporate buzzwords. We love them, hate them, make fun of them, snicker, and shrug and sigh when we hear them.  "Why don’t we circle the wagons one more time, peel back the onion, level set our expectations and touch base next week in order to leverage the synergies of our teams?" Sound familiar? While a lot of these expressions and words (buzzwords) are over used and have become cringe-...

Have you ever wondered, "How do I become more powerful?"  Power, in and of itself, is not an attribute that you develop. Power is a by-product.  Power is the sum or culmination of experience, craft (working on your art or leadership), skill, confidence, strength, knowledge, influence, connections, generosity, a track record. Those are the things you work on. Focus on. It takes time. Inve...

It is the choices we make in the key moments of our lives/careers that will determine whether or not we move forward and grow...or not. When it comes to key moments in our leadership, we need to: Be Aware of the Moments that matter Be Present in those Moments Embrace Reality Make the choice. Be a leader. When you are faced with a key moment, what new actions can you take? In what new ways can you...

I've got my foot on the gas but I'm not going anywhere. Ugh! Sound familiar? We've all seen it, experienced it and had to overcome it. Spinning your wheels is exhausting and frustrating. As leaders, it is our job to know when the wheels are spinning and to help our teams get out of the mess. Tune in to find out three things you can do to get unstuck.  The book is available!  Here to...

Purpose Matters and if we don't intentionally focus on and build culture in our organizations, one will develop by default. Wouldn't you rather take the lead and determine what that looks like? Tune in to learn what purpose is, why we need it and most importantly how we get it. The book is available!  Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadership In Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Cha...

Tune in as we unpack this question that many of us ask ourselves at one time or another in our career.  The book is available!  Here to Lead: Mastering the Art of Leadership In Order to Execute Strategy, Advance Change, and Drive Results is available in paperback, ebook and audio. You can purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble Online. Visit www.kellybargabos.com to listen to all past episodes an...

In order to influence our leadership teams and our organization like we need to, it is critical that our messages are heard above all the NOISE. In this episode, we discuss practical ways to reduce the NOISE so our message is heard.  N - need to know O - own your message I - look in the mirror S - speak their language E - eliminate noise when you can The book is available!  Here to Lead: Mastering...

If you're like me, you love a good life hack. Whether it is a shortcut on how to peel garlic or open a beer bottle, hacks save us time, hard work and often times they provide a solution when we don't have everything we need to accomplish the task at hand. Unfortunately, there is no leadership hack. In Season 1 of Here To L.E.A.D., we've learned the four anchors necessary to bring ou...

The ABCs of Driving Results - A ssign - B eware - C ommunicate The final key to success for us as leaders in driving results is to COMMUNICATE.  Communication is a powerful, dynamic, two-way force that is vital and necessary. The life of your organization, your team, and your success depends on it. Communication sets the tone, determines culture, it can motivate and tear down, it can lift up and d...

The ABCs of Driving Results - A ssign - B eware - C ommunicate The next key to success in driving results is for us as leaders to BEWARE. Any good driver knows that you need to keep your eyes on the road. Why? So that we can see what’s coming and be on the lookout for any flying mattresses or other debris, danger, weather (hail, snow, ice or tornado funnel) and the signs that would alert us to a c...

The ABCs of Driving Results - A ssign - B eware - C ommunicate As leaders, we can do a great job at developing vision, setting strategy, figuring out what needs to be done, and then leaving the details to our staff while we move on to something more worthy of our time and amazing leadership skills. We can view this level of detail as below our pay grade.  As a leader, it is your job to make sure t...

We’ve developed our elevator pitch and have a better understanding of who we are as a leader, we’ve learned what it takes to execute strategy and affect change.  You’d think that the hard work is done and now the results, the outcomes, the goals we were trying to achieve, should just come naturally as a by-product of all that work.  Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.  The word “drive” means t...

Tune in to an episode from my other podcast, All There Is,   for some relevant thoughts on leadership and why it is the thing we need most right now.  Authentic Leaders provide Vision, Unity, Inspiration and Strength, and we all know it when we see it. What the World Needs Now, is Leadership, sweet Leadership, it's the only thing that there's just too little of.... The book is available!...

Leading your teams through Change is a daunting task. Tune in to discover some suggestions on how to make it a successful endeavor. It is a powerful thing to have your team use their own words to describe how they feel about their work, what they value, and how they want to be seen and known by others. This is a great starting point for implementing change. The book is available!  Here to Lead: Ma...

How long will it take to advance  the change I need? Well that depends. In the context of advancing change, we need to understand two things: 1) That Time is Relative Just like boiling a pot of water...it depends on the temperature you're beginning at, the size of the pot, and how intense the flame is.  2) We must be willing to Go The Distance What does “Go the distance” mean? Well if you’re...

Change is necessary. And hard. It takes Courageous Decisions to ignite change, but the small, day by day choices are the fuel that keep the fire of change burning. Courageous Decisions are achieved with these three steps: 1) Decisions: Make the right decision to begin with. Quality decision-making is a skill that must be developed at the leadership level. 2) Choices: The choices you make on a dail...

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE What is it? Why do I need it? How do I get it? We’ve established that change is often a reaction to internal or external forces. But it can also be purposeful and intentional and part of the culture of the organization, department or team.  The term operational excellence by itself sounds abstract and lofty. Here’s how I define it:  Operational Excellence is a way to create...