Sterling Terrell

smart ideas from books (mostly)

A Leaders Necessary Exposure To Risk

A Leaders Necessary Exposure To Risk

I have been thinking about this tweet all day:

In business, you need some exposure to risk to be trusted.

Good grief, I mean, the number of executive board members, CEO’s, mid-level managers, and bureaucrats out there that pay virtually no price for making terrible decisions is mind-blowing.

The best analogy I can think of is how the average person treats a rental car vs. their own.

Maybe if it was your company – and your money – you would take fewer trips, buy fewer drinks, write off fewer mistakes, and make fewer excuses after losing money year after year.

How easy it is to spend someone else’s money…

I read somewhere that a company was looking for a CEO and that the only requirement – beyond general competency, experience, and know-how – was that they invest their entire life savings into the company.

That sounds like a good idea to me.

More?

Understand: Mangers need skin in the game.

Leadership Is Communication

Leadership Is Communication

This post – Leadership Is Communication – is another repost from the former john.do blog.

Good-grief I miss that blog…

Be-that-as-it-may, you know how every so often something you read sticks with you?

I think about this post every single time someone at work fails to relay an important piece of information in a timely way.

Of course it’s never an imposition on them.

It’s an afterthought.

And then it’s someone else’s problem.

(The đź’© always flows downhill, in case you don’t know.)

Poor communication, coupled with a misunderstanding of the work being done…and a flippant email from a supervisor or co-worker is suddenly hours of work and frustration for a now agitated employee.

Understand: A significant part of not being a “blocker” is documenting your processes.

It should all go something like this:

Leadership is communication. And, in general, the better the person is at communication, the more effective they are as a leader.

This was a (lightbulb) moment for me and it’s why I work so hard on trying to be the best communicator that I can be, for our community inside and out.

One of the things that I do as a general litmus test when I look to work with people is how good their communication skill(s) are… in its variety of forms. This is especially important as written communication is becoming even more necessary — clearly, it should be something that all managers & leaders should be thinking about!

If you aren’t a consistent and intentional communicator you’re just not going to make it long working with me! This, of course, aligns deeply with our #tatt operating virtue.

Remember: Communicating well doesn’t mean communicating a lot* — it simply means that you’re doing everything that you can to ensure that the information that you have stored in your brain is quickly distributed out and into the minds of others.

It means that you aren’t getting in somebody’s way (or holding them back). It means that you’re never a blocker for another team member and they have access to the information they need to operate and execute.

Most-important is the following principle: Communication is a service that you do unto others; it’s not something you demand. This is important; please don’t miss this.

Recent Posts