Common Leadership Errors: Being Vague and Expecting Perfection

Common Leadership Error: Being Vague and Expecting Perfection There is no doubt that how results are produced is just as, or more important, than the results themselves.  How work is done, the…

The Should vs. Is Leadership Error

This is the first in a new blog series from Bryan Shelton. Check in on the first Tuesday of every month for new blogs in the series. Our brains are designed to learn and adapt quickly to our…

The ABCs of a New Year’s Resolution

Many people make New Year’s resolutions dedicated to making themselves better in some way. Whether it’s to lose weight and get fit; become a better leader; or be a better spouse, parent, or friend.…

Errorless Leadership: Helping Others Be Successful

“People learn more from their mistakes” is an old saying that should be put out to pasture. Not only is this statement untrue from a learning standpoint, but relying on people to make mistakes to…

From "Beat Down" to "Build Up"

Recently during a leadership workshop I was facilitating, a participant approached me at a break and told me he wanted more out of his direct reports. He wanted to know why his current approach was…

Two Truths about Performance Improvement

When it comes to influencing behavior in organizations, there are two truths that need to be considered. These truths relate to two major aspects of the organizational culture: the systems operating…

How To Adapt in “The Great Resignation”

What companies do in the near-term to improve the employee experience will have a significant impact on their future success. “The Great Resignation” is causing a disruptive change in how companies…

Developing Skills Quickly with the Science of Behavior

There is an old saying that has always bothered me: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. If it's just a proverb to point out how important community is, I get it. …

Shifting from Evaluating to Coaching

How many times a day does this scenario happen in your organization? A Manager walks into the office and asks one of his direct reports, “Did you review progress against the quarterly goals in your…

Overestimating Your Leadership: The Dunning-Kruger Effect

Many people underestimate the complexity of being a good leader while simultaneously overestimating their own leadership skills. According to Psychology Today, “The Dunning-Kruger effect is a…

Leadership Success—A critical measure of effectiveness

In the book Measure of a Leader, the authors state, “The best predictors of leadership are found in the behaviors of the leader’s followers.” Measuring a leader by the success of the people he or she…

Increasing Meaningful Behaviors Part 2

Based on the positive response to my blog on Increasing Meaningful Behaviors, I thought it worthwhile to extend the discussion. As you now know, values can play an important role in our lives and…

Increasing Meaningful Behaviors

For most of us in the US and for many throughout the world, our lives have been turned upside down by stay-at-home orders. We’ve lost access to many of our favorite places to spend our time.  For me…

Want to Build Discretionary Effort? Focus on Building Rapport

Think of discretionary effort as the more in the “I got more” GEICO commercials.  Discretionary Effort is defined as performance that is above and beyond the minimum requirements of a job. More…

Bad Rules Are Getting in the Way of Your Good Leadership

Language is truly a double-edged sword.  Language allows us to cooperate, plan, coordinate, describe the future, talk about the past, and it even allows us to describe interactions between the…

Are You Developing Successful People?

We have all heard of the Peter Principle—“Observation that in an organizational hierarchy people tend to rise to "their level of incompetence." Thus, as people are promoted, they become progressively…

Earning the Right to Coach

When it comes to developing employees and improving performance, coaching and delivering feedback are critical actions for achieving desired results. In fact today, most organizations expect their…

Are You a Reinforcement Creator or Killer?

Most of us have had the opportunity to work under great, and unfortunately not so great, leaders. More than likely when you worked with great leaders you delivered high levels of discretionary effort…