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Shawn Stratton works with organizations to strengthen leadership skills that translate into powerful teams. Founder of the LiveMore Group, an organization that helps people maximize their potential and productivity, Shawn has designed presentations and retreats for both small businesses and large corporations, offering teams of all sizes the inspiration and tools to flourish in this unpredictable, exciting economic environment.
How Leaders Have Their Teams Self Police
Team discipline is an essential element of any high performance team and the leader cannot direct it alone. Sure, a team leader’s responsibility is to lay out clear expectations and a compelling purpose for the team mission but a huge part of team discipline has to come from within the team. If a leader spends his or her time preaching discipline and wagging fingers, their efforts to control the discipline within the team will soon fall on deaf ears. There is a reason people have a harder time speaking in front of their peer group. Their reason is that they care how they will be viewed amongst their cohort more than a group of strangers they will probably never see or hear from again. To quote an example of this from my experience, when leading expedition teams that I had no hand in selecting, friends would often ask me, “what do you do if you have a bad team?” and “what keeps them from going all Lord of the Flies (a classic novel where a well-behaved party of schoolboys trapped in the wilderness has turned into a tribe of faceless, murderous savages) out there in the mountains?” Quality Teams Self Police You may ask that if effective team discipline comes from within the team, is it out of the leader’s hands entirely? No, not at all. In every team, there are people who naturally emerge as leaders in their own right. There may be a vocal leader, a silent leader, the one with the most experience, one who has the highest level of a specific talent, oozes the most...
How to Motivate With Progress
Of all the things that can boost inner work life, the most important is making progress in meaningful work, when a job gives them the opportunity to experience achievement. Workplace Motivation Tips from Shoveling Snow This is another post under the topic of Managing Underperformers in the lead up to my upcoming webinar and course under the same topic. Perplexing to many, I have always enjoyed shoveling snow. Besides the bonus of fresh air and exercise that comes with shoveling a driveway, I was mostly motivated by seeing continuous progress in meaningful work. Fortunately, progress is easy to see when shoveling (when it has stopped snowing) and sure it may not be the most meaningful work but the driveway does need to be cleared to get the car in and out and my family will be happy to have a clear driveway. That’s meaning enough for me…. When I have the time to do a good job. As a leader, if you are struggling with unmotivated team members, take a close look at not just their roles and responsibilities but the actual work they do day in, day out. Are they able to see the actual progress in their work and how it is contributing to the project or team goal? Perhaps they are unaware of the impact their progress has on the team. When we think about progress, we often imagine how good it feels to achieve a long-term goal or experience a major breakthrough. These big wins are great, but they are relatively rare. If the progress of someone’s work is not clear to them, you...
Even in 2016 There Will Always Be One: 5 Ways to Manage the Weak Link
HAPPY NEW YEAR – HERE’S TO YOUR BEST YEAR EVER ———— Dealing with the weak link It was the day we had been anticipating for weeks. We had been paddling remote rivers in Northern Alaska and today was the day we would reach the Arctic Circle. A day before, Beaver Creek had spit us into the Yukon River and with two days of upstream paddling, we would reach the Arctic Circle, a major milestone for the trip. The student leader of the day was Mike. Mike had struggled with attitude issues for the whole trip and he, when addressing the group with the plan for the day, said “Guys, I hope you are having fun now because today’s going to suck!” Leading an expedition in the mountains, there was often one team member that was slower than others or had the worst attitude, or the most medical issues, or the worst navigation skills or the….. You get the idea. On every team there is usually one weak link (WL). As a leader, how you manage the WL can make or break your team experience. The WL may not prevent you from achieving your goal but they can make the experience extremely difficult. The WL is not usually a destructive team member. They are usually performing their role as asked, but they are doing it to a slightly lesser ability than the others at the time. Even on an Olympic gold medal winning rowing team, there will be someone who is the weakest rower. 5 Ways to Manage the WL: Acceptance: Before you can manage a difficult team member, you...
Shawn Stratton, Leadership Motivational Speaker and Consultant
“His use of story telling, humor and photography delivered a powerful message on the importance of finding our true passion as an indicator of success. ” -Ian Shortall read more
