Practical Tools for Leaders: Breaking the Patterns of Worry Anxiety is one of the top nemesis to a leader (and all humans for that matter). This issue can paralyze the progress of any organization. After years of working with CEO’s and business owners I have noticed that we all have a pattern for dealing with…

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Often in life, the biggest fear to overcome is taking the first step. Leaders make the first move, and in doing so, they inspire others to act. By initiating action, leaders serve as pioneers, paving the trail for others to walk after them.As a black man living in the Deep South in the 1960’s James…

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America seems to be waking up to its weight problem. Popular reality television shows Biggest Loser and Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution inspire viewers to shed pounds, or better yet, to avoid putting them on in the first place. Bestselling books, Eat This, Not That! and Cook This, Not That! teach readers how to order and…

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“It’s nothing personal; it’s just business,” is a commonly heard phrase in the workplace. However, I tend to disagree with anyone who tries to impersonalize business. At its heart, commerce is a human enterprise, founded upon relationships between people. Most of us spend a majority of our waking hours in our business or at work,…

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A primary responsibility of leadership is to communicate expectations, both with words and actions. When leaders carefully and consistently set expectations, they engineer a flourishing work environment. However, when leaders abdicate their duty to communication expectations, chaos ensues. Here are six rules of thumb to follow as you set expectations in your organization. 1) Set…

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As any cyclist can attest, the difficulty of a race depends largely on the terrain. The strenuous challenge of peddling up a mountainside exhausts a rider, but the thrill of cruising downhill requires little to no energy at all. Wind also factors into a cyclist’s journey. Driving into a howling headwind saps a cyclist’s strength,…

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How do leaders generate positive momentum? It’s very simple: by learning and then applying what they have learned. In the knowledge economy, leaders are distinguished by their ability to process information and put it to use.There are three ways in which leaders interact with information, and each impacts momentum. 1) Ignorance The recipe for perpetual…

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Months before President Obama took the oath of office he began assembling an inner circle of advisors. He and his transition team painstakingly pored over the qualifications of candidates to identify the strongest leaders for cabinet posts. In methodically vetting future leaders of his administration, President Obama demonstrated that he understands the law of the…

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