In a crisis, understand that your response, not the incident itself, defines your credibility and will be remembered, so ensure it reeks of competence, integrity, and sincerity.
Ensure your crisis response is truthful and forthcoming from the outset, as any later revelation of withheld information will destroy trust permanently.
Lead by example and consistently live the values you hold, ensuring your children understand what you truly stand for, as this is your most significant legacy.
Explicitly discuss and transparently live your values, especially with children, to ensure they clearly understand what you and your family stand for.
While children are young and impressionable, establish a common understanding of core family values like ‘family comes first,’ solidarity, and unconditional love.
Consistently act as a ‘fan’ for everyone you lead, in both good and bad times, demonstrating unwavering support regardless of their performance or the difficulty of the conversation.
Extend the life of positive news or accolades by documenting, celebrating, or sharing them over a longer period, allowing individuals to benefit and bask in their achievements.
Employ creative methods like documenting, framing, writing letters, or temporary naming conventions to extend the impact and longevity of positive recognition.
As a leader, it’s your job to inspire and motivate everyone, even those whose personalities or styles you find challenging, by finding different behaviors and things to celebrate about them.
Make a conscious choice to lead and show ‘fan-ness’ to everyone, even those you find uncomfortable, as it is a fundamental aspect of effective leadership.
Commit to practicing behaviors as routines until they become second nature and part of your consistent style, rather than using them as one-off techniques for specific effects.
Focus on mastering universal leadership routines, as these will make you foundationally more effective in all aspects of your life before adapting to specific situations.
When giving criticism, start with positive feedback that is as vivid, elaborate, and detailed as the negative points, aiming to match the number of positive remarks to negative ones.
Ensure that the positive feedback you provide is as detailed and vivid as the criticisms, and if you have fewer positive points, reduce the number of criticisms to maintain balance.
If you can only find a few vivid positive points, limit your criticisms to a number that allows for a balanced conversation, as people are only ready to hear what you can balance.
Actively work to achieve a better balance of positive and negative interactions in all your relationships, and specifically when giving critical feedback, ensure positive remarks are as vivid and detailed as the negative ones.
Regularly assess the balance of positive and negative feedback in your relationships and prepare for critical feedback by identifying vivid positives to match your negatives.
Recognize that consistently negative feedback in a relationship leads to withdrawal, defensiveness, and people stopping listening, so strive for balance.
Strive for a healthy balance of positive and negative feedback in relationships to prevent defensiveness from too much criticism or alarm from too much praise.
If someone asks ‘Do I do anything right?’ or ‘Is it ever good enough?’, recognize this as a critical sign of an overly evaluative relationship that needs immediate rebalancing to avoid long-term damage.
Understand that rebalancing a relationship that has become too negative or positive will take time and consistent effort.
To rebalance a negative relationship, proactively engage in positive conversations about personal interests, team talent, or exciting topics, rather than always focusing on results or metrics.
When you observe excellence, tell the person directly if possible, but always make it a routine to tell a third party, as this enhances sincerity and impact.
Adopt a personal rule to always share praise about someone’s excellence with a third party, even if you’ve already told the person directly, to amplify its effect.
As a leader, ensure every individual you lead has a clear, short-term priority, and if they don’t, it’s your responsibility to help them establish one.
Start by sharing your own current priority, then ask others for theirs, and be ready to discuss and recalibrate if their focus seems misaligned with what’s most important.
Recognize that priorities are short-lived (usually a couple of weeks) and require constant recalibration and discussion to maintain focus.
Regularly incorporate discussions about current priorities into staff meetings, round robins, and one-on-one conversations, sharing your own and helping others refocus their efforts.
Critically examine the true drivers of your success, ensuring you don’t misattribute positive outcomes to ineffective or counterproductive behaviors.
When faced with resistance to change, investigate whether individuals or groups are benefiting from the existing problem or dysfunction, as this often impedes progress.
To facilitate change, openly discuss and expose the hidden benefits or advantages that individuals or groups gain from maintaining existing problems or dysfunctions.
To be coachable, cultivate an openness to change and avoid excessive self-satisfaction with current outcomes, even if successful, as this can impede growth.
Reflect on your signature strengths and weaknesses not just as a leader, but as a human being, recognizing that these traits apply across all aspects of your life.
Ask those who know you best (partner, spouse) about your perceived strengths and weaknesses to gain external perspective and enhance self-awareness.
Consider how your leaders perceive your strengths and weaknesses, noting any gaps with your self-perception and your ability to articulate negatives as clearly as positives.
Develop self-awareness by reflecting on what people commonly misperceive, overestimate, or underestimate about you when they first meet you.
Be aware that high standards or a desire for influence can lead to withholding praise, and actively work to counteract this tendency.
Utilize criticism, feedback, evaluation, judgment, advice, and counsel as essential tools to help people improve and become better.
Invest in learning specific, effective ways to give feedback that are universally applicable and timeless, transcending cultural or technological changes.
Understand that motivation compels action, while inspiration lights an internal fire to want to do better, and aim to provide both.
Be aware that what motivates or inspires one person may not work for another, requiring a nuanced approach to individual needs.
While individual adaptation is ideal, recognize its difficulty in emergent daily interactions and seek universal methods of inspiration that apply broadly.
To be an effective leader, concentrate on what you do rather than what you say, as leadership is defined by actions, not just words.
To improve as a leader or person, first understand yourself and the differences in others (team, spouse, friends), then adapt and flex your approach accordingly.
To identify effective leadership, focus on observing and understanding the specific actions and routines that exceptional leaders perform, which others might not.
Approach leadership with the fundamental intention to make situations and people better through strategic decisions, actions, and messages.
Recognize that leadership is not tied to authority or title; anyone can lead at any time by making the choice to improve a situation or person.
Aim to build a team where multiple individuals lead in different ways at different times, rather than relying on a single leader.
Consistently keep promises, admit mistakes, show humanity, and be present during crises, as these are basic, essential leadership behaviors.
Develop an understanding of team dynamics to effectively create coherence and alignment within your team.
Recognize motivation and inspiration as critical, though challenging, daily functions of leadership that require consistent effort.
Recognize that talent is foundational and organizational culture significantly impacts strategy execution, so prioritize both for success.
When confronting dishonesty, frame the situation as a choice where telling the truth now will lead to a better outcome than continuing to lie, which will only worsen the situation.