Flashback Friday: Do The Right Thing is still a value we live by at Gibson. Give this popular blog from 2014 a read. Does integrity “live” at your organization and in your relationships?

One of our Core Values is: Integrity Matters - Always Do the Right Thing. It seems elementary to ask why integrity matters. The answers are all too obvious, right? Yet all too often there are examples of integrity issues in our world, in business and in our personal affairs.

I checked out a few dictionaries online and they define integrity as: The quality of being honest and fair; the state of being complete or whole; an adherence to moral and ethical principles; to be honest and have sound moral character.

One of my partners, Mark Wobbe, pointed me to another website that offers a simple formula to define integrity:

Integrity = (Accountability + Competence + Ethics) – Corruption

Flashback Friday: This is our most read blog of all-time. Even though it was written in 2014, the qualities discussed are just as important to teams today. When this was written, I was celebrating 17 years with my best teammate, Kimra. Next week it will be 25! Happy Anniversary, Kimra!

We are committed to teaming at Gibson. Perhaps more than any other firm in our industry.

• We have a teamed relationship for client service delivery.
• We have an executive leadership team with very clear roles for each member.
• About five years ago we went against years of legacy and tradition to change our typical “lone wolf” salesperson model into multi-person risk advisory teams complete with a shared compensation model. Talk about breaking China!

Building an effective team isn’t so easy. Good teams have a sum that is greater than the individual pieces. This requires that egos are set aside to allow the entity of the team to be greater than any one member. By putting everyone on the team in a position to do what they do best, high achievement is possible. I find no coincidence that since evolving to the team model, we’ve also had the best growth in our eighty year history.

So what are the top qualities of an effective team player? I consulted the For Dummies to learn what great teammates do differently than others.

Flashback Friday: Originally published in 2013, this blog is crowd favorite and one of my personal favorites - lessons from my now 98 year old grandma. Next month she'll celebrate her 99th birthday!

With Grandparent’s Day on Sunday, I want to honor my last living grandparent, ninety year old Dorothy Gerber. Not only is Grandma Dorothy an amazing woman, she also is officially the biggest and most devoted fan of my blog.

She devotedly commented on my first ever stab at blogging. It was entitled “Defining and Living Core Beliefs” from January 30, 2013. Using her original free Juno email handle from the early 1990s, she found her way to my site and then posted this: “Good job Tim. I am proud of you and Gibson.”

Flashback Friday: Originally published in 2017, this blog is one of our most popular and still very relevant today. I've seen many people share recently about the books they read in 2021 and what they hope to read in 2022. I hope this blog gives you a few ideas as you complete your must-read list for the new year!

There are plenty of book lists out there. This post is a little different. While I’ve got examples of specific books for you, more importantly I want to emphasize the kind of books you should read. As Japanese author Haruki Murakami has written, “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

“Some things are up to us and others are not.” – The Enchiridion

The ancient Stoics taught that we own only our choice of thoughts and actions. Everything else – the externals – remain outside of our own doing.

That means we have way more agency in who and what we are than we tell ourselves. While its not within our power to determine the outcomes, our choice of inputs most definitely are.

Traditionally this is the time when I highlight the top 10 blogs of the year, but in 2021 we introduced something brand new – The Edge Podcast! So, this year, let’s celebrate both our top blogs AND our top podcast episodes.

If you can't write the next line, well, you're dead. The past doesn't matter. - Charles Bukowski, Author

Everyone has a story. And they’re all unfinished.

Many people seem stuck in a moment, re-reading the old chapters of their book. Some bask in a glory that no one cares about anymore. Others can’t get past the tragedies, challenges, and slights still lingering in their heads. All represent stories from lives lived and lessons learned, but they are from the past.

What matters more is the chapter you’re writing right now, today. And those chapters still unwritten.

Being around a lot of founder friends in YPO, I’ve heard stories about #startuplife but there’s nothing like experiencing it firsthand! I got a small dose of it over the past year as my wife and I started a small lake rental & property management business.

There were more than a few twists and turns, even while only sitting in what EOS would call the Owner’s Box. I now realize why my YPO mates often bucket us non-founder CEOs as those “running their family business” or a “hired gun.”

It’s not that a hired gun (like me when I started at Gibson) or the next generation of leadership at a family business has it easy. We face all kinds of unique challenges that founders do not! Yet, starting something from scratch is an entirely different undertaking. For mature companies, the pain and excitement of startup life comes when launching a new product or opening a new market.

Ask someone who has been on a great team what made it so special. You’ll hear about a group of diversely talented people who knew their role and were playing for something bigger than themselves.

If you dig a little deeper, you’ll also likely learn there was a “favorite coach” who really “got them” and in turn got the most out of them. Some might even go as far as to say they were playing for their coach, not wanting to let them down.

It’s a key reminder that who you are and how you act as a leader will have a tremendous impact on the success of your team. You may not be able to win without great talent, but you coul singlehandedly be the cause of a loss.

So, what’s the makeup of a great coach?

One of the most meaningful things I’ve learned – and been able to refine for myself over the past few years – is the value of spending most of my time doing things that align with my unique abilities.

Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, writes that unique abilities are “the essence of what we love to do, and also do best.” They are the ways we “naturally strive” as they call attention to what “motivates and fulfills us” as humans.

Author Pat Lencioni, after years of writing books on leadership and team dynamics, created an assessment tool called Working Genius. Similar to the thinking behind Sullivan’s Unique Ability, Lencioni’s assessment is for understanding our “God-given gifts… the things that [we’re] great at and love doing.”

“Ideally we should spend as much time as possible doing those things,” commented Lencioni in a recent Chief Executive article.