HOW LEADERS MAKE IT RIGHT WHEN THEY BLOW IT

If you’re in a position of leadership, chances are better than good you’re going to blow it with your people sooner or later. It’s like messing things up in your marriage. Don’t ask me how I know this, but it’s inevitable from time to time.

There are pluses and minuses to that comparison, but one benefit is that making things right with our spouses can teach us how to make things right with just about anyone.
How? I’m not a counselor, but after decades of professional and personal experience, I’ve found mending relationships involves the same basic five steps.
Let me say up front that I’ve never walked these steps perfectly, but they’ve made a huge difference in my life and leadership even when I stumble through them. And I bet they can help you make it right with your people when you blow it.

Step 1: Take Responsibility

This first step is the most important. If we blow it but we’re unwilling to take responsibility, we’re basically telling our people that making it right isn’t worth it. And that’s just another way of saying they aren’t worth it.
But that’s not true. The health of our teams is critically important to our success as leaders. Because of that, we need to put our egos on hold and be willing to take responsibility for whatever harm or hurt we’ve caused.
What about harm we haven’t actually caused? You know the expression, “You can be right or you can be happy?” Keep it in mind as we look at the next few steps.

Step 2: Don’t Be Defensive

This is one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned. By taking the defensive posture, we’re only preserving our egos, not our relationships. In fact, we’re actually causing serious damage.
Why? By defending ourselves, we’re essentially abandoning those we’ve hurt. We’re saying, “You’re on your own—I didn’t have anything to do with this,” and leaving them to manage the pain and disappointment alone.

Step 3: Avoid Ifs, Ands, or Buts

Now, there may be mitigating circumstances, reasons beyond our control for what happened. We all know this. But the middle of a crisis is usually not the best time to bring it up.
Why? Because there’s a fine line between explanation and excuse, and people in pain are likely to miss it.
And let’s be honest, we can miss it too. We might think we’re explaining the circumstances when really we’re just covering our rears. In the heat of the moment the distinction can get blurred.
If you’ll notice, steps two and three go back to the same fundamental problem. They deepen the division, not heal the breach.

Step 4: Express Empathy

We can’t leave our people dangling emotionally. This fourth step is when we lean back into the relationship by sharing the hurt. And this is what starts to close the breach.
Our teams won’t feel alone in the hurt if we identify with what they’re feeling and share it. Instead they’ll see (and hopefully feel) that we truly get the pain we’ve caused and are present with them in it, rather than turning away to protect and console ourselves.
Taking responsibility enables this step to occur. When we’re defensive or passing the guilt, we’re driving a wedge between us and our people.

Step 5: Ask Forgiveness

Once the breach has been closed, it has to be sealed with forgiveness. But of course it takes more than asking. It takes an answer, and only our teams—the people we’ve hurt—can do this part. We can take responsibility and lean in, but they have to honor that and reciprocate.
This doesn’t mean we’re off the hook if they’re unable to extend forgiveness. It only means more restorative work is needed.
The good news is that if we value our people enough to work for that restoration instead of fighting to protect ourselves, they probably won’t withhold it. It’s in everyone’s best interest to heal and get onto better things.
I believe most relationships are easily fixed if we have the courage to stop defending our own egos. Anybody can damage a relationship. But it takes courage to fix one—the courage to reach out beyond ourselves to the people we’ve hurt.
The good news is that we have what it takes. If you’re leading a small organization or a large one, you’ve already got all the courage you need. The only question is whether you’ll use it to make things right when you need to.

Question: In your experience, what prevents leaders from making things right with their teams? You can leave a comment.

5 PROVEN STEPS TO REACH PEOPLE AND MAKE MONEY—IN LESS TIME

One of the hardest things about growing an online following is not knowing how to get from where you are right now to where you know you have the potential to go.

If you’re like me, you’ve felt like this from time to time—maybe even right now. You’ve got something important to say or something useful to sell. You know you it could make a huge difference in people’s lives.
But navigating the platform world can feel like traveling without directions. It’s easy to get lost. Imagine what it would be like having a clear path from here to there. Now you do, and it’s free.

If you have a message or product the world desperately needs and are frustrated because you can’t seem to get the attention you deserve, Your Path to Online Influence is the resource you need.
Seats are limited, but everyone who registers in time will discover:

• The No. 1 reason you’re not making progress with your personal platform (even though you’re working nonstop).


• Three game-changing productivity tools to help you finally blog consistently, even with a crazy schedule.


• The biggest mistake I made early on in my blogging career—and what you can do today to make sure you get it right.


• The specific tactics you can focus on this week that have been proven to create serious online traction.


• My best traffic tips to guarantee your content gets noticed, spreads to more people, and makes an impact.


• How I turned my online platform into a thriving, multimillion dollar business and how you can do the same.

Here’s one thing none of us has to spare—time. If you want the quickest route to making a significant impact, Your Path to Online Influence will show you how.
This exclusive training is free—but seats are limited, and they’re already going fast. Don’t lose your spot to a potential competitor.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR NON-FICTION READING MORE PRODUCTIVE

I’m a serious reader and have been most of my life. Most leaders I know are. We realize there’s a major ROI on time dedicated to reading.

As I’ve blogged about before, reading makes us better thinkers, improves our people skills, and helps us master communication—not to mention the rest and rejuvenation it offers.
We can gain a lot of rewards from reading, especially if we’re intentional about how we read and record our takeaways.

Keeping Score

Years ago, I summarized the books I read using a “net out” form. Unfortunately, I gradually fell out of the habit.
However, based on one of my goals for this year, I have reinstituted this practice—but in a new and improved form.
I’m launching a new live show soon and plan to build each episode around a specific book and author interview. To prepare for that, I will read the book, of course. But I also want to capture my thoughts about it, so I can be better prepared for the interview.
I thought my process might be helpful for you as well. You can make your reading more productive by using my Book InSIGHTS^™ form. It enables you to record eight specific kinds of information. This will not only engrain key elements, but it will also make them easy to access in the future.

Book InSIGHTS^™

• INformation. What’s the basic bibliographic information about the book?
  
  
  
  • Title
  
  
  • Subtitle
  
  
  • Author(s)
  
  
  • Publisher
  
  
  • Publication date
  
  
  • Pages
  
  
  • Your personal rating
  
  
  
  


• Summary. How would you briefly summarize the author’s premise and main argument? Think of this section like an elevator pitch. If you had to tell someone what the book is about in less than a minute, what would you say?


• Insights. What were the key insights you gleaned from the book? I highlight as I read and then distill in my own words whatever stands out as important to me. I also note the page number, so I can go back later and review the insight in more detail.


• Glitches. What were your main disagreements with the author (if any)? Reading is an active exercise, and disagreement is part of what stimulates our own growth and development.


• Holes. What did you feel was missing from the book? No book is perfect. Noticing deficiencies helps you evaluate a book, weigh its contribution, and decide on additional research of your own.


• Takeaways. What were your key takeaways? This is the key if you want your reading to spark growth and personal change. I try to list two or three things I learned and which I’ll leverage for new ways of thinking or acting.


• Snippet. What are the quotes worth remembering? While I’m reading, I identify quotes worth remembering. I store my Book InSIGHTS in Evernote, which makes these quotes easy to find at a later date.

The key idea with using Book InSIGHTS is to distill your reading to a short document that you can easily access down the road. It pays dividends in new ideas, personal growth, and life application. And I find just the practice of getting it down makes it sink in. I retain more of what I read when I take the additional time to record what I discovered.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR WEEKEND A WOW EXPERIENCE

Every year comes freshly stocked with 104 weekend days. That’s 28 percent of all available days in the year. It’s like a full quarter! The trouble is that we treat our weekends like a slush fund to bankroll more work. We’re forfeiting a tremendous amount of time we could invest in better uses.

Almost a third of Americans work on the weekends, and I bet the number is even higher among entrepreneurs and executives. Based on what the research tells us about rest and rejuvenation, there’s a competitive advantage in bucking the trend.
You’ll actually be more productive if you unplug. But that’s easier said than done for some of us.

It’s hard to unplug for the weekend. I hear it whenever I talk with busy leaders about taking time off stage. Work has an inertia of its own. Unless we plan our time off stage, we’ll be tempted to slip back into what is routine—what is familiar—and we’ll end up working. (Don’t ask me how I know this!)
But slipping into weekend work is not inevitable. If you want to break an old pattern, you have to be intentional. Yes, allow for spontaneity, but start with the end in mind. Ask yourself these three questions:
Looking back on my time off stage …

• How do I want to feel when my time off stage has come to an end?


• What do I want to remember about my time offstage?


• What activities will make me feel like I used this time well?

Rejuvenating weekends don’t just happen; they are caused. Here are my rules to make sure I don’t spend the weekend working:

• Rule No. 1: Don’t think about work.


• Rule No. 2: Don’t do any work—none!


• Rule No. 3: Don’t talk about work.


• Rule No. 4: Don’t read about work.

I don’t follow these rules perfectly. It’s especially tough when you work with family. But I come pretty close. How? The key is to replace work with something else.
An enjoyable time off stage has more do’s than don’ts. The options are endless, but for most of us they fall into several large categories we can use to optimize our time off stage.

And with that in mind, here are five ingredients that make sure your weekend is a WOW experience (along with some general suggestions).

1. Rest. Time off stage is a great time to catch up on your rest. Go ahead, give yourself permission to sleep in or take a nap. Put this on your to-do list if you must. Then you can check it off when you achieve your goal!


2. Refreshment. Go to a new restaurant. Cook a special meal. Eat at a leisurely pace. Stay at a special resort. “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world,” J.R.R. Tolkien said. I couldn’t agree more.


3. Recreation. Play helps us de-stress and stimulates our creativity. So play golf, throw a ball, or go hiking. You could also take a class related to a hobby that you would like to learn; spend time in a novel, a memoir, or a history book; or watch a new movie or television series.


4. Relationships. Weekends are perfect for investing in relationships. Take your spouse or significant other on a date. Attend a marriage seminar. Start a book club with friends. Call family members. Go to dinner with friends or have them over to play cards.


5. Reflection. “Reflection and prayer are man’s internal GPS system,” says William J. Bennett. “It is how a man evaluates and determines his fortune and his future.” So take time to meditate, journal, attend church, write a life plan, or find a beautiful setting and just sit and think.

If this isn’t quite intuitive to you or you want to up your game, I’ve created a Weekend Optimizer Worksheet to make the coming weekend a WOW experience for you. You can download it here.

Weekends are a perfect time to downshift from one week and recharge for the next. But only if we plan our time intentionally.