ACHIEVE Centre for Leadership

Threatening your team into high performance is a strategy. Just not a good one.

We've all heard of the manager who's tried monitoring task completion, ranking employees, and firing two people as a warning to the rest. The result? A team that was deeply motivated...to avoid him.

Rewards aren't the magic fix either. Research suggests that over time, the reward becomes the only reason someone does the job, and it has to keep getting bigger to work at all.

What actually moves the needle is giving people purpose, autonomy, and the chance to do work that plays to their strengths.

New blog explores the shift from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation, and five practical ways to get there.

Wanting to be a great leader is the entry fee, not the qualification.

Mark Schinkel (one of our incredible ACHIEVE facilitators) tells a story about his hockey career. He was motivated, competitive, and committed. He also barely cracked the university roster.

Meanwhile, teammates with twice the talent never made it either, because drive and skill alone weren't enough. The whole package was required.

Leadership works the same way. The managers who plateau aren't usually the ones who stopped caring. They're the ones who got good at one or two parts of the job and assumed that was enough.

This week's blog breaks it down into three elements: mindset, tasks, and skills. Most people lead heavy in one, light in another, and blind to the third.

It's worth asking honestly which one you've been neglecting.

Here's the part that can sting a little: you can quote every leadership framework ever written and still be ineffective in the room. Knowledge without ex*****on is just vocabulary.

Which of the three, mindset, tasks, or skills, do you think most leaders neglect most?

3 Elements of Sustainable and Effective Leadership - ACHIEVE The reality is that sustainable, effective leadership needs to flow from a solid, grounded sense of vision, values, and strategy. However, it doesn’t stop there.

“Fake it 'till you make it.”

Let's be real, that's really bad leadership advice...and pretending to have everything figured out is exhausting.

What we hear from managers instead is simple:

“I don’t want to fake confidence. I just want to be a good manager”

The shift that makes leadership feel less out of control, isn’t about acting more confident, but about becoming more aligned with yourself.

When your values and behaviours line up, you’ll notice quickly that
• Conversations feel more natural
• Trust builds faster
• Your team starts being more open and honest (not more awkward silent meetings...)

Try This:
Choose two or three values that matter to you as a leader (e.g., fairness, curiosity, growth) then turn each into something your team can actually see:

• Growth → Regular development conversations
• Fairness → Explain your decisions
• Accountability → Own mistakes openly

Small actions like these shape culture faster than big leadership statements

How cool is this? Daniel Anthony Doerksen, co-author of You Can Manage: A Practical Guide to Becoming the Manager Everyone Wants, was on Global News Winnipeg!

He gets into something that matters deeply to us at ACHIEVE Centre for Leadership - how much managers shape the performance, engagement, and culture of the people around them.

It's a conversation we really believe is worth having, and Dan hits on some really great points.

Check out the full interview here:

‘You Can Manage’, author of new leadership book says | Watch News Videos Online Watch ‘You Can Manage’, author of new leadership book says Video Online, on GlobalNews.ca

Have you ever held a meeting to get input on a decision you'd already made?

Most leaders wouldn't say yes. But most employees have been in that room.

The problem usually isn't dishonesty, it's a lack of clarity about what kind of input is actually being sought. When people can't tell the difference between being genuinely consulted and being managed through a process, trust quietly walks out the door.

New blog from ACHIEVE Centre For Leadership's CEO Eric Stutzman on what transparency in decision-making really requires.

Click the link for the full read. https://achievecentre.com/blog/why-clarity-in-decision-making-is-crucial/

One of the biggest misconceptions about leadership is that getting more skills automatically makes someone a better manager.

Skills matter, absolutely.

But you can know all the right "techniques" and still create confusion, tension or stress for your team.

We've heard managers say "I didn't realize how much of the room I was accidentally shutting down".

The reason?

They were moving too fast, focusing on the "doing side" off the job to see themselves clearly.

Take a minute today and ask yourself:
"How am I being perceived by others".

At ACHIEVE, we believe a balanced approach to growing as a managers requires us to continually ground our doing in our being.

It's the first essential that our latest book You Can Manage - A Practical Guide to Becoming the Manager Everyone Wants gets into.

If you're curious about the other Essential 5, or want to stop guessing at how to manage you might find the book helpful.

Find it below!

https://bit.ly/4u66WgV

Just a quick heads up that our team will be away for the stat holiday on Monday, May 19.

We’ll be taking a little time to rest, recharge, and hopefully enjoy some sunshine!

We’ll be back and responding to messages on Tuesday.

Wishing everyone a safe and restful long weekend from all of us at CTRI and ACHIEVE.