As leaders, we seek to create high-performing teams. Meaning teams that drive results. Teams that deliver on the company mission. Teams that create meaning for each of its team members.

While all leaders aim for those lofty goals, many don’t know where to start. I have personally worked with many teams to help them become more values-centric and the tips below come directly from our work.

Much in business is out of our control. Creating a culture of learning can help your team and company take control back and adapt to changes that take place—both internally and externally.

I recently interviewed Amy Crum, senior director of commercial sales at Proofpoint, for my next book, The Savage Manager. One of the areas we explored was how to create a culture of learning with your team. Below are a few “how to” tips that were inspired by our conversation.

Gratitude. It’s a big word that is loaded with connotations.

For Steve Gatena, founder and CEO of Pray.com, the world’s #1 app for daily prayer and faith-based audio content, gratitude is a leadership imperative. Steve and his team have built the digital destination for faith and they believe gratitude needs to be practiced daily.

The benefits are many and Steve’s full story will be included in my next book, The Savage Manager, which will be released in 2023. For now, I wanted to share some of the practical benefits of adding more gratitude into your daily routine.

Fernando Tatis Jr.'s suspension last week was a blow to sports fans (especially long suffering Padres fans), ardent lovers of baseball, and parents whose kids idolized Tatis for his on-field prowess, bat flipping flair, and love for the game of baseball.

Tatis’ story is a painful reminder of 3 leadership principles.

The ability to give feedback separates good managers from those that are mediocre. I interviewed Phil Dana, CHRO of AskBio for my next book The Savage Manager, and he noted that giving feedback is one of the top 5 most important skills for managers. When it comes to giving feedback, people wonder “should I be direct and to the point?” or “should I sugarcoat what I really want to say?” Like with any behavior, let’s take an inside out approach to delivering feedback.

I’ve spent much of my adult life trying to control all aspects of my life. You may be thinking, what’s wrong with having a deterministic attitude toward your own life and success? Isn’t that just ownership and accountability? Absolutely. But, we can go too far if we believe that we need to control every situation and outcome. Consider a few of the warnings.

This morning, I struggled to write a new blog – a new post about motivation. To help regain focus, I turned to my trusty Calm app and Jeff Warren, one of my favorite meditation guides.

At the end of the short meditation, he said, “What we pay attention to becomes our life.” That comment stopped me in my tracks. It made me think about the importance of the thoughts that fill our minds, day-in day-out.

What we pay attention to becomes our life. Put another way, what we focus on becomes who we are.

For some, empathy comes naturally. They are able to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” and understand how changes in the workplace might impact their colleagues. For others, the first step to developing empathy is to Google “what is empathy?” or “what is empathy at work?”

Before we shift to the benefits of empathy and the “how to”, let’s focus on what empathy is and what it’s not.

Greatness. It’s a word and aspirational state that has intrigued me for years. But, what does it mean to be great? I started thinking about it when I penned my book, The Savage Leader: 13 Principles to Become a Better Leader from the Inside Out. In sports, there have been clear examples to me of Greatness. Steph Curry, Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, and Wayne Gretzky. Athletes who won (and keep winning) multiple championships. Yes, they won, but it was also the way they won as well as the impact on their teammates, franchises, fans, and their communities that felt different.

I recently wrote about the benefits of being more positive. But, how do we go about actually being positive? “Isn’t that something we are just born with?”, you might be thinking.

I recently asked a group of CEOs about the value of positive thinking and how they go about cultivating optimism in themselves and their teams. Our conversation highlighted the universal benefit of being positive, so I wanted to share some quick tips to help you be more positive. The tips come from the work I do as an executive coach as well as the insights from the group of seasoned CEOs.

Be positive. That’s a phrase that has always resonated with me. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always seen the glass as half full and not half empty.

I recognize that not everyone is wired in this way – Silver linings are hard to see, lesson learned seem trivial, and looking on the bright side seems disingenuous. For me, I look for the good things, but I know others struggle (or don’t want to) to do the same.

To get started, I’ll make the case for the benefits of positive thinking and being optimistic. In a future post, I will provide tips to boost your ability to think positive.