Alongside the now discredited belief that leaders are born not made is the equally erroneous view that bad leaders can’t shift their behaviors and become much better. This belief tends to be especially widespread about more seasoned and senior executives. In their Harvard Business Review blog “Bad Leaders Can Change their Spots” Jack Zenger and […]
Read post »As 2012 winds down, ’tis the season for looking back at the year’s highlights. Harvey Schachter reviewed dozens and dozens of business, leadership, and management books for The Globe & Mail last year. As I contemplate my ever expanding must-read book list I am in awe of how many books he reviews. Harvey’s either a […]
Read post »Most organizations we’re working with today have declared a set of values. Posters, slides, banners, screen savers, newsletters, flyers, and framed parchments proclaim what the organization stands for. Many of these values statements assert a commitment to excellence, respect and integrity, customer focus, teamwork and collaboration, service/quality, responsiveness and the like. This is an important […]
Read post »I first encountered Martin Seligman’s work on the power of optimism in the mid eighties. I’ve been an avid reader of his research and groundbreaking work ever since. When he was president of the American Psychology Association in 1998, he founded the Positive Psychology movement. Last July, I attended the first Canadian conference on Positive […]
Read post »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 […]
Read post »The pace around The CLEMMER Group these days may not be as frenzied as the U.S. presidential race but some days it feels like it! We’re not out on the campaign trail kissing babies or slinging mud at our opponents. But we have been very busy spreading the word about Zenger Folkman’s revolutionary leadership development […]
Read post »How to Be Exceptional couldn’t come at a better time. We’re standing at a very critical crossroad. Our organizations desperately want and need much stronger leadership at all levels. But a torrent of studies show most leadership development approaches aren’t working. We need a better way. We’re also at the intersection of powerful and revolutionary […]
Read post »Insights and inspiration as I attend Zenger Folkman’s Extraordinary Leadership Summit this week in Utah and the world watches the London Olympics: “The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he ‘gets for it,’ but what he ‘becomes by it'” – John Ruskin, 19th century English social thinker, philanthropist, artist, and writer We were […]
Read post »Here are a few insights drawn from The Inspiring Leader: Unlocking the Secrets of How Extraordinary Leaders Motivate: “Adequate leaders get everyone to do their jobs, but inspirational leaders are able to get people to rise far above that mark and achieve more.” “Inspiration and emotion are inextricably linked together. The inspiring leader learns how […]
Read post »This is an extraordinary book on leadership from the experts in extraordinary leadership. In 2002, legendary training and development expert Jack Zenger (he’s been given numerous international awards and citations) and Joe Folkman (renowned psychometrician with extensive expertise in survey research and leader assessments) published their groundbreaking book The Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into […]
Read post »On March 7 (tomorrow), 1876 Alexander Graham Bell was issued a patent by the U.S. Patent Office for “the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically … by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound.” The telephone was first seen […]
Read post »Like the debate on whether leaders are born or made, an early debate in the emerging Emotional Intelligence research was whether our EQ, like IQ, is fixed once we hit adulthood. The debate is over and the verdict is in: like building leadership or other forms of expertise, we can improve our EQ at any […]
Read post »It’s always very interesting to see what readers identify as the most significant messages in my books. Occasionally I wonder if they actually read the book I wrote. Maybe they mixed it up with another one? But most often I am pleasantly surprised at what a reader has learned from the book. Through the power […]
Read post »“The most neglected form of compensation is the six-letter word thanks.” – Robert Townsend, former Amex and Avis executive and author of Up the Organization “What we’ve found is that exceptional leaders lead with gratitude, they pause to feel and express it first, because they have discovered that this is an essential way to improve […]
Read post »My last blog post announced that you can now view last Friday’s (November 4) full Leading a Peak Performance Culture webcast with all slides and audio track. You might want to view (or review) the session on your own or share it with your management team and/or improvement professionals concerned with leadership and culture development. […]
Read post »Many organizations are implementing significant overhauls of their IT systems. But many of these projects are poorly implemented. This leads to sizeable cost overruns, missed deadlines, disrupted operations, unhappy customers, and stressed out employees. This month’s issue of Harvard Business Review carries an article entitled Why Your IT Project May Be Riskier Than You Think. […]
Read post »Strong management teams fiercely debate options, challenge each other’s thinking, and find the optimum approaches hidden in the grey area between both sides of tough issues. That takes trust, emotional intelligence, and courage. I am currently coaching a couple of lower performing executive groups struggling to “up their game” and become strong leadership teams. One […]
Read post »Last week I finally saw the famous musical My Fair Lady based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. I took our fair daughter, Jennifer, to see My Fair Lady at the Shaw Festival in beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. We thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve wanted to see the show for years as a result of reading and […]
Read post »Since the mid-eighties I’ve been an avid follower of Martin Seligman’s leading-edge work at the University of Pennsylvania. He began his distinguished psychology career in the late sixties studying pessimism, learned helplessness, and depression. His two previous books, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life and Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive […]
Read post »During our April trip to The Netherlands, I was fascinated by the extensive water management skills the Dutch developed over decades of draining and reclaiming land. After learning that 25% of the country is below and 50% is at sea level it’s very clear why this region of Europe is known as “the lowlands.” Polders […]
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