A Team Leader’s Alphabet – Letter E

E is for Educate.  The team leader needs to develop his or her people by providing educational and training opportunities.  If the budget is tight, figure out creative ways to make this happen. This is a short series of posts from one of my upcoming books, “A Team leader’s Alphabet,” containing simple and direct tips [...]

A Team Leader’s Alphabet – Letter D

D is for Devil’s Advocate.  One way to encourage constructive “conflict” is to appoint a Devil’s Advocate, who is assigned the job of poking holes in strategies and actions in meetings.  The leader of the team needs to bless this activity and never, ever react defensively when the DA does his or her job.  This [...]

A Team Leader’s Alphabet – Letter C

C is for Conflict.   Despite the fact that most of us dislike the idea of conflict, it can be a positive thing IF team members understand how to deal with it.  Without constructive conflict, a team becomes susceptible to group think, and that can lead to major problems if no one is pointing out [...]

A Team Leader’s Alphabet – Letter B

B is for Buffer.  It’s your job to buffer your team from some of the demands of upper management and to find ways to influence upward to provide the resources your team members need.  And never bad-mouth upper management to your team.. This is a short series of posts from one of my upcoming books, [...]

A Team Leader’s Alphabet – Letter A

This will be a short series of posts from one of my upcoming books, “A Team leader’s Alphabet.” It contains simple and direct tips on team leadership and team building, still one of the greatest challenges in any company. After 20 years in business, I’ve learned a great deal from others, and I’d like to share [...]

The Suit

The Suit Magazine has featured my business, Meridian Consulting Group in their latest issue. You can read it HERE.

How to Manage With Questions

The art of management often involves asking questions.  Lots of them.  Here’s a list of ten questions to ask as you travel throughout your organization.  If you ask these questions as part of your routine, you’ll teach your people that their opinions matter. What made you mad today? What took too long? What caused complaints [...]

Leading the Successful Meeting – Part 5

The final segment of my 5 part series on leading successful meetings. Here I discuss how to ensure the meeting results in action being taken. Action Taken As A Result Of the Meeting Very few things are as irritating as leaving a meeting knowing that nothing was accomplished and time was wasted.  The meeting leader must manage [...]

Leading the Successful Meeting – Part 4

Part 4 in my series on leading successful meetings explores strategies in obtaining active participation from all involved. Getting Active Participation from Everyone A frequent lament among managers is their inability to get people to participate in meetings. Chances are managers with problems in this area are either making errors of commission, omission or both. Errors [...]

Leading the Successful Meeting – Part 3

Part 3 in my series on leading successful meetings examines the importance of paying attention to both task and process through the four stages of group development. Task And Process When a group meets for decision-making and problem solving, the meeting is clearly task-oriented.  It would seem that if procedures and operating agreements are established, and the [...]