When was the last time you deliberately celebrated an employee who did something good? How often do you consider how to celebrate things that are working?

So often leaders miss opportunities to engage their employees by simply sharing the enjoyment of good work. Everyday countless tasks and goals are completed by employees without notice. Employees show up and work hard because they care. While it might feel as though your world is focused on everything that is going wrong, I guarantee you there is much more going right. Celebrating what is working doesn’t have to cost you anything, not even time.

People everywhere are saying, “I had my performance review today”.

Yes, it is that time of year when leaders gear up for the big performance discussion. By this point your performance ratings have been long since entered, you survived calibration meetings, changes have been made so there is a perfect bell curve, approvals have been given by senior leadership, and everyone is beyond frustrated. Now you get to sit down with your employee and provide a summary of their performance for the past year, set aside your frustration, and hopefully find a way to keep them motivated.

Make it an effective performance discussion so that you are not a negative topic of conversation at your employees dinner table!

As a leader, the beginning of the year is a time to take a strategic look at the year ahead and determine what specifically it is you want to accomplish throughout the year, understand where you are and what it will take to get you there. Many leaders see goal setting as something that they "have to" do rather than "get to" do.

If you are a leader who looks at goal setting as something that must be done, to enter into the system, and stay off “the naughty list”, I encourage you to consider the impact this attitude has on your employees.

The most important thing we can do is be in the moment, be fully present. Being present in the moment requires active, open, and intentional attention. The present is where we show up and make our biggest impact. Staying in the present keeps us focused and allows us to understand more deeply. Right here, right now is the only thing we can control. Now is all there ever is.

We all have goals we want to reach, challenges we’re striving to overcome, ideas that need a road map and times when we feel stuck. Partnering with a professional coach can unlock your potential and set you on a path to thriving personally and professionally. If you have not worked with a coach before, you might be wondering what it is like and what to look for in a coach.

“Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.” ~Harvard Health

If you don’t say it, they won’t know it. You might think your employee you are grateful for their contributions, but how would they, if you don’t tell them? The fact is, your employees don’t know and they need to tell them. Your employees don’t come to work to screw up, they come to contribute, work hard, do good work and make an impact. Bottom line, they care just as much as you do.

There are many people that are just naturally good at building relationships. They put people and relationships before tasks or activities. They are just wired that way. We all tend to either be people first or task first. If you were to look at a continuum with task on the left and people on the right, each one of us would fall somewhere on that continuum. If you fall to the left, these strategies will help you.

I think we can all agree that the ability to build relationships is an important skill for leaders. The question becomes, how do you build them and with whom?

When people interact with you they need two things, what they came for (item, answer, information, etc.) and to feel good about the interaction (welcome, heard, understood, etc.). Both of these are important to building effective relationships. The first part should be pretty clear, people need good information from leadership. It's the second part where many leaders fall short.

On the surface, Integrity seems straight forward and fairly easy to define, to agree with, and to stand for but, if it is that straight forward why do so many leaders get called on their integrity?

Each of us has an acceptable range of integrity that differs based on the lens in which we view the world.

How aware are you of your emotions? Can you accurately identify an emotion for how you feel as they happen?

Having high emotional intelligence means that you are skilled at spotting your emotions and are able to use them to your benefit.

There are several components to emotional intelligence, self-awareness is the first. Incidentally, having a high level of self-awareness is a strong predictor of overall success.

Most would agree that leaders need to be accessible to their employees. As a result, leaders will say, "my door is always open," or "I have an open-door policy". Does that mean, my door is "physically" open? I guess that would be a start. But that in itself does not invite conversation. I have worked for many different leaders over the years and they all have been accessible to varying degrees. I worked for one senior leader who said, “my door is open”.

How do you gain your authority as a leader? What actions do you take to get work accomplished? What do you do differently when the pressure is on you?

Do you lead from a place of POWER, using your positional power to get things done? As a leader you have it, but it is how you use it that is important.

“Trust,” according to Warren Buffet “is like the air we breathe. When it’s present, nobody really notices. But when it’s absent, everybody notices.”

As I have been collecting data on the top 10 leadership capabilities, I have found that "creating an environment of trust" is at the top for almost everyone. The fact that trust comes out on top does not surprise me, what has surprised me is how it is non-existent in many work groups.

How do the people around you influence you? What behaviors change when you are with certain people? How have you noticed shifts in your behavior over time? 

The truth is, everyone is impressionable and we can all be influenced by the behavior of others, the good and the bad.

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” ~George Bernard Shaw

Creating a culture of open communication takes continuous intention. One great way to get started is to stop doing all the talking and listen.

I have encountered many leaders who operate in a constant state of frenzy. This "leadership frenzy" is the opposite of being a strategic leader. This leadership style focuses on creating and managing tasks and activities. The bigger the list of activities, the better. Throw in a massive excel spreadsheet with pivot tables and they are in heaven!

How your employees feel about their job influences some of the most important measures of the health of your organization - retention, customer service, revenue and operational efficiency. Did you know that as a leader, you influence at least 70% of your employees' engagement?

I have worked with many leaders over the years and accountability always comes up as an important topic. A leader will almost always say, "yes, I hold my employees accountable". Oddly, when you ask employees they will say, "no one is held accountable". Interesting difference in perspective.

Holding yourself and others accountable is about keeping commitments that are made.