Last week Melanie Will, Manager of Learning and Organization Development, Wilfrid Laurier University and I delivered a one hour webinar on Strengthening Leadership and Culture. Melanie provided a case study using many examples and research data from their organization’s use of The Extraordinary Leader Development System for over 160 leaders throughout the university. We covered […]
Read post »Does your team/organization need more communication? Would you like to get more e-mails? Most workshop participants give an emphatic yes in response to the first question and a deafening no to the second. Yet when told that team/organization members want more communication many leaders respond with ccing more people or sending more e-mails. During the […]
Read post »Recently I was asked to speak at a CEO forum on strategic use of the CEO’s time. This was a great opportunity to review the common themes emerging from our keynotes and workshops and leadership team retreats. These time traps apply to anyone in a leadership role, but especially to senior executives. How many of […]
Read post »Have you ever experienced a leader who’s very strong at coaching and mentoring but doesn’t get results? People feel great working with him or her, but the job doesn’t get done. What’s the likelihood this leader would be rated in the top ten percent of leaders? How about a leader who is very good at […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »Last month I delivered a one hour webinar on How Learning and Development Can Build Stronger Leaders and Cultures (click on title to view it) sponsored by The Institute for Performance and Learning (formerly the Canadian Society for Training and Development). During the webinar we ran a poll on the research and best practices presented. […]
Read post »Years ago I was in a meeting with our team reviewing the rapid changes in our training and consulting business and sorting through our priorities for the coming quarter. We had doubled our already substantial business over the past 18 months. While the growth was exciting, it was also exhausting. We were piling on new […]
Read post »Community is one of those words that have many meanings, primarily because the experience of community is so diverse and rich. Community can help shape our identity as a collective and interdependent people. It creates the opportunity for us to care for and about others and, in turn, to be cared for, the key […]
Read post »I’ve known Paul Born for many years and have deep respect for his work founding the Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement in 2001. Their community-based work has reduced poverty for 250,000 people in Canada and many other countries. When Paul gave me a copy of his latest book I expected it would center on his […]
Read post »WLU is a dynamic and fast growing university in the heart of “Silicon Valley North” in Waterloo. A core part of their mission and values is nurturing a culture that “inspires lives of leadership and purpose.” Our daughter, Vanessa, is a Laurier graduate. Living in Waterloo Region, I’ve spoken to various student groups and conferences […]
Read post »If you buy a little goldfish and keep it in a small bowl it will remain no bigger than a few inches long. Move that same fish to a large aquarium and it will double or triple in size. Put the goldfish in a large pond and it can grow up to a foot long! […]
Read post »As the name implies, an effective keynote presentation condenses key ideas from broad topics to its core essence. Memorable keynote presentations that connect and “stick” with audiences spice these points with humor. This “edutaining” combination is powerful. It’s often one of the big differences between dry presenters strangling their audiences through “death by PowerPoint” and […]
Read post »Just as Human Resource Leaders Need to Create More Strategic Value there’s a huge need for Learning and Development professionals to do the same. Last year Rob Pearson became the new CEO of the Canadian Society for Training and Development. I reconnected with Rob at a Conference Board of Canada Learning and Development meeting last […]
Read post »Change happens. We can’t control much of the world changing around us. But we can control how we respond. We can choose to anticipate and make changes or resist them. Resisting change is usually like trying to push water upstream. Generally we’re quick to point to others who resist change. It’s much harder to recognize […]
Read post »An administrative assistant with no experience booking professional speakers was asked by her manager to call me about my availability and fee to deliver an opening keynote for their upcoming staff conference. When I gave her my fee, she replied, “For one hour….Wow! What a job! And you don’t even have to have sex!” I […]
Read post »My last blog, “7 Reasons Change and Development Programs Fail“, concluded that a senior leadership team retreat lays the foundation for successful change and development initiatives. This is often the intact senior leadership team heading up a department, division, or the entire organization. Depending on the retreat objectives and length, one or sometimes two, levels […]
Read post »A long list of studies shows that 50 – 70% of leadership, culture, and organization change and development efforts fail. For example, a Harvard Business Review article by Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria on “Cracking the Code of Change” concludes, “the brutal fact is that about 70% of all change initiatives fail.” These efforts typically […]
Read post »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, […]
Read post »Since bookings in our business are much slower in the summer, I’ve often used the time for writing books, reflecting, and planning. One of my projects this summer was to step back and look at the bigger and evolving picture of our keynotes and workshops. Most of my keynotes and workshops are tailored to a […]
Read post »A recent study by the International Coach Federation showed that strong coaching cultures are correlated with much higher financial performance. Companies with an above average coaching culture showed revenue 19% higher than all others in their peer group. At last July’s leadership summit Kathleen Stinnett delivered a keynote presentation on How to Create a Coaching […]
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