The practice, discipline really, of blameless problem solving gives leaders and managers a great tool to accelerate performance, quickly build trust, and pull for greater employee engagement across the organization. When blameless problem solving becomes part of the culture, it’s a powerful lever for high performance.

Your willingness to move through the pain and adversity will set you free into your ultimate expansion.

My own philosophy about secrets is that the longer we hold them the more potential negative impact they have. I’m not talking about other people’s secrets because those aren’t ours to share.

One remedy to assumptive behavior is to get clear on expectations, and to practice the process of Requests and Promises. It keeps transactions clean and free of unnecessary hiccups, speed bumps or roadblocks. These are called Conversations For Action*, and when we make them specific, measurable, and in time, many of the headaches associated with assumptions are eliminated.

“IF YOU FOCUS ON RESULTS, YOU WILL NEVER CHANGE. IF YOU FOCUS ON CHANGE, YOU WILL GET RESULTS.”

If you want people to behave a certain way, you have to tell them how you want them to behave. That way they know what you expect from them

when you assigned the project, were you clear enough to the team involved?

• Who is this for?

• What is the purpose?

• What outcome do we want to achieve?

• Why I am trusting YOU to this assignment

When we don’t keep promises, it opens up all kinds of portals for mischief.

The words "fun" and "productivity" rarely occur in the same sentence. But what if we discovered that having more fun actually increases our productivity?

Do you consider who your audience is when you use this language? If we don’t, we lose people in the communication.

At Momentum Consulting, we consider ourselves both consultants and students of high performance. We are right there with you in this endeavor, one moment at a time. And if you’re around any of us long enough you’ll hear us talk about the power of listening. This is not just hearing things with our ears. This is how we receive and process information. And when done generously, it can even be a way to honor the one(s) speaking.

“The customer is always right” is a phrase pioneered by Harry Gordon Selfridge, John Wanamaker and Marshall Field, highly successful retailers who understood that the success of their stores depended on the happiness of their customers.

Our founding principle at Momentum Consulting is Dignity as a Birthright. This short narrative discusses this principle in relation to workplace safety.

But, there is a lot more to this than obvious first impressions. First of all, your best right now is simply your best in this moment in time. This "best" of you now is different from your "best" of years past. Your childhood best is not your adult best, and it wouldn't even be fair to compare. Nor should we expect to compare a current "best" from person to person.

I believe that giving up your need to be right starts with the willingness to listen generously. Curiosity is a foundation of generous listening. When we become curious, it exponentially increases our ability to learn. 

Making a request requires generous listening first, and then in speaking straight, respectfully. We have to be out of reaction mode in order to be effective.

In work and relationships, clean-ups are essential when there is a negative emotional impact on someone. Acknowledge the wrong doing and work to clean it up.

Are you listening with generosity, or are you listening by default? Accepting accountability for how we listen to each other changes the conversation.

I believe that so many of our other key fundamentals are rooted in integrity, for example:

• Honor commitments

• Be accountable

• Respect confidentiality

• Practice blameless problem solving

• Fix problems at the source

• Appreciate and acknowledge

• Speak straight, respectfully

• Always do your best

When we experience a core value violation, our default listening kicks into overdrive, and our reaction to stimulus can be severe. The drive to obey these default emotions can be seductively strong, but there is another option.