Posts by Jeffrey Boersma
How Flexible Are You?
Fellow Leaders, I’ve always enjoyed being active—running, hiking, biking, strength-training and sports have been routines for me since I was young. But something changed about 10 years ago. I started to get plagued with injuries. I hurt my back, my neck, my calves, and several muscles and ligaments. Though I didn’t like it, I figured…
Read MoreThe Slacker in Your Midsts
Fellow leaders, One of the key teachings in the book Switch is that the more we can turn people problems into situational problems, the more likely we are to see successful change—even when change is hard. And the more we can look at others with the mindset of”that’s the situation they are in” versus “that’s just…
Read MoreIt’s All About the Audience
Fellow Leaders, Remember the chapter on Public Speaking? Learning public speaking is part science and part art. The science part can be taught, and the art can be discovered and developed through experience. If you are like me, I tend to learn the most from experience—and those experiences aren’t always the most pleasant at the time.
Read MoreHow to Get Clear on Your Growth as a Leader
Hello Leaders, My office in Grand Haven is owned by an accounting firm. My heart goes out to these men and women during tax season as they work seven days a week, on very little sleep, from now until April 15. One of the greatest fears the rest of us have is to discover we are being…
Read MorePutting It Out There
My fellow leaders, I’ve put it out there and I can’t take it back. Too many people know. Too many have heard. I’ve talked about it too many times. There is no turning back. And I do have some fears. What if we don’t make it? What if the current favorable conditions change? What is she gets pregnant? What if there is a downturn…
Read MoreAre You Like Most People?
Dear fellow listeners, Here is a fun quiz: the phrase “seek first to understand, then to be understood” comes from which of the following? The LEAD 365 segment on high impact listening. The LEAD 365 segment on leaning in to healthy conflict. Steven Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. All of the…
Read MoreTop 10 Trust Walk Takeaways
All of you who have been on the two-day retreat as a part of building great teams have done the trust walk. My favorite part of that exercise is not the first part when there is no talking; it’s not the second part where you can talk but the one person is still blindfolded. My favorite part…
Read MoreTrust
Trust is at the heart of building great teams. Without it, a cascade of negative things that hurt the team takes place: reluctance to have healthy conflict, unwillingness to make commitments, avoidance of accountability, and a failure to look at real results (Lencioni—The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team). In LEAD 365 we also learned another set…
Read MoreSacrifice
Your team knows you care about them by your level of willingness to sacrifice and serve them. The year must have been around 1980. There had been an unexpected significant increase in the volume of our business, and it hit us in the heart of the summer vacation season. And it was HOT inside that plant—90 degrees…
Read MoreVision and the Need for Hopeful Belief
Frank Sinatra first sang the following words back in 1959: Just what makes that little old ant think he can move a rubber tree plant everyone knows that ant, can’t move a rubber tree plant But he’s got high hopes He’s got high hopes He’s got high apple pie in the sky hopes. Establishing and…
Read More