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Tagged with 'management'

Are You on the Horns of a Bad or Bully Boss Dilemma?

In Colleen McCullough’s historical fiction novel, Fortune’s Favorites, she describes a scene in the ancient Roman senate when the dictator, Sulla, asked for discussion of his proposal. Ofella spoke up in opposition to Sulla’s plans. Without saying a word, Sulla motioned to his henchmen waiting at the doors. They carried Ofella out to the courtyard and […]

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You Can’t Raise Performance with Low Expectations

In his book, The Excellence Dividend, Tom Peters writes, “In an Oscar acceptance speech, the late director Robert Altman said: ‘The role of the director is to create a space where the actors and actresses can become more than they have ever been before, more than they’ve dreamed of being.'” You’ve likely had a limiting […]

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Balancing Management and Leadership: What’s Your Power Source?

Should leaders push or pull? Light a fire under people or stoke the fire within? Use position or persuasion power? Control with rules and policies or foster commitment with values and trust? Finding the right balance of management and leadership is a continuous challenge. Less effective managers use position power and get people doing things […]

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This Common Mistake Dramatically Increases Resistance to Change

I was waiting to deliver a workshop on “leading change” at a company’s management meeting of their top leaders. The new CEO was setting the context with observations of his first few months, his vision for the coming years, and the strategic priorities for the next year. Essentially his message boiled down to, “you’ve been […]

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For the L of It: Leadership and Love

I once asked a manager how many people work for his company. He said, “About half.” After we assessed their organizational culture, we found he was overly optimistic. They had a very large number of disengaged people. It wasn’t hard to see why the organization’s results were poor and getting worse. As someone in a […]

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Dealing with Stupid Busy Leadership Teams Overloading Their Organization

I had an exchange of messages with a reader about my blog post Stupid Busy: Is Your Leadership Team Overloading Your Organization? The reader, who we’ll call George, wrote, As a middle manager who is on the receiving end of this, you are hitting the nail squarely on the head. Unfortunately, there is no way […]

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Thoughts That Make you go Hmmm…from Peter Drucker

Photo – Jeff McNeill CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons As mentioned in my last post, I’ve been a lifelong follower of Peter Drucker’s seminal work on personal, team, and organization effectiveness. After writing that post, I went into my research database and found I’ve filed over 130 of his quotes, articles, and excerpts. Here […]

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Hinge of History: A Major Leadership and Culture Transformation is Underway

The 10th annual Global Peter Drucker Forum just wrapped up in Vienna, his birthplace. Forbes senior contributor, Steve Denning entitled his report on the session, A Major Transformation of Management Is Already Underway. The first management book I ever read way back when was Drucker’s The Effective Executive. Published in 1966 (I didn’t read it […]

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Asset-Based Community Development is Part of Emerging Strengths-Based Movement

I had lunch recently with Derek Alton to discuss his new role as Campaign Animator at the Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement. Derek is a sharp, creative, and ambitious young innovator who is very driven to fulfill Tamarack’s mission of “collaboratively creating vibrant communities by engaging learning leaders.” I’ve stayed in touch with Tamarack’s co-founding […]

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Steve Jobs Showed How Towering Strengths Overshadow Weaknesses

This month’s release of release of “Jobs” the biographical drama film starring Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs shows our continuing interest in this extraordinary leader. Jobs disrupted and redefined the music, smart phone, computer, and related industries. Jobs’ large legacy resulted from a few outstanding strengths that many called genius. The new film, previous books, […]

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How Many Monkeys Are On Your Back?

My last blog (Breaking the Manager-Employee Dependence Spin Cycle) discussed how Dave, a recent participant in The Extraordinary Coach workshop, realized he’d locked himself into an ever increasing cycle of taking on more and more of his employees problems. He was getting busier and busier while his employees were getting ever more frustrated waiting for […]

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Coaching Survey: Huge Improvement Opportunities

Last week I delivered a one hour webcast on 6 Steps to Building a Coaching Culture with Exceptional Leaders. Participants from 41 countries registered to attend. At broadcast time 536 unique sites signed on — many were teams or groups viewing the webcast together. The best feedback on whether participants feel they are getting high […]

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Myths and Methods for Developing Our Next Generation of Leaders

In the next 5 -10 years we’re going to see waves of leaders retire. Forward thinking organizations are now deep into succession planning as they prepare for this big generational change. In his Harvard Business Review blog, “We Wait Too Long to Train Our Leaders,” Jack Zenger highlights Zenger Folkman’s research showing that many supervisors […]

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Double Learner Motivation with Revolutionary Strengths-Based Leadership

On March 4, HR.com is hosting my complimentary webinar on Double Learner Motivation with Revolutionary Strengths-Based Leadership. In this fast-paced session I’ll discuss why a huge part of the leadership development gap is caused by traditional needs assessments and gap analysis. This weakness-based approach is ineffective and undermines participant motivation for change. I’ll show pre […]

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Six Steps to a Coaching Culture with Exceptional Leaders

In our Extraordinary Coach development system we define coaching as interactions that help the individual being coached to expand awareness, discover superior solutions, and make and implement better decisions. This is a broad leadership skill set that is most often used in career and performance coaching. Extraordinary coaches can exist in an ordinary or even […]

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What’s Really Creating the Coaching Skills Gap

When asked why they aren’t providing more coaching, managers will typically say: I am overwhelmed and don’t have enough time; my boss doesn’t coach me; or, my employees don’t need coaching. Our research shows these are excuses coming from low performing leaders without coaching mindsets on wobbly foundations of weak coaching skills. Within the very […]

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A Great Time of Year for Reflecting and Refocusing

I’ve long found January to be a great time of year for reflecting on the journey so far and looking ahead to what direction I’d like to take in the coming year. This year’s R & R time coincided nicely with revising my LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn has become a major tool for connecting to people […]

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Coaching Skills Have a Huge Impact on Employee Engagement

click to enlarge   In his introduction to The Extraordinary Coach: How the Best Leaders Help Others Grow, bestselling leadership author and executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith, points out, “a leader who is an adept coach can greatly enhance the organization’s success; one who dabbles and doesn’t take the process seriously can cause harm.” Marshall’s insight […]

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Make This the Year of Boosting Coaching Skills

There’s been a big surge in coaching over the past decade. Part of this is driven by the pressing need for increasing bench strength and succession planning. It’s also very clear that leaders with strong coaching skills have dramatically higher levels of employee engagement, productivity, safety, and customer service. Scott Schweyer, Ed Haltrecht, and I are delighted to […]

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A Balanced Approach for Highly Engaged Employees

click to enlarge Many organizations recognize that highly engaged employees create dramatically higher levels of customer satisfaction. Highly engaged employees are less likely to quit and leave — or to quit and stay. A workplace with engaged employees is 2 – 3 times safer, more productive, creative, and producing much higher quality. Lots of organizations […]

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