You have just begun a new leadership role in a company that has tremendous potential. It is a small, relatively unknown company, but it is up and coming and could be something significant in the future.

Do you need to capture your thoughts in a quick, organized fashion? When inspiration hits, how do you ensure that you get that information into a place and way that you can refer back to later?

Those you lead are the heroes in their own story. When they are in front of customers or their team - it has to be *their* story, not yours. The role you play is coach and coaches are rarely at the forefront of any hero's journey.

It feels great to complete a project, regardless of the size. There is a sense of accomplishment and pride that comes from getting to the finish line. Whether your project was a tremendous success or it had bumps along the way there is something that every project has.

Almost all success stories begin with small steps that eventually pick up steam and turn into something much bigger. We did not learn how to read or write overnight, it was the culmination of many small steps to get to a point of proficiency.

In the busy world of retail leadership, it is all too easy to get sucked into doing many different projects. There are always constraints on resources (read: not enough payroll) and plenty of activities that need to be completed.

This past weekend I was busy helping my daughter move out of her dorm room for the summer. My wife and I had driven up the night before to be able to get an early start.

You may wonder how coaching and customer service may go together outside the tradition thought of a manager coaching an employee on providing service to a customer. But, the two have more in common than one might suspect.

How many things over the course of a day try to grab your attention? Is it tens of things, hundreds? Maybe even thousands. There is no shortage of people, devices, or marketers trying to grab our attention away from what we really need to concentrate on.

How often do we let the one percent of ‘bad apples’ dictate the way we lead the other 99 percent? Is it possible we do this unknowingly at times?

The idea of journaling has been around for centuries, some accounts date it back to the mid-late 1600s. For much of that time it was just as likely referred to as maintaining a diary. Today it tends to take on the ‘journaling’ title to make it more universal in its appeal.

What are the most important skills I can learn to become a better leader?This is always a difficult question to answer. There is not a single, right answer. My responses almost always start with, ‘it depends’.