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 […]
Read post »For years our culture development work has centered around three key questions: • Where are we going (the vision or picture of our preferred future)? • What do we believe in (our guiding values or principles)? • Why do we exist (our reason for being, mission, or purpose)? In the early years of our culture […]
Read post »In our culture development keynotes, workshops, and retreats we’ve been citing research from the largest study of organizational effectiveness ever undertaken. A few years ago McKinsey & Company published their extensive research in Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage (click here for my book summary and review). The research study identified nine […]
Read post »Do you wonder what would make you really stand out and vividly show you’re ready for more responsibility and career growth? Are you uncertain which actions would lead to your highest productivity and personal effectiveness? Or are you and others in your organization unsure what criteria to use in promoting frontline performers into leadership roles? […]
Read post »When our three kids were growing up I was — sometimes painfully — reminded of the old parenting adage; “children act like their parents despite all attempts to teach them good manners!” When Chris, Jenn, or Vanessa behaved poorly in public — if I took a deep look in the mirror — I could recognize […]
Read post »Last week I was working with a diverse group of senior operating executives at their professional association’s leadership forum. The new research we reviewed and discussions we had on building leadership strengths resonated strongly with the group — especially our Best Leader/Worst Leader exercise (see “Exceptional Leaders Aren’t Well Rounded“). What especially rang true for […]
Read post »It’s been two years since Jack Zenger and I explored partnering once again (our previous companies, Zenger Miller and The Achieve Group worked together in the 80s). Since forming The CLEMMER Group in 1994 we’ve been approached by many consulting and training organizations to work together. We’ve always chosen to do our own thing and […]
Read post »As baseball great Yogi Berra (known for his “Yogiisms”) or Canada’s bombastic hockey commenter, Don Cherry, might have said “it ain’t rocket surgery.” Dissatisfied frontline servers don’t produce satisfied customers. Disengaged employees don’t provide the discretionary effort leading to peak performance. Discontented team members don’t create inspired and energized teams. In a thriving and highly […]
Read post »Ellen Jane Langer is a professor of psychology at Harvard University. Over the past 35 years she’s written eleven books and more than two hundred research articles on mindfulness, illusion of control, decision making, and aging. Her landmark book, Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility (click here to read my summary/review of it), […]
Read post »April 1 as April Fool’s Day or All Fools’ Day can be traced back to the Roman festival of Hilaria and the Medieval Feast of Fools or the Feast of the Ass dating from the fifth century in various European countries. In 1392, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is set in on March 32 or April Fool’s […]
Read post »Social media is a key force in making the Internet truly a world wide web of interconnections. And that means the penalties or pays offs of low or high service/quality levels are exponentially multiplied. Technology for collecting and analyzing data along with process management approaches like Lean/Six Sigma are powerful management tools. They can pinpoint […]
Read post »Zenger Folkman is rapidly being recognized as one of the leading-edge leadership development and consulting firms of the 21st century. Global leaders in the automotive, financial, engineering, technology, retail, consumer products, and professional services sectors are using ZF’s ground breaking systems as the foundation of their leadership and organization development. Now in the second year […]
Read post »Last month we had over 500 sites from 30 countries registered for my 60 minute webinar on Building Leadership Skills and Coaching Culture. The webinar was divided into two sections. The first half outlined Five Keys to Building Extraordinary Leaders. The second part was on Six Keys to Building a Coaching Culture with Exceptional Leaders. […]
Read post »A few weeks ago my blog post on “Talent Management: Developing Strengths of Individual Contributors” reviewed 4 key reasons for developing key individual contributors. It also provided links to our white paper “Individual Contributors: Building on Strengths is the Foundation of Success at Every Level“. Some highly professional individual contributors wield great influence and make […]
Read post »I’ve been guilty of perpetuating the misconception of the well-rounded leader. Like many training and development professionals I used to believe that leadership skills development comes from assessing leaders against a leadership framework or competency model and developing an improvement plan to round out the flat or weak spots. But this long-held view is no […]
Read post »If you’re not connected with me on LinkedIn you may have missed the discussion generated by my post, “Wasting Time on Weaknesses“. Some commentators like Richard Peterson agree that weakness-based improvement plans are demotivating and wasteful. He goes further to call people “delusional” who continue to focus on weaknesses despite the “overwhelming evidence to the […]
Read post »After months of searching for just the right executive I am delighted that Brad Smith recently joined our team as Director, Business Development. Brad has nearly twenty years of experience as a trusted advisor in organizational effectiveness, leadership/culture development, learning, career and talent management, consulting, Human Resources, and performance improvement to hundreds of organizations in […]
Read post »A reader sent me this e-mail: “Your recent blog, “A Dose of Reality: Our World is Dramatically Better“, is excellent. Your information supports what I had already believed but did not have data to support. As I was reading your blog, I happened to have on my desk a copy of the book “The Trouble […]
Read post »“For all its shortcomings, positive thinking has stood up with surprising muscularity in the present era of placebo studies, mind-body therapies, brain-biology research, and, most controversial, the findings of quantum physics experiments … may challenge how we come to view ourselves in the twenty-first century, at least as much as Darwinism challenged man’s self-perception in […]
Read post »I couldn’t put down this deeply researched, well-written, and fascinating book. His one simple idea is “thoughts are causative.” Starting in the 1830s, Horowitz weaves together an entertaining and insightful history of “the most radical idea of our times.” As a long time student of self-help and personal growth literature and approaches I had many […]
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