Chris Kolenda: You cannot afford to waste a single brain when it comes to your company’s success.

You cannot afford to waste a single brain when it comes to your company’s success.

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What would happen if all your employees were engaged and committed to your company’s success?

What would change if two-thirds or more of your employees were committed to your company’s success?

Many leaders rely on a few all-stars, hoping the rest can pull some of the load. According to Gallup, barely one out of every three employees reports being engaged at work. With one-third or fewer pulling the load, you are burning the candle at both ends.

I met someone this morning at a global affairs conference in Washington, DC, who shared her story of burnout and walkout. Her employer was content to waste the talents of the unengaged and ride the workhorses until they broke.

No leader intends to waste the brains and talents of their employees, but most don’t know how to move them from unengaged to engaged without micromanagement. Who has the time for that?

What if you could get more people pulling the load? Your all-stars would still be in their zones of genius, stay with you longer, and contribute better, because the unengaged are pulling on the oars in the right direction and cadence.

Everyone has unique gifts– natural strengths or superpowers – that too often get overlooked in the hunt to hire people with the right skills.

You need to put people in roles where they use their natural talents and exploit them with their skills.

When you put people in roles that don’t engage their natural talents or skills, they will fail and drop out.

A more common occurrence is putting people in roles that match their skills but not their natural talents. It’s like putting a big-ideas person into a role that requires them to pore over Excel spreadsheet details. High-functioning big-ideas people will perform the job well but burn more energy than a details person will. This problem is what happened to the person I met in DC.

The upper left quadrant occurs when someone is in a role matching their talents, but they do not yet have the skills to exploit them. Steve Jobs, for example, was in this quadrant during his first stint at Apple. His people skills were so terrible that he got fired from the company he founded.

Jobs grew from the experience and developed enough people skills to avoid being radioactive. He moved into this zone of genius.

How can you help people find their zone of genius? I’ve created the PROM Archetypes® quiz to give you a broad frame. PROM stands for the four types of people you find in the workplace: Pioneers, Reconcilers, Operators, and Mavericks. They each make distinct contributions when in their zones of genius. 

Once you have their PROM Archetype® and identify their zone of genius, you can more precisely define the skills they need to exploit them. You can also use this tool to check your company’s cognitive diversity.

When you know people’s natural talents and skills, you can put them in zone-of-genius roles where they will thrive.

There’s no reason to waste people’s talents.

Would you like to discuss ways to use the PROM Archetypes® to strengthen your company and help everyone get good at getting better? Schedule a call. There’s no cost, obligation, or BS.

Chris Kolenda: Boosting Psychological Confidence

Boosting Psychological Confidence

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Psychological confidence arises when people are willing to speak up without fear of retribution; they do so respectfully and are confident they’ll be heard.

I prefer this term over psychological safety because safety-ism has created an expectation that employees should be free from accountability. Psychological confidence is about the courage to speak up and listen with an open mind, not about trigger warnings, safe spaces, and microaggressions.

People with psychological confidence report problems immediately, offer you fresh ideas that improve your business, and responsibly try new things that make your people, processes, and products work better. 

You don’t get innovation without psychological confidence.

According to an Accenture study that cites Gartner, HBR, and Gallup, companies with high psychological safety (confidence) experience:

27% lower turnover

76% higher engagement

50% more productivity

Your employees experience:

74% less stress

67% willingness to try new things

29% more life satisfaction

All three elements are vital for psychological confidence. Employees who fear retribution for disagreeing with their boss will keep problems and ideas to themselves, just like the co-pilot on the ill-fated Air France flight 447. 

The inability to disagree agreeably promotes gaslighting – employees will stay silent to avoid being blasted by a colleague. Such self-censoring is rampant on college campuses. 

Finally, no one will waste the effort to speak up if they don’t believe you’ll take them seriously; exhibit A is FTX’s collapse.

Magic happens when all three elements are working together. The willingness to speak up and disagree agreeably creates open-mindedness. Speaking up and believing you’ll be taken seriously creates confidence, and agreeing disagreeably while knowing you’ll be taken seriously builds trust.

Open-mindedness, confidence, and trust are the heartbeat of psychological confidence, creating the abundance mentality to share wisdom and co-create, leading to innovation.

To help you assess the degree of psychological confidence in your organization, Dr. Mark Goulston and I developed a survey that produces your Net Psychological Confidence Score.  

You can take it here as an individual to gauge your personal level of confidence. We can also create a version customized for your organization.

You’ll gain:

  • Your organization’s Net Psychological Confidence score, which you can use as a baseline for gauging progress.
  • Knowledge on what factors are playing the most significant role in your score.
  • Follow-up videos and action steps you can use immediately to strengthen your organization’s psychological confidence.
  • Greater trust, more innovation, lower turnover, and less stress as you implement these steps. 

Check out the survey here, and email me or schedule a call if you’d like to see if your Net Psychological Confidence Score is a good fit for your organization.

Chris Kolenda: Take These Simple Steps to Improve Accountability

Take These Simple Steps to Improve Accountability

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I use a pre-event survey before delivering a keynote or off-site, and “strengthening accountability” is always at the top of issues on leaders’ minds. 

Leaders recognize the value of accountability, which means being answerable for meeting standards. Employees willing to acknowledge and own their mistakes or shortcomings are most likely to learn from them and improve continuously. By contrast, those unwilling to do so are likely to repeat errors and fail to grow.

High-ownership employees believe they have a responsibility to meet standards, and they possess the psychological confidence to own their mistakes and shortcomings. High-ownership employees will flag problems before they become crises and offer fresh ideas that help you innovate. 

Low-ownership employees, by contrast, lack belief in your standards and have poor psychological confidence. They are reluctant to admit mistakes or shortcomings because they believe you’ll throw them under the bus. They won’t identify problems or try new things because they fear failing. You’ll have difficulty helping low-ownership employees grow because they do not accept your standards. Identifying these employees and moving them on (or flagging them before you hire them) will boost morale and productivity.  

Moderate ownership employees accept your standards but are reluctant to admit mistakes or shortcomings because they have low psychological confidence. They are likely to report only problems that can be blamed on others and won’t try new things. 

Most employees have moderate ownership, and your approach to accountability will determine whether they grow into high-ownership employees or remain the same.

When you view accountability as fault-finding and blame, you reinforce an employee’s reluctance to admit mistakes and shortcomings. When you drill into people about their errors, their first instinct is to defend themselves, rationalize, and shift blame. You are more likely to build resentment than create psychological confidence and better future performance.

Here’s a better way. Ask your employee the following questions:

  1. What went well?
  2. In what ways did you improve from last time?
  3. What would you like to do better next time? How?
  4. What does ideal support from me look like?

Your high-ownership employees will identify their critical mistakes and shortcomings and develop steps to improve. Your moderate ownership employees will identify some mistakes and shortcomings. For the ones they missed, you can ask, “tell me more about X.” You want to boost their psychological confidence so they improve continuously and take the initiative to report problems, offer fresh ideas, and try new things.

Your low-ownership employees won’t recognize mistakes and shortcomings or only identify minor ones. 

In rare cases, you may have a psychologically confident employee with low buy-in for your standards. In this case, you need to discuss how the company and the employee are better off with the standards than without and find out why they are hesitant to accept them. You might find that they have a good point, and you can make commonsense adjustments.

I’d like to hear how well this approach works for you.

P.S. To help you assess the degree of psychological confidence in your organization, Dr. Mark Goulston and I developed a survey that produces your Net Psychological Confidence Score.  

You can take it here as an individual to gauge your psychological confidence level. We can also create a version customized for your organization.

When you use the survey for your organization, you’ll gain:

  • Your organization’s Net Psychological Confidence score, which you can use as a baseline for gauging progress.
  • Knowledge of what factors are playing the most significant role in your score.
  • Follow-up videos and action steps you can use immediately to strengthen your organization’s psychological confidence.
  • Greater trust, more innovation, lower turnover, and less stress as you implement these steps. 

Check out the survey here, and email Chris or schedule a call if you’d like to see if your Net Psychological Confidence Score is a good fit for your organization.

Chris Kolenda: Harvard students cheering on Hamas shows why character counts

Harvard students cheering on Hamas shows why character counts

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American students’ celebration of Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians shows that elite education is losing its soul.

Why it matters: employees who cannot grasp the three basics of character formation: think critically, conduct basic moral reasoning, and maintain an open mind, will stifle innovation, cut ethical corners, and undermine your culture. 

Trusting relationships are the glue that holds organizations together. You should assess a prospective employee’s character before hiring them. 

Education, Plato wrote in The Republic, is the guardian of the guardians. Its purpose was not technical training but intelligence and character formation. You demonstrated your character through action in the public square and on the battlefield.

“The function of education,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “is to teach one to think intensively and critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”

Sadly, many students get indoctrination rather than the intellectual courage that comes from practicing critical thinking, moral reasoning, and agreeable disagreement. 

How else to explain their inability to see Hamas’s mass murder as beyond the pale?

One can condemn Hamas’s atrocities while at the same time empathizing with the plight of Palestinians and Israelis who want to live a peaceful and prosperous life, however they define it. One can support Israel’s right to self-defense while at the same time demanding their adherence to the laws of war and respect for Palestinian civilian lives. Hamas’s murdering thugs are Palestinians, but only a fraction of Palestinians are Hamas.

Who benefits from Palestinian misery and Israeli paranoia? Hamas, of course, and associated groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad (whose errant rocket killed scores of innocent civilians outside a Gaza hospital).

Many students have become, in words ascribed to Lenin, the “useful idiots” of those who seek to divide humanity based on their chromosomes, categorizing them into colonized/colonizers and oppressed/oppressors. The former, in this simplistic view, are good, and the latter are evil, so any action against evil is justified. 

Hence, you have university students cheering on Hamas as they beheaded Israeli civilians and butchered children. It’s obvious who benefits, on both sides of the aisle, from pitting people against each other.

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation,” Abraham Lincoln warned, “will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

The Enron, Madoff, Theranos, and FTX scandals, among others, show the damage when people lack moral and intellectual courage. Given what we see on many college campuses, such scandals will likely increase. Employers aware of the danger have revoked employment offers from students who celebrated Hamas murders.

Before the indoctrinated become bosses, you may see a perverse Robinhood effect – talented, self-righteous employees who sabotage your company.  

Artificial intelligence can improve this problem by leveling the book-smarts playing field. 

A B-level graduate of character from a state university can tap into artificial intelligence for the book smarts. The reverse is not true for the elite college A-student who lacks moral and intellectual courage.

P.S. Many students report that self-censoring is a significant problem on many college campuses. It’s a habit that may carry into the workplace. Did you know employees who report low psychological confidence are reluctant to identify problems, offer fresh ideas, and try new things?

​​Employees with high psychological confidence report significantly lower stress and anxiety and substantially higher performance, productivity, and innovation. Dr. Mark Goulston and I developed this psychological confidence survey so you can assess and identify ways to improve. We can also survey your entire team and provide you with a Net Psychological Confidence Score.

Chris Kolenda: Do you want Awesome repeats? Three-peats? Make this one simple change.

Do you want Awesome repeats? Three-peats? Make this one simple change.

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If you have good employees who perform inconsistently, I’ve got a way for you to boost individual and team performance with one simple change.

Most business owners I know are relentlessly positive people. Natural optimists who believe they can succeed and are willing to try new things to grow their business and bring out their employees’ best.

It’s not unusual for them to walk around the business complimenting people for their good work.

Stay awesome, Joe!

Keep on rocking it, Sara!

I appreciate you, Jane!

The effect of general compliments on employer and employee alike is easy to see: smiles, enjoyment, a boost in everyone’s mood.

Then, everyone moves on. Joe, Sara, and Jane keep doing good but inconsistent work. 

They know you appreciate them but don’t know what behaviors to repeat or adopt because your praise is too general.

What, exactly, is Joe doing that’s awesome, and what can Sara and Jane learn from it and vice versa?

If you want them to repeat high performance, you need to make your compliments specific. That way, Joe knows precisely what you believe is awesome about his performance.

Because he’s performed it and you acknowledged what he did, Joe knows what to do again. So do Sara and Jane, and they know what they can adopt from each other because you told them with a specific compliment.

Joe, I loved how you handled that customer’s complaint. You maintained eye contact, made sure she knew she was heard by repeating the complaint back to her, and used your discretionary funds to fix the problem and make her feel like a winner. Stay awesome, Joe!

Sara, the way you coached Brian to solve a problem he was facing was perfect. You asked him what he would do and what support he needed from you to make it happen. Brian’s solution wasn’t perfect – you knew that – and you knew that a good solution he owned was better than you giving him a perfect solution. Keep on rocking it, Sara!

This practice works everywhere you go. When I complimented a flight attendant on how well he treated people by looking at them directly and acknowledging them, I noticed he started doing it even more than he had before. The same happens with nearly everyone providing a service.

Specific compliments are your way to celebrate what right looks like, and the effect is infectious because your employee and their co-workers know precisely what to repeat.

General comments give a temporary mood uplift. Specific compliments give you a sustainable performance boost.

Let me know how this action works for you by sending me an email or leaving a comment.

Chris Kolenda: Leading in an AI World: 4 Ways to Repair the Trust Crisis

Leading in an AI World: 4 Ways to Repair the Trust Crisis

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Have you considered how AI will affect relationships in your workplace?

If not, it’s time to get ahead of the curve. Information technology provides massive benefits to society and your business, but its misuse has damaged relationships and created a trust crisis. 

Is that person really working all of those hours?

Is that “Hey Chris” email for me or personalized spam? 

Why do my employees make more than I do? 

Will a bot take my job?

Why does the CEO, who gets mega-millions, say she cares about us but can’t afford to give us raises or training?

It’s not that our company’s leaders won’t keep their promises; it’s just that they haven’t.

AI can widen the breach; it can also repair it. 

We live in an era where AI isn’t just a tool—it’s becoming a co-worker. 

AI exposes contradictions, say-do gaps, and potential unfairness while creating deep anxiety and uncertainty. This trust crisis corrodes relationships, impedes performance, and sours your company’s culture.

Why should you care? High-trust companies reportedly outperform their rivals by nearly 300%. 

And yet, how do you sustain trust as AI takes on more roles while raising troubling questions about credibility, agency, and employee value?

Here are four behaviors that will inspire employees to contribute their best even as AI’s role expands (my chatbot helped me craft these ideas after I gave it suitable prompts).

  1. Be Transparent with AI Integration: Remove the enigma surrounding AI. Educate your team on extracting the best from AI while recognizing its limitations. Your employees’ ability to provide actionable prompts will make AI an ally in your mission, not a mystery.
  2. Boosting Human-AI Innovation: AI can crunch numbers but can’t think outside the box. AI’s efficiency plus human creativity reduces risk and improves innovation. Leaders who promote critical thinking will get the best from AI while limiting garbage-in-garbage-out problems, drift, and look-a-like challenges.
  1. Creating Ever-Better Personal Interaction: Relationships become more important with remote work and distributed teams. You have a reduced margin for error, making every human touchpoint critical for building trust and unity. Face-to-face interactions in high-quality and innovative off-sites accelerate belief in you and each other.  
  1. Gaining Buy-In & Proactive Accountability: Move away from AI as a surveillance tool. Build a culture where leaders use AI to help employees improve future performance and spark their discretionary effort. 

You can anticipate AI’s effects on workplace relationships and develop behaviors that maximize its capabilities while limiting the downsides.

Anticipatory action on your part becomes compounding interest as trust increases performance, which enhances confidence in your company’s future. Wait, and you’ll regret the bill for corrective action.

Are you ready to get ahead of the curve? Schedule a call or email me for information about my keynotes and workshops on building trust in an AI world.

Chris Kolenda: McCarthy’s ouster shows that Americans can find common ground

McCarthy’s ouster shows that Americans can find common ground

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Getting people to find common ground seems more challenging these days, given 24-hour cable news, social media outrage, and polarization. 

These challenges can also enter the workplace, creating obstacles to buy-in, innovation, and change.

If you are experiencing similar frustrations getting people on board with new ideas, the recent U.S. House of Representatives drama can provide you with a productive way forward. 

Eight angry Republicans united with the Progressive Caucus and the rest of the Congressional Democrats to oust Representative Kevin McCarthy from his role as Speaker of the House.

Although the parties involved rarely agree on anything and base their fundraising strategies on demonizing the other, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder to remove the Speaker.

Chaos brought them together. 

The eight Republicans were appalled that McCarthy created a bi-partisan agreement to fund the government until mid-November. The Democrats view chaos across the aisle as a way to improve their 2024 electoral prospects in hopes they can regain the majority.

McCarthy, for his part, failed to create a goal more compelling to the Democrats, who were his only hope of retaining the Speakership.

He did not need to create a power-sharing agreement. Continued funding for Ukraine might have been enough to sway eight Democrats or more to keep McCarthy in the saddle.

Here’s what this episode means to you.

The key to gaining buy-in for change is to begin working from where people agree and working together on ways people believe they will be better off. 

Your employees will not believe a lecture on why a certain change makes them better off; they have to come to that conclusion themselves. 

Employees have strategies to thwart change. They can slow-roll implementation in hopes that the change comes off the rails. Telling you what you want to hear and doing what they want to do instead is another common approach. Sabotage works, too.

You need people’s active support if you want change to stick.

Here’s an approach you can use.

  1. Develop a goal that enjoys common ground
  2. Collaborate on options to achieve the goal
  3. Have your direct reports identify how they will be better and worse off in each option, and develop strategies to mitigate or offset the disadvantages
  4. Choose the option that best makes the people involved better off

The option might not be perfect in your eyes, or even optimal, but you will gain people’s active support and reduce or eliminate passive resistance.

If you are ready to gain greater buy-in and accountability, consider joining one of my programs or schedule a call with me to get started. 

Chris Kolenda: The Fetterman Rule: How Companies Win the Struggle for Accountability

The Fetterman Rule: How Companies Win the Struggle for Accountability

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Does your company struggle with accountability? 

If so, the U.S. Senate’s recent dress code drama will help you understand the struggle and take corrective action.

If you are like most people, you prefer to avoid confrontation, but you’ll do it if necessary. This preference accounts for why many leaders wait to confront deviations from standards until they become too big to ignore.

The problem with waiting, though, is that deviations become hard to break habits. You will spend significant time and energy and pay a high emotional tax trying to break a bad habit. 

You are better off nipping the problem in the bud right away when there’s no emotional attachment to the deviation, and it hasn’t become a habit.

The best case is when your employees enforce standards among each other so you don’t have to get involved. 

This is where the Fetterman Rule comes into play: your standards are what you tolerate. 

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman loves to dress in a hoodie and shorts; it’s reportedly part of his persona to connect with blue-collar constituents. I’ve got no opinion on his politics or how he dresses in his own home or when he’s out and about.

The U.S. Senate, however, has had an unwritten business attire dress code, and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer tolerated Fetterman’s flaunting of it. He even planned to abolish the dress code to accommodate him. 

Worrying about the new policy’s effect, Senators voted overwhelmingly to establish business attire as the official dress code for the Senate floor.

Your best indicator of buy-in is when your employees enforce standards among each other.

Creating buy-in for standards means that people need clarity about them; they must believe that they are better off when everyone follows the standards, and there must be consequences to guard against deviation.

Do your employees enforce your company’s standards, or do you feel you’re doing it alone? 

If you’d like to get your employees more involved in accountability, schedule a call, and we can discuss what’s getting in the way and specific action steps you can take to move forward.

Chris Kolenda: Less Time, Better Results. What People Say About Expert Consulting Mastery

Less Time, Better Results. What People Say About Expert Consulting Mastery

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Joan (not her real name), a gifted leadership coach, was at her wit’s end. Her firm emphasized cold-calling to get people to buy leadership training programs. She was extremely uncomfortable. The awkward and frustrating conversations never led to a sale and often damaged existing relationships. She wasn’t making any money. 

CEO coaching and consulting are high-trust, high-touch endeavors. People need to know that you understand their needs and that you’ve got their backs before you can broach ways to help them. I learned this lesson the hard way, too.

Joan started working with me on this approach during the Expert Consulting Mastery program. She rehearsed it several times with me before talking with prospects. She got immediate results and boosted her business to six figures from nearly zero revenues.

“This approach feels good and natural to me,” she reflected. The conversations were joyful and consistently led to working together. She gets referrals from delighted customers, which boosts her business. She never cold-called again.

Business development is the Achilles heel of many veteran coaching and consulting businesses. 

Positioning, prospecting, marketing, and sales can feel overwhelming and daunting for many people.  When you learn how to perform these skills in line with your values and standards, you will find that they become a joyful part of your business and incredibly effective. This is exactly what we do in Expert Consulting Mastery. 

When you fall into the trap of riding your Rolodex for a year or two and fail to focus on long-term business development, you’re destined to struggle once the people who knew you in your previous capacity have moved on.  This can cause your early wins to nosedive quickly. I learned that lesson the hard way, too.

When you have a method to identify the people you want to help, find them, and meet them where they are, and you do so consistently, your business will succeed sustainably. 

Here’s what some past participants have said about my Expert Consulting Mastery program: 

“Working with Chris has given me the skills, confidence, and accountability I needed to build a thriving business. I now approach business development with enthusiasm instead of trepidation.” – Lori Tompos, Lori Tompos consulting

“Spend less time, and get better results … I was able to apply as we were going and see results immediately.” – Kris Yagel, Founder, Diligent Plans

“This program’s clarity and focus resulted in more high-payoff work that we love and less wasted time and energy. We expect 33% growth to reach $100k in monthly revenues and expand from there.” – Matthew Hargrove and Barry Lingelbach, Black-Grey- Gold Consulting 

“I know exactly how to achieve my goals and deliver life-changing outcomes for my clients … and charge much more for the value I provide.” – Laura McKenna, Founder, Strength and Shield Coaching (Watch Laura’s video)

In case you’re wondering about the details of this program, here’s a quick recap for you.  You can read all the details here if you haven’t done so already.

This 9-week program gives you the process, guidance, and support to accelerate your business and create durable success.

100 percent of the people who’ve implemented each step of the process have been successful. Most find the program pays for itself in the first few weeks.

Each week you will watch videos (totalling about 30 minutes) and complete an assignment. You will meet with your group and me via Zoom to discuss your progress, answer any questions, and give you action steps that get results.

By the end of the program, you will have everything you need to move your consulting business from striving to thriving. 

If some part of the process is not working for you, here’s my promise and guarantee: I’ll work with you until it does – at no additional charge.

I’m very selective about who joins the program which is why admission is by-application-only. 

If you’d like to know more, send me an email, and I’ll send you a simple application.

We’ll discuss your business and see if Expert Consulting Mastery is right for you. I’ll give you action steps to move your business forward, whether or not you decide to take the next step.

Chris Kolenda: 13 Behaviours Draining Your Energy: The Michelangelo Principle Can Help Your Leadership Improve

13 Behaviors Draining Your Energy: The Michelangelo Principle Can Help Your Leadership Improve

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Are you a leader tired of people telling you to pile more stuff – goals, reading, workshops, conferences, journaling, activities, etc. – onto your overloaded life? 

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The individual ideas sound great, but who has the time for it all? It feels like the good intentions on the road to hell. 

If you are like most leaders experiencing good idea overload, you pass on capacity-building activities as nice-to-dos. 

I’ll get to it when I’m not so busy.

You leave opportunities on the table for becoming ever-better, and the delays rob you of development’s compounding interest effect.

If you’re experiencing this tension, I’ve got something that will help you create more space in your rucksack, and it’s not another failed productivity hack. 

Take away your time and energy vampires by following the Michelangelo Principle.

When someone asked Michelangelo how he created David, the sculptor replied that he simply took away everything that was not David. 

The Michelangelo Mindset is a term I first heard from Dr. Mark Goulston about the importance of removing the obstacles in your way. 

For this article, the Michelangelo Principle states that you must take away what’s holding you back to become an ever-better version of yourself. 

Imagine someone piling more “good stuff” onto the marble containing David, making Michelangelo’s job harder. We might never have this work of genius.

The principle is the same for you. In this case, you want to prune away behaviors that create needless friction. 

Behaviors – how you apply your standards to the people around you – separate elite leaders from everyone else. At a certain point, your skills and experiences no longer differential you. Your behaviors set you apart.

Below are fourteen behaviors that drain your time and energy. Most leaders have two or three of these behaviors. Prune these away, and you’ll save hours each week in no longer correcting miscommunication and misaligned work or having to pick up the slack that didn’t need to happen.

  1. Adding unnecessary value. When you improve someone’s idea by 5%, you reduce their commitment by 50%. Your employees perform far better with an 80% solution that they own than with a 100% solution you provide. You waste time and energy because you must make up for lost employee commitment.
  1. Offering unsolicited advice. Your good intentions create resentment by saying, “I’m better than you.” You waste time and energy by creating needless friction. Your employee is worse off, and you must pick up the slack. Ask, instead, what support you can provide to help them succeed faster. 
  1. Winning every argument. When you insist on winning every argument, you drag out meetings, create unnecessary conflict, and undermine goodwill. Gaining people’s buy-in is more important. Once you’ve got that, shut up and move out. 
  1. Butting in. Nothing matters before the But. The same goes for However and No. You create resentment with these words that say, “You make a good point, but my point is better than yours.” You waste time with needless input and micromanaging compliance with your mouse-turd caveats.
  1. Providing Constructive Criticism. Criticism builds defensiveness, which impedes progress. You waste time and energy relitigating the past, and your employee is less likely to innovate and try new things. Stop dwelling on history and start framing a better future by feeding forward: “How will you do it better next time?” 
  1. Justifying your actions after requesting feedback. You asked for feedback on what you can do better. Your employee tells you something you do that bothers them. When you justify your actions, you imply someone other than you is at fault. They feel they stuck their neck out, wasted their time, and gained your resentment. When you ask for advice and get it, say, “Thank you.” 
  1. Not Listening. Instead of focusing on your employee, you try to multitask. Your employee thinks they are unimportant to you, and you get only a fraction of what they said. Other times, you listen to respond (see winning every argument), so you miss their more essential points. You waste time and energy on misunderstandings and rework. Focus 100 percent of your attention on listening without passing judgment. Seek first to understand. 
  1. Speaking (or typing) when Angry. You are guaranteed to worsen the situation by creating resentment, putting your foot in your mouth, and piling on problems. Step away from the keyboard, go for a walk, and ask, “What can I do to improve the situation?” 
  1. Negativity fixation. You want to show how smart you are by explaining why every new idea will fail, so you stifle initiative, undermine ownership, and stay mired in a failing status quo. Ask instead, “How will you address this challenge?”
  1. Feeding someone’s negativity fixation. You’ll waste hours arguing back and forth with a know-it-all who’s stuck in their ways. Ask instead, “If it were possible, how would you do it?
  1. Letting Perfectionism impede progress. Moving from an 80 to 90 percent solution can be prohibitive in time, money, and opportunity cost, so stop waiting for perfection. Go with the 80 percent solution and adapt as needed. You’ll save time, energy, and resources while seizing opportunities that grow your business.
  1. Obsessive fault-finding. Some leaders treat finding an error like discovering a buried treasure. You spend so much time looking for what’s wrong that you miss seeing and recognizing what’s right. You spend time correcting faults, large and small, but fail to reinforce productive behavior, so unnecessary problems keep piling up.
  1. Finger-pointing. Leaders who obsess over faults tend to fixate on blame. This tendency creates predictable backlash as people try to defend themselves, cover their backsides, and re-litigate the past. While you waste all this time and energy, the problem’s cause remains. Focus on the cause, not blame, address it, and move on.
  1. Being the Hero. When you parachute to solve everyone’s problems and answer their questions, you become a crutch for your employees. Instead of building self-reliance, you create dependency. You rob yourself of the time to do your job, and rob your employer of the value you are supposed to provide. Instead of solving the problem for them, ask, “How would you do it?” 

Are you ready to slay your time and energy vampires to become an ever-better you? I can help you zero in on the behaviors to chip away and give you the action steps you need to reveal your own David. Schedule a call here and let’s get started.