Have you ever taken a big dog on a run? I recently dog sat for two Samoyed – they’re beautiful and strong. They were originally bred to pull sleds and herd reindeer in Siberia. You’re getting the picture – the dogs love the winter outdoors and were ready to run, their owner is a runner, and these dogs are trained to run with her but at a much quicker pace than what I can handle. So the choices were make the dogs slow to my pace, stop running with dogs, or just take the one slower dog on a run.

After I finished my run I thought about how similar my run was to how an office team functions. One pace doesn’t always fit a team. Slow or fast are you asking your employees to run at your pace? When you train staff – is your pace that of a plodder, or sprinter? How well does it match and challenge the person you’re training? As a leader, you can’t afford to slow your pace to the let everyone catch up, there needs to be a balance, and to achieve your dreams you may want to find and retain the dogs that can run and pull their own weight.