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Join Me in Des Moines?

05.15.13 Leave a Comment

If you’re in the Midwest of the US–or just have a hankering to travel there–please join me at The Extreme Leadership Intensive in Des Moines, IA on July 18 & 19, 2013.

This day-and-a-half program will help you apply the principles of Extreme Leadership directly to your business. You’ll leave with a specific roadmap for weaving Love, Energy, Audacity, and Proof into the very fabric of your team, project, company, or organization.

It’s going to be great work and a lot of fun. (I can’t really do it any other way, you know).

Early Bird pricing ends today, but it’s a great value no matter how you slice it. There are considerable discounts for bringing your team, too.  Space is limited to 150 participants.

Click here to register.

What Do You Talk About With Your Team?

05.13.13 2 Comments

No matter the structure of your team, no matter the challenge your team is working on, and no matter the proximity (or lack thereof) of its members, there are three things all successful teams have in common:

  1. They are all made up of human beings
  2. Human beings perform better with great leadership (although not necessarily the traditional top-down kind).
  3. Great team leaders foster meaningful connection among the members of the team.

Teams thrive on collaboration made up of meaningful connection with one another, and individual team members will perform better when they feel like they’re all in it together. You need to connect your team members to one another on a personal level. So, if you find yourself leading (or being expected to lead) a virtual team, your primary job is to go out of your way to facilitate the very interpersonal connection that remoteness tends to inhibit.

And while nothing encourages trust and connection better than good old locked-in-the-same-room, face-to-face, oxygen-sharing meetings and social time, assume that you’ll never have that luxury with your virtual team. Even though it is, arguably, easier to lead a team that lives under the same roof, that’s a rarity these days. The good news is you can still get your team to know, trust and commit to each other by using virtual collaboration tools like web conferencing and social workspaces to enjoy face-to-face conversations and continuous collaboration.

Connection is all about conversation, and, as the team lead, you’re in charge of making sure those conversations happen.

So, what do you think? What conversations do you need to have with your team to get them connected, on the same page, and ready to work together across time and distance?

I’ll share my top 3 conversations soon.

Old Wisdom for New Teams?

05.10.13 Leave a Comment

Way back in 1995, I had the great pleasure of seeing the legendary management sage, Peter Drucker, speak about teams and teamwork at a conference for training industry executives.

Keep in mind the context of that now bygone era: CD-ROM was the latest, sparkly new technology, the internet was essentially a network of electronic brochures downloaded via modem to your computer at the rate of a millennium per page and The Wisdom of Teams by Katzenbach and Smith, first published in 1992, was all the rage in management circles.

“Everybody’s always asking me about the best way to build a team,” said Drucker in his thick, German accent. “But it’s just a silly question, really, because it assumes that all teams are alike. But they’re not. A baseball team is different from a football team is different from a tennis doubles team. You have to have the right team structure for the business and challenge.”

That had never occurred to me before, but it seemed so obvious after I heard him say it: Build your team structure to best suit your business need and be willing to tear it down and start over with a new structure as the needs change — and change they will.

Here we are 20 years later, living in a technological world more globalized, interconnected and mobile than even the venerable Peter Drucker could have imagined, and new kinds of teams — driven by new media, challenges and opportunities — are sprouting up every day: virtual teams within a global company and project teams composed of people from different companies who may have never met in person. We’re working in what some have dubbed a “freelance economy,” where it is no longer necessary to have a company or formal team in common in order to work together to accomplish a project.

So, what do you think? In this brave, new world, do the “old” principles of leadership and team-building still apply?

Spring Cleaning

05.07.13 2 Comments

Not that this kind of thing should be reserved exclusively for springtime, but any excuse for a good, old-fashioned eradication. So, there's no time like the present to purge the energy-suckers around you and yours. Here's your challenge: Get … Read the full article→

Save The Date: Extreme Leadership Summit, 2014

04.25.13 Leave a Comment

  presents... Extreme Leadership Summit, … Read the full article→

The Entisys LEAP

04.06.13 Leave a Comment

Michael Strohl, CEO of Entisys Solutions, Inc. is a practitioner of Extreme Leadership (cultivate Love, generate Energy, inspire Audacity, provide Proof), and his passion, it appears, is taking hold in the company he leads. "Now," says Michael, … Read the full article→

The Radical Leap Re-Energized AudioBook Chapter Two

03.02.13 Leave a Comment

Here's the 2nd chapter of the audiobook version of The Radical Leap Re-Energized (Chapter 1 is right below it, in case you missed my previous post). Have a listen and, if you like it, please share it around. We should be finishing recording next week … Read the full article→

The Radical Leap Re-Energized: AudioBook Chapter One

03.01.13 1 Comment

I've been in the studio recording the audio book for The Radical Leap Re-Energized. It's an exciting project and a lot of fun to do. I'm working with the phenomenal Richard Del Maestro, who is not only a skilled engineer and editor, but a … Read the full article→

A Greater Than Yourself Legacy

02.11.13 1 Comment

Tommy Spaulding's GTY Project, Ethan Fisher from Steve Farber on Vimeo. "Truly great leaders in life become so because they cause others to be greater then themselves. Dedicating yourself to bringing others along so that they can achieve more than … Read the full article→

Trust, Love, and Humanity ARE Hardcore Business Principles

02.05.13 5 Comments

A call to action for Extreme Leaders: Follow the examples you respect; challenge the ones you don't. … Read the full article→