In the world of sales leadership, effective communication isn't just a skill; it's the cornerstone of success. Yet, many leaders overlook the critical importance of adapting their communication style to meet the diverse needs of their teams, stakeholders, customers, and prospects.

By embracing tailored communication strategies, you can elevate your sales game and achieve unprecedented results.

“Darren, you're all replaceable,” I was once told by a very senior executive at a previous corporate job. It was a blunt reality check early in my career. The comment stunned me, but it taught me the importance of not letting others control my career.

So I started doing things differently with the goal of becoming irreplaceable.

Did you know that only 30% of managers say they delegate effectively. Worse yet, most managers lack access to training to learn how to delegate successfully.

Below are common mistakes I see managers make when delegating:

Delegating is hard. “I don’t have the time to delegate” or “They might screw it up” are common excuses for not delegating. But at what cost? Do you struggle to delegate? Try the following and see if you get a better result:

Most of us are cogs in a hyper-optimized business machine. I know I was early in my career. I needed my colleagues in product, marketing, and technology to deliver any real business impact.

So how can individuals and companies avoid the trap of becoming and building a workforce of cogs? Below are some of the themes and focus areas we infuse into our manager training programs.

Most people only listen at 25% efficiency*. Yet, people tout their ability to listen. I was reminded of this yesterday as I tried to have a conversation with a friend while he scrolled through his Twitter feed. Consider a few quick tips to boost your listening skill:

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.

Conflict is all around us. With every passing day, conversations around divisive topics seem to be more toxic and less productive. The latest, tragic school shooting has brought the issue of gun control, gun rights, and gun safety into the forefront. But it’s not just this issue that brings out conflict and ultimately the worst in people. Pick any topic and you’ll see corrosive discourse happening daily. And it’s not just in the anonymous annals of social media. People seem more and more comfortable ripping “the other side” out in the open in the analog world.

But there could be a better way.

I’ve been told my book The Savage Leader includes too many sports stories. Given that, why not double down and write an entire article about sports?! In all seriousness, I believe there are leaders in all walks of life and sports offers so many great examples of leadership, both good and bad. Strip away the unrelenting obsession with highlight clips and you’ll see leadership in action. You don’t need a deep understanding of sports to see and learn lessons from both the coaches and players.

In the time since I published The Savage Leader, people have asked me to go deeper with each Savage Principle. “How can I be authentic as a sales person?”, “How can I became more values-centric as a leader?”, or “How do the principles apply to me as an individual contributor?” are questions that have emerged. In response, I have directed people to the Key Takeaways in the book and Challenge at the end of each chapter. But, I want to go further as The Savage Leader was intended to be both easy to read and easy to apply.

I am kicking off a series of posts to bring the principles of The Savage Leader to managers of teams. The Savage Manager starts here.

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.

Confidence is a core attribute among great leaders. Confidence to make challenging decisions. Confidence to anchor to your values when “easier” and “faster” paths seem tempting. Confidence to pivot when customer needs and wants shift.

While people universally value and seek greater confidence in work and life, actually becoming more confident can be tricky. Based on my experience as an executive coach, confidence can be gained through an array of efforts such as the achievement of small wins, focusing on the process and not just the outcomes, adopting a lifelong learner mindset, and joining a peer group. The first step to becoming more confident however, is to focus on your mindset.