About

Have you ever walked into a place where people are moving fast, aligned and abuzz with positivity? You can see and feel that people are working together with drive and commitment to each other; with purpose, as they’re highly productive in getting things done.  They celebrate their achievements together.  You immediately want to be part of it, and you say, “I want that!” You don’t just say, “that was nice.” You say, “I want that!”

I get to take part in growing and guiding organizations into becoming places where their people are happy and fulfilled. They challenge, and at the same time, support each other in efforts to be awesome at fulfilling the organization’s vision. In doing so, they inspire each other to be personably accountable to each other as they find a better way. They make the world a better place, starting with their work.

I’m pretty sure you’ve also experienced this, the sad opposite, people working, unhappily, and or unhealthily, stressed and spending their days at the expense of their own lives and families.  Sometimes, we’ve even taken part in this or inadvertently caused it for ourselves and our companies.  We end up with unhappy, or neutral people, who simply don’t do as well as our happier counterparts.

Which of these two places do you work?  Which one do you want? You can change it!

A Heart Based Leading approach (yeah, I know that sounds a little canned) makes our work worlds fun and better places, for the 8-10 hours that we're away from our families. Why? So, that we go home happier and fulfilled at the end of our productive days, and in turn, we're better people to our families, with our friends and in our communities.

It all comes down to taking care of our people and relationships.  They have to know, and more importantly feel, that they matter.  And, that has to be genuine.  It’s about heart.  When we care for our people by creating and tending to a people influence system that fosters happiness, emotional and physical safety, teamwork, and combine that with a will to make our purpose come to be, our people flourish!

The best way that I found so far, care for your people from the perspectives of 4 areas: People, Culture, Teams and Leaders. 

Yeah, I start with People, the individuals who work together to make things happen. Nothing gets done without them, so give them the emotional and physical environment and the tools to do an amazing job. Developing your leaders without developing your people leads to a real waste of time, money and effort. I found that coaching is the best approach, since it gives the ownership of attitudes, ideas and work to them.

When it comes to Culture, we control our own fate. And altogether, we must be purposeful and aligned, because we create a culture that’s either positive, safe and challenging or negative and detracting. Each organization’s culture develops uniquely from what is rewarded, tolerated and reinforced.

We work together and group ourselves into, and take part on, multiple Teams in our organizations. Sometimes, the teams are task or project related and at other times, proximity or relational. Our teams function best when our people care for each other and the cause.  They demonstrate empathy and foster psychological safety as they encourage and challenge each other.

And amongst all that, we discover, create and develop Leaders in our midst. Leaders aren't determined by authority and rank. They are not necessarily a subject matter expert. They are the ones who go first in caring for their people and inspire them to risk finding better ways; they invite their people into higher performance and getting things done.