The quote “Formula for uccess: under promise and over deliver” by Tom Peters has never been so true as it is today. In this day and age where promises are broken both right and left, the people who live true to their promises will win in the end.

My husband, Mike and I were talking this past week about a few colleagues who we consider to be at the top of their game who have promised a few things and never delivered on them. We were talking about the amount of time we spent trying to get them to follow-up and follow-through, only to be a bit disappointed in the end. You see…the promise of payment, the promise of a task or the offer of a favor never came through. So, not only did we spend time trying to get the follow-through, we spent a lot of time worrying about why the promise fell through the cracks.

I have learned in life that you just don’t make promises you can’t keep. If you think there is any way on earth that you won’t be able to follow-through, you simply say “no”, and then if you can follow-through, the person is totally surprised and delighted! If you think you can get the report in on Monday, tell the client or colleague that it will come on Wednesday, and when it comes on Monday, the person will sing your praises to the masses.

I am someone who once did everything people asked me to do…so much so that I was exhausted. It was hard for me to say “no”, and with a bit of coaching, I learned to say “no” to just about every request. I still say “yes” to opportunities and volunteer work which are meaningful for me, but saying “no” is actually a huge favor to others. It frees both you and them up to move along.

If you are reading this post today, I would ask you to consider “What have you promised, and have you delivered on that promise?” If not, I encourage you to clean that up today.

Person Tom Peters

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Over the last two years of working closely with colleagues and hundreds of millennials, I have been inspired by stories of both struggle and hope.  And with each story told, I became more and more clear that a huge part of my life path is to be of support to our emerging leaders.

Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools you can use to connect with other people and to make an impression, because each time you tell a story, people connect with you on a human level.  While you can certainly use rhetoric and intellectual facts and figures to build your credibility, you will hit home when you engage people using a time in life when things changed, or a story about your roots or a time when you fell.

One of the best articles on this subject is the article Storytelling that Moves People  by Robert McKee and Bronwyn Fryer.  In the article, they say “If you can harness imagination and the principles of  a well-told story, then you get people rising to their feet admid thunderous applause instead of yawning and ignoring you.”

I leave you today with a question “What stories can you tell?”  Once you answer that, then go tell it!

Over the last two years of working closely with colleagues and hundreds of millennials, I have been inspired by stories of both struggle and hope. And with each story told, I became more and more clear that a huge part of my life path is to be of support to our emerging leaders.

Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools you can use to connect with other people and to make an impression, because each time you tell a story, people connect with you on a human level. While you can certainly use rhetoric and intellectual facts and figures to build your credibility, you will hit home when you engage people using a time in life when things changed, or a story about your roots or a time when you fell.

One of the best articles on this subject is the article Storytelling that Moves People by Robert McKee and Bronwyn Fryer. In the article, they say “If you can harness imagination and the principles of a well-told story, then you get people rising to their feet admid thunderous applause instead of yawning and ignoring you.”

I leave you today with a question “What stories can you tell?” Once you answer that, then go tell it!

Millennial Leaders 

BNET Editorial gathered some great information by Robert Half International and PayScale to find out what Millennials are looking for in career. Great stuff.

A few other fun things on BNET:

Recruiting Gen Y: Four Killer Tactics

Workforce Millennials: A Field Guide

Three Strategies for Managing Millennials

This is such a juicy topic…Do your clients have a pecking order? You know what I mean…Do you pick up the phone with more urgency when a “special” client calls, or do certain clients get preferential treatment over others? Hmmm…very good question indeed.

I had a meeting last week with a biz owner…someone who is quite successful, and she commented to me about a situation. You see, she had hired a web designer for a project about two years ago. At that time, she was in the middle of a transition, and she was doing fairly well but not well enough to write home to the family about her business.

She hired a web designer to help her through her transition. The designer did a great job for her, and she became a walking billboard for his business. As time moved along, the designer began to get more clients (because of her testimonials) and obviously more “important” clients, because this designer began to promote the “more important” clients over her to the public. Hmmm…interesting that she picked up on that.

You see…this biz owner is someone who thought her web designer was a true partner…someone who would stand by her and support her, because she was a first client. But, as time went on, she became like a puppy who then became an old dog…the shine was gone. She was that first client, but now, she was someone who no longer had the pull of the “more important clients” for the designer. She no longer was famous enough for him. Such a shame (in my opinion, because I know this person and her ability to send thousands of people his way.)

I was raised by parents who always taught me “Dance with the one who brought you.” As you may know, this phrase (probably southern) suggests that we need to always remember the people who helped us get where we are. They are the seeds that we plant early on, and they are (in my opinion), the most important people in our business. They help us plant seeds that yield incredible fruits of our labors (more clients, more connections.) My adivce is…take care of those people, thank them and never forget that they helped you get where you are today. If you forget it, your business will take a big hit. It always does.

If this situation is true for you, I have a few suggestions on the topic:

1) When you make announcements about your clients, do it in alphabetical order. You may be saying “Well, I want John Smith to be first on the list, because he has more credibility.” That is bullshit!. By ordering your clients according to who you think is most important, you send a loud and clear message to your other clients: You are not as important! (I also want to remind everyone that money often buys prestige, position and power, so the person who you think is “so important” may have bought their way to success, which then diminishes the efforts of your clients who are working their way up through hard work, sweat and tears.) By listing your clients in alphabetical order, you take the “preferred client” scenario out of the equation, and you put everyone on a level playing field. If you are ordering your clients according to power, position and prestige, you are essentially “playing favorites.”

2) Each time a client does ANYTHING for your business, thank them over and over again. Your clients can never hear gratitudes enough.

3) On just one occasion, take the client who you “think” is your least influential, and move that person to a prime position. Give that client an MVP award or some type of award of distinction. You will be rewarded forever for that one effort.

4) Each time you decide to move a client to the bottom of your list, stop to consider his or her network and his/her ability to get out and talk up your company. You may be making the mistake of a lifetime by moving this person to the bottom of your “pecking order.”

There is a great coaching telesummit coming up next week. We are going to be addressing some of the top trends in leadership coaching for the future. I will be speaking on the topic of coaching and leadership development for Generation Y.

To learn more, visit this link.

I don’t know a company alive who is not wrestling with this question. The majority of leaders today are being challenged by top talent that jumps ship or gets recruited away, and this trend is going to only escalate in the next few years as Generation Y comes into the workforce. This young group of leaders see job hopping as a necessary step in their career development, and in order to stick around, leaders are going to have to be committed to building an organization that is attractive enough to keep sharp people around.

Today’s careerists are saying that they are usually attracted to a company because of strong brand equity, a great salary and nice perks. But, what keeps them with a company is a creative, collegial atmosphere, pride in the organization, access to the top decision makers in the company, the opportunity for advancement in the company and exposure to the training and development needed to grow their managerial and leadership skills.

I have coached over 800 people and have trained over 10,000, and what I know to be true is that employees leave when they feel they have no other choice. Employees don’t necessarily leave companies…they leave a boss who is making life difficult, or a culture that has become boring and stagnant, or a lack of psychological safety, or when they feel like they are stuck in a dead end job without any type of inspiration from a manger or co-workers. To stop employees from jumping ship, the leader has to be willing to bring a great deal to the company to create an environment that is exciting, one that allows employees the opportunity to engage in open debate and that offers employees challenging assignments that will stretch them both mentally and emotionally.

Leaders will also be required to become dedicated to ongoing learning and development and to create a true learning organization in the culture. They will be challenged to find new and creative ways to capture and then leverage the knowledge of their most critical talent. Through blogs, wikis, company forums and interviews, decision makers can begin capturing and then sharing knowledge so that they grow the company and create a succession plan for future leaders. Leaders of the future who engage in what is known as a knowledge harvest — a systematic, facilitated gathering of information through formal interviews, observations and collection of data so that best practices can be shared throughout the company will have the upper hand in the future.

We are in the midst of one of the most exciting yet turbulent times in history. The companies who can keep talent from jumping ship will be those who take the time to respect, trust and develop their employees. It’s just that simple! We would like to encourage you to comment and share your ideas on this pressing question.

To learn more about how to prevent your top employees from jumping ship and taking their knowledge with them, pre-order EDGE: A Leadership Story today.

From all accounts, it appears that it is going to become more and more difficult in the future to stay ahead of your competition if your team is not the best and the brightest in your industry. Intellectual horsepower includes not only IQ (many people believe that an IQ of 130 is needed today to be a top player) but includes transferable skills, the ability to understand and break a complex situation into logical steps and being super sharp, agile and a quick study. Intellectual horsepower also includes being able to embrace paradox and ambiguity and being adept at functioning effectively in the midst of opposing ideas or forces.

If you go back and consider the blog post Is Your Company Truly Designed for Innovation and the topic of mapping the job the customer needs to get done, you will be able to identify the skill deficits in your organization. Each time a customer voices a success, ask yourself “Who worked with this client, and what skills were at play to make this customer experience outstanding?” On the same note, if a customer’s job is not getting done, it’s time to step back and ask “What skills are missing from this process that we need in place?” From there, you can provide your team with the training and development needed to create outstanding customer experiences. Once you have trained your employees, if you have someone on your team who just doesn’t “get it”, then it’s time to replace that player with someone who can “get it” and get it quickly.

I also recommend looking closely at Executive Intelligence. This article from HBS spells this out nicely.

Sometimes the most obvious and profound forms of leadership hit you up-side the head when you least expect it. I got in the car Sunday morning to go pick up my older son John from a friend’s house where he had spent the night. Minutes later, on the two lane rural highway ahead of me was a car accident that obviously had just happened, right at the intersection of another two lane road. No emergency vehicles had arrived yet, and there were a few men directing traffic and helping the victims to the roadside. I squinted as I got closer trying to make out the familiar looking figure in the Levis and white t-shirt. It was my son, waving his arms for traffic to slow and to move to the shoulders of the road. Turns out the accident was a mere stone’s throw from his friend’s house. Hearing the impact, John, his friend, and some other locals had sprung into action.

I followed his direction, and then pulled off for a few minutes, watching as my young son stepped seemingly effortlessly into control, surveying and directing the weekend traffic coming and going on the rural but busy road. Just then the fire truck pulled up and the Captain got out and shook my son’s hand, like a peer. He gave him a yellow jacket and a traffic control sign and let him get back to work. You see, my son is in training as a volunteer firefighter. His father is a fire captain, and John has waited for this day since his dad’s boots came up to his hips and the weight of his helmet toppled him over. He just turned 15, the legal age for one to start training as a volunteer and to go on calls and actually assist. But, of course, he’s been hanging out with his dad, uncles, and cousins at the volunteer station for years, hearing the men he aspires to be like exchange fire and rescue stories

I pulled back into the line of traffic. As I passed John, I instinctually asked, “Are you alright?” before I could edit myself. Of course he was alright! He was soaring, but his reply was simply, “Yeah, Mom, just keep the traffic moving.” So, I did. And then it hit me. This was his first call…and I had gotten to witness my son moving into the leadership role for which he is so intentionally grooming himself. Needless to say, there were tears streaming down my face as I drove back.

When his cousin dropped him back off at home, John was beaming and reliving every moment as he recounted each detail to me and his brother. We were all ears. Though his father and I are no longer together, we each know that our son will walk a mile in the shoes of the firefighters he knows and admires…and then outgrow them, exceed them. He is walking his own path and will either find or create the tools he needs to do so, whether he is a firefighter or not (and he probably will be!). So for anyone with a young leader in their life, I would say this: support them, love them, give them boundaries, listen to them as they figure it all out and, perhaps most importantly, be a mirror for what they need to see in and of themselves. And then, little by little, set them free to touch the lives that they will.

These Gen Y leaders seem to be ten steps ahead of even themselves, let alone those of us who are fortunate enough to nurture them. We walk a fine line between helping them get their footing and knowing just when to let go of their hands. But don’t worry, they’ll let us know when we hold too tightly or too long.

The last thing my son said to me that night was, “So, Mom…did you really cry when you were driving back home?”

“Yes…I’m so proud of you. I love you.”

He smiled at me and turned to go to bed. I heard him softly say, “I love you, too,” when he was safely out of sight.

Harvard Business Review has some really great conversation starters.

Crisis Communications and American Airlines Posted by Kathy Bloomgarden on April 17 is a wonderful read on communicating during a crisis.  She focuses on the recent challenge with American Airlines and offers some very sound suggestions that we can all learn from.