As school starts back, we often think about teachers and all the lives they touch. In a presentation at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky, I showed photos of myself in third grade at Congress Park Elementary School in Brookfield, Illinois, and on the Lyons Township High School soccer team in La Grange, Illinois. I pointed out my third-grade teacher, Miss James, and my soccer coach, Coach King, and shared the impact they and other teachers…

When I am asked to present to a group, I ask the organization to survey the attendees to find out what they are looking to leave with from the session. The topics mentioned quite often are how to manage change, communication, building trust, improving staff retention, achieving excellent customer service, and the most requested item is how to address performance issues. For this column, we will dig into the last one, performance situations. The most common…