As I was recently reading the John Maxwell Daily Reader, the statement made by John Maxwell struck me hard. Really, really hard. I think his statement will strike you hard as well.

January 29th’s reading shared a quote from John Maxwell’s book Your Roadmap For Success. The piece that struck me was this:

Change requires action.

How many of us want to see a positive change in our lives? I see those hands. I think that’s everybody reading this.

Come on… I mean, who doesn’t want to see positive changes happening in their lives? I know I do.

Some positive changes I would like to see are:  Read more...

• To lose another 13-16 pounds
• To release my first book (I have two in the works!)
• To improve my marriage
• To increase the amount I can lift

Over the years, I’ve signed up for a lot of newsletters, store promotions, and more via email. I’ve recently come to realize I’ve signed up for way too many emails. Many of them I no longer read or they no longer apply to me.

What does this mean for me? It means my email inbox has become inundated with emails from companies and organizations. Just today, my inbox contained over 500 emails from various companies.

That’s a lot. A lot more than I’m comfortable having in my inbox.

I choose to do something with all of these emails. I began to look at the emails, their senders, and whether or not the emails were pertinent to me.

Doing this allowed me to determine which email lists I wanted to stay connected to and which email lists I was okay with clicking the unsubscribe button.  Read more...

Lately, I’ve felt uninspired. What used to drive me to write has left me feeling empty and dry. I think my well is close to empty. My well is dry.

Authors, content creators, leaders, and more have a well they go to. This well helps them find new content and ideas to present to their audiences and teams.

Sometimes, these wells run dry. You hit writer’s block. You hit an inspiration block.

There are hours, days, weeks, even years where you may not feel the desire to keep doing what you have done for as long as you can remember. Writing feels mundane. New content isn’t coming easily. Or you don’t know where to direct your organization to go.

It sucks… But it doesn’t have to be the end of what you love to do.  Read more...

Stats fascinate me. The numbers tell a story. The stories they tell may be hidden deep within the numbers or examples but they are there.

One sport that constantly looks at stats is major league baseball.

They have stats for everything. Some of the statistics baseball fans and announcers follow are:

• Batting Average
• At Bats
• Home Runs
• Singles
• Doubles
• Triples
• Base On Balls
• Hits
• On Base Percentage
• Slugging Average
• Times On Base
• Stolen Runs
• Runs Scored
• Base On Balls
• Balks
• Home Runs Allowed
• Double Plays
• Triple Plays
• Games Played

Today, though, I want to look at the one statistic that gets the most focus. Everyone focuses on the batting average of hitters.

As a leader, you’re going to face stressful situations. These situations may pop up and surprise you or you may see them coming from a mile away. Whatever the poison, you have to be ready to deal with stressful situations.

I had a stressful situation recently. How I dealt with it may help you deal with the stressful situations you will encounter as a leader.

My Stressful Situation

We have multiple servers for our business. One of them hosts our Epicor ERP system. This server is a physical, stand-alone server that has not aged gracefully.

I came into my department and faced off against a frantic co-worker. They hadn’t received orders the day before or so far that morning.

Uh oh… Something is wrong.

My stress level began to rise…  Read more...