New leaders who are overwhelmed by their new responsibilities and fear the embarrassment of failure tend not to pursue success. Rather, they spend their first year just trying not to make a mistake. New leaders spend a considerable amount of time gathering data, seeking out historical information, checking with subject matter experts, and inevitably getting stuck in analysis paralysis mode out of fear. No one wants to make a mistake. Mistakes don’t feel good. But more importantly, we don’t want our mistakes to define us. So, to protect ourselves from any possible embarrassment we try to create mistake-free zones. There’s … Read More
Be Contagious
Take a moment to reflect on last week. What were the high points? What were the low moments? How did you handle every day challenges? How did you interact with your team? What message did you convey? We already know that individuals who display good leadership skills have more engaged employees with lower turnover. There’s also a commonly held belief that leadership is contagious. When you display strong, decisive, inspirational leadership, others around you will also begin to display those same behaviors. Research shows there is a trickle-down effect of leadership behaviors.