Expand your horizon to influence and motivate others to actively build cohesive teams.
by Michael Holland - In 1994 I made a classic management mistake. It involved a very stressful job, a struggling team, and two bags of marshmallows. The short version of the story is that a consistently tardy team member to critical team meetings received a barrage of marshmallows when he arrived late, yet [...]
By Michael Holland - During a summer evening on the Magothy River, one of the large rivers feeding the famous Chesapeake Bay, I witnessed a beautiful sailing race: 40 or 50 sailboats tacked back and forth along the river, each one maneuvering to catch the wind perfectly and take advantage of a competitor. [...]
By Michael Holland I worry at times that the gap which exists between leaders leading well and those who won't is growing wider and deeper. Recently I re-watched the TED Talk "Why Good Leaders Make Us Feel Safe" by Simon Sinek. In the talk, Sinek inspires with stories of how true leaders provide a circle [...]
By Michael Holland Three months. That’s all. Then you can retire or start the new role in the division in CA or go to the blah, blah, blah opportunity. You’ve been laying low and avoiding all conflicts within the team you lead. No sense addressing a problem with so little time left. No sense wasting your precious [...]
By Michael Holland - Your leadership mantra challenge for the rest of 2023 should be Bring Me Problems. We have so often heard the opposite phrase of don't bring me problems, bring me solutions. We are too busy to solve all these problems and we want our employees to stand on their own, figure things out, [...]
By Michael Holland - The Adirondack Mountains in Upstate NY provide a beautiful opportunity for hiking. There are 46 mountains that are higher than 4,000 feet. I’ve spent some time climbing a few of the "46ers" and one challenge appears often: the false summit. After a few hours of hiking you come to a spot [...]
By Michael Holland - The team is not the problem. The team itself is not dysfunctional. The team didn't wake up today and say hey, I'm going to be a dysfunctional team. The team is simply a label being placed on a group of people who together create a entity that can enable tremendous success [...]
By Michael Holland - I needed to re-set my clock in my not-so-new car and had forgotten which buttons to push in sequence to get the clock flashing and ready for change. Rumbling through my glove box I pulled out the thick, black canvass bag which contained the owner’s manual. Well, actually it contained one [...]
By Michael Holland - Teams, teams, they are everywhere. Many think that just surviving together through the drudgery of the workweek makes the group a team. Many think that having a moniker – the senior leadership team, the accounts payable team, the special super-secret project team – creates a truly cohesive and functional team. The [...]
by Michael Holland - Manager Matt is two years into his 1st tour of duty as a leader. He’s survived the dark days of learning to manage on the fly with new situations when everything was new to him. He’s been through handling performance reviews and slow staff meetings, handled performance challenges and un-engaged peers, [...]
