11 Questions to Determine if Your Humility Is Actually False Humility—Chuck Lawless The Bible calls us to be humble (James 4:10, 1 Peter 3:8). Nobody I know strives to be arrogant, but some believers are actually prideful in their humility. Here are some questions to determine if that’s the case in your life. Do you…
Links for Leaders 4/13/18
Why Email Is So Stressful, Even Though It’s Not That Time-Consuming—Dorie Clark Each “yes” leads to more work. Saying no is a challenge for any professional: you don’t want to disappoint people, and any given opportunity may lead to positive outcomes. But analyzing the emails I received taught me an important lesson about why it’s…
Links for Leaders 8/4/17
“Leaders must be able to start things. Leaders must be able to complete things. And, more often than you’d think, sometimes leaders have to put an end to things.” Scott Cochrane shares three times a leader must kill a good idea. “The world many leaders stepped into when they began in ministry no longer exists.”…
6 Basic Email Observations from Leading a Team
Few things are as lamented as email and staff meetings. And yet, both are very important in communicating, in ensuring execution, and in keeping work moving forward. They are, however, lamented for a reason. Poorly led meetings and poor email practices waste immense amounts of time and energy. Here are six basic email observations from…
Links for Leaders 2/24/17
“I have become increasingly aware of the value of short-term sprints in today’s life and work cycle. For all the talk of long-term perspective, there is value in breaking an all-day hike into a lot of small ‘sprints’ It’s like the old proverb, ‘How do you eat an elephant?…One bite at a time.’” Stephen Graves…
3 Emails You Should Never Send
In a recent meeting with my leadership team, I shared my concern that email has a tendency to make us less efficient while promising to make us more so. An article from Harvard Business Review prompted the discussion with my team and has caused me to evaluate my own email habits and learn some ways…
5 Ways to Reduce Time on Email
I recently shared a Harvard Business Review article bemoaning the inefficiency of email with my team. The article recounts the story of IBM’s initial intent with email and the surprising and disappointing results. Cal Newport wrote: In the early 1980s, IBM decided to deploy an internal email system. In typical careful IBM fashion, they began…
My Five Favorite Personal Productivity Tools
People often ask me what tools or systems I use to maximize productivity, to stay organized, or to complete tasks. My answer is typically perceived as underwhelming, as I don’t have a project management system (though I am not against them) and the tools I do use are a bit “old-school.” The five productivity tools…
Three Indicators Your Meeting Should Have Been an Email
Last week I gave indicators that your email should have been a meeting. There are times when a push for efficiency via email backfires and actually creates more work. In those times, a meeting would have been more effective and more efficient. However… there are times when a meeting is really a waste of time….
Three Indicators Your Email Should Have Been a Meeting
Some meetings could have been an email, but some emails should be meetings. There are times that people, in attempts to handle things efficiently, resort to an email when a meeting would have been more effective. Just because communication is efficient does not mean it has been effective. Sometimes a longing for efficiency can lead…