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Leadership Strategies Is it Normal To Be Abnormal?

Guest post by: Sylvia Lafair

Article Overview: Hey leaders, PAY ATTENTION! This is a great time of year to really take some private time and think about how you want your company and team to work together in the future. So I'd like to tell a personal story. We just had a fabulous holiday party at The Country Place, our retreat center in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Now, we have owned this place for two decades and it is on 400 acres in the midst of nature with tons of trees and a spring fed small lake (or large pond).

Leadership Strategies Is it Normal To Be Abnormal?

Hey leaders, PAY ATTENTION! This is a great time of year to really take some private time and think about how you want your company and team to work together in the future.

So I'd like to tell a personal story. We just had a fabulous party at The Country Place, our retreat center in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Now, we have owned this place for two decades and it is on 400 acres in the midst of nature with tons of trees and a spring fed small lake (or large pond).

This was the best party I can remember. Elika Almeida, the Director of The Country Place took special care to decorate and we just found out we won an award for most inviting retreat center in the area. Yeah!

Now what is this about normalizing the abnormal? For way too many years than I care to admit we had someone work here who was incredibly negative, a martyr and a splitter. She talked about everyone to everyone and the atmosphere was less than fun.

We stopped seeing her destructive patterns. That can happen. It is so in front of us all the time we just begin to take it for granted. Not a good idea.

It all finally came to a head as these things eventually do and we had a mutual parting of the ways early this year. That opened the door to new beginnings. Elika was hired and she is doing an amazing job. If you have any needs to take your teams off to a retreat consider calling her.

The property is jumping and jiving with a newly refreshed spa, a new enlarged dining room ready for 2011 and more than that; a team of people committed to excellence and who work together as a cohesive team.

What is interesting, except for this nay-saying unhappy person we have a group of employees who have been here, many for years, and are newly refreshed and ready to make your time with us the best time away you've ever had.

One person CAN and DOES make a difference. So, if you are finding staleness to your company please take a look, under a microscope, to see if one person is holding success in arrears. Remember, we are only as strong as the weakest link. Sometimes that link can become stronger and other times it takes effort to look the truth square in the face and make change.

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Article Tags: leadership strategies, pennsylvania, private time, retreat center, trees



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