Opening Comments

I've started a few blogs in my time and I always feel the need to state my intentions with an initial post. Maybe it's just because I need to see it in type myself, but I'll share it with you anyway.

The reason that I chose to start this blog was to create a platform where I can share my experiences and thoughts surrounding team development and leadership. My hope is that I will open some conversation and we will all be able to tackle the many challenges that teams face together as a focused group. During the course of my career I have had the opportunity, as have all of you, to work on a number of teams. Some of these teams were great, others needed work, and they all affected the final results. Whether you're the leader or not, we all have a vested interest in keeping the team moving forward.

In leading teams, I have developed a set of activities that I try to keep in daily focus. They are:

• Development - I believe that we should always be learning, growing, and becoming experts in our field.
• Awesomeness - I believe in leveraging our strengths to be great at something. I'm talking about true strength here, not just "I'm good at selling XYZ Product," but "I'm good at communicating and use that to explain benefits of XYZ Product when I'm selling."
• Vision - I believe that part of the definition of team is unified vision. Everyone involved needs to know where they want to be as a unit by X date and what they're willing (and needing) to do to get there.
• Effort - I believe that we only control one real thing. Quarterly targets, daily challenges, frustrated customers and colleagues are all external realities that exist in every environment. When teams hone in on maximizing their effort they're meeting real potential.

These aren't exhaustive of the things that teams need to be aware of, but they are the most important to me and the ones that I fall back on when making decisions about daily activity. I'll touch back on these regularly as I cover different topics and experiences. Oh, and yes, I did chose "Awesomeness" over "Strengths" because it got me the "A" to complete my acronym - during a busy day, sometimes the only thing you can remember is your own name.

I am looking forward to creating a community here by publishing fresh content weekly. So if you like what you see please bookmark the blog, or simply follow me on Google + for regular updates.