If you want to be a more effective communicator, have more productive meetings, and have people respect you more – skip the verbal hugs. “Sounds good Jim, but what the heck is a verbal hug?” Good question.

A verbal hug is used to soften the blow of a message you believe is going to be difficult to hear. By adding extraneous information that you may or may not believe, you offer a verbal hug, hoping it will make what you are really trying to say more palatable.

This can become problematic because the true message is no longer clear and can be disregarded or not even heard.

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Running a business is a wild ride and there are a lot of surprises along the way. But I think the thing that surprises me most is that I have learned more about business and leadership in the last five years than I did in the previous 30 years.

This is part two in a two-part series of the five most surprising things about business that leadership teams need to learn. (You can read part one here.)

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Running a business is a wild ride and there are a lot of surprises along the way. But I think the thing that surprises me most is that I have learned more about business and leadership in the last five years than I did in the previous 30 years. This is part one in a two-part series of the five most surprising things about business that leadership teams need to learn.

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Do you want any of these for your business in the coming year? Peace of mind. Consistency. Efficiency. Scalability. More Fun. And of course, more profit. Every leadership team that I’ve worked with seems to have an instant eagerness to improve upon these areas in their business, regardless of industry.

The key to achieving these goals in the new year is a three-step exercise of identifying, documenting, and following your company’s Core Processes. It’s not a sexy solution, but it’s incredibly powerful. And it’s not as painful as you might think.

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Annual planning season is upon us. This is the time of year that many of my clients have their two-day offsite annual planning sessions. It’s their opportunity to reflect on last year’s successes and misses, as well as getting clear on where to focus their time, energy, and resources over the coming year.

In a recent annual planning session with a financial services company, the six-person leadership team had an a-ha moment. They are all very polite, friendly people who are hard workers, but they didn’t fully trust each other. They trusted each other to do their jobs and get stuff done, but they didn’t have a vulnerability-based trust. What does this mean?

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