Everything is decaying. Nothing improves on its own.

The concept of status-quo being the maintenance of a result is a fallacy. Doing the same thing over and over will result in diminishing returns. 

Status-quo is like a pilot holding onto the controls of the plane and ignoring the impact of a head or side wind wind. To do so would never enable the pilot to reach his destination. The wind pushes the plane off course and the pilot needs to take active countermeasures to keep the plane on course.

Likewise, every plan is only valid for a very short initial period. Thereafter, every plan requires adjustments to compensate for uncontrollable variables.

The 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics states that all things are decaying, eroding, and falling apart. Nothing gets better by itself. Therefore great leaders make continual adjustments to keep their organizations headed in a positive direction.

Here are five things that leaders can do to assist them in counteracting the effects of the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics:

• Increase general awareness: Remain open-minded and tap into the awareness of a team. This includes feedback from employee engagement surveys and good leading indicator reports that show where the organization is going.
• Increase self-awareness: Remain humble and seek feedback from trusted confidants who will speak truth into your life and hold you accountable. Don’t be closed and defensive, rather thank others for their candid feedback and welcome them to keep it coming.
• Clarify and align with your operating philosophy: Take time to define your operating philosophy and then align all of your actions accordingly. Your operating philosophy defines what you really believe and will act on, not what you hope for.
• Practice intentionality: Take action and do the little things consistently. These are the actions that are as easy to do as not do, for which the result is not always easy to measure, and therefor most people will take the path of least resistance than the path of intentionality committed to one’s philosophy.
• Own your missteps: Nobody is perfect. When you make a misstep own it, and the associated consequences, and then make the necessary adjustments to get back on a positive path. 

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.

Life can often seem like a maze. 

We move forward with what we believe to be a well thought through plan, just to find ourselves at a dead end. At those times we can feel stuck, especially when life’s pressures [causing cortisol to course through our vein] shut down our creative and innovative [thinking] brain (Limbic).

It is hard for a day to go by in an automotive dealership without somebody quoting the definition of insanity—usually in response to the breakdown of a process—when they get to such a dead end.

Seems that most of what is done day-in and day-out in the average dealership is similar to what has been done in the past—almost like Groundhog Day. The funny thing is how everyone is surprised when yesterday’s thinking doesn’t solve today’s problems…and the cycle continues.

Great Leaders, however, understand the importance of elevated thinking in order to solve today and tomorrow’s problems—being proactive and not just reactive. To do so they maintain an effective meeting cadence through which they tap into the minds and thoughts of their peers and followers. And, since they have invested leadership capital in past interactions, others willingly engage with them in problem solving.

How Great Leaders elevate their thinking:

• They build leadership capital by investing in others so that others gladly provide a collaborative return on that investment when needed.
• They establish an effective meeting cadence where issues can be discussed in a timely manner and solved by an expanded group.
• They don’t try to solve everything themselves, rather, they assemble a cohesive team through which brain-power is expanded.

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.

Being trustworthy can simply be defined as being worthy of trust.

Trustworthiness is like a credit score [creditworthiness]. You don’t start high. Rather, you start at zero and earn your way up into a trustworthy position. In other words, we need to demonstrate our worthiness of trust before others will make deposits into our trust account.

Trust, says Stephen M.R. Covey, is the very basis of the new global economy, and he shows how trust—and the speed at which it is established with clients, employees and constituents—is the essential ingredient for any high–performance, successful organization. 

For business leaders and public figures in any arena, The Speed of Trust offers an unprecedented and eminently practical look at exactly how trust functions in our every transaction and relationship—from the most personal to the broadest, most indirect interaction—and how to establish trust immediately so that you and your organization can forego the time–killing, bureaucratic check–and–balance processes so often deployed in lieu of actual trust.

Here are a few simple ways to earn a reputation of trustworthiness:

• Tell the truth, no matter how difficult it is to do so or how negatively it will reflect on you.
• Follow through on your commitments, whether overt or implied.
• Own the outcome of your decisions, whether positive or negative. Don’t make excuses. Don’t deflect to others.
• Always ensure that your actions and words align.
• Do the right thing, especially when nobody is watching.
• Speak with candor–courageously tell the kind truth when it is helpful to the other person.
• Don’t take trust for granted, nor sacrifice it for anything.

Andy Stanley led a great leadership workshop on trust and trustworthiness, which I highly recommend and, which can be accessed though the link below.

As part of this workshop he encourages teams to make six commitments: three for how team members will choose to trust each other, and three for how team members will commit to being trustworthy.

After watching the workshop with your team ask each person to complete the commitment form below. Then hold each other accountable to these commitments and observe how the communication and collaboration within your team improves.

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.

Thomas Edison was one of the biggest failures of his time…if not of all time…if you only look at the things he did that didn’t work. 

Take the light bulb for example. He apparently tried approximately 10,000 different approaches to make a light bulb before he found a solution that worked.

His passion and perseverance ultimately brought him to success.

And, because he persevered and invented a variety of things that ultimately worked we don’t think about his failures as negatives, but rather insights into why his inventions did not work, yet, and instead we remember him for his successes. 

So how do you define failure?

For some reason in our society there is often a negative stigma associated with failure. And, it’s often the shame associated with that stigma that causes many people to stop short of success.

Great leaders view failure as part of the learning process and know that in the shadow of every great success are a multitude of failures. With regards to the light bulb they would say Edison failed 9,999 times before he succeeded.

It is no different with any endeavor, and sports provides some of the best examples. Nobody expects to score on every shot or play. The most successful take a shot or execute a play, assess the outcome, make tweaks, and make another attempt. Eventually, with persistence talent becomes a honed skill, which result in greater and greater success.

Somebody once saw a golfer get a hole in one and said that golfer was lucky. To which another person replied, “and the better you are the luckier you get!” It’s not surprising that Tour Players have a higher percentage of holes in one than amateurs. 

That is why great leaders celebrate failure. They encourage their teams to execute. And when they fall down they encourage them to get up, dust themselves off, make some adjustments, and try again. And again. And again.

But without the leader’s encouragement most players would stop short of success…quitting as failures.

It is only insanity if you keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results. Provided you make intelligent adjustments each time you don’t succeed—and try again—it should never be considered failure, but rather fundamental activities in learning.

Challenge to leaders: How are you responding to the failed attempts of your team? If your team is not succeeding as much as you feel they should try celebrating failures [and learning] and see what happens!

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.

Innovation and advancement seldom occur without taking risks. That being said the biggest impediment to risk-taking is fear—fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of injury, fear of shame, blame, and repercussions, etc. 

Safety is not just about our physical wellbeing. It is also about our mental wellbeing. Therefore, creating a safe environment should be one of our highest priorities of leaders. Yet, it is amazing how many managers don’t give a lot of thought to the safety of their teams. In fact, in pursuit of greater [personal] gain many managers readily put their teams in harms way, which only serves to increase team fear.

Great leaders, like trapeze artists, however, understand that safety nets compel greater risk taking. One of the greatest safety nets is the vulnerability of the leader.

In 2015 Google published results from a study called Project Aristotle, which involved studying hundreds of Google’s teams to figure out why some stumbled and others soared.

Google found that the strongest teams weren’t filled with the brightest minds or the hardest workers; the #1 thing that led to team success was psychological safety.

Google also found that a team has psychological safety when its members believe they can take risks without feeling insecure or fearing embarrassment. In one case at Google, a leader by the name of Matt Sakaguchi promoted psychological safety by asking each team member to share something that others may not know about them.

Matt went first. He said, ‘‘I think one of the things most people don’t know about me is that I have Stage 4 cancer.’’ He explained that, way back in 2001, a doctor discovered a tumor in his kidney. By the time the cancer was detected, it had spread to his spine. For nearly half a decade, it had grown slowly as he underwent treatment, while continuing his work at Google. Recently, doctors had found a new, worrisome spot on a scan of his liver that was far more serious.

To read more of Google’s findings follow this link to What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team as published by the New York Times Magazine.

In his organizational health model, Patrick Lencioni demonstrates that Vulnerability-based Trust is the foundation for cohesive teams.

Vulnerability creates a sense of safety between team members…and when the leader goes first in demonstrating vulnerability the rest of the team feels much safer in being vulnerable.

So, if your team does not seem to be cohesive and if you feel teamwork is lacking maybe it is because fear has hijacked your team’s sense of safety…putting them into fight, flight, and/or freeze mode. Maybe it is time for you to demonstrate greater vulnerability.

How a leader can demonstrate greater vulnerability: At the beginning of your next team meeting start by telling a story about your past that shares information about you that none of your teammates have knew before.

Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.