I was recently approached to review Mike McHargue’s latest book, Rookie Mistakes: Advice from Top Executives on Five Critical Leadership Errors. Since this book is about leadership and I am sure all of us have had to attend meetings in different settings, I thought this would be a good way to get to know Mike and his book. With 2019 coming to an end, I could not read it right away so, instead, I asked Mike how we can incorporate leadership in everyday life. He approached this question by telling me about productive meetings.
Let’s learn a little more about Mike before we dive into his guest post about leadership, and then after, I’ll share the book cover and synopsis with you.
About the author
Mike McHargue is a Principal Consultant with Patrick Lencioni’s Table Group. He is a part of the global movement to bring organizational health into the workplace and has worked with hundreds of leadership teams across the globe. When Mike isn’t making mistakes or helping leaders correct their mistakes and build stronger teams he can be found either running or encouraging his kids to learn to play the ukulele and cheering them on as they play basketball, soccer and lacrosse.
He lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife, Anna, and their three children, Elena, Jack, and Gabriella.
Leadership in Everyday Life
Meetings are a reality for most of us. Meetings are where we should be talking about the most important issues and challenges facing our business, where we should be making important decisions, where we communicate, set priorities and in theory, get a lot done. Yet, often when I ask leaders how they feel about meetings, I commonly get an earful about what a waste of time they are and how they dread meetings. Even their own meetings!
Since meetings are a fact of life for most of us, learning the principle of effective meetings is a true leadership-in-everyday-life topic.
I believe there are three important components to great meetings: starting with clarity; talking about the most important things and ending with clarity. I don’t think any leader would argue with those things, yet most leaders would agree that their meetings do not align to these three components I’ll address this first component, starting with clarity.
When I work with leaders and teams I always try to emphasize the power of clarity when it comes to all communication. Meetings are a great opportunity to create/reinforce clarity and avoid confusion.
In addition to having clarity about the meeting’s purpose, a Table Group best practice is that leadership teams start meetings with a quick review of the answers to the critical questions from Patrick Lencioni’s book The Advantage:
- Why do we exist?
- How do we behave?
- What do we do?
- How will we succeed?
- What is most important, right now?
- Who must do what?
It might seem repetitive to review the answers to these questions at the start of every meeting, but it takes just a few minutes and ensures the intellectual alignment of the leadership team, which is so critical to a healthy organization. Starting with clarity keeps the meeting focused, ensures discussion about the most important things, and leads the team to make better decisions.
Leadership is having the courage to make hard decisions and set direction for the team. We can’t do that unless we have clarity about who we are, what our team needs to focus on, and the values we will hold.
In my book Rookie Mistakes I address five common leadership errors that leaders make. And one of those is running/allowing truly awful meetings.
Do your meetings start with clarity?
Tell us about your experiences with meeting! Do you like them? Or find them to be necessary evil?Do your meetings start with clarity?
Here is what you can learn by reading Mike’s book:
Are Your Critical Leadership Errors Undermining Your Team and Organization?
After working with more than 300 teams as a Principal Consultant for The Table Group, Mike McHargue recognized an emerging pattern. It became clear that, as many of those well-intentioned leaders made their way from managers to executives, they made significant leadership mistakes.
For his work Rookie Mistakes: Advice from Top Executives on Five Critical Leadership Errors, McHargue interviewed hundreds of executives, 25 of whom were vulnerable enough to share their wisdom about errors that must be avoided both by the rookie leader and the seasoned executive.
Rookie Mistakes focuses on the most damaging of those errors to leaders and teams. McHargue learned from his research that those errors fell into five clear categories:
• Allowing confusion
• Failing to connect with their team
• Running truly awful meetings
• Hiring too fast and firing too slow
• Failing to give and receive feedback
This book offers practical advice to help you become the leader you always imagined you would be.
Want to read Rookie Mistakes? Find it on Amazon (Kindle). Also available through Kindle Unlimited. Stay tuned for my thoughts on the book next year!
Cover image: Photo by Mad Fish Digital on Unsplash
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