Your 2025 New Year Resolutions Check-In

Yikes. It's already March. Hopefully, you've mastered or are achieving good progress with your New Year's resolution(s) for 2025.

If you need another resolution to tackle this year or haven't yet selected one, now is a good time to review this list below.

New Year's Resolutions for leaders:

Don't micromanage
Don't be a bottleneck
Focus on outcomes, not minutiae
Build trust with your colleagues before a crisis comes
Assess your company's strengths and weaknesses at all times
Conduct annual risk reviews
Be courageous, quick and fair
Talk more about values more than rules
Reward how a performance is achieved and not only the performance
Constantly challenge your team to do better
Celebrate your employees' successes, not your own
Err on the side of taking action
Communicate clearly and often
Be visible
Eliminate the cause of a mistake
View every problem as an opportunity to grow
Summarize group consensus after each decision point during a meeting
Praise when compliments are earned
Be decisive
Say "thank you" and sincerely mean it
Send written thank you notes
Listen carefully and don't multi-task while listening
Teach something new to your team
Show respect for all team members
Follow through when you promise to do something
Allow prudent autonomy
Respond to questions quickly and fully
Return e-mails and phone calls promptly
Give credit where credit is due
Take an interest in your employees and their personal milestone events
Mix praise with constructive feedback for how to make improvement
Learn the names of your team members even if your team numbers in the hundreds
Foster mutual commitment
Admit your mistakes
Remove nonperformers
Give feedback in a timely manner and make it individualized and specific
Hire to complement, not to duplicate
Volunteer within your community and allow your employees to volunteer
Promote excellent customer service both internally and externally
Show trust
Encourage peer coaching
Encourage individualism and welcome input
Share third-party compliments about your employees with your employees
Be willing to change your decisions
Be a good role model
Be humble
Explain each person's relevance
End every meeting with a follow-up To Do list
Explain the process and the reason for the decisions you make
Read leadership books to learn
Set clear goals and objectives
Reward the doers
Know yourself
Use job descriptions
Encourage personal growth and promote training, mentoring and external education
Share bad news, not only good news
Start meetings on time
Discipline in private
Seek guidance when you don't have the answer
Tailor your motivation techniques
Support mentoring - both informal and formal mentoring
Don't interrupt
Ask questions to clarify
Don't delay tough conversations
Have an open door policy
Dig deep within your organization for ideas on how to improve processes, policies and procedures
Do annual written performance appraisals
Insist on realism
Explain how a change will impact employees' feelings before, during and after the change is implemented
Have face-to-face interaction as often as possible

Comments

Why Your Middle Managers Are So Important

The book, Power To The Middle , shows how managers are the crucial link between a company’s ground floor and top brass. “Too often company leaders view middle managers in a negative light as expendable employees who can slow down productivity and overall strategy,” explain the book’s authors and McKinsey partners Bill Schaninger , Bryan Hancock , and Emily Field . “However, new KcKinsey research reveals that this outdated perspective needs to change and that well-developed managers are the strategy that companies must prioritize to succeed today,” they add. Most importantly, by the end of their book, the authors sum up their insights and provide a playbook that will help senior leaders let go of the command-and-control mindset that has hobbled their managers for so long. The authors define middle managers as the people who are at least once removed from the front line and at least a layer below the senior lead...

How To Survive, Reset And Then Thrive

“Uncertainty is here to stay. Rather than seeing it as an obstacle to overcome, integrate it into your strategic approach to invigorate your high-growth potential and outperform competition under any market condition,” explains Rebecca Homkes , author of the book, Survive, Reset, Thrive . “Most books aren’t honest enough about how hard it is to reset ,” adds Homkes. Yet, resetting and leaning into change is essential. “If you are ready to embrace change as a central element of your growth strategy, this book is for you.” Homkes’ book is a timely, comprehensive, and essential read for business leaders looking to take the next step toward ensuring high growth for their companies. The book brings together more than 15 years of Homkes working directly with high-growth companies of all sizes and across a wide variety of industries. Survive, Reset, Thrive (SRT) is a practical and innovative interconnected three-mode approach : Survive : Stabil...

My Favorite "Moral Of The Story" Tips From Harvey Mackay

I'm a big fan of best-selling author Harvey Mackay . He writes about business, sales and leadership and typically ends his articles with a moral of the story. Culled from his writings of the past few years, here are some of my favorites of his moral of the story endings: Change your thinking, change your life. It's not enough to know how to do things - you must know why you do them. If you live in the past, you won't have much of a future. If you want to outsmart the competition, you have to outthink the competition. Don't be afraid to make a decision. Be afraid not make a decision. What you learn on your first job will last through your last job. Minds are like parachutes - not much good unless they are open. If you can't be an expert, hire one. People have a way of becoming what you encourage them to be. It only takes a little spark to ignite a great fire. Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing to do. Mackay's best-...

Read Good To Great

Near the top of virtually every list you'll see of the best leadership books, you'll find, Good To Great , by Jim Collins . The book, five years in the making, and published in 2001, addresses the all-important question of: Can a good company become a great company, and if so, how? Some of the lessons from the book are: "Leadership is equally about creating a climate where the truth is heard and the brutal facts confronted." "Leading from good to great does not mean coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights." "Good-to-great companies use technology as an accelerator of momentum, not a creator of it." "Engage in dialogue and debate." Good-to-great companies are those who have the ability to get and kee...

How To Assess Your Organization's Risk Using The 5Cs

Within the first 100 days as a new leader in an organization, you'll want to assess your organization's risk . Authors George Bradt, Jayme A. Clark and Jorge Pedraza, in their book, The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan (third edition due out on October 10), suggest you do your assessment using the 5Cs : Customers : First line, customer chain, end users, influencers Collaborators : Suppliers, allies, government/community leaders Capabilities : Human, operational, financial, technical, key assets Competitors : Direct, indirect, potential Conditions : Social/demographic, political/government/regulatory, economic, market Use a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) as you examine each category if that helps.

Frustration In The Workplace Is A Silent Killer

" Frustration in the workplace is a silent killer," claim authors Mark Royal and Tom Agnew in their terrific book, The Enemy of Engagement . Further, "in an organizational context, frustration is not as simple as failing to get something you want. Rather, it involves the inability to succeed in your role due to organizational barriers or the inability to bring the bulk of your individual talents, skills, and abilities to your job." Royal and Agnew further explain that a staggering number of highly motivated, engaged, and loyal employees quit trying--or quit, period---because they feel frustrated . And what's causing all that frustration? It's lack of enablement . According to Royal and Agnew, as employees grow in experience in their roles, they begin to focus less on learning the ropes and more on achieving desired results. In the process, they are increasingly confronted with enablement constraints that limit their ability to get their ...

4 Questions To Ask An Employee When He Quits

As a leader, it's critical that you understand the real reasons employees leave your company. To do that, you need to ask specific questions that may not be ones you currently include in your exit interviews. Fortunately, Richard Finnegan , shares in his book, Rethinking Retention in Good Times and Bad , four key questions you should include in your exit interviews : Why did you decide to leave us? Of all the things you've told me, what is the top thing that caused you to resign? It's great that you've found such a good opportunity, but why did you look? What one thing could we have done that would have caused you to stay? Your goal is to learn the most important leave reason rather than learn which three or five things contributed to your employee's decision to leave. The four questions above will help you learn the most important reason.

A Good Reason To Begin Volunteering On January 20

As the nation honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Monday, January 20 , volunteer or make the decision to volunteer in your community. King routinely asked “What are you doing for others,” and January 20th is the ideal day to ask yourself that question. The federal holiday was first observed 27 years ago and in 1994 Congress designated it as a National Day of Service, inspired by King’s words, “ everybody can be great because anybody can serve .” You can turn to Volunteer Match to find volunteer opportunities right in your neighborhood or nearby surrounding area. Visit the web site, type in your city's name and the types of volunteering opportunities that interest you most, and you will be presented with a variety of organizations seeking volunteers. And, if you are a leader in the workplace, encourage your employees and team members to volunteer in the community as individuals. Or, organize volunteer afternoons or evenings for your employees.

How To Energize Your Work And Life

Tom Rath is the author of the incredibly popular Strengthsfinder 2.0 book . His latest book is, Are You Fully Charged? The book draws on the latest and most practical research from business and psychology and identifies the three keys that influence most of our daily well-being, as well as our engagement at work : Meaning : doing something that benefits another person Interactions : creating far more positive than negative moments Energy : making choices that improve your mental and physical health "This book will challenge you to stop pursing happiness and start creating meaning instead ," explains Rath. And, by doing so, you will rethink your daily interactions with the people who matter most. "The actions you take throughout every single day accumulate to shape your years, decades and overall life," adds Rath. Even brief interactions count, says Rath, such as exchanging a smile or greeting while passing someone on the s...

Try To Avoid These Common Mistakes

In Leading Change, Step-By-Step , author Jody Spiro describes three common mistakes leaders should avoid . Those are: Thinking That a Mission is Developed by a Single Leader -- Spiro explains that in order to have buy-in from across the organization, the creation of a mission requires negotiation and genuine input from across the organization. And that means a leader needs to be a good, active listener. Addressing Too Much in a Single Strategy; Inability to Say "No" -- According to Spiro, leaders should avoid the temptation to "pack" a given strategy with several other strategies. Instead, you should be selective and narrow the strategy to a single thought that furthers your mission and is a niche where you can have a competitive advantage or offer a unique program or service. Confusing Strategies with Actions -- Both strategies and actions specify something that will be done. But, as Spiro explains, actions are more specific and concrete. The strateg...

Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

Search This Blog