How many of these points apply to your organization? High “snicker factor” on your vision, values, or mission statements Declining or stagnant employee engagement levels Absenteeism and “mental health days” Difficulty attracting or hanging on to top talent Waning or plateaued Client/Customer satisfaction Resistance to change Weak trust and teamwork Less than stellar service/quality levels […]
Read post »The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen. It is the people inside the company, those on the front lines, who are best qualified to find new ways of doing things. – […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »Decades of research shows that many leadership development programs have little impact on creating lasting behavior change. Sometimes called “spray and pray” or “sheep dipping,” many efforts provide one-off learning or development events in the hope that something will stick. With weak follow through and little connection to daily work life it rarely does. Decades […]
Read post »With over 500 sites from many countries tuned to our one hour webcast last week it’s clear that Leading a Peak Performance Culture is a topic with lots of interest. You can now view the full archived webcast by clicking here. During this fast-paced session I gave a high altitude, jet speed overview of a […]
Read post »A New Yorker cartoon shows two people standing at a bar having a glass of wine. One is peering over the top of a tall dog cone around his neck and explains to the other “It keeps me from checking my phone every two seconds.” The Information Overload Research Group reports that “knowledge workers in […]
Read post »Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. These words are often attributed to the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe but seems to be a compilation from various sources. Regardless of the author, this powerful advice identifies a timeless leadership […]
Read post »“Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?” is a 1974 Harvard Business Review article that’s become widely cited and reprinted. The authors, William Oncken, Jr.and Donald L. Wass use the metaphor of a problem or issue being like a monkey on someone’s back. This excerpt outlines a leadership trap that’s still ensnaring many managers over 40 […]
Read post »Southwest Airlines has not only been the most financially successful airline in history it has also produced the #1 return to investors of all S&P 500 publicly traded companies for a 30 year period. Herb Kelleher, co-founder, Chairman Emeritus, and former CEO declares, “it’s the intangibles that are the hardest things for competitors to imitate. […]
Read post »Next month’s Extraordinary Leadership Summit and Coaching Symposium will be the fourth one I’ve participated in since forming our partnership with Zenger Folkman. Three intense and powerful days of workshops, Client presentations, panels, and discussion groups provides a rare chance to hear about the latest leadership, coaching, and organization development research and practices. We’re especially […]
Read post »Wells Fargo is now America’s largest bank by market capitalization. One of Zenger Folkman’s early and largest Clients, the company has been working extensively on leadership and culture development for the past decade. CEO John Stumpf observed, “We always say we could leave our strategic plan on an airplane, somebody could pick it up, and […]
Read post »It’s been a few years since we’ve condensed our culture development approaches and experiences into a one hour webinar. Over the past few years we’ve continued working with a variety of North American and global Clients on leadership and culture development. We’ve also added the depth and power of Zenger Folkman’s leadership and coaching skill […]
Read post »Joe Folkman is a global expert in psychometrics or measuring psychological factors. He wrote his PhD dissertation on data he collected from 360 assessments. Over the decades he’s developed feedback and measurement tools around a growing database now compromised of over a half million assessments on almost 50,000 leaders. Long-time feedback, executive coaching, and leadership […]
Read post »Recently I’ve been reviewing our lessons learned on organization and culture development. This is in preparation for our June 17 webinar on Leading a Peak Performance Culture. “Making Change Work … while the Work Keeps Changing” is a new research report from IBM summarizing interviews and online surveys they conducted of over 1,400 leaders responsible […]
Read post »How do you build a leadership strength from good to great? How do you sustain energy and endurance to keep working at developing leadership skills until others notice a substantial improvement? How do you ensure the leadership skill you’re developing is most relevant to what the organization needs or expects from you? The answers to these […]
Read post »Whenever we ask a group of workshop participants how many rank employee engagement as one of their top priorities, most raise their hands. We’re encountering a growing number of organizations finding that their engagement survey ratings are slipping — and not just at the frontline employee level. A growing number of people — at all […]
Read post »8 Tips for a Better YOU Research shows that people who put proper emphasis on their own development impact their organization in significant ways. Multiple studies show how seeking feedback can increase leadership effectiveness, but ZF’s upcoming webinar on May 27 will take a deeper dive into self-development and the critical role feedback can play. […]
Read post »Many leaders find courageous conversations to give corrective or redirecting feedback very difficult. Emotions can get in the way, perceptions of the issue can differ widely, relationships may be damaged, and reactions can be volatile. Leaders may be scarred from past conversations where they gave or received tough feedback in a poorly structured and awkwardly […]
Read post »Plato once observed “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when people are afraid of the light.” Ignoring or failing to understand how others see our behaviors keeps us in the dark and diminishes everyone’s perceptions of our leadership effectiveness. Those perceptions then shape […]
Read post »A recent Harvard Business School newsletter summarized research from David Garvin, the C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and Joshua Margolis, professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School. They point out that effective leaders need good advice and need to give useful advice to others. “Yet business […]
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