Articles for category: Leadership

August 16, 2017

Greg Thomas

The Turning Point in Leading Your Team

As a leader, you know there is much more work to accomplish than your time will permit. So does your team. If you’ve done things correctly in setting up and leading your team then you’ll know it when you are sitting down for your regular team meeting and you pull out the list of work to do, taking tasks for yourself only to have members of your team jump in and take them for you. “We need you to do this, we’ll take those tasks for you.” That’s the Turning Point when your team has become something much more, much

June 29, 2017

Greg Thomas

Problems without Context

Are like pilots without a license. Sure you’ll probably get there, but… Will you get there on time? Will you get there in one piece? Will it cost you less than an arm but more than a leg? Will you really know why you are going  there to begin with? Without context to a problem, we are hoping to solve an issues with an infinite number of variables.  But when we add context to the discussion, when we frame the scope and reach of the problem, the players involved (and the ones that need to be involved) the solutions we

June 23, 2017

Greg Thomas

The Team Failed

And what a great moment it was. What great flames of fury sprouted from the utter disaster that was your team’s crash landing when they tried to reach too high. Spectacular – this story will be told for years. It will be told for years because it will be the preamble to the greatest accomplishment your team will ever accomplish. Every team fails now and again, but the ones that are spectacular, that are borne from pure blood, sweat, effort, tears and commitment to the goal and each other – these are the failures that will manifest into the team’s

June 14, 2017

Greg Thomas

Leadership is not all about Leading

It sounds like it would be, but it’s not. It’s about building future leaders. It’s about coaching others to take chances. It’s about guiding others through hard decisions, letting them make mistakes and helping them learn from them. It’s about shifting paradigms and worldviews to help people grow and improve. It’s about doing the work no one wants to do, so others can grow through doing the more visible, important work. It’s about putting aside your own praise and redirecting it to those you work with. Leading a team is only one component of leadership, it’s all the other aspects

May 23, 2017

Greg Thomas

The Guilty Question

Do you feel guilty when you ask someone the hard questions?  When you really put it to them – not in a demeaning or rude way, but in a direct fashion where you need to know the answers in order to proceed? It’s odd isn’t it, how guilty we start to feel that we had the audacity to ask these questions? Maybe I was too hard? Did I come off too strong? What will they think because I was so direct? Depending on who you are asking and the context of the discussion at large I would hope those people