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Tagged with 'Emotional Intelligence'

For the L of It: Living and Leading Above the Line

Too many appointed leaders sit on the line and wait rather than taking the initiative and stepping up to make things happen. They follow someone else’s lead. Some slip down below the line and wallow in hopelessness and pessimism — which they’ll often call “being realistic.” They may be called “leaders” by their position. But […]

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Smarten Up: Hone Your EQ Edge

There’s not a lot we can do about the processing power between our ears. For the most part, we’re stuck with whatever IQ we’ve got. The good news for many of us is that our IQ is less important to success and happiness than our EQ (Emotional Quotient or Emotional Intelligence). What’s even better is […]

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It’s Now Forever: 9 Tips for Gifting Yourself the Present of Presence

A road sign on a winding mountain highway warned, “Slow Down or Die.” Simple, succinct, and great life advice as well. If day after day of stressful racing around doesn’t manage to physically kill us before our time, it will surely kill our happiness and enjoyment in being here. Think of times you’ve felt high […]

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Scream Team or Dream Team? A 10 Point Team Check Up

An organization’s culture ripples out from the team leading it. The behaviors of the leadership team are THE single biggest influence on what’s expected/rewarded and discouraged or unacceptable for everyone else. Despite what’s proclaimed in vision, mission, or core values, these set the organization’s true cultural norms. Team meetings reflect the team’s effectiveness. Too many […]

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Leading the Way: 13 Approaches to Navigate Through the Storm

Many people can sail the ship when the sea is calm. The real test is during fierce storms. Even mediocre managers can get by during calm times. Today’s massive storm calls for strong leadership. The American Pulitzer Prize winning author, Willa Cather once observed, “There are some things you learn best in calm, and some […]

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Charisma Confusion: It’s Often a Weakness and Humility a Strength

Is humility a key trait of highly effective leaders? Are charismatic leaders who can stir strong emotions more effective leaders? Questions about these intertwined leadership characteristics recently came up in workshops and online discussions. Charismatic leadership seems to especially confuse many people. It’s a popular media stereotype of strong leadership. As much as I enjoy […]

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Use the Force and Foretell Your Future

Visualization sparked my career and energized my life. When I was just starting out, someone recommended I read Claude Bristol’s book, TNT: The Power Within You. The book sparked such an intensity of energy and profound new awareness that I couldn’t get a good night’s sleep for almost a week. Even now, as I thumb […]

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Are You Being Poisoned by a Toxic Culture?

During a retreat with the leadership team of a large healthcare organization, we were running a little behind schedule so I said we’d move fairly quickly through the Responsibility for Choices principle in our leadership discussion. Fortunately, an astute participant piped up with, “Jim, I think we need to talk about our ‘blaming and disclaiming’ […]

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New Studies Show “Soft Skills” Are Now a Critical Priority

“The whole human side is now more important than skills or IQ. Everything we hear from clients is about the human aspects of leadership,” reports Rajeev Vasudeva, CEO of the Egon Zehnder executive recruiting firm. In a feature article on today’s “ultra-tight job market,” Fortune magazine concludes, “across industries, employers are prizing people skills, the […]

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The Unlikable Leader: 7 Ways to Improve Employee/Boss Relationships

Can a leader be highly effective (increase productivity, profitability, service/quality levels, boost safety, etc.) without being liked? Less effective leaders often think so. They might declare “it’s not a popularity contest, I don’t care if people like me; my job is to get results.” Unlikable leaders get results alright — poor and unlikable results. Zenger […]

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Stepping Up to Avoid Wallowing in the Swamp

The December 1 issue of Fortune magazine has an in-depth profile of Satya Nadalla, the new CEO of Microsoft entitled “The Man Who is Transforming Microsoft.” Writer, Andrew Nusca, was “on the road with Satya Nadella’s traveling rival show” during a recent whirlwind tour of Europe. During those busy few days Andrew gained insights into […]

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Key Leadership Lessons From Our Most Popular Workshop

Of all our custom keynotes and workshops topics, the most popular continues to be variations of Leading @ the Speed of Change. One reason for that is in today’s fast-moving world it’s easy to be overwhelmed by rapid changes and difficult problems. While we can’t control the changes, we can manage our response. It’s not […]

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Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on… Agile, Learning Organizations

“The learning organization can mean two things, it can mean an organization which learns and/or an organization which encourages learning in its people. It should mean both.” – Charles Handy, “The Age of Unreason“, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, pp 225 “Feedback is the lifeblood of the organization — the exchange of information that lets […]

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9 Key Behaviors Transforming Good Managers into Great Leaders

Balancing management and leadership has been a focus of our work stretching back through many of my books and our keynotes and workshops and leadership team retreats. Zenger Folkman’s research on the “differentiating competencies” that separate the bottom 10% from the top 10% shows that emotional intelligence is a major factor in leadership effectiveness. Good […]

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The High-Performance Balance: Management and Leadership

Employee engagement, customer satisfaction, safety, quality, and financial performance are slipping in many organizations. That’s often because organizations are over managed and under led. “People are our most important resource” has become a worn out cliché with a high “snicker factor.” Research shows that high performing teams and organizations balance the “hard” discipline of systems, […]

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Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on…Organizational Culture (Part One)

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue … but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look … – Henry David Thoreau, American author, poet, and philosopher Before we can learn to lead, we must learn […]

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Beware the Self-Assessment Trap

As a senior citizen was driving down a divided highway his car phone rang. When he answered the phone his wife’s urgent voice came through the speaker system warning him, “Herman, Herman! It’s all over the news that a car’s been driving for miles on the expressway going the wrong way. Please be on the […]

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Becoming a More Focused Leader with Emotional Agility

Where did 2013 go?! Were the days of the past year a tornado of multi-tasking juggling endless e-mails, phone calls, hurried hallway conversations, and racing between meetings? Did you spend countless hours putting out fires and responding to one problem after another? A major leadership — and life — skill in today’s crazy-busy times is […]

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Avid Readers are Stronger Leaders

As an avid reader and author I was delighted to come across recent research on the impact of reading on leadership effectiveness. In a series of five experiments conducted by social scientists at the New School for Social Research in New York City, they found that readers of literary fiction scored higher in empathy and […]

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10th Anniversary of Publishing “The Leader Letter”

One of the most celebrated anniversaries is birthdays. This month is the 10th birthday of my monthly newsletter The Leader Letter.I published The Leader Letter in April 2003 to coincide with and announce the publication of my fifth book, The Leader’s Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success. I signed thousands of pre-ordered books […]

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