SigmaU Blog

If you’re a growth-oriented and innovative company then courage should definitely be a part of your culture. It takes guts to be different, to challenge the status quo and to set BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) for your company!

To execute and navigate through unknown territory takes courage and it’s not enough for the leader to be courageous. Courage needs to be woven through the organization.

Show Courage as a Leader

Like most things, courage will require you as a leader setting an example for your team. My old coach Lindsay used to always say “Leaders get the behaviours they display or tolerate.” So how can you be an example of courage? Courage as a leader isn’t necessarily about control or leading the charge. In fact, courage as a leader shows up when you push yourself outside of your comfort zone. When you’re vulnerable by putting yourself out there on social media for example. It’s being courageous enough to admit to the team when...

I just finished an amazing one-on-one with a firecracker on my team! She was asking me if it was reasonable to transition to full-time sales within the next twelve months.

To back things up, it’s important to paint a picture of where this team member started. This individual has been in an administrative support role for the past six years.  She is by definition an introvert and does not like being the centre of attention. She’s the type of person who appreciates being celebrated privately vs. in front of people.  She’s also been super-committed to our personal development program and is unrecognizable to the girl who walked through our doors in 2015! In fact, if you had asked her back then if she would ever do sales she would have laughed followed by a “Hell NO never!”

About six months ago, she rolled up her sleeves and started dabbling in sales. It wasn’t out of a new desire but out of her commitment to help the team because sales were...

Most leaders I meet hate firing people. Even if there was absolutely no way the relationship could continue and it was the wrong fit, firing still feels awful. 

I did this poorly for so many years and wish I had done a lot differently, but we live and learn. As entrepreneurs we don't have the luxury of a corporate HR team guiding our steps or doing the dirty deed on our behalf. 

One thing that I wish I did differently was address the issue with the entire team right away. Having said that, I'm grateful to say that it's been a very long time since I've had to terminate someone but these are the steps I would take again.

Rally the Troops 

Bring your entire team together, preferably in person or at least virtually if you're reading this during a lockdown. Without disclosing anything confidential and while respecting the terminated team member, explain that the team member has been asked to leave the premises and their employment has come to an end. It may be nice to...

Our leadership team had a terrific coaching session with our mentor Rob recently. We talked about the negative impact of leaders ignoring their people. He mentioned that when a relationship gets so broken down, the leader may actually give team members the silent treatment and start avoiding them altogether. What a terrible feeling for the team member trying to navigate their job!

This made me pause and really think about how our actions communicate to our employees that they’re not worth our time. See if any of these ring true for you as a leader or if you’ve experienced this yourself.

1. Constant Rescheduling

Nothing says “you’re not important to me” like consistently bailing on meetings. Obviously, there are some situations in which you’ll need to reschedule. Recently I signed up for a six-week training course. The team was gracious enough to reschedule my coaching with them only to have the course get cancelled. It was a bit of a palaver to...

We’ve all worked for draining leaders. One may come to mind immediately, or someone may pop in to your thoughts as I describe one of the worst bosses I’ve ever had. Let’s call him “John” for sake of anonymity! John was a charismatic salesperson who started a side hustle and recruited me from my part-time job in college to be his administrative assistant. I was so excited for the fancy title until I was about a week in.

See, while John was excited about his venture, he wasn’t an inspiring leader. In fact, it was draining to be around John because he just expected me to know how to do a job that I was never trained for. He would fly off on business trips, send me a list of 35 “urgent” emails that needed to be addressed and provided zero clarity on how to attack each one. He was wishy washy about expectations and when I asked him which email was the most important since they were all marked urgent, his response was “they’re...

I’ll be honest with you. I’m a pretty impatient person. I want things done yesterday and I don’t like waiting. It’s an area of improvement and growth for me, along with being flexible. When I’m hyper focused, I tend to be rigid and I am certainly not naturally wired to “go with the flow!” Having said all of that, I feel like COVID has forced a bit of patience and understanding on all of us during the past year.

P – Present

This forced slow down has made many of us pause and enjoy the moment. There has been an increased awareness of our humanity, fragility, and our ability to adapt. We’ve been forced to slow down, take stock and be grateful for our health and celebrate if we have been able to keep jobs and businesses running while so many others have suffered tremendously!

A – Adaptable

Whether we were a buttoned-up banker, lawyer or other professional, we adapted to living from home. We leaned in to the change where pets...

According to Wikipedia:

Mindfulness is a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.

When we’re not mindful, we’re not fully present. We’re not engaged in the moment and may feel overwhelmed with racing thoughts which can often become anxiety-producing. When we’re distracted and not being mindful, we easily forget things, scroll for hours on Instagram or find ourselves arriving at a destination like work and thinking “how on earth did I get here!” It’s difficult to be mindful in a digitally-crazed world! Here are a few hacks that I use in an effort to be more mindful…

Set Intentions

I never used to set intentions. In fact, I operated for most of my career in a reactive mode. I would let email set the tone for my day and I wasn’t intentional with my routines. Everything shifts...

Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large. As a verb, its definitions include: "expect with confidence" and "to cherish a desire with anticipation." Wikipedia

I have a daily practice of gratitude, setting intentions, reflections and prayer. Recently, I read about the subject of hope and it has stuck with me for a few days.

Here’s what I read:

“Why is hope essential? During World War II, Viktor Frankl, an Austrian Jew, was imprisoned in Auschwitz, one of the worst concentration camps where his wife and his parents died. Frankl was a trained physician and his experience led him to observe the value of hope. Those in the concentration camp who had a sense of hope would talk about the future and what they would do once they were freed or once the war was over; they became the ones to survive the kind of natural causes of death that wiped out...

The Pressures and Loneliness

I’m gonna be real with you guys for a minute. I’ve experienced some of my loneliest moments as an entrepreneur and leader during COVID.

For the most part, I stuck to my healthy habits and routines and, despite those efforts, I found myself in super dark moments where I felt very alone. I felt like I was drowning and treading water at a pace I wasn’t sure I could manage.  A few months ago, I spent several weeks in a row just focusing on getting through the day, so it brought me one step closer to the weekend. It was like I was having an out of body experience and then Friday came! I felt like I could release the breath I was holding in and find refuge in the distractions of weekend activity.

As leaders, we have a tremendous amount of weight on our shoulders. You’re dealing with financial pressures, keeping up with the latest safety regulations. Your concerned about your team’s well-being and mental health. You’re...

Journaling is the process of taking pen to paper, or fingers to a keyboard and taking note of personal experiences, reflections and occurrences on a regular basis. It is a personal journey of gaining clarity on a variety of areas in your life you may be interested in exploring. It could be gaining clarity on who you are as a person, understanding your emotions, reflecting back on past experiences, or looking into the future, just to name a few.

Journaling has many benefits when it is added into your daily routine and it can have an impact on how you show up, not only in your personal life but also professionally. Taking the time to journal and really dive deep into your thoughts and emotions will provide you with a better understanding of why you do the things you do. This provides you the clarity you need to become aware of certain things or situations that may be a trigger for you and be able to catch them before they happen or stop and make a change.

Journaling also reduces...