Extra Shot of Leadership

You are hiring a new supervisor…you posted the job, you found the perfect candidate and your pretty excited that they are starting next week. Now what? Does the standard onboarding checklist apply? Having a clear strategy for what information you share and a cadence for when you share it can accelerate a new leader’s learning curve for understanding the business, the work and their team. This week...

Have you ever seen a leader totally lose it? And by lose it I mean expressing their frustration or disappointment with an outburst with voice raising, a battery of questions or a pounding on the desk. Was it you? Leaders typically have a high level of care and passion about the work of their department but when things go wrong their passion can turn into a display of anger. Though the outburst may...

How sharp are your coaching skills? Are you providing all the answers, or do you take the time to help your employees reach their own conclusions? Great coaching conversations are extremely valuable for employee growth and performance. The good news is coaching is a leadership skill that can be developed and sharpened. With a few tweaks, a little extra time, and the right questions, leaders can en...

Are your team members stressed, are they focused, are they ok? How do you know? With the workplace playing a central role in many people’s lives, it is important for team members to feel connected and supported by their leaders. So how do leaders balance building relationships with getting all the work done? Are they two separate things or do better relationships actually help get the work done? T...

Have you ever felt like your life and leadership compass needed recalibrating? Many leaders often contemplate a reset in January as they begin a new year while others may choose the fall when the school year begins again. Don’t worry if you missed those two opportunities, because the best time for a reset is when the time is right...for you! It may be when your daily schedule is packed full with m...

What can you accomplish with a continuous learning mindset? The answers to this question are absolutely endless! Anyone with an ongoing and self-driven pursuit of knowledge can build, create, or attain just about anything they set their mind to. Apply this thinking to leadership and leaders can soar to a level of leadership where the sky is the limit for what they can accomplish both personally an...

Great leaders rarely exist just by natural ability. Many great leaders have built their skills and reputation by way of feedback. Not the fluffy feedback but the tough stuff. The kind of feedback that can be painful to hear and can often leave a person feeling angry, confused, or frustrated. Just because they are a leader doesn’t mean they won’t struggle with the news or have to dig deep to listen...

Leaders with a continuous improvement mindset can drive their teams to accomplish great things. But what happens to leaders and teams when the leader is always striving for more? As they encourage their teams to do more and be more, what other message are they sending, and what are they giving up by chasing more? This week Kim and Pepper reflect on their definition of success and discuss their tho...

Excellence in leadership can be reached with time and a conscious effort spent on skill improvement. This improvement requires an understanding of leadership skills, identification of personal strengths and opportunities, and a willingness to continue to grow. Let’s just assume for a minute that you know or have googled top leadership skills, and you are willing to continuously grow. Now, what’s t...

Good employees make mistakes and great leaders allow them to. If this statement is true, then how do leaders allow these learning opportunities without putting their organization’s and personal reputation in jeopardy? This week Kim and Pepper discuss their thoughts on the value of failures. They share how they set boundaries around failures, manage them when they happen, use them as learning oppor...

When do you begin the discussion of leadership with your kids? Is there a specific age that you begin discussing topics like influence, leadership presence, and decision making? Kids of all ages have many opportunities through school, extracurricular activities, and sports to begin thinking about the type of leader they want to be. If you don’t engage them in a leadership discussion, who will? Thi...

Learning new words is good for the brain and a larger vocabulary. They can enhance a conversation or a book, or even a great podcast, but do we really need to create new words for leadership terms that already exist? What’s the added value of the new word if it has the same meaning as a leadership term that already exists? This week Kim and Pepper discuss the term inclusive leadership. They break...

Are your shoes right for this meeting? Should you even be in this meeting? How much thought have you put into why you are showing up and how you are showing up? These are some things to consider if you want your leadership presence to work for you rather than against you. As busy leaders, it is important to maximize the opportunities we have with our teams to ensure our message is what is needed a...

Quick, tell us 5 things you are really good at. What is taking so long? Many of us can be quick to point out our list of personal flaws, but then stutter a bit when it comes to verbalizing the things we do really well. If this sounds like you, tune in to this episode! This week Kim and Pepper discuss a skills inventory and who they may have allowed to identify their unique personal strengths. They...

Health and leadership go hand in hand. Would you agree with this statement? While good health may or may not make (or break) a good leader, it does contribute to their ability to think clearly, make sound decisions, multitask, and connect with others for a sustained period of time. While these are critical attributes for leaders, the more personal behaviors that enhance these qualities are often i...

Are your team members scrambling to get their work done at the last minute? Are they unable to complete their assignments on time? If your answer is yes, it may be time to do a temperature check on priorities and alignment. Without clear priorities, a team can struggle to spend their time effectively because everything seems equally important. This week Kim and Pepper share their strategies for de...

Hey Leaders, it’s 2023! How you doing? Are you up for it? Feeling good about it? If you are not feeling it, how can you get yourself in a better place to engage in areas that really matter? This week Pepper and Kim have an open conversation about how they are feeling about 2023 and what they are doing to get their priorities straight, gain clarity and motivation, and get their brains engaged at wo...

Much like the ripples created by tossing a pebble into a pond, influence energizes an organization. The good news is you don’t need a C-suite office to get the job done. With a certain level of understanding and skill, influence that inspires others to change their thoughts, behaviors and actions can come from any level of an organization. This week Kim and Pepper start a discussion on influence....

Do we really need an extravagant experience like a ropes course to build cohesion and the comradery within a team? The purpose of a team building event is to get team members away from their work and provide an opportunity to foster personal relationships. Leaders with heavy workloads, tight budgets, and demands for work-life balance may find themselves searching for ways to accomplish the same go...

Trust. It’s a big deal. And it why we just can’t let this topic go without one last trustbuster that can get a leader and their team in the ditch. Taking credit for the work of others may seem like a no-brainer buster but there is an art to helping your team members to stand in the spotlight. This week Kim and Pepper share their thoughts on how to let others take center stage as well as some thing...

With trust being a huge component of leadership and team success, it is just too early to stop the conversation. In the last episode Kim and Pepper discussed how indecision and unpredictability experienced over time can erode the trust between leaders and their teams. While these actions made the list for obvious trust busters, this week they are digging into two actions that are a little less obv...

Trust. It’s one of the most critical elements of success for a leader and the team they manage. If you can build an environment of trust you will experience a team that is more energetic, more engaged, and more productive, but bust it one too many times and you will experience the reverse. This week Kim and Pepper discuss two big trust busters for leaders. They share the impact of the busters as w...

If people delivered better presentations, we wouldn’t be bored in meetings. Do you agree with that statement? It’s hard not to, and there have actually been a few studies that align with this thought. According to Poll Anywhere, a whopping 91% of working professionals admit to daydreaming during presentations, and 39% of them confess to actually falling asleep. With that in mind, creating a dynami...

Great communication can have a profound effect on the success of a leader as well as the success of their team and their organization. But great communication requires flexibility. Leaders need not only understand communication styles, but they must also adjust their own communication style to the preferences of their boss, their teams, their colleagues and customers. Leaders who learn to adjust t...

Have you heard of the great resignation? Have you seen it? If you are paying attention to business news, you will see numerous articles about the high numbers of people leaving their current jobs. But why? What is causing all this movement? According to a recent study by McKinsey and Company, the reason the majority of people (41%) are making their exit is lack of career development/advancement. O...