Learn and Lead

A great post by David Small on Dan McCarthy's blog Great Leadership about serving your team with honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable.

"How often do we have members of our team that we say “good job” too, even though we know they could be doing better? Did you know you could be doing more harm then good by not pointing out their shortcomings? Here are four tips to build up your team without giving them false positives."

Read the full post False Positives.


David Small is the author of the bestselling book The Wandering Leader. In this book David explains how leaders don’t need to be perfect, but they should get things done. He focuses on seven areas of leadership that everyone can grow in; career, financial, social, physical, spiritual, intellectual, and family. David has been a professional ice hockey coach for over a decade and is an officer in the army reserves. David has guest lectured and been a keynote speaker at leadership events around the globe.

We mostly hear how hard it is to give negative feedback and fire people. I have been wondering about this. Yes giving negative feedback is hard and firing people is harder. However come to think of it, actually this is a easiest thing. We are all critical of others and so giving negative feedback comes naturally. We more often than not, find it easier to find mistakes rather than appreciate what's going on well. And if a subordinate isn't working out, firing is an easy way out. The work pressures are high and we can't afford a non-performer on the team, right. Actually, that is the easy way out. What's really hard is to make the non-performers succeed. That is the true challenge of leadership.