Blog
Important Meeting? When Should You Hire a Facilitator?
1) When you need everyone (including you) to be fully engaged in the content, decision making, brainstorming, or other activities this meeting will entail. Decision making is especially prone to unintentional influence when the leader is facilitating the meeting....
3 Reasons to Take Your Staff Meeting Out of the Building
Has your staff meeting gotten stale? Are you disconnected from the problem you are solving? Do you need a breath of fresh air to breathe new life into your group? There are many reasons why it may be the right time to take your next staff meeting out of the conference...
How do you know if your team is working?
The great thing about working in a team is the ability to bring together a bunch of different people with different skills, perspectives, and energy. However, often we are working in a group that is not actually functioning like an effective team. How can you tell?...
Stop Having Recurring Meetings With No Purpose
You’ve been there…every two weeks you lead another staff meeting…new day, same issues: employees on their phones no one comes prepared nothing is accomplished no one is willing to speak up except that one guy who always has something to say before you all leave you...
#33 How Do You Build a Business That Builds Community?
What does it look like to build a small business that is grounded in the community and which feels like a family? Rand Jenkins, Founder of Mountain Mojo Marketing Group, has been trying to figure that out. Rand and podcast host Sharon share their early bad experiences...
Renew the Energy of Your Team with a Leadership Retreat
For two years I have had the honor of designing and facilitating a Leadership Retreat for the Capital Planning and Campus Operations team at Northern Arizona University. This has been a great challenge because the leader of the team, Daniel Okoli, presents me with...
#32 Who is a Leader?
As a 14 year old, Diana rode 75 minutes on a public bus to her first job so that she wouldn't be distracted by friends. Now as the Director of a the Small Business Development Center she helps entrepreneurs realize that they can be entrepreneurs. Mentioned in this...
Get Unstuck with a Team Building Exercise
Groups learn best when they are having fun. One of my favorite exercises to facilitate with groups is Team Juggling. All you need is the space to circle up and 3-8 Koosh balls or other soft round objects. In this video I describe how Team Juggling works. I recently...
#31 What’s Next for Do Good, Be Good
Host, Sharon Tewksbury-Bloom, tells her story about being a bone marrow donor and shares an update about the next season of this show. Mentioned in this episode: Be the Match WerkIt Podcast Festival The Do Good, Be Good Facebook Page The Do Good, Be Good Shirts and...
#30 What If We Start With Good Enough Now?
Jessica Pettitt has worked as a weight lifting judge, Peace Corps volunteer, diversity trainer, bartender, and more. In this episode she shares what she learned during that varied work history and her work now, on Good Enough Now. Jessica encourages us to do the best...
#29 Artificial Pancreas Creates Better Quality of Life for Diabetic Engineer
While in graduate school for mechanical engineering, Chris found out about a few people who were designing systems to connect an insulin pump with a continuous glucose monitor in a way that can best be described as an artificial pancreas. Chris got involved and was...
5 Free Webinars – One a Day – October 1-5, 2018
Do you lead staff meetings? Good news! I am offering 5 free webinars to help you plan and lead more productive staff meetings. Hopefully you can join me live for at least one of the webinars. Each webinar will be recorded, so even if you can't join me live, register...
A Free Way to Generate Great New Ideas for Any Project
Do you have an annual event that has gotten stale? Or are you doing a promotion and want to go beyond the usual flier and email campaign? I have had great luck with a simple technique based on random word association. Try this at your next meeting with your group: Ask...
#28 Finding the Fun as a High School Music Teacher
Vocal Musician and Music Teacher, Jamey Hasapis, is a joy to listen to in this interview. He shares what he has learned from a career that spans multiple sectors and positions. Jamey finds the fun in every job and his enthusiasm is contagious: Mentioned in this...
#27 A Virtual Assistant Who is Really There to Help You
"My whole thing is staying organized." Mike Barugel launched FYT Virtual Assistants to help you. From creating spreadsheets during play as a child to making processes at his first job at McDonald's, Mike has always had a talent for putting tasks in order. His own...
A Quick Trick to Share News with Your Team
Sharing news is hard. Maybe the news isn't good. What will your staff think? How will they react? Maybe the news is not bad, it's just change… but people often freak out when they face change. If you need to share news with your staff, I strongly suggest that you take...
#26 Bonus: Identity Crisis from MadCap
Dan Bloom and David Ross from MadCap discuss what it means to pour ourselves into our work and whether or not we should compromise who we are for our careers. It is a fascinating conversation between great friends, and they have been generous enough to let me...
How Do You Prioritize Projects On Your Team?
Do you ever get overwhelmed by all the possible directions you could go in with your team? In my last job we faced a crisis. Our program had been funded by one large federal grant, and we had just been informed that we were being cut by 54%. We then learned that the...
Staff Meetings Aspire to Be Great
When I was building the 3 Steps to Energize Your Team With Better Staff Meetings Toolkit, I used a creative thinking exercise to put myself in the shoes of a staff meeting. Not to imagine myself AT a staff meeting, but to actually imagine that I AM a staff meeting....
#25 Crafting an Argument for Self Care
Rebekah's Barre3 fitness class has left me with tears of joy and gratitude. I always wondered why that is. After interviewing Rebekah for this episode, I think I get it. Rebekah used to be a lawyer and takes that skill of constructing an argument into the fitness...