I often ask business owners and managers if they are happy with their current team. The most popular answer is, “Sure…” That word is said without confidence or conviction, which indicates that I need to dig a little deeper. So, I use my standard follow-up: “Rank your team from best to worst — don’t overthink, just off the top of your head.”

One source indicates that up to 40 percent of our daily activities are executed on autopilot without giving much thought to what we’re doing.  So when someone mentions the word change, we often want to put on the brakes and tell them they can keep their change.

Have you ever been “in the zone”? It’s that state of mind where you’re firing on all cylinders. Ideas and answers are coming to you rapidly — and they’re good ones. Professional athletes have games like this, in which they break records and carry their teams to the top. It would be nice to be able to create this state of mind every day.

How many of us have been in a situation where we are so utterly frustrated with an employee’s performance or behavior that we end up attacking the employee instead of the issue at hand? In this type of scenario, nothing gets resolved, and the emotional intensity puts the employee on guard.

A large part of the message you send to your team is based on demonstration. What you say and what you do must be aligned for your message to gain traction with your team.

I specifically titled this blog The Power of Questions, and I want to be clear that questions differ greatly from questioning. I define these terms like this: questions are asked to gain understanding; whereas questioning is a behavior used to pick something apart to criticize or even ridicule.

I speak with many HVAC contractors who are frustrated with the way things run in their businesses. When we get to the topic of employee performance, and I ask, “How do employees know what is expected of them in this specific situation?”, I get an answer that just drives me crazy: “They just know.”