Personal Development Books I would Recom...

Over the Christmas break, I was talking to a few people about the books I read and how much I believe in personal development / success-oriented books.  I was asked about my favourites and the most influential ones, but was also asked an interesting question – “If I were one of your employees, which books would you recommend to me?“. This was a great question and I thought about it briefly and came up with the following list – mainly around topics that don’t seem to get taught anywhere yet are so essential to a successful career.   Time...

Servant Leadership

I came across an article in Inc. Magazine last month on Servant Leadership that really hit the mark for me. The basic premise is summed up by a quote from Kent Keith, CEO of Greenleaf Center of Servant Leadership: “I think the simplest way to explain it would be to say that servant leaders focus on identifying and meeting the needs of others rather than trying to acquire power, wealth, and fame for themselves” I believe in this concept – wholeheartedly. I discussed this a bit in my post “Two Tips for Building a Semi-autonomous Business”...

Eliminate Prima Donna’s from your ...

Sometimes you get an employee who is smart, creative, passionate and pretty darn good at what they do; but they are also arrogant, obstructive, demoralising and high maintenance.  This is the prima donna employee and despite their benefits, they are not worth keeping. I’ve had to deal with many prima donna employees during my career and I’ve always justified keeping them – justified to myself, to my staff, and to customers.  After all, they are usually talented and smart and you can’t help think that if you get out of their way, they will really...