Mike’s Blog

The other day I noticed that I’ve been procrastinating to work on doing some marketing work. As a business owner, I know marketing is an important activity. The problem is, I’m not passionate about marketing. I’m passionate about helping people. To get out of this...

I wrote this post sitting on the bank of a river. A river never stops flowing and is full of life you rarely see. To see the life beneath the surface, you need to wade out into the river and standstill. Teams are like a river. On the surface, they can look to be...

“The first job of any leader is to inspire trust” — Stephen Covey If you’re a leader, then you know the one thing you need to do is to trust others to get the job done. You cannot have your hands in everything. That said, I’ve had leaders tell me that they’re...

I’ve been learning a lot about anxiety during the past month. I don’t suffer from a mental illness, but anxiety is a normal part of life. When you feel anxiety, you become hesitant and unsure about how to move forward. It’s a fear response at work, as your mind tries...

Human nature is such that we’re not willing to change things until they’re too painful. I see it in business all the time. Everyone is feeling stressed, productivity is down, and customers are unhappy. Yet, the company has plenty of money, so they keep working in a...

I do a lot of writing. Sometimes it’s easy, and the words seem to flow from my fingers. Other times, writing is a little like nails on the chalkboard. Over time I’ve developed a couple of tactics to help myself get unstuck. To begin, I don’t fight the feeling or beat...

It’s always easier to see problems with other people than it is with yourself. Take, for example, when someone says they don’t trust somebody. With a little probing, I often find the real problem is that this person doesn’t trust themselves first. It might be they...

Life took an unexpected turn on March 13. That’s when the province of Ontario declared a state of emergency ordering us to stay home and keep social distancing. I’ll be honest; the first few weeks of the lock-down were a mental struggle. How can I be trapped by this...

Psychological safety is an important topic receiving plenty of airtime lately. For a good reason, too, as there’s still plenty of work to do in making the workplace more humane and safe. I do think, though, there’s a danger of swinging the Psychological safety...

One of the most powerful questions I know is, “What do you/I want?” The question asks people to think about where they want to go, rather than what has them stuck. The problem, though, is when inviting the person to look forward, they might still have a self-limiting...

Do you ever look at a problem and wonder: Where did you go wrong? What did you do to deserve this? What failure on your part leaves you dealing with this problem? What if you knew you are the author of every problem in your life? I used to struggle with this thought...

Unlike the title of this post, there is no four-step approach to building a high performing team. According to Tuckman’s model, you need to go through Forming, Storming, and Norming before you can get to Performing. It always sounds so easy when people talk about...