We Want to Contribute Our Ideas

I wrote my new book, Make Things Better: The Path to Success in Business, as I see a need for the messages offered:

• lead with humility and empathy
• leadership by questioning
• active listening may be our most important skill
• address problems promptly
• request and offer feedback and feedforward
• remember names
• be early
• respond promptly, as soon as possible
• learn how to have the difficult conversations
• leadership is how we help people feel about themselves
• and many more…….

The best ideas are bottom-up ideas and companies do better when ideas flow up, rather than simply having a culture of top-down directives.

Leaders make things better, and so can everyone else. Anyone, whether a CEO, another high-level or mid-level person, an executive assistant, a receptionist, someone in the mailroom, can be alert to potential improvements, be it reducing costs, saving time, streamlining a procedure, a potential new service or product to offer clients, ideas for promotion of our company in our community, a new prospective client, and how to draw closer to our present clients.

If we are alert, see something or think of something that might make things better, then speak up, tell our manager or offer our idea in a meeting.

Concerned that our idea might not be a winner? That is okay, everyone has ideas, some great, some not great. Offering ideas is appreciated.

And remember, failure is a door we go through on the way to success.

There are important messages in this book, and the main theme is that as leaders make things better, so may everyone else help make things better.

Everyone’s job, no matter what our position, is to help our company/organization be successful.