Do you ever get frustrated with people on your leadership team while solving problems or brainstorming ideas? They may ask too many questions, jump to conclusions too fast, are too quiet, or are always a pessimist. Do you sometimes wish they all had your “MO” when discussing these things? Wouldn’t that be great? Or would it?

You might think it’s best to have all optimists on your leadership team or that it might be best to have all innovators or all realists, when in reality, my experience, after having observed almost 100 leadership teams identify, discuss, and solve issues, is that you’ll actually benefit by having a balance of all types.

In the last quarterly session with a client, the team reported record financials in the last 90 days. They exceeded their revenue and profit targets, and they completed over 90 percent of their rocks. By all estimations, they had every reason to celebrate. But when it came time to grade the quarter, they gave it a C+ / B–. Surprised by the low grade, I asked them to explore this a bit. What they discovered has the potential to change their company for years.

The leaders of companies running on EOS^® learn to look at their business through the lens of the Six Key Components™ (as illustrated by the EOS Model™). This is important because the root cause of a company’s issues is weakness in the Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process or Traction Component™. Solving issues at the root (rather than treating symptoms) makes them go away forever.

When I was a leader in one of my own businesses early in my career, I had the misfortune to discover that my employees had nicknamed me “Hurricane.” It was NOT a compliment! 

Part of what earned me that nickname was the rage I felt when I had to repeat myself several times with my employees. I thought telling people something once should be enough! I hired really smart people, so when they didn’t seem to remember things I’d told them, I thought they just weren’t paying enough attention to what I said, and that made me furious.

If you want to be a more effective communicator, have more productive meetings, and have people respect you more – skip the verbal hugs. “Sounds good Jim, but what the heck is a verbal hug?” Good question.

A verbal hug is used to soften the blow of a message you believe is going to be difficult to hear. By adding extraneous information that you may or may not believe, you offer a verbal hug, hoping it will make what you are really trying to say more palatable.

This can become problematic because the true message is no longer clear and can be disregarded or not even heard.