Are You Prepared to Have the Best Summer You've Ever Had?

That's not a motivational opener. It's a diagnostic question.

Because when I ask leaders that question and watch how they respond, I learn something about how they're running their business. Most pause. Some laugh. A few get uncomfortable. Almost none of them say yes without hesitation. And the reason is usually the same: they're so focused on what's broken that they've never given themselves or their team permission to focus on what's possible.

That's the problem I want to talk about.

The Problem-Solver Trap

Most service-based businesses exist to solve a problem. A restaurant solves hunger. An attorney makes a problem disappear. A dental professional finds an issue and fixes it. That's the core of what you do and you're good at it.

The trap is running your team the same way.

Many of the leaders and managers I work with came up through the ranks solving problems. It's how they got good. It's how they got promoted. And it's exactly what makes it hard to lead a team effectively. Because when your default mode is find the problem and fix it, that's the lens your entire operation starts to run through. Every meeting becomes a problem review. Every conversation leads with what's wrong. And over time your team stops expecting anything different.

That works as a short-term survival strategy. It is not a long-term leadership strategy.

What People Actually Need to Focus On

There's a reason you hear so much about vision, goals, and vision boards. People want something positive to move toward. The research and the real-world experience point the same direction: teams perform better when they're working toward something specific and achievable rather than just trying to avoid something negative.

The challenge with big visions is distance. A five-year vision is real and it matters but it's too far out for most people to feel the pull of it day to day. It takes too many steps to get there for the goal to create daily energy. You need something closer. Something the whole team can see and believe in the same week they hear about it.

That's why I use the best summer you've ever had as a practice-wide objective with a number of my clients.

Why This Works

It's specific enough to be real but open enough for the whole team to make it their own. It's positive by design. Nobody has to be convinced to want a great summer. It's something everyone can get behind, not just the top producer or the office manager. And it has a built-in timeframe that creates urgency without pressure.

More importantly it gives you something to build team meetings around again.

A lot of practices have quietly stopped holding regular team meetings. Not because meetings are bad but because they ran out of things worth meeting about. Or more accurately, the meetings kept starting with a negative agenda and ending with a worse outcome than when they started. Nobody wants to show up for that. So they stop.

A clear positive objective changes the meeting entirely. Now there's something to plan toward, something to measure progress against, and something to celebrate along the way. The meeting has a reason to exist.

What You Need to Do With It

Set the objective. Name it clearly and make sure every person on your team understands what it means and why it matters. Best summer we've ever had is the headline. Your job is to define what that looks like specifically for your practice.

Then hold a team meeting at minimum once per month to move the needle on it. Not a problem review. A progress meeting. What did we do last month that moved us closer? What are we doing this month? What does each person need to get better at individually so the whole group improves together?

That last part is important. The only way you move the needle for your business is to move the needle for your team. That means getting better as a group and getting better individually. No one gets left behind and no one gets to coast while everyone else carries the load.

People need something to work toward. Give them something worth working toward and then stay consistent about bringing them back to it every month. That consistency is what separates the practices that actually have their best summer from the ones that just talked about it in April.

Who This Is For

If you're running a service-based practice or business and your team meetings have lost their energy, or you've stopped having them altogether, this is for you. If your leadership default is fixing problems and you're starting to feel the ceiling that creates, this is for you.

The goal isn't to stop solving problems. It's to give your team something worth solving problems for.

Let's talk.

Written by Kevin Johnson, CEO and Founder of Leverage Consulting.