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Tagged with 'strengths-based leadership development system'

3rd Canadian Conference on Positive Psychology

For the past few decades I’ve followed the ground-breaking work of Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania. Based on his extensive research, articles and books, and his 1998 term as elected president of The American Psychological Association he’s now considered the founder of the burgeoning new field of positive psychology. This is defined as […]

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Authentic Leadership Comes from Building Our Strengths

I will be delivering a presentation next April at a healthcare leadership conference. The conference theme focuses on the courage to bring authenticity to action. A couple of my books have chapters on authenticity as one of seven core leadership principles. In light of our work over the past 18 months with Zenger Folkman’s strengths-based […]

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Six Essentials to Creating an Extraordinary Culture

How would you describe the organizational culture of your dreams? What are its essential elements? How would people treat each other? What core values would shine brightly every day? If you could eavesdrop on members of your team describing their workplace at a family gathering or social event, what would you hope they’d say? We […]

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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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Book Review: “The Power of Feedback” by Joe Folkman

“I’d like to give you a little feedback” sends shivers up the spine of many people. Sometimes prefaced by a cursory point or two on our strengths or what we did well, most of the feedback centers on what we’ve done wrong or on fixing our weaknesses. Rather than benefiting from the power of feedback, […]

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The Best Positivity/Negativity Ratio for Peak Performance

Given the overwhelming research on the power of optimism can leaders and teams be too positive? Intuitively we know that’s true. An overly positive view often leads to whitewashing issues as if pretending they don’t exist will make them go away. Over the top optimists often avoid those courageous conversations that address the difficult Moose […]

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We’re Waiting Too Long to Start Investing in Leadership Development

Jack Zenger was recently talking with long-time Client, Symantec, a prominent Silicon Valley software firm about the remarkable success they’ve had using Zenger Folkman’s Strengths-Based Leadership Development System. The company has gathered compelling evidence that “leaders who participate in their development programs are getting higher scores on essentially every leadership competency they measure …. Upper […]

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Untangling the Training, Mentoring, Coaching Confusion

Like “vision,” “service,” or “leadership,” coaching has become a word that means different things to different people. Many people think of the typical sports coach who’s a veteran of the game (often a retired player). Sports coaches typically develop skills, guide improvements with feedback, and actively direct game plans. Other people talk about coaching and […]

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The Coach-Coachee Relationship and the Impact of Executive Coaching

A number of participants in our February 12 Building Extraordinary Coaching Skills webcast provided comments and raised interesting questions about this vital leadership skill. One question was whether there’s a marked difference in coaching those in volunteer roles versus people in paid positions. In the webcast I outlined our definition of coaching as “interactions that […]

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Love, Leadership, and Productivity

Valentine’s Day hearts convey feelings of love and passion. It’s a day to celebrate romantic relationships and express our gratitude and affection for loved ones enriching our lives. February 14 is also a good time to review the powerful impact extraordinary leaders have on their teams and organizations. Exceptional leaders fan the flames of love […]

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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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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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The Enduring Impact of Focusing on Strengths

Years ago a 7th grade teacher gave her class an up close and personal exercise in finding and building on strengths. She began by circulating sheets of paper that had only the name of each student at the top of each blank page. Students were asked to identify what they felt was the greatest strength […]

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November 28 Webinar on Building Organization Muscle

Last week we held our morning briefing in Toronto on Developing Exceptional Leaders. During the first part of the morning I delivered a 90 minute overview of the unique and revolutionary Strengths-Based Leadership Development System. You can view a condensed version of the material I covered in an archived webinar on The Strengths-Based Leadership Development […]

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Three Strategies to Dominate in a Scary Economy

Tomorrow is Halloween. So it’s fitting to read a very well written piece in Fortune about “how smart companies are facing the doomsayers with great ideas and fearless moves.” Senior Editor at Large, Geoff Colvin, has been a long-time favorite business writer of mine. He often shows how the best leaders build the strongest companies. […]

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9 Points for Getting 360 Degree Reviews Right

My last two posts have focused on dealing with feedback fears and using feedback to move us forward. As we work with Clients to implement our Strengths-Based Leadership Development System we’re tapping into Zenger Folkman’s extensive knowledge base and rapidly expanding our experience and expertise in using 360 feedback tools. It’s an incredibly powerful vehicle […]

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Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on…Using Feedback to Lead Forward

“The eye cannot see its own lashes.” – Chinese proverb “Superior performers intentionally seek out feedback; they want to hear how others perceive them, realizing that this is valuable information … one common mistake is focusing on people’s weaknesses and failing to note their strong points. This can be demoralizing rather than motivating.” – Daniel […]

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9 Ways to Get Over Your Feedback Fears

Canadian Thanksgiving Day was earlier this month. That holiday Monday was cool with bright sunshine and blue skies. After our traditional Oktoberfest Family Day lunch (Kitchener-Waterloo celebrates their German heritage with the largest Oktoberfest outside of Munich) our family decided to visit a corn maze. It consisted of a series of trails and pathways cut […]

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Manifesto for a Leadership Development Revolution

I’ve been delivering keynotes, webinars, facilitating workshops, and discussing our Strengths-Based Leadership Development System for the past month with many highly experienced HR, Learning, and OD executives. It’s been fascinating to see most of them go through the same struggle I did when I first dug into the compelling research. On the one hand, comments […]

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Leadership Cross-Training is Powerful and Revolutionary

For the last few decades leadership development has used a linear approach. For example, communication skills training might involve breaking down the key actions of the skill, showing examples of strong communication, practicing key steps of the skill, and getting coaching or feedback. Linear training is effective and will often help a motivated learner get […]

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