Some time back I was the executive sponsor responsible for developing a facility strategy for a new line of business. I empowered one of my project managers to develop the strategy which we would jointly present to our management. We both had visions of what we expected in the strategy but I didn’t ensure our points of view meshed.. My project manager was very competent in her job; however mind-reading was not one of her skills. The day before we were due to present the strategy, I did a walk-through with her. It wasn’t anything like I envisioned, and I knew the strategy in its current state wouldn’t be well received by our management. We went through a fire drill to get the strategy to a state where I thought it would be better received. We survived the review with our management, but it didn’t go nearly as well as it could have gone, and we went through a lot of pain (including a sleepless night) to rework the strategy.

As a young manager I was on a particularly difficult assignment that had attention all the way up to the CEO of the company. The executive leading the project was a very seasoned and intentional leader who executed as well as anyone I’ve ever seen drive a crisis initiative. His ability to stay on top of the work was like nothing like I’d ever seen from other leaders in the organization. During my annual review with him, I asked what he saw as a crucial attribute of a successful leader. Without missing a beat, he gave me two words which continue to shape me as a leader: follow up.

Through the years I’ve seen how follow-up (or lack thereof) contributed to a team’s ability to successfully deliver results. Organizations that have follow-up in their DNA simply execute more friction-free than those who don’t. The leader stays better aligned with the work happening in the organization, and the followers better understand and execute to the leader’s expectations. I’ve seen it in my own experience as a leader. As my leadership skills matured and my follow-up ability became more autonomic, I saw first-hand how we were able to get things done more effectively. I also saw another benefit--my timely follow-up behavior reduced the number and magnitude of crises I had to deal with. I was more on top of what was happening, was better in sync with the team, and more engaged when the team needed my help to get something done.

Want an energetic and informative keynote to drive and expand followership in your organization? Lonnie's popular leadership book  Why Don't They Follow Me? can be delivered in an engaging keynote that will give the audience impactful tips they can immediately apply to boost  leadership skills and strengthen followership.

Here's how it works:

1. Lonnie holds a one-hour meeting with the sponsoring leader to understand current leadership pain points and how to best address them with the audience.
2. Lonnie incorporates the pain points into his keynote
3. Lonnie delivers a one-hour keynote discussing all 12 leadership lessons from Why Don't They Follow Me? including the pain points.

Interested? Let's connect to give your organization a memorable keynote to help them boost their leadership skills and strengthen followership.

Need to see more? Check out a sample chapter from Why Don't They Follow Me?

Want to drive and expand followership for you and your leadership team with a minimal time investment? Turn Lonnie's popular leadership book Why Don't They Follow Me? into a customized leadership team book discussion. Get relevant tips you and your team can immediately apply to boost  leadership skills and strengthen followership.

Here's how it works:

1. The sponsoring leader reads the book (1 hour)
2. The sponsoring leader and Lonnie meet to review each lesson and agree on relevant points to be made with the leadership team for each lesson (1 hour)
3. The leadership team reads the book and completes a self-assessment prework assignment (2 hours)
4. Lonnie discusses each lesson with the sponsoring leader and leadership team (either on-premise or virtual) to bring better understanding and relevance to each lesson (2 hours)
5. Each leadership team member reviews their prework based on the discussion and develops a plan on what they will commit to work on over the next three months (1 hour)
   

Interested? Let's connect to help you and your leadership team boost those leadership skills and create an environment where followership thrives.

Need to see more? Check out a sample chapter from Why Don't They Follow Me?

Through my years I’ve seen many leaders at all levels struggle with getting things done either by having to work late in the evenings and on weekends or by completely missing due dates. As I’ve talked with these leaders, they just consider it part of the job, unable or unwilling to do anything about it. I found myself early in my career doing the exact same thing; setting unrealistic expectations and killing myself to try to meet them, only to have a limited success rate of delivering on time. I hated that hamster wheel.

The good news is you don’t have to accept this as the status quo. Here are six simple principles to get better control of your work and be more deliberate about what you get done: