Our reader poll today asks: Which of the following phrases do you dislike the most?

• “Let’s circle back on that” – 22%
• “At the end of the day …” – 7%
• “Let’s leverage …” – 5%
• “Let’s put a pin in it” – 19%
• I hate them all – 35%
• I have no problem with any of these – 11%

What are you actually saying?

Read the rest of this post at thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World.

There are four major activities that will consume your leadership capital. Depending on your team, you’ll have a different mix of these activities.

There are four major activities that will consume your leadership capital. They’re directing work, doing work, delivering work and developing people:

Directing work

Directing including planning where you translate your vision into individual goals and activities. Prioritizing which is turning individual goals into team priorities. 

Read the rest of this post at thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World.

Learn three signs that a process, commitment, or way of working may have run its course.

Today’s post is by Marc D. Kirshbaum, author of The Eleven Primal Spaces: Awakening Next-Level Leadership By Reconnecting To What Makes Us Human.

Leadership culture has a great deal to say about endurance.

We admire the executive who remains calm when things get difficult. The manager who holds a team together through an uncertain stretch.

Read the rest of this post at thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World.

Our reader poll today asks: As we close in on Q4, what are your expectations for how this year will turn out for your organization?

• It will be far better than we expected – 9%
• It will be better than we expected – 23%
• It will be about what we expected – 46%
• It will be worse than we expected – 19%
• It will be far worse than we expected – 4%

More good than bad.

Read the rest of this post at thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World.

Avoid these three common pitfalls when developing your team members.

Some common pitfalls I see leaders fall into revolve around not taking a personalized approach to developing their team members.

This includes spreading your time and energy equally across all your team members. I call this the peanut butter approach. Leaders give everyone exactly the same amount of time and energy. They do this because it feels fair to everyone. 

Read the rest of this post at thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World.

Based on ground-breaking new research on innovation and problem solving, learn techniques to help your team bring you better ideas.

Today’s post is by Karin Hurt and David Dye, author of Courageous Cultures (CLICK HERE to get your copy). This is a post from our archives, originally published in 2020.

When we share our recent research findings on what prevents employees from speaking up and sharing their best ideas, sometimes we get this reaction: “Oh, that’s not our issue.

Read the rest of this post at thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World.