Recently Zenger Folkman correlated assessment data from three organizational levels to look at the cascading impact of senior leader effectiveness on their direct reports and in turn on the next level below them. The study found that managers who worked for the worst executives had awful engagement levels in the 24th percentile. However, managers working […]
Read post »If you’re a LinkedIn member please join our Strengths-Based Leadership Development group. If you’re not already connected to me, please click on http://ca.linkedin.com/in/jimclemmer/ and send me an invitation to connect. As a reader of this blog you should find our recent discussion (How do you help leaders let go of focusing on their weaknesses?) useful. […]
Read post »After hearing me deliver a keynote presentation at a conference this summer, “Amir,” a regional director for a large technical services firm, called for help. The company’s core service is delivered by highly paid technicians with deep expertise and qualifications. Replacing a technician is very difficult and costly. Amir called me because they had a […]
Read post »Tomorrow we publish my November blogs in our December issue of The Leader Letter. The lead article is my blog on “Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on … Reading and Leading.” As much as the evidence shows that extraordinary leaders are often avid readers, today’s hectic pace makes it especially challenging for many leaders […]
Read post »An 11 Keys to Building Extraordinary Leaders and Coaches webinar participant e-mailed me with this observation and question: “It’s amazing that for so long our organization has been concentrating on improving employee weaknesses and seemed to forget about helping them achieve greatness by focusing on what they are good at. I assume I can use […]
Read post »Are you looking for quick, easy — and high quality — online material from top experts in leadership development, personal growth, or sales and service excellence without searching all over the Internet? Would you like a “one stop site” to access surveys and benchmark data, learning modules, and custom content for your organization? I’ve enjoyed […]
Read post »Lean/Six Sigma was brought into more popular use with the Total Quality Management/Continuous Quality Improvement movements over two decades ago (you can read some of the roots of approach in this online Introduction to Firing on all Cylinders: The Service/Quality System for High-Powered Corporate Performance). In 1990 MIT researcher James P. Womack published The Machine […]
Read post »I just went to Amazon and searched for coaching books. I was presented with 29,935 books to peruse. I typed “coaching programs” into Google and got 687,000 hits. Coaching is so popular because — done effectively — it can turbocharge personal, team, and organization performance. But there’s a mind-numbing array of frameworks, processes, experts, methods, […]
Read post »Two readers recently posted comments voicing the common struggles many people have in letting go of weaknesses when developing leadership effectiveness. One reader responded to Zenger Folkman’s Harvard Business Review blog Three Myths About Your Strengths by naming a fourth myth as focusing on your strengths means you can ignore your weaknesses. He went on […]
Read post »Tom is a strong manager with a solid track record of energizing and pulling teams together to deliver results in difficult circumstances. He’s been rising steadily in his organization. Tom thrives on ever more challenging assignments and driving hard to continue growing his leadership effectiveness and career opportunities. A recent 360 assessment from Tom’s direct […]
Read post »“Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.” – James Russell Lowell, 19th century American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat “All leaders, whether contrarian or otherwise, are heavily influenced by what they read. Indeed, in many cases leaders are directed and inspired as much by their readings as […]
Read post »As an avid reader and author I was delighted to come across recent research on the impact of reading on leadership effectiveness. In a series of five experiments conducted by social scientists at the New School for Social Research in New York City, they found that readers of literary fiction scored higher in empathy and […]
Read post »Ghosts, goblins, and zombies are scary. But working for a bully boss can be terrifying — like living with a creature from the black lagoon. If we allow ourselves to be a victim of a horrible boss we could even end up in an early grave. Most bad bosses aren’t evil. They’re often good people […]
Read post »Organizations too often waste time and money providing leadership development programs that don’t work. Very little of their learning and development efforts significantly improve long term team or organizational results. A major reason for this all too common performance improvement shortfall is lack of follow up. Participants are “sheep dipped” in a workshop or 360 […]
Read post »In the opening lines of the chapter entitled, “Making Strength Productive” in his 1967 book The Effective Executive, the “father of modern management,” Peter Drucker writes, “to make strength productive is the unique purpose of organization. It cannot, of course, overcome the weakness with which each of us is abundantly endowed. But it can make […]
Read post »As with my webinar earlier this month, 11 Keys to Building Extraordinary Leaders and Coaches (now archived and available for viewing), when presented with the overwhelming research, reflecting on their own experiences with good and bad leaders, and thinking about what motivates them to stick with an improvement plan, most audience members experience a sharp […]
Read post »In 1998, Martin Seligman, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, was elected President of the American Psychological Association by a landslide. This set him casting about for a central theme for his time in this key leadership role. A few weeks later — still puzzling over a theme — he was weeding in […]
Read post »We had over 400 sites join last week’s webinar on building extraordinary leaders and coaches. During this 60 minute webcast I outlined a high level and highly condensed overview of 5 keys to strengths-based leadership development and 6 steps to building a coaching culture with exceptional leaders. In this fast-paced webcast I rapidly covered: • Key […]
Read post »Charles Darwin was a 19th century British naturalist who revolutionized the study of biology with his theory of evolution based on natural selection. His most famous works include Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. One of his key research findings was that, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor […]
Read post »As the frenetic pace of organizational mergers, downsizing, and restructuring picks up speed, middle and senior managers are faced with career opportunities and major threats. A few months ago I coached “Sheila,” a manager who had been through our Extraordinary Leader development process. Sheila had been given 360 feedback from her manager, peers, direct reports, […]
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