The girls I bring to church had a fascinating discussion this morning about fast food restaurants. It started when I asked them what they wanted for breakfast and the youngest one shouted, “tacos, tacos, tacos!!” There was lots of laughter as the older two girls explained that it was too early for tacos. And so,…
Author: Dr. Carla Jill Stein
Leaders don’t always grease the squeaky wheel
I love thinking about the start of the school year, but I do not miss the confusion of those early days or the feelings of “what time IS IT?” when the alarm clock goes off earlier than it did all summer. Still, it’s hard for me to resist going out and buying new pencils and…
High maintenance
Last week, during a conversation with John, I commented “I am weary of this high maintenance situation.” I’ve thought about the term, “high maintenance”, since then. It is easy to describe a “high maintenance” vehicle. You know what I mean. It started with a higher than “normal” price sticker. Owning a “high maintenance” vehicle proves…
Should you get inputs from others?
When setting plans for the future, control of who is involved and how much weight their input should be given, can be tough issues for leaders. I have two questions to help you decide if you should involve others in developing future plans. 1. Are the resources involved yours alone? In other words, are the…
An accountability team
Years ago, I heard John, after hearing one of our granddaughters say to another “You’re not the boss of me,” respond that “Everyone has a boss.” The three girls questioned him about that. He went on to explain that he was accountable to their parents for their care, he had to answer to the bank…
After the push
I’ve been gone for a couple of weeks. To be honest, I had a lot going on to prepare for activities around Easter and my writing had to take a back seat. My attention, energy, time, and intellect were used up as we prepared for this Easter. It was exciting and fun and draining. Leaders all…
Are we trustworthy?
Recently I was reminded of a personnel selection that we made a few years ago. We had been blessed with a great professional in the position for many years and they were leaving the area. Their contributions to the organization and team were amazing; selecting the right person to replace them was critical. Technical skills…
“Move it, move it, move it”
For many years, John and I had a long distance relationship. Our jobs caused us to live in different parts of the country for the first five years of our marriage. Although we saw each other about every 6 weeks (when he wasn’t deployed), we most often communicated by phone and cassette tape. The tape…
Time management problems? Look deeper.
It doesn’t matter how hard we try or how smart we are – we cannot do it all. No leader can take on every task, know all possible answers, anticipate every single issue or physically do all jobs. But, yet we try. A few weeks ago, a group of volunteers was helping me complete a…
The call from Human Resources (HR) caught me off guard. An employee had been passing bad checks and two deputies from the county would be in my office at 1:00pm to arrest her. HR advised me not to share with the staff member about the arrest plan and to have her in my office at…
Dr. Carla Jill Stein 