Today we’re sharing insight from guest blogger Chris Kennedy, President, CEO of Hartson-Kennedy Cabinet Top Co., Inc. We hope you enjoy Chris’s wisdom and perspective.

In thinking about some of the experiences I’ve encountered running a manufacturing business for 30+ years, there is one recurring theme that jumps out at me. It is something I think has not only been beneficial to our company, but enjoyable and rewarding to me personally as well, and that is CARING.

Today we’re sharing insight from guest blogger Dean Breyley, Certified EOS Implementer, entrepreneur, and speaker. We hope you enjoy Dean’s wisdom and perspective.

Bottlenecked, gridlocked, congested – there are lots of ways to describe how it feels when a business gets stuck. We’ve all been there at some point in our work, and once you realize you are there, you immediately start searching for ways to get ‘un-stuck.’

Finding an effective solution that truly gets the business back flowing and growing can feel like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. All the while, the issues caused by the bottleneck continue to pile up and snowball. Results slow down, growth starts to halt, errors increase, and people get frustrated. What got you where you are today no longer seems to work.

Today we’re sharing insight from guest blogger Barbara Khozam, internationally recognized customer service speaker and trainer. We hope you enjoy Barbara’s wisdom and perspective.

Negativity has always been easier to pass along than positivity. This is largely due to our antiquated human nature of day-to-day survival against the world around us. Our existence depended, historically, on knowing where dangers could be found. So passing on this negative knowledge was essential to our lives. However, we no longer live in such an era. But, as human citizens of a modern world, why not make the conscious decision to make positivity contagious?

Today we’re sharing insight from guest blogger Mike Cahill, President of Banking Services at Ruoff Home Mortgage. We hope you enjoy Mike’s wisdom and perspective.

By chance, I was visiting with a former coworker the other day and two things popped up. One, I saw a copy of the book The Energy Bus on a desk in the office. Two, the person I was talking to shared how a coworker always had something negative or cutting to say. There was never anything positive forthcoming from them. This coworker could not seem to see this about themselves.

In August of 2009, I was named President of Gibson. The fourth one in our entire history. Most of you remember what it was like in our country back in 2009-10. "The Great Recession" was crippling our economy. Companies were laying off large chunks of their workforce or closing their doors entirely.

Today we’re sharing insight from guest blogger René  Boer,  a Certified Implementer of EOS. We hope you enjoy René's wisdom and perspective.

Today we’re sharing insight from guest blogger Ron Kitchens, Chief Executive Officer at Southwest Michigan First. We hope you enjoy Ron’s wisdom and perspective.

When hiring new team members, typical organizations focus on resumes and references. Great organizations, on the other hand, focus on selecting the best people based on talent, strengths, and fit. It may be faster to scan credentials and hire based on pieces of paper, but I guarantee that a strategic approach will lead to fewer regrets in the future. Simply put, we as leaders need to know what to look for and how to find it.

Today we’re sharing insight from guest blogger Scott Downes, founder and principal of Thomas LLC, an independent communications consultant. We hope you enjoy Scott’s wisdom and perspective.

As I was partaking in the annual holiday known as “Shark Week”, I thought a recent re-watching of the original summer blockbuster Jaws might provide a worthy metaphor to explore some leadership lessons. Chief Brody, Hooper, Mayor Vaughn, and that old salty dog Quint provide so many pearls of wisdom throughout the movie that I’m sure we could all learn from.

Our lunch was great. It was like the twenty years had never passed. We talked about our wives (only good things of course), our families, and certainly business. I laughed hard more than once as he shared anecdotal parenting stories from the past two decades. His sons, teenagers when I began working for him right out of college, were now grown men with wives of their own.

Today we’re sharing insight from guest blogger Amy Cooper Collier, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Girls on the Run Michiana. We hope you enjoy Amy's wisdom and perspective.

The good news for driven, always-improving, Type A leaders, is that your success may well be rooted in that Type-A soil. You have vision, enthusiasm, and a commitment to ever-higher standards. You work tirelessly to make a difference in your company, your community, and your world. A lot is expected of you: crystal-clear vision, inspirational motivation, extensive knowledge, wise perspective, up-to-date skills, encouraging guidance, authentic affirmation, solid decision-making, and the list goes on and on. Leadership isn’t for the faint of heart.