Are you an ambassador? As a front-line leader, your role is to be an ambassador. You need to take management’s initiatives and points of view and transmit that to your team. You also need to take any issues, suggestions, and ideas from your team and lift them up and transmit them to managers. How can […]

When you hear that something is a no-brainer, does that mean it really is a no-brainer? Often, there are things that you think will be easy to implement as a leader, and they turn out to be far more challenging than you thought. Keep a radar out for certain phrases when implementing these changes. When […]

How accountable is your team? Do they act like owners or renters? Many people likely treat stuff that you rent just as well as stuff that they own, however, there are many situations where the opposite is true. Think about rental cars, for example, people are more likely to treat a rental car worse than […]

Should you strive to be the perfect leader? One question that we ask in our Frontline Leadership class is, “If you think back to all the leaders for whom you have worked, what percentage of them were good leaders and what percentage were not good?” Usually, it turns out to be a coin toss, you […]

What’s the difference between being driven and being abrasive? You have likely met people who are very ambitious, and you may be one of them. However, there is a fine line between being driven and being abrasive. If you end up crossing this line from being passionate and driven to being abrasive, it prevents people […]

Who should own continuous improvement? This might go for other departments and functions within your organization. Let us examine a different question. Who owns your health? The doctor, or you? In reality, it is your health. You have to take primary responsibility for it, even if your doctor is your consultant or advisor to help […]

How do you deal with employees who have short fuses? You likely know someone who has a short fuse. They end up blowing up over small issues, or they overreact to an announcement that you make in your workgroup. How can you as a leader not allow that to aggravate you, and how do you […]

Congratulations, you just got promoted to be the supervisor of your work team, but how are you going to be successful in that new role? There are several challenges that face every new supervisor. Leading your former coworkers is one of them. After all, you used to work alongside them and commiserated with them, but […]

How can you use a shift start meeting to get your day off to a great start? Shift start meetings or toolbox meetings are a great opportunity for you to get the shift off to a good start and get your team members ready to contribute and achieve their goals. You’ve likely seen both less […]

Why should you focus your team on collaboration and not on competition? Some leaders believe that employees will perform better if they have rivalries with other teams. They will have things like crew of the month or employee of the month, really thinking that if they are competing against each other, it will bring out […]