Podcast Interview @ And Dad Makes 7 with Rocco DeLeo

Yesterday, my friend, Rocco DeLeo, released the first part of our interview for his podcast – And Dad Makes 7.  In this part of the interview, we talk about being “On Track” in the various aspects of life.  Please stop by and give it a listen.  I had such a blast talking to Rocco, and I believe our conversation will encourage you.  Get to the interview by subscribing to his podcast or by clicking here.

After you give it a listen, let me know what you think in the comments below.

6 Actions You Can Take Today to Prepare for Your Promotion Tomorrow

What do I have to do to get promoted?

It’s a fair question everyone must ask themselves, their co-workers, and their management, if they want to achieve their career ambitions.  Over my 20+ year career, I have moved from an engineer to a project manager to an operations manager.  Each step on the journey has required patience, persistence, and plenty of planned actions.

Today, I will help you identify six actions you should be taking today if you want to move closer to the promotion you desire.

6 Actions You Can Take Today to Prepare for Your Promotion Tomorrow

1. Talk to a person who is already in the position you want to be in next.  If you want to become a salesperson, talk to other salespeople.  Go out to lunch with them.  Grab a cup of coffee with them.  Pick their brains, and find out what they like and don’t like about their positions.  These conversations will help you understand the realities of the position you are pursuing.
2. Talk to your boss about the position you want to be in next.  Communicating your career aspirations with your boss is a good idea if you want support moving along in your career.  Your boss has the opportunity to be your biggest advocate and career counselor, but this won’t happen if you don’t talk to him about your career goals.
3. Look in the mirror and learn about yourself.  Take time to do a self-assessment.  I’d recommend looking into the DISC profile, the MBTI profile, and StrengthsFinders 2.0.  These “tests” will reveal key information you need to understand your strengths and weaknesses.  These kinds of assessments will also reveal more about you and what kinds of positions are right for you.
4. Get the training you need for the next position.  What training will best prepare you for the promotion you desire?  Some people say that an MBA isn’t worth very much anymore, but my MBA was a major part of preparing me to move from a project manager to an operations manager.  Seeking out training helps you learn, and it also demonstrates to your managers a commitment on your part to grow.
5. Work hard in your current position.  Don’t expect your promotion to be handed to you.  If you don’t work hard in your current position, your managers won’t believe you are capable of working hard at the next position.  If you want a promotion tomorrow, you better work hard today.
6. Pray.  Don’t underestimate the power and importance of prayer in your career journey.  Prayer isn’t a magic wand to get you to the corner office.  Instead, prayer provides an opportunity for you to hear from God on your direction.  Prayers may seem passive, but I believe it’s active.

When was the last time you received a promotion?  What steps did you take to get the promotion?  What steps are you taking now to prepare for your next promotion?

Did you sign up for the 7 Week Stretch Challenge yet?  Sign up below!

The Healthy Stretch of Leadership

I’ve been leading people for over 20 years now and in that time I’ve discovered leadership stretches us in 5 different ways. Being stretched is a good thing, it’s the opposite of letting us retreat into ourselves. When we retreat into ourselves, we find what we think is safety, comfort, rest, protection, but this is just a facade. What really happens is we become unhealthy, self-serving, risk averse, lethargic leaders with poor attitudes and hearts that can grow toxic.

The apostle Paul issued the war cry of the stretched leader when he said ‘For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.’ (Phil 1:21) My life for the cause regardless of the cost, as the ultimate cost will be worth all I have. So how are we stretched as leaders and what happens to us when we aren’t?

I want to share with you what I’ve discovered about being stretched in leadership. Every leader begins the leadership journey with the same five components. The role of the leader is to steward these components toward anonymity, away from ambition, so as their influence is aligned to God’s influence, the cause they lead and the God whom they lead for is glorified. Allow me to elaborate.

Stretch 1 – Passion into Wisdom

Every leader is passionate when they first start. They are fired up, keen and excited, wanting to change the world. Passion however dilutes if it is not stretched. If passion is not pulled toward and informed by wisdom, passion at best fades to disengagement or at worst results in recklessness.

When a passionate leader presents an idea or initiative to their people they should be seeking the wisdom and not approval of those they lead. Approval does not necessarily result in the success of the idea, but wisdom always does. The passionate leader needs to seek out wisdom, for maturity to take place.

Stretch 2 – Trust into Integrity

Integrity is a leader’s greatest asset; it is from integrity that influence flows. Every leader begins leading with an empty integrity account, but they are trusted to have influence, all be it in small amounts. If a leader chooses integrity always, the trust they build increases.

Through every decision a leader either builds or bankrupts trust. Building trust is acting with integrity, so the trust others place in you is rewarded. To not build trust is to play the role of the hypocrite, pretending to be someone your followers will eventually discover you’re not. Leaders who seek integrity always hunger for the truth, whilst using it as a mirror.

Stretch 3 – Invincibility into Humility

When a leader realizes their weaknesses they begin to embrace humility. Every emerging leader is not aware of their weaknesses yet, as they’ve not been leading, but as a result they do not know what will disqualify them from leadership. They feel invincible.

It takes courage to examine yourself and have others do the same, to discover your limitations, blind spots and weaknesses. People frequently think humility is just thinking less of yourself. Humility isn’t thinking of yourself less it’s thinking about yourself less. Leadership is not about you, it’s about the God whom you lead for and the people you lead, period!

Stretch 4 – Confidence into Security

Even the most unconfident leaders begin with confidence. It’s why they decided to step onto the leadership platform. The direction they steward their confidence however determines how long they remain on and how far-reaching their platform becomes. Insecurity is not a lack of confidence; it’s the investment of confidence in the wrong things.

Every leader needs to explore what they have invested their confidence in and potentially reinvest it in something else. Insecurity breeds in us when we trust something that is untrustworthy, constantly changing, and ever unreliable. A leader needs to place their confidence in God and lead out of the security, which accompanies this.

Stretch 5 – Commitment to Resilience

Resilience is the most valuable trait a leader can have. Without it, leading is horrendously difficult. When a leader starts leading they are committed. That is until the first set back, knock down, disruption, heartbreak, frustration. It’s at that point they need to decide if they will grit their teeth and push on.

Resilience is the repeated and constant decision to not give up, to stay committed. A leader needs to constantly make this decision and in so doing, deepens the well from which they lead. Commitments can come and go, or rise and fall on any number of variables, but resilience is a white-knuckle refusal to give up. The greatest leaders are resilient.

Leading people will stretch you, it’s meant to, but you need to ensure you’re stretched in the right way. For more on this and to explore these and other concepts further you can pickup my latest book The Anonymous Leader: An Unambitious Pursuit of Influence.

How are you stretched as a leader and what is the result of that stretching in your influence?

It’s an honor today to host Ralph Mayhew.  Ralph and I connected through the blog world several months ago at Joe Lalonde’s site.  Despite living on the other side of the world (Ralph lives in Australia), we share several common bonds: a passion for leadership and a passion for Christ.  I hope Ralph’s post today challenges you to become a better leader.  His new book is fantastic!  And I’d highly recommend you pick up your own copy if you’re serious about becoming a better leader.

BIO:

Ralph Mayhew’s brand new Amazon bestseller The Anonymous Leader: An Unambitious Pursuit of Influence, offers a fresh understanding of leadership and influence, and is available at www.theanonymousleader.com. He also blogs at www.ralphmayhew.com.

Ice Breaker – Super Bowl Predictions

Most weeks on The Stretched Blog, I ask an ice breaker question on Fridays. The questions are designed to help us get to know each other here in The Stretched Community. I’ll provide my answer to the question here in the post, and then you can leave your response in the comments. While you’re in the comments section, see how others answered the ice breaker question.

(I’m always looking for Ice Breaker question ideas.  If you have an idea, send me an email at jon@jonstolpe.com.  If I use your question, I’ll give you credit and share your links.)

With the Super Bowl coming up on Sunday, this week’s question seems appropriate..

Question:  What’s your prediction for the Super Bowl?

My Answer:  I’ll make three predictions:

1. The Anheuser Busch Clydesdales will make people cry.
2. Peyton Manning will become the oldest quarterback in NFL history to throw a touchdown to both teams in the Super Bowl.
3. Carolina Panthers will defeat the Denver Broncos 28-16.

Answer this week’s ice breaker question by leaving a comment. I look forward to reading your response! (As always, feel free to share links.) And keep Stretching!

Don’t forget to sign up for the 7 Week Stretch Challenge.  You can sign up right here:

When The Waves Grow Fierce Around Me

I had the best of intentions.

I had every thought of writing a nice, new “STRETCHY” post last night for you today, and then my plans kind of got derailed.

There have been a few things going on in my world the past few days that have caused a little higher amplitude to the normally steady, manageable waves I’m used to experiences.  Sometimes, life causes us to experience fear, anger, anxiety, disappointment, and fatigue.  I think I’ve felt a little bit of each of these things over the past few days.

Instead of writing a nice, new “STRETCHY” post, I’m left writing something with more rawness.  I hope you don’t mind.

I wish I could fix things.

I wish I could mend relationships.

I wish I could tear down walls.

I wish I could heal wounds.

I wish I could make scars vanish.

I wish I could snap click my heals together three times and be home.

I wish I could sleep soundly.

I wish I could just make it all better.

But I can’t.  I can’t do any of these things.  I wish it wasn’t so, but there are times when I need these reminders.  I need to be reminded that I can’t do it all.

But I know the One who can.

I know the One who can fix things (even if I don’t understand the remedy).

I know the One who can repair relationships.

I know the One who can tear down walls.

I know the One who can heal all wounds.

I know the One who provides the security of home we are all looking for.

I know the One who provides perfect rest.

I know the One who can make it all better.

And it’s this knowledge – it’s this One – that keeps me from being swallowed up by the giant waves of life.  And this is right where I need to be right now.

The nice, new “STRETCHY” post will have to wait for another day, because this is all I have for now.

In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help.  From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.  Psalm 18:6

Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments below.

5 Keys To Overcoming Your Mistakes

If you were paying attention last week, you may have noticed that I made a mistake.

Yes.  I am not perfect.

Last Sunday morning, I was working on my Monday morning post (How to Respond When You Feel Buried).  After working on the post for nearly an hour, I put the final touches on the post by working the a graphic to go with what I had written.  I picked my background using Pixabay.com (a site offering beautiful, free graphics).  I found a house buried in snow.  Perfect.  I downloaded the file, and moved over to Canva.com where I do my final graphic editing.  I cropped the photo.  I added my text elements.  I saved the graphic, and I pasted it into my post.

As I was inspecting my post, I noticed I spelled a key word on the graphic incorrectly.  Instead of writing FEEL on my graphic, I wrote FELL.  I quickly made the changes, and I thought for sure I saved everything correctly as I scheduled the post for the next day.

Monday morning came, and my post went live at 5AM EST.  I was mortified a couple of hours later when I received a Facebook message from one of my friends pointing out the spelling error on my graphic.

I quickly went back into the post.  I made the necessary correction, and I updated the post.  Then I responded to my friend to thank her and to let her know of the fix.

I tried to let the mistake go, but I continued to be haunted by my error as people promoted the post on Twitter.  For some reason, the uncorrected graphic showed up on my Tweets.

Mistakes happen.

How we respond to mistakes is what really matters.

Here are five keys to responding when mistakes happen:

1. Acknowledge your mistake.  We all make mistakes.  Accept it.  Admit your mistakes.  This is the first critical step in overcoming your blunder.
2. Correct your mistake (if possible).  Do everything you possibly can to fix your mistake.  This requires humility and a resolve to make things better.
3. Give yourself some grace.  We are our own worst critics.  We give others grace when they mess up, and we must learn to give ourselves a break from time to time.
4. Learn from your mistake.  What can you learn from your mistake?  This is the question you should be asking yourself.  Mistakes and failures help us learn how not to do things.
5. Move on.  You have a choice.  You can live in the past as you dwell on your errors, or you can move ahead making forward progress towards your goals.  What’s your choice?  I’m sure you can guess the better choice.

When was the last time you made a mistake?  How did you respond to your mistake?  What did you learn from your mistake?

Don’t forget to sign up for the 7 Week Stretch Challenge.  You can sign up right here:

Ice Breaker – Endless Loop

Most weeks on The Stretched Blog, I ask an ice breaker question on Fridays. The questions are designed to help us get to know each other here in The Stretched Community. I’ll provide my answer to the question here in the post, and then you can leave your response in the comments. While you’re in the comments section, see how others answered the ice breaker question.

(I’m always looking for Ice Breaker question ideas.  If you have an idea, send me an email at jon@jonstolpe.com.  If I use your question, I’ll give you credit and share your links.)

With Groundhog Day coming up next week, this week’s question seems appropriate (if you’ve seen the movie, Groundhog Day).

Question:  If you had to play one song continuously non-stop for the rest of your life, what would it be?

My Answer:  Where The Streets Have No Name by U2.  I think I could handle it for a while.

Answer this week’s ice breaker question by leaving a comment. I look forward to reading your response! (As always, feel free to share links.) And keep Stretching!

Don’t forget to sign up for the 7 Week Stretch Challenge.  You can sign up right here:

The Best Way To Keep Your Best Employees

Why do you think employees leave?

More money?  A bigger, better title?  A more flexible schedule?

If you are a leader in your organization, this is a question you need to understand.  Employee turnover leads to additional hiring and training costs for the company and typically leads to a decline in overall team enthusiasm and productivity.

In his 2013 Forbes.com article (Six Reasons Your Best Employees Quit You), Louis Efron gives these six reasons your employees are leaving your company:

1. No vision
2. No connection to the big picture
3. No empathy
4. No (effective) motivation
5. No future
6. No fun

And in his 2005 article for The Center for Association Leadership, Leigh Branham lists seven reasons employees leave.  Two of these reasons include:

• There is too little coaching and feedback.
• Workers feel devalued and unrecognized.

As leaders, we have a challenge and responsibility to address these shortcomings.

Today, I will help you identify one of the key action steps you can take to positively change things.  By implementing my suggestion, your team members will get the coaching they desire, they will gain a greater feeling of value, they will feel like they are better understood, and they will experience a higher level of motivation.

Today, I challenge you to implement regular one-on-one meetings with your team members.  A regular one-on-one meeting will make all the difference in giving your team members just what they need to feel valued, appreciated, motivated, and excited for their future in your organization.

Here’s my story:

A few years ago, I started having monthly one-on-one meetings with my team members.

As an operations manager in the construction industry, I’m challenged to balance my time as I’m responsible to make sure my group is operating as planned. I meet with my team members monthly on an individual basis to review their projects from a financial, resource, risk, and customer perspective. These monthly meetings, which typically last about an hour, provide a pretty good snapshot of things from a business perspective, but they don’t provide a lot of time for diving deeper personally.

I’m also responsible for participating in other department and company meetings. Again, these meetings are important for certain aspects of our business success, but they typically don’t provide opportunity for connecting on a more personal level.

I’ve heard it said that “It’s business, it’s NOT personal.”  Well, I disagree.  As a leader in the workforce, I have a responsibility care for my team members.  For me, this means our relationships in the business world are meant to be personal.

How can we take time to connect with our team members with all the different demands on our time?

This is the question that rolled around in my head as first started considering the possibility of implementing regular one-on-one meetings.  I have so many things on my plate already.  One-on-one meetings just didn’t seem to fit into my already busy schedule.

How can you NOT take time to connect with your team members?

And so…I took Matt’s challenge and encouragement to heart.  And I started holding monthly one-on-one meetings with my team members.

We talk about business and the challenges that they are facing on a project or assignment.  And we also talk about life outside of work.  I’ve learned about their interests, their passions, and their families.

For the most part, these meetings have been 30-40 minutes each.  I use a one-page outline to guide our discussion and to take notes which helps me capture details of our discussion.  I first ask my team member for an update on how they are doing and what has them busy.  After 15-20 minutes of catching up, I typically have 5-10 minutes of items I want to cover with them.  We finish our meeting with an opportunity for them to ask for help.  With 10 direct reports, these notes have been essential to helping me remember our conversations.  And it helps with my follow through on any action items that I have taken from our meeting.  (NOTE: You can download Matt McWilliam’s one-on-one meeting template here.)

What difference does it make if you know your team members?

It makes all the difference in the world.

The average working person spends 9-10 hours of their days at work – every day. (That’s two-thirds or more of their waking hours).  Most people work over 2100 hours every year.  If my math is correct, most people work about 80,000 hours in their life time.  However you do the math, we spend a lot of time at work.

We are relational beings.  We are made to connect with others and to be in community with others.

We are missing a huge opportunity to connect with others if we go to work, come home, get our paycheck, but fail to connect with our co-workers.

Intentional connections

My one-on-one meetings have helped me be intentional in connecting with my team.  It’s helped my team to feel more connected to me.  And it’s also helped my team succeed from a business perspective.

I’m so thankful I listened to Matt and started having one-on-one meetings with my team.

Regular one-on-one meetings with our team members leads to reduced employee turnover, more satisfied employees, a better culture in your business, and greater business success.  I have also discovered that one-on-one meetings provide an excellent place to discuss employee development.  My team members have pursued advanced educational opportunities as a result of our discussions during our one-on-one meetings.  They’ve also taken steps to advance further on the road to achieving their career goals.

Call to Action:

• If you are leading a team, it’s time for you to implement regular one-on-one meetings (if you’re not doing this already).
• If you are not leading a team but you feel disconnected from your boss or your organization, it’s time for you to ask your boss to start having one-on-one meetings with you.

Do you have one-on-one meetings with your team?  If so, how have they made a difference?  If not, what are you waiting for?

Do you have one-on-one meetings with your boss?  How have these meetings helped you?

Looking to STRETCH yourself?  Sign-up today for the 7 Week Stretch Challenge:

How to Respond When You Feel Buried

Blizzard of 2016 – Snow Storm Jonas

I live right in the path of the major snow fall that took place along the east coast this weekend.  I don’t know the exact number, but I’m fairly certain we had over 2 feet of snow fall in our area.

We have a long driveway.

How will I move all that snow?

This is the thought that went through my head when I woke up to the reality of the work ahead of me.  I felt overwhelmed.

How often do you have this feeling – the feeling of being buried?

We add too many things to our responsibility list.  We start out with the best intentions, but we get behind.  Before we know it, we are buried by a long list of things we need to address.  We quickly move to a level of paralysis that is the result of not knowing where to start.

What should we do when we get to this point – when we feel buried?

Today, I want to help you answer this question.  I’ve identified seven essentials to moving ahead when you feel buried.  Here they are:

7 Ways to Respond When You Feel Buried

1. Take a deep breath.  Actually, you may need to take many deep breaths.  Studies show that deep breathing actually helps to alleviate feelings of stress.  I recently downloaded a new application to my phone called Calm that helps users learn the deep breathing and meditation techniques.  Taking a deep breath gives you the opportunity to re-center yourself.  Before I went out to shovel, I took a deep breath.
2. Do a brain dump.  When you feel buried, you need to get all that stuff out of your head.  Take time to write down the list of things that are causing you to feel buried.  Keep the list handy, so you can add to it later.  I use Wunderlist and Notability to help get the stuff out of my head.  You don’t need a fancy software application to make this work.  Go get a piece of paper and a pen, and get that stuff out of your head.
3. Prioritize your list.  Look at the list you created when you did your brain dump.  Prioritize this list.  What things are important?  What things aren’t so important?  What things are urgent?  What things aren’t so urgent?  Determine which things really need to be addressed, and determine what things can wait or be forgotten all together.  You may want to assign a number to each item on your list – a 1 for the most important things and a 5 for the things that can wait.
4. Schedule your list.  Use the list you created and assign a deadline for each item.  Plan out your days over the next week or two or three to tackle your list.  I’d recommend spending 15 minutes each day to plan your day.  Obviously, you have things you need to address for your work and for your family.  When you plan your day, you can see the gaps in your schedule.  Use these gaps to intentionally tackle the items on your list.
5. Focus on one thing at a time.  Don’t try to do it all at once.  John Lee Dumas uses tells the listeners of his podcast to F.O.C.U.S. – Focus on One Course Until Success.  When you focus on too many things, you end up focusing on nothing.  The feeling of being buried returns, and you settle back into paralysis.  Get more traction on your list by focusing on one thing at a time.  Shoveling out from the storm, I had to focus on one area of snow at a time.  Once I completed that area, I could move to the next.  Overtime, my driveway was cleared.
6. Get ‘er done.  Just do it!  You can’t accomplish anything on your list by sitting around.  You have to get up and get moving.  Decide today to tackle your list, and take action today.
7. Get help.  Help comes in many forms.  My kids helped me shovel the snow, and I hired someone to run their snow plow up the driveway.  The snow plow couldn’t get everything, but this was a huge help.  Get someone to hold you accountable to take the above steps.  You don’t need to tell the world, but you may need a friend or two to check in with you to make sure you are making progress.  If you need help prioritizing your list and scheduling your list, I’d love to help.  Don’t be too proud to get the help you need to dig yourself out!

How do you respond when you are overwhelmed, buried, or stressed?  When was the last time you experienced this feeling?  Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Don’t forget to sign up for the 7 Week Stretch Challenge.  You can sign up right here:

Ice Breaker – Special

(I’m always looking for Ice Breaker question ideas.  If you have an idea, send me an email at jon@jonstolpe.com.  If I use your question, I’ll give you credit and share your links.)

Question:  What makes you so special?

My Answer:  When I was in 3rd or 4th grade, I had a T-shirt that said “I know I’m somebody, ’cause God don’t make no junk.”  I guess that’s the number one thing that makes me special.  Besides that, one of the things that makes me so special is that I’m an engineer who has actually learned to enjoy writing and speaking to others.  I have a story that is different from your story, and I’m the only one who can share it from my perspective.

Answer this week’s ice breaker question by leaving a comment. I look forward to reading your response! (As always, feel free to share links.) And keep Stretching!

Don’t forget to sign up for the 7 Week Stretch Challenge.  You can sign up right here: