In many ways, decision-making is the quintessential job of a leader. It is also the biggest driver of performance in business and in life. Researchers estimate we make nearly 35,000 decisions each day. Therefore, it’s critical that leaders embrace a decision-making process that reliably results in wise decisions.

Salespeople have a sales process that guides their approach to creating and winning deals. Sales managers have a cadence to lead their sales force so they can reach their goals. Sales leaders have sales performance management to build, maintain, and improve the sales function. Sales performance management is a holistic view of sales.

At a time when employees are leaving their jobs in record numbers, focusing on the relationship between leaders and direct reports is critical. Having a great boss should be a desirable feature of an organization’s leadership culture. Yet despite earnest attempts in training and development, we have a long way to go. Gallup reports that one in two U.S. adults have left their job to get away from their manager and improve their overall life at some point in their career.

The best sales teams get into an aligned operating rhythm and execute using agreed-upon best practices. So many sales organizations operate with frontline sales managers “doing their own thing.” It reminds me of the times I spent watching my step-daughter’s Pee Wee/youth soccer games when she was growing up. She played in an all-girl league, and wherever the ball rolled, the ponytails followed.

Over the past two years, leaders have been put to the test. They’ve had to keep their organizations afloat amid challenges no one saw coming. Executives everywhere have been forced to rethink, restrategize, restructure, and relaunch. The majority have risen to the challenge with determination. Yet despite these efforts, businesses are struggling to retain employees and keep them engaged.

Creativity and innovation are crucial for driving growth and staying competitive in today’s rapidly evolving world. Most people would say that’s true especially for companies that manufacture products. But it’s true for all organizations; for profit companies, nonprofit organizations and government entities.

An NYU psychologist offers critical guidance for dealing with a jerk at work. Most of us work with a jerk—toxic people who seem hellbent on making our lives, well, hell. But here’s the good news: You don’t have to be completely beholden to their poisonous ways. It turns out toxic coworkers often operate by the same tired playbook. And once you identify and understand what type of work jerk you’re dealing with, you’ll have more ammo to neutralize them.

It’s probably an understatement to say that so many aspects of the workplace have changed in the past few years. We’ve seen the ‘expectations pendulum’ dramatically swing – in everything from employees’ relationship to the workplace, to how they think about their wellbeing, and even more fundamentally than this, how work and life actually intersect.

What takes a long time to build and a short time to destroy? Trust. One of the greatest attributes a leader can acquire is the ability to build trust. Even though competency is part of the trust formula, trust isn’t gained by being the hardest worker, having the most seniority or being the most skilled at a particular job.

As a sales manager, I appreciated the value of curiosity in building relationships with prospects and coaching my team. Curiosity is an essential aspect of human nature that drives us to explore, learn, and grow. Whether seeking knowledge about the world around us or trying to understand other people’s thoughts and emotions, curiosity plays a vital role in our personal and professional development.

So I didn’t. The truth is, avoiding that hard decision and others like it cost me time, opportunity and cycles of unnecessary rumination and distraction. I learned that procrastinating a hard decision is actually a decision in and of itself. It also typically comes with a cost. Understandably, many of us hesitate when the stakes are high instead of being decisive. Or, in the words of Paul Epstein, a sports executive turned bestselling author and keynote speaker: We play defense when they should be playing offense.

You’ve just tipped over halftime in 2023. How will your year end up? A lot of the next five and a half months, especially Q4, depends on how you motivate sellers now – deep in the summer grind. There are numerous diverse ways to encourage and motivate salespeople now. Here are some examples that might be helpful so you have more options.

We work for decades, yet for most of us, there are a handful of moments in time that define the course of our leadership career. Unfortunately, these moments — opportunities or crises — don’t come with a caption suggesting, “Hey, pay attention and embrace this mess because it’s going to turn out to be important to you.” For individuals who choose to lead, it pays to see the signposts. Here are three significant moments in the career of everyone who leads that merit your complete engagement.

We have all heard about the Great Resignation. The notion that many people are leaving their job or not returning to work has been a persistent theme of 2021 and 2022. There are any number of theories as to the cause of this trend: Pay scales were too low. Government benefits were too high creating a disincentive to work. People were fearful of getting sick and/or bringing the virus home to members of their family.

You’ve got a good team. The results are solid. You genuinely like one another. Trust is good too. And yet. You have a feeling you’re capable of more. What’s missing? If you’re fortunate to be working on a good team, it can be tempting to keep doing what you’ve always done. But Marshall Goldsmith’s advice for leaders is true for teams too, “What got you here, might not get you there.”