It's Friday The 13th - The Most Popular Posts.

Today I just hit 400 posts on my site. It's especially momentous when it happens on Friday the 13th. (Oh my!) Here are some of my most popular posts over the past three years:

3 Powerful Tips To Energize Your Team

It’s Friday. It’s been a hard week and you’re looking forward to the weekend. Doesn’t your team feel the same way? Here are some quick leadership tips to energize your troops and make them feel like a million bucks.

3 Critical Skills of Effective Leaders

Great leaders translate vision into decisive action — a skill that’s especially vital in tough times. But what are those skills? Do you have a blind spot? Should you be doing more?

Micromanagement Is Bad For You

If you’re a micromanager and want to change, you need to understand why you’re micromanaging and develop skills to allow your team to produce while you focus on leading.

Leadership Blind Spot: Recognizing Your Team

We all forget to do it. You focus on work, meetings, reports, etc. and ignore the most powerful leadership tool you have in our arsenal – recognition and acknowledgment.

10 Simple Tips To Attract The Best Clients

Getting clients is easy, hard, fun, frustrating, energizing and enervating. Most of all, you never know what to expect — one day no one is saying yes and the next, you close five clients. Here are my ten top strategies I use every day to make clients knock on my door.

Stupid Things People Do At The Office - You Micromanage Your Staff.

Everyone hates micromanagers. Then why do we keep running into them? Why are they our bosses? It's like a bad stomach virus. If you are a manager, odds are that you micromanage someone, or some project, or some group. Why do you do that?

One word: INSECURITY.

You are probably insecure about something, someone, or some process that is either uncomfortable or out of your knowledge zone. And because it is, you spend more time than you need on it. Much more time.

How do you let go of that bicycle seat and let that person, project, or team ride off into the sunset? It's easy - you need to feel comfortable, not them. So do this:

• If it's a Person - there is probably something about them that you don't trust (because micromanagement comes from not trusting someone). Once you figure that out - let's say it's their attention to detail - work with them on this. Bring it to the forefront and discuss it with them. Give them more and more difficult  tasks that stretch their abilities. If they succeed, you can pull back. If they fail, you're there to pick them up (get that? let them fall!).
• If it's a Team - there is probably something about you that you don't trust. You need to see a coach and figure that out. Candidly, I've coached a lot of upper management types and when they suffer from micromanaging their team (feedback from a 360 assessment), they usually have deep trust issues (from being severely burnt in the past) and have to slowly reliquish control.

But that's easy. Start with your stars and give up control slowly. You'll see that you will have more time for the more complex parts of your job.

Enjoy the journey!

Micromanagement Is Bad For YOU.

If you’re a micromanager and want to change, you need to understand why you’re micromanaging and develop skills to allow your team to produce while you focus on leading.

Whether you’re a star performer who was promoted to management or you’re managing in a new area where you haven’t done the work yourself, micromanagement can creep in. There are many drivers, such as loss of control or a sense of inadequacy. These all arise from the same inner issue: fear.
Why fear? Ask yourself: “If I don’t micromanage, what could happen?”

Team members could make mistakes. They might not do the work as well as you would. They may do it in a different way than you did; their way might be even better, which could make you feel less valuable. Or maybe micromanaging is the only way you know how to manage. If you stop doing it, then you won’t know what you should do. What’s worse, your boss and peers may see that you don’t know what you’re doing. When you think about these possibilities, how are you reacting inside? Does your “fight or flight” response kick in?

The problem with fears is that they lurk just below the surface and remain unexamined. When you become conscious of them, they lose their power. Have a look at what worries you and assess how realistic it is. For fears that have a lot of power over you, create alternate responses. For example, instead of “their way is different, so they must be wrong,” try: “Their way brings new possibilities, which reflects well on me as their leader.” Once you have addressed any limiting fears, it’s time to change your behavior.

Your goal is to have a successful team. To do that, you need team members who perform well and a team leader who leads them to success.

Focus on communication and trust. To help your team members excel, try these tips:

• Assign tasks that include clear, specific and time-bound expectations.
• Allow employees to develop the specifics of how they’ll accomplish the task.
• Set up status reporting that fits the scope of the assignment. (Beware of burdensome reporting, a classic sign of micromanagement.)
• Let employees know that you’re trying to change, and give them a safe way to point it out if you slip.

Be a leader. Try the term “microleader.” You never hear it, because it makes no sense! The language of management lends itself to command-and-control approaches that no longer work in many environments. Instead, leadership skills bring more value and will increase satisfaction for everyone, including you. Options include:

• Investing in each employee through coaching, challenging work and development.
• Removing barriers to success that your team members face.
• Expressing a meaningful vision that helps team members see the value of their contributions.

Most team members don’t want or need to be hovered over. As you let go of fears about creating a different type of relationship with your team, you’ll break your micromanagement habit.