How to Develop Your Core Values (And Implement Them) in Six Steps

How to Develop Your Core Values (And Implement Them) in Six Steps

Every organization has a culture, whether it was created intentionally or not. Developing and implementing your values puts you in control of that culture. Most importantly, it helps you identify who’s aligned with it and who’s not. Here’s how to create your core values — not just some words that you put on a wall or a website — but the actual tenets that underpin your organization’s culture.

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How to Delegate Like a Boss

How to Delegate Like a Boss

At some point, that do-it-all person will have to stop doing and start delegating. Otherwise, they’ll begin to feel like they’re on a hamster wheel — doing what they’ve always done but suddenly getting nowhere. Making that shift is challenging. In fact, it’s one of the most difficult, yet important, transitions founders go through.

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What Does a Good Business Coaching Relationship Look Like?

What Does a Good Business Coaching Relationship Look Like?

The concept of a coach used to be reserved for athletes. Now you can hire a coach to help you with everything from weight loss or parenting to public speaking and career transitions. So with all these coaches running around, how do you know what’s a worthwhile investment of your time and money?

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An Early-Stage Founder Belongs In the Trenches (Lesson #8 of 8 Lessons Growing 8 Companies)

An Early-Stage Founder Belongs In the Trenches (Lesson #8 of 8 Lessons Growing 8 Companies)

All those important lessons you learn over the course of a career can actually hurt you if you don’t know when to set them aside. You have to see when it’s not a time to be the seasoned CEO and instead lean into your role as the scrappy founder — even if this isn’t your first (or your seventh) rodeo.

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How You Can Harness Workplace Conflict to Help Your Organization Thrive

How You Can Harness Workplace Conflict to Help Your Organization Thrive

Conflict is inevitable. Everyone is different—different backgrounds, different scripts, different personalities, and different goals. Difference creates conflict. If we’ve learned anything from the last few months of civil unrest, it’s that embracing differences in our lives and in our organizations is critical. Workplace conflict will happen. By treating it as an opportunity for growth, we’ll help ourselves, our organizations, and our employees.

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What to Look for in a Business Mentor and the Mentoring Relationship

What to Look for in a Business Mentor and the Mentoring Relationship

Mentorship is a deeper, long-term relationship between two people. Even if it doesn’t start out that way, it becomes so from time spent together and mutual care for each other.

The relationship with a mentor is a meaningful one. We reached out to our clients to get deeper insight into how having a mentor can impact people’s lives. A couple of stories stuck with us and showed the power of effective mentoring relationships.

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Your Growth Strategy Stopped Working. Now What?

Your Growth Strategy Stopped Working. Now What?

Any successful business that’s been around for more than a few years has found themselves on that plateau, trying to figure out why their growth stalled or why they feel stuck. The plateau itself isn’t a problem. In fact, it may create an opportunity to look at your business, your product, or your market through new eyes.

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Two Wrong Leaders Don’t Make a Right One (Lesson #5 of 8 Lessons Growing 8 Companies)

Two Wrong Leaders Don’t Make a Right One (Lesson #5 of 8 Lessons Growing 8 Companies)

The experience left a big impression on me. Leadership isn’t theoretical. There are real, perhaps even dire, consequences to poor leadership. Fudging it doesn’t work, and pretending that two wrongs add up to a right could end with you thanking your lucky stars that you don’t have to explain to your board how you blew up a BMW test engine.

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Is It Time to Hire a Leadership Coach?

Is It Time to Hire a Leadership Coach?

If it were up to me, everyone in a leadership position, or starting or building a business, would have a coach — not because I want to (or could) coach them all, but because leaders who have coaches are better leaders. At the same time, I recognize that every business leader is balancing dozens of competing priorities, now more than ever. Is it time for you to hire a leadership coach? A better question might be Are you fine staying right where you are?

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How to Build an Effective Leadership Team

How to Build an Effective Leadership Team

Poor leadership costs companies revenue, time, staff, and customers. And the leaders at the very top aren’t the only ones that have an impact. Every supervisory role has the capacity to exceed goals and inspire stellar performances or to miss the mark and impede productivity. Building a leadership team that can help you achieve your goals requires careful and purposeful planning. I’ve had the opportunity to learn from my own successes and failures as a CEO as well as from my clients’ experiences.

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Identify Your Leadership Style and Maximize Effectiveness

Identify Your Leadership Style and Maximize Effectiveness

Becoming a better leader isn’t something that happens in a day, or even in a week. Building that set of skills requires intentional thought and effort. Understanding your innate leadership style can help you determine where to start. Once you’ve made an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses, you can begin to make change by playing to your strengths and minimizing or mitigating your weaknesses.

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7 Characteristics of Effective Leaders

7 Characteristics of Effective Leaders

Having a great business idea or getting promoted to a leadership role doesn’t automatically make you a good leader. In fact, there are lots of mediocre (or downright bad) leaders out there. I learned a lot about leadership throughout my own journey to CEO. I’ve learned even more over the last ten years as I’ve coached, mentored, and advised hundreds of growth-stage leaders. The most effective leaders are intentional about their leadership, working to develop the skills and characteristics that will make them better able to reach their own goals and to help their teams identify and reach theirs.

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Leading a Remote Company

Leading a Remote Company

How have the companies that have always operated completely remote done it? If they can do it every day, why can’t the rest of us? What kind of lessons could they teach us? I reached out to the leaders of two Trajectify clients who founded and run completely remote companies: Max Rice - CEO and Founder of Skyverge & Caleb Frankel - CEO and Founder of Instinct Science

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How to Lead During Times of Uncertainty—Business Responses to COVID-19

How to Lead During Times of Uncertainty—Business Responses to COVID-19

If you’re still reeling from the news of the last few weeks—or days—you’re not alone. Businesses all over the world are scrambling to protect employees, figure out remote work schedules, reforecast revenues, or simply keep the doors open. No organization will manage all of this perfectly, but some will find ways to strengthen the relationships with their customers and their employees, to expand their understanding of their business, and solidify their own commitment to their values.

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6 Questions to Ask Before You Choose a Business Coach

6 Questions to Ask Before You Choose a Business Coach

If you run a business, lead a team, or head up an organization, there’s a good chance you’ve considered hiring a coach—or at least looking to someone else for guidance. A coach is focused on unlocking your potential. They work with you to improve your performance. As with anyone that you bring into your confidence and your business, you want to make the right choice. We’ve been on both sides of the equation—as coaches and as clients.

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