You have less than four seconds to make a first impression.

Utilize these four questions and listening strategy to find common ground with those you serve!

You’ll see great results and deeper relationships as a result.

Looking to accelerate your communication? Looking to feel more confident with your communication? 
Aim to communicate with clarity so your team executed at the highest level? 

I encourage you to join our Master Communication Course. Sixteen (16) lessons on the practices and principles of effective communication. 

Click Here to learn more.

I believe what is appreciated appreciates. And in turn, was is depreciated, depreciates. 

Here is what I mean. 

One of the services my company provides is facilitating climate surveys and exit interviews for  schools.

I was reading through the notes from one school and saw this response from a departing teacher.   

“When I turned in my resignation letter no one from the administrative team came to talk to me. I felt devalued as an employee.”  

It made me think about my practices as a school leader. 

How do I treat people? Do they feel appreciated around me? Or depreciated? 

I know that I have definitely avoided many rooms and halls of staff who turned in their resignation or who have been told they are not coming back.  

I am definitely guilty of not engaging some staff. 

I come up with excuses in my head. They don't want to talk to me. I am just glad they came today...terrible right?

But then I started to notice...

I have learned that if you aim to be an influential leader you have to give up the right to complain down. 

Think about it, no one wants to be led by a complainer. 

You simply cannot lead and whine at the same time. 

For example, as a principal, you cannot complain in front of employees about other employees. You’ve not only modeled poor leadership but you’ve also made it alright for your employees to do the same. 

As a teacher, you cannot complain about other teachers to parents in front of your students. You’ve now decreased your peer’s credibility and in the meantime, lost some yourself. 

As a parent you cannot complain about your school, your principal, your child’s teacher in front of your child. This has now given your child the right to do the same. To not follow rules or respect teachers or classmates.

When I was a special education teacher I had a GIANT EGO. I thought I knew it all. Mainly because I was very...

I believe that compromise is not about listening and learning from others, it’s about giving in on what you truly desire. 

It’s skipping the run because it’s too cold. It’s having one more cookie because they are amazing. It’s sleeping in when you need an early start to get that report finished. 

It’s also letting parents pick up their kids late daily without penalty. It’s not saying something when an employee comes in late. It’s picking up the slack for others who don’t finish the job on time. 

It’s not being prepared for the team meeting. It’s creating double standards for employees and separate standards for administration. It’s making a commitment without following through. It’s failing to address obvious problems. It’s sending surveys but not using the information to create change. It’s talking about, gossiping about employees. It’s accepting inferior performance and...

As a leader, do you aim to be loved or are you going lead?

As someone who always considered himself a relationtional leader this is a challenging question.

When I first started as a middle school principal I found myself seeking more affirmation then information.

I would set a vision and then ask everyone their opinion.

If their vision did not agree I would make a compromise for them, not hold them to the image I was seeking to create.

I knew that a leader’s personal stock increases when people buy into the relation.

However, to create significant change, I did not the importance of shifting from pleasing people to challenging people.

Change the leadership question from are we all ok to are we all committed?

Commitment is the line for challenging people.

When you don’t have alignment in the commitments of your people, everyone in the organization can feel it.

It creates disconnect of the people from the purpose.

When you have alignment, and everyone is on the same...

I believe that it’s not experience that grows the leader, it’s a combination of two key principles and action.

A leader’s growth will come from two things:
1. Evaluating your experience
2. Taking action based on your evaluation

Every week I end with these questions three:
What went well?
What went wrong?
What role did I have in these problems and success.

Then I write out the action steps I will take this week to move my experiences into evaluative improvement.

Try this for the next 30 days and I guarantee you will see a significant difference in your emotional and physical health while getting better results.

Raising your awareness,

Dr. Tom

P.S. Did you grab the quarterly School Leader Checklist, a tool from ourPrincipal Leadership Academy, I sent out the other day? If you are looking for an easy to use tool that will help you as a school leader become more productive by empowering the leaders around you click the link below to grab your copy.

Jeff Henderson states, "It's no longer about being the best company IN the world. It's about being the best company FOR the world." This quote has me thinking about my legacy and what the world is going to remember me and my business for. 

Creating your legacy can begin today.  How do you want the world to remember you and your organization? 

When you think of Alfred Nobel, what comes to mind? You might be like me and not have known his first name, but that last name conjures up the faces of the best of the best of humanity--Mother Teresa, Malala Yousafzai, Nelson Mandela, and Barack Obama to name a few Nobel Peace Prize winners. 

Alfred Nobel is the man responsible for the Nobel Peace Prize, but did you know that he was also a chemist, engineer, and innovator who manufactured weapons? He had dedicated his life to developing nitroglycerine as an explosive; one of his brothers, Emil, was even killed during one experiment. Ultimately, he invented...

Jamie Kern Lima, founder of IT Cosmetics, went from once a struggling waitress to an international best-selling sensation, eventually selling her company for over a billion dollars becoming the first female CEO of a brand in L’Oréal’s 100+ year history.

How did she do this? By not changing her "why!" Jamie shares, "If other people's opinions can shift your "why", it's not powerful enough." 

I believe sustained organizational health and success begins with a clear and concise mission statement. Your organization's mission is the WHY behind your existence. 

Here is what I mean.

Great organizations continuously follow their mission and rarely stray from it; as even a deviation can result in a flutter of ineffective activity and confusion. 

As marketing expert Donald Miller says, “When you confuse, you lose.” 

The most effective schools I have studied sustained their mission through stable school leadership, clear education...

On October 8th, at the Live2Lead Conference  John Maxwell will be teaching key lessons and anecdotes on 2 of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. The Law of Addition for leadership states that if you choose to serve your customers and your employees by adding value rather than trying to come out on top or make yourself richer, higher profits will follow. On the Law of Connection, John Maxwell writes, “When it comes to working with people, the heart comes before the head.” Logic will only take you so far—in order to really get people on board with your mission, you need to connect with their emotions.

I would like to share with you a story, where I saw first hand the Law of Connection at play. I had been given the opportunity to lead a group of nonprofit board members in Philadelphia. Most of them governed charter schools but a few were from other organizations, law firms and local colleges.  Hearing that the audience would be quite...

As a school leader, you are in the people business. If it is good for the people, it will be good for your business. 

I recently met author and thought leader Jeff Henderson. He wrote the book, Know What You're FOR.

Jeff has an incredible path to success, working with Fortune 500 companies like Chic-Fil-a and some of the largest churches and school districts across the country on their purpose, values, orientation, culture and marketing.

In Jeff's book, he shares that there are two critical questions that every organization needs to ask and work daily to ensure the answers align.

1. What do we want to be know for? (Your Vision)
2. What are we know for?  (Current Reality)

The first question you need to ask yourself and your team. You will probably get a handful of different answers.

Here is our What are you FOR statement: 

Leaders Building Leaders, at its core, is about making a difference. Our brand is for principals and school leaders who desire to unlock their...