“I feel like they are genuinely interested in hearing my opinion.  And because I trust and respect them, even when they decide differently from the way I wanted, I can support the decision.”

That quote came from an employee I was interviewing at a member company.  He was helping us determine what was truly unique about this company.  He feels free and even invited to offer his opinion.  Because they genuinely are interested and sometimes factor his ideas into the solutions, he is okay even when it doesn’t go his way.  How good is that?

If we can solve that first issue of trust we talked about in the last post, we can move onto the next dysfunction of a team, fear of conflict.  Turns out...

Based on what most of my career taught me, I would have told you that healthy teams were as rare as the unicorns that many leaders are hoping to find.  I have come to believe that organizational health is not only possible, it is the greatest determination of long-term success. Having seen teams fight for and find that elusive prize, I now believe you can get most of a team rowing in the same direction.

But that is not the case for most.  In fact...

In the last 50 years, the car crash death rate has dropped by nearly 80 percent.  And one of the main reasons for that drop has to do with “accident report forms”.  These are very specific forms that policeman and other first responders use to diagram the accident, document weather conditions, and identify the accident’s primary cause.

All that information is fed into the “Fatality Analysis Reporting System”.  The data...

When did running your business cease to be fun?

When did it quit feeling like a grand adventure in entrepreneurship and just become a job?

When did your business start feeling like it owned you instead of the other way around?

When did the things you used to love to do quit being very much fun to do?

I don’t know a single business person who started their own business because they wanted to live in frustration, pressure, and overwhelm.  

But an alarming number of them do.

Watching my father’s struggle...

There is a pattern we’ve noticed with business owners.  All of them are facing one form of challenge or another and they are typically looking at solutions that are external to their companies…primarily from two common areas.

We say, however, that the solutions to most company problems come from three key areas...

In the movie Groundhog Day, the weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) experiences his own version of hell.  He wakes up in Puxatawny, Pennsylvania stuck in repeatedly reliving the same Groundhog Day celebration that he thought was well below his station the first time.  

Day after day.  The same day.  

He first manipulates the situation and then allows the experience of doing repeated do-overs to change his life.

Virtually everyone is stuck in one arena of their life or another.  Things don’t really seem...

Turns out that Jesus says this a lot…even from what would have to be an exasperated heart.  The life everyone is looking for is staring them in the face.  What they have all longed for has arrived.  The reality is, however, that most of us are so comfortable in the familiarity of our frustration and pain, that even the real hope of change gets overlooked.

You can’t scream loudly enough to be heard

by ears not ready to hear.

One of the many coaching methodologies we have been trained in taught us something super helpful.  We are not only applying it as a filter for which clients we engage, but it has also become our filter for ministry commitments and even personal relationships.  It states...

My father was an incredible man.  He carried all those values like integrity, selflessness, working hard, and doing the right things that our world seems to be in such short supply of.  I miss him a lot.  But, I am also becoming more aware that sometimes, holding onto the old ways can be crippling.

He was very resistant to change.

When desktop computers arrived on the scene, he, like many others, thought it was a fad.  He believed that they would never replace the need for using service bureaus like his that could harness...

One of my current favorite leaders comes from more of a ministry than a business background.  He is an incredibly capable leader who runs a very successful business.  It has been a beautiful thing to watch him embrace best business practices and apply them with vigor.

In the last 11 months he has...

Time to reset the typeface on our calendars for another year.  

We assume you have already cataloged all your successes for the year (hopefully with the input from your team), allowed yourself to feel some pride at what you have accomplished, and have a plan to celebrate and honor your teams for all their hard work.

One of the leaders we work with has already done that step and moved onto an even more challenging one…

…honoring every employee individually for their contribution!

Not only that, he is going to help them...

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

- Sermon on the Mount

Jesus has just dropped some serious knowledge on these people.  It is not that he was saying anything inconsistent with all the teachings the people were following, but this time they heard and received it differently.  It goes on to say that the people were amazed because he taught as one who had authority and not...

I have been told that I have a gift of persuasion.  They say that when I point all my guns in the same direction…ideation, passion, strength, conviction, verbal acuity, etc…I can make a pretty compelling case for almost anything.  I am beginning to believe that I’ve lost whatever ability people thought I had.

I can’t seem to get anyone in my generation to change their opinion about “that” generation.

But to be fair to my generation, Millennials...

My partner Paul talks about the “art of the possible”.  At our LifePlan weekends we talk about how despite your beginning, you can craft a different ending.  Our corporate coaching roadmap helps teams imagine a more inspired future and then craft a simple plan to achieve that destination.

The biblical narrative has restoration as its’ major theme.  The whole point...

We spend a lot of time trying to convince people that restoration is available to them.  The company you always wanted, can be yours.  The life you were once inspired to find, is still available.  

Getting clarity on the future you desire, 

creating a clear plan to get there,

and believing that your hope can become a reality, 

can almost make them an inevitability.

We are curators of an incredible set of tools to help leaders and their companies find the same.  Once they step onto the roadmap...

I heard yet another story of a significant spiritual leader falling last week.  I am embarrassed to say that there was a season in my life where the failures and mistakes of others almost brought me joy.  My legalism had me trying to hold to an impossible standard that actually curated more brokenness…in me and in others.  The fall of others, in some twisted way, made me feel better about myself.

In this season, however, I just felt incredible empathy.  With his leadership over thousands of disenfranchised children and the intense...

Leaving college and going back home felt like the last chapters of my life were unfolding.  My five years in Waco had been punctuated by a rebirthing both spiritually and relationally.  The hallmark of returning to where I came from seemed like the end to both.  

Of course, it wasn’t. But it took me a while to figure that out.

I had a few lifelines...

I really love interviewing people.  I am honored that some of my clients want me to meet some of their most important candidates and that my schedule sometimes allows.  I consider getting to know someone, understanding their story, and getting to the real foundations of what makes them tick an honor.

Someone’s story is their greatest treasure.

Since I am not the potential employer, these interviews often look really different than the typical ones.  As a person who is usually helping articulate and then...

We pray before almost every group meeting with corporate clients and before every scheduled one-on-one.  There is a very specific prayer process that we walk through on our own before we sit down with pretty much anyone.  We learned it through a very mature ministry and it has been immensely helpful.  (Let me know if you are interested and we’ll share it with you). 

It is meant to calm, center, and get ourselves clear enough to be able to offer...

Start-up companies often experience a season they call the “Trough of Sorrow”.  They describe it as being in the place where no matter what they do, the company does not improve.  Adding to the sorrow is the feeling that everyone else around them seems to be succeeding wildly.  All the others seem to be getting acquired, raising huge funding rounds, and announcing...

I had to get a new phone a few months ago.  I tend to disable everything until I am absolutely sure it is necessary.  One of the things that took me a really long time to turn back on was “Location."  I had it disabled for quite some time.  On a regular basis (anytime I tried to map something) I would get the error message above, but I just typed in an address close by to bypass the error message and continued to keep it dormant.

I think if I am really honest, in some weird way it made me feel...