Posts by Meredith Nieuwsma
Why Feedback Is Uncomfortable — and What To Do About It
Many people struggle with giving negative feedback because they don’t want to hurt the other person or strain the relationship. But plenty of people struggle with giving positive feedback to others.
Read More“The Emperor’s New Clothes” and the Need for Feedback
It’s easy to laugh at the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes and at how ridiculously the characters behaved, but I believe that we live out this story every single day.
Read MoreWhen Things Get Weird
Remember the Human System? It’s the reason so many of us don’t do well giving or receiving feedback. Here’s a quick recap, worded a little differently than you may have seen it before: We are unique, with different beliefs, values, passions, gifts and voids, wiring, experiences, and so on. We are dysfunctional, and it shows…
Read MoreThe Great Eight: Wrap Up
(This post was first published here on October 3, 2016.) I’ve served on a whole lot of teams in my life, some great, some not-so-great, and I can say without hesitation that the team I work with at Leading by DESIGN is the best, healthiest, most connected team I’ve worked on. I think the four…
Read MoreThe Great Eight: Trust
(This post was first published here on August 30, 2016.) As I write this post, there are 6,289 books on trust available under the Business and Money category on Amazon. What can we possibly add to all that wisdom? Maybe nothing. But please keep reading anyway. Trust is foundational to great teams, and so far—even in those…
Read MoreThe Great Eight: Common Goals
(This post was first published here on August 8, 2016.) Imagine you are running a race. All the runners gather together, stretching muscles, bouncing on the balls of their feet to warm up, drinking a last few sips of water, popping in their earbuds. The loudspeaker fires up to give the final warning, the starting gun…
Read MoreThe Great Eight: An Introduction
(This post was first published here on August 1, 2016.) Throughout our year together in LEAD 365, we focused on three “buckets” of leadership—three areas that great leaders need to focus on: Being a person worth following Creating clarity around purpose/mission, vision, and values Building a great team In our building a great team sessions,…
Read MoreThe Care and Feeding of Leadership
Take your time. It is the fastest way to achieve your goal. At the end of LEAD 365, many of you were given a bonsai tree. We gave you the tree to remind you that leadership takes ongoing care in order to flourish, much like the tree. But there are even more parallels to great…
Read MoreGiving Long-Overdue Feedback
Early in my career I ran a database, and I trained a lot of people how to use it. Being new to the database, the people I trained often made little mistakes. I didn’t want to hurt their feelings or seem overly critical, so I didn’t say anything. Instead, I’d just fix the mistakes when…
Read MoreOne Step Further
This post was originally published on the Leading by DESIGN blog on May 9, 2016. Each LEAD 365 cohort goes on a retreat, and so far the feedback indicates that this retreat is a highlight for almost everyone. Honestly, it’s a highlight for us as well. Last week, Rodger and I brought a cohort to…
Read More