The RapidStart Leadership Podcast brings you short, interesting stories, revealing research, and practical tools to help make you a more effective leader. Whether you are a new leader, a seasoned manager, or mentoring someone else who is learning to lead, these podcasts will arm you with actionable takeaways you can apply, whatever the leadership situation you find yourself in. Host Ken Downer is the founder of RapidStartLeadership.com where his blog posts, videos, podcasts, and online cours ...
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Culture Course Correction: 11 Ways to Avoid Going Over the Cliff
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When it comes to getting things done, culture can have a huge impact not only on how well the team performs, but how likely it is that our teammates will stick around to do it again. So, what do we do when we sense that our team’s culture is heading straight for the edge of a cliff? Here are eleven ideas for how we can make a culture course correct…
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Increasing Engagement - How to Get People to Open Up
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If we hope to develop high-performing teams, increasing engagement is always at the top of our to-do list. But sometimes in our efforts to lead, we can get in our own way, and hinder the very thing we are trying to encourage. Two brief interactions that went very differently illustrate how this can happen, and what we can do if we are serious about…
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The 18th Mile: It’s Not the Finish Line Leaders Should Focus On
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Most people know that a marathon is 26.2 miles long. Successful runners also know that it’s a mistake to focus solely on that distance. Smart leaders can benefit from similar thinking. Whatever marathon we are running with our teams, to get to that distant goal, it’s not the finish line we should focus on, it’s the 18th mile. Here’s why. Notes and …
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Leading Winning Teams: 5 Leadership Lessons from Mushers
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On a recent sub-zero day on a frozen lake in central Minnesota, I got a chance to witness great team leadership in action. It was a crash course in what leading winning teams is all about. Here’s what the experience was like, and five key lessons from the leaders themselves that we can all use in leading our own teams. Notes and Resources: Prefer t…
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The Blemishing Effect: Why Selling Perfection Can be Self-Defeating
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When we’re trying to influence people to choose an option we favor, we can be tempted to only talk about the reasons why they should. But according to something called the Blemishing Effect, it may actually be in our best interests to point out why they shouldn’t, too. Here’s why. Notes and Resources: Prefer to read? Here’s the full postThe Blemish…
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Do You Have Leadership Double-Vision? Should You?
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One of the many challenges we face as leaders is where to spend our time and energy. Recently I came across an insightful analogy that can help us approach this problem. It has to do with having a kind of leadership double-vision. Notes and Resources: Prefer to read? Here’s the full pos tDo You Have Leadership Double-Vision? Should You? The Essenti…
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Running in the Rain: What to Think About When You Think About Quitting
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How do we convince ourselves to do something we’d rather not? It’s cold and raining outside, but I’m supposed to go for a training run today. I really don’t want to. To get myself out the door, here are the kinds of things that go through my head, and ways we can all think about approaching any difficult task that we’d really rather not do. Notes a…
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Reflecting Back on the Year Ahead – 11 Ways to Make Your Reflection Session Pay Off
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As ever, with the approach of the New Year, there is talk of reflection. Extracting the lessons-learned from the past year and using them as we look forward is a great path to continued growth. But few are the people who will actually sit down and do it. One reason may be that there is no owner’s manual to guide the process. With that in mind, here…
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Boosting Team Performance: 3 Ways to Make Your Team’s Engine More Powerful
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What do jet engines and work teams have in common? If either generate too much heat, they will self-destruct. Aeronautical engineers found a surprising way to adapt their engines so they could handle more heat and operate at higher capacities. Today we’ll look at three ways to apply their approach to leadership, and boost our own team performance. …
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Delegate Better: Three Ways to Get the Results You Want
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When telling people what we need done, how do we strike the balance between being overly prescriptive, and recklessly lax? How can we be sure what we want in the beginning will be what we get at the end? A story I read recently involving a frozen lake, a pack of wolves, and a canoe full of beer can serve as a helpful guide in helping us master the …
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Rapid Deliberation: 7 Ways to Hit the Target While Under Stress
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In times of high stress, we want fast answers. As leaders we feel the pressure be decisive. But fast is not always best, and can sometimes lead us deeper into trouble. What we need is rapid deliberation. With a little help from Wyatt Earp, and people who jump out of airplanes for a living, here’s what I think that means, and how we can put it to wo…
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"Set and Forget" Leadership - How to Delegate so You Don't Get Burned
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‘Set and forget’ leadership: Hand off the task as fast as possible, move on to other things. It’s what we tend to do when we’re in a hurry, but the biggest speed advantage this approach confers may be how quickly it can get us into trouble. Here’s a way to think about how to delegate that task we’ve cooked up so that things function smoothly in the…
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Big Hammer or Small Blade? What it Really Takes to Achieve Your Goals
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Want to achieve your goals? Don’t listen to the marketers… We are continually bombarded by messages that to cater to, and encourage, our short attention span. There is no shortage of “life hacks,” quick-fix remedies, and promises of miraculous overnight success. Like a blow from Thor’s mighty hammer, we’re led to expect quick resolution to our prob…
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Lighthouse Leadership: How to Lead Your Team When the Storm Hits
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Not all leadership situations are the same. Sometimes the way ahead is clear to all, and leading is easy. But it’s when the storms roll in and the path is obscured that leaders earn their keep. These are the lighthouse leadership moments that matter the most. With the help of a story of amazing bravery, here’s what that means, and how to keep your …
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The Best Revenge: What to Do When Someone Does Us Wrong
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What’s the best revenge against someone who has done us wrong? The answer might surprise you, but it has everything to do with what makes a leader. Notes and Resources: Prefer to read? Here’s the full post: The Best Revenge: What to Do When Someone Does Us Wrong Here’s a short, fun video of matches going off in a chain reaction in the form of a vol…
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Hyperbolic Discounting and 7 Ways to Prevent Self-Sabotage
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Hyperbolic discounting may sound like a super-charged holiday sales technique, but in reality, it’s a phenomenon that leaves us vulnerable to making poor impulse choices and sabotaging our goals. Here’s what it is, and seven ways to turn this dangerous penchant into a tool to help us make smart decisions. Notes and Resources: Prefer to read? Here’s…
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7 Stages of Self-Righteousness: Symptoms and Treatments
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Self-Righteousness in the media and in my social media feed seems to have become almost as prevalent as Covid-19, driving people even farther apart than the six feet needed for safe social distancing. So, while the scientists are searching for a medical cure to stop the pandemic, I thought I’d take a stab at addressing the symptoms of this other si…
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The Final Act of Leadership: What Leaders Get Wrong About Succession
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How do we know if someone was a great leader? One key is to take a hard look at their final act of leadership before they let go of the reins. Too many would-be leaders see succession in a distorted light that invalidates any good work they may have done. If we want to be seen as “one of the good ones” here’s how to get the focus right. Notes and R…
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Stop Social Loafing: 6 Ways to Get Everyone Working
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Did you know that 1 + 1 + 1 does not always equal 3? You would think that the more people on a project, the greater the output. Sadly, that’s not always the case. A phenomenon called Social Loafing leads some team members to do the minimum possible. They drag down group productivity like a boat anchor. Today we’ll look at why social loafing happens…
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In Praise of Praise: 5 Ways to Enhance the Power of Your Appreciation
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There’s a tool sitting on our leadership work bench that often goes neglected. Yet it has the power to increase our team’s efforts, raise their spirits, and improve performance. As a bonus, it takes very little time, is easy to use, costs almost nothing, and comes in unlimited supply. What is it, you may ask? It’s praise, and today we’ll talk about…
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Herd Mentality: What We Can Learn About Leadership From Ancient Americans
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In the days before they had horses and rifles, ancient Americans successfully hunted the enormous and dangerous American Bison in a surprising way. By taking advantage of its herd mentality, a few bold warriors were able to manipulate the actions of hundreds of buffalo. As social animals ourselves, we can learn a lot from their tactics to help make…
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Rocks in a Jar: 11 Things They Didn’t Tell You
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You’ve probably seen the “rocks in a jar” presentation about time management. It’s great for visualizing the need to prioritize what’s important. The problem is that I think there was a lot they left out. Here are eleven things they didn’t mention about the concept that can make us even better at managing our time. Notes and Resources: Prefer to re…
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Leading Through Transition: Tips for Leaders in Times of Change
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No, this is not another post about the seven leadership lessons we can learn from geese. Yes, it does come from watching geese, but it’s something that others have overlooked, and it has to do with leading through transition. And as usual, a simple demonstration by mother nature carries powerful lessons for us about how to lead in chaotic, unsettle…
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Plans are Worthless: Why We Should Plan Anyway
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These days as we move from one unforeseeable event to the next, it might seem that any effort to plan is a waste of time. Dwight Eisenhower would agree, at least in part, when he said, “Plans are worthless.” But here’s the rest of that great quote and what we can take from it to help us prepare for the next time the unimaginable happens. Notes and …
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9 Secrets to Leading Sheep – No Matter How Many Legs They Have
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As a rule, we tend to look down on sheep, but we have a lot more in common with them than we might want to admit. In this post we’ll look at one would-be shepherd who learned the hard way that sheep are not the passive conformists we think they are, and we’ll build a list of nine ways to successfully lead sheep, no matter how many legs they happen …
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Leadership Test: Will You Be Ready When the Challenge Comes?
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Like an airplane ascending through the clouds in the early stages of a flight, we can expect some rough air when we first step into a new leadership role. Our teammates are trying to see if we have what it takes to lead them well. Pass the test and we earn their trust. Fail it, and it’s going to be a long turbulent flight ahead. Here’s what those l…
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The words we use as leaders make a difference, but to be honest, some of the phrases we’re using in our attempts to lead are actually making things harder for us. Here are three examples of these crutch phrases that we tend to rely on that don’t really give us the support we think they do. Do any of these sound familiar? Notes and Resources: Prefer…
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Leadership Trust: The Secret to Achieving Impossible Things
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Tomorrow he would lead his lead his army to retake Burma from the Japanese. Today he had a chance to share with his soldiers the leadership philosophy that would make that monumental task possible. He did it with a single short story. Here’s what he said, and how it can help you and your team accomplish the impossible, too. Notes and Resources: Pre…
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Leaders and Con Men: Should We Follow Their Example?
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Con Men work in the shadows and employ every trick in the book to get people to do what they want. As leaders, we’re trying to get people to do things, too. So, is there really much difference between leaders and con men? Is there anything we can learn from these evil-doers that we can put to use for the good? Notes and Resources: Prefer to read? H…
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Bosses and Burnout: Three Things Leaders Should Know
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Burnout on the job is costing us millions of dollars annually, but the solutions leaders are putting into place to solve the problem are missing the point. Here’s what you need to know about burnout, and three effective strategies we as leaders can take to deal with it when it arises, and even prevent it from appearing in the first place. Notes and…
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Courage to Lead: Re-Looking the Role of Courage in Leadership
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It takes courage to lead, but not in the way many people seem to think. Certainly, we need courage to step forward and show the way, but if we want our teammates to be motivated, engaged, and productive as they follow, there’s something else we have to do with that courage. Here are ten ways to lead with courage that may surprise you. Notes and Res…
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Smiling at the Finish Line: 7 Ways to Avoid Disaster on Your Big Day
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Big event coming up? Want to make sure it goes well? I just completed a big event of my own, and despite some bumps along the way, it turned out well in the end. Here are the seven things that helped me make it upright to the finish line, and how they can help you, too, whatever your big event may be. Notes and Resources: Prefer to read? Here’s the…
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Lost in the Jungle: 5 Questions to Ask Before Launching Your Team
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In this episode I'll share a story about how we nearly launched a search and rescue team into a trackless wilderness to recover a pilot who had crashed into the jungle. From that story, we can extract five key questions that leaders should have answers to before launching their own teams on any new mission. Notes and Resources: Prefer to read? Here…
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