Do you work in an environment where:

• People are constantly running around focused on pressing matters instead of being able to think about the big picture.
• There is never time to do anything except put out the latest and loudest fire.
• The organization expects to move quickly but it crushes critical thinking and debate.
• It is the norm to work 60+ hours per week.

How about an environment where:

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I went to the dentist last week for the first of two visits to get a crown placed on a cracked tooth. Honestly, I hate going to the dentist. Don't get me wrong. My dentist is extremely competent, and I trust his work.

There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world - one thing which, if removed, will destroy the most powerful government, the most successful business, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love.

In Part 1 of this article, I discussed the impact that senior leadership teams have on employee engagement, productivity, and retention. And, I made it very clear that the behaviors that originate at the executive team level ripple through the organization. Just like a wave that gets larger as it nears the shore, those behaviors get magnified and repeated - regardless of whether they have a positive or negative impact.

Well, I am back after taking a few weeks off from my normal blogging routine. I hope you have enjoyed the summer as much as I have.

So, I thought I would jump back in with a concept I introduced in a webinar I conducted last week on The 4 Costliest Mistakes Senior Leadership Teams Make. It's a concept I call "getting stuck in always having to be right."

"The conduct of a company's leadership team is directly correlated with the organization's long-term performance."

In her article Lessons from Team Fumbles, Susan Lucia Annunzio goes on to say "Once-venerable institutions such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Royal Bank of Scotland paid the ultimate price for the behaviors of their leadership teams."

Some of the behaviors Annunzio is referring to includes:

What is the purpose of this complimentary webinar on August 11th?
In just 57 minutes your senior leaders will learn specific ways to avoid or address some common, costly mistakes, and help them achieve a major shift in how their teams perform.

Senior leadership teams are the single most influential factor that impacts employee engagement, productivity, and retention.

Have you ever watched a 400-meter relay team work?
On a good team, their hand-offs are impeccable.

In fact, given two teams of equal quality runners, the team with the more efficient
hand-offs always wins. The same holds true in the work place.

Inscape Publishing just launched the Everything DiSC 363 for Leaders, and my clients love it.

They love it for three reasons.

(1) It combines the best of a 360 degree assessment and the power of DiSC.

(2) It does away with the often useless, open-ended responses raters can give, and instead gives raters a set of choices to select for open-ended questions - making the feedback behavioral based and more valuable for the leader.