What is the Monday Morning Business Coach?
For over 12 years and running, every Monday morning we’ve sent out an email containing an executive coaching “nugget”—a simple, practical tip or strategy for you to easily take action on to start off your work week.
We use the situations of our clients (anonymously, of course) as well as what we’re pondering or reading about to write a short post. We keep it short because we know your life is busy and you need the “quick tips” to solve your problems, help you focus, and move you forward. We’re not claiming we can solve every issue, but we aim to give you the knowledge and wisdom to help you find your own power and create the future you want. You can view past posts below.
Recently, an executive we work with was describing that he was struggling to get out of the weeds of the day-to-day. He knew that he needed to be more strategic in his thinking and actions, but instead found himself pulled into doing the work that his team was assigned to do. To succeed in his job, he needed to support others to do the work that needed to be done while he created the vision, strategy, and relationships to…
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Last week we talked about how a handful of 2-second hesitations can lead to Failing to Make a Decision. Today, we want to share with you 5 important steps to increasing your ability to make decisions (even when it’s hard). 5 Steps to Decision Making Pause and ask yourself, “Is what I’m about to do in alignment with my goals?” It’s important that you actually know what your goals are. Consider what you are trying to achieve. Explore “What’s the…
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Linda was recently reading an article in The New York Times Magazine by Jami Attenberg (February 4, 2018) about healthcare decisions. In it, Attenberg said something that seemed powerfully true not only for our healthcare decisions but for all our decisions! This is what she said: “. . .[every time I needed to make a decision] I hesitated, and a handful of hesitations that take only a second added up to years of failing to make a decision.” This struck us as one…
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If you’ve been part of our community for a while, you know that our Work, with a capital W, is helping individuals, teams, and organizations succeed through increasing the leadership of each and every person, regardless of role or title. As coaches and consultants, we work at the intersection of psychology and business and we know, from 30 years of experience, that the ability to lead requires that you: Pause and manage your reactivity so you can respond powerfully…
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We were recently in a meeting with two top executives. They were describing an incredibly challenging time when their leadership team was running at full speed. That afternoon, the team asked to skip a leadership team meeting so they could use that time to focus on several “revenue critical” efforts that were underway. These executives needed to make a decision that would move their agenda forward, create success for the organization, and manage their staff’s need for some control over…
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We’re currently working with a number of organizations with relatively new leadership teams. As is often the case, the people on these teams have made their way up the organizational ladder because they have succeeded in their department or in a specific area of expertise. While it makes sense that they would move up in leadership as their skills grow, the transition to higher levels of leadership requires a major shift in their approach and mindset. In particular, they need to…
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This is the follow-up to the 3 Steps to Delegate Effectively which we re-shared last week; we thought this follow-up should be re-shared as well. We heard from several of you that you were concerned that if you used our 3 Steps to Delegate Effectively, it would be experienced by others as micromanaging. Delegation is about providing Context, Content, and Connection so that the individual who is assigned the activity can organize their thinking and their tactics to accomplish the delegated task. When…
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As coaches and consultants, we find that many people regularly struggle with delegation, and they tend to feel uncomfortable admitting it because they believe they should know how to do it. In our experience, delegating is a challenging skill . . . one that few of us are taught. People are frequently told they should, “just delegate that” but when they do, and they don’t get the results they hoped for, they give up and just heap the task onto…
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One of the biggest frustrations we hear from people in leadership is that they have to be available to their teams “all the time” to answer questions and solve problems. They say that they read about dream teams that know how to move forward in the face of challenges but their team just doesn’t get it. When we ask them to share some examples of how this plays out, we often hear a long history of our client (as team…
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Today is Martin Luther King Jr, and to honor his work around civil rights, we want to share with you a present-day voice advocating for a better world. On January 7th at the Golden Globes, Oprah gave a powerful speech about the importance of speaking up. The speech she gave was moving, and the reaction of the audience was equally, if not more, moving. You see, as Oprah spoke, her words fueled their hopes and their conviction for a better…
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