Dealing with Workplace Conflict Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict (with 17 years of nonprofit leadership experience, I can speak to how conflict is often not addressed well in NPO settings and how to do it well for more collaboration) Too often, team members don't have the meaningful, collaborative conflict that builds better results, creates innovation, and helps you serve your clients and communities. Often, people think of conflict as strictly destructive and avoid it altog...
Jul 11, 2024•28 min
Brainpower with Nina Sunday Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 24, 2023•39 min
How to marry creativity and business acumen and turn them into superpowers We creatives often get in our own way because of the stories we tell ourselves So our creative juices sometimes can become our worst nightmares that lead to overwhelm, burnout, and jeopardize our well-being and relationships But it doesn't have to be that way. Let me show you how. Yiqing (yee-ching) is an award-winning actor/filmmaker and a creativity coach for artists and entrepreneurs. She is the CEO of Fearless Cutie P...
May 09, 2022•25 min
OS 122 Super Charge Your Profits with No Bid Federal Contracts! Federal Contracts are not just for the BIG COMPANIES, federal contracting is for small companies. Small Businesses are leaving SO MUCH money on the table. If you've never thought about federal contracting because there's too much red tape, no-bid contracts will open up this door of opportunity for you. Ron Imbach is the president of the Center for Business Innovation and the Executive Director of the International Association of US ...
Apr 11, 2022•31 min
OS 121: Scale Your Business by Following Evan’s C.A.S.T.LE. Methodology Evan Tzivanakis is an Accredited Executive Coach (www.ExecutiveCoachAsia.com) and a Ph.D. candidate in Organizational Behaviour. Throughout his career, has managed more than 500 employees across 8 countries and led companies to expand across the Asia Pacific region by successfully crafting the right company culture and leading people from the front. With that experience, he helps executive leaders and organizations to enhanc...
Feb 10, 2022•39 min
OS 120: Ed Krow on Leadership With a proven track record in HR, Ed Krow is a people expert who uses his unique talent transformation process to leverage existing talent and align employees with organizational strategy to create change, drive sustainable growth, and maintain overall happiness. “I help solve people's problems and I write books about solving people's problems, but I’m also a business owner. It’s not only experience, it’s living with the same problems my clients do and sharing how t...
Feb 01, 2022•30 min
OS 119: Know, Like and Trust and Other Sales Lies with Sara Phillips Website: superiorperformancecoaching.biz Free Ebook for listeners: https://www.hotsalestips.com/habitsofsuccessfulsalespeople Sign Up for a Free 30 Minute Consultation to get personal tips to up your sales game: https://calendly.com/saraphillipssolutions/complimentary-30-minute-advisory-session Bio: Sara Phillips is a person who has sales running through her veins. She paid her way through college by buying candy and reselling ...
Jan 24, 2022•27 min
5 Leadership Myths That Kill Entrepreneurial Ventures Hugh Ballou The Law of the Lid Your leadership is like a lid or a ceiling on your organization. Your church or business will not rise beyond the level your leadership allows. That’s why, when a corporation or team needs to be fixed, they fire the leader. - John Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Starting and maintaining a profitable enterprise as an entrepreneur is very difficult, at best. However, research shows that 90% of busin...
Dec 14, 2021•13 min
Top Challenges for Today’s Leader Leadership is a general topic that people understand in different ways; in fact people have contrasting and conflicting perceptions of how leaders should behave and what leaders should do. Therefore, there are many gaps between theory and effective performance for leaders. Over the past 31 years in working with leadership in many types of organizations doing different kinds of work and leading different sizes of groups, I have observed these 5 things that are my...
Mar 18, 2019•10 min
Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.- Albert Einstein There are at least 200 working days a year. If you commit to doing a simple marketing item just once each day, at the end of the year you've built a mountain.- Seth Godin (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/09/the-simple-power-of-one-a-day.html)* Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can ...
Mar 12, 2019•8 min
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” ― Robert Frost Choices are very important in leadership. Making the wrong choice costs money and potentially damages the organization. The burden is on the leader for making effective and wise choices. Not making a decision is a choice. Sometimes, paralyzed by the gravity of the choice, leaders stall and can’t decide. Not making a choice is certainly a choice. What’s the impact of the d...
Mar 04, 2019•6 min
The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause. - Gustav Mahler Thinking versus Feeling is Transformational Leadership Leaders lead. The question is…do we lead with our brains or with our hearts? In my studies in Bowen Family Systems, a profound paradigm for leadership by managing and differentiating self, I have discovered a better way to make difficult decisions. The way is ...
Feb 25, 2019•10 min
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected. - Steve Jobs As a musical conductor, I... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 12, 2019•8 min
“I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.” ― Mahatma Gandhi We hear lots of noise in conversations and in the media about striving for equality of gender, nationality, and race - equal opportunity - equal rights - equal pay, etc. Recently in Blacksburg, Virginia, in a session called “Dialogue on Race,” a young African-American presenter used the phrase “Diversity of Excellence” in his presentation. That phrase made so much sense to me. I have adopted the idea and r...
Feb 04, 2019•7 min
Leaders, Set Your Standard of Excellence You must have control of the authorship of your own destiny. The pen that writes your life story must be held in your own hand. - Irene C. Kassorla One of the most common problems I encounter, when working with leaders to build results and create effective teams, is described in the statement, "My people just don't do what I need them to do." I suggest that this problem comes from the leader, not from the team. Leadership is defining the desired outcomes,...
Sep 17, 2018•8 min
Hidden Goals Don't Work 5th of 5 (http://transformationalstrategist.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Running-400.jpg) Set your goal. Share your goal. Accountability is energy. We think that being accountable to someone might bring us criticism if we fail. We don't want to look bad. We don't want anyone to judge us poorly. When we set a goal and share that goal with someone, it might be frightening. What if the person laughs at our goal? This is a statement of our intentions. This is typically a bo...
Jul 05, 2018•6 min
Focus on the Outcome 4th of 5 Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. - Thomas Edison You want to quit. Focus on success. Do not quit. This simple concept is very difficult. Along the trail, there are many opportunities to quit - don't quit. On the pathway to success, there are many opportunities to quit - don't quit. Focus on the benefit, and not on the problem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 26, 2018•9 min
If I miss a day of practice, I know it. If I miss two days, my manager knows it. If I miss three days, my audience knows it. - André Previn Running to Be Fit 3rd of 5 The first rule is to set your goal. Then begin at once preparing for success. Rehearse for success in everything you do - you are forming good habits that will influence your success and your life. I set my goal on finishing a half marathon. My mind believes it. My body is not capable of achieving it, so I must train daily to be ab...
Jun 25, 2018•6 min
Setting Goals is the Key to Success 2nd of 5 (https://hughballou.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Running-360-Goals-300x180.jpeg) At the root of all success is a vision and intention. We must learn to set achievable goals. I lead teams. I lead meetings. I teach leaders to lead. I can see the end result, because I have defined it clearly. I set a goal to be in shape. I have expressed the goal in terms of running a certain distance in a certain amount of time. I can't accomplish that goal without th...
Jun 22, 2018•5 min
Commitment is everything. I decided to begin training for a 5K road race when I was 48 years old. I had trouble running from one driveway to the next one. This was a major change in my life, however, I was committed to succeed. Two years later, I had finished over 50 5K races and was training for a half marathon. My commitment was to, #1 not finish last, and #2 to finish without stopping. I accomplished that goal with every race. I am really bad at this, however, running is a discipline in my li...
Jun 21, 2018•9 min
I have been traveling around the country presenting Nonprofit Leadership Excellence Workshops (http://synervisionfoundation.org/summit/workshop/). In many instances, I’m asked what to do when a board, or members in general, are resistant to change. The phrase, “We’ve never done it that way before!” is often repeated. Change is a fearful thought if other changes in life are too stressful. Change is not an option when there is no understanding of the value of the change. Change for the sake of cha...
May 06, 2018•9 min
Reverse Paradigms - Script vs. Story (https://hughballou.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/CEO-Space-International-300x238.png)CEO Space SNAP: Super Networking Accelerated Potential The SNAP is a great networking tool created by Berny Dohrman and Bob Proctor 25 years ago to empower people to connect with more people in less time. It's basically a modified elevator speech, in that it's short, precise, to the point, and powerful. Within the highly refined and specific culture of CEO Space, it's a way...
May 01, 2018•10 min
I constantly hear leaders complaining about others in the culture that they lead and focusing on how to change the behaviors of others in order to change the outcomes. The leadership methodologies that I support and champion are Transformational Leadership and Bowen Family Systems. The synergy in those two separate methodologies is about the leader changing self. In Bowen Systems, when the leader changes, others in the culture respond. In Transformational Leadership, the leader sets the bar and ...
Apr 17, 2018•5 min
Leadership Skill of Discernment The culture of compromise is often accepted as the price of mass. But in fact, this is the crowded road to popular acceptance, and it works far less often than the compromisers believe it will. - Seth Godin* Ours is a world where we are saturated with information, which we are expected to absorb and respond to, often instantly. Not only must we respond, but the expectation is that we will make decisions with wisdom, with justice, with compassion and with a whole a...
Mar 06, 2018•12 min
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. - Henry Ford So, it’s not going as you planned? You are doing too much and your team is accomplishing too little. The work is more intense and the income is down. It’s difficult to see anything but obstacles. It might be time to reframe those obstacles and attempt to define a way forward. Those obstacles can become opportunities if you can rethink strategy. It’s also time to rethink your own skill set, as well. T...
Feb 13, 2018•10 min
One of the biggest traps I experience with clients is that leadership is a term not universally understood and that leaders don’t know how to lead. We have been taught that leaders must have all the right answers and know what to do. That paradigm sets leaders up for problems. No one person knows every right answer or every right tactic. We have teams to fill in our gaps. The trick is to know how to create and sustain a collaborative culture. This defines Transformational Leadership. In order to...
Feb 04, 2018•9 min
Responding vs. Reacting We want to identify and solve problems instantly, when, in fact, we are not really sure what the problem really is. Our reaction is to solve problems and to move ahead, rather than creating a process to respond. Responding is a thinking state, while reacting is an emotional state. Making emotional decisions is the default of an ineffective leader. Making thoughtful decisions is the decision of an effective leader. As responsible leaders, we get to choose. What’s your choi...
Jan 28, 2018•9 min
Leadership Perspective: Reverse Paradigms, Intervening vs. Observing Podcast Transcript Your job is to facilitate and illuminate what is happening. Interfere as little as possible. Interference, however brilliant, creates a dependency on the leader. - John Heider* Managing self is the leader’s first responsibility. Managing group process is next. Setting the example is a primary foundation for defining the transformational leader. In Bowen Systems, the leader changes the behavior of others in an...
Jan 20, 2018•10 min
“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” ― Ernest Hemingway Recently, I created a post about listening (https://hughballou.com/podcast-57-leadership-skills-listening/). As a musician, I have learned to listen, however there is listening, and there is listening with intention. We often listen without really listening for intent. We listen to form our response, or prejudge the content, or prejudge the context, reason, or content of the person talking. For the musical conduc...
Jan 10, 2018•9 min
Reverse Paradigms,Mindset of BOSS versus Influencer The notion of being a boss as an effective leader is far gone. Once when I had a team, they gave me an official “BOSS" card. I was a card-carrying boss. The card pointed out that boss spelled backwards is “Double S O B.” Funny! But it’s not funny. Pressuring team members and dictating what to do is not effective in today’s work environment. Here are some polarities: (https://hughballou.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Boss-vs-Influencer.jpg) Got ...
Dec 22, 2017•5 min
