Liz’s Leadership Insights Blog

Don’t Be a Wimpy Manager

What's a wimpy manager? It's a manager who isn't honest, fair, and clear with her employees on her expectations. It's a manager who believes she's being nice by not telling her employees when they're under-performing, veering off-track, or flat-out behaving in unacceptable ways. It's a manager who mistakenly believes she's being nice by not telling her employees what they're doing wrong so they have a choice and a chance to change their behaviors. A wimpy manager is someone who equates...

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The One Thing

Unlike the movie City Slickers in which Billy Crystal's character realizes that "The One Thing" in life that will make you happy is different for everyone, in business, we must make it very clear to all of our employees what The One Thing is we're trying to achieve as an organization.  If we don't, our employees may inadvertently waste tons of time, money, energy, and other resources by working towards other things. The need to talk about The One Thing (or for those of you familiar with my...

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Are you Valuable or Valued?

We've heard over and over "Add value for your customers!" But what does that mean? According to Webster's Dictionary, VALUE means "Monetary or material worth". Therefore, "Add value for your customers" must mean we have to add some thing (product, service, or other benefit) that adds tangible monetary or material gain for our customers. How do we do that? We need to find out what is valuable - and not merely valued - by our customers. There's a big difference between providing something that...

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If Something Feels ‘Off’ It Probably Is

If Something Feels ‘Off’ It Probably Is

I messed up – big time. I knew deep in my gut something had to be wrong, but for some reason, I didn't have a frank, direct Necessary Conversation™ with Joseph. During our numerous status meetings, I had accepted his rationalizations of a hectic travel schedule, numerous new team members, and uncooperative clients to justify his less-than stellar performance.  I asked myself regularly:  Why wasn't he performing to the level I knew he could? Why wasn't he communicating with the other...

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